Wow! In over 50 years of messing around with boats, I’ve never seen the boating world in such turmoil! A friend recently scrapped his 50 sloop because he couldn’t afford a dock in Newport Beach to tie it up. A mooring service company employee recently showed up at the store with a truckload of spars, winches, and hardware from a half dozen Coronados, Ericsons and Cal sailboats that he scrapped because no one would purchase them. I made him a cash offer and he said he could do better selling the brass, stainless, aluminum etc. by the pound to the scrap metals dealer and he headed off to San Pedro! If anyone out there ever wanted a boat, there will never be a better time than right now. Craig’s List is loaded with them, some are free, just sail them or haul them away.
Although I qualify for senior citizen’s discounts, I still do most of the buying and practically all of the pricing at the store. I personally measure, rate and price every sail in our 1,000 bag sail inventory that you can check out at www.minneysyachtsurplus.com . A new Sabot sail is now priced at over $300.00, friends with an Ericson 28 just paid $1,800.00 for a new mainsail and a quote for a new mainsail for Alaska Eagle came in at $12,000.00! Is it any wonder that we are selling 100’s of good used sails every month? While other stores are raising their prices, I insist that my crew hold the line. S.S. fastenings have been $7.00 a lb. for the past 8 years and they still are. We sell sandpaper at cost because we all hate hand sanding and the thought of burning up a buck or buck and a half every few minutes on such a distasteful chore is a total turn-off. We recently lowered the price of paint, varnish, West Epoxy etc. to our cost plus 10%. No one should have to pay $35.00 to $40.00 dollars for a quart of varnish! Boats are my life, just this afternoon I was crawling around the cramped engine room in my Down East 38 sloop running a new bilge suction line. When we say in our ads “we keep boating affordable”, we mean it! We have one store at a fantastic location, and it is totally paid for. Every day customers tell me they couldn’t own a boat if it wasn’t for my store. Please know we all appreciate your nice comments and thank you for your patronage. Thanks to you........Minney’s Yacht Surplus is doing “just fine”.
ernie minney
