Resin Research Composite Pro is better than West and costs less. Your not officially allowed to complain about epoxy prices until you pay over $200/gallon for the good stuff, like Pro-Set and MGS.

The price of carbon keeps going up, which keeps increasing the costs on foils. I have carbon here that is over $100 per meter, and you need quite a few meters to build a 7 foot long F18 dagger board.

New sail prices aren't exactly going down either, few production boats are coming with U.S built sails so that's another USD<Euro problem.

F18 daggers are now 7 feet long???

The Nacra MKII daggers are 6' 6" long:

http://www.microwindracing.com/images/mkIIdaggerboards.JPG

You have been close to a Melges, right? For starters, there is a lot more material in those boats than ours. Considering the relative size, they are somewhat proportionally priced to a F18. Not to mention, their sails cost a ridiculous amount of money. How they ultimately justify the cost of these boats is beyond me, although I'd venture to say there are fewer of them than most people realize, and probably take a lot of labor to build.

Mike

I thought I saw a price for the 'new' Melges 20 (a 3 man, open sport monohull, like a Flying Scot on 'roids) that was about $40K!

I remember thinking at that time, "Wow, you could buy TWO racing cats for that!"

I think Resin is a byproduct of Oil (Petrolium based) and I know you know what's been going on with the price of oil lately, so it's no surprise that the price of everything oil based is up too....then there's the increased shipping cost, because the delivery trucks run on...OIL.

Have you seen the price of Diesel fuel lately?

There are some good deals on used boats out there, thank God! But the price of -everything- is going up, it's your paycheck that's not going up as quickly, that's why it hurts a lot more.

and...we're off.

Where are you -off- to?

If you're going a long way, you may want to hire one of those 'Calgary Asian Escorts' I've seen advertised here! ;^0

i would also suggest that real inflation (not US govt numbers), QE1 & 2, and fuel cost have exacerbated the cost of everything

I was just pointing out that the talk of oil was going to initiate the dive into the depths of political discord.

Give it a moment.