Re: What determines boat capacity?
I think the various posters on this thread are correct when they posit that the boat manufacturer wants to avoid liability lawsuits.
[Sorry, but I have to say that we need SERIOUS tort-reform legislation in this country!!!!]
I wonder if boat manufacturers limit loading based upon model. Perhaps a fishing boat or bow-rider will have a much-limited max loading, while a ski-boat, since it presumably is less-likely to carry a bunch of friends...might be allowed to carry what it's hull is really capable of.
-Boeing pulls the same thing, though for a financial reason, with their airplanes.
I fly jets for Fedex, and one of my previous airline jobs was flying 747's for Kalitta Air, an all cargo airline out of Ypsilanti, Michigan. We had 15 airplanes, and each one of them was different. What amazed me was the fact that N704CK had a max takeoff weight of 802,000 pounds, while N714CK had a max takeoff weight of 833,000 pounds. 704 had engines that developed 55,000 pounds of thrust each, while 714 had weaker engines- they only made 52,000 pounds each. I was curious about this, asked around the company during recurrent training, and I was told that 704 could EASILY take the greater weight- there was no problem with structural strength. 704 and 714 were exactly the same. The difference was that the airlines that originally bought these planes also bought PERFORMANCE DATA from Boeing. If you paid a bit more....suddenly you could load another 29,000 pounds of freight or human meat. Connie Kalitta, the drag racer who owns the company, refused to pay Boeing the exorbitant sum they demanded. It doesn't matter- on a regular basis, I took off from Hong Kong, used every INCH of the 11,000 foot runway, pulled the plane off the pavement at the last possible moment...and then just barely climbed. Thankfully, we were usually headed west, towards Macau and a large expanse of water, so only the fishermen were scared when the 231 foot long airplane passed about 8 feet above their heads at 250 mph.
Yes we were overloaded on a regular basis. Overloading anything is a BAD idea...trust me!
T