Dear readers,

I've had a truly luxurious week. I've just finished two longer sections as a report on the new Grand Soleil 65 LC, one for YACHT and one for our partner magazine BOOTE Exclusiv. This is a ship with a hull length of a good 20 metres, a width of almost six metres and a weight of 27.5 tonnes, depending on the configuration. A real luxury boat, one would say, chic, fast, elegant and breathtakingly beautiful. And: in the version we sailed, it cost around three million euros, including all the bells and whistles that money can buy.

It's a good thing that people can afford such a magnificent yacht and invest their fortune in the yacht building industry, which is capable of producing such luxury. We live from it and so do many others. As a YACHT editor, I occasionally get the exclusive and exciting opportunity to deal with boats of this type and size as part of my job. In normal life, on the other hand, I belong to the great mass of people who usually don't even come close to such exuberant splendour, let alone ever get on one.

When it comes to buying a sailing boat, we tend to focus on the more modest market segments. Smaller and affordable boats fulfil the desires of a broad range of sailors and those who would like to become sailors. However, the financial possibilities of potential buyers are only of limited importance. Another decisive factor is how the boat is to be used, where it is to be moored and whether a suitable mooring with an appropriate draught is available at all.

• Which boats does the YACHT actually sail? These here ...

The demand for small, manageable and flexible boats is therefore likely to remain high. Boats that are kept at home on the road trailer in the carport and are only put in the water for the weekend or for a summer holiday are also in demand like never before. Anyone who spends a lot of time in marinas can easily understand this development. And there's nothing wrong with that.

There is just one catch: manufacturers currently seem to be neglecting the small market segment. Exciting new launches in the area of small cruisers, trailerable sports boats or compact cruising boats have become rare. And who knows this better than us? Anyone currently interested in a small, handy and affordable boat has less choice in an increasingly dwindling and homogeneous range of new products.

Where, for example, have the affordable and versatile small cruisers from Polish production gone, which ten years ago made life difficult for the established series manufacturers with their attractive and inexpensive concepts and filled the space at international trade fairs? Some of these ships are still available and can be bought new, but they have also become expensive in comparison. In addition, there is hardly any new development in this area either. The range is therefore shrinking noticeably. And the small cruisers are also only sparsely represented at the trade fairs, if at all.

If you ask the manufacturers, you always get the same answer: It is simply no longer worth developing and offering small boats. Planning, design and, not least, mould construction are cost-intensive, and the investment cannot be fully amortised through sales. This is understandable in a difficult economic period in which the prices for the materials used to manufacture boats are rising, shipyard sales are plummeting and dealers' margins are close to zero. In short, there is hardly any money to be made from building and selling small boats at the moment.

Nevertheless, there is a glimmer of sunshine on the gloomy horizon. In spring, high-volume manufacturer Jeanneau launched the Sun Odyssey 350 once again presented an interesting boat for the highly sought-after entry-level class around ten metres hull length, Sunbeam Yachts in Austria has launched the 29.1 new innovative daysailer at the start, and just these days my colleague Fridtjof Gunkel is a guest at Hanse Yachts in Greifswald to present the brand new 360 to test.

Ultimately, these are significant signs that there could be more movement in the market. However, it remains to be seen whether this could be the start of a turnaround in the development of small boats. It would certainly be desirable. I am very curious.

Michael Good,

YACHT editor

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The week in pictures

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