ON THE DESIGN OF SMALL CRAFT HARBORS

Abstract

There is little useable, up-to-date written data on the design of small craft harbors. That which has been written does not in general fit the needs of today's crowded marinas. Therefore, we are pioneering a new phase of coastal engineering, one that needs the cooperation of both scientist and engineers, of private practice, university and government. To develop these needs, we must have specialization, as today's research, development, and design is too complex for any one individual to be expert in all. In larger organizations, such as government, three specializations must be developed. It is necessary that all of us in coastal engineering realize and admit this. Therefore, in this introduction the delineation of the responsibilities of these specialties are discussed. The designer must go to the shore, evaluate the needs of the area, conceive the works that will accomplish the needs, relate to the researcher where his lack of understanding lies and therefore the areas where research is needed. The researcher must then go to the laboratory and to the basic mathematical relationships and establish the relationship of one factor to another. The designer must then take these relationships to the drawing board and devise the structures to furnish a useable harbor. The relationship between the designer and the researcher must be initimate with each having full confidence in the other. Each of these takes long experience, training, and direction of thought that is peculiar to his calling. However, most frequently one in his specific knowledge feels that he can better do the job of the other. Here is often perpetrated a mistake that is severely injurous to the general public. A designer cannot be developed by reading literature, doing laboratory experiments, and discussing design with field personnel, even with frequent visits to the sites. A designer is developed by consultation with the scientist, or researcher, living with the on-site problems, and bearing full responsibility for the designs he devises by living with his projects. A scientist or a research engineer is developed by love of delving into the unknown, logically relating one factor of truth to another, starting with Idealized conditions completely unrelated to actual conditions, then developing coefficients to compensate for the irregularities of nature until a procedure is developed that the designer, with his long experience with actual conditions, can utilize in the development of a project. Rarely is both specialties inherent in one man. Therefore, grave errors are made by giving principal research responsibilities to a designer or principal design responsibilities to a researcher.