Gunboat Factory & Financial situation by Peter Johnstone

Images: Jesús Renedo / Gunboat. – When you invest and create new projects, there is always a quota of risk. I’ve been involved in many projects, new companies / startups and new business built from scratch in the last 18 yrs, I can count about 8 on 3 different countries.  I helped to create many of them and also did some on my own like leaving office to build F18s cats, push for a multihull racing class in Arg, the F18 OP now being a reality built by Exploder , this website and other small projects.

So I’m all for entrepreneurs and people creating & pushing hard for their dreams at any level. I have taken many risks affecting personal & family status quo on each decision, of course in another level than million dollars boats business , but those risks I took myself never involved 3rd parties, the risks of failures would only affect me exclusively.

On bigger projects like Peter’s or the companies/projects I’ve worked as employee this scenario is almost impossible to avoid, as you also provide work for others, (being employees or providers) which is the real drive and first engine chain of any economy: Entrepreneurs implementing new ideas.
But you always need to plan ahead to minimize, if possible,  any “collateral damage” (employees, providers & clients) , if not you belong to Wall Street.

Regarding Peter’s list below, I mentioned here that the G4 was a Racer since day 1, and I think the marketing used focused on Cruising mainly made a rather innocent capsize to transform in a huge deal and ‘tragedy’.

If you promoted the G4 for what it is , a thoroughbred racer with room to sleep and dinner at night , the impact of a 20knots flying racing cat slowmotion sideways capsize without any breakage in a regatta, would have been part of the R&D and test trials.

I can tell you this first hand as I passed Peter a rather closed sale for a G4, of a prospect client who thought of drinking champagne while foiling 20knots  from Buenos Aires to Colonia, Uruguay like the old Aliscafos foiling power boats ferries did in the past… So that capsize made the client abort any possible buy.
I wrote about this (being a racer first) almost every time I published stuff from the G4.

To me the G4 is quite easy to brand and market, if I have the money which boat of the 2nd photo above do you think I will buy to race at Voile St Barts? or any other regatta like that one? Is a no brainer, and after the racing I would call my friends, wife and kids to have a great dinner (like last photo above) on this incredible F1 . Rather simple and honest marketing strategy, if you sail and race performance Multis, the possibility of a capize is always there no matter the size, F18 or MOD70.

On the rest , well …just big financial & logistics problems that such projects have to endure.