Last Post?

Rest in peace pore Option 1,
Your time did come but now it's gone!
Futile chat of choice galore
But really such a dreadful bore.
Pity tho', now no one's won.

[duluthboats]

LOL!! I like your prose but I don’t share the sentiments. The way I look at it, we have gathered all the right ingredients and put them together to ferment. What becomes of this mash is yet to be decided. At this point a field hand like myself can do little but watch it cook and stir the pot now and than.
Gary

[Polarity]

Whats the rush after all??

Paul

[Willallison]

'Tis way too soon to mourn the end,
Of Option One, our cyber-friend.
We've come too far, to out of hand reject,
This result of collective intellect.
The challenge is there to get it just right.
But perfection isn't something to be had overnight.....

[duluthboats]

[Polarity]

Dear guest poster of words of dread
She's merely resting, she's not dead
So enough with the doom and unfound fears
Just get out your finger and post some ideas!

[Mike D]

Queries

Surrounded by so many literary expressionists I feel hesitant to post anything that does not rhyme. So forgive me if I only tell you what a famous Roman once wrote, he was Nero’s tutor so he was as well qualified as any to write about ships;

A ship is said to be good, not when she is painted with extravagant colouring, nor when the bow is silver or gold, nor when the bulwarks are carved in ivory; but when she is stable and firm, tight in the seams to exclude water, strong to withstand the assault of the sea, obedient to the helm, swift, and not sensitive to the wind.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger)

I have some queries about the design and I would greatly appreciate answers to some rather simple queries

• [1]When discussing dimensions would you please be specific . For example, what is the length? There are at least 8 definitions that I know of, 4 of which will not apply here (Registered, Tonnage, Freeboard and Rule) as it is not a classified/registered vessel but it still leaves LOA, LOH, LWL and LBP.
  
  Probably not LBP (or Lpp nowadays) but that still leaves three lengths that are quite different and two of them seem to used interchangeably. The LOA is the Length Overall and is from the extreme aft end to the extreme forward end so it would include a bowsprit or an outboard motor. LOH is the Length Over the Hull and it is the body length excluding stern-platforms and such like. LWL is variable because the draft changes and therefore so does the Length on the Waterline, if it is not specifically stated then the convention is that it is on the design waterline.
  
  Very much the same as beam and Bdk, Bex, Bwl, Bmld.
  
  [2]I have read a few postings about heave and comfort and references to a book by Dave Gerr, The Nature of Boats and the chart on page 107. Could someone post a copy of it please and a copy of any applicable text. I went to http://pws.prserv.net/fmyers/HCFactor.html to check it out. Portager wrote of this site and said to enter some values and the “height” but all I found was the displacement, LWL, BWL and the Waterline Area Factor.
  
  The Calculator uses the same variables that are in the standard calculation for the natural period of heave, in other words the time taken to go there and back again vertically. The problem is that the boat displacement should be corrected to take care of what is termed the entrained water, the boat actually carries water with it so the displacement seems to increase. I’d just like to check what the chart says about it because the worst case is a wide, shallow draft, flat bottomed hull – ring any bells? :
  
  [3]This often crops up

  one of O-1's requirements was that it be legally and easily trailerable worldwide

  and I wonder does it fix any other dimensions? I have read somewhere about a 31’ trailer limit – does this not determine LOA? Is there any height limit from the ground to the “top” when O1 is on the trailer? I have noticed that “length” seems to vary consistently and usually as a matter of it would be nice if… or it would be better if…….. As this boat will carrying two (minimum) crew – what’s the maximum by the way? – it does seem that it should be as long as possible yet not contravene any stability or other criteria.
  
  [4]I have seen only vague references to cost and it is still not clear, to me anyway, what is included in the cost. I thought it meant that the boat would be complete and ready for operation and that it would include EVERYTHING but fuel, lube, food and any other consumables. The cost of the hull etc is obvious but what about curtains, cutlery and charts and the host of other items aboard either built-in or carried but necessary for the safe, efficient and comfortable operation?
  
  Willallison made a start with a good list that has been revised but a detailed check-list for everything is needed and a price or cost should be worked up. This would put a brake on the nice things such as pods or water-jets. For example, I think the smallest pod (I assume this is an ABB Azipod) is 400 kW which is rather generous compared to other values cited in this forum of 250 hp or 350 or so. The ABB pod is an electric propulsion motor with separate generators forming a power station for all on-board services. The cost of the pod plus its necessary service equipment etc would be therefore very high compared to any outboard – can you really afford such luxuries? There is absolutely no doubt that a modern AC/AC drive is the best system if you want a propeller. But does it reside in your price range?
  
  All talk of better than or cheaper than or shouldn’t we ought to be verboten until there has been some sort of preliminary cost assessment to put things in perspective.
  
  [5] Enuff bitchin’ – here’s some advice about charts such as the one mentioned above. If you decide to use such a chart in your design it would be much easier if you reduced it to a formula that you could build into a spreadsheet. Let me give you a simple example, I looked at the values given by portager in his post; 5,000# displacement and 120 sq. ft., 25,000 & 330, 4,000 & 104. I put these in Excel and made a fast chart with only 5 clicks and 1 select. About half an hour later I ended up with two formulas and using the same displacements as given these are the playback values of the area;
  A: Area = 0.568*D^0.6285: giving 104.29, 119.99 & 329.95
  B: Area = 1.3666*D^0.5 + 0.00456*D – 0.04: giving 104.63, 119.39 & 330.04
  
  The first one has the edge but you can prove black’s white with such few data points. However, putting such a simple formula in a spreadsheet is a breeze and it releases you from having to refer to an outside reference when you do your sums. You don’t have to use the result, often I show a result but I can enter another value if I choose to do so. The result of this calculation is guidance, it is not immutable as if I wanted a speed in feet/second using knots.
  
  [6]Before anybody chants
  “All very nice but where’s your design?”
  To which I say “I must decline.”
  Although an Honours in Nav Arch I did earn
  The ins and outs of boats yet must I learn
  I wish I could say “Coming along fine”
  But I can’t.
  Not yet.
  
  Instead, I volunteer to compile, using data from all you guys, a cost estimate. If anyone has a WBS suitable for boats send me a copy otherwise I’ll modify one used on ships. I’ll wait until 9 pm EST on Saturday 12 Oct for a WBS and if there isn’t a rousing cheer from at least one person before the cut-off I withdraw my offer.
  
  JIC - a WBS is a Work Breakdown System that defines all the elements of the project for initial costing/estimating and through to reporting.

I leave you, temporarily I hope, with this thought
Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere
intellectual play.
Immanuel Kant
Not implying that it refers to anyone here but you may infer whatever you wish.

One last thought, I greatly disapproved of 20-20 hindsight from those who hadn’t the least grasp of foresight so I had the following framed notice in my office
Where were YOU when
The paper was blank?
Came in useful at times.

Bye for now.
Michael

[Willallison]

Well - let me be the first to RAISE A ROUSING CHEER !! Your help, input, guidance, criticism, enouragement etc etc is VERY welcome......

Hope it's ok for me to speak for other here..... but the first thing you have to understand, Michael, is that (for the most part at least) those who have contributed to O-1 so far have been, if not complete amateurs, then at least erring towards that end if the spectrum. I for instance am a 2nd yr student with Westlawn. So the O-1 'process' is as much a learning experience for us as it is a design project. All the more reason for us to welcome you to the fold so to speak - I must admit that I had hoped to see a few more of the obviously knowledgeable forum contributors joining the fray, but never mind......

Answers to a couple of your queries....

1. If I recall correctly, I was the only one to post an "overall trailer length" restriction - here in Oz the combined length of boat and trailer (not the vehicle) must not exceed 12.5 metres. Combined width must not exceed 2.5 metres. There are height restrictions - I can't recall them off the top of my head - but they are high enough not to be of concern to us. As I said these are Australian regs - nobody has posted anything which restricts us further.....

2. In referring to a "pod", we are simply talking about a transom extension to which the outboard is attached - akin to the type of thing you see bolted onto the back of boats converted from sterndrive to outboard power. You are quite right - the type of pod to which you refer would probably blow our US50K budget in one hit!

3. Speaking of budgets - fairly early on in the piece, we established that US 50K is the budget for the completed boat, on trailer, including engine, but excludung 'optional' items such as electronics. This is for the home-builder.

4. Your criticism of our vague use of the term 'length' is a valid one. In general, I would say that unless otherwise stated most would have been refering to the LOH. But just to muddy the waters a little, where items such as boarding platforms are built into the hull (such as in a number of my sketches) they would probably have been included.....

5. Your quote from Kant (is that pronounced can't ?....) is insightful - I think that with the combined knowledge of all willing to partcipate, we have most of the bases covered - though a little more of each couldn't hurt....

And I like the bit about "where were you" - I've printed it out and stuck it on my wall - alas it resides next to a sheet of blank paper........

But now I have a question for you....

I wish I could say “Coming along fine”
But I can’t.
Not yet

Why not?

[Willallison]

Some modifications to the max size limits I stated above....

Length 12.3m (8.5m towball to ctr axle, 3.7m axle to rear)
Width 2.5m
height 4.3m

[Mike D]

Will

Thanks for the comments. I hope no one was/is/will be upset at some of the things I wrote. There is a fine line between shooting the **** and just blowing off in the design process and a round table session is often a very valuable and rewarding step. But it can easily lead to endless chit-chat if the goals are side-stepped. That’s why today we hear so much about mission statements and the need to focus etc ad nauseam. Some good ideas pop up out of nowhere even during chit-chat, the difficulty being that chit-chat takes a long, long time and it will delay even a generous schedule. The best thing is to log the good idea but include it in Mark II thus giving yourself and the rest of the team some extra time to properly review and gauge the merits or demerits.

One of the major obstacles in O1 has been that the SOR (modern jargon meaning Statement of Requirements, used to be Outline Specification) has been consistently ignored. It begins to gel and out of left field something entirely contradictory appears and then everyone is off and running in a different direction. It can be rather frightening to see some of the errors that have been made but no one offered comment.

No names but here are two simple errors that weren’t typos. A discussion of fuel weight and volume came to the final conclusion that the SG of gasoline is about 0.6, my words and my summary. Gasoline or petrol has a range from about 0.71 to 0.77 depending on the source of the crude oil, the blend and additives. Diesel oil is from about 0.82 to 0.88. The other oddball is that did you know 0.25 m = 4 inches? They both show the dangers of conversion of units.

Despite the gripes it is gratifying to see the enthusiasm that exists, I am merely trying to funnel it in the direction the polls suggest – I think.

The data you posted

Length 12.3m (8.5m towball to ctr axle, 3.7m axle to rear)
Width 2.5m
height 4.3m

If I were a designer I’d determine just what this gives as the maximum permissible LOA and I would reduce it slightly just in case as a design margin. I’d also find out from everyone posting what their limit on LOA would be and try to make some sense out of it all. When the suggested towing vehicle ranges between a good SUV and a FreightLiner it does make me grip the table for support!

I saw that the budget was for US$50 k but I am also aware of some budgeted items with an astounding over-run. I haven’t the faintest idea of DIY building costs and I am deliberately refraining from checking prices on the net or here where I live. You have elected to take the Design to Cost route which makes sense but you need a cost estimate just to know where you are. Odd things can happen during the DtC process, you may be obliged to drastically reduce the size. Maybe you decide to reduce the speed or perhaps you can afford to increase it but in both cases it could be a change to the hull form. Something very fast means a prismatic form whereas much slower would be a rounded hull. Maybe all the arrangements will need to be re-done – sort of déja-vu all over again for the third time around. But I’m not the designer :

For almost 40 years I have encouraged technically-minded people to read something written by the French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes over 350 years ago – he’s the guy who said Cogito, ergo sum a Latin phrase meaning I think therefore I am. He wrote a short book called in French DISCOURS DE LA METHODE POUR BIEN CONDUIRE SA RAISON, ET CHERCHER LA VERITE DANS LES SCIENCES which was translated into English as Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. You should read it, it’s all over the net and it is only 90 screens in a very large font.

Put boats and work to one side and read it. In a nutshell, his method consists of;
1. Accepting only what is clear in one's own mind, beyond any doubt.
2. Splitting big problems into smaller ones.
3. Arguing from the simple to the complex.
4. Checking when one is done.

Two very short extracts from Chapter 1 – "For myself, I have never fancied my mind to be in any respect more perfect than those of the generality; on the contrary, I have often wished that I were equal to some others in promptitude of thought, or in clearness and distinctness of imagination, or in fullness and readiness of memory.............

I will not hesitate, however, to avow my belief that it has been my singular good fortune to have very early in life fallen in with certain tracks which have conducted me to considerations and maxims, of which I have formed a method that gives me the means, as I think, of gradually augmenting my knowledge, and of raising it by little and little to the highest point which the mediocrity of my talents and the brief duration of my life will permit me to reach. For I have already reaped from it such fruits that, although I have been accustomed to think lowly enough of myself, and although when I look with the eye of a philosopher at the varied courses and pursuits of mankind at large, I find scarcely one which does not appear in vain and useless, I nevertheless derive the highest satisfaction from the progress I conceive myself to have already made in the search after truth, and cannot help entertaining such expectations of the future as to believe that if, among the occupations of men as men, there is any one really excellent and important, it is that which I have chosen."

Today we talk about the “KISS Principle” and “Eat the elephant one mouthful at a time”, Descartes will blow your mind and instruct you how to think. Just read one chapter a day, only six plus an intro. You’ll be hooked, but even better you will have learned how to stare at a blank wall and see the maze of question marks just drop away one by one. All because you answered the easy bits of the puzzle first which led to many of the awkward bits simply slinking away. Now then, what’s the damned length?

No, Kant is pronounced cant with a short, hard a as in apple.

But now I have a question for you....
quote:

I wish I could say “Coming along fine”
But I can’t.
Not yet



Why not?

Because this is a different world to the one in which I spent my career. Ask me about tankers or ferries and I am quite at home. D/E propulsion, slow speed diesel, medium speeds – been through them all. Slight difference in power and sizes, of course. Lowest power was around 1,000 hp then over 3,000 to over 28,000. The same basic theory exists no matter what it is, the application of it is not the same – it is as Kant said. Just look at my last gaffe – pod. To me it was an azimuthing thruster called AZIPOD but it turns out to be a support doohickey for an outboard, next you’ll tell me it is also a seed container for leguminous plants. I must get used to the idea that a bipod is really a double-doohickey for twin outboards. :

While at college and in my early years, boats were brushed aside in favour of ships so to me a high speed ship did maybe 20 knots. Apart from warships the fastest vessels I was ever involved in were two at 23 knots and a different design at 22 knots. The rest were in two main groups of about 10/11 to 14 and then 15/16 to about 18 knots. Now I am reading whatever I can find, without spending money, on small fast boats. I am catching up on planing and semi-planing up to V/RtL of 5 or 6 while the fastest I ever did was only 1.5 and most were around 0.5 to 0.8, completely different.

I’m trying not to get too involved in the actual design process but limit myself to things that I know and that are applicable to small, medium and large vessels. I will also be satisfied if I can pass on some lessons learned from my own experience in short-cuts and the whole process of design and how to get it across to others.

One thing I intend to do is write a spreadsheet to do the speed/resistance calculations. But Lord knows when I'll ever get it finished as it appears that misguidedly I have volunteered to become the estimator, I must work on a few guidelines for what I suggest.

But now to bed!

Michael

[duluthboats]

Michael
Thank you, for showing interest in 0-1. As you pointed out we have been rudderless and much of the early enthusiasm is gone, with some abandoning. This site is frequented by many people very knowledgeable in the field of naval architecture. I had hoped that they would take an active role in this exercise and that a neophyte like me would learn something. I can understand the reasons this hasn’t happened. Early on I expressed concerns about designing by committee. All I can say now is that if thread ended today I still have learned a few things and had a chance to interact with some great people from around the world.

The Nature of Boats, by Dave Gerr, is aimed at guys like me who have a love of small boats and no engineering background. In many cases he’ll use a chart in place of the formula to assist in understanding. I don’t have the hardware required to scan the one you were talking about so I can’t help you there.

The WBS, even with your JIC I’m at a loss. I will try to fill in the blanks where I can. I’ll be away from my PC for the next 3 days and will not be able to meet the deadline.

René Descartes, wow, what can I say? I can read the words in a short time but I’m not sure if I can digest it all. But I’ll give it a try.

Lastly, I to have a notice hanging, this one is in the lid of my tool box where I can see it while I’m working.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW
YOU MUST DO

So let me add my rousing cheer for any help you choose to give us with O-1

Gary

[Polarity]

Lets not get tooo serious here ! the original mission statement was: (paraphrased)

"Most of all, the idea is to generate some interesting discussion!"

I think we have suceeded! I have learned a lot from this and still am. Looking at the number of posts and threads, O-1 has achieved just that...
Having said that, lets try and bring her to fruition, but there is no rush, throughout the life of o-1 there have been cycles of interest and input, just like the forums in general - some months every other contribution is from one member and then they take a sideline to watch and learn and give input when they see something they can help with.

I think that a lot of us are here with expertise in one area - but outside of that we are all learning from each other. Not just with O-1 but within all the forums.

There has been a great response to O-1 and it's a pretty unique way to design anything!

Since everyone else has been posting personal sayings I will post mine - but it has two meanings...

If you don't know where you are going...
then any arrival will be purely by chance

Obviously this is a call to plan and have direction, however it also means that if you would like to arrive somewhere by chance then it's important not to know where you are going - one of the ways to do that is to have collective decisions made.

Mike, it's great to have your input and I hope we can teach you a little something about small yachts in exchange for the huge amounts of knowledge and experience you have taken the time to post up - it is very much appreciated

After all everyone here is here to share and to learn because we have a thirst for knowledge and know that others thirst for ours.

That makes us all very special.

Cheers! to a bunch of very special people


Paul

[Polarity]

I really like some of the posts above but I would like to point out re ...

"Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play. "

EXACTLY thats what it is !... "intellectual play" and damn good fun it is too