Reliability
There is a saying that “cruising is the process of working on your boat in exotic places” and it’s distressingly true. Even buying a brand new boat does not fix the problem, let alone fixing up an old one. But I don’t believe it must be that way. Let’s look at how the Adventure 40 will be better than that.
The Goal
Here is my reliability goal for the Adventure 40:
- You will be able to buy one for around US$250,000.
- The boat will come to you fully offshore-equipped, with a complete, professionally written and illustrated, assembly and commissioning manual.
- Any competent sailor with basic tool skills will be able to commission the boat in seven working days or less.
- You will only need to add a hand held GPS, linens, and dishes.
- After tuning (documented in the manual) and sailing the boat for a week, you will be able to sail the boat 30,000 miles around the world with only routine maintenance.
Impossible? I don’t think so. We just need to change some things about how the boat gets designed and built:
Designed For Task
Most sailboats built in the last 20 years were not designed to go offshore. Hell, a lot of them were not even designed to go sailing. No, they were designed to look good in a boat show with an interior to wow the dreamers who have never been outside protected waters.
In contrast the Adventure 40 is first, last, and all the time, designed to go offshore, and then those design decisions have been vetted and improved by the hundreds of offshore sailors that comment here at AAC.
Quality
There is a pervasive assumption about boats, reinforced by the current state of the industry, that less expensive boats like the Adventure 40 must be poorly built and equipped with junk gear.
That does not have to be so. By eschewing foo-foo features and going simple—for example, tiller steering instead of the twin wheels supplied on some boats of comparable price—huge amounts of money can be saved that, on the Adventure 40, will be invested in great construction and making sure that the gear that is included is the best.
In specifying the boat we will be guided by the basic principle of the lowest possible total ten year cost of ownership, not a sticker price. I still think that we can get the boat in under US$250,000, but if she ends up at say US$257,000 because she has a really good engine and robust drive train that will go ten years and 10,000 hours with nothing but oil changes, so be it.
Prototyping
It really is no wonder that many new boats are a nightmare of poor design and worse construction. Think about it. Often, a builder, who has hardly ever been to sea, gets together with a designer, who has not been to sea much, and the two of them listen with rapt attention to the marketing/sales guys. This triumvirate designs a boat, often without benefit of an engineer.
They then find some suckers to buy the first boats. Generally the first ten boats are crap. After which, the builder changes everything (if they have not gone bankrupt) based on the anguished screams and warranty claims of the first owners…and the whole cycle starts again.
There is a better way:
- A prototype Adventure 40 will be built.
- Experienced sailors test the boat hard.
- One or two families of four test the boat on coastal cruises including overnight sails.
- The boat returns to the yard to have problems and omissions fixed.
- Gear that has failed to perform is replaced with different gear.
- Repeat as necessary for at least three months.
- The specification, right down to the last screw, is documented and frozen.
- The first production boat is built to that specification.
- The first production boat is tested to make sure nothing went awry.
- Production commences.
Quality Control
Obviously I can’t enforce this, but I’m suggesting to the builder that every Adventure 40 be built under the watchful eye of a quality control inspector who makes absolutely sure that the boat conforms to the detailed and public specification derived from the prototype.
And here is the most important point: The QC inspector, although paid from the purchase price of the boat, contractually works for and has fiduciary responsibility to the buyer.
Sure, this will add some cost to the boat, but not as much as you might think. Remember, the boat is standard and built to a detailed spec. Also, this is a mass production boat, so there will be economies of scale in the QC process too.
What About the Builder?
I can hear the more business oriented among you now: “What about the builder? Why on earth would he or she subject themselves to, let alone fund, this draconian plan?”
The answer is simple: Because there is a lot of money to be made according to the initial budgets we have done. I can tell you after a career in small business that the single biggest destroyer of profit, after lack of customers (we have that one cracked), is ambiguity. And what have we done with this plan? Removed most (you never get rid of all) of the ambiguity that bankrupts boat builders.
Examples:
- Warranty claim: Does the boat conform to the published and public specification? Yes: claim denied.
- Missing piece of gear from delivered boat: Did the QC inspector sign off on the packing list when the boat was shipped? Yes: claim denied, call the insurance company that covered the boat in shipping.
- No options and changes, the biggest killer of boat builders.
Comments
Do you have any suggestions to make this process even better? Please leave a comment, I’m all ears.
you should maybe try and get Apple to build this boat…
I think apple’s success after jobs’s return was to a very large extent caused by one thing: focus. I think I see a lot of that in what you describe about this project. If you are able to carry that through the boat will be insanely great 🙂
Hi Dan,
Thanks very much for the vote of confidence. Focus is something I have always had an abundance of. Trouble is I sometimes have trouble distinguishing between focus and bull-headed!
I continue to really like where this design is going, and the focus on it’s off shore purpose!
Hi Jeff,
Thanks very much for the encouragement. I try to sound supremely confident (OK verging on arrogant) about this, because that’s how you get things done, but I have plenty of moments when I start to think I’m wasting my own time and the readers. Comments like yours help to keep me enthused.
Keep in mind the RCD (Recreational Craft Directive).
All boats in Europe must comply with the RCD.
Hi Michael,
Thanks very much. A very good point. Many of the sign-ups are from Europe, so we need to get that right. Also, the boat might be built in Europe, nothing even slightly firm on that yet.
Now I love this site, and the Adventure 40′ all the more… I have been mesmerised and had my life fundamentally changed by getting involved with Apple since 1999. My pension went AAPL in 2006 and those same shares I hope will be funding my Adventure 40′ in a few short years…
As for building, you might ask if one of the emerging East European countries could be an opportunity.
Make this a class act guys! (It’s certainly starting off that way.)