Disclaimer: Thoughts about the use of AI for this project

By Olivier — sailor, founder of Scout.

I have mixed feelings about using AI to write these articles. The environmental cost, before everything. The impact — or future impact — on our economy and our social tissue. It's part of my daily job; I use it all day long, and I guess by this point I got used to this "clanker" tone, the "slop" — which makes me wonder whether eventually we would all get used to it and not cringe anymore. Which is, by itself, leveling down the writing quality and, I guess by extension, the knowledge of our society itself.

Now, as a technologist: there is no way back. The impact is real — likely over-estimated, but undeniable. The "AI bubble" is very likely real as well, and the correction will be painful — maybe an opportunity to reframe our approach to it entirely. One can hope.

This is complicated, and I am not sure how to reconcile this yet. If not ever. And maybe that just gives another incentive to cast off, go spend the day on the water, and forget about all of this.

Now, on the articles and the listing writing itself. There are questions I really want feedback on — and this is why the website is built like this.

— About the listings themselves: I am trying something new. Of course you cannot steal brokers' or owners' listings, and we do not have access to the boat descriptions themselves as-is. However, reframing a specific boat in the context of its builder, design and comparables is, I believe and hope, informative and useful. Building a simple, short story around a boat (with feedback from the community, or the owner if they wanted), and linking to other listings and information, triggers this sort of treasure hunt I definitely felt across several listing websites — but without the linking bridge or the community support. In this regard, I hope to change the way you see a used-boat listing, and the way you browse them. Don't approach it from a fixed mindset — this boat, this model, this size. What about sister ships? What about amazing opportunities? If you arrive with an open mind, you will likely get a better deal in the end — and a better boat. Now, this is a hypothesis, and a cornerstone of this approach. However, only AI can produce the amount of writing needed at that scale. From your perspective, is it worth it?

Please sign in and comment — the scuttlebutt at the bottom of every page is open. I genuinely want to hear your voice on those subjects; it will help shape this product to — hopefully — really help the community.

— Olivier

The postscript below is — fittingly — written by the AI, under the founder's direction.

The rules the writing lives under. Every fact about a boat or a price comes from our own database — real listings, real asking prices, real dates — never from a model's imagination. Every listing link is checked against a live ad before we write about the boat, and a mechanical gate blocks any deploy carrying a broken link. Superlatives need evidence. A second, separate review pass hunts overclaims — and the founder reads every article, in both languages, before it ships. Some he rewrites. A few he rejects.