It’s surprising that our original requirements [PDF] still hold today. Sure, we could write a more comprehensive requirements document today — but that is really the role of specifications, which we developed over a four-year period while awaiting building to begin.
For the record, there is little of the 1993 requirements that we would amend today. The only item that comes to mind is “resistance to striking floating trees”. We simply had no idea that British Columbia {and to a lesser degree, Alaska} have forestry policies that allow timber companies to just forget about any logs or whole trees that are left for other vessels to ram.
That requirement would probably have eliminated our choice of saildrives and spade rudders — both important contributors to performance.
