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What were
we thinking?
I’m often
amused at how smart we think we are. With ease (and thousands of bucks
in software) a designer can produce dozens if not hundreds of pages of
stability analysis. Who knows, some of it may even be meaningful.
Performance prediction analysis can likewise ramble on for dozens of
pages where only a few years ago an experienced eye and an off the cuff
analysis would probably have proven just as accurate. The same is true
for structures and just about every element of boat design. Though our
computational abilities have skyrocketed, what we truly understand about
small boats has remained largely unchanged for decades.
What about all the drawings we draw? It is simple to
document a design down to tiny fractions of inches. A click of a mouse
can dimension a structure to a sixty-fourth of an inch. Unfortunately
few boat yards are equipped to build the boat with more accuracy than a
sixteenth (nor do they need to). For some yards even that standard may
be far too optimistic.
Serious design professionals, of course, appreciate the
need to generate not just data, but useful data. Still, I fear, there is
a tendency in today’s world to produce more paperwork than the answer
requires or than reality can easily support.
If the truth be told, the best yachts today remain a
combination of modern computational tools and tried and true design
experience. In that sense the best boats develop much as they did 20, 30
or 50 years ago. Though the boats we desire, and the creature comforts
we demand change as the years pass; the oceans, the winds, and the waves
clearly do not. The cruiser, especially the serious cruiser should focus
less on the concept of hi-tech design and more on that concept of well
proven techniques. Storage boxes full of design data won’t get you to
your destination. A good boat will….
But that’s just my opinion. |
