round britain record boat - help required

[Guest]

Re: cheque please

I wonder if we can get some nutter in the states to do some or all of the work and ship the thing back. Tough exchange rate but they do seem a lot more au fait with gas-guzzling woompah boats than the girlie lot down on the solent fallapart crappo sailyboat catamarans, and much better paintjob g'teed. I wd've have thort a reasonable spec sent to ole Pa double-ton Fanblade Whitney and his boys near some lakes in s carolina a good idea. in the films they always seem to do an excellenet weldy worky job for not too much cash, and the whole THRUST project cost only 2million.

This compares wonderfully against massive telly adverts for management consultants, now bit boring. Your lot do seem vaguley marine with sharks, desert islands and the like -or was that the other half? Anways, we'll call it Android 1, or Consultantsea, or The Consultant! or praps as a cat they might prefer Double Disbursements or The Partnership , take your pick in exchange for reasonable cheque for £2m tops shd do it. Big cat also has advantage of lots of overhead camera company name shots on news at ten. Fuel consumption/type calcs awaited.

 

[jfm]

Re: cheque is in the fax

Sharks campaign was while ago. But praps I can persuade the gang to do new campaign in Q1 2002, massive billboards Times Square, CNN, acres of the corporate colour. In which case £2m seems drop in the ocean (pardon metaphor) if boat painted corporate colour, called a 3-letter word that might feature big in ads, and much TV helicopter shots. I'll do the fuel weight stuff when find slide rule, work up proposal, and sort it. Who's gonna drive this baby?

Talking of cats, completely tangentially but just occurred to me, have you booked Pete Goss as guest speaker for LVplc Christmas bash, per my rec earlier this year? We hired him for a bash earlier this year, highly recommend, captivating speaker and scary videos and stills of Southern Ocean horrors.

 

[Guest]

Re: royal navy thing

It's that restored royal navy wotist world war zooming around the channel boat. 30+ knots in a force 5/6 looks the part, but not fast enuf for our purposes. We need steady 70-80mph on slight sea with 40+ tons of juice on board. Nonetheless, not a bad idea , and I was most encouraged that the propsed craft would be covered in real fur, not fake.

 

[Guest]

Re: cheque is in the fax

ooh I'll have a bash at driving and/or do some nav. Prob get some nutcase greasemonkey chaps too, plus of course 1 memebr of crew shd be from the sponsor so it's touchy feely, and that F1 british chap also may be handy, and quite cheap.

 

[Guest]

Re: preliminary design approved

As a result of inherent british engineering know-how, and guessing, the BB seems to have landed on a suitable design. A jet powered, planing catamaran. Read all about this design (and praps see how much to buy the other half of their jet engine) on http://www.quicksilver-wsr.co.uk

 

[jfm]

Re: \'gines sourced

Hmm tres interesting. Turbofan seems the way to go then. By coincidence our in-house VC fund has an interest in a company that runs the last remaining biggish fleet of BAC 1-11s out of the UK, and does all UK servicing of them. I did some bits of this investment a few years ago. The thing is, the 1-11 is basket case because the 'gines will not meet noise regs after 2004 and it's not economic to re-engine them. Actually they're whisper smooth inside the plane in the front rows, the people on the ground go deaf. And before you ask, all this noise stuff was fully factored into our investment. But the point is, we can get Spey motors off BAC 1-11s for 10-a-penny, why gosh here's one in the corner of my office. So, apart from humungous ear defenders (Sony actives, I think) we've just got to sort the hulls now. Glasplies praps?

On the Quicksilver website, what does "leviation" mean (in the caption when you hover over the pic)? Or is it typo for leviathan as in sea monster?

 

[Guest]

Re: elevation

So exaccly how much is a jet engine then, dya think?

Not sure bout making the hull thing, but it will be to be very big. Otherwise erm it won't be 90 feet long. Round the back of tower bridge in St Kathrine I saw the disused ferry boats, aluminium catamarans, remeber them? But mebbe not planing enuf, and not very big either, 60 feet? I'm sure they did 30+ ish tho. Nice and comfy, and cheap too. rip the seats out, slap the fan on the back as a test bed to see wot'll it do anyway. Or borrow all six, install midget http://www.microjeteng.com
jet engines and synchronise movements (haydn, nich, dave s etc) for spectacular cheating at mindblowing 18 hours dead.

 

[Guest]

Here's three ideas, each one barmier than the one before so should fit in well here.

First off according to www.boatered.com, (look in non boating related forum) and there's a post about the speed of US aircraft carriers. Lots of "ho hum, well my lips are sealed but I'm reliably informed" and the upshot is that they reckon a couple of their big nuke carriers can do 70mph. No I don't believe it either but.... So that'd be pretty quick and take record off eyeties, but then the yanks would have the record so that's no good and I think carriers are being used somewhere warm at present. (Mustn't make jokes about Afghanistan or Kim will pull this post like he did my last).

Second option is the jet one. should be able to pick up a s\hand JT8 or similar for $5 or $10K dollars specially since loads of airplanes parked in desert at present, or better still RB211 or Trent off BA 747 or 777. Trent's a better engine 'cos it sounds rivery and hence nautical flavour. Fuel's going to be the problem though as others have said.

Third option is just to buy s\hand Lightning\Tornado\Harrier or similar and bolt on to "not quite perfectly moulded hence selling cheap" Manhattan hull. Though must be the blue hull, not white, Matt doesn't like the white hulls. Fill M\H with fuel and use just as fuel tank like with the Shuttle and the big tank. Should hold loads and RAf planes have in-flight refuel probe (or fit one) so get RAF Tristar to do low level in flight refuel, or stop near RAF bases on way. Valley in Wales and Kinloss in Scotland I think are near the sea, otherwise BarryD in MV2 with a big fuel can on wheelabrrow can do it. If weight gets to be problem, cut off airplane wings, or if weight not a problem, fill wings with fuel too. Sort of turn the airplane in to a wingless seaplane. Alternatively I know of a Tristar that's up for breaking, for $200K, and that's got 3 engines + lots of other bits that could be sold on, but Tristar probably too big for this and might look silly.


Wonder if Ryanair or easyjet would sponsor it. Round Britain trip for £9.99 + tax.

Oh and hull must be Olesinski or Bennet design so Fairline\Princess\Sealine etc can have logo on the side and say Support British Boating and Barmy Matt For President of Europe etc.

Might sound expensive but about 10 yrs ago a colleague of mine bought an ex RAF Vampire for £250 at an MoD car boot sale auction. Not allowed to fly it, it had past it's sell by date and had a broken spar in the wing, but he had it in the entrance to his company and said that when he first got it the engines ran. Give it a couple of months and there might be some war surplus aircraft up for auction at really cheap prices.
Oh and how many miles is this Round Britain trip?

 

[Guest]

1450 nautical miles ish. Excellent ideas, tho not sure that a slightly mis-moulded manhatten hull gets chucked in a skip. The bodging up of what appears to be a total cockup is known in UK as "craftsmanship".

 

[Guest]

ahah, so now we've got a name for the boat too.

Craftsmanship

Got a good ring to it, traditional, olde worlde, proper, right sounding Britishness about it. Hmmm

 

[jfm]

Re: motors easy

Am checking a few leads. Likely can get jet (I mean turbo fan, a jet in the middle with high bypass ratio turbofan) that is notcurrent (like a spey off BAC 1-11) for about $15k with lots of spares thrown in. I suggest two, not contra rotating but that's ok. Location= Brighton, need someone with a van to pick em up or Pauline B can pick up in her lunch break. In accordance with previous practice I hereby donate all the fuel. So we need a hull, that's all, that's the hard bit. Thinking caps on. Matts idea of a passenger ferry isn't bad, and when we've finished Dreemer can buy it for Greek daytrip scam I mean venture. What do you reckon?

 

[Guest]

Re: ooh heck : Anneka?

$15k is cheap! And that bloke with water speed thing trying to kill himself as fast as posssible has a spare one.

If all else fails, try what we did with our driveway and Ask Anneka. It always works. C'mon you lazy old cow, I need to go drive to the airport in the morning so I need a nice new driveway by tomoorow morning at 8am, giving you 14 hours. Hurry up!

 

[jfm]

Re: Anneka?

Nice bum. Driveway story? What shall we say, "come on we have a turbo fan and we need a 90 foot hull to attach it to, welded or glued by Thursday, common you lazy cow make one, we'll all raz round in that naff turquoise buggy while you do it, hurry up!!" Will that do it, in your actual experience of her? Or get those junkyard challengers or whatever they're called on Saturday TV (Jeeze do they bodge up a pile of pigeon-sh!t-welded crud....)

 

[Guest]

Re: Anneka?

I saw the lovely bridge at Wadebridge built by her lot in record time, so she seems ideal. There must be a lot of out-takes, where she bounces into the bakers shop and asks for lunchtime sarnies for 200 people for free, and they tell her to get stuffed, and such.

In the same area, some mates at a round table or whatever did a sort of orienteering thing where you have to collect a load of thingsm, find clues and return to see who wins. First offf was a platform ticket, so out team found train station, and then under my supervision picked up every single paltfrom ticket to stuff the others. Then proceeded to find a handstand and other things, mostly by knocking on a door and ask for a hatstand please. Some success, and we won. So, praps colin can ring up sunseeker and ask for a hull - but not an old nanky one please. He'll need a nice new leotard of course.

 

[Guest]

Re: Nahhh

It's new. Designed a couple of years ago. They tried real fur but it showed up on radar, so they're using a kevlar based synthetic fur developed by NASA for the Star Wars programme. Makes the tail totally invisible, apparently.