Lolcow Doug Jackson / SV Seeker - Boomer hubris personified, an incompetent lunatic's dreams slowly crumbling to dust because of his own poor decisions.

Eydallur

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Aug 18, 2020
Ladies and gentlemen today I have a treat for you that is of an entirely different flavor of retard to what you're used to but if you've already developed a taste for narcissists with overinflated egos made worse by internet exposure, sociopathic boomers and drama spanning decades then I'm confident in saying the added spice of naval architecture, seamanship and metal fabrication will please your sensibilities.
Ever read a story about an inexperienced sailor lost at sea in a homebuilt boat and wondered how in god's name someone could be so stupid? Doug Jackson is here to offer you a unique opportunity to witness the disaster as it unfolds, documented in painstaking detail over the course of more than a decade and a half. Progress on "The boat the internet built" has been documented since the beginning on his YouTube channel, gaining some online support, goodwill, and volunteers. Over the years bad design choices and shoddy workmanship have accumulated, and the true nature of Doug has become more apparent.

Current status of the SV Seether:
On land: :disagree:
Dead in the water: :agree:

Bottom of the ocean: :disagree:
Awaiting salvage: :agree:

Doug successfully floated down the Mississippi river, suffering only a half dozen groundings and other minor learning experiences. He's moseyed on over to Penascola and is no doubt feeling quite smug for having proven all the haters wrong.
Will he ever raise sail? Will he ever venture outside of protected waters and the warm bosom of a marina?
Well ladies and gentlemen after a goddamn year of waiting since he got his clown shoe in the water, he finally raised sail — in four knots of wind, moving at a single knot.


This is the first thread on KF featuring an aquatic lolcow (manatee?) and in keeping with the theme his progress is extremely slow, accordingly there is also plenty of discussion of other failed mariners in this thread.

Introduction: Our fearless captain.​

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Meet Doug Jackson, a former database technician who after working a cubicle job at oracle for 40 years decided what he really needed in his life was a boat that would allow him to live out his dreams of larping as a modern day Jacques Cousteau. If Doug were a sensible man what he would've done is bought an older boat with a hull in good condition and then refit the interior and superstructure to accomodate all the equipment and crew needed to conduct salvage operations, greatly simplifying the process of building a marine salvage/research vessel and streamlining the process of getting the finished craft insured and classified in order to be chartered.
Or he could have sold his house, spent all his savings plus untold thousands of dollars in donated funds and bought a big fuckoff pile of scrap stuck in an industrial lot 900 miles from the ocean with no means to haul it anywhere.

NOT ONLY WOULD HE BE JUST AS FAR AWAY FROM THE SEA AS HE IS TODAY BUT WOULD HAVE SAVED HIMSELF 15 YEARS OF WORK, A DIVORCE AND ESTRANGEMENT FROM HIS FAMILY.

(Arguably, finally launching his boat has done more to hinder Doug than help since the fastest route to the Gulf is still via truck, only now he first has to haul out.)

In the end what we have is less of a modern day Jacques Cousteau and more of a modern day Tom Sukanen. The question is of course how the hell did things get this bad? To understand, we must first consider that Doug is an incredibly driven man of singular purpose who fully devotes himself to his work, he is also extraordinarily unwise with very limited ability to plan ahead who forms a vague impression in his mind of what the proper path forward is and pursues it without ever entertaining any doubts or criticisms, preferring to toss all caution to the wind and enthusiastically berating anyone who suggests there might be some nuance he's ignored as he's making a mess with materials and tools he has no experience or training in the proper use of let alone their safe handling. This is a man who isn't merely ignorant of standards, rules or conventions, he is explicitly hostile to any design specifications or established safe practices. His motto that he will frequently wear printed on a t-shirt is "feel the fear and do it anyway", this repugnant boomerism is also the title of his favorite book written by some self help quack.
When calamity inevitably befalls him he fully expects others to bail him out. So strongly has this belief become mired in the mud of Doug's mind that he staged a terrible accident and traumatic brain injury to extort pitybux from his fans. It backfired spectacularly, more on that later.
So to begin, why did he not save up money and pay for the construction of a boat, refit a serviceable vessel or base his plans on an already existing, proven hull design?
The answer is that to do any of these things, to stray even by a hair from the first dumb fucking idea that enters into your mind would be inauthentic, the actions of a pansy who was probably raised by a woman. He had a silly dream of building and then sailing a 75 foot tri-masted chinese junk and by golly he was gonna do it and he was gonna do it in the middle of the fucking prairie no less.
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Kay is retired and can no longer work a regular job due to fibromyalgia; aka "lots of pain". And we have never saved money. - Doug, 2006
Behold, the start of our happy adventure.

Foundations of failure: The frameless hull.​

When building any boat larger than a bathtub, the hull will require some degree of reinforcement. When constructing anything larger than a dinghy this reinforcement is typically the base structure that forms a skeleton upon which the outer skin of the hull is then affixed — picture a rib cage and you'll get the idea. These sections are what are called frames and their purpose is twofold, to distribute loads and maintain the structure of the hull when at sea and to simplify construction by making it much easier to achieve the desired hull shape without having to worry much about asymmetry being introduced during the boatbuilding process. Regardless of materials chosen for the hull or deck, this basic principle of naval architecture doesn't change.
However, if you're hellbent on getting to a finished hull shape that you can admire from your porch as fast as possible then silly shit like frames, plans or specified dimensions will just get in your way. Just get to welding and if it doesn't fit, hack away at it with an angle grinder until it does.
Enter the origami hull. First conceived by Brent Swain as a design that would allow hobbyist boatbuilders to quickly complete a hull by just bending huge slabs of sheet metal, omitting the need for an initial skeletal framework, the origami hull was suggested to Doug by one Jack Carson who also convinced him to build a boat with twin bilge keels. He then created drawings for and made a mock-up model of what would later become the SV Seeker aka "the boat the internet built". What exactly was the design process? Trial and error by a guy who'd only built one boat previously.
To create our plans, Jack started with a piece of paper that had the 64ft hull drawn on it in 1" to 1' scale. He then made some changes, transferred the drawing to sign board, cut it out, folded it up, glued the seams, took measurements, ran some calculations, adjusted the original drawing and did it again. Three models latter he was done. No CAD, no CAM, no Computer, "very caveman" as he said. - Doug, 2006
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The very essence of grug brained. Also note the 10 foot discrepancy between what was designed and what was later built.
This minor deviation is of no consequence. It fucked him completely.

Here's a quote from plebbit discussing some of the problems with the design:
Over a decade ago there was a ship engineering forum that tore apart the design, or lack thereof, that would eventually be chosen by Doug to build his boat. It was mainly dedicated to discussing the negatives of this origami style of folded steel that they felt was being promoted by a huckster. The guy sold people on his crude plans that could quickly put a large hull of a dream boat up on their property if they could afford the initial outlay of plans and steel. But most remained dreams as building a boat is more than quickly welding together steel sheets bent and pulled together under stress.
The finishing up of the boat is where people began to take years to realize they were not equipped to do. So many were never completed at all. Only around a dozen small versions made it to the sea. Many in poor shape. A few sailed off to become junk moored or anchored somewhere, eventually sold off for scrap. There was one that bent one of the double keels, sunk, and salvaged for scrap. Another that leaked so bad after launch the owners had to pull it out, and it was scrapped. Only 3 or 4 were ever finished and used as okay sailboats for awhile. A few showed up for sale on boat listings. They ran the gamut from shitty with rusting hull going for peanuts or somewhat decent and sailable going for a low price. There was at least one built by a boatyard with an overall redesign of the original plan but keeping the aesthetic. So it looked like a small version of the Seeker hull, but topsides were like most modern boats. It was built to insurable passage making standards as per the owners having enough to afford it. But overall the design that they all started from were shown to be total shit. And folding steel had been tried once by a boat building company in the 1940s for the war effort and about 6 large hulls produced were deemed as unwieldy to make symmetrical and each interior would have to be custom made for each. It wasn't worth the work involved on each hull vs traditional boatyard standards that can be repeated by rote and note. So those hulls were.. scrapped. Someone on the forum who worked for a large steel boat design firm put the folded steel "Origami" plans into one of their test computer suites that simulate and show issues with boat building plans. This style of boat, once over a certain size, was shown to not hold up to torsional stresses in ocean conditions unless greatly beefed up. Steel boats need to be built much like wooden boats, with a spine, ribs, and a boxed lattice above connecting them. Or like supersize ships, as overly supported steel boxed sections. Styles of building Doug would completely ignore for a ship his size.
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Particular emphasis is warranted to explain how monumentally stupid it is to construct the hull for such a large sailing vessel using a method only suitable (if that) for small boats.
For all boats but especially monohull sailboats the stability of the hull is of extreme importance and is second only to buoyancy as the most important factor that determines the performance of the hull and how much stuff you can fit inside of it and where. Stability refers to the resistance of a boat to forces that disturb it from an upright orientation, the more of it you have the more abuse it can endure from wind or wave action before capsizing.
Stability can either be increased by lowering the center of gravity or extending the beam (width) of the waterline (the latter is called form stability). While a cheap and easy way of lowering the center of gravity is just adding more ballast this will increase drag and slow you down while also reducing freeboard which makes you more vulnerable to waves breaking over the deck, it also reduces reserve buoyancy — this is to be avoided, the only thing separating a boat from a wreck is whether or not it floats, not whether it sits upright on the sea floor.

Given the importance of a low center of gravity, wide waterline beam and lower total weight in deciding ultimate seaworthiness of a boat, the immediate urge should be to reduce the weight of the hull above the waterline and widening waterline beam to a reasonable maximum.
The origami hull design selected by Doug places insurmountable constraints on both these design goals by restricting first the ability to achieve a desired waterline. To get an idea of the problem, get a piece of sheet metal, grab it by the ends and try bending it as far as it'll go, you'll quickly notice it's very hard to keep it from twisting in ways you don't want. The same applies to huge slabs of steel before they start twisting uncontrollably too. The further you try to bend them the greater the tendency to flex in ways you can't control, this limits you to a narrow hull design with a deep "V" profile.
Normally, hull symmetry is something that is a foregone conclusion when building a boat but Doug, having no experience of large scale metal fabrication failed to take these challenges into account (spoilers: the Seether's hull is twisted).
Second, the cutting and bending of the hull plates can only be accomplished if the material is of the same uniform thickness. The result is that you end up with a huge portion of the hull's mass carried far above the waterline which requires a proportionate increase in ballast to counteract. In plate-on-frame construction this would be easy to remedy, for a frameless origami hull it is unavoidable.
What Doug could have avoided however is the entirely pointless choice of extending the hull plates to form solid bulwarks made of quarter inch thick steel that wrap around the circumference of the deck when all you need is a handrail or a stainless cable.
Now with all that in mind, consider that the only real benefit to constructing an origami hull is that you're able to complete it relatively quickly. Doug spent three years fabricating the hull of the Seether which is all well and good but a hull on its own is far from a complete boat. That was seven years ago and the SV Seether still isn't finished. In total the frameless construction saved him at most a couple months and cost him stability, speed, buoyancy and a permanent list to port.

These failures at such a fundamental stage of building a boat, achieving a symmetrical shape that can float, are the premier reasons why the Seether is often called a boat shaped object (BSO for short). It is also ugly as sin, though that is more a subjective gripe.
It should also be pointed out that even though the origami method of nigjerry rigging together a hull omits framing in the initial phase of construction, internal frames are still required to give the hull the strength it needs to withstand the torsional stress and impacts it will no doubt encounter from heavy seas when it reaches the the antarctic ocean, Doug's intended destination for the Seether (he likes to compare himself to Shackleton).
I'm told waves are pretty common in the ocean but I'm a really dumb motherfucker so I could be wrong. Where I do hold a lot of expertize though is in all aspects of metal manufacturing
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Those frames don't appear to go all the way to the top, leaving a critical section of hull just above the waterline completely unsupported. Their ability to support the hull is also lessened greatly by the nonsensical inclusion of speed holes in their design. When building an outsized and obese 70 ton steel pig I guess it makes sense to remove material from one of the most critically important features of the hull. The brackets are also compromised from having been butchered so they can better fulfill their primary design intent as a decorative head injury hazard.
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On the left is what we should expect to see, on the right is what can be found inside the hull of the Seether. Doug appears to have taken the "frameless" phrasing to be a literal descriptor of the origami hull's key feature. These frames aren't even joined to the hull apart from a few small beads. They are an ornamental embellishment and nothing more. All loads that stress the hull are absorbed by the skin of the hull in full with no supporting structure beyond a couple bulkheads. This might be sufficient for a 22' boat, it is grossly insufficient for the 75' heap of shit Doug has built.

Here's a small list of assorted failures of the design and construction of the SV Seether:
  • Underpowered engine taken from a clapped out school bus, installed in the boat along its original transmission with the only modifications being a removed torque converter and use of the wrong oil. Both are woefully inadequate for their new role and a source of much trouble. When engaged in gear, the engine suffers under a load not unlike performing a hill start in third. Unsurprisingly it stalls out if pushed any harder than a brisk walking pace. Half of the Seethers progress down river has been under tow.
  • Single variable pitch prop, no bow thruster. While it's impressive Doug cast his own propeller blades this single drive is inadequate given the size and weight of the boat. The pitch control unit also blows its seals and refuses to function thanks to Doug's poor machining and refusal to use oil or pressure to spec. The Seether has a prop too big for its poorly cobbled together pitch control apparatus, making less than half the power Doug would be satisfied with and being at risk of unpitching from the gentlest tidal current. The "hundred deaths" (Doug is incapable of pronouncing Hundested) is a source of much ridicule and merriment.
  • The windows of the pilothouse were taken from the same above mentioned school bus, not only are they likely to shatter if a wave impacts them, Doug fully expects this and considers it a good thing.
  • Doug also expects the entire fucking pilothouse to be ripped clean off by a wave. This man feels the fear and does it anyway.
  • Bilge keels might be good for reducing draft but they also slow the boat down and make it more susceptible to drifting off course, given the weight of the boat this will handicap it in the Mississippi, if it ever reaches it.
  • Despite Doug's intention of actually sailing and not just motoring everywhere, he has installed no cleats. In fact there are next to no features installed anywhere on the Seether that would suggest it's intended to carry a three mast rig. He has canvas and battens piled up next to his masts but no practical method to raise or control any of it. Not that Doug would have the courage anyway, he is absolutely terrified of revealing just how unseaworthy his boat shaped object is.
  • Insufficient drainage to clear green water. There are actually more pathways for water on deck to drain INTO the boat than out.
  • Insufficient storage space. Lack of straps/tie downs. Nearly all cargo carried aboard the Seether is unsecured and must be considered as free surface moment.
  • No AC and the single head does not function. If you want to be a guest on the Seether then avoid going below where it's 120+ and make sure you bring your own bucket. Oh by the way this is a research vessel, contact the Sea Chest Foundation today and schedule your next field study.

Doug and safety: A troubled relationship​

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In the top bunks you get the nice company of the mermaids. And for those of you too scared to be around steel while the boat's rolling, well don't sleep on the top bunk! -Doug, 2020
This comment really highlights everything wrong about Doug's completely insane hostility towards all norms of maritime safety and it is this thinking that lies at the heart of every design failure that has gone into the construction of the Seether. As an aspiring captain not only has he no experience of helming any vessel but the very notion that he as a captain might be responsible for the safety and well being of his crew and passengers is deeply offensive to him and he resents the thought that his revolting aesthetic sensibilities ought ever take a back seat to practicality. Not only has Doug next to no experience at sea where he might've learned to appreciate hand holds and guide rails (of which none are to be found on his boat), in fact his only experience at sea was aboard the Nothin Wong in 2011 where he apparently learned all the wrong lessons from a drunk canvas-pilled oceanoanarchist.
Should the SV Seether ever manage to traverse 900 miles of inland waterways and reach the ocean as all fans and detractors alike are hoping for it is guaranteed to sink the moment it encounters a sea state rougher than that of a mill pond. If not for the deficient design and construction of the hull and its systems then for the hubris, inexperience and fatalistic machismo of its captain.
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Of all the ways to fabricate a circular disk of aluminum, freehanding a piece of 5/16" thick material on a goddamn table saw is without a doubt the most moronic method imaginable.
Hole saw and a drill press. Doug has a drill press.
Plasma cutter and a circular template. Doug has a plasma cutter and frequently cuts circular shapes with it.
Lathe and some round stock. Doug has a lathe.
CNC mill and some flat stock. Doug has a mill.
Doug doesn't just handle his tools like a man with a death wish, he actively encourages other people to also risk injury and will call you a pussy for keeping your grinder's guard on, this is coming from a man who nearly eviscerated himself when his t-shirt got caught in his cutting wheel. Although he suffers minor injuries on a regular basis he has miraculously avoided limb loss. It seems god has a sense of humor and wants this prick to finish his project so he can be swallowed by a whale.
Where this has really cost him however is in his relationships to fans and more importantly family. Doug used to have his grandson working on/around the boat but several years back the kid stopped appearing in new videos.
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Not only has Doug burned bridges with his son and lost access to his grandson but his wife Kay left him too several years ago, presumably to find a man with a boat rather than just a man with dreams of having a boat. Thanks to carelessness, a cavalier attitude towards safety along with entitlement issues and an obsessive need to win every argument his closest and most cherished family members have all been repulsed by Doug and disowned him. Despite all the quotes from MLK, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama plastered all over the boat's interior he is a fantastically antagonistic character who never backs down from a fight with anyone questioning his hubris.
I'd rather have my wife than a boat - Doug, 2011, before losing his wife and building an artificial reef.
What friends does he have left then? His fanbase consists mostly of boomers like himself with little to no knowledge of seamanship or shipbuilding in awe at the size of the absolute unit this oaf assembled in his front yard, tradies watching in shock and amazement and a few mariners who are enthused by the sheer strength of will to see a project like this through to the (bitter?) end after fifteen years of dedication where every little thing on the boat has been hand made/assembled.

Doug and his fanbase: Fake it 'til you break it​

Apparently envious of the attention other boatbuilding channels on youtube were gaining while his growth was stuck in the doldrums (I only say this because no other explanation makes any sense) Doug in early 2020 decided to stage an explosion and fake a life threatening injury for attention and to extort pitybux out of his gullible fanbase. Problems soon reared their ugly heads as it turned out not all of his fans were quite so easily fooled and the ingrates began questioning if what was presented was actually legit.
Through this lunacy, Doug effectively purged his Patreon of a significant number of backers. They were probably raised by crotchbleeders anyway so not a great loss.

Doug removed from his channel the hoax itself and his two first non-apologies but plebbit has them all archived.
Doug likes to pretend none of this happened and would like the whole fiasco to be memoryholed.

This is a quote from /diy/:
The one constant in this saga is that he never learns anything; he may pay lip service to taking away a lesson but it's always the wrong one, and he only does it to appear reasonable.
In the case of the explosion hoax this was his "apology"-
"“We’re sorry for the pain and anguish that it caused you,” Jackson said in his YouTube video. “I still think there’s a lot we can learn from it, and I hope we can because these pranks, they’re fun, so we’ll do them again, but we’re not going to do them like this.”
But that only came after he faced a huge backlash and loss of support from his original statement explaining his reasoning and what he "learned" from what he originally claimed was an "experiment"-
"Jackson says this was, in part, a social experiment, but also a way to weed out who the true Seeker devotees were.
Did he go too far? Not in his mind.
"The only people on a boat that you can count on is your crew. There's no 911. No ambulances. You count on the people around you," Jackson said. "So, why do I filter? Because I want the right people around me."
He may have been able to fine tune his emotional manipulation and con man techniques as a result of the experience, but that's something different than "learning" any lesson in a moral/ ethical sense.
tl;dr: he'd do it again in a heartbeat if he thought he could get away with it.


If you want to read more in the meantime, /diy/ has a pretty active general on the Seether and plebbit has some discussion too as well as sailinganarchy.
Then there's Doug's old website, his new website and his youtube channel.
Updates from Doug are typically posted on his facebook group or the boat's own page, the only way to get more up to date info is by monitoring VHF channel 16 if you're near Tulsa.

So what's going on with the boat right now?​

The fearless captain, after futzing about with his running rigging for god knows how long, finally found an opportunity of DEAD CALM to fly some canvas. Not the main, mind. Just the fore and mizzen. Let's not get too adventurous.
Doug got it towed to the port of Catoosa, from there he intends to motor to the Mississippi river and out into the gulf of Mexico where I suppose he'll finish fitting out and then be on his way (to the bottom of the ocean). He hit a snag however in that in the FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS he's been working on this project he never once thought to ring up the Catoosa harbormaster and ask what sort of insurance he'd need to launch his boat there. Harbormaster told him to fuck off and to not come back unless he got the shitheap insured so they at least can retrieve damages if his boat instantly turtles and blocks the shipping lane. Although it might be funny, Doug is a narcissist of the highest order and is unlikely to an hero. In the mean time his support is dwindling and he's becoming increasingly hostile to both jeers and to those expressing genuine concern.
Recall how his original plans were those of a 64' boat? Any underwriter is going to look at that and toss his application straight out the window because what he built does not match his plans. It is likewise highly unlikely he'll ever get a marine engineer or surveyor to approve the Seether due to above mentioned issues and a million more points of failure.
Ironically, not launching is perhaps the one saving grace of this clown show. There's no way for you to sink and be stuck cursing the crew chief in the back of a USCG black hawk if you never touch water.

Update: The house has been sold​

The move is going well.
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Update: The port of Catoosa eventually took pity on the man and launched his boat​

Almost a year after the pirate themed launch party ($200 to attend) Doug was finally underway. Mostly thanks to a benefactor called "Captain C Money" who hooked him up with a pinky promise insurance policy. After 40 miles of motoring down the Verdigris river he arrived in Fort Gibson and decided he really missed living as a hobo in an empty lot so is now living as a hobo at an empty dock. Should you encounter Doug in the wild, under no circumstance use the words "USCG" and "inspection" in the same sentence, it makes him most irate.

Update: Doug has reached Kerr Lake​

This stunning accomplishment does however come at the cost of not just his boat's primary powerplant but also that of his dinghy which had to tow him. Doug has announced he has no intentions of going further until next year, possibly foreshadowing Robert S Kerr reservoir as the Seether's final resting place.

Some assorted gems:
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More like the SV Coper.

Also, I know nothing about maritime insurance, but is there really any insurance company out there willing to insure this monstrosity? It seems like there is a 0% chance of this thing ever launching.
The retard dismissed people telling him to figure out the insurance for years and simply planted his 80 ton monster that took 15 years to make on the nearest harbor.
Now that the harbor tells him he can't let his boat into the water without insurance (this is on a river with a lot of commercial traffic where a broken down boat could do a ton of damage), he's asking for 3 million dollars from his supporters for insurance liabilities.

The guy is boomer hubris personified. It's like watching the guy who insists safety goggles are for pussies getting a piece of shrapnel lodged in his eye ball.
 
is there really any insurance company out there willing to insure this monstrosity?
No, Lloyd's of London, last port of call for desperate boat owners who need their vessels insured for passage, told him to take a long walk off a short pier.
I think he's trying to finagle his way into the water by roping in an engineering firm to include him in their policy but I'm unsure what the particulars of this scheme are or if it's still on the table.
Recall how his original plans were those of a 64' boat? Any underwriter is going to look at that and toss his application straight out the window because what he built does not match his plans.

He's been stuck in a parking lot for over a month now, begging for people to front the three million he needs.
 
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The guy is boomer hubris personified. It's like watching the guy who insists safety goggles are for pussies getting a piece of shrapnel lodged in his eye ball.
Hmm, has he shared his thoughts on the vaccine? Because I bet I can guess what they are.
He's been stuck in a parking lot for over a month now, begging for people to front the three million he needs.
So is the $3 million for a bond in lieu of insurance?
 
Holly buggering hell a Aqua cow!

I'm impressed by his dedication, but honestly this thing is a death trap I'm not a marine engineer by any stretch of the imagination but during lockdown I really got into a book series that involved a lot of talk about ship design and I bought and read a few books just to add to the immersion and understand a part of the story better and even after a very admittedly very surface level reading of these books I can honestly just look at it and see that this thing will break apart in anything other than a dead flat calm let alone should the hull be put under any kind of stress.
 
Holy crap, i never expected this guy to make an appearance in the farms.

Bit of background, this moron is well known in the sailing and DIY boatbuilding comunity. He started this project of his against the advice of everyone. He trolled cruiserforums.com for years asking for advice and rejecting everything that went against his delusions. And he has been at it for years with only that rustbucket to show for it. But he is oh so smart.

That Brent Swain guy is a sort of legendary scammer himself. He has claimed to design a bunch of boats but can't provide blueprints, because of reasons. He has multiple accounts at cruisersforums and sailinganarchy where he responds to threads to congratulate himself and provide testimony of his designs, all sockpuppets of him. He claims to have "thousands of miles of bluewater under his keel" , yet he was found to live with his sister. A larper and scammer of the first order. He also googles his own name constantly to monitor threads, so expect him and his sockpuppets to show up here eventually.

This thread has potential.
 
Holy crap, i never expected this guy to make an appearance in the farms.
I wouldn't have bothered if it weren't for his very thorough video documentation of the entire project (fuck ups included) which makes researching/sourcing more or less straightforward and also his incredibly hostile demeanor to all that challenge his judgment. If Doug were just a regular idiot there would be nothing terribly interesting about this failed project but he's also a full blown sociopath who craves attention from the easily impressionable.

Jack Carson too appears to be a bit of a character, essentially an aquatic bum who would alternate homelessness/unemployment with gigs up and down the inside passage aboard whatever boat he could scrounge up enough money/scrap to buy/build.

Oh and funnily enough in the first discussion I found on Brent Swain and his designs he's samefagging himself. What an absolute cunt.
If you have any old material detailing his antics please share. I didn't discover this shitshow until recently.
 
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I hold deep respect for anyone with such a level of dedication, no matter how autistic or stupid the project is. Someone working against all odds to achieve their dreams is what made Terry Davis and Ulillillia so appealing to me.

The difference between them and Doug however, is that they at least knew what they were doing. Terry wrote his own compiler and made a working OS, and Ulillillia overcame his irrational fears and channelled his autism-fueled math powers into making his own videogame. Doug on the other hand is pissing away all that dedication and spirit he has into assembling junk into the shape of a boat.

Goes to show that dedication isn't everything, you also have to not be a complete retard about whatever you're trying to do and be humble enough to listen when people unanimously say that your project is dead in the water. Hopefully he installed some lifeboats for when this thing inevitably sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
 
Goes to show that dedication isn't everything, you also have to not be a complete retard about whatever you're trying to do and be humble enough to listen when people unanimously say that your project is dead in the water
That's the thing about boats, especially blue water cruisers, even proven designs with the latest and greatest in marine technology taken out in tip top condition skippered by experienced sailors can and do sink on a somewhat regular basis. When the wind picks up the open ocean is a scary fucking place to be no matter how many millions went into building your boat, that's why you want to be doubly sure that both you and your vessel are prepared for any voyage you embark on.
Doug has not only got no experience on the sea apart from a weekend bender with an alcoholic and his floating gypsy wagon but is so monumentally full of himself he started his project right in the middle of prairie country where his only path to the ocean is through a thousand miles of some of the most densely trafficked shipping lanes in the world.
 
Given that he's been at it for over a decade, I wasn't sure if he'd have much milk left. Turns out I could be mistaken. Top quality OP, OP.

BTW are you a boatbuilder? You seem to know your shit, even though Blind Freddy can see that Dougie's origami boat may as well be made from literal origami.
 
Given that he's been at it for over a decade, I wasn't sure if he'd have much milk left. Turns out I could be mistaken. Top quality OP, OP.

BTW are you a boatbuilder? You seem to know your shit, even though Blind Freddy can see that Dougie's origami boat may as well be made from literal origami.
I'm a metalworker/machinist who used to sail a fair bit in the past. If I ever got the idea to build a boat I'd start small with something manageable I could finish in one season, or take the job I've been offered and build boats for the navy.
 
I don't know if this will ever find a home outside PG or if it has the legs to sustain itself as a thread (I hope it does), but goddamn, I loved this OP and the way you told the story of this stubborn, idiotic, utterly deluded incapable man. Very enjoyable read.

eta: in the OP, could you please list any social media accounts he has, YT, IG, Twitter, etc.
 
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I don't know if this will ever find a home outside PG or if it has the legs to sustain itself as a thread (I hope it does), but goddamn, I loved this OP and the way you told the story of this stubborn, idiotic, utterly deluded incapable man. Very enjoyable read.
True. It's pure kino but it feels like it could be a little late. That said, there may still be enough delusion left in the tank for this cow to be sustainable. That'll probably depend on how his other socials (if any) are going.
 
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True. It's pure kino but it feels like it could be a little late. That said, there may still be enough delusion left in the tank for this cow to be sustainable. That'll probably depend on how his other socials (if any) are going.
Feels like a thread that has a really great OP, but is going to go totally silent for months until the news story breaks nationally that this ramshackle affair foundered and has shut down the Port of Catoosa for a few weeks.

Doug is definitely funny, but it's a very consistent (?) funny. Outside of the one notable exception, his antics are not really stand-out; until the insurance debacle, his milk has just been various similar strains of his boomerism and the explosion. There just isn't that much about what he does to hold a running conversation, especially this late in the project.
 
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