Boat Bits gets a lot of press releases for various new products which I just can't bring myself to pass on as almost all of them are... Well, the word "stupid" does come to mind... maybe the word I am really looking for is "superfluous" to actually sailing or living on a boat.
Which is really frustrating as I love gear that brings something positive to the party, so to speak, and I'd love to pass such things on to my readers... but all I seem to get is dumb stuff whose sole purpose seems to be in parting folks on boats with their hard earned dollars.
There also seems to be no shortage of gnashing of teeth and howling at the moon on how awful the marine trades and companies are doing these days (and yeah, I know the economy is a sinking ship with a clueless "can do" er, "can't really" crew at the helm more intent on rearranging the deck chairs rather than getting the frelling boat off the reef) but here's a thought...
Simply do your job...
Since we need a whole new suit of sails for the new proto-Simplicity rig and time is tight, we spent more than a little time sending emails and letters to various sail lofts asking for quotes on a new suit of sails (main/jib/staysail/Storm sails/drifter) which is no small chunk of money and as the marine industry is in such dire straights I expected to get back some pretty competitive quotes on new sails...
Guess what? Out of fifteen lofts I queried I got three back (and those three were all in Hong Kong) none of the USA lofts apparently needed the business or just maybe they did not get my mail?
So I queried again and only got a few quotes, all of which were wrong as apparently they had not read my letter or looked at the attached sail plan which just does not fill me with either a warm fuzzy feeling or C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-C-E!
Sadly, the fact is that all of the various lofts DID get my quote requests as now I find myself on their mailing lists and get no end of offers for various bits of sailing/logo bric and brac (hats, wallets, sunglasses croakies and briefcases) which they seem far more eager to sell than... SAILS!
Which brings us to the only real standout in the entire mix... Sailrite who got quotes to me within 24 hours and actually quoted on the sails I requested and got them right. What's more is that when we ordered a sail kit they sent it promptly and we had their product in our hands within ten days...
Which brings us around to the whole business thing again... The sailing biz has lost its way, it would seem, and for the most part has forgot it is here to serve the client with quality products that we can depend on when we go offshore and in return they get our hard earned money... It's as simple as that. They do a good job and they get our money. If times are hard, maybe they should be looking at their customer service and the quality of their products, rather than finding new over-priced nautical sailing-themed bric a brac to separate us from our hard earned dollars.
Rant over.
Plans Change, Martinique version
1 week ago
