Random thoughts and rants on boat design, boat building, and other boat bits for those in the 99%...
The best answer I've heard in ages, what passes for school days with tRumps virus, and this week in the war on science trenches...
Kurt Hughes (AKA multihull designer guy) with an interesting take on a tiny house.
Some weather stuff, an artistic use of masking tape, and five film suggestions which might lighten your mood...
A very long time ago I was lucky enough to have a couple of classes with Victor Papanak who, pretty much pretty shook up my world on the subject of what made good design and the world in general. His book, "Design for the Real World", is still a major influence on my life and the way I look at things in terms of design. I mention this because I was just looking at this years Pittman Innovation awards.
I'm pretty sure no one at Sail Magazine has read "Design for the Real World".
I think I'll just leave it at that.
Listening to All-4-One
So it goes...
“Downright scary and disturbing”, a book on my need to read list, and in the "Nonviolent resistance is hard" department...
Tom Cunliffe is on a pilgrimage.
Listening to the Bad Shepherds
So it goes...
A nomadic community with ideas we should be emulating, something you really might want to read about, and in the "no future/no reality/no considerations" department...
Here's an interesting idea for cooling down a hut, small house, or, dare I say it... a boat.
More information can be found here and it is well worth the read.
Listening to Boom Box Repair Kit
So it goes...
Dengue a serious problem in Hawaii, the sound of silver spoon babies crying in the night, and I can't say I'm surprised anymore at heinous Republican hijinks but I do still wonder just how low can you go and sleep at night...
Yowza, finally someone has come up with a good use for inflatable technology!
Too bad it does not have anything to do with boats...
Listening to Shred Kelly
So it goes...
A good question, needful reading, and about that skidmarks in your coffee cup idea from the Republicans...
Over at Navagear Tim writes about a newish product I've been looking forward to seeing called the SeaBung.
It's certainly kind of cool and it is a major improvement over the standard wooden bung that we've all been using since Columbus first cruised the Caribbean.
It's also sorta/kinda e-x-p-e-n-s-i-v-e for what it is. Especially for something so easily copied by any industrious boat owner with a bent for DIY and five dollars or less in his/her pocket.
Just saying...
Listening to "Pops" Staples
So it goes...
So much for perp walks and the rule of law, no rule of law no trust, and yet another reason there is a lack of respect or trust for those who should be upholding the rule of law...
Krugman says some important stuff about Texas, Vigor offers some good advice, and Adafruit points us to a great op-ed on ideas...
I've been thinking...
Yeah, I know thinking is something of questionable activity these days (apparently soon to be made illegal in some states) but it sometimes does come in handy.
Case in point, I've been reading way too much about single speed bikes (the new hip thing for those cyclists who need a quiver) as you simply can't get away from them on the cycle circuit. A lot of my dissatisfaction with the idea of single speeds is the common thread that going to a single speed (and I won't even begin to go into the nether regions of things Sturmey-Archer) is that you can use a belt because chains and derailleurs apparently are such a hassle. Just for the record, there are no plans in my future to ever have a single speed.
As it happens, a friend was telling me how neat the new Native Watercraft Ultimate kayak was and that it sported a Propel drive...
Folks may also remember I'm a big fan of the Hobie Mirage drive and how I wish more folks would design dinghies around the drive (right now there is only one that I know of). Part of the reason for the lack of designs is that the Mirage is not well suited to boats that have a lot of rocker and it has occurred to me that the Propel drive or a DIY version might be more readily adaptable...
So, we were talking about thinking... right? As it happens, while I think a single speed bike with a belt drive is dumb as a box of hammers, I do get a tingle when I look at the Propel drive while thinking DIY thoughts along with dinghies and off-the-shelf bike parts.
Houston, we just added another project to the list...
Listening to BTO
So it goes...
One of the problems with the marine industry as it exists today is that it is simply about selling you stuff in an already defined market. New products that come in are mostly rehashed old products with little or no real development except in the guise of marketing to get you to toss out your old gear so you can replace it with the new version of the same old same...
For instance, my old Barient winches (circa 1969) work just as well, if not better, than the pair of Harken winches I bought a couple of years back. I'd wager big money that my Barients will still be going strong long after the Harkens have failed and become so much scrap aluminum.
Pretty much any "new" sailing product I come across is the same old same with a lot of hype. The sailing press which should be critical of new products and actually review them has taken the "We'll just print the companies press release" approach because pointing out that the new hyped product is simply the same old same might upset their advertisers. Of course, that is not to say that the cruising press cannot be hyper critical when there is no advertising revenue in the picture... Remember when all the various sailing mags hated catamarans? Touted as unsafe and a crime against nautical tradition until the amazing 180° turn they made as soon as companies making and selling cats found advertising budgets?
So where do we find progress of the real sort if not from the industry that is supposed to serve us?
Get hacking!
The real hassle of building a boat or any big project of a nautical variety is simply to get started. There are always a million reasons not to get started, but once you do, it all gets pretty simple...
Getting started is the HARD PART!
Case in point... The new mast! For years I have had a certain idea about a way of building a mast that would be light, strong and the sort of price that would make my oh so frugal Mom give me a big thumbs up. Of course, like a lot of good ideas that no one has actually done, there are a whole lot of reasons that many will give on why it should not be done that way... We, being something of a herd animal when all is said and done. So what it comes down to is a whole lot of pressure to go with the same old same and tried and true. What makes it worse is half the pressure to do the same old same is generated by "yours truly" as I find myself on one hand knowing the idea will work but then having attacks of doubt and the whole if-is-was-such-a-good-idea-why-isn't-everyone-doing-it sort.
So I have been doing the running in circles route the last few weeks, jumping from a semi-traditional mast construction to semi-traditional strip planked mast construction to a what the hell maybe I should just buy some aluminum pipe to the mast I really want to make and back again, and again and again! Exactly the reason boats don't get built sort of stasis!
The traditional mast in wood has a lot to say for itself as it is strong, easy to build, and fairly cheap, but it is also heavy in the grand scheme of things and while a monohull is not as sensitive to weight as a multihull, it is a real factor when all is said and done. The semi-traditional strip plank or birds mouth is more work and while lighter than your basic box mast is still heavier than it could be and they both have issues that make me a little uncomfortable. Which leaves my untried adaptation of the old Gougeon/Gold Coast wing mast construction as possibly lighter, stronger, cheaper and with a very real possibility of being a complete failure (spelled mast fall down go boom)... Yeah, choices are hard.
So what to do? Well, one way I use to decide stuff is by simply working it out using the guitar algorithm. Traditional wood mast means I have to give up a guitar or two... Strip planked or aluminum mast means I can keep my guitars while my adapted Gougeon mast design means (if it does not fall down and go boom) I can get a couple of guitars to add to the quiver. Now put that way, what do you think I'm going to do?
Which brings us to the red/black conundrum... Should I get this in red?
I recently spent far too much time listening to several folks go on and on (and on) over what a cat schooner was as opposed to a cat ketch and so on... Boring!
The new rig for "So It Goes" is a cutter, which is pretty obvious, it having a couple of foresails and all. Where it gets tricky is where the main comes in. Some might call it a Batwing, while others looking at how it all goes together would classify it as a gaff variant with an extra sail panel above the gaff. My take is that as the top horizontal batten has gaff jaws and the boat is more or less rigged as a gaff, except without the peaking stuff, you might as well call it a gaff or some such. Or not.
Well as far as I'm concerned... I'm simply going to call it... Simon!
For those readers who forget what a Lapworth designed CAL 34 looks like with it's normal rig...
One of the boats on our short list that I mentioned some time back, the Simplicity, got me thinking about its rig. The fact that at the time I was mired in the where-would-I find-room-for-the-running-rigging-on-various-possible-rigs-of-the-junkish-variety, made the word Simplicity resonate quite a bit...
Simple makes all kinds of sense!
Over the last couple of weeks or so, Mark Smaalders and I have been throwing ideas back and forth on the idea of a Simplicity rig variant for "So It Goes". The result winds up being a pretty interesting affair!
One thing you should know about Mark is that he "GETS IT"! Unlike a lot of designers, he has actually built a boat and cruised in it long term. In fact, he is co-author of the aptly named "Tropical Cruising Handbook" and writes from hard earned experience. Experience that finds its way into his designs as well. For example, he understood my thoughts that having less things to break in the rig was a good idea...
"I once had a welded forestay tang at the mast head give way during a nasty 4-day passage between islands in the Pacific. The only reason the mast didn't come down was that the fitting jammed at the masthead after breaking, which isn't the sort of thing you want to count on."
Like I said... He gets it.
We'll start talking about the actual rig tomorrow...
One of the first things you learn when you do the boat gig is that it comes with a "List" and how you handle living with a list is one of the big factors if you are going to be a happy or not so happy camper... So it goes!
Lists are a fluid thing and sometimes they are happy making while other times they can be a drudge but it is all part of what makes life work on a boat so you just have to do what is needful. Of late my list has been more of the drudge variety but yesterday it turned the corner and morphed into the fun sort... Sure the drudge items are still on the list... but the difference is I now have a new item added that has me all kinds of excited and looking forward to getting to it (even the drudge stuff)!
So expect to hear a lot about things having to do with self steering from rants to "how to"!
More soon come...
I'm a big guy... Not big in the freakish sense but just somewhat bigger than average and it becomes problematic when buying jeans, bikes and surfboards. I guess we all have our own crosses to bear and being 6'5" in a 5' 10" world is mine.
Of course you notice the 5'10" real world view and dynamic when you do the boat thing right away as most yacht designers don't really design for people much above six feet (of course they think they do) headroom being the obvious area that comes to mind but as headroom is a much over-rated thing when it comes down to it, my area of contention is berth length. A couple of years back, I remember having a discussion with a multihull designer from Oz who could not compute why I wanted to move a couple of bulkheads a foot further apart as he just did not understand the reason anyone would actually need a berth longer than 6'2"... "Just bend your legs when you go to sleep"!
Yeah right!
Back when I was designing mountaineering and backpacking equipment I went to work for a company who had previously had a designer who was 5'4" and had designed the previous range around the world height average which made him at 5'4" "average" of course the backpacks in the line only fit kids, women and smallish men and they did that very well. But it goes to show that unless you actually experience something you may not get the need for something. So shortish yacht designers design in ample headroom but forget that folks of a certain stature just might need a longer bed...
Same on surfboards and bikes. as most of the great bike racers and top surfers are not very tall (that low center of gravity advantage rocks!) and as a result the tall folk get left out to an extent... You find bike frames geared towards that middle ground and the fix is simply to use a longer seat post which is all kinds of wrong but sadly a fact of life these days. Surfboards are problematic as well, every so often I find a board that I'd love to have only to find out they simply do not make it in a size that would fit...
Just something to think about for NA's, frame builders and surfboard shapers looking for a niche that needs dealing with!
On "So It Goes" we are in the process of updating and upgrading various systems and the next on the list is doing something about the awful Raymarine Bidata depth/log which has simply never worked very well. Hardly surprising as everything we have ever had on our boat that has had the moniker of Raymarine stamped on it has been, shall we say, less than advertised... When the Bidata comes out we will finally be a Raymarine free boat...Oh happy, happy day!
The plan is to replace the sounder with a small fishfinder (more about that another day) but the log and speed thing is still up in the air...
I still quite like the hockey puck styled Speed Puck by Velocitek but I don't like the battery as power source and while I have been waiting for sometime for them to (hopefully) come up with a unit that could be plugged into the ships power system so far I am still waiting which is a shame as I know a lot of cruising sailors who think this unit is the Bee's knees and would buy it in a shot with a different power source.
So I am still looking for a decent speed/log and almost feeling nostalgic for my old Walker log...
On a whole different tack is the very cool new App for an IPhone called the Sail Master which for $12. (really!) does just about everything one would need on a boat except make toast and walk the dog! VERY COOL!
Of course it is not suitable for cruising as battery problems and the fact that an IPhone is just not built to live in a cockpit for days on end and all the other abuse that is the day to day norm for gear on a voyaging sailboat.
That said if I actually had a phone (Globalstar certainly does not count as a phone but it is good for cracking nuts) I'd have an iPhone and I'd be all over this! The important bit though is it gives me hope... I've pretty much given up on the sailing gear big business folks actually coming up with any real innovation for the cruising sailor and it will be folks like Sail Master and Velocitek who will lead the way to better and more affordable nav products if they ever realized that the only folks sailing were not just racers...
