Someone who will be missed, the land of the not smart, but hey, it could always be worse and we could live in Hungary...
Over at Attainable Adventure Cruising they have a pretty good post about progress and, to some extent, rudders... Being that I'll be building a new rudder for "So It Goes" real soon, it seemed timely.
Of course, I have to admit that most of the time when I hear the word "progress" mentioned in conjunction with boats or boat design I often cringe because "progress" is one of those buzz words that seldom means anything like... well, progress.
Take for instance the new textile rope clutches by Ronstan...
It IS most certainly progress. You take a simple idea that rope structure under tension gets smaller and grips (can you say Chinese finger cuffs?) which is, after all, the basis of all rope splicing. Combine it with a bit of ingenuity, some shock cord, a bit of string, and a small easily built inexpensive bit of hardware and you wind up with a better
Better yet, because it is so much cheaper to manufacture than an excellent mechanical rope clutch like this one which costs about $80...
Guess what? It costs a lot more at $179...
Sure, it is a very smart and cool clutch but not exactly progressive when you factor price into the equation. Good design always has to factor in cost in a positive manner and this is just the reverse of that.
There is a positive side to all this because just about anyone with an IQ slightly above room temperature can easily DIY this sort of textile line clutch without raising a sweat for pennies on the dollar. I'm pretty sure I'll be a seeing a lot of this sort of clutch in the not too distant future but, I suspect, I won't being seeing the name Ronstan a lot when I do...
But, I do believe I was talking about rudders and Attainable Adventure Cruising's take on carbon fiber for rudder posts or at least that was what I was going to write about... Maybe that should wait till later as I'm trying to limit myself to one rant a day!
Listening to the Rascals
So it goes...
