Reply To: Wooden boatbuilding
It isn’t up to measurers to refuse to fill in measurement forms, Bob: measurers just measure boats. If they think there’s anything weird going on they include a note. It’s up to the National Authority to decide whether they want to issue a certificate or not. It’s also the NA who decide if they want to drill holes in the structure to see if its all the same thickness, so unless the measurer has superhuman powers he doesn’t have any way of telling what’s going on in there. If we did a swing test to check the pitch inertia of the hull it would fix the whole problem. Finns do it, europes do it, it’s something you can measure easily and you could say that as long as a hull weighs 72 kg and passes the swing test all the details like framing and stringers and material thicknesses are completely free.
As it is, although the rules say you musn’t centralise the weight, it isn’t clear whether (say) building the centreboard box out of thicker material is centralising the weight or just structural common sense (considering that centreboard boxes quite ofter fail near the front). Same goes for including extra deck beams close to the cockpit where the helm’s going to park his bum when it’s light or windy – it’s got to be structural sense, but it might be illegal under the proposed rule.
Dave
