You, in fact, did use the best way to take the lines off of a boat. I've
got several articles on the topic and some are somewhat ad hoc, others
require setting up an X-Y Cartesian coordinate system from which you take
measurements to the boat, but the best of all is the one where you do as
described ...triangles. If you know the 3 sides and define the reference,
then you can get the most accuracy out of your measurements. Boats being
what they are, any other system can result in trying to take measurements
from very low angles and that can result in a lot of error. You *still*
have to fair your results when done though.

And BTW, nothing illegal or unethical about documenting your boat
....designed by someone else or not. I would however say that the most
ethical thing to do with the lines data is that you ask the designer for
permission before you share them in any way. The lines are the designer's,
not the construction method. Using the data for your own personal analysis
of a boat is something I would highly recommend and something I've done.
But I don't share the data with anyone else without written permission.
Just my way, my 2 bits worth of a way of living and let living.

Brian D



"mislav" wrote in message
...
As a final note, this is not meant to be a manual on how to cheat a boat
designer by not buying the plans and build a replica of their boat. The
time and effort spent in setting all this up will probably worth more then
the money you spend on the plans, plus with the plans you'll probably get
much more useful info then just line offsets. The reason I did this is
because I wanted to investigate hydrodynamic properties of my shell with
Michlet SW, but the plans I used to build the boat didn't include any
offsets.