C & L Boatworks – Everything That’s Old Is New Again!
C & L Boatworks – Everything That’s Old Is New Again!
Help your customers “rediscover” relaxing weekends
By Andy Adams
Everyone agrees that we want more people to get involved in boating, but to attract them, I think it’s important that we help our customers rediscover how to relax and enjoy their weekends!
Until we have a bonfire of smart phones and iPads, our work lives are going to reach out and spoil our fun at every opportunity, so we need to find ways of making our recreational time at the college (and out on the water), as valuable and memorable as we can. A sailboat can be a great escape.
Since the Vikings, mankind has gone out sailing on the water, reveling in the sense of peace and tranquility and enjoying the feeling of adventure and escape that goes with sailing your own boat. The wind and waves come and go, the time passes and the stress and pressure of the office are left far behind.
I recently heard someone say that the great thing about riding a motorcycle, is that when you’re riding the motorcycle, the only thing you can do is ride the motorcycle! The same seems to be true when you’re out there sailing your own boat.
If you’re a marina operator or other professional in the marine industry, it makes sense to encourage your customers to have sailboats, particularly affordable, convenient and easy-to-sail Canadian-made boats like the models from C&L Boatworks; the CL14, CL16, CL11 and the CL Echo 12. It’s a way to enrich the vacation experience, transporting your customers back to a less hurried and less stressful time.
What’s different about a C&L sailboat?
While there are lots of sailboats on the market, few have enjoyed the longevity and enduring success of the C&L line.
C&L Boatworks is a small business, located in Fort Erie, Ontario and owner Dave Ventresca and his people serve a large and loyal group of owners across North America and the Caribbean, some of whom have been sailing their C&L boats for as many as 45 years.
That’s right–the CL16 has been in production since the 1960s and today, the repair and parts business is actually the larger part of C&L Boatworks. Just about every CL16, CL14 and CL11 part is backwards-compatible for 45 years!
For a boat dealer, that means that if one of your customers needs to replace a damaged sail, a rudder, a centre board, or even the whole mast or boom, parts and service are just a phone call or email away. It makes a used CL very attractive too.
These are hand-laid boats, made one at a time with time-proven techniques and lasting quality.
C&L Boatworks actually makes a few other models as well. They are the Code 40 and the high-performance skiff the Stealth, but the most versatile models are the CL14, CL16 and CL11.
The CL11 is a great boat for kids, an affordable cottage boat and an easy place to start sailing, and also is a great row boat. The CL14 is probably the most versatile because it is big enough for a couple of adults, or a parent with a couple of kids and the 14 is light enough to launch off a beach or a dock. Both models have remarkable stability due to their beamy double-chined hull, which gives novice sailors confidence when starting out and performance when they have upgraded their sailing skills.
The CL16 is a bigger boat for bigger waters. It carries more people in comfort with its teak benches and it has been the overall top-seller with almost 3,000 built – most still sailing. There are active groups racing CL16s at the school and club levels and there are some fleets in cottage country as well. With its spacious enclosed rear lazarette and under-foredeck storage it is also a great day-sailor for family outings.
How To Create A Fleet On Your Lake
If you are not a sailor yourself, you may not know how engaging and enjoyable a little friendly racing can be. It’s great fun to have a group of people all sailing the same boat because people talk about their boats, they learn from each other, they’re evenly matched and the fun is in the sailing experience more than it is in the equipment.
Seeing a whole fleet of CL16s or CL14s out on a Saturday morning is a beautiful sight and it attracts attention. Having a new sailboat on display at your marina will also attract attention, and in some cases, an impulse purchase. Even a new CL16 can be had for just $13,000 with the other models all priced even lower. It is a credit card transaction for many of your customers, and they are more likely to go for it if you facilitate their sailing experience with education and support.
You may not know this but Sail Canada, Canada’s national organization for sailing and the people who field Canada’s Olympic sailing team, are also the number one on-the-water training organization for sailing. They are National and there are provincial sailing associations all across Canada too.
The Sail Canada website is http://www.sailing.ca/en. From the home page, there is a button called Education & Training, then a button for Dinghy Instructors. That reveals the whole database of qualified, registered Sail Canada instructors available to teach sailing – through your marina.
This may not cost anything either. Use a launch ramp, park or other public area, just make your marina the communications hub.
Go to the www.sailing.ca website and enter your location to search for instructors available in your area. Sail Canada instructors will have met various levels of training (check their resume), are registered with the Sail Canada Association and depending on their own qualifications, can even get third-party liability insurance for running a small sailing school.
This can be a great reason for families to come to your marina every weekend!
We think there’s a great business opportunity here and you can do it around an all-Canadian built line of sailboats. You even get a nice bit of history and tradition as well as brand recognition and loyalty.
We have recently noticed a resurgence of interest in more traditional boats and upscale models to. A certain segment of well-heeled buyers seem attracted to the enduring values of a traditional boat. The C&L models are built the same way as in years past, but with modern materials and cutting-edge hardware and rigging, such as Harken bearing blocks and North Sails.
The C&L in C&L – A Little History
In the 1950s in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Henry Croce and Ken Lofthouse [the C and L in C&L] were the importers of a sailboat called the Wayfarer which was made out of wood and built in the UK. In the late 60s, there was a strike and the supply of Wayfarers was cut off. Croce and Lofthouse were temporarily left without a business so they created a new 16 foot sailboat in fibreglass to replace the wooden Wayfarer; hence the CL16 was born in all fibreglass construction.
In 1970 at the Toronto International Boat Show, the new fibreglass CL16 took off, the CL11 was introduced and the company also moved into the Greater Toronto Area where there was a lot of boat building activity.
In 1972, an associate of Croce, Anne Waterhouse and her husband David partnered with Bob May to buy the company. They continued making the CL16 [about 500 that year!] as well as picking up the Sandpiper S565 pocket cruiser.
The CL14 was introduced in 1973 and during that heyday of sailing, there were big racing fleets of CL16s in many places across Canada, Michigan and the Eastern USA. In 1982 the company purchased the design for the Echo 12 from Skene Boatworks in Ottawa, Ontario and that particular boat is still used extensively for the Navy’s Cadet training program as well as by camps and clubs for their sailing school fleets.
Another boat manufactured by the company was the Code 40 in the late 1970s, a design originating in Quebec. The Sandpiper with cuddy cabin had a run of about 1100 of them built by the time the model was mothballed in 1992. C&L Boatworks still produces and supplies OEM fibreglass parts, sails and hardware for this model.
In spite of the amount of time that has passed, an enthusiastic owner group continues to hold annual regattas in different areas around Ontario and Quebec and sail their Sandpipers.
There are many sailboat builders in the market, but few have been the “durable brand” that C&L has proven to be.
In 1993 Waterhouse and May sold the company to long-time C&L dealer Tom Oleksiuk, who brought the business to Fort Erie. At that time Dave Ventresca joined the company as a young man.
Historically speaking, the boom in sailing was over. None of the staff from Pickering wanted to move to Fort Erie and basically, Tom started over with the existing tooling. He continued to produce the C&L line, concentrating on the CL14 and CL16 and Echo models for club and camp trainers, and later invested a huge amount of money in the development of the high-tech, high-performance Stealth skiff, but he lacked the resources to establish the Stealth as a bona fide racing class internationally before he passed away.
Enthusiastic Owners Keep C&L Sailing
The good news is that Dave Ventresca is still a young man who is passionate about sailing and boatbuilding, committed to running the business and he’s making a living supplying parts and service to the existing fleet of CL boats as well as producing new boats for the cottage and club markets.
Although he does some advertising in Canadian Yachting magazine and a few other publications, his most potent marketing tool is the group of current and past C&L boat owners.
The company first established its website back in 1995 and there is a very active Owners Group Forum with more than 800 CL owners ready to jump in at any time to answer questions from sailors and potential and CL boat buyers. They offer the advice that could only come from an experienced owner and the kind of new owner support that no dealer could afford to supply.
The CL16 may be a 46-year-old design, but everything that’s old is new again. The membership in the CL club, the Owners Forum website, the camaraderie amongst owners, the chance to build a fleet of affordable and fun sailboats on your lake, and most importantly, a way to help people rediscover how to relax and enjoy their weekends through sailing, is something that we think marine industry professionals across Canada should warmly embrace!
Photos
Photo 1: C & L Boatworks – Everything That’s Old Is New Again!
Photo 2: Company owner Dave Ventresca seen in their display at the 2014 Toronto International Boat Show.
Photo 3: The CL boats are all available with such features as Harken equipment, coloured hulls and more.
Photo 4: Doesn't that look like fun! Single-handing your CL16 on a sunny weekend is the sort of day that makes lifetime memories.
