IBEX is for the TRADE ONLY. No one under 18 years of age—including infants—will be admitted.

Monday, October 6, 2008

8:30 to 10:00 a.m.

SESSION 101

Naval Architecture for Service Yards and Surveyors

Marine repairers, installers, and surveyors have all seen and wondered about structural modifications such as: cockpit extensions; bulkheads chopped up to make room for a new generator or microwave oven; engine stringers and deck beams cut away to make room for a new engine, without having to raise the cabin sole; and cuts into engine stringers for any number of reasons. The list goes on: stress cracks that mysteriously appear for seemingly no reason at all; hard spots in hull sides; cracked welds; and pitted shell plates. More subtle effects might arise due to changes in fuel and water capacity, and modifications in sailboat rigs. While many of these conditions could be insignificant, some may be indicative of an unrecognized underlying problem. When should you—as a repairer, installer, or surveyor—raise a red flag to an owner or underwriter? When should you tell a customer: “We can’t do that”? How do you know if you’re on the edge of safety? Since you make these decisions daily, our session will explain the basics of vessel structure, stability, and powering in a way that will help you make better decisions about when to call in the next level of expertise.

[Note: We’ll also cover “structure” in Session 305 Surveying Structures and in Session 605 Appropriate Structural Modifications.]

Speakers: Steve Burke (Burke Design LLC), Timothy Graul (Timothy Graul Marine Services), Jack Hornor (Marine Survey & Design Co.)

SESSION 102

Composite Tooling from Concept to Completion

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, boatbuilders and other marine manufacturers must consistently develop innovative new products if they are to survive and grow. Customer demand for highly stylized sculpted shapes and cutting-edge performance has pushed tooling technology into a highly complex operation. Accordingly, manufacturers are looking more to robotic routing, and laser equipment. In this session, we?ll reveal the latest developments in design, engineering, computer numerical control (CNC), and plug and mold-making technologies. You’ll gain a new understanding of how the latest developments can reduce fixed costs, and, at the same time, effectively focus your resources on introducing and integrating new products into your line.

Speakers: Sid Lanier and Glen Naroth (Marine Concepts)

SESSION 103

Testing in the Shop and in the Lab

To achieve quality control, proof of concept, performance predictions, and product longevity, you need to conduct testing. Here, we’ll offer details and guidance on approaching testing for your composites project. We’ll explain how to perform accurate testing in your own shop, without a lot of sophisticated equipment, but we’ll also discuss when and how to turn the process over to a third-party lab—and what to expect in return. What problems are you investigating, which tests should you run, and what size should your samples be? What special instructions should you give to the lab? How many test samples are needed for statistically significant results? How critical is the fiber alignment in your sample? What is the smallest practical sample size for a ply-by-ply laminate schedule determination? How does lab Barcol hardness compare to the tests you’ve run in your shop? Occasionally, outside testing can introduce an element of unreality into your composite evaluations, and we’ll review some of those dangers. For example, should your samples be “conditioned” at 250°F for four hours, as some tests methods specify, before being tested? Will your finished product ever actually become that hot? Join us for a session full of practical advice.

Speakers: David E. Jones (D.E. Jones & Assoc. Inc.), Bruce Pfund (Bruce Pfund/ Special Projects LLC), Bob Lindyberg (University of Maine)

SESSION 104

NC-Cutting Files

Lofting of metal boats and yachts can be accomplished with existing off-theshelf computer-aided design and ship-design software. In fact, most metal boat builders now rely on NC-cutting files to prepare pre-cut kits. Typically, builders who’ve worked with precut boats seldom return to manual lofting and cutting. Still, they need confidence in the source of those files, and they need to know that the design has been successfully accomplished using CAD. In this session, we’ll show you how to get started in working with NC-cutting files for metal boats with both compound-curve hulls as well as developable-surface hulls. It’s simple in concept but requires certain software, skills, and know-how to do successfully. We’ll give you a primer on the design software you need to establish the hull and deck surfaces, and follow up with real-world experience from the shop floor.

Speakers: Nick Boksa (Boksa Marine Design Inc.), Eric Sponberg (Sponberg Yacht Design Inc.), Andrew Vance (Kvichak Shipyard)

SESSION 105

Professionalism and Ethics

As a profession, marine surveying has grown dramatically over the past two decades, but at what price? Those organizations tasked with watching over the profession offer lip service to the concepts of professionalism and ethics, but provide seemingly little enforcement or redress when a surveyor’s work is less than ethical. As a result, the reputation of the marine-surveying profession as a whole has slipped in the eyes of the rest of our industry. In a shrinking marine marketplace, conscientious surveyors have to differentiate themselves from the herd by rising above the typical “C.Y.A.” liability clauses and boilerplates that serve only to water-down their work product. Join us here if you’re interested in exploring the issues of technical competence, trust, and objectivity that are at the heart of surveying. Let’s all come prepared to sound off about where we are—and what we can do to raise the bar.

Speakers: Jonathan Klopman (Marine Surveyor), Kim MacCartney (ACE-INA)

SESSION 106

Diesel Fuel Systems

Clean fuel is the very lifeblood of any diesel engine, and its importance cannot be overestimated. contaminated fuel not only raises the risk of unexpected engine shutdown, it also increases the likelihood of damage to metal fuel tanks. To ensure that the fuel that reaches the engine is clean, builders should consider installing supplemental, stand-alone filtration systems, designed to work while the fuel is still in the vessel’s tanks. In this presentation, you’ll see every detail of fuel polishing, from the basics of how it works, to how you can design and install an efficient and effective system. With many visual illustrations from the field, we’ll emphasize materials selection, as well as proper design and installation techniques. You’ll learn why all fuel-polishing systems are not created equal, and we’ll teach you how to distinguish between supplemental filtration and true fuel-polishing systems. Since there are many off-the-shelf polishing products available, we’ll outline their characteristics and help you understand what you can expect from them. We’ll also dispel some myths and clarify a few common misperceptions about fuel polishing. Bring your questions.

Speaker: Steve D’Antonio (Steve D’Antonio Marine Consulting)

SESSION 107

Practical Testing for Dockside Electrical hazards

Focusing on the boatyard manager, this session will offer the information you need to begin implementing a testing program for dockside electrical hazards. For the past couple of years, Irish Boat Shop (Harbor Springs & Charlevoix, Michigan) has been working with a Florida-based consulting firm to develop a procedure allowing yard staff to regularly test boats plugged into the marina grid. Initially, this sounded simple: grab a tester, clip it around the shorepower cord, and if the reading is too high, don’t let the boat plug into your pedestals. In practice, however, there were problems to overcome, including the financial concern that some testing would require paying for a highly skilled electrician. In this session, you’ll find out how Irish Boat Shop was able to put specific testing concepts into practice, and how that decision paid off.

Speakers: Michael Esposito (Irish Boat Shop Inc.), James Shafer (Harbor Marine Consultants Inc.)

SESSION 108

Team Building

No matter what the nature of your business, you’ve probably already discovered that teams don’t just automatically come together and perform the tasks you have in mind. You need to build those teams carefully, and then tend to them as they develop. In this workshop, we’ll demonstrate some techniques designed to help you draw teams closer so that they can reach a higher level of performance in a shorter period of time. As a participant in our session, you’ll learn several team-building techniques through direct participation, and we’ll also provide you with some excellent facilitator tools to ensure that those high-performing teams keep succeeding. This will be an active, hands-on seminar. Come prepared to jump in.

Speaker: David Veech (Institute for Lean Systems)

SESSION 109

Evaluating Customer Satisfaction

Listening, and leading, are the best ways to build better boats and to create loyal customers. We need to know what questions to ask our customers, and what to do with that information. We also need to take the lead and come up with better mousetraps. (or, put another way, Henry Ford once said that if he’d listened only to his customers, he’d have built a faster horse.) Join us in seeing exactly what it is that our customers can teach us about the product as well as sales-and-service performance—and where we should apply our creativity and expertise to lead the way in improving product design. We’ll examine how J.D. Power in particular goes about turning raw data into prioritized, focused strategies for improving both the product and customer relations. This includes managing expectations—the flip side of enhancing the dealer end of the business.

Speaker: Eric Sorensen (Sorensen’s Guide to Powerboats LLC)

3:30 to 5:00 p.m.

SESSION 201

Chronic Propeller Problems

Do you know what the most chronic inboard propeller problems are? Do you know what early and prudent design decisions could have averted those problems? And do you know how to fix those chronic inboard propeller problems if a customer comes to you for repair? Virtually all propeller shops keep lists of the complaints that they attend to almost daily, and those lists are all very similar. They include: recovering RPM due to propeller overload; recovering speed loss due to propeller under-load; propellers and high shaft angle; what to do about root cavitation; propellers as the cause of noise and vibration; and identifying and eliminating propeller “singing”. In this seminar, we’ll share a wealth of tips and techniques for dealing with these familiar problems efficiently and effectively.

Speaker: Don MacPherson (HydroComp Inc.)

SESSION 202

ISO 12215-5 Structural Calculations

Now that ISO 12215 Parts 5 and 6 are harmonized, and therefore included in the CE certification process, any builder who wants to sell boats in Europe needs to understand this particular standard more than ever. To help take the mystery out of Part 5, we’ll begin by defining the required values of the craft, and will follow up by presenting a 41' (12.5m) powerboat as our example, showing you how to do detailed calculations for a typical hull panel, and for a typical stiffener. Our goal is to clarify the requirements of ISO 12215. Builders who’ve mastered this standard will have little difficulty providing the necessary documentation about the strength of their boats for structural investigations, warranty complaints, or when worse problems arise. In addition, to obtain export approval to the European Union, those same boatbuilders will be able to readily provide scantling evaluations for the required CE assessments.

Speakers: Ulrich Heinemann and Alexander Schlösser (International Marine Certification Institute/IMCI)

SESSION 203

Bondlines and More

Describing bondlines as either “primary” or “secondary” barely scratches the surface of a complicated topic. In this session, we’ll also compare “open” bondlines with “blind” bondlines, and we’ll talk to you about specific materials and processes that can reduce your inherent risks in blind bondlines—especially when you’re working with core materials. We’ll also examine the secondary-bonding properties of certain resin systems and bondline primers. In addition, we’ll review best practices for abrasives preparation, and we’ll provide you with some simple shop- and field-grade tests that you can carry out as you conduct your own in-house bondline evaluations, without having to send samples to outside test labs. Since being efficient and saving time is so important in today’s marine-manufacturing industry, the bonding of grid structures/frames and stringers into hulls has become increasingly popular. Join as we examine some challenges when choosing adhesives, and to consider the influence of thick and thin bondlines in standing up to slamming forces and fatigue.

Speakers: Thomas Anmarkrud (Os Båt), Thomas J. Johannsen (ATC Formulated Polymers Inc.), Bruce Pfund (Bruce Pfund/ Special Projects LLC)

SESSION 204

Wooden Yacht Repair: Following in the Footsteps of the Masters

Restoring or repairing a wooden yacht is often a journey into the past, back to a time when the legendary designers had finely honed skills in the design of both sailing and motor yachts. That was the age before computers and epoxies. In this session, we’ll consider the best way to approach a restoration or repair job from the boat yard or builder’s standpoint, as well as from the design standpoint. How is it possible to convey the original designer’s style and intent when drawings are no longer available? Or when the vessel has been modified so many times over its lifetime that the design drawings no longer reflect the vessel that you have sitting in your boatyard? We’ll compare repair jobs intended to restore a vessel to its original condition and style, with those jobs that are major updates, including: interior accommodations, larger engines, or a taller rig—bearing in mind that some of those changes can impose loads beyond the scope of the original hull.

Speakers: Bruce Marek (Marek Yacht & Design Consultants), Jim Moores (Moores Marine Inc.)

SESSION 205

Forensic Examination of Paint Coatings

In this seminar aimed at surveyors and repairers, we’ll describe alkyd and linear polyurethane paint systems, as well as the current industry standards that apply to paint-coatings quality in terms of assessing their finished surfaces. Then we’ll introduce the forensic tools and techniques necessary for examining “quality”—and consider whether they’re appropriate for assessing new applications, or failures in coatings already applied. Alexseal is the latest linear polyurethane kid on the block long inhabited by Awlgrip and Sterling; Awlgrip recently altered the formulation of several of its key paint products, so we’ll discuss some observations gleaned from the construction and repair yards that are learning how best to work with these new and modified paint products.

Speaker: Ron Reisner (Reisner, McEwen & Assoc. Inc., Marine Surveyors and Consultants)

SESSION 206

Jet Drive Update

Technological development and market acceptance of jet drives have continued during the past decade, but do you know the details of that arc? What are the important hull-design and machinery-installation factors that a designer or builder needs to know when considering a jet drive? Are jet drives more efficient than open-water propellers, or are they just getting closer to that efficiency? What improvements in materials and jet design are on the drawing board, or already on the market? Are there innovations in jet and engine control? In this seminar, we’ll offer you an in-depth analysis of the state of the art in jet drive technology, and get you up to speed on where jet drives are going.

Speakers: Matt Mullett (All American Marine), Steve Peake (Hamilton Jet), Graham Scott (Ultra Dynamics Inc.)

SESSION 207

Running the Organization

Whether you’re new to leading an organization, or have been at it for a while, this session will provide you with fresh approaches for effective day-to-day management of your shop or yard. When you’re in charge of a marine business, you have to juggle a lot: finances, regulations, human resources, marketing, business development, customer relations, and even your personal life. How do you find the balance? How do you make good decisions? What should you delegate, and what should you do yourself? And when you do delegate, should you choose someone in-house or hire an outside consultant? How do you allocate time and resources to all of your responsibilities? Our two presenters, both with extensive backgrounds in boatyard, marina, and shop management, will share their perspectives on what it takes to run a successful organization.

Speakers: Jim Bronstien (Marine Business Advisors), Bill Yeargin (Correct Craft Inc.)

SESSION 208

Apprenticeships

Do you know what’s happening in the way of technical apprenticeship programs in the marine industry? To survive in today’s competitive environment, boat builders, repairers, and related businesses all need access to a highly skilled and trained workforce. One way to create a career path for employees, and to provide a stable work force, is to develop an apprenticeship program. In this session, you’ll learn about the different apprenticeship models in place today—including a North American model. We’ll cover apprenticeships in boatbuilding and in vessel repair and refitting. Join us to find out what you need to do to implement a successful apprenticeship program.

Speaker: Rob Manning (Quadrant Marine Institute), Additional Speakers to be Announced

SESSION 209

Value-Stream Mapping for Boat Manufacturers

Taking two production builders as our examples, we’ll introduce a variety of functions beyond basic manufacturing which will be practical, relevant, and helpful for all participants. We’ll begin by defining value-stream mapping and analysis, then see how it can be a strategic tool for building your business. next, we’ll employ value-stream mapping to obtain measurable and sustainable results, and finally, apply it to directly support areas of your operation. We’ll also discuss case studies of different value-stream maps done in the marine industry, and we’ll list the results achieved by a number of companies in other manufacturing sectors as well. Join us.

Speakers: Parthi Damodaraswamy and David Veech (Institute for Lean Systems)

Space is limited.  Register TODAY to secure your seat.

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