Re: [PUP] Any suggestion - or PPM should die ?
Well - that seems to have perked the discussions ... !
So far, I requested opinions, experiences and suggestions, and some
basis/experience thereof.
Instead, I seem to have received 6 pages of directed-mail with a
somewhat negative tone, and no suggestions ?
Lets's see;
Ross A. - tankage is needed - I agree.
Says radar is needed - ;(
Junks the "junk" - ;)
Ken Williams -
No suggestions,
Also says radar is needed.
Disputes the Nordhavn stuff -except kind of, somewhat, not.
Ken - You have a great website ! I enjoy Your posts.
You have the best research/rational decisions of any passagemaker I know
of. Please keep it up.
$$ - Maybe You are making the correct choice for You ?
Probably, in my opinion. I hope so.
John M - Likewise enjoy Your posts.
No suggestions.
High usage in production boats - nonsense.
Out of 300 boats, 1 M miles in 5 years ?
Note that the pennant program only captures the ones who trawler - not
the 2/3 who stay home. Average is average, not average of travellers.
Does not like me to criticise too-expensive junk. The sub zero would be
an example.
Valerie -
Likes camraderie -good for You !
No suggestions.
Bob E-
Agrees with me.
Notes that people who buy expensive stuff hate for anyone to criticize it.
Agrees on "apparent systems".
On value, cheap and price;
I have bought and used much more expensive stuff, than yachts, many
times for a long time. I worked on 60 M$ systems. Many of my tools I
owned were 150k$ each.
And I still criticized the manufacturers for selling junk ! (Most did,
and still do).
General;
$$ - People buy whatever they want.
Experience - I agree with You very much. Everyone starts somewhere and
gains experience. Those who travel and trawler, gain experience in it.
But most buyers do not have that experience when they start, or do they ?
Many people are conditioned to buy "brand". That why the marine industry
sells "brand" rather than quality.
In a sea of relative quality, everyone picks the best option they can.
This does not mean that they pick from good or excellent options available.
This used to apply esp. to the US, although over the last 10 years the
same unfortunate tendency has spread to Europe.
That does not mean that the production boat people are making the right
choices. It does not mean that they are building the right thing. It
does not mean that they are doing a good job. And it does not make their
products inherently safe, fit-for purpose and / or reliable.
I have a few questions for all of You with production boats.
Do the people with high-value production boats believe there is
something wrong in criticizing poor installations, building practices etc. ?
Do you think that these boats should need large amounts of expensive
maintenance and parts ?
Do You believe that its understandable to have failures, errors, poor
installations, leaky seals, shoddy paint, poor electrical schemes,
hard-to-reach installations etc. ?
Do You believe that by paying for this maintenance, as You then solve
the problem for Yourselves, You are getting a good deal ?
I have reason and experience for my opinions.
Now, in my experience, the reason manufacturers get away with poor
products in the engineering fields is lack of know-how on the part of
buyers. This certainly applied to PC4s, IT and telecommunications. Most
database and telco stuff is the same - poor ridiculously expensive junk.
The base reason is that the guy buying it does not pay for it - nor is
he resposible for it when it goes wrong, as he just says "oh we buoght
cisco or hp or ibm or oracle or whatever - its the best stuff, so its
certainly not my fault".
When I did IT stuff (or do), I always knew more about it than the sales
people. Usually more than their tech people. At the end of the day, I
got great service, great products, and successfully installed very large
and very expensive complex systems for a lot of money. That run
extremely well, very cheaply, very profitably. And I always got paid on
results, or owned the biz. The manufacturers fixed a lot of expensive
errors on their part, at their dime, invested a great deal of expensive
effort on doing it right - and we usually became their biggest customer
in that business sector or country.
Sometime, I had to change manufacturers 4-5 times, until they were
willing to fix their failures.
I would like to make the humble suggestion that when I criticize
something, maybe it because there is something wrong with it ?
And I would also like to offer that I have never criticized anyone
personally - I certainly feel no need for that.
I believe the PPM is a great thread.
However, if we are not going to get suggestion, ideas and examples, how
can we proceed ?
Hannu:
I don't know how you can say that I had no suggestion. If anything, I am
usually guilty of having TOO many suggestions and opinions...
My suggestion is specifically:
Each buyer's Perfect Passagemaker is unique to that buyer. The best we can
do is to outline the options so that when each of us refit our boats, or
pick a new boat, we understand the full range of possibilities, so that we
get as close as possible to our Perfect Passagemaker on the first try. All
of us have bought a boat, and then wished we had done something differently.
That's a lot of money wasted. If we educate ourselves on what the pros and
cons of each option are, and leave breadcrumbs for others, we'll have done
something of value.
We've actually been doing that in an unstructured manner over the past
couple of months; discussions of house battery banks, charging systems, hull
types, stabilizers, length to width ratios etc.
My suggestion would be that we pick one system at a time, according to our
mood, and discuss it until we lose interest. I think I gave a list a few
months back of what the "systems" on a boat might be:
- Hull (wood, FRP, Steel, Aluminun, hull shapes, etc)
- Propulsion (engine brands, single vs twin, fuel efficiency, value of wing
engine, redundancy, engine controls, dripless shafts, prop selection, etc) - Communications (internet, ssb, epirbs, fax, vhf, nets)
- Stabilization (active fins, paravanes, anti-roll tanks, etc)
- A/C (conventional, chilled water, soft starts, vfds, etc)
- Electrical (battery charging, inverters, diagnosing problems,
international power, isolation and step-up transformers, cables, etc) - Entertainment systems (movie servers, sat radio, tv receivers, etc)
- International cruising special requirements (international power adapters,
passarelles, med mooring etc) - Galley (gas vs electric, best barbecue, grey water tanks, refrigerators,
freezers, etc) - Monitoring systems (what needs monitored, what is possible, etc)
- Cabins (Ventilation, port lights, mattresses, etc)
- Tenders (davits, inflatable vs hard bottom, water toys, fendering, etc)
- Ground tackle (snubbing, anchor selection, rode, winlasses, etc)
- Diving (hookahs, compressors, tanks, etc)
- Hydraulics (cooling, ??? - I'm a complete loss on hyrdraulics)
- Navigation Systems (nav software, radar, ais, sonar, gps)
- Fuel and oil (filters, cleaning, storing, transfer systems, filling,
bio-protection, alleged efficiency enhancers etc) - Safety (rafts, flares, ditch bags, epirbs, sat radios, medical kits, life
rings, survival suits, etc)
I'm sure I forgot several systems in the list above, but you should see
where I'm going with this.
In short .. There are as many different "Perfect Passagemakers" as there are
buyers. The best we can do is to help buyers know what to ask for - so,
let's focus there. Rather than saying "What do I think makes a perfect
boat?" we should say instead: "According to different cruising plans, and
budgets, what are the possibilities, and how does a buyer pick between them,
so they arrive at their Perfect Passagemaker?".
-Ken Williams
Sans Souci, Nordhavn 68
www.kensblog.com
Your assumption that the 2/3 who haven't signed up for the pennant program
"stay at home" is incorrect. Some people just don't care about the program.
I know of at least one circumnavigator who hasn't bothered to sign up and
doesn't care. So maybe an average of people who care about the program is
accurate.
Alex
(snip)
John M - Likewise enjoy Your posts.
No suggestions.
High usage in production boats - nonsense.
Out of 300 boats, 1 M miles in 5 years ?
Note that the pennant program only captures the ones who trawler - not
the 2/3 who stay home. Average is average, not average of travellers.
Does not like me to criticise too-expensive junk. The sub zero would be
an example.
y known as Trawler World Productions.
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
Brian said: "... 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!..."
Brian:
In the scenario I described, it wouldn't matter which order you tackle
systems, because there are no right or wrong answers. For instance, you
mention hulls. I would contend that every possible hull is a valid option
for the "Perfect Passagemaker," because there is no one perfect boat. Is
there a buyer for whom each possible hull type is the right answer -- sure.
There occasionally might be a case where one system affects another, but
this is rare. A discussion of nav systems is the same whether you have a
wood, FRP, steel or aluminum hull. A discussion of ground tackle is the
same, whether you have one engine or two, etc.
-Ken Williams
Sans Souci, N6805
www.kensblog.com
I hear ya, I was just trying to focus things a bit....
-----Original Message-----
From:
passagemaking-under-power-bounces+brian.smyth=ns.sympatico.ca@lists.samu
rai.com
[mailto:passagemaking-under-power-bounces+brian.smyth=ns.sympatico.ca@li
sts.samurai.com] On Behalf Of Ken Williams
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 12:04 PM
To: 'Passagemaking Under Power List'
Subject: Re: [PUP] Any suggestion - or PPM should die ?
Brian said: "... 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!..."
Brian:
In the scenario I described, it wouldn't matter which order you tackle
systems, because there are no right or wrong answers. For instance, you
mention hulls. I would contend that every possible hull is a valid
option
for the "Perfect Passagemaker," because there is no one perfect boat. Is
there a buyer for whom each possible hull type is the right answer --
sure.
There occasionally might be a case where one system affects another, but
this is rare. A discussion of nav systems is the same whether you have a
wood, FRP, steel or aluminum hull. A discussion of ground tackle is the
same, whether you have one engine or two, etc.
-Ken Williams
Sans Souci, N6805
www.kensblog.com
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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
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Passagemaking Under Power and PUP are trademarks of Water World
Productions, formerly known as Trawler World Productions.
Hannu,
Being new here, I'm not up to speed on your history in this group. I'd like
to empathise with your input but I can't see where you're going with this.
May I ask you to explain what your specific interest in the PPM topic is
please..?
Thanks.
Callum.
Callum McCormick
http://www.m0mcx.co.uk/
I think that the idea of talking about systems, materials, and reliability
is a good one. Within each person's definition of a PPM lie many common
systems from bilge pumps to engines. Size may dictate models or brands, but
it is still all good. It is also important to understand the intended use of
your PPM. For example, the PPM for the Inside Passage and Alaska might be
constructed of different materials than a PPM intended for runs from New
England to Trinidad.
The PPM topic serves as a vehicle for learning just as the Passagemaker List
does.
Ron Rogers
Hello, could we ask all the sailors on here to look at not the top 600K trawler but put their experience to making a good seaworthy small passagemaker, and what a small passagemaker would need. I think it is good to look at the top of the market knowing the products which have world wide reputation but when you have to put your mind to the economical solution and making the budget solution there may be a different story.
Any thoughts ?
Regards
David
--- On Tue, 12/9/08, Ron Rogers rcrogers6@kennett.net wrote:
From: Ron Rogers rcrogers6@kennett.net
Subject: Re: [PUP] Any suggestion - or PPM should die ?
To: "'Passagemaking Under Power List'" passagemaking-under-power@lists.samurai.com
Date: Tuesday, December 9, 2008, 7:24 AM
I think that the idea of talking about systems, materials, and reliability
is a good one. Within each person's definition of a PPM lie many common
systems from bilge pumps to engines. Size may dictate models or brands, but
it is still all good. It is also important to understand the intended use of
your PPM. For example, the PPM for the Inside Passage and Alaska might be
constructed of different materials than a PPM intended for runs from New
England to Trinidad.
The PPM topic serves as a vehicle for learning just as the Passagemaker List
does.
Ron Rogers
http://lists.samurai.com/mailman/listinfo/passagemaking-under-power
To unsubscribe send email to
passagemaking-under-power-request@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.