Open Source Anchor Project (OSAP)

h1. Open Source Anchor Project (OSAP) Wiki

The OSAP is the brainchild of [Insert Name Here] a participating member of CruisiersForum.com.  As active sailors, and especially cruisers, one of the most important and most hotly debated items are anchors.  The purpose of this project is to develop a low cost, open source anchor that is readily crafted from globally available materials with readily available techniques.

This project developed out of discussion on CruisersForum and if you wish to participate in the development of this project you must be a registered member at CruisersForum.

Click "Here":http://www.cruisersforum.com to register

If you are interested in participating in this project please PM the user "Foolishsailor" on CruisersForum and express your interest along with an email address and you will be added to the working group

To follow discussions on the development of the anchor please see click "Open Source Anchor Project":http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f118/open-source-anchor-project-113732.html

h3. The Intent

The intent of the OSAP is to create and distribute the design specifications for a generic new-generation anchor suitable for fabrication from readily available materials and using fabrication methods commonly accessible through-out the world.

The intention is to produce a design whose performance can be considered acceptable given the design criteria. The Intent is not to provide all things to all people.

The intent is to distill the essential aspects of prior art while specifically avoiding the unique and distinguishing characteristics of extant Copyright and Patent protected works, so as to produce an open and unlicensed design with functional utility.

The intent is to express the fact that a freely available OSA design will disincentivize piracy of intellectual property and as such is intended to be counter-injurious to established anchor manufacturers.

The intent is that presently established anchor manufacturers would be free to produce their own version of the OSA for sale in the worlds' marketplace and that the free availability of the OSA design would encourage expansion of the existing manufacturing base to the direct benefit of the end user.

The intent is to provide for the transfer of technology to enhance the safety and self-sufficiency of mariners regardless of class or border be they fisherman, waterman, recreational boater, or world cruising sailor.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

Prior art - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Copyright - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Patent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

h3. Why Should I Care About The OSA?

There are many practical, as well as philosophical reasons, why you should care and they are all selfish.

If you find yourself in a far away port with no where to hide from a hurricane or cyclone bearing down on you, and there is a guy on the beach with a stick welder, and you can find some steel plate, and you have a set of OSA prints in your ships papers, then you would at least have the option of making a decent anchor which is larger than your largest and which would otherwise be unavailable to you.

A more everyday example might be the fact that the guy dragging down on you right now, with the undersized plough that came with the boat when he bought it, might not be dragging down on you if an inexpensive but reliable OSAP anchor were available to him.

Beyond the practical, there are philosophical reasons as well. A freely available anchor design which more efficiently uses materials and resources to create a better quality anchor will have a direct economic impact on the individual who needs it most as well as on the planet as a whole.

The notion that one should discard some steel, have it shipped to Asia to be recycled into an anchor shaped piece of steel, shipped back to the the States or Europe where it is bent, so that it can be shipped back to the "manufacturer" in Australia or New Zealand, where it is either repaired or shipped back to Asia, to be recycled again, and then shipped back, using a transportation system entirely dependent on the use of oil, a non-renewable resource, and a production infrastructure likely fueled by coal in a country that doesn't give a crap about air pollution, is completely insane. 

All for a lump of steel or aluminium.

The ideal would be the option of going to meet a real live person, who lives in locally to your current position, hiring him to personally manufacture an essential piece of safety equipment from materials he has on hand, and who you could in turn trust with confidence to repair.

You as a cruising sailor can embrace the concept of production by the masses as opposed to mass production as described in "EF Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful

h3. Design of the OSA

Barring changes in the laws of physics, or a revolution in materials and manufacturing, the fundamental design of contemporary anchors will, in the future, only change in incremental amounts at best. 

We all know what the OSA looks like. It does not look like everybody's idea of the perfect or best anchor, but it might to some.

Given the relatively small fluke-area-to-weight ratio, inherent complexity, and expense required to produce, it does not look like the typical asymmetrical, hollow-shanked, ballasted point, and compound-curved single fluke of the Spade-style anchor.

Instead it probably looks like an asymmetrical, elbow plate-shanked, roll-bar-dependent, single concave fluke typical of the improved Bügel-type anchor.

It doesn't look like a game changer. It looks simple, basic, and without a lot of bling. It looks like something you've seen before, but probably less complicated.

However, new design, radical thinking and a communal effort - *especially by those that may not even be sailors* may help to bring something new to the table.

As important as the shape is, the materials will ultimately determine the successful utility of the design and what techniques are utilized to shape and work this material into the proposed anchor.

So here we are at the first step of a journey together to build something new.