2002 What's New Entries
12/16/2002 - Gwan Soo Kim who has been doing drafting for us for the past year is moving to the West Coast to be closer to his wife's family. Even before leaving he was able to get a good position with a West Coast design firm. We hate to see him go. Keep an eye out for his name. You will surely hear more of him. .... In the Eastport section of the site you will note that we have added a link to Spinnaker Realty and a suggestion that you talk to their Sales Agent, Rebecca Greenberg. If you want property in the Eastport area, you will surely be happy working with her. .... We badly need someone to expand and keep up with our Liveaboard Catalog sales of hardware and supplies. Someday this section will be big but right now we only react to customer requests and questions. .... In the brokerage section you will note that we are looking for Luders 16 Class Sloops. A fleet needs at least 5 more boats we are told. .... We have added another drawing to both the Sovereign and Crown Jewel 36 plans, so there has been a slight adjustment in the plans fee.
11/13/2002 - We have added some drawings to a few stock designs so you will see some changes to the stock plans pricing on the stock plans order form. .... You will also note that we have added a full time intern program to the Yacht Design School page. This will be an opportunity for an occasional student to work here in the MacNaughton Yacht Designs office with special tests applying their work to the lessons. The occasional student who is accepted for this will still pay their regular tuition but will get a scholarship to cover room and board.
11/04/2002 - Our email service provider apparently melted down gradually and completely over the last couple of weeks. Everyone should assume that every email they've sent for at least the last two weeks never got to us. We are assuming everything that we sent out for email over the last two weeks didn't get to you. Everyone should be sure to use only the friends@macnaughtongroup.com email. I'm very sorry for this folks. We can't even get to anyone at our former service provider to complain! At least you can get to us to complain. Don't be shy about any lack of service you may have experienced, we probably never got your message or our reply never got back. All orders that came through on our order forms come an entirely different route and should be perfectly OK. .... We've made several updates to the Designs section of the site. See especially our favorite quote so far about our design work. .... We've also updated the frequently asked questions in the Yacht Design School section of the site. .... Again our apologies for the email snafu.
08/30/2002 - Due to a limited staff during the week of Labor Day shipping times should be expected to increase slightly. .... Our thanks to Michael for the spelling correction in the Marine Listing Agreeement. .... We have added a little more descriptive material on our CAD Course, which is an elective extra for our regular degree program in yacht design. This course uses Rhino, which we believe to be the best available software for on screen yacht and small craft design. Special student pricing of $195 is available on Rhino for our students. The regular commercial license price is $895 yet you are allowed to use the student Rhino package, which is the same software, professionally once you have completed the course. .... We have made a few minor adjustments to the Yacht Design School frequently asked questions. .... We have added quite a bit to the Careers section. I notice that there are more jobs available with us now than there ever have been.
05/28/2002 - The Silver Gull 19, which many of you have been anticipating is now in the stock plans section. This is a very easy to build, very inexpensive weekender sailing dory. Take a look, you may find her of interest. .... We have also updated all our stock plans prices for the first time in several years. These prices are as low as we can make them and give really good service. .... Normally our policy on jobs for our students has been either to hire them ourselves or have them list the firms that they'd like to work at and try to place them with one of them. However occasionally a design firm or boatbuilder specifically asks us to help them find someone. You will find an Employment Opportunities page linked from our School page. Right at the moment it has a position in Michigan listed. .... In the idea designs section we've added a few notes for a 20' transom sterned, plumb stemed, gaff cutter. She'd make a great little cruising boat for two people. .... Also avid followers of the idea design page will be interested to know that a Swiss gentleman has just signed up to have us do up the Lake Sailor. We've already done up one version and I think she looks great. Right now we are going over styling questions with the client. If you are interested in this concept email me so that you'll be amoung the first to see the final design. .... The Sylvina W. Beal has arrived in Eastport. I am sure that this vessel will help define the future course of Eastport. If you come here by all means take a trip on her. She's a great vessel from which to see this area and its wildlife.
04/22/2002 - The Eastport page has been updated with two more links. The most important, in our opinion, is the link to the Sylvina W. Beal's website. This is the first cruise schooner to operate permanently out of Eastport. We are designing another vessel for the same outfit. As far as I can see this is the last really major piece of the puzzle to ensure Eastport's economic future. Schooners are a really big draw and they encourage people to come here who want to be here because of who we are and what our area is not some vision of what we might be. Eastport is a center for learning boat building & yacht and small craft naval architecture. It is becoming a center for yacht design and we already see signs that it will be a center for custom boat building as well. All this is of great benefit to the area. The second new link is to the Eastport Maine Area Information Directory. This should provide a lot of information on the area. .... The Miranda sailing life dinghy has had a metric offset table added at the request of a builder in Japan. This may make things a little easier for those outside of the United States. .... Those interested in our CAD Course in the use of the Rhino software for on-screen design should note that the number of lessons has grown to 10 lessons. Fortunately as the course gets more detailed and more valuable we are finding that we do not have to raise the tuition cost. Students taking this course seem to be doing nicely. We have started a brief frequently asked questions section on the CAD Course and the Rhino software.
4/08/2002 - The Morgan Giles ketch in the brokerage section has been sold. .... The office has just acquired a large format printer for printing some basic drawings directly from the computer. When this will actually result in drawings that the customer sees is still a little problematic. So far we are still doing all final drawings by hand except for magazine article illustrations and some computerized lofting work. .... We have updated two prices on the yacht design tools order form. Unfortunately updated doesn't mean lowered .... We've started work on getting our own little yacht ready for the water. The big project this spring is replacing a plank in the stern.
03/12/2002 - Great news recently is that a local gentleman for whom, along with his partner, we are designing a 90' schooner has also bought the historic schooner Sylvina W. Beal. The Beal used to be a commercial schooner working from this area and was restored as a cruise schooner some years back to serve further down the coast. Having her back here, along with the design of the new schooner makes it look like Eastport will be well on its way to being the schooner capital of Eastern, Maine. For some time we have felt this would be wonderful for the area. It is great to see it coming true. This extraordinary maritime environment cries out for these beautiful vessels to allow people to see it. .... A competing school pointed out that one of their instructors also is a professional designer conducting business from their school so we have slightly modified our Yacht Design School Brochure .... We have also updated the link to Presidential Realty's web site. They have a line on a lot of great properties in this area. .... We have removed several off topic posts in the discussion group. We try to edit this group as little as possible. We leave on criticisms of us, etc. But people don't come here to learn about your poker club so please save us the work of cleaning out your postings.
03/12/2002 - Our thanks to a potential student for pointing out that the form for Yacht Design School enrollment made it easy to confuse the CAD Course with the YDS Course in naval architecture with a specialty in yacht and small craft design. .... On the basis of what people tend to inquire about we've added two concepts to the idea designs page. The first is a Canal Cruising Narrow Boat. Designed to be built in varying lengths this type would be for the inland waterways in the United States and Europe. The second is a series of designs in various sizes possibly called the Far Seeker. These would be full power vessels with sailing rigs to be used when sailing is convenient or in an emergency. They would be capable of world voyaging under power alone and would tend to actually seek out low wind routes for the most comfortable ride. They would also be designed from the first for use of flopper stoppers to cut the roll to close to nothing most of the time. .... I would have sworn that I had corrected the statement on the design tools order form that said the 109 ship's curve was hand made of wood. However a customer complained and I looked and I hadn't. If anyone else feels they were misled when they got a plastic curve let me know. I will be composing a proper letter of groveling apology to him today. .... Michael C. I've been trying to contact you but your email address is not working. I will have to mail you my questions on your lesson work and answers to your questions until this clears up.
02/18/2002 - In the design section you will find a picture and brief biography of Gwan Soo Kim who is working with us now. Soo is presently putting most of his time in working on a 90' schooner design that we are in the middle of. We've also updated the other biographies as well. .... We've added an optional hollow yard drawing to the Crown Jewel 36 design. This raises the stock plans price just slightly. .... Ed Scott, who does a good deal of our drafting, is taking on the job of Brokerage Listing Secretary. This should increase our ability to find good boats for you serious cruising people out there. You will now also find a link to his biography on the Brokerage page .... We've revised the careers page a bit to try to be as clear as possible about what you can expect if you want to work with us. .... Our thanks to Roy Bryant for pointing out a broken link on our site.
01/28/2002 - Thanks to one reader for alerting us to some inconsistancies in drafting tool prices, which we have corrected. .... In the brokerage section you will note that Windsong has been sold. This leaves only one Amphibicon, our favorite trailerable cruising boat, for sale on the site. If you want one for this spring remember we can't necessarily find these boats very easily. People tend to hang onto them. .... We've had a lot of interest in our CAD Course based on the Rhino program. At the suggestion of an early reviewer of the course we have divided the original Lesson One into two lessons. This means that there are now nine lessons instead of eight. Nevertheless we have not increased the cost of the course. .... Readers enamoured of the Coin Collection will be interested to know that we have added one more drawing to each set showing how to make good patterns for casting the rudder fittings. We've raised the prices slightly to compensate for the extra printing time. Our thanks to Matti & Cecilia and to Bjorn for suggesting this addition. We've got a couple of other suggestions in hand for some other enhancements of a couple of designs in the Coin Collection that we'll be working on shortly. .... Sales of drafting tools continues to increase very rapidly. We are now supplying tools to a couple of colleges, a branch of the military, a state government, and numerous yacht design and large ship design offices. All this in addition to the sales to our own students. It appears that we are becoming the major supplier of marine drafting equipment in the United States and a major one in the world. I'm not 100% sure why this is happening. I think that people are thinning their lines on the assumption that they should be selling only very high volume items. Everytime someone stops carrying something it increases our sales.
01/22/2002 - Our thanks to Diane for sending us the clipping from Living Aboard magazine that mentioned our web site. Our thanks also to John Callahan for thinking his readers would be interested in our site .... We have updated several questions on computer assisted design in Yacht Design School's frequently asked questions section. Those familiar with our views will find some subtle changes in response to recent experience with the excellent Rhino program which now forms the basis of our CAD course. Basically you will find our conclusion to be that manual drafting is, for the foreseeable future, still pretty essential for the professional, but Rhino is by far the best on screen design tool available so far. .... In the brokerage section please note that Lichen has been reduced in asking price to $7,500. If you want a great little coastal cruiser these Amphibicons are hard to beat.