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Posted by dwhite
on 4/8/2010, 8:00 am, in reply to "Re: Future of Fireball"
72.237.88.0
Sorry about the previous posting. My feeling is that the lack of quality used or readily available new boats over here in the US is the biggest drawback to purchasing a Fireball. MOst of the used boats that people are seeing are older designed standard bow boats that really should have been disgarded years years ago but people want to clean out their garage and sell these things to to people who think they can rebuild these old hulls and make them competetive again. We spend a lot of time giving advise to people on how to rebuild something we end up never seeing on the water. There have been some good buys with some but the majority are questionable hulls at best. Back in the 70's Rondar would sell 5-10 new fully equiped Fireballs at a fleet discount to several US vendors who would in turn pass the Fireball along at a huge savings to buyers and the result was a lot of Rondars were sold over here and our fleet grew like crazy. I wonder why something like that would not work again. A real problem is the fact that a new Fireball will cost at the present moment around $14,000 US. After purchasing that boat the buyer will be lucky to race in three regattas this summer with 6-7 boats in the racing fleet. On average there are one a couple of boats at any club and many clubs will never see a Fireball all summer long and have not. Now for $7,000-$10,000 one can find a quality used Lightning and sail it anywhere in the US and can count on a fleet of 15-20 boats on average on any given weekend. Also we need to address the issue of the fact that there are two different design of the Fireball. The wide bow makes the standard bow boats out dated yet there are a lot of standar bows around. The plans yo pruchase are for standard bows and after spending several thousands of dolars to build the boat you have an out dated design with few sailors attending the regatta. Up date the plans and work on getting some sort of buying incentive going with the manufactures. The Fireball is a great class but at present a bit expensive to buy new and no quality used boats around.
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