All posts by kurt

Plans Price Increase

The price of plans has to go up.  It looks like the magic date is June 1. I’m thinking it has been about 20 years since the plans prices were raised. I have been told my plans prices are low; and it has become more work then the cash flow reflects.

sarabi12

E-Study Plans

We are a bit closer to sorting that out. It seems the shopping cart cannot tolerate no shipping charge. Waiting for answers but for now, again the best work-around seems to be order a book, tell the cart bot that you live in Botswana, and email me the study set you actually want emailed to you.

Some Core Costs

John here on the west coast of Canada has some cost figures for various core approaches to his 40 trimaran.

“I just got a quote for cedar strip 1/2″ x 11/2” for a $1,05/ lin ft…that $8/sq.ft.

Also FYI  here in Canada, 1/2″ H80 divinycell is $4.50/ft…cedar $4.25….and balsa is $2.25/ft
 
Resin $317.60 – 5gal pail
hardener $142.41 – 1gal”
40tripsp

Powercat Sinking 2

Delightful meeting with Dan. Turns out a wave stove in the door in the front and it all went downhill from there. I do stand corrected about it having too much windage for offshore;  it was never intended to go offshore.  Except when it did.

Dan thinks he might rebuild, but ship it home in bits safe in a container. It would need accurate 3D modeling to sort out the pieces then. Glad to meet Dan.

Kelsall Powercat Sinking

I just got word yesterday that this 61′ Kelsall powercat Twin Coves sank and was lost at sea.  I see no mention of it online.  I will know a lot more after a meeting tomorrow. I would not have felt safe going out of the harbor with that much windage on a sled that small.   I always declare that whatever the sea can’t hit, it can’t hurt.  The inverse that it will hurt what it can hit is true too.  I feel badly for the owner.

twin coves

 

36′ Charter Cat in a Box Price Reduced

OK, several people have inquired but nobody bought it yet.
Its now priced down to $90K. With USCG stamped plans to carry 24 passengers out to 20 miles.  This 36′ x 24′ daycharter cat is for sale.   Owner hopes to sell soon.   Get it now and have it working by Labor Day.

Built using CM plywood epoxy construction with cored decks.
pair of new Honda 15 hp high thrust with 20 hours each.  Electric tilt.
Lefiel mast, boom and bowtube
Teleflex steering
Harken hardware
Staaf sails
Kick-up rudders
Portabote tender
KED lights
Life Sling                                                                                                                                   Lifelines                                                                                                                                           2 Bruce anchors

It is demountable and does all fit into one container except the mast. Is here in Washington state but can be shipped anywhere.  Contact me at 206-284-6346 or at khughes@multihulldesigns.com

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Unusual Conjunction

I have realized lately that there was a kind of unusual and I think singular conjunction going on in Seattle in the late 80s. Naval architecture had just started to go digital. It was new and expensive. Macsurf had just come out and I seem to recall it was $6K a seat. Autocad was $3K a seat. A giant HP pen plotter was $10K.   What did a Mac cost?  Going from memory here.
Suddenly, here in Seattle there was an explosion of innovation. I always thought that was going on everywhere else, but now I’m not so sure.

Microsoft helped make the PC a less costly alternative to Mac.  Dave Vacanti here wrote Prolines hull design software for PC that did Macsurf at 10% the cost.  Generic Cadd, also here,  for PC was one step behind Autocad, also at 10% of the cost.  Zericon did a pen plotter for $2.5K.  The guy at plotter accelerator wrote a batchfile that made the Zericon plot in one smooth sweep instead of in the order drawn.  Generic also output a flavor of EPS file that Adobe (also down the street) could read easily and with even now, unmatched resolution.  So we could all start doing high quality publishing.  And all these people knew each other.  Dave wrote output specifically for Generic and so on.  By ’86 or ’87 I was doing everything in CADD, with files downstreaming from Prolines to Generic.  I recall being at a design conference in Southampton in maybe ’88 or ’89.  I presented slides of this process and the designs.  John Shuttleworth, the then famous as the most digital catamaran designer in the world, told me, “How you do that is great.  We can’t do that.”

The only other person I recall seeing do CADD back then was Gino.  I was watching him playing with it back at R&D Boatworks.  Cam Lewis was there also.  His comment was, “Its like an etch a sketch”