Category: Modern boatbuilding

Whenever boat designers get together there’s one topic nearly always crops up – the problems that arise when some builder or other changes plans.

Other groups have also have their gripes – I know touring bands talk about the comfort that is afforded by having the bigger engine option in their vans and office workers complain about IT.

But changing a set of carefully worked out plans goes to the heart of what designers do when they make the mass of small decisions that together make a functioning and often good looking boat. So a designer’s anxiety mounts when someone announces that they’re making a change.

Often, the changer is an experienced person (such as Faversham’s Alan Thorne), the change is minor and everything works out fine  – but so often that anxiety often turns to dismay when an unlooked for modification turns out to be disastrous for the builder’s project.

And so it was in the example Michael Storer quotes in this article. I commend it to first time and amateur boat builders – and I commend Mik’s thoughts on the issue to other designers.