Hey Pete, can you find that Tampa Bay news program video of Matt and Zach Lynch sailing their Viper together? I've looked all over but can't find it.

That's how you sell a $16,000 "toy".

What you make doesn't necessarily determine what you buy for toys, it just establishes how dedicated you are to wanting the toy. I'm dirt butt poor most of the time, but do what I can keep a boat under me.

Speaking of which, I gotta get back to my corner......

Karl, how many kids do you have?

Would you buy one of your kids a $16,000 sailboat?

Did your dad buy you a $16,000...anything?

That is my point.

Here you go.

http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/sports/fish_n_chip/father-son-racing-team-makes-waves-06042010

Thanks Pete.

My aim in this discussion is stricktly from a Marketing viewpoint.

How are you (Mr. Viper "Junior" Dealer) going to "Sell" the boat, to the Clubs and parents?

Give me your best "Pitch" Mark, or anyone else. Because If I can't sail the boat, at $16,000, nobody in my family's getting one!

And that would hold true even if there were 1,000 yacht clubs that already had fleets of them up and running, of which there are....zero.

Dad's got to write that check, you had better have a product Dad can sail too!

That's the sell; Dad and the Kids, together, having good times!

Put a "No Dad's allowed" sticker on it and good luck selling ANY of them!

how much do the horses cost?

Mind you, the rumour has it the club is noticeably below 16.000.

I guess it is just as with motor cross, those things are't cheap as well and dear child wants something proper where Dad wants something affordable. Somewhere those two limits have to meet and that means you can't fully satisfy both.

Wouter

In Timbo's case nothing more needs to be said. Tim, you gave me a chuckle with your "If I can't use it we ain't getting it" speech.

Here's the pitch the Tim: Get a Viper Club because you'll never have to scoop the poop!

I've got the Blade equivelant, so I'm good. The horses over the past 15 years have probably cost me as much as a brand new Gunboat 62 for sure, but then I also rode them, my wife rides them, my two other kids rode once in a while.

At one time all 6 of us rode, but now, not so much. I hate to go near them, as all I see is $$$$ flying out of my wallet every time I go to our barn, which BTW, cost me $42,000 to have built...then there is the $17,000 trailer being pulled by the $35,000 truck...

Don't make me add it all up, I'll kill myself.

So, how many of you DAD's out there are going to buy your kid a $10,000 to $16,000... or what ever, "Toy", if YOU can't also play with it??

Timbo, all this blathering! You must not have looked at the website!
VIPER Club
Why should I waste a pitch on you when you are definitely not in the market! If I had a product called Horsefly Be-Gone! you'd listen right? Haha. I do like your points though.

How can you not sail the boat? Put the Club sails or the regular sails on and the boat still performs.

I was out in about 7 knots with a junior and I was impressed. We were able to beat the other F16s at the club here at West River with the Club sails and we weighed 300 lbs. The SA is taken out of the square top and the sail is a bit flatter. The kite is flatter and 9% smaller, and we used it on a reach very effectively.

You could always just put the regular set of sails on and there's your boat, Tim, singlehanded or double. And if you singlehand in a breeze with the Club mainsail.......fast for sure! It could actually close the gap between the single/double in the breeze. This is exactly what is so attractive about the F16; it is so versatile. singlehand/double/junior/mixed/female/males....every combo possible.

So to answer your question if you can sail it or not..

Remember, it only weighs 50 lbs more than a club 420, and the 420 is still an eight thousand dollars. $$/mph the VIPER Club blows it away.

Though we are competing against the 420, I don't look at it as direct competition, but more of a cross training, as mentioned earlier. Recruiting colleges look for sailors who have sailed a variety of boats with success. Contrary to popular outlook, cats are very technical boats to sail and demand fast thinking and a lot of tactics, as we all know. I don't really have to go there. The main focus is keeping kids interested in sailing. For me, if there were no cats I would have quit a long time ago, and I still like to sail leaners too. Of course, many yacht clubbers see cats as taking away a piece of their pie, but I think there could be many more slices available in the whole pie.

Daggerboards are not an issue. You can't have a true performance cat without them IMO.

To say there are absolutely 'zero' VIPER Clubs around, what is that? At one point there were zero Optis, Zero Lasers and zero Hobie 16s. Why try to kill something before it starts. I just visited my 1st club. Thanks for that one buddy.

Check the FAQ page out on the site to help. Any suggestions are helpful. Well, maybe not 'any'

What's your next stop? Do you have a pair lined up for Racine yet?

How about this Pete
VIPER Club Great Lakes Championship!

I posted this on the Open Forum. If I was a junior I'd be all over this! If anyone knows a kid or pair of kids that would like to do this, drop a line.

I'll forward to the F16 class if you like.

What is the price difference with a standard Viper?

I think you missunderstand my points here, I am 200% behind the concept of the Viper Club Junior concept. It was Mark Schnieder who said it should NOT be sold as a family boat but only as a Junior boat. (go back and read his posts) That's when I said, What dad is going to lay out that much money for a -Kid only- toy? I also mentioned the Laser Radial 4.7, etc, same concept, I think it's a great idea.

Maybe we can start an F16 junior class, and I can have my kids race my Blade (with the same Junior sails) then hit the beach, swap sails, and I go out and race. I'm all for "Versatility" and any cost savings, believe me! Mark was saying a kid needs his own boat and doesn't want his dad along. My point is, what dad can pay for that? I say, Use it for BOTH, the dad and the kid, the kid can race with his friends, and dad can race it too. I'm not trying to kill it, I think it's a great idea. But before Dad writes that big check, Dad needs to know he can play with it, thus my mention of Zach and Matt Lynch.

I would never have bought -any- of the horses if Mom and Dad couldn't ride them too...

I'm JC, not Robbie. Robbie's too cool to post on websites, and he's busy doing what I want to be doing right now.

That's what I hate about these forums, that "go back and read his posts" stuff. I read his posts and you asked anyone to give the pitch, so I responded. I don't wanna talk in circles.

I'm not taking it the wrong way at all. I'm just trying to answer the question. You can dish it out real good Timbo, and I have fun with it too sometimes.

I see where Mark is coming from, and I think you are both right in a way. Club kids generally sail club boats without mom and dad, and that's what the norm is. However, since this is a larger price-tag it must suit many different options. You and I are coming at it from the same angle. Anyway, I think the efforts should be geared towards getting more kids involved instead of haggling over small selling points.

What a great idea! An F16 junior class. Kids race, swap sails and parents can race. I bet you still didn't look at the website. When do you decide to put the landing gear down, Timbo, after everybody in the **** has been talking about it for fifteen minutes?

The imagination is a powerful thing.

Loss in functionality is the trade off but will they help you win races? NO. Are they in the way? YES. Will it be expensive to replace or repair those "deep" boards? YES. Would center or low profile boards like on Taipan be lees likely to get whacked in club or rental use? YES. Do we need the "deep" boards to enjoy "apparent wind sailing"? NO. Do the "deep" boards create more problems then they solve? YES. Can we make them shorter? NO. Not without a redesign of the "trunks". Will they redesign the "trunks"? NO. Would not add to bottom line which is perhaps why they went with the F18 beams and want the F16 min. weight increased. Did I miss anything?...

I have two set of boards on my Stealth. Long and short. In fact the original short ones are the same as the rudders, all sourced from 49er rudders.

I keep them in my trailer box just in case, if I break a rudder or a daggerboard I have two spares...

The big difference between the two is that the boat is way quicker to lift a hull with the long ones. I've used the short ones only twice: Once when it was honking a good 25 knots with gusts to match and a second time combined with a smaller main when I put my two sons (14 and 9) on the cat by themselves.

I'd say there is value in short boards

I wrote a paragraph of recommendation on behalf of the two kids I'd like to see awarded the ride. It would've been a whole letter, but I'm just not that creative.

Sweet that there'll be two more F16's at Racine! Way to go JC.

Sorry for the confusion JC, I was traveling up to ATL when I responded to the posts, from an airport computer connection, didn't have time to go to the web site, and right now I am still in ATL. It is 12:30am, I just got out of a 6 hour simulator session, now I'll be snoozing in a chair at the airport until the first flight out, 06:55am, back to MCO. We call it "living the dream."

I just know from all the years I've spent trying to "sell" sailing to other families (and cats in particular the past 10 years) the parents need to be "on board" if they are going to write a big check like that, vs. a few grand for a "Racing Opti".

When the Wave first came out, I had high hopes it would replace the Opti, as most of the complaints I heard from kids in Opti's were: 1. "It's too slow!" or 2. "It's too small."

Well, the Wave fixed both those problems at once. The problem for the Wave was, and still is, there is no follow on cat class for the kids to move up into, at most Yacht Club settings. The Yacht Clubs go with what they know, what is simple to store, what is cheap, thus they use Opti's, Lasers, 420's etc.

The Hobie 16 is still very popular today, because there are so many used ones out there, cheap, anyone can get into cats via the H16 if they can find a back yard beater cheap, and fix it up.

That's the only way I was able to get into cats (it was a $750 Hobie 18 in my case).

With the H16, the parents can race with or against their kids. But any of the newer cats? Not too many used ones available, and none of them are what I would call cheap, so if you want to sell a brand new, expensive (relative to a used 420) cat, you had better have an 'angle' on Dad and/or Mom being able to sail it too. They are the ones who write the check.

Now, they may only sail it once in a while, but it makes it easier to part with that much money if Dad knows he can get out some time too.

It's going to be a tough sell in this envrionment, no doubt, but I think if you get to the clubs where the 15y. old kids are, who have been sailing slow bathtubs, they will be -hooked- when you get them out on the wire in some wind. And if you can get Dad out too, he just might write that check.

Tomorrow, if/when I finally get home, I'll check out your website.

Be good!