Commentary: How Fast and How Much? – Speed on the Water
Here are the first two questions you get when from the average bystander when you pull your high-performance catamaran up to the docks:
“How fast does it go?” and “How much does it cost?”
These two questions, as you know, will vary in sequence. One of them is natural. The the other is understandable, but is wildly intrusive and inappropriate.
As a performance boat selling point, top speed is becoming less and less relevant. Photo by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
Regardless, these are the first two things people most often want to know about your go-fast boat. And yet come late January when the 2023 Speed On The Water Year In Review collectible print magazine reaches your doorstep—assuming you’ve ordered it in time—you will not find the answers to either in the annual 196-page issue.
Why?
Let’s start with price, something based on our experience at Powerboat magazine speedonthewater.com co-publisher Jason Johnson and I have never included in our Year In Review magazine. Manufacturer pricing is one thing. What a dealer will sell a boat for is another. Options from custom paint to power add to the variability. And the difference between the price a builder wants to see a boat list for versus what a dealer would prefer to see published are often markedly different.
If you really want to know the price as a potential buyer—rather than someone with zero purchase-interest who just wants to rant about boat-pricing-gone wild on social media—call the builder or the dealer. Because anything we present you will be less than accurate.
Now to top speeds. Verification has become an increasingly thorny issue. In our Powerboat days, we routinely heard, “Wait, that boat is way faster than what you got—you don’t know how to drive our boat,” from the builder. You could set your watch by it with certain companies. (Sorry, no names, that was long ago.)
But now, since we are not testing the boats ourselves, we rely on manufacturers to provide those speeds and we report it that way. These days, builders are de-emphasizing top speed and reluctant to provide those numbers to the media. We’ve watched that trend build for years and at this point answering the question of “top speed” in a data box with “N/A” feels silly and more than a little pointless.
As a serious buyer you can always call the manufacturer or one of its dealers and ask about top speed—just as you would with price—and you’ll probably get an answer. Or maybe you know someone at your lake or on social media with one and can ask them both questions, or more since you’e not the average bystander. Or you can do nothing and rant about it on social media.
But you won’t find either in the 2023 Speed On The Water Year In Review issue.
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