[Rhodes22-list] Single handed over 25 feet--Hunter27

[DCLewis1 at aol.com]

Lee,
 
Good comments.  I completely agree with you re economies of scale for  
production boats like the Hunter.  But I’m not sure those economies are  passed on 
to the buyers, in which case the economies are moot to Hunter  owners.  Stan’s 
describing a $60K boat, you point out the Hunter comes in  around $100K, if 
there are economies the owner isn’t seeing them.  Also,  some of the reviews of 
Hunter boats are mixed regarding quality.  For  example, when we were shopping 
around for a boat I checked out a 22' ( as I  recall) Hunter we’d seen at the 
Annapolis boat show.  Turns out it had been  out for at least 3 years, and 
from year 1 owners complained about a leak where  the mast passed through the 
cabin top - 3 years later they were still  complaining.  Their product did not 
improve and the problem was not fixed,  it turned me off.  The Hunter appeared 
to me to be a production boat, where  if you bought the boat you bought the 
problems. The Rhodes (Gen Boats) product  got uniformly excellent reviews when 
it came to quality and workmanship - that  mattered to me.  Surely there’s an 
unhappy R22 customer somewhere - but  I've never found him/her.  Maybe Stan 
supports unhappy owners with the one  fringe benefit he offers Gen Boats 
employees - free burial at sea.
 
Also, re economies of scale: I think Gen Boats producing 2 models will  allow 
it to introduce some economies of scale.
 
I suspect the real difference between the Hunter and R27 will be what  people 
want to do with it.  If they want something sleek, looks-fast, with  instant 
name recognition they’ll go for the Hunter.  But if they are  interested in 
trailering, cruising, day sailing, and gunkholing, shallow water  capabilities, 
and into technical amenities, they’ll go for the R27.  Of  course, if the R27 
is as fast as Stan reports and it starts winning races, all  of the above will 
change.
 
As for spiffing up the website, I recommend we start with the R22  owners 
website.  What we have is good, and the Email list is great, but -  as examples - 
wouldn’t it be great to link the narrative and pictures from  Chris’s cruise 
and Bill’s cruise to the site?  How about pictures of owners  boats (check 
the Montgomery site to see what’s possible)?  Dan’s boat with  the fall foliage 
- fantastic.  Conversely, the link to the RAC Planjam on  the home page is 
for 2004 - the info is dated and suggests the owners really  haven’t done much 
in the interim.  So perhaps the .org site would be a  place to start.  
 
The tradeoff may be that other sites may or may not look better but R22  
owners are better looking.
 
Dave
<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> Check out free AOL at 
http://free.aol.com/thenewaol/index.adp.  Most comprehensive set of free 
safety and security tools, millions of free high-quality videos from across the 
web, free AOL Mail and much more.