thesis adventure

What started as a simple day trip to Mystic, CT for the 19th Annual WoodenBoat Show metamorphosed into an epic three day adventure over land and sea to ports of call including Greenport, Orient Point, and Shelter Island, NY and East Lyme, New London, and Mystic, CT (plus some small towns on back roads between Mystic and New London). In May, the thesis team of Dixon, Lachtman, and Mouravieff (henceforth, Lidia, Andy, and Hampton) made plans to attend the WoodenBoat Show as a means of conducting parametric research for our senior thesis project. Lidia, Andy, and I are designing a solar-electric, wooden launch for our thesis. Our thesis will take the design from blank paper screen to construction-ready drawings. In order to do that, we need to know something everything about wooden boats. Because we all are aren't great wooden shipbuilders, there's a very large stack of books to read.

Each year, WoodenBoat magazine in association with the Mystic Seaport produce the WoodenBoat Show. The show is an excellent opportunity to see hundreds of wooden boats built by professionals, museums, families, and individuals. We thought it would be a great way to see, feel, smell, and hear about wooden boat building. (Don't worry there's great food in the adventure so as not to leave out our fifth sense.)

The day before the boat show, invitations to Seth Cooley's and Schuyler Needham's houses in East Lyme, CT and on Shelter Island, NY prompted our day trip to grow.

Thursday evening we chilled at Seth's house on the water in Connecticut. Seth took us out for a quick round of wake skating and wake boarding under a great sunset. After it grew too dark, we sat around Seth's patio while his dad grilled steaks and steamed lobsters. Dinner was fantastic, and it marked the beginning of a great weekend of food. (I told you we used all five senses.) Some other Webbies joined us for dinner, and it turned into a Webb party complete with a girl visiting from Scotland. The talking and games went late into the night until the thesis crew realized that we had to be up and out early in the morning.

King Neptune with a creature from the deep

More pictures from the entire trip can be viewed here.

Getting to Mystic from East Lyme is a snap. I-95 provides a quick, 15-minute link between the two towns. That is, it provides a quick link if there isn't a fuel tanker that spills diesel fuel all over I-95 two exits before Mystic. The tanker accident effectively shut down the interstate, prompting us to "choose our own adventure" on the back roads to Mystic. Can you imagine a time without a dash-mounted GPS? Technology has improved our lives in so many ways -- the only problem being that it has improved ALL of our lives, including the other 10,000 cars trying to go north on I-95. The traffic planners that mapped out the road(s) to Mystic didn't plan on that kind of traffic volume. We crept along to Mystic as the day approached noon. Finally, we ditched the Jeep just west of the Mystic drawbridge and decided to walk the last 1.5 miles to Mystic Seaport.

Our walking adventure commenced directly after the "where can I park so that the Jeep is still here this afternoon?" adventure. I'm glad we walked -- we found a great deli/ice cream shop at the drawbridge, the Mystic Drawbridge Ice Cream Shop.

The boat show proved to be quite a success. We talked to some folks, took a ride on a repowered electric launch from 1903, and learned a few things about boat building. I even had the opportunity to listen to a launch operator who spoke in stream of consciousness. A real (GHP) Commie treat!

The 19th Annual WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport

We packed up for the New London-Orient Point Ferry to head back to Long Island. Schuyler invited us to Shelter Island to see the custom boat shop and meet another wooden boat designer who used to work at Sparkman and Stephens. Shelter Island was a nifty place, and I can understand why so many people vacation there in the summer.

Shelter Island's Coecles Harbor Marina under moonlight

Our thesis adventure drew to a close the next morning as we shoved off for Webb. Lidia and Andy had to get back early for family and travel obligations. I, on the other hand, had time to burn as I waited for the next leg of my summer travels to begin.

What do you see in the clouds reaching up to the Moon?

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Posted in: ferry,mystic seaport,shelter island,thesis,WoodenBoat

at it again

It has been a few months, admittedly. To those (to one) of you who have frantically wondered what happened since Day 4 in Egypt, I've got a quick summary in this post to bring you up to speed.

After leaving Dubai at the end of February, classes resumed in full force. This semester marked the beginning of the Webb Trifecta: ship design, marine engineering design work, and thesis. Over the duration of sixteen weeks, our class completed conceptual designs for six different "small" ships, a preliminary design for a product carrier fire main, and researched and selected thesis topics. We also continued to take classes like hydrodynamics, ship structures, and American government. The end of the semester ended in its usual whirlwind.

And now, I'm at it again. Most Webbies take the summer for themselves and turn down job offers. We all need a certain amount of decompression time after the "total emersion" curriculum. Be it an indicator of my mental health: my decompression starts with three days in Newport, continues with 5 days at home, jumps to the Middle East for 30 days, hops back to Newport for another 7 days, and ends with Leadership Week back at Webb on the 16th of August. Now, in words, that doesn't look too daunting, but don't forget that I have to travel to all of these places. It's a 4.5-hour drive from Webb to Newport (on a good day), and a 15-hour flight to Dubai. Did I mention that when I go "home" that I am actually only spending two days in Georgia and the rest in Charleston? Yes, my decompression is a little spastic.

Why do it? Well, the Haida project is super cool, and I get to go back to Dubai for a month. (Regrettably, in the middle of the blazing summer...)

So what do you have to look forward to seeing and reading this summer? I'm covering a smorgasbord of destinations Newport, Mystic, East Lyme, Glen Cove, Shelter Island, Jacksonville, Kingsland, Charleston, Pawley's Island, Dubai, Sharjah, and who knows where else I might land.

It's game on, readers. There's a world out there for making waves, and I'm at it again.

Sunset at Webb Institute

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Posted in: announcements