[PUP] Any suggestion - or PPM should die ?

[John Marshall]

Here's a suggestion... as opposed to rambling around with a blank  
sheet of paper, let's start with a specific example of an all-out  
passagemaker, Dashew's Windhorse, which was designed for optimal  
passagemaking comfort and safety, and compare/contrast his approaches  
and decisions to those this group might find desirable. Windhorse  
represents an extreme end of passagemaking vessels, opposite end of  
spectrum from most production boats, but likely closer to where this  
PPM thread should be taking us, albeit we'd like to produce a smaller  
vessel at significantly lower cost.

(The production vessel that has emerged from Steve's work, the FPB64,  
is still $2-3 million USD, and likely above the range that we want to  
focus our PPM effort toward.)

Steve has very publicly discussed his concepts, tradeoffs and decision  
processes on his web page, and has always been open to discussion.  
He's laid out his decisions and rationale for building as he did,  
system by system.

If we start from there, looking for cost reduction opportunities by  
examining different approaches, system by system, we'd at least be  
starting from a proven concept of an extremely reliable and  
comfortable passagemaker. It would also impose some "comparative  
evaluation" structure on the discussion.

As we used to say back when I was an engineer, "there is nothing more  
terrifying than staring at a blank sheet of paper." Better to start  
with something and work our way from there to the place we want to be.

Here's the primer:

http://www.setsail.com/dashew/do_PARADIGM.html

John

On Dec 8, 2008, at 7:49 AM, Brian Smyth wrote:

> Good Morning Ken,
>
> I agree with your post in that I think there needs to be structure in
> the discussion as it does tend to wander a bit.
>
> My suggestion (however humble) is that you might want to approach the
> discussion in much the same way that a designer approaches the  
> design or
> a builder might build the boat.
>
> In other words, focus on the big picture first...what is the hull
> material, what is the general arrangement etc....and try to limit the
> discussion to these topics until they are almost defined.  I say  
> almost,
> because they can always be revisited, but you gotta start somewhere!
>
> Just my two cents...
>
> Thanks,
>
> Brian
> _______________________________________________
> http://lists.samurai.com/mailman/listinfo/passagemaking-under-power
>
> To unsubscribe send email to
> passagemaking-under-power-request at lists.samurai.com with the word
> UNSUBSCRIBE and nothing else in the subject or body of the message.
>
> Passagemaking Under Power and PUP are trademarks of Water World  
> Productions, formerly known as Trawler World Productions.