Bob,

I'm just an outsider here but you were not really replying to what Dave ACTUALLY wrote :

Your statement :



Is actually quite inaccurate itself. You make a false "straw man" intepretation of what Dave wrote and then knock it down.

Let me explain :

1. Bad dealer - You go against this by saying that the dealor was very helpful to the boat owners. Apart from the various reports that I have that actually say the opposite the comment "bad dealor" also refers to how the dealor handles himselfs towards his suppliers and the policy choices he makes. I can assure you that behind the scene quite some bad stuff was going on. The dealor managed to alienate a big group of (important) people in a rather short time. This included his suppliers. Without a supplier a dealer is dead. Without a dealor a class is in serious trouble. This all happened in, what, 18 months ? Like every story, this story will be more nuanced in several aspects and "bad dealor" maybe a bit simplistic but inaccurate ? I don't know, there is definately a case to be had that supports that.


2. Daggerboards leaked - You go on the defense by stating "so have Marstrom rudders and centerboards on Tornados." I don't know about you but I think this only means that Marstroms daggerboards and rudders are bad as well. There is absolutely no need to have leaking daggerboards or rudders. Scores of other builders, some pretty low tech, don't seem to have trouble making dependable boards that don't leak and are of a normal weight. Most noticeable in this respect are of course the I-20 and F18 boards. None had ever this problem. Neither did any of the Boyer boats.


3. Just sailed bad - Bob, you reply to this by saying something like : "it won several races just the same,..., later it was upgraded to be more managaeable in a breeze, ..., a fully redesigned and pimped-up individual boat finally sailed really well". This actually sounds to me that you admit that the basic design was NOT that good overall. I think Dave was commenting on the basic production model that was sold and promoted. None of the Gunboat upgrades (and they were quite extensive) ever made it to the production version. Clearly you implictly state yourself that there was significant room for improvement (upgrades). And the fact that it sailed well in some bouy races (on lakes ; like catfight) didn't help the boat much in the Tybee 500 which proved to be the design swan song. The comments from some of the HT sailors in that distance race were quite clear. I'm agree with you that the new gunboat would have handled the Tybee 500 alot better, but that doesn't change the verdict on the production version. Actually Dave himself actually wrote :"It would be a good lake boat with flat and deep water and light winds." This was exactly the situation in which the HT did well at Springfever 2002.


4. Hull leaked - Actually Dave never wrote down that the hulls leaked, you introduced this yourself, you can't go off on Dave for this. Dave did say that boats didn't have emergency floatation in the hulls, you didn't contest that.





So basically you agree with Dave here ? The fact that Bim (and ONLY BIM) uses this inferiour joining technique also for their other products doesn't make it any better. Also it is quite a thing to ask a 12.000 US$ customer to sand down his new hulls and smooth out the keel line and decks himself. What are you paying 12.000 US$ for exactly ? No wonder the F18 and I-20 were prefered by customers, here you don't have the finish-up the boat yourself because the builder had questionable quality procedures. Ohh, and I can witness that we are not only talking about some seam tape here. The boats that I examed at Springfever 2002 actually had misaligned hull halves. This means that the "seams" were created by one hull halve protruding past the other halve.


So I would say that your comments are pretty inaccurate Bob and even in an obvious way. He'll I'm an outsider and can still can call faul on most of your comments without much effort.

I'm sorry,

Wouter