Not at all, Mike - I guess a better way to put it is, "Why are M24s so much more expensive than an F18?"

But we are not on a Melges forum are we.
My original post was just that the price goes up a lot faster than what we are getting.

Yeah, what he said.

Wonder what the new falcon marine f18 will cost.

Matt has a nice target number, but I don't know if he'll have a final price until the first boat is out of the mold... or maybe the second?

The main reason why and F18 costs more than a Tornado from Exploder is the foils... To build a set of foils for a Tornado is very easy, but the F18 is really quite expensive to build due to the length and shape of the boards. From our perspective we could save some money on the foil construction by building them wet layup with foam like everyone else, but by going prepreg autoclave built we have super stiff foils that are unbreakable (rocks excluded..) Sure it costs more, but it works better and it is after all a race boat...

We currently build our Phantom in the same factory as the Exploder Tornado and all the rest is about the same costs. We take a lot of time with the hull construction because we want a super stiff boat and we use a bit more material compared to the tornado because the hull weights in F18 are higher than the Tornado, So we could actually save money by reducing the F18 min weight

Thanks for that Macca.
So the rule to keep a minimum weight is keeping costs up?

EPA and most Gov regulations are out of control, Way too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

The price on most toys seems to have really jumped in the past 6-8 years. I did some searching back through old receipts on a project I did in 2006 and was surprised to see 30-50% increases on parts across the board since then.

I bought a boat in January 2010 and bought the same boat just recently in March 2012. The 2012 has longer dagger-boards so there is some increase in value there. I calculated the cost of each boat converting USD to the currency of the country the boat was manufactured in at the time of purchase (AUS). The DECREASE in price (not accounting for two years of inflation) was 3.6%.
In USD terms the INCREASE was 14%.

I got quotes from another brand at the time of both purchases and the increase in USD terms was just about the same 13.7% (this new boat also had longer dagger-boards).

http://www.oanda.com/currency/converter/

Oh dear god, I just priced a gallon of West System (I haven't bought any in a while...not many composite projects going on lately and I usually buy by the gallon). Almost $100 for a gallon of resin...I think I paid about half that the last time I bought it (not but a couple of years ago).

I wouldn't say it is all greed but more so making the money while they can... I'll bet if we spun the clock back when the manufactures were pushing 20 or 30 boats a week out the door like they were in the hey day of catamaran sailing the prices would be a little lower.



From what I remember back then they had looked at manufacturing elsewhere due to all the EPA, other regulations, and fees they had to pay to manufacture in Santa Ana..

As for the price being high, if you're willing to pay the price for what I am selling the product for; then so be it, and don't complain.