Thinking about Changing My Career to Boat Designer??

Hi All,

I have been a Mechanical Designer for over 20 years. Mainly in the water treatment industry and 2 years ago changed industries to food and beverage and now the piping designer for an engineering firm in California designing equipment layout and piping layout in large food/beverage plants. I have been doing all my work in CADWorx that plugs into Autocad 2012. i have taken Solidwork classes with certificates of completion in all available classes and a Certified Associate in Autodesk Inventor 2009 pro. 3D Cad is pretty much my preferred tool of use

Recently I have been thinking about changing my career to boat/yacht design. I have always wanted to learn to sale and own a boat that I can use for weekend get away's, except finances have prevented this luxury from happening.

I have a lot of design experience in process areas and was thinking about doing the Westlawn online program and get a job designing boats.

I suppose my main question is, is this a good career move for someone who is 46, does it pay well/okay, I currently make around 70-75k. is there an industry demand for this career, is Westlawn a good and reputable school. Here is a link to the coarse I was thinking about persuing (http://www.westlawn.edu/course_info/overview.asp)

Its all online which I do like, due to my current job that requires me to travel a lot and is hard to make time for classroom work. Based on the research I have already undertaken its hard to really establish if this is a good career change for someone of my age, I just love being around boats.

After attending the San Diego 2014 boat show and browsing the interiors and exteriors I really wanted to become a live aboard and was thinking about purchasing a 40-60 ft boat to have as my home. Again time at this point made that idea in practical.

Your thoughts on this career as a boat designer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Anthony

 

Duplicate initial post with http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/education/thinking-about-changing-my-career-49815.html which already has two replies.

 

Ye sorry, just wanted to get the best advice possible about this potential career change, but i need to rethink my options. Thanks very much for all the helpful tips.

Anthony

 

Welcome to the forum Anthony.
Having two identical threads running gets too confusing over time, remembering which reply is in which thread or whether something has been posted before. Therefore, the replies from this thread have been moved into the original thread, and let's continue the topic at http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/education/thinking-about-changing-my-career-49815.html