DSK wrote in message ...
&
"Jim Woodward" jameslwoodward at attbi dot com wrote in message ...

Thanks both for the excellent advice clearly based on extensive briny
experience.

I guess I was thinking of seaworthiness in the fairly narrow sense of
being able to survive something like 'The Perfect Storm'; &
particularly the ability to quickly self-right in the event of
capsize. According to Czeslaw A. Marchaj
in 'Seaworthiness : The Forgotten Factor' the "point of vanishing
stability" et.al. of most modern yacht designs is woefully inadequate
- deficiencies he attributes to the pervasive influence of
International Offshore Rules & the 'floating gin-palace' ethos of the
charter-boat industry, on modern yacht design & construction. This
observation appears to have been borne-out empirically by the 1988
Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race http://www.radford-yacht.com/stablty1.html

As a natural pessimist, I want to build the 'ultimate-unsinkable'
craft, which will weather the worst that the sea can inflict;
however, I get the distinct impression leafing through all the myriad
yachting magazines, that most boats out there are little more than
flimsy eye-candy. Just another prettified escapist consumer commodity
designed more to part you from your hard-earned lucre, than to be
truly "worthy of the sea".

Yet on the other hand I continually read accounts of wildly improbable
craft -http://www.famoussmallboats.com/ - criss-crossing the Atlantic
& Pacific with apparent ease. All quite confusing really.