Ya Never Know...do Ya?
Copyright© 2015 by Old Man with a Pen
Chapter 4
They, the International, mailed back; MM is millimeters, designated mm. 4mm equals 0.15748031 inch. You used 1/4 inch. 1/4inch is 0.250in thick. Your boat is almost twice as heavy as it should be ... had you used one eighth (1/8 or 0.125in) your boat would be light. It is easier to add weight than it is to subtract it.
Then came the 64 thousand dollar question.
Does your association have a measurement committee?
And I, like the idiot my sister says I am, mailed back... What is a measurement committee?
The International ... at this particular time ... resided in London ... England ... not London, Ontario, Canada. Mail ... regular mail ... mail with a 2 cent stamp ... went by boat. AirMail was far too expensive. By boat usually meant a Liner like the Queen Mary but sometimes it meant steamship ... as in tramp freighter. Tramp freighters have no set schedule ... they are opportunists ... they go where the freight is.
Mail by Liner was five days ... steamship might be five weeks ... and that's after getting to New York or Boston by rail.
A day spent being "sorted" in the local Post Office ... another day on the train, yet another day at the New York or Boston Post Office ... being sorted again, five to thirty-five days en route by water, a day in "receiving Southampton" or "receiving Liverpool," a day by train to London, a day or even two ... depending ... at the London PO ... a day in the International mail room. Reading by a flunky who may or may not decide to kick it upstairs, if it goes upstairs, the next reader might be answering, mailing it back ... waiting for my response ... get the idea?
I built the boat when I was going on nine. The correspondence was final by the time I was 10.
It was realized that the kit boats were shipped bulk to the United States Optimist National and distributed as needed and they were cut from European plywood in Germany and 4mm was 4mm was 4mm.
Our association lost its certification until there was a measurement committee.
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