First off let me say I love your boats. I love the quality and completeness of my NE Dory kit. The manual is superb! I have not a single complaint that could be made. Fantastic and thank you for a wonderful building experience!!
I'm the kind of guy who is infected with the “What next” virus. I truly doubt I will ever be able to build another boat, but if I did.......what would it be?
John you have designed so many great boats, but none of them are what I would be looking for in a “next boat”. I would want bigger and better. Your last few offerings have been Micro and Nano boats. I would love to see you turn your attention to a magnum boat! I'm not talking a 30 or 40 foot monster. Just something with enough cabin space for two consenting adults. I know what you are thinking. Pocket Ship has room for two, I want enough room for two consenting adults to consent in! A double birth, room for two.
What is the answer to this riddle? Your already half way there. AUTUMN LEAVES! In my opinion the most strikingly beautiful design in your fleet. I have seen the preliminary drawing you have for a 21 foot version. The world needs the Autumn Leaves magnum!! You admit in your write up on Autumn Leaves that the single occupant cabin will be a tough sell. Yup even if I were single I think I would like Autumn Leaves big brother.
So the next time you get struck with the urge to fire up the old designing software, pull out that 21 foot drawing and take another look. The world will thank you!
Sincerely
Mike
Sounds like you have a case of the '2-footitis'. Always thinking you need just a little more room. LOL
I have owned boats almost my entire adult life and it is an infliction that is hard to shake. But as I get older I realize that less is oftentimes 'more' . I am sure John will give his, as always, articulate reply, but I have a guess as to what it may be.
I do concur that John/CLC have some very nice designs and I can't wait to finish my NE Dory so that I can think about which boat to build next.
John has drawn a version of pocketship that is 21 feet long. The problem is the cost. As he explained it to me:
The problem once you get any larger than PocketShip is that there's a
nonlinear increase in cost and complexity. A 17-foot PocketShip isn't
13% more expensive and doesn't take 13% longer to build; it's twice as
expensive and takes twice as long to build. And to design and
prototype!
He said the 21 foot version would cost 15-20K in materials to build and cost him 100K to design, prototype and create a detailed manual for it.
That is some very interesting information. But on the other hand I don't think anyone reasonable would expect a 21 foot boat with accommodations for two to cost the same as a Dory. Of course the cost would increase exponentially. As would the difficulty of construction. The simple act of inverting the hull would be a challenge. But isn't the challenge what make the end product worth it? I mean anyone can mosey on down to the local marina and flop down there credit app and sail away with a beautiful boat. But next to the boat you sweated and bled over? That's a whole other kettle of fish.
I don't disagree with you, I'd love a 21 foot pocketship. If John is going to invest 100K in a kit, he'd have to expect to get at least 100K back in sales. If adding 3 feet to the pocketship (to make it 18 feet) doubles the cost and adding 3 more to 21 feet doubles that, then the kit is 4 times the cost of the current pocketship. In 2014 CLC had shipped 500 NE Dorys. They also sold 60 Pockerships. That's almost 10 times fewer and Pocketship is just over twice the cost of the NE Dory. How many kits would sell at $13,600? Not only that, but the time to build it is 4 times longer. Pocketship takes about 9 months to build in evenings and weekends. At that rate, the 21 foot one would take 3 years. How many people are willing to tie up their garage for 3 years to build a boat? I don't think John could justify doing that boat on spec. Like the Faering Cruiser, the first one would have to be commisioned. If only the lotto people would stop picking the wrong numbers! :-D
Those Lotto people are no fun alright! I have a hard time with the whole “have to buy a ticket” concept myself!!
Build Madness and sleep under the stars on the trampoline in the tropics???
Pocketship was a beast to handle by myself - any bigger, and you would have a much more difficult time flipping it over and handling the plywood panels. In the introduction to the Pocketship manual (I think), John writes that if you get much bigger, it makes a lot of sense to buy a production boat given the expense and man-hours required to DIY (and production boats in that size are very cheap). There's nothing like Pocketship for sale cheaply in my area, but there are plenty of 20-25 foot cabin weekenders around.
Actually, being an engineer in research and test, I'd be interested in coming up with a more complete but closed form model for the cost in $ and hours for boats. In the keelboat world I know, we generally assumed and it was borne out roughly, that costs more nearly were proportional to displacement, not length as newcomers would assume, and that generally, displacement tended to trend with the cube of the length, given similar styles.
For DIY plywood boats, I'm thinking total volume and inches (feet? yards?) of fillet might be a good place to start with estimating the cost and time. Don't want to make the model too nonlinear or too many parameters, but it might be fun (?) to noodle with it. Anybody think there might be a grant in the study? :-)
I'm fond of reminding people that economics is known as "The Dismal Science." The Dismal Science is in the driver's seat for most of coolest boat design projects, alas.
Madness-the-proa was a personal project. I'm not going to say how much THAT one cost; it's embarrassing. But I loved every minute of it. "We laughed, we cried, it became part of us..."
Ditto PocketShip; that one was for me and no one else. Honestly I thought maybe we'd sell one a year or something. If I hadn't been my own client that project would have never gotten started.
The Faering Cruiser was a commission by someone who understood that naval architects need to charge at least as much as the guy who does my lawn. There'd be a lot more interesting boats in the world if there were more clients like him...
Meanwhile, I keep doodling, but most of my energy goes towards updating and supporting our existing stable of designs. Because payroll.
The timing of this thread is uncanny as last week I began composing a blog post entitled "The Search for the Next PocketShip," featuring an entertaining and rather hit-or-miss array of attempts to recapture some of PocketShip's lightning-in-a-bottle.
Look for that in a few days.
John, love the mini trawler concept. It looks like it would be right at home on the Bahamas thin water.
Looks top-heavy to me. Bet it'd be great fun in a cross wind.
Laszlo
Hi John and thanks for chiming in!
Wow that Snowy Egret looks great! I am looking forward to your blog. I just was typing up a huge list of questions about it but realized I was jumping the gun a bit. I got a little excited. I will wait for your blog, and then bombard you with questions!!
Almost April. Time for the re-release of the 82 footer.
Ok sorry I cant help but ask one question. Port side of the Snowy Eaglet, is that a wood stove? Small box with a chimney? If it is, you may have just made a sale....well in about 2 to 3 years.
You'll need a fire extinguisher.
Well, well... Very nice!
But may I suggest that before jumping on exciting new projects, it might be nice to finalize the ones which are in the pipeline... for instance, that so beautiful and unconventional "Outrigger Junior"... There is nothing similar in the market, and I am sure that many people would show their interest if they knew that the boat is really fully completed, safe and ready for sale...
>>>>But may I suggest that before jumping on exciting new projects, it might be nice to finalize the ones which are in the pipeline...
>>>>>
I agree completely. Which is why the new releases in general have slowed the last few years. Overhauls of instruction manuals have been the main priority, displacing the Outrigger Junior from its launch among several others. (The OJ is 100% complete design-wise. It's just awaiting its lavish assembly manual.)
Likewise, absent a live commission, larger PocketShips remain the realm of entertainment and speculation for now.
And without further ado, for the benefit of cubicle procrastinators everywhere, here are a dozen candidates (and pseudo-candidates):
The (Unending) Search for the Bigger PocketShip
My Votes are in!! Loving the Pocket ShipIII and the Snowy Eagret!!!!!
I love John's post on larger variants of Pocketship. I voted for Joy Spring and Artful Dodger, but if I were going to build something larger than the Northeaster Dory, I'm sure I'd opt for either the Southwester Dory or Autumn Leaves. Both would row well and sail better, and both would be nice boats for coastal cruising. Autumn Leaves would probably win my heart because it is so different from my (absolutely delightful) dory. I can imagine a long, comfortable cruise in Autumn Leaves.
I'll post the results in a month or so.