“I don’t know how to do that. But I will figure it out and get back to you.”

This is my favorite part about working at Rockport Marine; I utter these words or similar almost every day. “Figuring it out” could take a couple of minutes, or it might take an entire day. It doesn’t really matter—either way it’s an enjoyable, challenging and rewarding way to spend your day.

At its core, design is puzzles and problem solving. The puzzles we have at Rockport Marine tend to be large, with a gajillion pieces ranging from new to beyond repair. There are pieces missing and there are extra pieces. Some of the pieces you will need are available in a catalog. Some you will have to invent and manufacture yourself. They are expected to fit together perfectly into a finished assembly whose physical beauty, quality of craftsmanship, elegance of engineering, and prowess under sail or power will inspire all who step aboard. Oh, I almost forgot. It should also last forever. Or maybe almost forever. Some of our grandkids might pursue this line of work and it is probably okay if a few things need fixing by then.

Rockport Marine is a busy place. So there are always puzzles in abundance. We don’t see most of them in the design office because they get solved by the crew and the project managers every day. The solutions take the form of ingenious jigs, and tools improvised or invented that increase the accuracy, efficiency, or otherwise improve the execution of the task at hand. I’d be surprised if we see 1% of the puzzles, but they tend to be good ones so I thought I might share a few.

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This must be a stressful time for marketing professionals. It seems I keep reading about the demise of traditional avenues for advertising. From what I’m told, ever evolving “Social Media” seems to be the panacea , but it would appear that the constant shape-shifting makes it pretty hard to get a firm grip on that too. Likely the feeling of uncertainty about where this is all headed is the first indication that I am no longer an especially youthful member of the labor force. I remember watching how my parents’ awkward, stumbling, negotiations with various forms of “new technology” resulted in what I interpreted to be reluctance followed by resignation of their growing technological obsolescence (for carbon dating purposes those technologies included ATM machines and cordless phones) . It is no comfort to me that, at age 34, I may be approaching the same obsolescence, but I tell myself that this apparent inability to keep current has more to do with the amount of time spent cooking and cleaning up after kids than ossification of cerebral tissue. For the record, prior to my Father’s aforementioned resignation I had the opportunity to learn my first engineering axiom: violence and portable electronics do not mix.

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Here in the design office at Rockport Marine we have the benefit and added pressure of working with 50 of the best boat builders you could ever hope to find. This means that when a design can be called genuinely beautiful and satisfies the pragmatic experience of that crowd we can claim a measure of success. It’s a pretty tall order so when we recently came across a new tool purpose built for engineering elegance we were keen to give it a spin. The restoration of Adventuress gave us the opportunity.

The spar loft here at Rockport Marine is a huge library of what works well aloft (and sometimes what doesn’t) but designing the rigging hardware for an 83’ schooner is a huge job and a few of the fittings warranted a more detailed engineering analysis.

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