We’re out cruising for a few more weeks, currently nested in the heart of the San Juan Islands at Friday Harbor Marina. I love walking the docks here because Friday Harbor—everyone’s resupply stop—has it all: Classic watercraft next to crusty fishing boats, which in turn are jammed in with performance sailboats, million-dollar megayachts and a terrific assortment of small craft.
Because Friday Harbor boasts such variety, it’s where I find myself comparing and contrasting hull designs, quietly wondering about trends in naval architecture and recreational-boat marketing.
We’ve witnessed some fundamental shifts in hull design, along with ever-evolving stylistic trends, since the advent of fiberglass boat production. And design of recreational boats has been all over the place—tailfins in the late 1950’s, small cruising sailboats reflecting traditional designs in the 1970s, faster small powerboats once huge outboards became available, and over recent decades a lot more designs emphasizing the comforts of home (sometimes at the expense of exterior design, reliability and/or seaworthiness).
Along with greater beam and higher speeds, some designs now exude what feels like a “manly attitude” that’s similar to what we see in big, aggressive-looking American trucks, painted in shades of military gray, sometimes with angry-looking grilles. That’s what I’m seeing in some new powerboat designs: Angular shapes that suggest toughness over grace, and a cheerless function over form. But maybe that’s just me, being sensitive and yet snarky about modern boat design.
After walking a few miles on Friday Harbor docks, I’m frankly just confused about what’s going on, but I’ve noticed you can tell a lot by focusing on the bows of boats. Stem profiles tell a story, along with other details of design and construction.
So, just for fun, here are some photos of boat bows, and caption notes. (If you can draw conclusions from any of this, please share with other readers in the Comments section below. I have personal thoughts, but I’ve said enough.
Here goes…
Let’s start with something nice and traditional: The stem of a Devlin Surf Scoter, one of the 22-footers designed decades back by Sam Devlin and built in his Olympia, Washington shop. Sam has made some changes in the Surf Scoter design over the years—different power options, lengths and accommodations—but all of the models speak to salty, seaworthy boat design.
We used to say there aren’t many straight lines in a boat—and it was true—but the Stabi-Craft company of New Zealand has aggressively challenged the truism. This is a straight-on view of their 1550 Fisher model—welded aluminum panels with almost no curves to be found. I’m not saying these aren’t seaworthy, strong and able craft, but the design trend toward hard, angular lines and what seems like a military-vehicle aesthetic is, well, not for everyone.
I know clipper bows have a functional place in history, and we saw quite a few during earlier days of fiberglass-boat production, but they’ve faded as a design trend. (Can readers ID some contemporary production boats with clipper bows? I’m happy to be corrected on the subject.)
Back in the 1960’s some guy in the Puget Sound area imported half a dozen under-30’ pilothouse cruising sloops from Finland, selling them to folks up and down the shores of the Salish Sea. This one could use a bit of freshening, but the owner sails it often, loves the boat and is happy to tell you all about its virtues, including steering inside and outside of the pilothouse. There’s nothing nicer than sweet lapstrake planking lines, even if the boat will never be shown at a wooden-boat festival.
Nothing says “tough” like a sheet of diamond-plate blanketing the bow of your boat. This seems to be the way smaller fishing boats are going…toward an image of indestructibility. I’m sure these boats are way stronger than the thin aluminum boats of the past, but will they help catch more fish?
When one bow isn’t enough, try two or even three. There have been all kinds of successful catamaran sailboat and powerboat designs—this is a big and seaworthy ZETA powercat—but I have no idea where cats are going in terms of production or market penetration. (I’m happily stuck in the monohull universe, but I appreciate that some real benefits are found in multihull designs. Do any readers want to comment on the subject?)
Powerboat design continues to evolve, but whether large or small we tend to refer to boats with this stem profile as “Nose Jobs”—typically fast, streamlined day boats or cabin cruisers. (We don’t know exactly how this design trend evolved, other than suggesting speed when the boat was at rest, but maybe the marketing department was involved…helping sell 24-foot models that were actually sitting on 20-foot hulls?)
There’s a whole new category of powerboat design, mostly originating in Europe and headlined by manufacturers like Axopar of Finland, that appear to break a lot of old rules. They are fast, V-hulled, expensive, somewhat radical in design, with low-freeboard hulls, stems raked slightly aft, angular lines and what seems like a whole new approach to accommodation arrangements for weekenders or cruisers. I just don’t know what to think, but despite high sticker prices they seem to be selling well. (In just the past few years, we’re now seeing them everywhere and maybe especially in some of the hot-spot marinas. They typically feature two or more gigantic, powerful outboard motors and we get the feeling—not proven—that these “adventure boats,” with marketing aimed at younger buyers, might appeal to tech execs and others who have more money than boating experience.) Below is an Axopar of the type pictured above. They look impressive when running at speed, but a bit restless when tethered to a marina dock. (Readers, please comment.)
Axopar’s radical looking “Adventure cruiser.” Please let me know what you think—and what you know that I don’t about this trend in modern powerboat design.
The term “Trawler” has been applied to countless boats that have a few things in common: Forward-facing pilothouse windows, lots of interior space, and a certain “manly” appearance. (I know that a pilothouse with forward-leaning windows might have a greater sense of interior space, and it might suggest “serious fishing machine,” or “rugged and seaworthy” boat, but is it possible the public has been applying “trawler” to a variety of boats that haven’t ever trawled in their life?)
This is the bow of an aging Cruise-A-Home. Need I say more?
Of all the design trends I’ve witnessed over the past decade, my all-time favorite is the return of plumb stems (or even slightly aft-raked stems) on many new sailboats and some powerboats. And the design feature, happily, is not just for looks—it’s to extend waterline length and enhance hull speed of cruising and racing sailboats, especially. It makes total sense AND it looks terrific…so that’s my personal award for improvements in hull design, offsetting many setbacks we’ve witnessed as naval architecture is sometimes overtaken by sales and marketing departments. And, full disclosure, I appreciate the return of plumb stems since I’m sitting aboard a 1930 John Alden-designed motorboat with just such a stem…so the old is new once again, and not just because it looks cool.
A few years back, well before the pandemic, I attended a talk that Tad Roberts gave at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival about what constitutes good design. Although he was talking about boats, he actually started with the ideas of ancient Roman architect, Vitruvius, which were that good design should combine three things, which he labeled Commodity (utilitas - efficient arrangement of spaces & systems to meet the functional needs of its occupants), Firmness (firmitas - physical strength secured the building's structural integrity), and Delight (venustas - style, proportion, and visual beauty). Tad observed that these ancient rules could also be applied to boats, i.e. good design is timeless.
Tad proposed his own three rules for the aesthetic aspect of boats, which he says should be Balanced, Formal and Austere. He proposes that, in addition, there are other attributes which result from good design; Excitement, Cohesion, Elegance, Identity and Practicality.
I was struck by this approach and it occurred to me that these ideas could all be related to each other in a 3-circle Venn diagram, with Commodity, Firmness and Delight comprising the three circles, and Tad’s additional rules falling in various places among the circles and their intersections. At the very centre, in my view, at the intersection of all three, would be Balance, Identity and Elegance. As Tad continually points out, boat design is a matter of tradeoffs of all these elements and how to balance them.
If you take this Venn diagram approach, you then have a useful tool for looking at the various trends in boat design, including specific parts of the boat like bows, or how well the overall bits of the boat hang together.
To take your example of plumb bows, by themselves, I would have to ask how well they fit with the rest of the boat and how practical are they for the boat’s intended purpose. They might be fine for flat, protected waters or a flat-out racing boat like an IMOCA 60 where you can put up with the discomfort, but in an ocean-crossing cruising sailboat do they provide sufficient reserve buoyancy to prevent serious pitching when thrashing to windward 1,000 miles offshore in a big head sea?
For an example of overall boat design, such as the Axopar boats, I would argue that while they might be practical and structurally strong enough, they fail on identity, elegance and balance. They look to me like a wannabe Bond villain boat, but clearly aren’t. The various parts do not make a harmonious whole and I don’t think anyone would call them elegant.
Try using this mental checklist the next time you walk the docks.
Boat design these days is probably like a lot of things in the world now, a performance only with no evidence of reason and often displaying something more akin to insanity.
Marty,
A few years back, well before the pandemic, I attended a talk that Tad Roberts gave at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival about what constitutes good design. Although he was talking about boats, he actually started with the ideas of ancient Roman architect, Vitruvius, which were that good design should combine three things, which he labeled Commodity (utilitas - efficient arrangement of spaces & systems to meet the functional needs of its occupants), Firmness (firmitas - physical strength secured the building's structural integrity), and Delight (venustas - style, proportion, and visual beauty). Tad observed that these ancient rules could also be applied to boats, i.e. good design is timeless.
Tad proposed his own three rules for the aesthetic aspect of boats, which he says should be Balanced, Formal and Austere. He proposes that, in addition, there are other attributes which result from good design; Excitement, Cohesion, Elegance, Identity and Practicality.
I was struck by this approach and it occurred to me that these ideas could all be related to each other in a 3-circle Venn diagram, with Commodity, Firmness and Delight comprising the three circles, and Tad’s additional rules falling in various places among the circles and their intersections. At the very centre, in my view, at the intersection of all three, would be Balance, Identity and Elegance. As Tad continually points out, boat design is a matter of tradeoffs of all these elements and how to balance them.
If you take this Venn diagram approach, you then have a useful tool for looking at the various trends in boat design, including specific parts of the boat like bows, or how well the overall bits of the boat hang together.
To take your example of plumb bows, by themselves, I would have to ask how well they fit with the rest of the boat and how practical are they for the boat’s intended purpose. They might be fine for flat, protected waters or a flat-out racing boat like an IMOCA 60 where you can put up with the discomfort, but in an ocean-crossing cruising sailboat do they provide sufficient reserve buoyancy to prevent serious pitching when thrashing to windward 1,000 miles offshore in a big head sea?
For an example of overall boat design, such as the Axopar boats, I would argue that while they might be practical and structurally strong enough, they fail on identity, elegance and balance. They look to me like a wannabe Bond villain boat, but clearly aren’t. The various parts do not make a harmonious whole and I don’t think anyone would call them elegant.
Try using this mental checklist the next time you walk the docks.
Boat design these days is probably like a lot of things in the world now, a performance only with no evidence of reason and often displaying something more akin to insanity.