I'm not too sure about the limited production numbers being the reason for the A-cats high cost price. Afterall I can name a few other boat types with lower production numbers and heaps more hardware that are seriously cheaper then the A-cats.

I think we must look more towards the basic design of the A's. Scott Anderson says it in that French cat sailing DVD. You have to tinker and continiously redesign the A-cat if you want to stay near the front. I think this leads to rather short competitive lifespans of each individual A-cat design. Pretty much you have to design a good A-cat, promote the hell out of it ($$$) and then try to recover your costs in about 4 to 5 years before the next improved design comes along. The open A-class rules in turn also force everybody to go to expensive production methodes. Carbon right now is on extremely high demand due to Airbus and Boeing buying huge quantities for their new planes. I hear from different sources that currently carbon cloth of the right specs is nearly impossible to get. The A-cats of course were almost 90% carbon. In addition I feel that A-cat have opted for some expensive design features. I still would love to see an A-cat come out with a redesigned alu beams setup and show that it can be just as good as glued in carbon beams. However I also understand that that will not go anywhere as the A-cat sailor don't want aluminium, not even if it is just as good. It makes the wrong statement, most of them feel. It is just like with watches I can't tell the difference in the measuring of time between a decent electronic Casio and a Rolex, still a certain group of people prefer to pay heaps more for the Rolex. Why ? For some reason I don't think that all that gold and silver makes any impact on the time keeping machine inside the watch. I often feel the same way about use of carbon in some catamarans.

A-cats are relatively speaking enourmously expensive. Their is not much on them. A mast, a mainsail, and some rigging. Compare this to the fittings on say an F18 (who are stiffer in the platforms than the A-cats as well and quite close in round the course performance); Spinnaker packages, jib setups add alot of cost and still the A's are more expensive.

Now, I personally don't think that the A's being expensive is a bad thing. Like the Rolex's there is always a group of buyers that don't want anything else. It needs to be top of line and full of expensive technology. Otherwise they are boring or not interested. The A-cat class suits this nice very well and has done so for many years. And the A-cat class has a well established role in the greated scheme of beach catamarans. Often it experiments with things that later find their way in the other classes as well. That is all very good. The problems only come when recreational sailors want to have an A-cat. These sailors don't belong to the first group and these sailors don't like progress and experimentation very much. Pretty much these sailors want price effective (or attractive) boats that keep their value for many years and they want to feel competitive with their boat for at least as many years. All these things are in full conflict with what the A-cat truly is. Everybody wants to have a Ferrari for the price of a Suzuki alto, but the expensiveness of the Ferrari is also what makes it exclusive and thus what makes people want it. So even if the Ferrari company could make them cheaper they will not do for damaging the reputation of the brand and of the products.

Indeed, the A-cat its price and forced use of difficult and expensive production technologies make the A-cat class what it is and it will never become a price attractive class. Neither in purchase cost or even maintainance costs. Both AHPC and BIM tried to market a more inexpensive and more easily producable A-cat than fully blow A-cats. Both failed at that, I feel people just wanted the real things for about 30 % less of the cost to make one of them.

If you want a high tech wapon with all the carbon wistles and bells, then you will have to pay for that buddy ! If you don't want to pay for it then you'll end up on a F16, FX-one or Inter-17 like the rest of us.


Wouter