Anything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong
September 2024 Edition

Anything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong

SHOULD A COPY OF MURPHY'S LAW BE POSTED ON THE WALL OF EVERY YACHT DESIGN AND PLANS-REVIEW OFFICE?


Edward Aloysius Murphy Jr. was an American aerospace engineer of safety-critical systems — Wikipedia


“As a naval architect having designed all manner of vessels, and worked in plan approval at [a major classification society] , I can tell you that Murphy's Law is definitely not ever considered….” DM from a FYBBO reader:

This snippet arrived in my inbox as part of a longer message received after I published an article on vessel stability and down-flooding, as they potentially related to the recent tragic sinking of the yacht Bayesian.

In that article, I remarked that my experience over the years has been that many naval architects and engineers working in yacht design and plans-review offices tend, at times, to forget Murphy’s Law — as do most of us involved in yacht building — when large, expensive, and profitable projects are at stake, and when demanding, ultra-wealthy buyers and owners focus primarily on aesthetics and convenience.

??[? Bayesian Disaster Follow-Up? ]??

To be honest, I am not sure whether the intent of that reader’s comment was to confirm my opinion or denigrate it. But that’s really of little matter because I’d already set about wondering how often we in the yachtbuilding industry wax overly optimistic about problem-specific solutions we craft that don’t perform in the real world as they do on the drawing board or sketch pad — solutions that lead straight to new problems which are worse than those we set out to solve, or solutions that simply enable us to hide from ourselves the fact it would be better simply to “go back to the drawing board”.

While I’ve been thinking about that, I’ve continued to read a several very good articles about a number of as-built design features of Bayesian which may have contributed to her sinking — some of which articles support my own early (some have said premature) speculations:

??[??... TAP HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE ]??


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Fair winds and safe harbors Phil Friedman


Copyright ? 2024 by Phil Friedman — All Rights Reserved

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