Escape Machine

When my day job takes me "on the road" and I have settled into my hotel room for the evening, I sometimes grab a nice bottle of wine - put my *boat design* hat on and think about what my next "escape machine" might look like.  Then I fire up my design tools and build a virtual version of it.

And when I get some time between work gigs then I can usually be found in my *workshop* actually building one of them.  Here and here are a couple that I prepared earlier.

Actually that's not strictly correct - this one is still in the shed - should be in the water later this year.

I know that engineering design and creativity and innovation are supposed to be dead in this country - but I can't help myself ;-)

The thing that makes it all work are the tools and the *knowledge* and the people who create them and use it.  These days it is possible to design any physical object by first creating a 3D model - and only building the real thing after you have proved and de-bugged the virtual design.  It's called virtual prototyping.  And surprisingly, it doesn't require tens of millions of dollars to be paid to US Corporations as incentives ;-)

I am guessing that our tertiary education institutions are all over this like a rash - doing their utmost to help our industry compete.  Or at least they would be if they didn't have *moron* right wing state government's slashing and burning the *education* programme.  Jeez we do stupid better than anyone - Virginia.

I have been thinking about a bit of a radical boat for a while now - as outlined here.  That idea has developed into something of substance - two 4.8 metre hulls - joined end-to-end at the cockpit.  It's basically a big double-ended and multi-chined sharpie - with water ballast, a centreboard and a sprit schooner rig.  It's the next one to occupy my *workshop*.

And by contrast - here is a fun little trimaran - and a radical catamaran.