YACHT DESIGN

I had a call last night from my blog boss at Sailfeed asking me why I had been quiet on my blog. Truth is I just have not been feeling like I had anything very worthwhile to say on the blog for a couple of weeks. I've been designing and taking care of a few personal things but I have not been waking up busting with profound or important thoughts I felt I needed to share. I'm reminded of a line in Bob Dylan's tune BROWNSVILLE GIRL: "Oh if there's an original thought out there I could use it right now." Years ago, when I was traveling on business a lot I began writing to a couple of friends. It soon occurred to me that I was really writing to myself, trying to sort out the sensations of being in foreign countries and dealing with cultural adjustments. So I stopped writing letters and began a diary. I would write in the diary, a yellow paged notebook, each morning while I slowly ate my breakfast getting up the courage to go and face what ever weirdness-es I would have to deal with that day.

I wrote pages and pages of observations and feelings that were quite personal. It was my way, I guess, of processing the flood of experiences each day held. I really thought I was writing profoundly important things. But years later, after having stopped the diary, from time to time I'd go back and read my entries. They were for the most part self indulgent and shallow, jejune. I marveled at the things that at the time seemed so important but in reality they just sounded silly. They were not thoughts that stood the test of time. I was not Jack London. I never felt comfortable with the idea of letting anyone else read my diary. So to make sure that didn't happen I would hide my diary. I'd move it from time to time to a new hiding place. I got so good at hiding it that today I have no idea where it is. But it will turn up someday in an obscure file for some esoteric piece of marine hardware that hasn't been produced for years. Maybe the trick is not to try to be profound. I once had a debate with a good friend. He preferred the MOODY BLUES to PROCOL HARUM. I preferred PROCOL HARUM. My preference for PROCOL HARUM was based on the idea the PH didn't try to be profound while the MOODY BLUES worked too hard at being profound. I'm still right. I went to bed last night feeling a bit defeated by the whole blogging process.

But I walked the dogs this morning and that usually clears my head and I actually had a thought.

I frequent the Sailing Anarchy website where I hang out at Cruising Anarchy. We were a loose bunch of know it alls who began pissing and moaning about the things lacking in modern production boats. This went on for numerous pages and then I had the idea that perhaps we should try and formalize our thoughts and produce some drawings that would represent our idea of the "perfect boat". A dumb thought but a thought and one that my fellow CA'ers seemed to think would be fun. I would produce the drawings. Soon it was apparent that we had a pretty talented group of people all willing to pitch in with design ideas and solutions. This was the beginnings of what we call now the World's Largest Yacht Design Office (see my blog entry on WLYDO). For me personally this became important. From a group of people who really did not know each other at all a circle of friendship evolved. I have had several of the members stay in my home and in my darkest hours the WLYDO was there to bolster me. And we had a hell of a good time arguing and exploring design features to what would become the CA 36.

It didn't take long for us to figure out that we were not in total agreement on exactly what the "perfect boat" was. So I drew some hull lines. We  agreed that we wanted a pretty boat with some overhangs, not much though, and a nice spring to the sheer. The draft would be modest but not shallow and the boat would have a spade rudder. We did not want a slow boat. We did not want a fat transom. We wanted a pretty transom. I gave the boat a spoon bow but I added that slight knuckle just above the DWL to help stretch out the sailing length without going to a near plumb stem. OK, it's a compromise to aesthetics. You can see in the pilot house sail plan drawing that the stem was later modified and we gained DWL and got rid of the spoon shape. It's not a light boat at a D/L of 242 but we k new we wanted volume for tankage and stowage. The displacement would also come in handy when we started laying out the interior. We also realized that some in the group wanted a raised house type design and some wanted a low cabin trunk so we did both.
 

I thought my layout drawings were pretty good but soon someone was posting revisions of my layout drawings. This kind of pissed me off at first. Then I studied the new drawings and realized they showed good ideas and a good understanding of design. On top of that they were very nicely presented. These were done by my now pal Tim O'Connell aka Wun Hung Lo, I just call him the Hungster. Our final layout reflects Tim's revisions. It's not a fancy or novel layout. It's very normal and orthogonal. But it works and nothing is really crammed in.

So enjoy these drawings. They were fun to produce and they resulted in some good friendships and a lot of ideas tossed around. But no, unfortunately you can't run out and buy a CA 36. The object was just an exercise in exploring design ideas and looking for the elusive perfect boat.

These beautiful renderings are by my pal Rick Beddoe who cut his yacht rendering teeth on the CA 36 project.

There is probably no greater compliment a yacht designer can receive than being asked to design a new yacht for a friend.


When I was a kid I loved to walk the docks down at the Shilshole Bay Marina. This was back in the day before they began putting locks on the gates. I would take a sketch pad with me and stop and sketch various design details that appealed to me. I think I was 15 years old at the time, before I had a driver's license but I'd get from Mercer Island to Ballard mostly on foot. It was a good walk. I was strolling the docks one day and I came to a boat that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was long, skinny, pale green and had an amazing canoe stern. Everything about this boat was different from the other boats I had seen. Even the cabin trunk with it's raised pilot house was different. Te name on the stern was OCEANUS. I would later learn that this was Bill Garden's own boat. In time I would race on OCEANUS but then I just stood and stared. I'm not positive but it may have been that encounter with OCEANUS that started my love affair with double enders. My life at the time revolved around two things, not counting girls, yacht design and guitar playing. I was convinced I wanted to be a yacht designer. My high school geometry teacher, Don Miller, a very patient man, encouraged me to call Bill Garden. I did and arranged for a Saturday meeting at his office. Bill was gracious and generous with his time and sent me home with a big roll of prints he was probably sending of to the dumpster until I expressed an interest in them. But if I have to think of one boat that has stood out in my mind as the ultimate expression of the yacht design art I think it would be OCEANUS. Bill is gone to that big design office in the sky now and OCEANUS was broken up for scrap a bout two years ago. But long, skinny canoe sterned boats still appeal to me.

About a year ago I got a call from Kim. I have known Kim for years and raced and worked with his son on ATALANTA when Derek was the skipper. Kim and I share a love of the history of yacht design and we also share similar tastes in yachts. Kim had owned a K. Aage Nielsen sloop of uncommon beauty and his current boat is a 30 square meter class sloop. Kim thought it would be a good idea to get together and discuss a new boat, maybe a long, skinny double ender and I am certain OCEANUS was mentioned. Kim came up and we started chatting. The new boat would be about 60' long and would be designed as a daysailer. I pulled pout some  tracing paper, I call it "flimsy" and I started sketching with Kim at my side. In very few minutes we had a profile that Kim and I liked but it was a rough start. My idea was a boat with some overhangs, not as much as OCEANUS had but enough to provide some fun in the shaping of the ends. I had this idea that I would use bow sections very similar to those on the Laurie Davidson America's Cup boat BLACK MAGIC. I would use that shape to help push volume into the bow in increase the prismatic coefficient and get a bow that did more than just hang out over the water. Overhangs can't just float out there. They have to be immersed at some heel angle if they are going to do any "work". Kim liked the idea. I drew a few preliminary sets of lines. Kim then sent me a copy of a Herreshoff profile of a long double ender and said, "How about this look?" The overhangs were gone. The Herreshoff boat was all waterline. I told Kim, "I can do that." I like waterline. From there things progressed rapidly. Kim and I were almost always on the same page and having a large bank of common reference design made communication easy. I think, according to my revision notes, that I drew eight preliminary hull shapes before Kim and I both agreed that we were "there". I would later make a change by adding more deadrise after Kim decided to build the hull in strip plank construction. I needed more volume below the sole for floor structure depth. The keel is a steel weldment that will double as a fuel tank with a lead bulb. The rudder is actually a rudder I did for another boat. That owner asked for a new rudder design because he did not like the first rudder. I designed him a new rudder and in the end the problem was bearings not rudder design. So we had this almost brand new carbon rudder sitting at the boatyard in California waiting for a new owner. It is perfect for Kim's boat.

There is really nothing special about the hull lines. With less than 18,000 lbs. displacement to work with and 62' of LOA I just pushed volume into the ends to get the Cp up and I made the turn of the bilge firm aft. There are no hollows in the shape. The sheer is a bit flat but with a narrow boat more spring in the sheer would look odd. I do have to admit that when you enter the boatyard you have to look hard to tell which end is the bow and which is the stern. In the photos of the boat in the hop the stern is closest to the camera. Dan Faulkner, my good pal aka Gatekeeper, has made two very beautiful half models, one for Kim and one for me. For more information on Dan's model making go to

http://www.gatekeeperhalfhulls.blogspot.com/

Kim did not care much about the interior of the boat. It was a daysailer and simplicity was the key. But I couldn't help thinking that if it were my boat I would want some comfort below for cruising. I also had the idea that we could use interior joinery as structural members to give our long, skinny boat some longitudinal stiffness. I drew an ultra simple layout with a rudimentary galley, using Igloo coolers for reefers, comfortable settee berths in the salon, a usable head forward and a big queen sized double berth forward. The front of the settees, counters and lockers forward are all one long longitudinal stiffener. Headroom stops at the forward end of the head. That was essential to preserving the look of the boat.

The real focus of the boat is the cockpit. The SLIVER will be tiller steered with the mainsheet directly forward of the helmsman's position. We will use a rigid vang and we will not have a mainsheet traveler. The cockpit seats are long and the seatbacks are high for comfort. Here is a rendering of the SLIVER done my good pal Rick Beddoe aka Sons aka Sonadora. This is an early rendering and the keel geometry has been changed.

I had a very distinct rig in mind based upon the rig geometry of the 30 Square Meter Class boats. This would be a fractional rig with the hounds at about 72%. I drew it and it looked sexy. I even drew exaggerated bend to the upper portion of the mast, just like the 30 Square Meters have. I loved it. The sailmakers hated it. The spar maker hated it. I could tell that I was in for a right good beating then something happened that changed the entire approach to the rig. Bob Pistay, a Seattle sailmaker, suggested we look at a used carbon Farr 40 rig. I called the Farr office and they very graciously provided me with complete drawings for the Farr 40 rig. They are very nice guys. I copied the Farr 40 rig onto the SLIVER and the fit was near perfect. Of course I lost my silly long "topmast" and my exaggerated bend at the top was eliminated but the rig fit, gave us the sail area we were after and did it at a tremendous cost savings over an entirely new rig. When you look at the sail plan it looks like a tiny rig on a big boat. But the SLIVER is not a big boat. It's a long boat. And, that rig is enough for a SA/D of 22.78. SLIVER at less than 18,000 lbs. has more sail area than a Valiant 40 at, let's be honest, 27,000 lbs.. If you like those ratios the D/L for the SLIVER is 49 and that is very low.

Choosing a builder is always very serious business. Kim and I discussed various ways the boat could be built. Kim liked the idea of a wooden boat. I liked the idea of a composite boat. After discussing the project with several builders Kim settled on building the boat at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Hadlock Washington., not too far from where Kim lives. Kim and I both got our construction preferences. The hull would be strip planked with cedar and the deck would be composite and come out of a one off female mold. The hull will be sheathed in Vectorply E-TLX 2400-10 triaxial cloth. Kim really liked the idea that the boat was going to be built locally with local help. For the engineering of the new boat we went to Tim Nolan and Jim Franken. They have an office in Port Townsend 15 minutes away from the boatyard. I had not worked with Tim or Jim before but I had been very aware of their work, usually in large powerboats. Tim does the engineering and Jim does all the amazing 3d modeling work we have used for all the stages of construction including the design of the rollover jig with CNC cutting by Brandon Davis of Port Townsend. The project is benefiting from a highly skilled team of local craftsmen. The stem and stern post were CNC cut and added after the planking was completed. The female deck mold is complete ( you can just see it behind the hull) and the deck will soon be laminated.
Not sure what else there is to say about the SLIVER project. So far it has been a lot of fun. Kim visits the shop frequently and I go over once and a while just to admire the work. I have a picture in my mind of the SLIVER sliding along effortlessly and silently in the light PNW breeze. I think it will make a gentle hissing sound. Kim will be at the tiller with a very contented look on his face. I'll be on the beach silently telling myself, "You did good Bob. You didn't turn out just like Uncle Mick."

When I tell these "histories" of my projects I am working mostly from memory. So from time to time I may get some facts and dates wrong but I will do my best to convey accurately the character of the project and the personalities of those involved.

Obviously I am still struggling with the image management part of the blogging process. Some of these old hand drawing make huge files when digitized.





The Lafitte project began in mid 1976. I was just 30 years old but my yacht design business was going great guns and I was feeling pretty good about myself and my output of new designs. We had projects lined up. Valiant was quickly making a name for itself with the Valiant 40. Islander was producing the Islander 28 in impressive numbers and I had just started on the Islander 32. Ta Chaio was building the CT 54. Ta Yang was building the Tayana 37. Also in Taiwan the Perry 47 was underway and I was becoming increasingly aware of other boats building in Taiwan that were, to use the colloquial, "rip-offs" of my work. One builder simply took my drawings for the CT 54, put their logo on my sail plan and produced a brochure for their new 54'er. This caused awkward moment in my normally smooth relationship with Ta Chaio. But it passed when I told them I had absolutely nothing to do with that project and I had not sold them the same design. " Intellectual property rights" was a novel concept in Taiwan. Settling down in my business class seat for the flight home one time I noticed that almost every man in the section was wearing a gold "Rolex". I quickly took mine off. You could buy a "Rolex" ( "Fauxlex") in Taiwan for $35 in those days. It was clear that the real action for a young designer trying to get established was in Taiwan. But established designers were afraid of Taiwan quality. I wasn't. I needed the work and I could see the potential in the Taiwan yards. The very first boat of my design that I sailed was a CT54. It was my first grp design.

One of the Taiwan rip-off projects was the Polaris 43. I had been contacted by a fellow, Al Liggett, from Guam. He said he wanted to build a one-off boat in Guam and had in mind a flush deck version of a hull like the Valiant 40. I charged him a really stupid low fee and drew up a design that was essentially a modified Valiant 40, with 12" more freeboard so we could do a flush deck forward. I explained to the client that he could only build one of these boats. It was far too close to my Valiant design to let him build the 43 in series. My contract with Valiant prevented me from designing any other fin keel, canoe stern boats for anyone but Valiant. He said that was no problem. He would build one boat in Airex core construction on the island of Guam. Later he called and announced that he was going to build a mold in Taiwan and produce the 43 is series. I objected and once again explained to him why he could not use my design for this project. But this did not stop him, he was an attorney and production of the Polaris 43 began. It was not a well built boat but it did sail well and Liggett's own boat SUNFLOWER is featured in one of Steve Dashew's books as a well designed offshore cruising boat. That was salt in my wound. I was not being paid any royalties for the Polaris 43's. But the 43 project was at best only limping along so I felt vindicated.

I was in Newport Beach, California, doing business with Islander when I got a phone call at my hotel. The caller said they were in a position to acquire the molds for the Polaris 43 and wanted a meeting with me to see if we could work on the project to resurrect it. I told them that I had no interest whatsoever in being any part of the Polaris 43 project on any terms and further more I would do what I could to undermine their efforts to market my stolen design. The caller asked if I had any ideas on how his "group" could work with me on a boat building project in Taiwan. I explained that I would be happy to meet with them and go through the design steps required for them to have their own, new design that we could build in series. The caller suggested a meeting immediately as his group was all in Newport Beach. I was not convinced this was a real lead. Something smelled a bit fishy so I told them I was too busy to meet with them unless they wanted to meet me at the airport prior to my flying back to Seattle. Fine he said.

As I waited in the tiny terminal of the old Orange County airport a young guy came up to me, introduced himself as Skip and directed me towards another guy who stood with his back to me. It was all very mysterious. As I recall it I keep thinking this guy was wearing a trench coat with the collar turned up. But it was Orange County and there was probably not a trench coat in town. But in my memory he was wearing a trench coat. The other fellow was Rick Lewis. It was an awkward meeting because I thought they were still on the edge of taking over the Polaris project and I was defensive and a bit combative in that meeting. But it became evident that they were serious about working with me when Rick suggested that they fly me back down for a day's meeting with them to see how we could get a new project started. I loved the Newport Beach area. I loved shopping at Fashion Island. I was a bit of a dandy. I liked cruising my rental car down PCH. I loved visiting Islander and seeing my boats lined up in their shop. I said I'd be happy to come back down.

A short time later I cam back to Orange County where I was met by what would become the Lafitte group, Mike Lewis, his brother Rick Lewis, Skip Reilly, Pauly Roesti and, Gene LaForce. The one missing member of the group was George Olivit and I would meet him later. George was the one holding out for a totally new design. Gene was a bit older than the other guys. George would turn out to be a bit younger. The rest of them were all close to my age, 30. We had a productive meeting and they were most anxious to get the project started. They said over and over that they wanted to build a "high quality boat in Taiwan". I'd heard that before and I was dubious but I liked the guys and like 30 year olds in 1976 we had some fun with our meeting and it appeared to be a good fit so I went along with their idea. They were very serious. They did want a double ender, a 44', fin keel, double ender. This posed a problem for me as it meant I would have to come up with a hull shape that got around my contract with Valiant. The new 44 could not have my signature tumblehome canoe stern. I'd come up with something.




These old drawings are very hard/light pencil and ink on Mylar. They do not digitize well so I apologize for how feint this lines drawing is. But if you click on it maybe you can see it more clearly
The Lafitte 44 has a stern unlike any other I have designed. I consider it to be a true double ender but not a canoe sterned boat. There is a subtle difference and I was hoping for that difference to keep the Valiant people happy. The Lafitte is heavy by today's standards and had arc-like sections through the middle of the boat. Note the slight hollow to the stem profile. This is reflected in some hollow in the bow sections. When I first walked into the yard building the Lafitte, a subsidiary of Chung Hwa, I looked at the astern on the plug and I thought, "Hmmmmm, it didn't look quite like that on the half model." Seeing both sides of the boat together for the very first time I was struck with the roundness of the upper waterlines through the stern. The Lafitte represented the most complete set of plans my office had ever done. Why? Because we knew they would make sure the boat was built exactly as drawn. We used outside lead ballast which was expensive in Taiwan.  George did a masterful job in laying out all the systems for the boat. Having been a "marine domestic" he had a real sense of laying out gear so you could actually get to it and have room to work on it.We specified each and every joinerwork detail on the boat. Lafitte would use only the best components and no expense was spared to make the boat top quality.

That was my very first trip to Taiwan. The Lafitte guys wanted me to check the plug. In those days boats were hand lofted from small scale, in this case .75" to the foot, lines drawings and so there was room for error. It was always good for the designer to go over the lofting. So off I went, First Class on a Pan Am flight stopping in Hawaii, where George Olivit would get on the plane and from there proceed to Tokyo and on to Taipei. I had still not met George so when I re-boarded the plane after a short stop in Hawaii and looked across the aisle the guy in the adjacent seat said, "Are you Bob?" I said yes. George looked young, the typical SoCal surfer type with blond hair and a "who gives a shit" attitude. I think George was the person to ever call me "Dude". That was what you saw on the surface with George. George turned out to be one of the very best boat builders I had ever worked with. George could do any job in the boat yard from laminate layup to electrical wiring and layout. George could grab a piece of teak, walk over to the band saw and shape exactly what he wanted while the workers watched. On top of that George had worked previously in Taiwan, was familiar with the culture and had a respect for things Taiwanese that quickly won over the boatyard workers. At the yard he was "Georgy". He was perfect for the job.

The Lafitte group did everything first class. At our business luncheons we drank bottles of Chateau Lafitte 1966.  No amount of money was going to be spared to insure that we produce a quality boat and have a damn good time doing it. So I sat back and enjoyed the comfort that my long legs needed on that flight. We arrived at the small, old downtown Taipei airport and it was jammed with people. There was no way in hell I was going to be able to get to the baggage carousel to get my bags. George just said, "Watch me." He then proceeded to push and shove his way through the crowd until he emerged with his bags. "That's the way you have to do it here." From the airport it was off to our suites at the Grand Hotel owned by Madam Chang Kai-Shek.  And I assure you, this hotel was grand in a very classical Chinese architectural way. It was huge and my suite was huge. I remember calling my wife and telling her I'm not sure what room to sit in by myself. I had an expansive balcony looking out over the jungle that surrounded the hotel. The hot and humid air was full of loud insect and bird sounds and  smells that were all new to me. "You are not in Ballard anymore Bob". The Lafitte yard was in Kaohsiung at the other end of Taiwan but we would spend a few days in Taipei so I could visit Ta Chaio and the Universal yard where the Perry 47 was being built. I had a great time taking the taxi around Taipei and eating exotic meals. I loved it. But the third morning I woke up with a major disturbance in my stomach. I barely made it from my bed to the bathroom. Whatever I had eaten wanted out and it wanted out NOW! I quickly found out why they put a phone right next to the toilet. I was prepared to conduct my business from there all day if I had to. I was certainly not leaving the bathroom. But things calmed down after what I remember as about two hours and I thought I'd go down to the tiny drug store in the basement of the hotel. I'd go look for something that would cure my stomach ills. The drug store was dark, about 10' square and stocked floor to ceiling with medicines, mostly Chinese, in no particular order. There was a little Taiwanese lady working there. I pointed to my stomach and said "This not good."  I spoke no Mandarin at that time. She nodded knowingly and said, "You need Ex-Rax!" NO! Not Ex-Lax! Just then an American woman came in and realized what was going on. She said, "You need Pepto Bismal." I was soon cured and that was the only time I ever got sick in Taiwan. I may have been showering with my mouth open. I don't know. I was always a pretty adventurous eater in Taiwan but I did not drink the water and I avoided the food carts on the streets that served from bowls washed between customers in a bucket of grey water. I just ate smart. In time I found a small hotel in Taipei, the Santos Hotel, San Der in Mandarin. It was more to my liking than the huge Grand Hotel and the staff at the San Der was always very willing to help me with my efforts to learn the language.





I would hook up with George every time I went back to Taiwan. George ended up living there for quite a while during the build of the first 44's and then again when we did the Lafitte 66. George had no trouble learning the rudiments of the language and may have been the reason that I took on that challenge too. Sadly and for reasons I'm still not sure of George and some of the other Lafitte guys eventually went to jail. It involved a "conspiracy" conviction and I'm pretty sure it involved pot. George went to prison in Arizona where he sowed thumbs on leather gloves for 6 months at the same time he was managing the Lafitte projects. Gene and Rick both died some time later. Not sure why Gene died but Rick had a very bad car crash that he pretty much never recovered from. Mike Lewis, who was the actual President of Lafitte, and I have stayed in touch and visited each other several times.


The Lafitte 44 layout was unusual in that there were two companionways. One lead down into the owner's cabin aft and one lead down forward into the galley area. To go forward from the owner's cabin you walked through the aft head. But I designed this area so that with the doors in the open position they closed off the w.c. and the basin so you did not know you were in a head. It was just a passageway. And the quality that George got out of the yard was amazing. It was the talk of the industry when the boat first came out. It was good enough that Ted Hood's Little Harbor Yacht Sales became the dealer. When the Lafitte 66 was introduced at the Annapolis Show Ted Hood came aboard and spent an hour on the boat. When he came out into the cockpit I said, "How did you like it?" Ted is very taciturn to say the least but he looked at me and said, "I think it's as good as a Huismann. I said, "A lot of people think Huismann is as good as it gets." Ted said, "That's right." And that was that. I felt like I had received the Papal blessing,. Within months Ted was setting up his own Little Harbor yard in Taiwan. You see, Taiwan could produce a quality boat. I don't have any drawings of the Lafitte 66 digitized but I'll get some and edit the blog to include them. Only one 66 was built and it was bought by Bob Mosbacher, brother of the famous 12 meter sailor Buzz Mosbacher. This was a feather in our caps and Mr. Mosbacher was very happy with how the 66 sailed. One of the really stupid things I did preparing for my first trip to Taiwan was to buy a camera. I knew almost nothing about cameras so I thought I'd be fancy and get a Polaroid, i.e. instant gratification. The result of that is today I really have no  decent photos of those early trips.




I loved working in Taiwan. I wasn't too keen on the humidity and the heat but it was just part of the exotic atmosphere. Taiwan beer is very good and I drank a lot of beer. I loved the food. I spent as much time as I could hanging out at the various boat yards and I particularly enjoyed working on the deck plug with the workers who almost never spoke English. One Sunday I went to see the deck plug of the Lafitte 66 with George. We were met at the yard by the owner of the yard and the foreman. George and I after studying the plug decided we would make the opening gate into the raised cockpit 2" wider. I picked up a piece of chalk and in my very best Chinese characters wrote on the plywood plug "plus 2 inches". The foreman looked at my writing and looked at the yard owner and said, "I think he is God." I have seldom felt so proud. "Gate" happened to be one of the very few Chinese characters I knew and I got a chance to use it. I look back on the Lafitte days very fondly. We were young guys doing what young guys like to do and while we were doing it we built a great boat.

One Lafitte 44 owner was an English gent, Mike Hardy, who was the Director of Operations for Cathay Pacific Airlines. He would come to Seattle to be wined and dined by Boeing. Part of his regular "entertainment request" was dinner with Bob Perry. So off Jill and I would go to the swankiest restaurant in Seattle to drink the swankiest PNW wines and eat the swankiest PNW foods while I had to sit there and listen to this sailor rave about his Lafitte. I loved it. The photo of the Lafitte beating up the coast of Scotland under full main and staysail is Mike's boat.

The Lafittes are getting a little old now and most need a good amount of upkeep. But they are very strong boats. When Lafitte wanted to do an Airex cored version they simply split the single skin laminate and added the Airex in the middle. Now that is strong. And expensive. Lafitte was eventually bought by Bernie Wahl in Buffalo NY. Bernie owned the company in its last days and he was a good owner and a nice guy. He was about as different as the young guys who started the company as you can imagine. But he got along well with them. George went on to marry a lady from Singapore and become a yard manager in Malaysia at a yard that serviced mega yachts. The last I spoke to George he was sailing around the world with his family in a 45' ketch. Pauly became a commercial pilot. Skip was an attorney and I lost track of him. He left the Lafitte project in the early days. Mike Lewis left Lafitte, did nothing for a while then took a job as a manager of a small northern Californian airport. While there he did some small grp repairs on  private planes and this lead to working on race car bodies. Then he was called in to help with a "secondary containment" problem for a gas station that was having trouble getting their new tanks up to EPA standards. Mike looked the situation over, gave it some thought, called them back and said, "You are doing it all wrong." Mike went on to get numerous patents in the field of gas station secondary containment and related areas and founded a company called Western Fiberglass. He did very well but is pretty much retired from it now. He's a great guy.





P.S.
I just got off the phone with George Olivit. He is now an organic farmer in Maui with two teenage daughters.
Pauly runs a large car dealership in Arizona.
George confirmed that Pacific Far East Industries the company that the Lafitte guys set up was there to give the group "legitimate" incomes while they went about their "import" business. I knew something was going on back then but I was to naive to figure it out and I never felt it was my place to ask directly.

And thanks very much for visiting my blog.

Here is a little sketch I did for 7 year old Orlando Yen in Australia for Christmas.

Here is a sketch that Orlando did for me this Christmas!

I originally posted this on Cruising Anarchy but then I thought it might be fun to put it on my blog. We had been discussing small houses and I had this design sitting around for the past five years. It combines my own life style with my ability to work with small spaces. Hope you like it.

My house

560 sq. ft. not counting the upstairs office.

 

My house was designed at a time when I was reacting to sciatic pain and the stress of building what to me was a huge and overly complex new house, the Taj Ma Jill. I used the exercise of mentally designing the house in my mind, in acad of the mind, to help me get to sleep at night. Later I decided to actually draw it up to see if my mental files were accurate. With minor adjustments they were fine. The house has an upstairs office area but I'm not going to show that. It's just an office. Keep in mind that this house is designed just for me, one person. I expect company on occasion but I have made no concessions to extra people in the house. The house is exceedingly simple yet very complex in its ergonomics. I have tried to make it economical to build.

My house is situated on a gently sloping, long grass and mountain weed covered hillside that eventually runs into the woods below. I can see the Cascade Mountain range in the not too far distance. It is sunny and about 72 degrees, it's around 4:40pm and the dogs are off chasing things. The cat is off killing things. I am puttering.

I have a pretty big veranda with two long benches for relaxing and napping. There is a chair without arms that is well suited for playing the guitar. There is a rustic coffee table for important stuff, like my pipe and my tea. I picture me and my cronies sitting on the veranda playing and singing good old tunes, and passing the Jack Daniels well into the balmy PNW night. I'll sit and smoke my pipe on the veranda. I won't allow myself to smoke in the house. The dogs will love napping on the veranda. It will have that satisfying , almost hollow sound when you walk on it .

The front door is centered and stepping into the house you have a bench seat to port so you can sit and remove your shoes. I absolutely HATE shoes on in the house. The shoes can tuck under the seat. Mini partial height walls divide the entry area off from the living areas.

To port there is the dinette and galley. The dinette has a nice view of the field in front and also a good view of the TV mounted on the opposite wall. There is stowage under the bench seat. The galley stretches along that port wall terminating in a large refer/freezer. Beyond that is my clothes washer and dryer stack. Across from that stack is a pantry/linen lkr. combo locker. The galley is laid out so I can work left to right starting with a leg of the counter to collect my ingredients, moving to the sink for washing then onto the cutting board for the chopping then onto the range. There is space each side of the range for hot pots. There is no dish washer. It would be very easy to work one into that leg of the counter if I took the angle out of it. But hell, I'm living by myself and I can wash up what few things get dirty.

Spiral stairs take you up to the office.

The living room is designed so that I can sit and watch TV with the sound muted while I listen to beautiful music coming from the Epos 12 bookshelf speakers flanking the fire place and the sub woofer in the corner. The hi-fi gear and turntable are all visible in the cabinet on the aft wall. A magazine bin sits next to one chair with my guitar du jour next to the hi-fi cabinet.  I'll stow the rest of my guitars up in the office. There is LP stowage below the TV and bookshelves above the TV. There are more bookshelves/ lp stowage on the other side of the fireplace. There is an end table next to one chair for me to put my tea cup on or my pipe or my magazine or my note pad or my tobacco tin.

Can't say I'm wild about the idea of a spiral staircase. Imagine trying to carry a very expensive guitar down that without knocking it. I added the office when I was done with the downstairs. It was an after thought. The spiral staircase is the only way I can figure out how to get upstairs without going to an external staircase. It rains too much here for that. Maybe I can find space for a dumb waiter just to transport guitars up and down. No, that would be to expensive. I am trying to dream with a budget. My pal Paps in Oz is working on some stair ideas for me. He's a master staircase builder.

The chair closest to the front door can be moved to be centered on the two speakers flanking the Norwegian JOTUL fire place. These speakers are on 8' centers and when I am listening carefully I want my chair centered in the "sweet spot" of the room for the best stereo imaging. I think that settee could be a pull out bed type so I have an extra bed for company.

I guess I'm going to have to give up my vast collection of cd's and go to a half-vast digital storage/Ipod type system. They make some very sophisticated and expensive units. I like new hi-fi gear. Now I have a whole wall full of cd's and I like to browse thru the cd's. I sure would keep my LP collection though. I'm an analog kind of guy.

The double berth is high to gain stowage space below it. Note that the wall separating the sleeping area from the living area is only half high so that I can lie in bed and look over that wall and see the fireplace. I can also see the TV from the bed. But I've never had a TV in the bedroom so I'm not sure I'd watch TV from the bed. I do like to read in bed.

The head and shower area is enclosed, snug and adequate. There is a relatively large hanging locker with shelves next to the head area.

I want good stowage for outside things like lawn mowers, tools and all those things you don't take in the house. I don't need a work bench as I am hopeless with tools. I just need a space for some basic tools. There is also a wood bin out there near the back door. During the retirement in my mind I plan on burning a lot of wood cut from trees on my own lot out behind the house. I'll keep my charcoal Weber out in the breezeway. My Laser on a trailer can slide right in there for the winter. The lake is 5 miles away.

The house has plenty of compromises. I will have to compact my life before moving in. The office will be smaller than what I have now but that's OK. It would be nice to have more living space but then the cost goes up and so does the clutter.

 

I don't have any drawings for the outside. I picture kind of a rustic, country/western look with a red tin roof. Maybe a log cabin or Panabode type of construction. Simple strong lines and big overhangs on the eaves so there is more tin roof for the rain to bounce off and create that nice ambient sound track.

If I was by myself then this is where I would want to live.

 

 

I thought what I would do from time to time is to go back though my designs and pick a few that I found to be the more interesting projects and go into detail on exactly how that project worked. I know some of the boats I pick will also be in my book YACHT DESIGN ACCORDING TO PERRY but I had layers of editors when I wrote the book. I don't have an editor for my blog. I suppose you figured that out already.So in the blog I am going to tell the stories behind the boats in a little more personal way. I promise to run them by the dogs and the cat. But if they object they can just HTFU.

Big John Carson worked at the brokerage next door to my old Ballard office. One day he walked over and asked me if I would be interested in talking to a friend of his about a custom boat. Of course I was interested. Business was a bit slow and I was ready for something new. A few days later John came over with Daryl Dalhgard, a Seattle dentist. Daryl was looking for "the ultimate offshore boat" and he had some concrete ideas on what that boat should be. We talked for over and hour, Daryl left a retainer and I got to work. Just like that. Together Daryl and I with the help of a great building team produced YONI ( Sanskrit for "abode") a marvelous example of one man's long range sailing vision.

Daryl really liked the hulls produced by Ted Hood's design office. At the time those hulls were the design work of Dieter Empacher. YONI would have a Hood like hull form. The boat would be 47' LOA and have a cutter rig. I dug in and in a few months had completed a nice 47'er for Daryl. Daryl took Wednesdays off and would spend many Wednesdays sitting next to me at the drawing board while we pondered design options. So when the Wednesday came that I told Daryl the design was finished I was surprised when Daryl said to me, "OK. Let's  start over again. If I built this 47'er I'd feel like a guy who married the first girl he dated. Now I want a 50'er that weighs 50,000 lbs and has 20,000 lbs. of ballast". I was not used to being told how much ballast to put into my designs by the client but I knew enough to know that I could get 20,000 lbs. of lead into a 50'er weighing 50,000 lbs.. So I rolled up the drawings for the 47'er and went to work on a 50'er.

It just happened that 500' from the office there was a Little Harbor around 50' LOA hauled out at Seaview boatyard. Daryl showed up one day with a hand full of carpentry tools and informed me that we were going to go down and measure the deadrise angles on the Hood hull. Fine, that sounds like fun. So with that data and a good long look at the Hood hull I began the hull shape for YONI. One of Daryl's primary goals for the new boat was that it have a Limit of Positive Stability of at least 135 degrees. That can be a challenge for some cruising boats but knowing that was our target from day one I told Daryl that I could do that. I began drawing lines. I drew numerous versions of this hull and Daryl would take the drawings home and come back with a change. Slowly we came to agreement on the final hull but this was only after Daryl hada series of full hull models CNC cut out of high density foam so he could really see the lines. Sitting there looking at the final three hull models I said to Daryl, "Hell, I can't even tell the difference between these hulls. How is the water going to tell the difference?" We decided on a final set of lines that day.


You can click on each of the drawings if you want to see them larger.

 

Many thanks to Ryan at SWIFTSURE YACHTS for getting me these photos.

Daryl's ideas on layouts were pretty much fixed after we had done the "dry run" exersize with the initial 47'er. The new 50'er would have a raised pilot house with a comfortable inside steering station with nav table and a raised dinette. The big galley would be down, forward. Daryl wanted a mini-dinette adjacent to the galley. I questioned this feature several times but Daryl wanted it so we got it. This is where you would eat if you were at the dock and wanted some privacy, away from the big windows of the pilot house. There is a washer and drying forward of the mini-dinette. There would be a guest stateroom forward off to port and a large head with a shower stall off to starboard. Wanting a true long range cruising boat Daryl wanted and got a huge focsle.

The owner's stateroom would aft, tucked under a long bridgedeck. I questioned the lack of an aft head but Daryl said that he thought walking 30' to the head at night was not a hardship, "I walk father than that at home." But for emergencies Daryl had me put in a large basin in the bureau. Just in case. The aft double berth was designed to be athwartships as Daryl, and a lot of other sailors I know, think this is the ultimate sea berth. This aft berth is a standard queen sized berth. The layout turned out very well. Of course it didn't hurt to have Bent and Eric Jespersen's crew up in Sidney, BC doing the finish work. Eric's crew is as good as they come and Daryl in short time was just as much in love with the building process as he was with the design process. Daryl was one of those clients who enjoyed the entire process. There are numerous detail touches to the interior that are the work of the Jespersen crew. I'll gladly take credit for all of them but in truth those guys made me look really good. I provided 1" to the foot, hand drawn, interior drawings so almost every space was very well defined prior to build commencing. Daryl and I went over each locker and drawer. If I could have changed anything in the layout I would have eliminated the mini-dinette and moved the head back into that space allowing more room for the forward stateroom. But as my first client informed me in a snotty letter one day, "It's not your boat Bob". Oh yeah, I forgot that.

Daryl wanted an aluminum boat from day one. We looked at steel construction and even visited a yard expert in steel construction but in the end we chose aluminum as it gave us the most options in terms of builders. Luck would have it that while visiting Jespersens Daryl met Brian Reilly, a Kiwi and an craftsman in alu construction. Brian was the best. He was truly an artist with aluminum. He was smart. He was fast and he had an amazing way of visualizing the sequence that you needed to eliminate any building surprises. I chose fairly heavy alu scantlings with 1/4" plating for the topsides through the turn of the bilge then 3/8" for the sides of the keel fin and 1" plate at the bottom of the fin. This would be a very rugged vessel. I like working in aluminum. It allows the designer to tie all the structural elements together easily and weights are far easier to predict than grp construction. The 20,000 lbs. of lead ballast would be internal. I am happy to say that YONI weighed exactly what I predicted and floated with grace and panache exactly on it's lines. Yahoo! Daryl would have had my ass if it didn't. That big Perkins diesel nestled in the bilge was so quiet that you would have to listen for the splash of the cooling water to know the engine had started.

 

Daryl wanted a cutter, a true cutter. Daryl even knew exactly where he wanted the mast. We did not agree on this mast location but as usual I lost the argument and I ended up wit the mast where Daryl wanted it a bit further aft than I would have chosen. But due to the layout of the boat's weights I was able to move the keel aft to insure that the boat be well balanced. I hate too much weather helm. I have this theory that while you can always adjust sail trim to alleviate lee helm with some boats there is just nothing you can do about weather helm short of major surgery. I like to start with a near neutral helm. You can always find some weather helm if it's lacking. YONI was the first boat I did with a Leisure Furl mainsail. The main rolls up inside the boom. I hear a lot of people being critical of the Leisure Furl system but I really like it. It gives you infinite reefing options, you get a reasonable cruising roach and you get about 65% of the normal draft of a non boom furling sail. When YONI was a pup my wife and I went for a sail with Daryl. When time came to drop the main we adjusted the boom angle and proceeded with the douse. It was quickly apparent that our boom angle was incorrect as the main was piling up at the tack. We raised the main again and began to drop it again, this  time successfully. My wife said, "I like this."

The headsails were arranged so that a light air and reaching genoa was carried on a furler forward with a working genoa just aft of that also on a furler. The staysail would also live on a furler. It's a convenient setup as it gives you a wide variety of options. The bad news is the windage you get carrying three headsails permanently on rollers. This can make docking in a breeze a bit of a challenge.YONI sailed very well. It was very stiff and it tracked like a train. It had a very gentle and w3ell balanced helm and moved well in light air. I never had the opportunity to sail YONI in a breeze but from the reports I received it was good ride when the wind picked up. John Guzzwell, a pal of Daryl's, helped Daryl bring the boat down to its slip in Seattle and they picked a very stormy weekend for that trip. The only complaint John had was with the windage around the dock.

I really like this deck layout. The big cockpit is in a T shape with the top of the T forward. The wheel is mounted on the bridgedeck and flanked by three big winches each side. The mainsheet trav is directly ahead of the wheel. The cockpit well itself is small but there is an extended deck area aft of the well big enough to throw some cushions for sleeping comfortably on deck. There is a big, flush hatch into the lazaretto in the aft deck. Propane lockers are port and starboard forward with room for four gas bottles, There is a deep swim step aft with a fold down ladder than extends deep enough into the water so you can easily climb out wearing scuba gear. The cockpit coamings are high with a series of bins in each coaming. There is a 5" tall bulwark running full length of the boat. Daryl did not want a teak cap rail so he paid to have a custom extrusion made in exactly the shape of a teak cap. Note that the stern pulpit extends forward to the aft end of the pilot house. The deck is festooned with hatches and Dorade style vents to insure good light and air below. There are also a series of opening ports in the hull topsides. There is a solid boom gallows across the pilot house top. This comes in handy as a reference to judge the boom angle when furling the main. There is a sturdy arch across the stern that is home to the davit system for the dink. The companionway drop boards are a one piece, counter weighted arrangement that lets the single drop board drop into a drained aluminum pocket under the deck. This detail was masterfully handled by the Jespersen crew.

I'm waiting to see if Daryl has any photos of the boat that he can email me. With a dark blue hull YONI was very beautiful. I would have preferred a contrasting white strip under the red bootstripe but that's another argument I lost. When the boat was being launched I stood there with Bent Jespersen and Bent said, "It should have had a white stripe between the boot and the bottom paint." "I know." If I get photos from Daryl I'll amend the blog to include them.

Daryl and I became fast friends. Daryl was passionate about his pastimes, his toys, whether it be his garden, wine, music, cars or hi-fi gear. When Daryl got into something he really got into it. I figured for all his fastidiousness with the design I could probably trust him with my teeth so he became my dentist. I trusted him. Daryl had an unusual way of making you comfortable in the dental chair. He'd put headphones on you and play nothing but down home, authentic blues. Daryl was into the blues. So I got the blues when I went to the dentist. Daryl loves live music and had a lot of contacts in Seattle with people in the music industry. This meant most excellent seats for just about any artist that came to town. Daryl took me to see DIRE STRAIGHTS, BOB DYLAN, BB KING and one of his all time favorites the California blues guy Doug McCloud. Daryl bought a boat to keep in his slip while they were building  YONI in order to maintain his slip at Shilshole Marina. When YONI was finished I bought that boat from Daryl and I own it still. Daryl moved up north so now he's about 45 minutes away from my house and a frequent dinner guest.

So you ask, "What happened to YONI?"
Daryl found YONI  a bit much for one person to handle. He was just not using the boat like he thought he would so he put it up for sale. It was bought by a Canadian pilot and enjoyed for a summer or two. Then the new owner became intent on adding a hard dodger. I tried to talk him out of it. His wife tried to talk him out of it. Eric Jespersen kind of tried to talk him out of it but it represented work for Eric's crew. I did my best with the shape and Eric did his best with the construction on the dodger but in the end it was hideous. REALLY hideous. Eye numbing ugly. My poor, beautiful YONI was transformed into,,,I'm not even going to try to find the words. Unfortunately that owner got very sick and the last I heard he was beyond using the boat. He was a nice guy even if he wanted an ugly dodger. I don't know where YONI is today and I don't want to see it. I'll just remember it as it was when launched.

YONI was one of the very last boats I drew by hand. The drawings are amazing, pencil and ink on mylar. I really like these drawings. Everything on YONI was detailed. Even my plumbing drawings, made with the help of Daryl's fastidiously prepared sketches, are works of art and I really don;t like doing plumbing schematics. But Daryl was a generous client willing to pay me for my very best work and he loved the creative process. If I was asked to pull out a set of plans to show someone what I could do it would be YONI's drawings I'd pull out. Then I'd stand back with a self satisfied smug look on my face waiting for them to say, "These are amazing drawings." "Yes, I know. The boat wasn't bad either."

My last blog entry on hand drafting received more hits than my best previous blog entry by over 120 hits. I thought I was blogging on an arcane art that was esoteric to say the least and would have very little wide spread interest. It was, to my eye, a pretty self indulgent blog entry. I was really surprised in the interest it attracted. So I have decided to do a Part II and go into a little more detail on the tools that were common place in old design offices. I have enlisted the help of my cronie pool over on Cruising Anarchy for this task. I think for them it was fun to dig out the old gear. Thanks Tad, Jose, Sons, Yves-Marie et al.

When I was a kid, probably 1962, I was reading an article about Ted Jones, the hydroplane designer in Seattle, in SEA Magazine. There was a photo of his drafting table with a hydro design laid out. Along the top of the drawing board were these "things". I thought, "What the hell are those?" I could not identify them at all. I was familiar with drafting tools but these funny shapes with little prongs sticking out of them were new to me. They kind of looked like boat hulls, weird boat hulls, so that wasn't it. They looked a bit like whales but that couldn't be right. What the hell are they? I later learned that they were spline weights. Yacht designers call them "pigs", "whales", "ducks" and spline weights. "Ducks" was probably the most common name for them.

They are usually weigh about 3.5 lbs., made of lead with felt on the bottom with a hooked prong extending out from the end. The prong is designed to fit into the groove in a plastic spline so you can bend the spine to do your bidding and hold it in the desired curve with the ducks. They are tapered in shape so you can better squeeze them together for tight radii. When I was a kid I had a small collection of ship's curves but if I was going to move to the next step of drawing hull lines it was clear that I needed some spline weights. But they were expensive. I worked at a meat market after school so I had some income and I began buying ducks one at a time. It was a bit frustrating. I was feeling like a yacht designer with my small collection of ducks but you need at least ten to really control a long spline. I asked for ducks for Christmas and my folks bought me three more. I eventually bought enough so that they were useful. The plastic splines were relatively cheap and could be bought in various lengths and various stiffnesses. My attraction to ducks continued and having worked so hard to collect them I started buying them up whenever I could find a pile of used ones. I found one group of ducks in a store that sold second hand yacht equipment. I bought two from Boeing Surplus. I even had a few chromed just for fun. I have one duck that belonged to Bill Garden. I have another duck that belonged to Bjarne Aas. When a helper would move on from my office I would trade him a spline weight as a memento.They were important to me. You could not design boats without them and they were a tool almost exclusive to the art/science of yacht design. Today I keep about 6 of them on my drafting table. Paper weights. The rest are in a bucket, lonely and neglected in my garage. With the spline functions of modern computer programs physically bending a spline and fixing it with  carefully placed ducks is a thing of the past. Oh well. One of the problems with ducks was that when I wore a tie to work I would sometimes set a duck in place with my tie clamped under the weight by accident. When I stood up to survey my long curve the tie would pull out, upsetting the duck and tipping it over, leaving a lead divot on the soft mylar. The bad old days.

With all that pencil and ink drawing going on young designers quickly learned that the eraser was an important tool and just as critical as a creative tool as the pencil. I think I must have erased miles of bad sheerlines over the years. You could use the standard Pink Pearl drafting eraser and do it by hand but that got old fast. I used a chordless electric eraser. I named mine "Steely Dan". You'll have to have read NAKED LUNCH to understand that reference. But I thought it appropriate. I went through several electric erasers. I found a certain eraser that was great on ink and others that worked well with pencil. Having the exact right recipe eraser in your machine made a big difference when you spent a good part of the work day erasing.

The other tool that you can't be without when designing yachts, ships or boats is the planimeter. It measured the area of odd shapes like hull sections. When I was a kid I would make a grid of squares on paper, place it over or under my body plan and then count the squares to see how many square feet were in a particular section. It worked fine but it was slow and not very precise. As time went on I knew I had to find a planimeter. I found one in a pawn shop down on Seattle's seedy 1st Avenue. It was $100 and I managed to come up with the money and buy it. It was German made and a marvel of the machinist's craft. You read the area on a vernier scale. It did take some getting used to but I almost got comfortable with it over time. The orange planimeter you see in the photo above is electric and digital. I thought I was hot shit when I got that, high tech. Fact is it worked great and for years I did my best to wear it out.

See that little green disk next to the planimeter. That is a parallel spacer "template". If you want to draw a cap rail of a constant 1.5" thick on a bulwark you stick your pencil into the appropriate hole in the parallel spacer and drag it along the spline. You get a perfect parallel curved line that way.

See that funny elliptical curve just below my pipe? That is a K+E 1007-8 curve. I used to call it the "egg". That little curve is responsible for the shape of the Valiant 40's stern profile. I could not have worked without that curve. I bought them whenever I saw them to be sure I'd never run out. I still have two very well worn examples.

Above the pipe is an erasing shield. You use this tool to protect the areas you do not want to erase. The erasing shield was indispensable. I had several, still do. But my favorite is gone. Damn!

When we started discussing tools over on CRUISING ANARCHY my buddies started dragging out their old planimeters. I don't recall anyone saying, "Oh, I threw mine away." Most said, "I think I can dig that out." And they did.



This last photo shows some of may various ducks that I collected.
The duck on the far right belonged to Bill Garden. The shiny green one said "747" on it when I bought it at Boeing surplus. The tired looking orange one is one of my very first ducks. I think that rounded one second from the left was made by Paul Bieker and left for me after he did his internship in my office. Tall ducks don't work so well as they are too easy to tip over. The black worn out one third down from the right belonged to Jay Benford, my first boss in a yacht design office.

Maybe I feel sorry for the youngsters that will never know the challenge of lining up their ducks, getting them all in a row to define the perfect sheer or waterline or buttock or diagonal. There was a real hands on sense when you drew with this old stuff. I would hunch over my drafting table and manipulate my planimeter around an immersed section three times and then take the average reading for accuracy. Now you push a button and get the areas, all of them, immediately. But in the old days there was that moment of anticipation when you would read the mysterious vernier scale and hoped you had a reading that looked right. There was a truly visceral connection to the design process.

I miss the aroma of hot ammonia wafting through the office from the old Diazo printing machine. Like hell I do.

I'm often asked if I miss the days when the design drawings were all done by hand. I don't. The convenience and accuracy of acad along with the ability to email drawings to a client or builder is way too handy to go back to drawing by hand and then mailing prints. When I designed ICON I sent a set of beautiful hand drawn drawings to the builder only to get an email that they wanted everything in acad so they could convert it to metric. So it was time for me to quit just playing the acad and get down to really learning how to use it.

But there are times when I look at my old drawings and the hand of man is so evident in the nuances of the drafting process that the level of "art" has to a great degree been lost with computer generated drawings. I was good at hand drafting. My old high school mechanical drawing teacher, Mr. Kibby, was very good, a bit dogmatic and very demanding that we master the techniques required to produce a well crafted drawing. "It's all about line weight Perry!"

It sure didn't hurt that I was enthralled with the drawings of Bill Garden, Phil Rhodes, Bill Tripp and of course the mast draftsman Al Mason.  I had some great examples of how it should be done available every time I opened a yachting magazine. I was collecting drafting equipment and drawing at home determined to become a yacht designer. In those days being a designer meant presenting attractive drawings so you could sell your ideas. It was good that I did. Coming home from school with one "A" on my report card, for mechanical drawing helped soften the effect of my other less than stellar grades. "Look Dad I got an A in mechanical drawing AND PE.

I drew on Clearprint vellum, 1000H. It was a high quality drafting vellum. I drew on both sides of the paper. The printer did not care what sides the lines were on. This way when drawing a set of hull lines you could draw the grid on the back side of the paper and the hull lines on the front side. This way as you made the mountain of corrections required to fair the lines you were not erasing the grid. But vellum/paper is not very dimensionally stable. At Dick Carter's office I was introduced to drawing on Mylar. Mylar was expensive, heavy and very dimensionally stable. It was also very messy to draw on as it smeared easily. You could buy pencil "leads" specifically formulated for drawing on Mylar but I didn't like them at all. I stuck with 4H, 6H and even 9H pencils. I used 9H for grids so I could get a razor sharp line.

I liked drawing on Mylar but as I looked at the drawings of other designers I realized I could do better. I started to use drafting pens in addition to the pencils. I would use the ink to highlight the important lines of the drawing. They made very good erasers to erase ink and I was very adept with an electric eraser. You learn quickly that the eraser is just as important as the pencil.

My old tools lay in a drawer now. I still use them from time to time but not much. I have a wide selection of range plastic triangles of various sizes but 90% of my drawing was done with one well worn triangle. I liked it's feel. I also used an ancient drafting machine that a friend of my father in law had given me. It was old when he got it so by the time I got it the machine was a true antique. But it was a wonderful machine, beautifully built and all metal, not like the newer mostly plastic ones. I treasured that machine and if I broke the steel belt that controlled the angle of the arm I was dead in the water until I had a replacement belt. I had to get the replacement belts custom made.


I also had collected a large number of spine weights. These are 3.6 lb. lead weights with a prong on one end that is used to hold the flexible plastic spline in place so you can draw long curved lines. As a kid I found them expensive so I bought them one at a time. But you needed ten to really use them properly. My folks bought me a few for Christmas one year. But I got in the habit of buying up used spline weights whenever I found them. I probably have about 40 of them now. I just use them today as paper weights. But you never know. They are great conversation pieces. I have one of Bill Garden's old weights. I have two weights that I bought at Boeing Surplus that say "747" on them.

While I enjoyed drawing I did not and do not like having to deal with huge sheets of brittle vellum and stiff Mylar for storage. It's not fun to have to go through a roll of 20 or more drawings when they have not been unrolled for ten or more years. But I still get a lot of requests for prints of my old designs so I have to  do it.

At 65 my eyes aren't what they used to be, Acad has infinite zoom abilities so that takes care of the eyesight issue. I can also now store lots of drawings on the  computer so I don;t have to deal with clumsy rolls of drawings any more. But there was a time when I relished the ritual of laying out a fresh sheet of mylar or vellum, assembling the tools of my trade, lining up the spline weights on the supple plastic spline and cutting in the perfect curve. Wait a minute, it's not perfect. I'll have to erase the damn thing and try again. Where's the "erase" button?

 

But I spend most of my time on the CRUISING ANARCHY forum. We discuss a wide variety of cruising subjects, this week ranging from man overboard visibility to the shape of the clipper ship's midesctions. Anything goes. When Spike died my CA buddies rallied and set up the scholarship fund. They also maintained close contact with me while I struggled along. There were some days when I just sat here and stared at the SA screen waiting and hoping and watching for who knows what. SA/CA is important to me.

 

 So, when the CA group found themselves once again discussing the "perfect boat" we had an idea. Let's design the boat on CA kind of like the way the FLYING TIGER evolved over on SA. Each would muck in with his ideas, I would do the drafting and  try to come up with a boat that represented what the group thought was ideal for the purpose. It really doesn't;t matter what the purpose was. We just picked a type and had at it. We weren't far into the first CA project when Rick Beddoe aka Sons aka SONODORA came along  and volunteered to do some rendering work for us. Pretty soon we had assembled a loose team with a few very active CA'ers at the core. I decided we needed a name for our group and The World's Largest Yacht Design Office seemed a good name. We are the WLYDO.

Make no mistake, some of these projects involved a lot of time and effort as they went through a lot of revisions. It's not easy to get the entire staff in agreement on design issues.

 

I'll run down some of the staff names for you. I know I will leave someone out but they can just HTFU as we say in the "office".

 

• There's me
• Gatekeeper
• Wun Hung Lo
• Sons
• Greever
• Jose
• Paps
• Advocate
• Palindrome
• Hike Bitches ( we just call him "Bitches")
• Tom Ray
• Cruising Loser
• Olaf Hart
• Yves-Marie Tanton
• Innocent Bystander
• Floating Dutchman
• Sculpin
• Old Goat
• Ishmael
• Beau V.
• Kimb
• Boomberries
• BlJones
• kdh
• Wombat
• Austin1972
• Smackdaddy

 

It's a big group and as I said, no doubt I have left a few names out and I apologize for that.

 

Here are a few of our projects to date. Note that when Sons began rendering for us we gave him a ton of shit over the quality of his work. At one point he stormed out of the office vowing never to come back. But we drug him back in with some effort and he began responding to the demands of his co workers. In short time Sons was producing world quality yacht design renderings. He had to. He had 30 people judging everything he did. "Do you really think the screw heads should be angled like that?" "Should we use a flatter varnish on the trim." The weird this is, I'm not kidding. Bottom line is that together we have had some fun and done some good work. I have made some fast friends.

We have no central office. We are worldwide with branch office in many major cities. We do have one  WLYDO central library and that's at Kimb's house where he has assured us that we can sleep on the couch, drink his scotch and listen to him play the bagpipes any time we like. We have several branches in Australia and the Ozzies have been very active in WLYDO projects. In that we all have our own offices I thought you might like to see where some of do our important design work. A glimpse into the work space of different WLYDO staff shows you very quickly that we represent a wide variety of skills applicable to sailing. Some members can even rebuild the transmission on your car or build you a custom staircases for your house. We are eclectic. So enjoy this tour through the WLYDO.

 

 

Halloween was Spike's favorite time of year.