Sabre Yacht field trip

   The yacht design class took a field trip to Sabre Yachts on Friday. The company is about 45 minutes away from Kennebunkport. (Our instructors told us it was an hour and a half away to trick us into getting there on time. We were all in charge of getting there on our own. So a lot of us were there pretty early. Dumb.)
   This field trip was a lot more beneficial compared to previous trips because I've learned so much. I was able to walk around and look at parts of the boat and know what all of it was. The man giving us the tour was using all kinds of fancy boat language and I was able to understand every word (Okay, maybe there were a couple words that were over my head when he started talking about the ventilation system. But we haven't covered that in class yet!)

   

   I saw a LOT of 3M products around the shop. 

   They use "yellow foam" as a core material in their hulls. This yellow foam is the exact same stuff we use in Industrial Design at ISU for making models and prototypes. So that was neat.

   

   Sabre's attention to detail is crazy. The do all custom cabinetry. We watched some girls varnishing doors and stuff before it is installed onto the boat.... and then later saw that same girl inside of the boat with a flashlight touching up anything she could. 

   Their COO is a guy who was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa. He wasn't at work when we were touring, so I didn't get to introduce myself. I told the guy who was giving us a tour to at least tell the guy from Des Moines that one of The Landing School kids is also from Iowa and went to Iowa State... and that I say hello? Haha. Idk.
   Speaking of Iowa State, TJ Maxx in Biddeford, MAINE has Iowa State sweatshirts. Odd.

   After the tour we ate at this place. Buck's Naked BBQ. Is it a chain? I hadn't heard of it. But I think that was the best burger I've ever had in my life (or maybe I was just happy to finally eat real food after trying to eat healthy the last two or three weeks). Our instructor, Derek, recommended it, so most of the class stopped there to eat together. So good. They also had a weird drink on the menu... a Mojito with a pineapple glazed rib in it. Looked gross but we all were tempted to try it anyway. But we decided against getting alcoholic drinks with our instructors at 11:00 in the morning before going back to school. 

   I went to The Hive again on Friday and Saturday. This band was playing Friday night and they were fantastic. I am SO EXCITED that they are playing again in Portland when Devin and I will be there. 

Muddy Ruckus & the Burners with Ryan Flaherty

   The guy singing in this video is Ryan Flaherty. The other two are different people from who performed at The Hive. So I'm not sure what to expect when the band performs in Portland. But I still plan on checking it out.

   This is the last week of the semester. Which means I'm half way done with yacht design school. It is going by fast. I turn in my sailboat project this Friday. Here is the most recent homework I turned in. We had to design the sail plan. It included calculations like sail area, center of effort, center of lift, and moment and load calculations to determine how thick the mast and lines/ropes had to be so they don't break.

This is the technical CAD drawing.

This is me playing on my Cintiq.

Happy :)

   I am happy I got to hang out with this beautiful dog during my two week break from school. 

   Being back in Maine is good too, though. The semester is almost over. I am finishing up a final design project that will be turned in on January 31. It is the 11.15 meter sailboat. I designed everything from the machinery arrangement, interior layout, sail and rigging plan, and so on. It has been a lot of fun. I guess the only complaint I have is that they gave us the shell of the boat from the beginning. The exterior style and shape of the boat was predetermined. I look forward to future projects later in the year where I get to decide on the exterior styling of the yacht. This brings up another point... We only learned about sailboat design for the first semester. During the second semester we get to learn about power boats. I am much more interested in designing powerboats, so I am excited to start. 

   I tried another new recipe this weekend. Chicken pesto pasta. But I didn't make the pesto sauce myself... I didn't even mince garlic... I used a garlic paste instead. It was still good though! Really good. I especially liked the crushed red pepper part because I like spicy food. It was a very easy recipe so I didn't mess it up... Garlic, crushed red pepper, sun-dried tomatoes, chicken, noodles, and pesto. 

   I follow "Earth Pics" on Twitter. It just posts cool pictures of places around the world... cool vacation destinations... stuff like that. It recently posted a picture of people swimming in Greece. Look at how similar this picture is to a picture of ME swimming in Cinque Terre, Italy.

Random people in Greece

Paige Mitchell in Italy

   I am having a fish problem. Poor Rocco II might have to be renamed to Sammi II... Because he has a bad tail like Sammi. But the fish might be on its way to the toilet any day now, so naming him Sammi would make me sad. So his new name is Nemo II. He had a hard time adjusting to the new tank water I gave them. He got sick and was basically immobile... so the other two fish ate his tail. But he is feeling much better and has been swimming around the tank as happy as can be for the past week now.. with no tail. See... look at it compared to the other two fish tails:

   I got a Wacom Cintiq for Christmas and am having a lot of fun playing on it! I haven't created any masterpieces YET. But I will be sure to post them as I complete them.

   This reminds me that I finished Kelly's drawing of Tom Hanks. The drawing is Tom  Hanks in character in the movie Cloud Atlas. I am very happy with the results and I think Kelly was too. Here is the drawing:

   The weather had been so nice in Kennebunkport since I got back from vacation. It had been above freezing every day and even reach the 50's a few of the days. Almost all of the snow was melted and the golf course was even green! But then this happened on Saturday... Oh well. It is pretty:

   And for the most EXCITING news: I have had some success in the job search lately! I had a great interview with a company in Florida and am flying down there to visit their office in a couple weeks. I hope to have more to say about that later. :)



   Thats all for now... and I just thought this picture was funny: