International Trade committee  That is very important, especially the self-righting craft. You have to get all the weight as low as you can. It looks top-heavy, but the things that are on the top are fairly light. All the engines, transmissions, and tracks are all low down.

International Trade committee  No.

International Trade committee  Yes. It's very much driven by the requirement of the job that has to be done. We wouldn't sell one if we weren't doing a special job that they couldn't do any other way.

International Trade committee  No, we're not.

International Trade committee  We should be, but we're so busy. I've been to Russia three times this year, I'm going to Brazil for a second time, and I'm running the company at the same time, so it's not very easy.

International Trade committee  Right now we've been sheltered from it, I have to admit, by the consortium, because I sell to the consortium, and funds, progress payments, come at certain stages of production out of Amsterdam. Their buyers have to do the battle with Kazakhstan to move this particular thing. W

International Trade committee  Absolutely. Yes.

International Trade committee  In this meeting here I can be quite honest. Most of the patents are getting very long in the tooth and we don't have a lot of patent protection, which makes it even more important. For instance, in the Soviet Union they want to buy one or two craft and you know very well that the

International Trade committee  I think so. I think the U.K. is probably one of the closer ones, with its problem of the Thames. They have a specific problem. There are all these little streets in the city of London, and they can't get big fire trucks in, whereas they can get up and down the river, and they do

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  “Typically” as a word is not very good, because the most we've built is six. One was built for Kazakhstan when we had the very high level. I think if one averages it out, it's about one and a half craft a year that we've built, but now there are two or three different potential

International Trade committee  Yes.... Well, not designed to them. There is a basic craft that we build. It's the additional bits that are put on it that are special. For instance, in oil spill response, we have to have cranes and other things to run some of their equipment.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. Our craft approved by the U.S. Coast Guard, which is the product we have sold the most of, has a capacity of 52 people. The one we're selling right now into Gazprom is 75, but they are bigger seats. If we have the ordinary IMO seating plan—we've talked about IMO—there

International Trade committee  No, I don't. I do think that it's not so much the skills you talk about but the experience. You can get the same good mechanic walk past a track system who says it looks okay, but someone who has experience in the craft will look at it and say it has a bent backing bar on that tr

International Trade committee  Right now we have about 35, but it goes up and down with the builds. For instance, when we were building the last big build for Kazakhstan, we had 64 people on three different shifts. We were working around the clock because they had a deadline to start drilling. Then we go right