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My pal Hal has a new neighbor. A lot of us here in South Florida do. People have filtered down to the bottom of the sock for years, but this year, it’s been a bumper crop. These shorebound newcomers are easy to spot. They brave the roadways in golf carts, providing blurry targets for those who came before them. Some, like Hal’s new neighbor, take to the water.

This particular fellow washed ashore from a dried-up state in the Southwest. His new waterfront palace next door to Hal came with a dock, so a boat seemed to be a logical accessory.

Location is everything; he was fortunate to meet Hal across the fence and mention his interest in the water. Hal is a veteran of the marine industry and has owned at least 50 boats. “Coyle, I’m trying to help the guy, but he just won’t listen,” Hal grumbled.

A few years back, I had the same experience with a new neighbor who had emigrated from a home on the range. We exchanged names across the fence. “You’re Jay Coyle, Yachting magazine. I’ve followed you for years,” he gushed before explaining he’d always dreamed of parking a fishing boat behind a house in Florida. He had the house, and now all he needed was the boat. I recall recommending that he start off small with a 25-foot center-console.

A month later, I heard a commotion in the backyard and spotted my new neighbor attempting to lasso his dock from his new 40-foot convertible. My recommendation had been simple math. The more length overall, the less time it takes for a new recruit to realize the pastime is draining his wallet. A center-console would’ve been the perfect gateway drug, but my neighbor ignored me.

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I’m used to it. As a boat designer, I discovered that successful folks who accumulate enough coin to take to the water typically aren’t great listeners.

Developers, for example, often treat designers like subcontractors: You’re simply executing a task they’d do themselves if they weren’t so busy noodling with cost-saving workarounds. Executive types have new ideas that a designer could never imagine, and they can be impatient in terms of enthusiastic responses and results. Doctors and pilots are often the least likely to listen. This seems understandable, given that the risk of boat design pales in comparison to removing organs or keeping hundreds of people aloft. Lawyers, no offense—my defense was to avoid them.

My pal Hal tells me he’s had the same experience. He claims that social media has made the situation worse: “Clients come to me with their minds made up based on the advice of self-appointed internet experts who have no idea what they’re talking about.”

My neighbor got the hang of boathandling and baiting hooks, but he unfortunately made the mistake of calculating the cost of a mahi-mahi dinner and sold the boat. A few hurricanes later, he moved inland to skipper a golf cart and dodge tornadoes.

His replacement has yet to seek my advice. If he does, I think I’ll just give him this column.

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I’ve been searching  for two seats and a console, but have been stuck in the wayback machine. What was once called a utility boat became a center-console in the 1960s. A blend of woven roving, mat and polyester resin, the center-console was a hand-rolled wonder. There were just a few brands, and if you can find one today, it’s likely on life support. I shared my obsession with a sales pal for a reality check. It didn’t help.

Bill is my vintage, and he shares my passion for center-consoles. He has two waterfront homes with docks, and keeps two seats and a console at each one. He buys them factory-fresh with full warranties and trades them in every few years like leased pickups. I think he’s lost count of the numbers.

While he claims his system works, the math bugs me. I understand the benefits of new boats, motors and warranties, but the prices—yikes. I’ve done my best to understand the modern markup, but it’s hopeless. I walked past a boat store just the other day and eyeballed a late-model, pre-loved, 30ish-foot example with a pair of supersize outboards. My ogling came to an end when I focused on the price tag pasted on its transom: just shy of $400,000.

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I called Bill to rant about the unfairness of it all. “My 25-foot Mako with a pair of 150s—a boat many considered the best in its day—cost me $19,000 brand-new, for God’s sake,” I groused. “I could have bought 20 of them for that kind of money.

“Its day was 1980,” Bill replied. “I hear this sort of thing all the time from experienced boaters.”

Ouch! In yacht-sales tongue, “experienced boater” is code.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I have more good days behind me than ahead of me, but that’s not the point.”

“Seriously, Coyle, when was the last time you bought a new boat?” he asked. “They’re not slathered together with a mop and a bucket of resin anymore. Today’s buyers insist on flawless finishes, high-tech materials, and plenty of horsepower and electronics.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” I told him. “They’re hard to miss. They’re everywhere.”

“You’re cheap, Coyle,” Bill said. I reminded him of the losses I’d suffered in past restorations. “It’s really not the money; it’s the value,” I insisted. “Classic center-consoles have a certain mystique. They’re different.”

I returned to the wayback machine and forwarded Bill my findings. “Take a look,” I said. “You don’t see one of these above water every day. It’s a rare ride.”

A few moments passed in silence. “Are you still there, Bill? Did you get it?”

“Yeah, I got it,” he said. “I get it, and I got one,” he admitted as he texted me an image of a small boat’s soggy remains.

It was the leftovers of a 20-foot Bertram center-console and…a cow? “It’s in a pasture in North Florida,” he said. “I bought it for $1,400 sight unseen. It just needs a bit of freshening up.”

Really? And I thought I had a problem.

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I’m sorry, sir. we cannot service your boat, as its warranty has expired. Here’s a list of boatyards.”

So stated the terse reply my friend Larry received after he contacted his boat’s builder about a leak. “I didn’t ask ’em to pay for it. I just asked ’em to fix it,” Larry said in disbelief. “I get better support from the damn cable company.”

It wasn’t his first time being frustrated. A few years back, the rudder of Larry’s expedition yacht claimed asylum in Panama and fell to the bottom of the canal on the boat’s maiden voyage. He called the builder and was told to call back on Monday because the office was closing for the weekend.

“The incident could have crippled international trade, for God’s sake,” Larry complained. The rudder is still living in Panama, and Larry sold the boat, but he loves to share the story.

Larry is a serial boat buyer—the sort of guy smart builders would love to have as a repeat customer. He can afford the best, is willing to pay for it and has enough mileage left on his clock for more than a few boats. The builders in Larry’s stories often cater to folks like him, have high opinions of their products and aren’t shy about their top-shelf pricing.

“Is this one for sale yet?” I asked Larry.

I also shared his frustrations with a yachtbuilder pal who navigates these same waters and has a family of customers that is cultlike in its passion for his brand. “Coyle,” he said, “keeping customers in this market happy can be challenging if you don’t remember one simple rule: Warranty is an investment.” This bit of wisdom was passed down to my pal from a pioneer in the trade, after my pal asked him how he dealt with extended warranties.

Read More from Jay Coyle: Tell Tales

“Sounds like you have a specific claim in mind,” the old builder responded.

“Yes, a fresh paint job on a boat with a warranty well past its expiration date,” my pal said.

“Did you hear of this from the owner directly?” the builder asked.

“Yes, we were having dinner at the New York Yacht Club,” my pal explained.

“Perfect!” the builder said with a smile. He considered the expense of satisfying the warranty gracefully to be part of his advertising budget.

Both good and bad news travel down the dock quickly. Some disgruntled owners remain tight-lipped, cut their losses and move on to a ski chalet in Colorado. However, committed enthusiasts move on to new rides, seeking advice from others who suffer the same addiction. My builder pal insists there’s nothing to be saved by failing to maintain and properly fund a somewhat flexible warranty program.

Larry has penned a letter expressing his disappointment, while word of his service challenge is already spreading down the dock. Most builders with any sort of shelf life get it, but, in this case, I suspect the damage is already done. Larry may also be penning a for-sale sign and perhaps a want ad too: “Committed enthusiast seeking committed builder.”

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There’s been electricity in the air as prognosticators of the marine industry anticipate the more environmentally savvy generations’ embrace of boating. Some builders have touched the wire with hybrids, while others put their fingers in the socket, building electric outboards, drives and boats. The technology seems ready for prime time, but are we?

The state of the waterway in my home state of Florida suggests we’ve got some work to do. Boaters charge down the waterway with no apparent concern for fuel burn. They’re either oblivious to speed limits or are simply ignoring them. Water cops are overwhelmed just trying to keep them from running into day markers—and one another.

What’s the hurry? Beats me, and I’m a boomer. Going fast on fossil fuel is overrated, and, these days, it burns Benjamins more efficiently than hydrogen. Fast, of course, is a relative term. The fastest boat I’ve owned was a flats skiff. While it could make 55 knots downwind, it had a “governor,” my wife. She’d holler at me if I went much past 20 knots.

And 18 knots was the sweet spot for our 37-foot convertible. I traversed the Gulf Stream and wandered the Bahamas for two decades, rarely having to adjust the throttles. Folks with big center-consoles could make the crossing in a fraction of the time, but they were usually beaten, bruised and still drying off by the time we were having a Kalik and a conch salad.

Is it possible we could put our idle time in idle and noodle this reality?

I recall, back in the 1990s, a brainy boomer peddling a concept at a conclave I attended that promoted thinking out of the box. We were instructed to form groups, dream up five ideas and rank them for potential efficacy. We then had to pick the worst idea and pitch it.

Read More from Jay Coyle: Tell Tales

I shall now follow that same formula. I’m thinking cats. No, not Caterpillars; despite my past ranting about multihulls, I’m talking about a catamaran. And forget what I’ve said about plumb stems, for this boat would have two. They are purposeful on a cat, as they optimize volume for a given length. While I’ve always encouraged right-tech instead of high-tech construction, this boat would need the latter.

There would be no flex-fuel workarounds or complicated hybrids; that’s just adding weight and stuff to fix. The bilge would have more stowage than a wasted lithium mine. Mixing electricity and water never ends well, so this boat would be wired like a floating GFI outlet. Going down sea, the wheels would provide regenerative braking. At anchor, they’d generate current from the slightest current.

Best of all, my design would be fitted with a fail-safe propulsion device that’s proved reliable for centuries: a sail. Better yet, a solar wing to keep the juice flowing. Such a boat is possible, if we were willing to slow down. But nowadays, that would be thinking out of the box.

The post Slowing Down with the Right Boat appeared first on Yachting.

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“See any lasting trends in yacht design, Coyle?” an industry pal asked me recently.

“It’s hard to tell,” I said. I had high hopes that the “dream it, and we will build it” period of concept-yacht creations would flush out something that would stick to the wall, but looking different is beginning to look the same, I suggested, adding, “It’s the Dolly effect,” a reference to the cloned sheep from two decades ago.

Back then, I wrote about my challenge in finding Hinckley Yachts at the Fort Lauderdale boat show (“Clone Craft,” October 2002). As I descended the ramp, the builder’s iconic Picnic Boat was surrounded by a flock of look-alikes. It was as though the Picnic Boat had been cloned.

A yacht serving as a platform for an afternoon picnic was not new. Frank Huckins had promoted the idea in advertising and built boats suited for the purpose in the 1930s. Back in the day, Hinckley had done so as well, declawing lobster boats for wealthy yachtsmen who “summu’d” in coastal Maine.

When the market for high-end sailboats lost its wind in the 1990s, Hinckley repackaged its pedigree in a 36-foot high-tech, water-jet jewel box. It deserved better than an express-yacht or sport-boat handle, ergo, Picnic Boat. It was a brilliant move, and by 2002, “yawt’g” in New England style was a hit.

A flock of boaters were driven to Hinckley’s creation by its looks and its proposed utility. The lobster-boat lineage was evident in the boat’s sheer sweep and tumblehome, and it looked right in Maine. Trimmed in finely crafted teak and flag-blue or jade-green topsides with cove-stripe accents, the Picnic Boat looked right anywhere. Builders from just about everywhere followed.

Read More from Jay Coyle: Tell Tales

When designers began noodling what I respectfully refer to as concept yachts, I had the opportunity to tour one of the first. It had a pug nose and towering chocolate-brown topsides peppered with picture windows. The craft looked more like a George Jetson-brownstone mashup than a boat. Even the boatbuilder admitted it looked a bit odd. He explained that customers wanted different. It turned out he was right, and plenty of designers have been grazing this pasture ever since.

At this point, builders have mopped fiberglass into every shape imaginable, but is anything sticking? It seems customers still want different. Or do they? Imagination is great, but what if we tried looking back to the future for a missed opportunity? I’m not talking full-on Marty McFly, but perhaps we could recalibrate the flux capacitor so we might at least recall what seemed to be the new-new thing last year.

Hinckley invented the Picnic Boat just as Hatteras Yachts invented the convertible decades before, by installing a bulkhead between a salon and a cockpit. It wasn’t a new idea, but the convertible brand proposed a new way of taking advantage of the design’s utility. An offshore fishboat could also be an offshore cruiser. The proof of concept? Dream and build the right thing, and customers and competitors will follow. Baaa.

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A sales pal of mine called the other day in a huff. He’d just listed a lightly used, factory-fresh, 50-foot yacht. It’s a high-tech, high-performance media darling that’s in such demand there have been lines of fans around the block waiting to experience its performance. Unfortunately, one of its engines had lost its voice.

“Can you believe it, Coyle?” he said. “It’s got the latest smart-outboard technology screwed to its transom, and I can’t get them to agree to take a customer on a sea trial.”

My pal explained that the four motors were not playing well together. “One of the motors refuses to talk and is butting heads with its siblings.” Hmm, got a couch?

I spent my formative years as a skipper aboard a 13-foot Boston Whaler dealing with an 18 hp two-stroke that was as dumb as a rock and willfully stubborn. After endless sessions of pull-starting and manipulating the choke, it was clear that one of us was going to need therapy. I then got wise to what was going on under the hood, learned the basics of carburetion and spark ignition, and invested in a bag of tools. Oars and oar locks were fitted, just in case.

Outboards had come of age when I graduated to a 20-foot SeaCraft in 1970. Its 115 hp two-stroke was fairly well behaved. I still carried a bag of tools and had a 4 hp kicker screwed to the transom, just in case.

There were tools aboard my 1980 25-foot Mako, and two 150 hp two-strokes, just in case.

The 150 hp two-stroke that joined my fleet in 1996 was well behaved in my care and is still running today. The 150 hp four-stroke that followed in 2010 was a game-changer—at last, an accomplished solo performer. A gasoline motor doing a handstand inches above the transom wash was arguably as reliable as an inboard diesel.

Read More from Jay Coyle: Tell Tales

So what happened? Since the days when a branch was whittled into a paddle, designers have been driven by more-is-better thinking: If one is good, two is better, and if that’s not enough, add even more. If Charles Lindbergh’s motor had crapped out over the Atlantic, he’d have had a long swim. His odds of staying dry would have increased with two engines, right?

It depends. Amelia Earhart’s second engine was apparently no help; in fact, it’s possible that she ran out of gas feeding it. Given the tragedy, did designers pause and reflect on the cost of added appendage drag, increased fuel consumption, weight and complication? Of course not. It took them just 20 years after Lindbergh’s landing in Le Bourget to noodle the eight-engine Spruce Goose, which seemed too much of everything.

Water or air, the ultimate goal is to transmit horsepower into the vehicle with the fewest moving parts. Weighted for redundancy, two motors seem to be the gold standard. As designers have yet to create a 1,200 hp outboard that can turn a 40-inch wheel, “more” will simply have to be better—behaved.

Got a couch? I still carry a bag of tools. You know, just in case.   

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A yacht broker pal of mine called the other day in a panic. He’d been tipped off by a fuel-dock source that one of his customers visiting the area had been blowing ballast (the holding tank) in the harbor. My pal was spelunking through the bilge of his customer’s ride, searching for the misguided waste valve, as the dockmaster was steaming his way. The East Indian manatee came to mind.

Our boat was interred in an old Florida Keys haunt for years. When the town bought the place in the 2000s, one of the first things it did was plumb each slip with a pump-out tap. While it could not have been easier to do the right thing, some boaters were irritated by the update and insisted they were less of a burden on water quality than the “non-native” East Indian manatee. “Make sea cows plug in,” muttered a malcontent who wintered aboard a few slips away.

The skipper’s soggy second home was a stick-built 60-footer struggling to stay afloat. A keen eye would note that the seawater burping from its belly was not from central air conditioning. A decaying window shaker was poking out the salon’s after bulkhead, hidden behind a potted plant. If this boat had a waste tank, it was likely the only thing aboard that was dry.

When plug-in day arrived, the skipper pointed out the new waste hose he’d stuffed through a porthole and assured the dockmaster he was compliant. But this dockmaster was not one to be trifled with. Suspecting subterfuge, he hatched a plan to confirm that goods were flowing through the hose and not into the harbor.

Read More from Jay Coyle: Tell Tales

As the skipper was keen on sundowners and rarely conscious much after sunset, the dockmaster set the trap in the evening twilight, stuffing a clean white sock into the hose at its connection to the slip-side suction valve. He recovered it a week later no worse for wear. Busted.

When I first stepped aboard in the 1960s, whether you pumped a lever or pushed a button, waste’s final destination was no more than a few feet from the departure gate: over the side. Savvy boaters considered going overboard in a marina akin to a death sentence. When holding tanks were mandated in the 1970s, the industry and boaters shrugged. As a boat designer, I found clients’ interest in waste management focused on how to get it off the boat as quickly as possible. Pump-out facilities were a novelty, and waste tanks were easily bypassed.

Times have changed. Given modern onboard waste systems and easy access to pump-out facilities, there’s no excuse for souring the seas. It turns out it was fellow boaters that ratted on my pal’s customer.

Perhaps there is hope, but as I write this, signs warning of high levels of enterococcus bacteria are being posted near two overstuffed marinas in town, and I still hear reality-challenged boaters blame the “non-native” manatee. Fun fact: Florida is not the East Indian manatee’s second home. It’s native.

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“There’s no more sport in ‘sport fishing,’” Capt. Tom grumbled. He’d learned to chase billfish in the cockpit of his dad’s charter boat in the 1960s. He’s the best fisherman I know.

“Pop would be disgusted,” Tom said. “Captains are hunting billfish like enemy submarines. You don’t need a $100,000 scanning sonar to find fish.”

The technology Tom was referring to is not the recreational-grade gear you find on a bass boat. Originally noodled to battle the U-boat threat in World War II, scanning sonar is common on large commercial-fishing vessels today. Lately, Tom’s been seeing more and more applications on high-end tournament fishboats.

I encountered the equipment and a like-minded skipper when I was a designer years back. The client was a can-do sort of fellow keen on rocking the fishboat world with a high-tech 70-footer that watermen of the day viewed as a Buck Rogers-Rube Goldberg mashup. In addition to its unique styling, it had automated outriggers, a telescoping bridge roof, hot-rodded diesels and an electronics budget that would have subjected NASA to a congressional hearing.

An early adopter, the client wanted technology that was new to yachting. So, when a row erupted between the electronics salesman and interior decorator, it was a TKO. The latest in retractable scanning sonar was in, and a guest head was out.

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While the client attempted to revive the decorator, I was assigned the task of sharing the good news with the reluctant old-school skipper the owner had recruited. Capt. Al was a fishing legend, cut from the same fine timber as my pal Tom’s dad. At Al’s insistence, I’d spent a morning fishing aboard his classic wooden charter boat, where he asked me to join him in his office (the bridge). He was a soft-spoken and polite man who’d fished more years than I’d been on the planet. While his exact words escape me, he made it clear that he didn’t think much of his would-be boss’s new dream boat.

Other than a vintage radio, the only technology I recall seeing in Al’s office was a tachometer and an oil-pressure gauge. He said he had no use for a fish finder because he was the fish finder. Like Tom and his dad, Al relied on his senses, searching for currents, upwellings and color changes. He followed birds to the bait, and the bait to the billfish. Al didn’t want the boss looking over his shoulder “on TV” at fish he wasn’t catching.

Fortunately, Al never took the helm of the new boat and continued to fish as he always had—successfully. But much has changed in the past 40 years, and Tom tells me that tournament types are now shelling out big bucks for the war effort. For them, it’s more about winning than fishing.

One thing hasn’t changed, as Tom says: “You don’t need sonar if you know what to look for.”

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What do you think?” my pal Bill asked. He’d been bugging me for months about my opinion on tasteful topside colors. Before me was an image of his new 60-foot fishboat. “It’s white. White is not a color,” I pointed out.

“Scroll down and be amazed, Coyle,” he insisted.

There was the same image of Bill’s white boat imagineered with a green hull. “White is simply my creative palette,” he explained.

It didn’t add up. While Bill had opened his wallet for a new ride, he’s thrifty. “You’re gonna smother factory-fresh gelcoat with a pricey paint job?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he announced. “I’m gonna wrap her.”

“You mean for shipping?” I asked lamely.

“High-tech vinyl,” he said. “Get with it, Coyle. It’s the latest in yacht finishing.”

In my mind’s eye, I pictured Bill’s new $2 million ride in fluorescent camo green with a breaching largemouth bass slathered amidships. Bill assured me there would be no bass graphics, just a tasteful forest green he’d taken a fancy to.

I tried to understand. “So, you’re covering a shiny new gelcoat finish with a cheap vinyl slipcover, like a worn-out recliner?”

“Coyle, they wrap Mercedes with this stuff,” Bill barked.

“You mean like delivery trucks?”

“No, like a quarter-million-dollar sports car, my friend.”

“But,” I continued, “a matte vinyl finish on a yacht? I prefer the boat in the high-gloss white.”

Read More from Jay Coyle: Tell Tales

I then wondered to myself how it is we seem to be regressing as a species. Thousands of years ago, a primitive relation figured out how to whittle a boat from a tree. How long could it have taken this budding boatbuilder to noodle that his creation would look better if he scraped the bark from the log? Welded steel replaced the rivet-pocked topsides of ships in the 1930s, and fiberglass replaced plank-on-frame in production boatbuilding in the 1950s. We’d come far—to vinyl siding?

While early gelcoat finishes could be a bit rough, by the late 1980s, chemistry, techniques and tooling had improved, and high-quality results could last decades with modest attention. With annual buffing and a coat of wax, I kept my 1989 37-foot Bertram looking like new for 22 years.

I admit: I once spun the color wheel and changed her boot stripe and feature stripes from black to blue and then back again. It was an expensive lesson.

Perhaps, Bill was on to something. Such a change of heart in vinyl would have been far less costly.

Wrapping larger yachts may be the newest new thing but, like vinyl itself, I doubt it will last. Bill doesn’t care; in fact, it seems that he’s prepared to try on colors like pairs of shoes until he finds a good fit.

“What do you really think about green, Coyle? I’m thinking it’s too earthy,” he said.

I proposed sticking with the new white gelcoat, but Bill insisted on something more fitting for an offshore fishing machine. Maybe indigo blue with a greyhounding marlin.

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How could a single container ship constipate consumerism?” a professional skipper pal of mine waiting on spare parts groused. He was referring to the ship that got lodged in the Suez Canal for six days last year. I explained that the ship had been going twice the posted speed limit.

“Sounds like boaters these days; their solution to everything is horsepower,” he grumbled. “They’d have been better off if they’d just turned off the engine.”

I agree. The results of bad judgment or inexperience are almost always amplified with speed. The amount of dockside mayhem that a formerly landlocked, retired couple armed with a trawler and a single diesel can cause is impressive, but it pales in comparison to a newly minted, testosterone-fueled enthusiast who considers pleasure boating a motorsport. Before the recent boating boom and the focus on big and fast, it was easier to spot trouble and defend yourself.

A dockmaster at a marina where I once interned would walk around shouting, “Incoming!” whenever a ham-handed skipper approached. Such vessels usually had a collection of exhausted fenders dangling from scuffed and scarred rub rails, and a skipper barking commands at a mate armed with a frayed dock line and a bent boat hook. The common approach was to charge the slip like a bull and then pump the throttle to regain control. The vessel would snort black smoke and lurch fore and aft until nervous neighbors lassoed it.

On the waterway, the inexperienced were usually wafting across the channel diagonally from marker to marker. These skippers often ignored attempts to communicate one’s intentions by radio or signal. The overtaking or “burdened” vessel should request to do so: “Skipper, I’d like to pass you on your port side. If you reduce speed, I can minimize my wake.” Typically, the only response would be the finger signal as I passed by.

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Experienced skippers who ventured to sea understood that inlets could be dangerous and deserved understanding and respect. Safe passage requires knowledge of the tides and unique features, such as shifting bars and currents. Sometimes it’s necessary to just say no and wait out the weather. I’ve made the right call more often than not, as my crew never lets me forget the nots. These days, inlets in South Florida are often crowded with thrill-seekers tempting Darwin’s theory.

Survival of the fittest? Perhaps. My captain pal likes to say, “If you’re gonna be stupid, you better be tough.” But even pros can make a bad call. In the case of the container ship, increasing speed to improve steerage seems a reasonable response. However, it is likely doing so also caused low pressure to form between the hullsides and the narrow channel, essentially sucking the vessel to the bank.

My pal and I have been driving boats for more than 50 years, but we’re still willing to learn.

Until you do, he has advice: “If you don’t know what you’re doing, do it slowly.”

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