Boat Design

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

Late-night inspirations

Submitted by Matthew on

Sometimes it's fun to get a bit carried away with design work. Even if it does cut into sleep a bit.

Assessing crew risks on a powerboat

Submitted by Matthew on

Should you require all crew on your boat to wear lifejackets? If so, under what conditions? Should you restrict access to some parts of the vessel when underway? Should those rules change in different weather conditions, or with different kinds of boat traffic nearby?

I suspect that many skippers make these decisions based on gut feeling and on who they side with in bar or forum arguments. Frankly, I don't think that's the best way to make critical safety decisions.

Risk assessment is a very well-developed art. Not every decision calls for a formal risk assessment, but putting a bit of logical thought into your key safety policies is certainly a prudent idea. Today, I present an informal walk-through of this process for the Starwind 860 trimaran we're currently building.

Stretching out a powerboat

Submitted by Matthew on

Design ideas tend to build up around here faster than they can be written down. At the moment, there are seven boats on the board:

  • The Starwind 860 is under construction and her detail drawings are still being finished up.

  • The Bonaventure 570's construction drawings are in work.

  • An up-sized Almaguin (5.8 m) is awaiting final construction drawings.

  • The four Awenda planing-hull designs are on the back burner, waiting for a calm spell.

And after John Harries' post this morning on why long thin boats are cool, I couldn't resist pulling out the CAD models of the Bonaventure 1180 for a bit more detailing.

Steering and throttle cable routing

Submitted by Matthew on

Control cable routing is often a bit of an afterthought. In a small, simple boat, it's often OK for the designer to more or less ignore the engine controls, and trust that the builder will know how to install them. That approach doesn't work so well for a larger vessel, like the Starwind 860 trimaran, in which the exact routing of each control cable must be planned out to avoid conflicts.

Pages

more