Brief article in Professional Boatbuilder this month (thanks Doug) on how how Tier 3 engine mandates are eating up more space in the engine room for what is essentially the industry's "catalytic converter moment". As an actual designer and fixer of other company's designs... my reaction to the incessantly escalating mandates is what a further, enormous waste, hyper-pointless waste of time. Instead of devoting my entire "design bandwidth" to those elements that will delight my target customer with a feature/function/price-point optimized for their mission, while ending up as devoid of pointless vulnerability-enhancing complexity as possible (i.e. more mission worthy), a nontrivial fraction of my design hours (and apparently interior boat volume) are lost to chasing the eco-utopian fantasies of the government. At least they always get this sort of thing right, so we got that going for us. And it is obviously ultimately good news if you run a marine towing or repair service thanks to the escalating average complexity of the installed base of yacht drivetrains... and math.
So thank you EPA... boats from the the good old days before Tier 3 in strong working order just got even more valuable, at least to those who "get" the systems aspect of this and cause/effect-driven technical decision-making. So, hey, if you're looking for one, I know where there's a nice one. And, I'm gently reminding the reader again.. if you have not come up to speed on the Lindy Effect, you're missing out on a machine selection/asset-management principle that is worth understanding.
