For example, I am now trying to figure out if the boat can handle the hydraulic log loader that I've got waiting to go on board. A 6,500 lb steel Prentice that can reach out 22 ft with its grapple and pull logs up and out of the lake, loading them on shore or where ever I want them.
The big question is "Will the boat tip over when I do this?" A good question to get answered before I build it. So I go to http://www.boatdesign.net/ looking for guidance. Hiring a naval architect is not something I can afford, but I was hoping that some of the pro's that hang out on this site would at least give me either a "What? You're crazy!" or a "Well, it could work if..."
Instead, I get 2 professional naval architects, one in Italy and one in Japan, who kick things around, do a bunch of figuring and what-if runs on the computer and give me the answers I need.
Now it's one thing if you are a carpenter and someone asks you if you'd lend a hand painting their fence for the afternoon. But when you're a carpenter and someone asks you if you'd like to pound some nails, well, that's kinda hard to get enthused about. These guys do this for a living and, yet, they were willing to do it for me, for free. Pretty cool.
People, most people, want to be helpful, are plain hard-wired to make the people around them better off. Perhaps love is too strong a word, but let's call it various forms of that, weaker versions of love. And as they said way back when Amor Vincit Omnia!
If you look, you can see it all around you: the wave of the driver in the car passing by, someone who let's you cut in line, hands being held, smiles made. Sure, it's easy to point to all the bad stuff, but, there is this foundation of love being made as Paul McCartney sang "The love you take is equal to the love you make."
The full back-and-forth can be viewed at http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/putting-log-loader-barge-28481-3.html
