I have a meeting with Peter Philips of Pacific Maritime magazine about this next onth,
Hi Peter,
I do have a Lake Chelan ferry. See pictures.
Most of my boats are in Hawaii. The Holo Holo, Kai Oli Oli and Alii Nui are warm weather boats that ferry a large number of passengers. I want to take what I know and apply it to the Puget Sound.
The difference is that I come from a sailing background. We are familiar with easily driven hulls, and weight saving is critical.
Almost all the passenger ferries that I see are by designers with a powerboat background. They just pile on more horsepower to make up for not being easily driven.
I have been designing catamarans for 35 years. With the help of congressman John Miller, I got the USCG to adopt a particular design rule to design catamarans to.
I just had a phonecom and visit from Ed Ives of Pure Watercraft. They are about to release a 50 hp electric motor system with a Tesla type battery. https://www.purewatercraft.com/
I got this nice note from the HaynesCarstens family.
” We are frequently asked what type of boat she is, and are always proud to answer that she’s a Kurt Hughes! Just wanted to send well wishes to you, and let you know how stoked we are on your design! Here’s to a speedy recovery so you can get back to creating more wonderful things for folks to enjoy!! Best Wishes! :~ The HaynesCarstens Family
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The future caught up with me this autumn and I didn’t see it coming. 6 or 7 years ago I bought an amazing plotter. A Canon that could do a page in something like 20 seconds. It could do full size patterns and everything. No more repro copies of an original. It would be just in time printing. $5000 and supposed to be worth it. A couple of years ago it stopped working. After about a $1000 in repairs it was working again. Until it quit again and I was warned it would be another $1500 and that might not be enough. That was last year. People were slow to pay at the time, so I parked the plotter. For at least a couple of decades, I could send a dxf file to University Reprographics and they could plot it out at full size. An overseas job came up that needed that. It turns out that is not possible anymore. To plot AutoCAD, they would need their AutoCAD. With all of us having plotters, the repro shops had to cut costs. That meant no more AutoCAD at the repro shop. I tried every other repro shop in Seattle. Nobody plots AutoCAD anymore commercially. And even with mere PDFs, it was more than $500 for a hull plot. So I am getting my plotter fixed. Parts are on the way. I’ll part with the cash. As soon as repairs are done, I can do everyone’s full size pattern plots again.
I think that I have tried every kind of weatherstripping to seal door closures or wet hatches. This model, called Rubber seal, ribbed, seems to be the best I have ever tried. All are adhesive backed. The ribs allow one part to deflect, without distorting the whole seal like a square section would. The black one is 3/8″ thick, from Grainger. https://www.grainger.com/product/TRIM-LOK-INC-Rubber-Seal-10D149
The white one is at Home Depot. They don’t carry black. I think is 5/16″ thick.
Paul started with the KHSD 45 cruising cat plans, but wanted some changes. I did a composite bow tube design for him.
I don’t recall being told it would be forward cockpit. The helm is indoors, which is always good.
I recently had to review a chainplate on one of my COI cats and send a note to the USCG.
I see from the X-Ray report that the Aolani chainplates were not steel, but composite as I thought they were.
These composite plates are immune to corrosion, unlike metal ones.
I assume the builder used my layup schedule as I have sent earlier. I see no reason to doubt that.
They are easy for the builders to build in a huge safety factor.
Instead of being fastened onto a hull, these synergistically combine to both strengthen the hull and the chainplate.
Unlike the metal plates, these have some resiliency so make all the parts longer lived.
Any delta in the parts from the loads would show up immediately and early by cracks in the paint. Unlike metal plates which usually are not painted.
Attached find a picture of one of my other catamaran designs with composite chainplates. Note that he lifts his entire vessel with only the three chainplate locations.
