A Time Of Transition

     This moment marks a transition in course and construct for the long, creative voyage of the Persson family. More than twelve decades after Frans ran away to sea, more than five decades after Finisterre won her third Bermuda Race, and after more than three decades of brothers Rick and Jon carrying on the craft and trade, the passing of Rick Persson marks a change from a purely craftsmanship-driven business to a design and tooling driven business. While over the past decades many new designs have resulted in many new boats, logistically speaking it will be necessary now to utilize technology and outside production sources to carry out many key processes. This will allow the dual opportunities of concentrating on developing a catalog of fully tooled designs, while creating the potential of new work for numerous manufacturers and boatbuilders.

     However, the course between the present position and future critical waypoints will require a few long tacks to reach. Upon Rick's passing, the shop and offices in Centerbrook had to be closed down, with all the vital pieces stored away, for the time being. A business based in craftsmanship survives by the labor, talent, and skill of the craftsman; and, the halving of craftsmen made continuing at that location untenable. But now the first long tack is before your eyes, a discussion of designs, structure, ideas and concepts. Existing works will be described and put on offer, and new works will be added when ready; which brings us to the next long tack.

     As the first physical step towards re-constructing the business, an office will be set up and established in the coming months suitable to the design work, writing, marketing, and business office needs of the enterprise. A central part of this process will be the digitizing of all designs (a tack long overdue, alas), and the use of digital media to inform and interact with the supporters of this business..

     The latter idea  --- interacting with groups of people ---- comes with the prospect of developing designs with "crowd-source" input, the objective being to reach  consensus points that will allow the interests of many people to be met by single designs. Or, of many people contributing to the process of creating a special purpose design for a single person.

     The digitizing of existing and new designs opens up a vast array of possibilities, including material options, precision cutting of parts and set-up jigs, scaling up or down of designs, and so on. Many concepts of structure and layout are economically possible and greatly simplify the construction process.

     The next posting will continue this discussion of general boat design and construction concepts, and of the next tacks planned for the Persson boat business.