M.B. Marsh Design offers a steadily growing range of plans for small watercraft. Our services include custom design, refit planning, condition surveys, failure analysis, systems integration and more.

Our designs hit what we think is an ideal balance between performance, capabilities, cost and ease of construction. Most of them are suitable for amateur or advanced amateur construction. These are boats that you can build in your garage, needing only patience, common tools, basic carpentry and fibreglass skills, and a willingness to learn. The resulting vessels are stylish, capable boats that will serve you well for many years.

From The Drawing Board

New designs from our drawing board, and assorted thoughts on boat design in general.

Boat manuals need to include electrical schematics and software details

Submitted by Matthew on

Good drawings take time to make. Time costs money. Therefore, good drawings are not cheap.

Some boat builders seem to think that this logic leads to a fourth point: "Therefore, we will not include drawings."

Er, guys? Not cool. Seriously, not cool. Just see what happens the very first time the owner has to have something fixed, and the technician spends most of a day rooting around in the bilges trying to figure out where the hell all the wires are going.

New design: Something whimsical for creative kids

Submitted by Matthew on

Here's a new design from our drawing boards that a few of you might find interesting.

She may look a little weird there, but read on and you'll see...

Do fibreglass and carbon fibre mix?

Submitted by Matthew on

"Let's put carbon fibre in there," says the marketing director. "That stuff's stronger. And I can sell it as a high-end feature."

"Yup, yup," replies the shop foreman. "We can do that. It's a bit pricey though, maybe we could use just a bit of it mixed with the fibreglass."

Fast forward three years, and both men are scratching their heads over why the component- which was, according to the designer, more than strong enough in fibreglass alone- has failed catastrophically even though they added a "better" material.

TL;DR: Mixing different fibres in the same load path can lead to a component being weaker than it would be if only one type of fibre had been used.

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In The Shop

Dispatches from the shop: Progress reports on our boat building projects, plus some useful information for those of you who are building, restoring or repairing your own boats.

More S860 crossbeams: Centre bearing blocks

Submitted by Matthew on

The Starwind 860 trimaran's crossbeams are joined on the boat's centreline by a massive hinge pin. This mechanism ensures that the two outriggers fold in sync. The peak load on the centre bearing could be up to 41 kN (about four tons) port-starboard or 11 kN up-down, and the structures around it need to reflect that.

Coloured epoxy?

Submitted by Matthew on

What does it mean when your epoxy hardener comes out coloured? Will it put your project in jeopardy?

Nope. It turns out that this is not really a problem for strength or curing characteristics, only for appearance.

Crossbeam construction

Submitted by Matthew on

It's been a while since we kept you folks posted on the Starwind 860 project. Don't worry, it hasn't died – we've just been busy!

A simple trailer tongue extension

Submitted by Matthew on

Folding trailer tongues are nice, but a folding mechanism is expensive and hard to retrofit to an existing trailer.

With the local water levels already low and going lower, the time was right for us to modify Sunset Chaser's trailer for shallower ramps. Here's how we did it.

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