We are constantly asked about progress on Mahdee and it is really nice to be able to give a simple response about how we just passed some easily described milestone. Alas, it is never as simple as that.

We did have a celebration many months ago when the ribs were done. But actually they weren’t. Besides the couple of full ribs that weren’t quite complete, there were numerous riblets (which back the chainplates) and ribs that extend up through the deck to support the bulwarks (bulwark stanchions) all of which look a lot like more ribs to the casual observer. Then there is the planking. We started that about a year ago and its still not done — as critically pointed out by a couple of visitors. But we ran out of planking stock and then took a break during the hot months and then the (planking wood) log went missing in transit, so we started on the deck beams and deck. Then it got rainy so we really wanted to get that deck finished even though we now had the planking stock! But then we realized that it would be much easier to fit the tank cradle if we could see underneath the tank while fitting it, so we left off a few planks for that. But we ran out of planking fasteners again anyway, so we needed to switch jobs while UPS did their job of bringing our fasteners to us. And so it goes for lots of parts of the boat project. Lots of uncompleted tasks that are on hold for very good reasons, but which make it very difficult to check off ANY milestones.

One of the workers we’ve met here in the boatyard has a client whose “project manager” has decided that work can only proceed on one task at a time. A linear milestone approach that in the real world is very inefficient. We know that progress is being made toward our launch, but everyone would feel better if we had more concrete milestones behind us. But that’s the nature of complex jobs.