Denny said:

Gary,
Thanks for the comments...  Well, the pilot house has seating for more than
one, so socializing is possible... Given the visibility underway from the
elevated house I suspect it will visited by guests... <snip a little>

Gary replied:

Just my opinion here, but it is based on many happy hours -- and a few unhappy
moments -- boating in various boats with just the Admiral and similarly
boating with guests aboard.  You will find that whenever you are there all
your guests immediatly visit the pilothouse and never leave. I suggest that
you design gracious pilothouse guest seating for five.  When underway with
just your Admiral aboard, a cozy one guest pilothouse might be just dandy.  If
you go that route, I very strongly suggest a great intercom, so you can summon
help when someting gets sticky, or at least you can get a cuppa without
abandoning the helm.  However, with guests -- like say two couples along for a
boat ride -- they are all going to absolutely insist on hanging out wherever
you are.  Recall how everybody follows the host/hostess into the kitchen at a
party, strategically stationing themselves directly in front of the stove,
sink, oven, refrig. and liquor locker?  If ya banish yer guests to the saloon
fer that three hour cruise ya just might hafta face a scurvy buncha mutineers.
Lead by the Admiral!  I know -- when I am driving I need to concentrate on
safe boating, at the expense of entertaining chatter with my guests.  Guests
are blithly unaware of the significance of what I am doing, particularly if I
am sitting with my hands in my lap, watching the autohelm steer, scanning near
and far ahead and around us, while monitoring the radios, plotter, radar,
sonar, engine instruments, bilge alarms and coffeemaker.  My Admiral is really
helpful there.  When one of us is driving, the other takes over as social
director, allowing the driver to participate in the conversation only at a
lower priority.

and Denny also said:

... I am always leery of saying too much  before I have something tangible in
hand...  Ya never want to bring yourself to Murphy's attention by shooting off
your mouth...

Gary replied:

Waaaaay too true!  The earliest stages of any design -- by any mere mortal --
are pretty lame.  Only through the evolutionary polishing and perfecting
effects of changing this and reconsidering that, responding to the max. amount
of critical input will produce a finely ballanced design in the end. The
overall boat length of your design makes a nice contemporary example.  The
real art is in keeping loyal to the basic design goals while having the
courage to challenge everything and honestly accept change where it will
actually improve the final product.

Consider the VW beetle car.  Great initial concept:  small, economical, rear
engined, air cooled, car of the people.  Pretty good cars early on, and they
did hit their design targets pretty well, but after fixing the glitches and
redesigning every component and sytem umpteen times to improve the same basic
car over fifty years of production they ended up with a really splendid little
vehicle.  It remained so popular for so long that VW was able to invoke waves
of nostalgic enthusiasm by reshaping an entirely different contemporary car
(not so small, not particularly economical (except the diesel, which hasn't
sold very well), front engine, water cooled, car appealing especially to young
women -- born after the real beetle virtually disappeared from the roads) to
retro-mimic only the characteristic shape of the old standard beetle.  Through
all this time Detroit put out dozens of completly fresh and original designs
each and every year, and each and every one of their cars suffers greatly by
comparison to the later evolved designs of the good old beetle.

Denny further said:

It is a collaboration between myself and Kurt Hughes... I laid out the way
the boat has to look, general shape, bow style, bulworks, overall look, etc.,
(no eurocrap design!)  The hulls started out at 42 feet, stretched out to 55
feet and finally settled at 50 feet...  I have babbled about the design
criteria on here before... THe archives should have it... If you are
considering a custom design I can recommend Kurt without reservations... And
he is a nice guy, to boot...

Gary concludes:

Ahhhh, here we come to the hardest compromise.  If the first challenge in
design is allowing it to grow, evolve and change into improved forms, the
second and greater design challenge is killing all the engineers and starting
production.  My example:  I would in many ways prefer to stay forever in the
design and redesign phase on our new boating project; endlessly improving
this, that and everything.  On the other hand, I want to go boating too.  I am
at the exact point of needing to close the redesign phase and pick up the
tools on our big liveaboard sidewheeler paddleboat project.  Our farm has sold
and we have to move aboard in about four months.  The new owners are literally
attacking our log house with chainsaws and axes!  The Admiral is pressing for
a good deal less than four months!  I guess I better get going!

It sounds as though we on the list should hear about how to contact your Mr.
Hughes.

Hurriedly yours
Gary Bell

Gary!

I don't know how large or luxe your log "house" is/was,
but there are log home afficionados who might have
wanted to disassemble, transport, and reassemble
that structure in another location!

D C "Mac" Macdonald
m/v Another Adventure
Grand Lake - Oklahoma
(boater AND log home fan)

----Original Message Follows----
From: Gary Bell tulgey@earthlink.net
Reply-To: Power Catamaran List power-catamaran@lists.samurai.com
To: Dennis OConnor ad4hk2004@yahoo.com,  Power Catamaran
Listpower-catamaran@lists.samurai.com
Subject: [PCW] boat renderings and plan?
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 08:30:57 -0800

Our farm has sold and we have to move aboard
in about four months.  The new owners are
literally attacking our log house with chainsaws
and axes!  The Admiral is pressing for a good
deal less than four months!  I guess I better
get going!

Hurriedly yours
Gary Bell