Refitting boats, solution or wasted money?

We do sell refit kits for transforming straight board boats into curved board boats.

A kit contains two boards, two daggerboards cases and two sliders to make the boards adjustable.

Cost aproximately 1900 euros including covers for the daggerboards but excluding the labor for the upgrade.

Does it make any sense to invest so much money in your boat?

It depends on what you expect. It will improve the perfomance of some boats (The Tool, Marstrom) significantly and will have less impact on performance on a Flyer 1, 2 or ASG3.

Though it will make some boats faster it will not make these boats competitive in the big championships. We have seen some refitted Tools, which were quite good but not as good as the new curved board boats (Nikita, DNA).

It makes sense to refit a boat if you do not want to sell your boat and  prefer to have an upgrade.

If you can sell your boat, the upgrade makes only sense if it adds 2500 euros to the value of the boat.

It is my experience that sailing new boats and selling these after 1 or 2 years is the most economic thing to do. The only problem is the initial investment which can be significant especially for younger sailors.

Upgrading older boats does not add a lot of value, that's why the depriciation of a new boat is often less than the depreciation of an old boat plus the upgrading costs and( the annual new sail).

The paradox of the new carbon boats is that the boats became more expensive but the cost of sailing actauallly declined. (more durable, higher reselling prices)

The transition from straight boards to curved boards can be a good thing for the class; the improved performance of the A-class catamarans will attract people from other classes and the availlability of reasonably priced secondhand boats will attract new sailors as well.