Colin’s two excellent chapters on Surviving The Boatyard got me thinking about the challenges of keeping boatyard costs under at least some semblance of control.
When we boat owners think about this painful subject, it’s tempting to just shrug and say to ourselves that all boatyards are a bunch of incompetent crooks and we are going to get screwed no matter what we do.
But after some 40 years of managing boatyard projects—some small, some large, and some huge—my impression is that, in most cases, the people I have done business with are just trying to run a reasonably profitable operation, not take us boat owners for a ride.
Defining The Problem
Rather, I think that many of the horror projects and cost overruns stem from poor project planning and monitoring on both sides.
And, if we think about it, this is not really a surprise, since most boatyard owners and managers have come up through the marine trades with little or no management and cost-control training or experience. And, on the other side of the transaction, few yacht owners have ever negotiated and/or managed a complex custom project before.
Note that I wrote “custom project”. Here too lies the root of more problems: Most offshore cruising boats are deeply customized and full of low-volume but high-complexity gear, making it difficult to plan a project in detail in advance—very different from fixing a car, or even building a house, where most tasks have been performed identically many times before.
The result is that:
- Everyone involved tends to throw up their hands and say, “We’ll figure it out as we go along”—a sure recipe for cost overruns and frustration.
- We owners tend to have unrealistic expectations based on the relative ease of executing the more predictable projects that we have experienced on land.
In short, the average boatyard project is a ticking time bomb right from the start.
So what can we do? Well, I think I can help here because, not only have I been maintaining offshore boats for some 40 years, I also spent a lot of my working life managing computer automation projects, which share many of the same issues as boat projects: custom nature, difficult to accurately define, and unrealistic customer expectations.
But before we get into that, let’s look at three ways to approach offshore boat maintenance:
John,
is putting the time-consuming expensive screw ups as a only a problem for DIY really fair?
Sure, if you do things yourself, there will be expensive screw ups. This point can’t be contested.
But does having those kind of tasks done by the available “marine professionals” – a term that seems as oxymoronic as “military intelligence” or “friendly fire” – lead to less costs? Given my own experiences and those of boat-owners I know about, I really doubt that.
Sure, if you manage to get people who know what they’re doing, this doesn’t apply. Unfortunately, finding those is a major and not really trivial task. And depending on the location, you might be simply out of luck.
Hi Jo,
Sure, all of that is true. Or to put it another way, it’s far from a perfect world in boat yards. That said, in part 2 I have some solid suggestions on how to manage the imperfections.
In my short experience as boat owner I learned the hard way never to let someone else install any kind long cables or hoses where both ends aren’t in the same compartment. Sure, they can help you string them, but that’s it.
As I have a certain affinity to electric things, I do those things on my own too.
Hi Jo,
Yes, I do all my own electrical and plumbing work too, but whether or not that’s a good idea does depend, as you say, on ones “affinity”.
I have a problem with boat yard’s that either refuse to quote or stick to a fixed price for basic services. I can think of few other businesses that do not live or die by their ability control costs on a fixed price bid.
A friend of mine recently said he was quoted a price for repainting his boot stripe. The invoice came in for 50% more than the estimate. This from a large New England boat yard. Always remember, the boat yard has your boat and that gives them lots of leverage in terms of pricing and invoice settlement.
Hi Dave,
I will be dealing with the quote/estimate issue and how to get one and manage in Part 2.
Dave:
I too have a problem with yards that refuse to quote, however, many simply aren’t equipped to do so, and thus they shouldn’t; it’s their call, and you can choose to not patronize them. It’s no small undertaking to engage in quotes and do so successfully. I did it for 11 years and met, on average, 85% of the quotes I gave to clients. When I missed a quote, I ate it, period.
Fixed prices for certain jobs, haul and wash, bottom paint, shrink wrap etc, makes sense, not sure why anyone would be opposed to this, you know the price in advance, you can shop around, you choose to accept it or go elsewhere.
What your friend got was an estimate, not a quote. That language needs to be defined up front, before given a yard permission to proceed with any work. Once again, the onus is on the boat owner to make sure he or she understand s this. A quote is, or should be, a fixed price bid, as opposed to an estimate which can vary considerably. Some states have laws that govern how much an estimate can range.
Hi Steve and Dave,
I will be covering quotes and estimates in part 2.
Hi John
all good points – just a small comment. I totally agree about delegating simple, laborious work to the yard, but do check the hourly rate in advance, or get a quote for the job completed – I have seen cases of what might be termed ‘creative accounting’ where those simple tasks have ben charged out an extraordinary hourly rate given the level of skill required.
Best wishes
Colin
Ho Colin,
Absolutely, and that’s exactly what part 2 is about: the steps we need to take before handing our boat over to the yard to complete a task.
every point you make here lines up nicely with my 30 yrs of similar experience…right now i am between boats thanks in part to hurrs irmaria, and mostly enjoying the downtime along with working subliminaly to shrug off the nagging compulsion learned duing these 30, albeit wonderful, yrs to always be doing one or the other: cruising or preparing (maintaining) to cruise :)…richard s (formerly s/v lakota)
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the confirmation, but sorry to hear that you lost your boat to a hurricane.