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Hi Rod
Nice to see your Zephyr's Delight floating.
She looks great.
A pity with the mainsail.
I know you have many other interesting things on your to-do list
So have fun.

Cheers

Bernd

Thank you, Bernd, for your kind comments. A year ago at this time each morning, I was planning my day for the workshop in order to complete construction before my 75th birthday. As we all know, I missed that deadline but no problem. This morning, I awoke to the knowledge the boat is completed and I now can spend my winter dreaming of next summer, sailing "Zephyr's Delight" and learning how to sail her well. I must tell you your design captured a ?great deal of interest at our local Marina. Several members of the local Yacht Club came over while we were setting up to complement me on the boat. I even received several invitations to join the yacht club. That is something which never happened to me when I showed up at the marina with my previous sailboats!! It is your design which has caught their eye - it is not like any to which they are accustomed. That also applies to the enormous response on social media when I posted photos of the ECO 6. Clearly there are many sailors and builders who are intrigued by the ECO 6 and want to see it on the water and with wind in ?her sails. I expect you will be selling more ECO 6 plans this winter as others join the dream of sailing an ECO 6. Thank you, Bernd, for your vision and your designs.

Hi Rod, I saw your postings on social media of course but just to add to Bernd's comments on here. Congratulations once again on getting afloat. I know it is frustrating when working on a timeline, and it is hard to avoid the tremptation to rush things along, though you obviously have kept everything to the very high standards you started with. "Zephyr's Delight" will comtinue to draw interest wherever you go. I found the same thing with my Duo480, in fact on those days when I have beach launched for a nice day sail, I often got very delayed with packing up my boat late in the afternoon back at the beach due to curious spectators.?

Anyway i wish you a relaxing time this winter while you can plan to perfection the final touches and be ready for next summer.?

regards
Bryan

Thank you, Bryan.

Hi

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You had a goal, and you managed to reach it. Your boat is finished, and you did a great job. That it is a bit later as planned is not important. Good, Winter is coming, but you was telling me you have a lot of other interesting things to do to enjoy the time till the next sailing season.

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I had a bit of a wrang smile about, selling more plans with all the effort you made to place pictures in the most important publications for example, on Facebook entities. Good, here is the result till now. A would-be client will order a plan of an ECO 6 at the beginning of October. Mmmm

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The world has changed. The “lifestyle generation” a PR stunt that works) are viewers, not doers. They have calluses on their thumbs from using their iPhones and not on their hands. Because most of them do not know what is the handle of a screwdriver and which is the working end.

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Back to catamarans. There are no cabin catamarans in production of the size of the ECO 6. Why? There is no money alone in it. The work you have to put in to get a boat according to the EU certification is too high. What is left over are big catamarans for millions of Dollars and euros. There are almost no small craft boat-building businesses anymore in Europe—only a handful of big boat-building manufacturers.

I was invited by some of them to visit the multihull boat show in Cannes last week. By the way, multihulls under 8 m were not admitted!

I did not go, because, for me, these cruising catamarans are general houseboats with sails. I do not talk about racing boats. The costs for these boats are out of the reach for most of us.
The cheapest catamaran on the show, the Bali 4.4 (length 11m) costs Euro 518.520,-.

I know this is a bit a strange answer. But lucky, we here at the forum can help each other to build boats for a bit of a lower price.

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Cheers

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Bernd

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Yes, the world has changed, and one of those changes is as you say - more viewers than do-ers. It is disappointing but not surprising that more of your plans are not sold and more of your designs not built. Last winter, when I had the cabin on the ECO 6 started, a friend brought his friend to see the work. His friend wanted to purchase a catamaran similar in size to the ECO 6 and as you have pointed out, there are no catamarans like that on the market. The woman asked if she could buy my boat after I completed it. I assured her I was not building the boat to sell - I was building it to sail. She then asked if she could hire her to build one for her. I assured her she could not afford my price - no amount of money could convince me to build a boat for someone else. I have other activities which I prefer to be doing that are more important to me than money. I suggested that she build the boat herself but of course, she had many reasons why she could not do it. The primary reason underlying them all was her choice of how she spent her time. That applies to many people. They are too busy chasing money. They don't consider the quality of their life - only the quantity of their bank balance. It is very unfortunate the marketplace does not support construction and sales of smaller catamarans (aside from beach cats, of course). In this part of Canada, the market is increasingly dominated by very expensive power boats (most often "wake" boats that destroy the lake bottoms) which are financed through loans which keep the new owners working so much to make the payments they have no time to take the boats on the water. It's a crazy world.

Wonderful news, Paul. I wish you an early start to construction. Keep us posted with your progress.