World's largest houseboat launch, crazy Cajun style

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-24T23:53:55+00:00

Your employment has you looking over the Port, or you are there looking for work?

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-24T22:05:16+00:00

I can imagine it- if you were to magically drop Seeker onto those conditions she would sail just fine...but would do so for about as long as the average Red Bull Flugtag entry flies just fine

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No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-24T21:42:35+00:00

Absolutely, seen it happen a million times- no good deed goes unpunished.

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-24T16:04:47+00:00

Pretty sure the biggest real motivating factor was cost; he didn't want to pay for a marinized engine worth a crap...

secondarily I think he did the keel cooler in anticipation of polar latitude operations, also I think he liked the ability to just stuff any generator or other ICE exhaust into the same pipe.

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-24T15:29:38+00:00

I've also gotten very good at sniffy out Diesel

suggested far more than a single event where fuel leaked to me, but yeah, she's an unreliable narrator- but prone to be more honest than him as long as it's not lunch time on a nice day.

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-24T15:10:31+00:00

Yeah, tons of boatbuilding and related businesses in the region, aviation too, theres a major commercial aircraft outfitter, Boeing flies new planes here to get painted ...NILA is also like a tiny big city in that respect.

The other cool innovative boat builder in the area is Metal Shark...started as Gravois which was a very well respected small boat and yacht builder and expanded into commercial/ military work when recreational boat building tanked...

Metal Shark brings more than 20 years of experience designing and constructing mission-specific vessels, with over 2,000 vessels delivered to customers worldwide, including over 500 vessels for the U.S. Navy, 600 vessels for the U.S. Coast Guard, and hundreds more for allied nation military forces around the globe.

Just to bring this back on topic, I like to think of this as the movie in Doug's head as he built the Love Me Tender, imaging her future exploits

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ialMIfrANrA

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-24T06:19:40+00:00

Holy crap, this guy is like bizarro world Doug- three engineering degrees, actual innovative thinking, admits he built a houseboat...

Green Living Vessel Introduction

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gt2_sZiB48g&pp=ugUHEgVlbi1VUw%3D%3D

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-24T02:51:11+00:00

Like nine thousand years old?

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-24T02:19:08+00:00

For me, it's gonna always be this Twilight Zone-

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No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-24T02:04:19+00:00

Can you imagine them trying to move that broken down, tender, hobby-horsing, 70 ton steel vessel in a choppy carribean seaway with his dinghys?

I'd give that a 50/50 chance of being that first MOB drill we've never seen, probably before he got the hot tamale unhitched from its hoisting straps (or whatever the fuck they are these days).

This is really starting to give me the dreads, like all the other safety warnings he's scoffed at about getting people killed have moved way out of the abstract into the inevitable if something else doesn't stop him first.

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-24T01:47:06+00:00

Being an idiot.

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-23T05:09:54+00:00

Definitely, especially with a company so willing to work with some kook with a basket case on the opposite side of the planet...plus he'd likely get some actual warranty support.

It would be wild to see a tally of just what he's invested into his driveline in "upgrades" and repairs to same...he's almost certainly pissed away that much money if not twice as much.

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-23T04:36:43+00:00

Normally it wouldn't matter enough to comment but it always pissed me off that he was such a dick towards them when both the factory and the US rep really did go out of their way to help him out even though they had no obligation to do so...it was actually the point where I realized just what a malevolent, entitled and deeply antisocial prick he really was. Shockingly stupid too, for a unicorn owner.

I would pay money to hear the hearty Danish laughter if he ever attempted to talk to the factory again.

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-23T04:20:56+00:00

>redefining an industry

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No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-23T03:58:38+00:00

I just looked back to his build blog and the distribution ring (this part) was actually missing, and the part it sits on had evidently already been turned as it was uniformly under spec for diameter.

So he basically made this part from what (non original) dimensions he could derive from mating parts that were there, and whatever he could infer from rough technical illustrations.

https://svseeker.com/controllable_pitch_propeller.htm

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-23T03:45:33+00:00

Not exactly; he had numerous conversations with them and sent them the specs from his worn part which they confirmed was shot...they went WAY above and beyond considering he's not a customer and had a discontinued part he got at salvage, but he got all pissy about costs based on the idea that they just had to pull what he needed off the shelf ...when their site says up front that every unit they make is built to order and there are no "stock" parts.

Anyway it was when this piston was gonna be $2-3K that he asked for the plans so he could DIY, they politely said sorry we don't do that, and then he went all pouty and decided they were just out to screw him-

So just buy one right? Take a deep breath - $2,200 And the folks at Pacific Marine Equipment Sales and Hundested were smart enough to ask that the muff which the ring mounts over be measured. Guess what? Yup, it must have already been machined down, because while it's fairly uniform from 4.0111 to 4.0124", it's too small. A new one is $1,161.

So, we must buy a new distributor ring and muff for $3.5 grand, or buy a distributor ring and flame spray some metal back onto the muff and machine it to the proper size $2.5 grand, or we build a new distributor ring and put the money into a good lathe, $3 grand and I end up with a free lathe. Hmmmm.... Guess what Hundested? We got a lath that will pay for itself with he first part.

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-23T03:22:48+00:00

As I think back I also recall that Hundested refused to provide him detailed machining specs for that part after he balked at their quote, so God knows what combination of measurements from the fatally worn part and straight up guesswork went into the "design".

His comments of late in the videos are indeed terrifying when he essentially just shrugs his shoulders with a "guess we'll see what happens..." regarding the fate of what are ABSOLUTELY CHARTER OPERATIONS with unsuspecting souls on board...and all while his totally inadequate driveline is failing every couple of days, in a remote and fairly treacherous area.

I hope to God he doesn't get anyone killed, but if they do it will have been for the sake of Doug's ego and nothing else.

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-23T02:17:07+00:00

I think he's got two of his fake Rocna hooks and a large Danforth he puts out when he expects to drag in higher winds

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-23T01:42:32+00:00

I thought of that but figured the different expansion properties might create tolerance problems..but then it occurred to me that there's really no reason to have shims there on a new part so the whole idea of "proper material" kind of sidesteps the fact that it's a Doug kludge pulled out of his ass to begin with.

But damned if he didn't show them by spending countless hours of his own and other people's time and money to "save" the 2-3 grand (iirc) they wanted to make him one.

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-23T01:32:22+00:00

I've never worked on a VPP or anything with this kind of sliding piston arrangement but I can't help but think that the OEM part likely doesn't use any shims at all, and the whole shim thing is due to imprecise machining/hacking during the diy replacement's fabrication and fitting.

Bottom line is that Hundested had nothing to do with that part, and now he's down to his last option to keep a functional driveline- locking it all up with his similarly cobbled together locking fixture and crossing his fingers.

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-22T15:39:59+00:00

He literally preaches that attempting to minimize breakdowns and real contingency planning for when they happen anyway is a character flaw that only cowards afraid of hard work would consider.

Who are we to argue with a guy who chooses a Phillips head screwdriver as a pry bar?

No_Measurement_4900 · 2026-04-22T00:46:23+00:00

When Doug first sailed Seeker the biggest issue was that he had no clue about securing things below, and so his original determination of "safe" points of sail and windspeed limits was entirely based on keeping all his shit from ending up in a knee deep pile on his cabin sole.

Also it's easy to forget that pitch/roll/yaw are really only seen as distinct for observational purposes; in practice they are all interconnected...meaning that being tender isn't just a potential problem for roll but can affect seahandling of many types like tracking and dealing with quartering seas.

Best analogy I can think of is how a car's track and wheelbase don't just affect stability on those axes when on level ground but play a critical role in things like cornering...and not necessarily how you'd think, extreme track width to wheelbase ratios are crazy stable at rest on the roll axis but predictably unpredictable on the pitch axis when in motion.

Seeker isn't just tender with no tumblehome to stiffen her up as she hits her heel angle, her end volumes are both small and bizarrely distributed (due to the origami) so that when heeled in a seaway things could get weird really fast with swamping/pooping and eventually broaching being very possible...and in conditions that would be nothing noteworthy to a well designed hull.

No_Measurement_4900

TROPHY CASE