Bram,
I'm for building the hull from a mold.
I still think the rigging and parts should be assembled/ fabricated by the
sailor. No sissies need apply. That's an even compromise. It will allow new
class members to come on board after the crucible of a build, and a lighter and
shorter build at that. Buy a semi finished hull for $5 thousand, and the rest
for another 5-7 thousand. Sounds fair. A finished and complete boat takes
lots and lots of man hours and raises the price too high. Delivering a hull in
some form of finished / semi finished state is an easy purchase agreement. The
builder needs the appropriate liability coverage. Small investment in tools
and real estate, packaging and shipping. End of story.
The class should own the molds, and should be positively controlled by the
class. In order to vote to destroy the thing under some extreme conditions, ie
if the builder is making lousy boats.
David Slevin
ps. I'll be visiting Desoto perhaps Tuesday night, and staying for as long
as I can.
BDally6107@xxxxxxx wrote:
At last years Annual General Membership meeting, the class decided that
discussion considering the possibility of allowing Nomex/hybrid hulls should be
held outside of our AGM. It was further proposed that I form a technical
committee of three people to consider different construction methods and to put
forward three molded options to the class. Roger agreed to be part of the
committee as he has some commercial experience building Swifts.
I have attempted to engage a number of Swift builders in this process to get
a measure the level of passion and have had little success. Roger has taken on
a new job and has had little time to communicate.
Because that is not working, I would like to be part of an informal
discussion at Fort Desoto with all of the attending class members to get an
idea of where we want to go and how we want to get there. This type of
discussion will not work at the AGM. It has been attempted during the past
couple of meetings. It will get postponed or passed on to some
â??to-be-announcedâ?? committee of folks who live 2,000 miles apart. Email
technical discussions require a very large time commitment. We can likely
accomplish in 1 hour of live discussion what would take months to accomplish
via committee email discussion. Important conclusions could be passed on to
the class for a vote or for further discussion at next years AGM.
Let me make it clear that I have no interest in going into the boat building
business. From the time I decided to move forward with Swift class building,
my interest has been to give something back to this sport without spending too
much money along the way. I owe more to high performance sailing than I will
likely ever pay.
On the other hand, I have no desire to see this class flushed down the toilet
like the 49er class in the US. Allowing unproven builders to produce molded
boats commercially at this early stage would do to our class what Vanguard did
to the 49er class.
A number of ideas have been developed over the years that I'd like to present
(about 15 minutes) on how we can move forward with solving our manufactured
boat shortage for those who don't have the time to build a Swift. These ideas
revolve around the following objectives:
1. How to protect the interests of the existing Swift member
builders to ensure that their boats, if properly built, would remain
competitive at the top level. This would require some patience as about 7
minutes of technical findings would need to be presented.
How to protect the future of the class by putting in place a method of
control on production quality/ methods/materials until at least 100 molded
Swifts were built. Part of this formula would be to make molded hulls
available to Swift home builders and to ensure that the standard Swift deck
would mate with the molded hulls. After 100 hulls are built, I would be a
proponent of free enterprise.
How to convince a quality builder to participate while protecting his
initial investment.
Please let me know if you are interested in attending such an informal
discussion. I have no interest whatever in doing this during the AGM and I
promise this will be the last time I will ask if there is little interest.
Also, I'm up to my ass in alligators finalizing details in preparation for
the regatta (both personal and class) and do not wish to engage in an email
discussion on this topic other than the agenda and/or topics for the
discussion. Details and questions should be saved for that time. We will keep
good notes and post them for the class members who were unable to attend.
Remember, this is not class business and should be viewed as preparation of a
possible proposal to the class.
Itâ??s been snowing for three days up here. Get me out of here! See you
guys in two weeks.
Bram
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