Jeff you are a great sport, and great for the sport. Everyone, Jeff H personally crawled all over my Frers when I purchased it and gave me his honest opinion. He will help any one of you out within reason. Don''t be afraid to ask him out in Annapolis. I feel he will make a great surveyor someday. (Jeff you have a great retirement job to go to someday but I know you love your day job for now) I hope to have you design a home for me someday. Sorry for the brown nose everyone but he is a helpful guy all the way to shouting boat trim/crew placement to help me out in a race.
If Jeff feel''s he''s crawled through a good sampling of these boats then he did, be it the earlier models, his finding can most likely be true. Keep in mind all production manufactures had their inconsistencies back in the day so it was easy to look at one of the bad apples or two. I admit to not knowing as much about them. If one is looking at late models then I''d say be sure to check out all the major production
lines equally because they are getting.."equal" in production. For those that constantly slam the production builders (above post), please keep in mind that cost plays into it for many individuals and a new or late model boat would not be affordable to many if it weren''t for production builders. If any non-production builder, or low production builder made the volume of boats that these builders did I can just about bet anything that you will see amazing discrepancies when the numbers grow. So I wouldn''t say that production boats are badly made, Honda even has some bad eggs at times. Production builders stimulate the industry as well and put lots into research for the benefit of all.
If had an unlimited budget and most don''t, I would not want to take a Jeanneau or any production boat offshore even if they are all rated category A offshore (later models), because there are manufacturers that are more expensive that specialize in it. But for near coastal, even long term island hoping, they present great trade-offs.
I already know the Jeanneau plant has very recently made tremendous strides in newly automated techniques (most shared with Beneteau) most likely since the above post gentleman visited them all. Also Jeanneau has recently attained ISO9001, meaning they have been checked out for tremendous quality control and record keeping. I don''t know of another production builder attaining that in Europe.
Beneteau "first" are great boats just don''t confuse them with cruisers or with their quality within the whole
line-up. Most of the later Oceanis were finot as I understand. Also all the late model Jeanneau’s are designed by great designers, many of whom built winning single hand boats, Open 50''s etc.
Jeff I directly told you in an email that I am part time broker of Jeanneau''s, sorry if it fell through the cracks. I am in medical sales fulltime. Many boat shoppers come to us already claiming that Jeanneau is a great alternative from looking first hand, and I''m sure it happens on the other side as well. No selling required they like them. I did it at the recent Annapolis boat show when a "cold" customer that we never met bought a boat on the spot from me after talking to every manufacturer in class and mostly beneteau. This was a fellow that was not new to sailing, it was not his first boat, and did a lot of offshore on the west coast. He settled on Jeanneau after crawling over them until after show hours and had a deposit down by Friday with me. This is an absolute true story.
As far as my bias, I have a lot of friends coming to me because they know I don''t have to sell a boat to live and therefore I am more helpful than pushy on a product. I am passionate about what I sell in my day job and I do a lot of research. I wouldn''t be wasting my time if I didn''t feel Jeanneau''s present a great value to the owner. It''s not the best, obviously a Swan, Hinckley, or custom 1-off is a better boat, but costs more and we pay for what we don''t need (given comparing new to new) I think a used late model Sabre is the answer for a lot of folks. New boat ownership has its advantages as well as many want to be tinkering less and sailing more, a good wash down and go home early rather than saying late on Sunday night working an older boats systems.
Cheers,
Jeff
(Jeff I think I saw you at Squisito last week)