As the new financial crunches take hold and the complete change of lifestyle that having children brings, we are reluctantly considering selling our kayaks. I have had offers from people to buy them but never really considered it - partially because I don’t have the audacity to ask what I think they are worth! Each boat that we have took approximately 300 hours to make. And, we adhered to the design as closely as possible and only strayed when it came to out fitting.
The boat you see here is a Great Auk. Its design came from the book The Strip-Built Sea Kayak . Its' dimensions are 17’ long with a waterline length of 16.6’. The overall beam is 24” with a waterline beam of 22.7”. The cost to build one boat I can estimate to be around $1200.00 and that’s only material cost. I have priced "Tupperware" plastic boats of roughly the same length to be around $600 to $2000. Those boats are virtually indestructible but at a cost where they are usually heavier and not very eye-appealing. The fiberglass boats usually will run from $1500 on up. These tend to be way more fragile than their plastic cousins.
I have an idea of what I want to get for them since I’ve seen them on E-bay from $2000 to $5000. And, I have a neighbor who runs a class on stitch-and-glue kayak building and one of his students asked me if you could really get $3000 for a boat like this? I said you probably could. Then, I went home and looked in the garage. I was in a quandary. If can find 5 people in a small town I live who will take a class at $1000 each and they don't think $3000 was too much to pay for epoxied plywood, then what could I get for cedar strip? Those stitch-and-glue boats look great but it is still plywood.
1 comment:
They are beautiful. They are worth more than just money! So, I am no help to the question either way.
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