Had I been more ambitious I'd have stolen my neighbors fence posts & maybe a sheet or two off the clothesline (what the hell, need lashings, the line too) & could have been sailing by now. Instead I read through this thread & now know more about FC hulls than I ever thought I'd want to.
I think that if we can draw any conclusions they would be as follows ... first, we benefit here from knowledgeable and tenacious people ... second, against all odds, rocks can float ... third, whatever the material, any dependable structure has to be built with respect for the properties of the material(s) in question.
It wasn't that long ago that I first heard of the very existence of FC hulls & will have to admit that my immediate reaction was "yeah, right" but what I do know from my own decades of experience (industrial tooling) is that poor quality can be achieved with any material. Those of us that do or intend to trust our lives to any given boat would be well advised to be completely familiar with that boat.
Perhaps the bottom line is personal choice. It would be a tedious world if we all agreed on a "One Design" principal & pursued no options for fulfillment of our own personal requirements in performance characteristics such as cost, stability, comfort, durability, mass, speed, depth of draft or whatever else.
Choices are cool and choices are what design engineering is all about. In overly simplistic terms, choices & compromise ARE the process & the process serves to enhance desired characteristics while still mitigating characteristics not desired. What we've seen in this thread is a lot of the information necessary for intelligent & informed choices that will fulfill personal needs (needs that won't necessarily fulfill another's).
And now, I'll excuse myself ... those fence posts are still lookin` good & I need to wander over next door before the nice lady's laundry dries ...
Troubledour
