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Originally Posted by lewisboats  I enrolled in YDS and received the first lesson but my lord the stuff you have to buy to do the work! Mylar sheets, ... |
I had the same experience when I enrolled at Westlawn some years ago. I was a computer engineer at the time and couldn't understand why I could not do my lessons on CAD. But that wasn't why I dropped out. Back then you communicated by phone and sent your lessons in by mail. They were on the east coast and I was on the west and with a full time job I could never talk to them on the phone. So I would do my lessons in the evenings and write questions along with them. I finally quit when I asked an involved question and the answer came back "No". No help, no suggestion, no teaching, just "No". I guess they had my money and weren't expecting more, so why waste their time.
But this was a long time ago and as I have said elsewhere, everything changes in this world. Maybe they have, too. I have the highest respect for Dave Gerr - his design sense and his ability to communicate. Maybe he has wrought some change at Westlawn. But I don't know.
Right now my biggest objection to Westlawn is one that should actually make them attractive to someone looking for a job in the industry: they appear to stress really modern designs. I have aged a few years since my Westlawn days and after many years of owning my own business I am way too independent to go to work for a firm designing production boats. And I don't really like the kind of bulgy, over-inflated looking boats that seem to be popular these days. At this point I'm just looking to expand from my life-long love of boats and my occasional bouts of boat-building into designing the boats that I build. So maybe I'll go the YDS route or maybe I'll just read the books and do the best I can with that. We'll see. My wife wants to buy a schooner and study whales...
10-03-2010, 11:21 AM
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