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[Kay C Lan]

On 7/8/07, Jim Sims <sims at ezpzapps.com> wrote:
Thanks Jim for putting in the effort to email your mate, but as a hobbyist,
it looks a little over my head.


> Any New Zealanders on the list have a sailboat??


[OT] my brother (and the company he worked for) did the computer aided
engineering stress analysis for 'One Australia', the America's cup contender
which famously broke in half off New Zealand - thereby again taking the
Australians into the record books as, not only had they been the first to
take the America's Cup from the American's, they were now the first (and
only) to sink during the event ;-)

Needless to say the team were more than angry and came looking for blood -
and huge financial compensation. The team were sat down and asked what sea
state they were sailing in, [I'm not a sailor so I don't know the exact
numbers but for arguments sake it was something like] the team replied 5.
The team were then asked to what sea state they had indicated would be the
maximum the boat was expected to withstand and therefore the design limit
the computer team had been tasked to design to. They indicated 3. The team
was asked to come back a day or so latter, at which point, free of charge,
they were shown the simulation of their boat being put through sea state 5 -
it broke in half, exactly where the real boat did!

Needless to say the team walked away with a reinforced understanding of the
old computer adage, the information you get out is only as good as the
information you put in.

I know this doesn't help you with finding a sailing partner for your mate,
but if he needs a boat designed that will snap in half, I know just the guy
for the job ;-)

[Way OT] For the most interesting comparison between religion and America's
Cup racing have a read of this:

http://www.peterballard.org/acup.html

It'll probably upset a few Kiwis and Aussies to discover they never really
won the cup.