Dear Jim,

I think you are right. A lot of trouble in building a boat (I mean a tailor
made boat),
no name, no resale price, no guaranteed results etc . To go for a larger
boat seems
to be a better idea. This is what an economist would say, a naval
architect, a boat
owner or a prospective buyer. But a man in love would not think that way.
When I am in my home I sleep early after 30 minutes of TV. When I am on the
boat
with friends, we can blabla about boats (and not only) until 5 in the
morning.
I cannot do that in a bar. I sleep in my home and my back hurts me in the
mornong.
I sleep on the boat and my back does not hurt me in the morning. I do not
touch
anything in the house. No screw drivers no nothing. I do not care. When I go
to
boat, I lift the cover and see if the bilge water is transparent-clean. I
look around
to find a spot to clean. If I dont find a spot, then I make a spot and clean
it.
And then I sit doown and start sketching the boat I dream off.
I do not know if I will finally do the right thing. In fact, I do not know
what is
right. I only know what is nice. I do not know what I will finally do.
Your comments, however, were very much of help to me.
Thanks.

PS
I have very carefully explored your site. The mv Fintry is a sea ship. Long
range thing.
I wish her following seas, whoever is onboard.


"Jim Woodward" jameslwoodward at attbi dot com wrote in message
...
Well.... That's certainly an open ended question.

I completely agree that almost all production boats are not suitable for
serious use. I go to several boat shows -- Maine Boatbuilders' Show,
Newport, Fort Lauderdale, Miami on the yacht side, the WorkBoat Show (New
Orleans), SeaWork (Southampton) on the commercial side, and the METS trade
show (Amsterdam) -- because each one gives me ideas and possibilities and
I
continue to learn.

I am tired of laughing at the 56' Long Range Cruiser (sail) with a queen
size bed in the middle of the master stateroom and no bunkboards or
division
to keep a sleeping person off the floor and off his/her partner. (I should
add that Fintry will have a king size bed, but it will be set up with two
mattresses that form a square, so that we can sleep either f&a or p&s,
with
strong bunkboards on three sides and down the middle in either direction).
Or of a Long Range Cruiser (sail) with single bunks against the side of
the
hull aft where the hull narrows rapidly, so the sleeper's head is outboard
of his feet and therefore below them if the boat heels.

I am tired of boats with large saloons and no handrails anywhere. Of
lifelines 30" (75cm) high. Of boats over 65' (20m) with r&g sidelights
forward of the steaming light and/or the steaming light well aft -- almost
a
third of the large boats at Fort Lauderdale this year were illegal in
these
respects. Why? Because having the steaming light on a mast forward is
ugly.
(We usually say "steaming light" here to mean the light that the rules
call
"masthead light" because "masthead light" is confused with the anchor
light.) Of powerboats with essentially no visibility aft from the
wheelhouse
and no way to look aft without going outside and walking aft. Of the 60'
power cat with computer and TV screens in front of the driver, so when
sitting down at the wheel you couldn't see forward except with a TV
camera;
this same boat had no side decks at all, bow to stern, so dock lines had
to
be handled from the bow and stern two levels up and there was no place for
any lines amidships. Of the 125' sailboat with the captain's cabin in the
bow, access only down a ladder from the foredeck, with two bunks, a toilet
between them, and very little floor space -- would you trust your $10
million boat to a person who would live like that?

I overheard a conversation this past weekend at Fort Lauderdale in the
booth
of one of the Big Three of yacht electronics manufacturers. Seems that a
recent radar unit needed a software upgrade. Owner had to choose between
having it done free if he brought the radar display (box maybe a third of
a
meter on a side, 20kg, four cables to disconnect) to the dealer, or to pay
a
couple of hundred dollars to have the tech bring the software to the boat
on
a computer. The display was so hard to remove that the owner chose to
have
the tech come to the boat.

Why do we need a little light next to a circuit breaker to tell us the
breaker is on? Seems to me the handle position tells us it's on and the
light is just a waste of electricity. Why are most of our light bulbs
rated
for 12 volts (or 24) when they have to run at 14.5 (or 29) when the
batteries are charging and therefore cut their life by a factor of ten
(tungsten bulb life is proportional to the inverse twelfth power of the
voltage).

And so forth. Now there are a few production boats that do a pretty good
job -- Nordhavn and Swan come to mind -- but even with them there are many
details I would change. Which is why we're starting with an absolutely
rock
solid strong ex Royal Navy hull and pretty much doing everything else over
again. This gives us the chance to do it our way and to know exactly how
it
was done in every case.

The Fleet Tender hull is almost ideal for us. Tough, with 10mm steel
where
it counts. Very little deadrise in the middle third of the boat, so the
main hold is almost twenty feet (six meters) square at the bottom, and yet
has a very nice entry and run. And, as I mentioned at the start of this
thread, with ballast tanks allowing us to use the USA East Coast
Intra-Coastal Waterway at less than 2 meters draft and still ballast down
for comfort at sea.

You, on the other hand, are going to have a hull built from scratch -- a
hull with features that are unconventional. I'm not qualified to discuss
the details of a planing hull -- I sort of understand them, but I've never
really studied them. You must know you're taking a risk -- even though
modern computer analysis will tell you a lot about how a new design will
work, the programs are based on designs that have already been done, so
something that is at the edge of the envelope may not come out in real
life
quite the way the computer thinks it will. So there's a risk that you'll
put
a lot of money into a project that doesn't solve your problem. You might
also consider that it could be difficult to sell -- most very personal
boats
are. As an example of this, we changed Swee****er's lifelines from 30"
tall
to 36" tall (75cm to 90cm) -- entirely appropriate for a large boat that
would be used at sea, with no problems at all. When we sold her, the new
owner wanted the old stanchions so he could return her to "standard Swan
57".

The other question I would ask is do you really need it? We passed
through
Greece on our circumnav in May and never felt the meltemi, so I know only
what I've read. I ask, though, whether a planing boat that can do 20
knots
or more cannot almost always make it to a sheltered place when difficult
conditions are forecast -- shelter is never far away in Greece. Thus you
never have to stay out there and take a beating the way you do when you're
crossing an ocean. Now, I know that running for shelter is not
particularly
appealing to a person who has spent much of his life at sea, but it might
be
the best compromise. Of course this means you must then stay in the
sheltered place until the meltemi stops blowing.

You could also just go larger in the best possible production hull. It
will
almost certainly be cheaper than a custom design, particularly if you
consider resale value. Larger will be more expensive to dock, but the
fuel
might be similar, given the large engines your special boat would require.
Larger will be more stable and safer than your present boat -- perhaps
equal
to your special -- and will have a lot more room inside -- a bigger boat
to
begin with and no dead space for tanks.

And finally, I ask if you've really done the math on the volume required.
A
cubic meter of water is about a metric tonne. She's going to be around 15
meters long, 4 meters wide, so her waterplane is going to be around 80% of
15x4 equals 48 square meters. To take her down 10cm, you're going to need
4.8 cubic meters of seawater. Now, 10cm isn't very much, but 4.8 tonnes
and
4.8 cubic meters is a lot in a 50 foot boat. You can put a small galley in
4.8 cubic meters and 4.8 tonnes is going to require strong framing, even
if
you assume that the tank will always be either full or empty -- no free
surface. This is made even harder by the fact that the larger engines are
going to need larger than normal fuel tanks.

Now, with all of that said, I don't want to end as discouraging. There's
nothing more satisfying than having your own thing, just the way you want
it. We've done it a number of times with houses and three times with
boats
(Fintry is the third) and it's just great to end up with something that
represents the best possible compromise for you. As you say, all boats
are
a sea of compromise, and most have the sea tilted towards making them easy
to sell to landlubbers.....

--
Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com