Amateur boat building in Europe.
Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 10:13 am
Lately, several of our European amateur boat builders have requested detailed design information in order to fill some government forms.
Our boats are professionally designed, float in their lines and perform well. All appropriate calculations were done during the design. In most cases, I can provide a set of hydrostatic calculations since they were done at the design stage.
Weight spreadsheets are proprietary and I will not distribute them unless the study plans specify it (like for the CT22).
For most speed boats, speed predictions are available, done either by the simple Crouch method or for later designs, by the Savitzky method.
Our boats are designed to conform to the ABYC standards which are used by the USCG. Those standards are close to the ISO rules.
We use Rulefinder for conformity checks.
We use ORCA3D from DRS Defense Solutions for most of our calculations. This is the software used by the US Navy and USCG. For some other calculations we use our own spreadsheets.
Not all that information is available to builders for all boats. It is not always included in the price you pay for the plans.
Some of my boats were designed before the ISO rules existed and others were designed using different software. In that case, extracting the data from a new model will be costly and time consuming.
Let's make a few things clear:
- To the best of my knowledge, an amateur does not need any type of plans homologation to build one boat. Only professional builders have to go through a certification procedure. Many of our designs were launched in Europe without any registration problems.
- In some countries, officials will ask the builder to fill a large number of compliance forms. In most cases, those officials are confusing amateur boat building and professional requirements. Amateur boat building is not as wide spread in Europe as in North America and Australia/New Zealand and officials are not always familiar with their own rules.
- I understand that it is difficult to fight those demands but you must understand that we, designers, can not spend countless hours filling forms or doing unnecessary calculations, different for each country. It seems that in Europe, despite ISO, each country has its own way of calculating things. Boat plans for amateurs easily cost 10 times more in Europe for that reason.
- Many builders have avoided those hassles by declaring the boat to be their own design or an experimental type one.
- most of the rules have nothing to do with design: type of fire resistant fuel hoses and stanchions height? That's are up to the builder.
- If you want us to do some calculations or fill official forms, there will be a charge for that service or we will direct you to a company that provide those services. For example, for ISO conformity, there are several companies that will do that work for about 2 or 3,000 Euros.
Calculations can be done at an hourly rate, that rate will be slightly higher than what a mechanic is paid in the US: $ 100.00/hour with a minimum of 4 hours.
Sorry about those limits but we have lately spent a good amount of time responding to those questions.
We must put a limit to what is included in the price of the plans.
Our plans are very moderately priced, in some cases they cost 5 to 10 times less than similar plans in Europe or Australia. To keep those prices low, we must charge separately for that information.
Our boats are professionally designed, float in their lines and perform well. All appropriate calculations were done during the design. In most cases, I can provide a set of hydrostatic calculations since they were done at the design stage.
Weight spreadsheets are proprietary and I will not distribute them unless the study plans specify it (like for the CT22).
For most speed boats, speed predictions are available, done either by the simple Crouch method or for later designs, by the Savitzky method.
Our boats are designed to conform to the ABYC standards which are used by the USCG. Those standards are close to the ISO rules.
We use Rulefinder for conformity checks.
We use ORCA3D from DRS Defense Solutions for most of our calculations. This is the software used by the US Navy and USCG. For some other calculations we use our own spreadsheets.
Not all that information is available to builders for all boats. It is not always included in the price you pay for the plans.
Some of my boats were designed before the ISO rules existed and others were designed using different software. In that case, extracting the data from a new model will be costly and time consuming.
Let's make a few things clear:
- To the best of my knowledge, an amateur does not need any type of plans homologation to build one boat. Only professional builders have to go through a certification procedure. Many of our designs were launched in Europe without any registration problems.
- In some countries, officials will ask the builder to fill a large number of compliance forms. In most cases, those officials are confusing amateur boat building and professional requirements. Amateur boat building is not as wide spread in Europe as in North America and Australia/New Zealand and officials are not always familiar with their own rules.
- I understand that it is difficult to fight those demands but you must understand that we, designers, can not spend countless hours filling forms or doing unnecessary calculations, different for each country. It seems that in Europe, despite ISO, each country has its own way of calculating things. Boat plans for amateurs easily cost 10 times more in Europe for that reason.
- Many builders have avoided those hassles by declaring the boat to be their own design or an experimental type one.
- most of the rules have nothing to do with design: type of fire resistant fuel hoses and stanchions height? That's are up to the builder.
- If you want us to do some calculations or fill official forms, there will be a charge for that service or we will direct you to a company that provide those services. For example, for ISO conformity, there are several companies that will do that work for about 2 or 3,000 Euros.
Calculations can be done at an hourly rate, that rate will be slightly higher than what a mechanic is paid in the US: $ 100.00/hour with a minimum of 4 hours.
Sorry about those limits but we have lately spent a good amount of time responding to those questions.
We must put a limit to what is included in the price of the plans.
Our plans are very moderately priced, in some cases they cost 5 to 10 times less than similar plans in Europe or Australia. To keep those prices low, we must charge separately for that information.