From: "Russell Hunt" <info@mdcats.com> Date: November 12, 2009 6:18:52 PM GMT-05:00 To: <power-catamaran@lists.samurai.com> Members: Thanks for the input. I did not mean offense by my answer, nor did I realize it would come across as marketing speak. I was not pitching for my boat in particular, but rather for quality power catamarans as a whole. And I do believe what I say and am very passionate about it. A well done powercat can avoid the compromise that mono-hulls are simply locked into. But I do not understand why they appear to be or have been considered a lower price way to go. And this is something I have been fighting against in the marketplace. The perception that a powercatamaran should be less expensive. They are much more expensive to build than a similar model size (LOA, not true size) mono-hull. This is one of the reasons we brought our Buzzards Bay 34 upmarket. Even if we finished her out to less than yacht standards she would still be perceived as an expensive boat, (say 375K) but without the "Yachty" touches that should go with a boat at that price point. So we gave her the added finish, details, and wood work of a vessel at the top of her class. We cannot build a Buzzards Bay 34 today for $280K, even without the upgraded finish. So the increase in price is a combination of the $280K being too low to begin with, as well as bringing her upmarket. MJM yachts, a competitor of ours, builds the MJM 34 and the MJM 40. Similar mission to our Buzzards Bay 34. Our hull surface area is about the same as their 40. With our beam, our 34 is atleast as big and certainly has more cruising space than their 40. Yet we have to price against their 34 (which is still more money than ours!). Their 40 is going out the door for well north of $750K. So what are some of the decisions to be made from a performance / value / production standpoint? Well the first thing I think of when it comes to trade offs are tooling. How much should you tool a boat? How many boats do you want to amortize the cost of the tooling over? How many boats do you think you can sell. To get the major cost down (labor) you want to mold everything to cut down on hand finishing. Believe me, 1 hr in the mold shop is easily worth 4 hr's in the shop. But building a boat with all liner construction is very heavy. How much heavier? Thats very hard to say, and varies from boat to boat. On our 34, I estimate we are saving some where around 2000 pounds building the way we do, hand finishing cockpit hull sides, shower areas, building in cabin floors in place from cored panels, etc. Allot of companies today even have molded liners for their headliners. Its faster, but its allot heavier. Now tooling up like that is a huge investment. On a 40 foot cat, the tooling cost could easily reach into the 1 to 1.5 million mark. To compensate for this cost, the builder must sell more boats. To do this, the builder will often set-up a dealer network, and of coarse, spend allot more money in marketing. This all adds cost. So with volume comes savings sure, but I think much of these savings gets spend on middlemen and advertising. Perhaps this is better for the manufacturer, who gets a stronger brand image out of the deal, but I don't think the end user is benefitted by a better value. I've spoken with Chris White about this and he has been running into this for a long time. Some of his designs custom built are of certainly higher quality / performance / value than those from Lagoon, etc, but the cost is actually similar. Most people would believe that the custom or low volume builds would be much higher cost but they simply are not. So, on our Buzzards Bay 34 we have tooling for the roof, deck, hull, cockpit floor, and cockpit hatches. Our tooling costs were around $250K. We're happy with this balance of tooled / versus hand finishing. Too much tooling and I'd be less interested in making continual improvements to the layout and interior features. There are so many boats out there with real problems, but because the tooling is all done, the builders won't make the needed changes. So the customer gets it in the ear. At our level of tooling we've been able to continue to refine and adjust. The Buzzards Bay 34 has a cabin trunk, where the 33 had no cabin trunk. We made this change on the first 34 by molding the deck , then adding the cabin trunk to the deck post mold. This way we were able to live with the new design for a while, making sure she was 100% before modifying the tooling. More expensive than directly modifying the tool, but I know myself, I am a tinkerer. If I wasn't 100% satisfied with the new cabin trunk, I would have had to modify the mold twice. Of coarse we had to hand finish that part, and we now are modifying the deck tool but the benefits from this design change were significant and added value to the boats. With the model change we also switched over to resin infusion for our hulls. Its more labor initially, more training costs, and more process materials (bag, resin flow media, tubing, etc.). But the part is better. Some of our competitors were switching or had switched and we did not want to be considered to have less composite expertise. But the bigger reason is that our customers were driving some changes to our boats. They wanted more fuel, more speed, and more stuff. So I wanted more strength without weight. So we went to resin infusion. Did we lose weight? Not that we could tell. But the laminate is better, stronger, more consistent. Some of the problems with switching over to resin infusion are cosmetic. There is more print through. And print blockers are another way to add weight. So this is an area we are still looking at and so are many other guys. Switching over to resin infusion takes somewhat of a leap of faith. Since I am not always long on faith, we molded the first hull with clear gelcoat. This way we could see exactly what was going on on the other side of the core after the part was pulled. Just in case we didn't get the resin feeder lines and vacuum lines distributed just so and left a dry spot, we would see it. And now that we know we're good, we can switch back to gelcoated hull parts. The cost of the change over to resin infusion? You must factor in having to paint the first hull, but I'd say for us it was an additional 15 to 18K. This drops to something like 5k additional for an infused gelcoated part, and I think with continued practice, we could get the difference down to 2.5k. I hope I've shed some light on some of the behind the scenes thinking. I'd love to go on but to fully answer all of the questions below would force me to miss supper. And I'm not that fast a typer. Probably not that great a speller either. So again apologies. I guess was trying to find a quicker way of saying all of the above. I didn't want to come across as a marketeer. I'm not. I actually believe this stuff. Russell Hunt, President Multihull Development, Inc. and Buzzards Bay Catamarans Office #: 508-403-0301 Cell #: 508-759-4111 Other #: 800-882-7083 Email us at: info@MDcats.com Check out our website at : www.MDcats.com http://www.yachtworld.com/multihulldevelopment/ Listmaster's note: This posting was delayed by the list server as it quoted the entire daily digest and had no specific subject line.

Thanks a lot, Russell, for taking the time to more fully explain how the Buzzards Bay powercat is evolving. Is the new Buzzards Bay 34 pictured on either of your sites? --Georgs > I hope I've shed some light on some of the behind the scenes thinking. > > Russell Hunt, President > Multihull Development, Inc. and Buzzards Bay Catamarans > Check out our website at : www.MDcats.com > http://www.yachtworld.com/multihulldevelopment/