The priorities below should all be considered, but the designer should consider them in the order most appropriate to themselves. There are a number of things that would normally be included in a specification such as this, but in this case those have been left to the designers , if the brief is read carefully the hints are there as to what is appropriate.
1/ Cost, with a heavy mortgage finding the cash for the project is not easy, they have a little in the bank and some from each payday. Time is a cost, tools and building materials are a cost, skills that they do not have are a cost . The ongoing maintenance and running costs of the craft are a very important cost.
It may be that materials and equipment that are commonly available and within our teams skills could in reality be cheaper than materials that have a cheaper purchase price, and a boat that does not require a travel lift to antifoul will be an advantage.
2/ Seaworthy. The trip from New Zealand to Fiji is about 1300 miles of , sometimes stormy seas, often interspersed with flat calms and sometimes very rough where the Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean pile up onto the shallows of the Kermadec Ridge, an underwater mountain range that pokes its head up as reefs and islands which makes the direct line a bit of an obstacle course.
Seaworthy by definition includes being safe when working on deck, secure in the cockpit, having adequate hatches and ports , drains, stability , and rigging that will cope with seagoing conditions.
Our design should be able to obtain a Category one rating for offshore work. This does not include the mandatory safety equipment which is outside the scope of this brief.
3/ Time afloat. The voyage can be expected to take up to three weeks in a small cruising yacht, the boat should be able to carry stores and equipment for twice that for the projected crew of two. Total carrying capacity including stores should be at least 1000kg, inclusive of two people, water, food, fuel, dinghy, ground tackle, spares etc.
4/ This boat should be an owner built boat, our hypothetical builders are a couple, She 28yrs old, a junior marketing executive who went sailing with the family when young, He 32, is a warehouse supervisor with some small experience of DIY carpentry with his Father. Both fit, well trained and experienced in the outdoors.
Building skills required are to be basic but some can be learned, one of the costs to be considered is the cost of learning or hiring those skills and equipment that they do not have themselves.
5/ They live in a Town House with a 10m x 10 m back yard, no shed but a temporary roof up to 5m x 10m could be made from a lean to frame and tarpaulin .. Power from an extension cord through a window may be used for lighting and power tools. Dads woodworking hand tools were passed on to our duo, along with a power drill, a power jigsaw ( sabre saw) and a big orbital sander. Any additional tools or equipment is part of the “cost” that must be taken into account.
6/ Materials, apart from items such as adhesives and fastenings, should come from the local builders yard. No materials specified as “marine” should be used unless there is not an equivalent.
7/ Time has a cost, Where there is a choice of making an item or buying one off the shelf, if it is possible to make said item simply and quickly that is acceptable but not at the expense of increasing the build time unreasonably. Besides, they have only 24 man hours a week available from their jobs if they are to get the mortgage down to where renting the house will keep the payments up.
Projected build time should be no longer than 1 1/2 years.
8/ Further to the above, it is acceptable for one or both of the team to attend Night Classes , where skills can be learned and specialised equipment be available.
For example, engineering where mild steel fittings may be shaped and welded using school equipment then sent off for hot dip galvanising.
9/ Comfort. Our two are hardened campers and trampers so need not have hot and cold running everything, but do require comfortable sea bunks, a double bed in port, a dedicated place for the galley stove and a flat on which to prepare food, and a somewhat private place in which to use a caravan type portable toilet.
10/ Performance This boat is not expected to break records, the fact that she can be leaving for the tropics in a couple of years gets them to their dream atoll immensely sooner than the conventional boat that they might be able to buy when they retire as that would entail a wait of 30 or 40 years .
11/ She should though be able to make good progress relative to her length in the widest possible range of conditions, be manoeuvrable enough to make her way into and out of tight spots under sail and be steady enough to be easily run by only two crew.
She should have a comfortable motion and be enjoyable to voyage in, after all, that's what the whole thing is all about.