MATLAB is great for making high-quality figures for publication. It has a pretty steep learning curve, though, if you're used to spreadsheets.

MATLAB's huge advantage for graphing is that everything can be tuned and tweaked with commands and scripts. You only have to fuss over the first graph in a series; once you have everything the way you want it to look, you can use the same formatting script on all your other graphs. Presto, they all look good and they all match.

Getting into a boat from the water is HARD. The drag of the water makes it difficult to jump, and there's often no bottom to stand on. Even if you're in good physical condition, it's quite difficult to heave yourself more than about 15 to 30 cm (6" to 12") vertically out of the water. Take a look at a swimming pool: the copings are rarely more than 15 cm above the surface; in the best modern pools, they're level with it. Most people just can't jump any higher out of the water.

Let's look at Sunset Chaser for a moment:

After all this talk about building test models and towing rigs, the three people still reading this are probably wondering just how it all turned out.