Previous "What's New" Text for 1998

12/31/1998 - This week we have extensively edited our Customer Manual to bring it up to date .... We have put
on another front page for the Quoddy Tides, the Christmas issue. House prices are beginning to rise here. Better act now while they are still so low. .... Yet another instance of our obsolete phone number was found on the web site by a design student. The last four digits of valid numbers are 6678 for the design office and 0799 for the boat yard. If you find anything else let me know. .... The Raye's Mustard site that piggy backs on ours has been reorganized. These are really great mustards by the way. .... We have modified our publishing and Loch Fyne order forms to indicate that we will charge shipping on heavier items shipped outside the United States. We have had some of the heavier books actually cost as much to ship as we were charging for the book. ....You will find "Fiberglass Boat Repair and Maintenance" now for sale in our publishing section. This very inexpensive book gives a great deal assistance to the person wishing to do this type of work on their boat. A great value. .... By popular demand the "humorous" picture of Tom in his biography in the design section has been replaced by a real picture of him. He says "Remember you asked for it. Neither I nor the macnaughtongroup.com web site accept any responsibility for nausea, queasiness, or any other ailment purporting to be caused by viewing this picture" .... We hope everyone has been having a good holiday season and that you look forward to a good New Year.

11/06/1998 - I'm still finding the old phone number in various parts of the site. We strongly encourage communication by email through the feedback option on the navigation bar as we are heavily email oriented. If
you want to talk to us personally the Design Office number is 207-853-6678. The Yard number is 207-853-0799. .... We have more pictures of the Controversy 36, Pleiades on the website now. I would look particularly at the third picture which shows her finished up about the way I'd have her. .... People keep asking when we are going to draw up the Silver Gull 14 Extreme. If anybody just has to build one of these right off, you could buy the Silver Gull 28 drawings instead. Everything except the deck layout and interior would be exactly half size. We could then do a sketch of the profile showing the midships "wheelhouse". We'd include any advice or explanatory sketches you'd need to complete construction. .... We are still working on the Anacortes 32 that we have shown some drawings of. We should be done on the construction and accommodations drawing pretty soon.

10/29/98 - This week we've had some nice conversations with people calling us for consultation on various
projects. A builder from Florida is sending us some designs to quote on converting to modern wood and epoxy
construction methods. A well established yard in Massachusetts asked for some recommendations on repairing a chine hulled boat. Finally, a major defense contractor wanted to know how thick to make fiberglass domes to cover radar on the sides of Naval vessels! This sort of work is always interesting .... We've added the latest Quoddy Tides front page .... We added another page to our Evening Hush design showing one of the pictures we just received from the first builder of the vessel. .... In the brokerage section we have updated the information on Pleiades, one of the extremely nice Controversy 36s. She's only $18,000. I wish I had the money. Next time I hope to put on more pictures of her. .... By the way in the design section there is a biography of yours truly. With this I included a picture that a neighbor had given to me that they thought reminded them of me. A reader commented, "Your joke picture, I respectfully submit, is a bad idea and detracts from your credibility." What's the vote folks? Use the feedback option on the navigation bar to let me know whether this is a bad idea or not. I can cut the picture if people agree, Heaven knows I'm not going to subject you to what I really look like.

9/30/98 - We now have short biographies on all the managers on the site. Many of you now have had some contact with Terry Pratt our Yard Operations Manager. He is taking hold nicely and is already boosting sales.   You can find Terry's biography in the yard section of the site. .... We have also added another front page for the Quoddy Tides. Anybody interested in this beautiful area should subscribe.

09/25/98 - Once again we have a new Quoddy Tides front page on the site. I've been urging readers to subscribe
to this and buy property here in Eastport. It has been so far below the national average as to be unbelievable.
Now I notice prices have started to go up although they are still way under the rest of the nation. Better buy
fast to get the best investment. .... You might check up on Raye's Mustard site again. We just added a new receipe for them. .... At the suggestion of several readers we are adding biographies for the active managers in the business. We've asked everybody for their history to put into these but the only one who has had one done up for any purpose is Tom. You'll find it in the design section of the site. When asked for a photo of himself Tom supplied the one that appears here. He says "It's not really a picture of me. I see no reason to inflict pictures of myself on the world. However it is close enough." We'll follow this as quickly as we can with a biography of Terry. .... We have also updated the link to the Marine Technology Center across the road from us. This year they have quite a large incoming class for the first year of the boat building course. There are a good
number of second year students as well. The marine mechanic's course is also going great guns. .... At the
request of one of our long suffering readers we have made the link operable to the second page of the Firedrake
design. Now you can see the interior of this design. .... It was pointed out that the thumbnails of Bastet did not properly link to the larger versions. I don't know what happened here and don't seem to still have the images on the machine so I have just killed the links and made a note to find these photos again and reload them .... We have also added some illustrations to the YDS-CAD Course leading page. .... We should have more time to liven up these pages in about another month.

09/07/98 - Yesterday a customer who is already having us restore a 30' boat told us he is considering buying and having us restore a 31' racing sloop from the 1930's.  .... Due to our recent computer problems we got a issue behind on putting up the Quoddy Tides front page. We are now up to date and note that the lead picture this issue is of a Whitby 42. Many years ago Tom was working in the office of Ted Brewer and Bob Wallstrom when this boat was designed and he has an affection for the design. .... Those of you who have worried over the future of the beautiful Victorian bank building in Eastport can rest easy. It has been sold to a couple from Texas who anticipate having a wonderful time restoring it.

08/28/98 - It has been a very hectic month since the last update. We had major computer problems in our
office that have now been solved. This has slowed our response time. However we hope everybody will have
received their orders and answers to their questions within a few days, with the exception of a few books and
special order yacht equipment items which may take as much as a week and one half .... Our really big news is
that we have induced a really top business man to come in and run the yard office and ship's store (including
special orders over the Internet) His name is Terry Pratt prattmgmt@macnaughtongroup.com and he will be the Yard Operations Manager. He feels confident he can vastly increase our ability to serve more customers efficiently and he certainly has the track record for it. This leaves your present writer doing the design and website work and supervising the shop crew. Although still overloaded I should be able to get out design work, quotes and publications a lot faster and should be able to write a little more in the way of the technical publications that our readers seem to find helpful. .... We still need a Shop Manager. Does anybody have any ideas? .... More soon, we're still catching up.

07/17/98 - We've been very busy designing and doing the spring launching of boats, etc. We are very sorry to have not updated for awhile. .... This week we have slightly revised the Living Aboard section on the site. .... We have also revised the yard rate sheet. .... In the brokerage section we have added a new listing. This is a Controversy 36 named Pleiades. These are great vessels for living aboard and coastal cruising. .... There is a least some possibility the boat yard operation may expand considerably over the next year. There has been some talk of finally getting inside storage and even getting a new foundry operation under way. .... There is a good chance that we will have a new manager in the office around the first week in September who will be responsible for customer service, day to day accounting, building up the ship's store, the custom orders end of the business and many other things. This will take a burden off the shop crew and will free up more of yours truly's time for design, writing and promotion. All this should be good for all of us. .... Again this week there is a front page of the Quoddy Tides. Subscribing to the Tides is your best way to keep on top of the great real estate and business opportunities in this area.

06/19/98 - Dan careened Eric a few days back and I have put a picture on her on the hard against the pilings. ....
There is a new Quoddy Tides front page on the web site. Prices will be starting to go up pretty fast from now on
on houses and commercial property around here. Most of the outrageous priced properties like for a house $19,500 were snapped up last year. Of course prices are still incredibly below the national average so there will be some bargains for awhile yet. Subscribers to this paper still have the opportunity to get great deals on real estate, both residential and commercial. .... Some time in the next few days we'll be putting a new brokerage listing on the site for a Controversy 36 yawl for a great price. Asking price is $18,000. I'd probably buy her myself if I had any money.

06/10/98 - One of our readers pointed out that we left out Living Aboard: Figuring the Costs on the publishing
order form. Thank you for pointing this out. We have corrected this with this update. If you are thinking of living aboard a yacht as your permanent home this is a very helpful article to take the guess work out. .... We have finished doing the lines of the Anacortes 32 in the computer and are now carefully drawing them out on mylar for the builder. If you go take a look at the lines it will give you an idea of our thinking on this particular type of boat. .... In other design work we have been doing a number of minor revisions and updates in our Coin Collection series of designs recently. These have always been popular designs but I notice that since more information on them and our design philosophy has been available on this web site more and more of them seem to be being built all over the world. Since they are the result of many years of experience living aboard and sailing by my family supplemented with a selection of the ideas of owners of these boats over the years I believe they represent some of the best voyaging yachts available.

05/29/98 - We did some minor updates and corrections on the publishing page. .... If you go to the brokerage
section you will notice a link to a copy of our Listing Agreement. If you have a boat you would like to list
with us please print out two copies, fill them out sign them and send them to us. You should be aware that we
don't accept all listings, only those we think we can sell effectively to our type of client. You should include with the listing agreement a complete description with all particulars and an equipment list. You should also include copies of any drawings and photographs you have of the boat. .... We were very busy in the last couple of weeks negotiating some new financing to meet changing needs at the boat yard. For anyone working on business needs in this area we can highly recommend Bar Harbor Banking and Trust for their excellent customer service. The only reason to go with any other financing source for this area would be if you could get a lower than market interest rate through some government program. .... We also recommend you check out the Quoddy Tides front page for the latest news and the Raye's Mustard site for the latest news from the world of mustard and the latest receipe using Raye's stone ground mustard. .... We are working hard on the lines of the new Anacortes 32 and will post information on the design as we go.

05/10/98 - We're terribly overloaded with quotes to do recently. This is partly spring work at the yard but mostly larger projects for the long term. .... We are also working up paperwork to submit to a couple of State programs that are intended to provide backing and incentives to attract investors to expand the yard facility. This expansion would include some buildings for inside storage of yachts. There is tremendous demand for this and it would really help us bring in more storage customers from much further away. Right now we turn away customers every year who would like to haul here if we could store them inside. .... In the past we haven't put much about our current design projects on the site. However we do have a West Coast client who is computer oriented so you'll probably be able to follow the progress of the design I am provisionally calling the Anacortes 32. This week you can go to A Current Project in the design section to see two profiles done up as we work toward getting the aesthetics just right for the owner. Check them out and see which bow appeals to you the most (or least). .... Also this week there is a new front page on here for the Quoddy Tides for those of you wanting a hint of the news of our area.

05/01/98 - Mayday! Mayday! (Sorry couldn't help it) .... Just for fun I've included below some thumbnails you can click on to see the three different bows we're looking at for the Anacortes 32 cutter that we're working on for a West Coast client.

04/24/98 - We just got some nice photos of the Scotsman technique, that we developed for repairing frames to full strength, on the site under the 32' trawler section of the project logs in the "yard" area of the site. Two of these photos are also going into the latest version of our Healing the Break article reprint. If anyone has ever tried to talk you into sister framing a boat you need this article to understand why "sisters" are poor engineering and how to do a full strength job easily and economically. .... Again there is a new Quoddy Tides front page this week. .... Also check the link in the "products" section for Raye's Mustard this site is just starting up and is the best mustard in the world made right here in Eastport. The same mill, stones and family ownership since 1900. .... One year on the web! There'll be lots more great stuff in the year ahead. Remember this site doesn't use "cookies", and we concentrate on information for you. We won't ever use sound and video unless it really does provide some information we can't otherwise provide. Remember advice is always free.

04/10/98 - As we come up on our first year on the web I do want to thank all our readers for their support. Our online ordering and design quotation forms have been well received and have brought in much more business this past year than we had the year before and it is increasing all the time. This does result in us getting bogged down a bit when large numbers of orders come in at once but this hasn't been too bad. .... In the products section we now have a link to the web site of Raye's Mustard Mill. We are in the process of developing (and hosting) this site for them. They produce very fine stone ground mustard that we use ourselves at home. .... We've spent a lot of time this week just organizing what we want to put on the site next. We're going to add more reviews in the publishing section, more lesson contents and illustrations in the Yacht Design School Section, and we will add a significant number of products in the Loch Fyne Marine Hardware section. Later we want to add at least two more idea designs and some more illustrations in the YDS CAD course section. .... It looks like we're getting there on our cutter design. When we get the profile finalized to the owner's satisfaction we'll put it on the site so our reader's can see it.

04/10/98 - We have added a link to a very informative site on the Eastport area. This is called the Quoddy Tour Guide and, while not a graphically rich site, it does have a very extensive list of the businesses in the local area. You can learn a lot about this near paradise on this site. .... Another link which appears likely to be useful to our readers who are boat owners has been added to our boat yard page. This is to Boat Owner's World which has a lot of useful information. .... We also found that the credit card on two of our forms included the choice of Discover and Diner's Club which we don't take! Sorry. We've eliminated those choices. They were created by a helpful "wizard" fortunately nobody has tried to order with either card. .... We do have naval architectural firms
asking us for draftsmen. So, if you are nearing completion of our Yacht Design School course or your instructing naval architect has suggested you are ready for a drafting job, please let us know if you want work. .... Our latest custom design, a light displacement cutter for a West Coast client has been intriguing me a lot. The owner wanted a light displacement boat with a cut away underbody and an easy to build shape but they also were cruising in an area with a lot of logs in the water and wanted a cutter rig with a bowsprit. The intriguing thing is that on a light boat a rig with a bowsprit tends to put the center of the rig pretty far forward. At the same time protecting the propeller in a highly cutaway underbody tended to put the center of lateral plane pretty far aft. Hmmm. Well, with a lot of subtle adjusting to both rig and underbody we've got something that works. The whole boat is going to end up with quite a classic above water appearance despite the modern cutaway. We're still working on the preliminaries. .... Finally this week there is again a new front page from the Quoddy Tides, our local newspaper. You can contact to newspaper directly using the email link at the bottom of the page to ask and questions about the paper and related matters. .... Well, the hit counter didn't record so I have eliminated it for the moment while I figure out what I did wrong.

04/02/98 - Take a look at the Quoddy Tides front page again this week. .... We should soon be providing a link to a new site for one of our favorite local businesses, Raye's Mustard Mill. You'll be able to buy real stone ground mustards from the only remaining traditional mustard mill in the United States. .... This week as far as things you can see there is now a hit counter on the bottom of the home page. It only appears and counts when you return to it from another page on the site unlike most counters I've seen. This should cut out the hits that never get past the first page which shouldn't really count. 

03/25/98 - In other news we are working on a number of fun projects that we will being gradually posting and letting you know about over the next few weeks. .... The 33' cutter custom design is coming well. When you are allowed to design a 33' boat and put four berths in it instead of six or eight (!) you sure get a lot nicer boat! .... OK! The forms are all working again. Everybody can order in the regular fashion. We're very sorry for the inconvenience. Basically software is being updated at our internet service provider and at one point in the process they got confused about how to set our permissions. They were trying to set the permissions on their server and test them from the same workstation. Since their workstations have the full server permissions they were able to get into the site structure and assumed that anyone accessing from a browser could also. In resetting the permissions to the site to a higher level so that they couldn't get into the site themselves they of course shut the whole order form system off from the outside world! In other words someone placing an order became defined as a security threat! Oh well. That's behind us.

03/23/98 - Our feedback option was apparently not working for several days so if anybody hasn't been able to email us that's working again. We still haven't got the forms working properly yet so email us for ordering instructions or print and mail the forms.

03/21/98 -  The information for our new marine design CAD Course is now fully in place. We reiterate that our regular Yacht Design School course is the course to take to learn yacht designing and you don't need CAD to learn to design. The CAD course teaches how to do the designing, rendering and patternmaking work, etc. on screen and supplies the software for doing so. You can down load a demo version of the CAD software and operate slide shows on the programs as well by using the links on the Enrollment page. There's a lot of fun stuff here. .... In our custom design work we are just starting to draw up a very nice approximately 33' cutter for a west coast client. We'll show you information on it as we start getting drawings done.Our forms are still not working correctly. Our ISP informs us that they are installing new software this week which should cure this and other problems. Please email us for instructions on ordering, or print and mail the order forms until further notice. Those who have placed orders that they have not yet received should email us immediately. We are very sorry about this but it is out of our control.

03/19/98 - We find that when our site was moved to a new server over a week ago the site was disrupted and orders submitted to us were lost. So if you have submitted an order in the last couple of weeks we urge you to resubmit it. This is the second time we have had problems. We hope this is due to growing pains at our ISP and will not be a recurring problem. We apologize for any inconvenience. .... We had one of our more interesting orders a couple of weeks ago. A copy of our Sheathed Strip Scantlings Rule Book was purchased for aid in constructing some boats to be used under ground in touring caverns with water in them! .... Also this week check the new Quoddy Tides front page for news of the area. You can email the Quoddy Tides using the email link at the bottom of the page. .... We are in the process of adding a supplemental course in Computer Assisted Design to our Yacht Design School Course. The information is still incomplete but should be all there in a couple of more days. In conjunction with this course we are acting as agents for the MultiSurf, MultiSurf-LT, Hydro and other marine CAD software from AeroHydro. This course does not in any sense replace the regular YDS course and is not sufficient to teach you to design boats by itself. You become a fully competant yacht designer with the regular YDS course at a modest cost. However, for the designer who wishes employment at firms using CAD or to introduce CAD into their own firm this new CAD course would certainly provide you with the opportunity to get both the training and the software. With demand for our students at an all time high your job prospects would be good with the YDS yacht design course by itself and adding the CAD course as well sure wouldn't hurt.

03/02/98 - This week we have updated our forms to make them work more reliably. A few of you have had problems getting forms to submit properly. Those problems have been corrected. We have also streamlined our organization of the received orders for quicker processing. .... Again this week the new Quoddy Tides newspaper front page is on the site. Boat people will particularly enjoy the picture of all the schooners along the waterfront in the 1901 picture on this page. In the early 1800's Eastport was second only to the port of New York in tonnage shipped.

02/27/98 - We find that we are still having problems with forms submission. If you find you are unable to submit an order form without getting an error code please use the feedback function to let us know what you wish to order and your phone number and email address. We will get back to you with a secure procedure for getting your order to us.

02/20/98 - Any of our readers who ordered anything through our site between Thursday February 12th and
Thursday February 19th should resubmit their order. We had problems with the server and cannot be positive that we received all the orders successfully. .... In our catalog you will find a new section under Loch Fyne
Marine Hardware
. This is where we are going to be gradually adding select hardware products of other manufacturers along with information on custom casting and our own items. This will be done as people ask us about specific types of items. .... We have also slightly updated our section of the Catalog on Living Aboard. .... In the marine publishing section we have added a reprint at a correspondent's request of our article Making a Yuloh which includes a blueprint showing how to proportion it for any size boat. .... Just today as we go to update the site we have gotten our first ever order from Russia. It was for our Scantlings Rule Book from a person building a 32 foot Lyle Hess design. .... Also it is worth mentioning that we just sent out a quote on designing a 100 ton commercial sailing vessel. This would be a fun design to do if we got it!

02/06/98 & 02/13/98 - One interesting thing that came in this week was a request from the government of an African nation for a quote on designing and building two roughly 100' yachts. We sent back a quote on doing a preliminary design with computer renderings of appearance and a rough idea of pricing. We'll keep you posted if anything comes of this! .... A helpful reader gently reminded us that the dates on this page should now read 1998 instead of  '97. We're really hard working nice people. We just don't know what year it is. .... Last year our website was really available to people only in the second half of the year. We noticed that stock plans and publications
sales were more than double those of the year before. Most of this was in the last three months of the year.
In January and the first week of February this year we have done more business than all of last year! Thank you
very much, folks. We have also noticed that due to this very rapid increase in orders we have been understocked
on books from other publishers. We are doing our best to correct this but many of you will notice that we are
badly underachieving on our goal of getting plans and publications out within 24 hours. We are sorry and hope
to be caught up on book inventory by the end of February. .... In the Eastport area products and services section we have added a link to Carl's Wood Shop. Carl does custom built furniture using traditional designs. He also buys and sells antique tools. .... We had a temporary glitch with our Service Provider that might conceivably have resulted in losing some orders placed on either February 12th or February 13th. If you placed an order on those dates you might want to resend it so we can be sure we got it. .... We've put in an improved illustration for the page on the Julie and Juliette yacht tenders. .... For some reason we left out of the Yacht Design School Bibliography two of the best resources you can have for people's thoughts on boat construction. These are Professional Boatbuilder and WoodenBoat Magazine. Let them know we sent you. PB is for all materials. WB is exclusively on modern and traditional wood methods. Remember these are forums with many differing and often contradictory opinions expressed.

01/30/98 - This week we've made a minor modification to the Yacht Design School page to make it easier for people to find the enrollment form. .... We've also added the new Quoddy Tides front page which has some of the information on the late great ice storm. Most people in Maine have power back now. .... This week we have done some minor editing in the Custom Design section of our catalog. Mainly this was the updating of drawing pricing. .... This week we have added a brief review of our Sheathed Strip Construction Article which we have retitled with the current working title for magazine publication "The Sheathed Strip Alternative". By the way a kind reader of this web site called up the other day to tell us that our Sheathed Strip Construction Scantlings rule is mentioned in the latest edition of Gougeon Brother's magazine "Epoxyworks". Gougeon has for
a number of years sent a large number of people to us for scantlings rules and advice. We can also endorse them as having always provided us with good products and services. 

01/23/98 - Apparently some people ordering books, plans, design quotes, or art prints have been submitting their order several times. Occasionally we have come close to filling orders twice that obviously were just the same order submitted two or three times. This brought us to the conclusion that we needed to incorporate a confirmation page that would come up when folks place an order. We've put this in place. Be sure to let us know if you find it doesn't work correctly. .... In the marine publishing section we have added one of our articles Living Aboard: Figuring the Costs. Since we get a huge amount of email with live aboard questions I have no idea why we didn't offer that article before. We have also added a recommendation for My Old Man and the Sea by David & Daniel Hays which is an excellent read about a father and son team on a Vertue rounding the Horn. As always if you can't find it locally we can get it for you. .... While nobody can see this on the site we have made some improvements to the order forms to allow faster processing of orders. We have also made some more very minor changes in the layout of the marine publishing page to make it slightly clearer. The increase in demand for publications from us has exceeded our anticipations. .... In a burst of mutual good feeling our boat yard operation and Presidential Realty have exchanged links. If you go to our products page and click the link you'll be able to see some pictures of the fabulous bargains in houses in this area. .... Due to weather keeping us inside this weekend we haven't been able to get a copy of the Quoddy Tides so there will be a mid-week update with the new front page.

01/16/98 - Recently we have had a lot of demand for more general information on working with epoxy and especially for information on "osmosis" blister repair on fiberglass boats. As a result we have added to our marine publishing page and order form most of the publications of Gougeon Brothers, Inc. on using epoxy in boat building and repair. These are the best publications available that we know of. Remember one of the big advangtages of buying from us is that we really use the information in these books and can advise you by email as part of the service if you don't understand something. We sell and use their publications and products because they are good. This does not mean that there are not other acceptable epoxies. However we cannot recommend what we do not use. .... We have also added another book "in progress" to be called Fiberglass Boat Evaluation. This will be a manual which will include our fiberglass scantlings rule with additional material for the amateur or new professional on surveying existing boats to find out how closely they conform to our standards for fiberglass construction and what repairs they may need. To my knowledge we are the only remaining supplier of scantlings information on fiberglass boats in the United States.

01/09/98 - Oh boy are we behind! The great ice storm of 1998 is still a crisis in Maine as I write this. Our wonderful little city of Eastport was without power for several days and most of the area around is still without power. However Eastport still has an old generating plant which must date back to practically the dawn of time. With very dedicated work local people were able to get two of the three generators on line. For a while though material for this site was being hand written next to a wood stove by kerosene light. This is not how I assume most people develop material for a web site! .... Again this week we have a front page for the Quoddy Tides. It doesn't tell about the big storm. That will probably be in the next issue. .... Right at the moment we are finishing up some drafting which modifies a design by another firm for sheathed strip construction and are printing up and sending a number Yacht Design School lesson orders, plans orders and sending out some books. .... We hope by Friday to have sent out detailed responses to some questions received by email and to have put on some ordering information for books that some of our readers are having trouble finding.

01/02/98 - Our thanks to Jim in Kansas for his proofreading of last week's additions. We hate to have spelling and grammer errors on the site. Everybody is welcome to pitch in and proof read! .... Again this week we have added some minor corrections to the Yacht Design School Bibliography. Eventually our goal is to have these books available through our marine publishing section. .... On our marine publishing navigation page we have added a list of our favorite sailing oriented novels. If you can't find these near you let us know. We will be setting up to sell these as soon as we can anyway.

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