Have motor-boats changed as much as cars?

[CrawfW]

Wow, for once it seems like i have found a topic that interests others! The only downside now is that i am about to reveal myself as someone doing this on a Friday night, as opposed to earlier when "WFH"......

Still, have really enjoyed reading the comments. Especially:

Brilliant question. Yes and no on so many different levels but I think this will be a magnificent thread

Picking out a few other bits......

Even cutting edge technology like electric drivetrains are available in boats...probably since the 60’s when Ray Hunt was designing hulls and Volvo built the first outdrive so that car engines could comfortably go in boats...which all led to the American suburban family being able to have a boat on their drive...I think boats and cars have been in lockstep

This is a particularly interesting point: the way in which alignment with Detroit brought down the price to enable American Suburbia to add boats to their possessions. I guess the UK issue is then that most of our water is salty and sometimes rather lumpy.

In terms of performance and seakeeping, No !
The fundamentals of a deep V and Hp thatRay hunt , Sony Levi , Don Aronow, Amarti( Itama ) Theodali ( sp ) Magnum , + sone others omitted from this list because I have forgotten…are the same .

What has changed is the demographics of the buyer a shift from seakeeping / ride / performance to floating apartment.
Not criticising btw , holster your weapons folks just saying it as it’s it .

This accommodation maxing out and easy entry into boating with manoeuvring aids via IPS + other electrotwackery ( with shafts ) means the advent of mid cabins , V drives on shafts and a loss of seakeeping, or a nudge away from could be bettered if the weight was more fwd giving a better balance .

There are still a few niche builders focusing on seakeeping via deep V s and massive Hp motors .By deep V I am using the correct in naval architecture circles of in excess of a 20 degree deadrise , You are looking at Otam , Itama ,Magnum as examples. With deadrises pretty much where Sony Levi , Ray Hunt , Aronow were back in the day .

I am not a particular fan of the E-type. Jaguar made some great cars – and engines – but the E-type has always seemed a little over-rated. A very great regret is not buying a Miura when they were still out of fashion, though it wouldn’t have been for the handling especially. Won’t ever afford one now!

And getting back to the main point - with extra questions......

1. Is the book in Portofino's photo still the key one to read? I would love to understand - at amateur level - the specifics of boat architecture, so that I could see how much they vary. Is the book in the picture still the right one?!

I would love to be able to give myself approximate answers to questions - (which would also be phrased better !) like "how many fewer HP does a flat-bottom planer of X feet need compared to a deep-V for a given speed". Geek.

2. Still, i am not completely alone........

back on the subject of planing boats - when did stepped hulls become more mainstream? think its only recently (last 10-15 years) that they've started being used on cuddy cabin sports boats (think regal use a stepped hull, no idea whether its a good implementation of a stepped hull or poor) and cheaper stuff. before that they were the preserve of the go fast american boats - your 70mph plus stuff.

I think a 25 foot fairey will still be better (by better I mean maintain a higher average speed in a given chop) than your average 25 foot american cuddy cabin though, would be an interesting test though.

This is exactly the sort of thing i too an keen to understand. Does anyone know if Regal's is a good version of a stepped hull?! Was it ~15 years ago that stepped hulls became mainstream?

3. Did Deep-Vs ever get to the mainstream after the 60s, or were they always "specials" for the Cowes-Torquay sort of thing?

Better stop there. Not least, because the quote text is making my head spin.....

 

[CrawfW]

Blimey, just looked up Ferretti, Otam, Itama and Magnum. To get into one of them i would have to have bought the Miura 20 years ago and be about to sell it....

Triana is looking much better value....

 

[jrudge]

They have made huge strides. Making a 1:1 comparison is tricky as abs in a car is not needed on a boat.

we now have electronic engine controls , pods , hi lo platforms , air con , stabilisation, water makers, jet ribs , position hold , auto docking ( not sure if commercial yet), interiors like houses , mid cabins ,rectangular beds , lithium batteries, modern silent outboards , ais , onboard Wi-Fi, etc etc. I would say that is a lot of progress

 

[julians]

Was it ~15 years ago that stepped hulls became mainstream?

Not sure that stepped hulls are even mainstream now, certainly the majority of planing boats are NOT stepped, but I think they became more mainstream a few years ago when manufacturers like regal started to use them.

 

[stelican]

The Regal stepped hull works very well on their sports boats up to 27 ft. Average 20% deadrise.
quicker planing more fuel efficient and higher top speed than the non stepped hull competition.
Interestingly not used on the heavier cabin cruisers.

 

[Portofino]

Wow, for once it seems like i have found a topic that interests others! The only downside now is that i am about to reveal myself as someone doing this on a Friday night, as opposed to earlier when "WFH"......

Still, have really enjoyed reading the comments. Especially:



Picking out a few other bits......



This is a particularly interesting point: the way in which alignment with Detroit brought down the price to enable American Suburbia to add boats to their possessions. I guess the UK issue is then that most of our water is salty and sometimes rather lumpy.



I am not a particular fan of the E-type. Jaguar made some great cars – and engines – but the E-type has always seemed a little over-rated. A very great regret is not buying a Miura when they were still out of fashion, though it wouldn’t have been for the handling especially. Won’t ever afford one now!

And getting back to the main point - with extra questions......

1. Is the book in Portofino's photo still the key one to read? I would love to understand - at amateur level - the specifics of boat architecture, so that I could see how much they vary. Is the book in the picture still the right one?!

I would love to be able to give myself approximate answers to questions - (which would also be phrased better !) like "how many fewer HP does a flat-bottom planer of X feet need compared to a deep-V for a given speed". Geek.

2. Still, i am not completely alone........



This is exactly the sort of thing i too an keen to understand. Does anyone know if Regal's is a good version of a stepped hull?! Was it ~15 years ago that stepped hulls became mainstream?

3. Did Deep-Vs ever get to the mainstream after the 60s, or were they always "specials" for the Cowes-Torquay sort of thing?

Better stop there. Not least, because the quote text is making my head spin.....

The book = Yes . Open your eyes .
Very briefly the Author designed for the mob “ rum runners “ between the wars during prohibition. To bring into Florida booze , out run the cops / officialdom…..in all weathers majoring on not getting caught .
Jap s did Pearl harbour = America entered WW2 . The author was under scrutiny from the feds facing charges = imprisionment etc . He was @ Pearl harbour when it kicked off .In the melee that followed he was drafted in the navy to design the same , but a military fast Motor Torpedo Boat ( MTB ) …….which he did just same deep V hull subbing cargo ( barrels of booze ) for ammo + torpedos . All went well in the pacific campaign. MTB s two versions a 70 and 90 ft making a major contribution.
Post war ( past alleged criminal misdemeanours conveniently forgotten) he was the very world first appointment professor of Naval architecture at MIT .Then he wrote this book .

Back in Europe the Brits pains me to say it - were floundering, literary the U.K. MTB s were flat bottomed ply contraptions- MTB s and basically couldn’t run fast in a chop .If they could run fast the weapon launch ( due to the hull bounce ) was erratic . They had no idea . Ok in the air we had Spitfires and Lancasters , but at sea we were very inferior in close 1/4 battles .
Meanwhile the German E boats were deep V …..they got it . Blomm + Voss et al But internal politics in Berlin stemmed there build numbers .
But in the few occasions E boats met Brit MTB s in a “ chop “ the Germans ruled the waves .

The rest as they say is history.

 

[NBs]

Hi,

I think hydrofoil boats an old invention, reheated. This Swedis E-boat is cool exsample.

NBs

 

[oldgit]

UK well behond the curve on access to flybridge.....the competition had stairs on tiny little budget boats we were still addicted to some sort of letterbox slot in the fly floor and manky ladder ........................ on blimming great expensive posh luxurious motor yachts. ?
Yup thats us all over .

 

[Alicatt]

Back in the early 70s my school mate and I were discussing the merits of the hull on his father's Winner Wildcat being a "Quadra lift" and some what similar to an ex Royal Marine's rigid raider dory I had much later, very much a stepped hull shape his boat had a Volvo Penta petrol engine and his dad had the engine tuned a bit using some of the parts from the Volvo 144 road cars that produced more HP. Just remember it as both his dad and my dad had Volvos at that time, he took the 2litre engine out his car and put it in the boat and the 1800cc boat engine went into his 145 Volvo estate car.

Hi,

I think hydrofoil boats an old invention, reheated. This Swedis E-boat is cool exsample.

NBs

My father (and uncle) worked at Denny's Shipyard in Dumbarton during the early part of the war and he knew of a hydrofoil MTB that Denny's had made but they had difficulty in keeping it up on the foils properly at the time, on a good day it was capable of around 70knots they say. They also built hovercraft just after the war.
Denny's shipyard had the first privately owned commercial test tank (1883) to test their hull designs, their museum has examples of sailing ships with bulbous bows that they tested but found they offered no advantage to the ships at that time.

Denny's Test Tank:

Edit: Coincidently my wife and I were married just across the road from this museum and in front of the building is a statue of William Denny.

 

[CrawfW]

The book = Yes . Open your eyes .
Very briefly the Author designed for the mob “ rum runners “ between the wars during prohibition. To bring into Florida booze , out run the cops / officialdom…..in all weathers majoring on not getting caught .
Jap s did Pearl harbour = America entered WW2 . The author was under scrutiny from the feds facing charges = imprisionment etc . He was @ Pearl harbour when it kicked off .In the melee that followed he was drafted in the navy to design the same , but a military fast Motor Torpedo Boat ( MTB ) …….which he did just same deep V hull subbing cargo ( barrels of booze ) for ammo + torpedos . All went well in the pacific campaign. MTB s two versions a 70 and 90 ft making a major contribution.
Post war ( past alleged criminal misdemeanours conveniently forgotten) he was the very world first appointment professor of Naval architecture at MIT .Then he wrote this book .

Back in Europe the Brits pains me to say it - were floundering, literary the U.K. MTB s were flat bottomed ply contraptions- MTB s and basically couldn’t run fast in a chop .If they could run fast the weapon launch ( due to the hull bounce ) was erratic . They had no idea . Ok in the air we had Spitfires and Lancasters , but at sea we were very inferior in close 1/4 battles .
Meanwhile the German E boats were deep V …..they got it . Blomm + Voss et al But internal politics in Berlin stemmed there build numbers .
But in the few occasions E boats met Brit MTB s in a “ chop “ the Germans ruled the waves .

The rest as they say is history.

Right. Been on the internet and should have a copy of this coming in the near future. What a chap. Recco. very much appreciated.....

At the risk of simplifying topics massively, it seems the recent-ish Regal is the only hull-design people are mentioning in the same breath as the various deep-vee. Are there other hull designs that have changed the game significantly in the 25-40' range?

 

[henryf]

The superficial answer is no they haven’t but actually I’m not so sure.

Fundamentally not much has changed with motor boats, hull, engine, interior, some beds and a steering wheel. Cars are also fundamentally the same, 4 wheels, an engine, seats and a steering wheel.

What’s changed with cars is build quality and reliability. If you think of a car from the ‘60s or ‘70s the build quality was shocking. They needed servicing every 3-6,000 miles and if you were heading off on a 200 mile journey you needed to fully check the car, pack a travel rug, a flask of tea and be prepared to break down. Now people commute that distance every day. Cars run for 20,000 miles between services and last 15 years before needing major work.

Back in the old days you might get a 12 month guarantee and by year 4 you’d be whacking Isopon P38 and chicken wire into the rust holes. These days cars are structurally sound for 20 years and try not to kill you in an accident.

measured in those terms I think there have been advancements in boating. They are still hand built low volume items but the fit and finish has come on leaps and bounds from the 1970’s and 80’s.

A new boat can be used in anger and you would hope to get reliable service out of the box. The electronics have become more complex to aid emissions and economy - I still remember firing up a twin engine diesel boat from the 1990’s and it filled the marina with smoke. These days there isn’t a whiff.

Then there’s the volume and accommodation afforded by today’s boats. A far cry from earlier cramped quarters and crude fittings.

Safety and navigation. Who still aims 10 miles north of their target when crossing open water so they can swing south and find the intended port? My chart plotter moans if I’m half a boat’s width off target for the entire trip.

So I do think boats have seen a massive improvement over the years equal to cars.

 

[volvopaul]

The engine are the same , even fuller of plastic bits .

 

[Chris H]

Car manufactures have made huge strides in performance and economy, I don’t see this with boats, Maybe the new diesels are a bit more economical but the actual boats don’t seem to be any faster.

 

[DAW]

Cars seem to have improved exponentially in so many areas ... build quality, reliability, aerodynamic efficiency, fuel economy, power output, handling, performance, frequency and cost of servicing ... and the sophistication of the electronics used in engine management and entertainment systems is mind-blowing. Even the modest family car is a significant engineering feat and they seem to have done all this without becoming dramatically more expensive in relative terms compared with average incomes, etc. You get much more car for your money today than 60 years ago, and even low cost cars are often very good in absolute terms.

I'm not sure the same can be said of boats. Of course they have also improved in almost every way, but this forum is still full of complaints about patchy build quality, dubious engineering and design decisions, fragile components which don't work with each other, are poorly installed and/or fail in normal use far too often. Absolute performance, whether measured by speed or efficiency, doesn't seem to have improved that dramatically, and inherent unreliability is still accepted as normal because "it's a boat". While you certainly get more boat today than 60 years ago, perhaps this comes without the same evolution in value for money we've seen with cars.

It's easy to say that bespoke. luxury products built in low volumes will never be as reliable as those which are mass produced, but low volume car manufacturers have found a way to invest heavily in design, development and testing, sharing technology and learning from the volume producers to more effectively manage their build quality and reliability.

 

[rafiki_]

Cars seem to have improved exponentially in so many areas ... build quality, reliability, aerodynamic efficiency, fuel economy, power output, handling, performance, frequency and cost of servicing ... and the sophistication of the electronics used in engine management and entertainment systems is mind-blowing. Even the modest family car is a significant engineering feat and they seem to have done all this without becoming dramatically more expensive in relative terms compared with average incomes, etc. You get much more car for your money today than 60 years ago, and even low cost cars are often very good in absolute terms.

I'm not sure the same can be said of boats. Of course they have also improved in almost every way, but this forum is still full of complaints about patchy build quality, dubious engineering and design decisions, fragile components which don't work with each other, are poorly installed and/or fail in normal use far too often. Absolute performance, whether measured by speed or efficiency, doesn't seem to have improved that dramatically, and inherent unreliability is still accepted as normal because "it's a boat". While you certainly get more boat today than 60 years ago, perhaps this comes without the same evolution in value for money we've seen with cars.

It's easy to say that bespoke. luxury products built in low volumes will never be as reliable as those which are mass produced, but low volume car manufacturers have found a way to invest heavily in design, development and testing, sharing technology and learning from the volume producers to more effectively manage their build quality and reliability.

I think you touch on one of the bigger differences, price increases. Boats of a similar size have at least doubled, if not trebled over the past 20 years. Car prices have increased, but nothing like as much. Feature content in cars has multiplied. While there are more features in new boats, these all come at a massive premium. It’s a good case study for an MBA to compare price and feature growth, cars to boats.

 

[oldgit]

Car manufactures have made huge strides in performance and economy, I don’t see this with boats, Maybe the new diesels are a bit more economical but the actual boats don’t seem to be any faster.

Anybody body else wandering around Excel or SBS remember being deluged with information on just how much fuel the buyer of a new boat would be saving over the previous version. .
They knew their market well, how on earth would they sell anything that might use 30% less fuel but was 2.5 knots slower than the previous incarnation of the boat.

 

[henryf]

I’m not so sure that car prices haven’t increased in line with boat prices pro-rata.

A new VW golf in the UK starts at £25k. It doesn’t seem that long ago that they started from around £10k. Maybe I’m just getting old…..

 

[Alicatt]

Anybody body else wondering around Excel or SBS remember being deluged with information on just how much fuel the buyer of a new boat would be saving over the previous version. .
They knew their market well, how on earth would they sell anything that might use 30% less fuel but was 2.5 knots slower than the previous incarnation of the boat.

Is it the 2.5 knots slower that gives the 30% fuel saving?

 

[Sunny265]

I think you touch on one of the bigger differences, price increases. Boats of a similar size have at least doubled, if not trebled over the past 20 years. Car prices have increased, but nothing like as much. Feature content in cars has multiplied. While there are more features in new boats, these all come at a massive premium. It’s a good case study for an MBA to compare price and feature growth, cars to boats.

I suspect that is due to the ability of car manufacturers to pool resources, share running platforms & engines and automate production. Plus, there is an almost guaranteed outlet for all the metal produced. The bigger boat manufacturers are implementing many innovations from manufacturing excellence, but like the car industry can lead to a more sterile end product.
The boat building industry is in a difficult place, high overheads, increasing costs, longer lead-times in the supply chain and a small market impacted by events outside the control of those that can afford to buy a new boat.

 

[Kub Cat]

Having front engined, mid engine and rear engined sports cars in the stable I can say the skill level required to drive them well increases as the engine goes further back and as they get older.

In my opinion they also get more rewarding as they get harder to drive.

As for powerboats some older boats were more extreme. You needed more skill to get the most out of them. I am thinking of ski boats that I have had that had very little freeboard. You could sink them easily if you got it wrong.

My Cigarette has very little headroom, very few creature comforts and is 12m long. Running through the ocean is absolutely amazing, but it’s not what most people want and I must confess, I don’t use it very often. As an aside, miles per gallon the two 8.1L petrol engines is similar to my 17ft RIB with a 90hp because the bigger boat is doing over 50mph at about 3200rpm.

Boats have definitely changed a lot as have cars. We have different expectation.

Modern boats are definitely quieter, and I think that is a great thing, there is less fatigue as they usually have more creature comforts.

But because they are so incredibly expensive and often couples decide together what to buy, comfort and style are often much higher priority than outright performance or seaworthiness.

For example massive cabin windows very close to the waterline make the interior feel so much nicer, but we have had 2 boats at our marina that they have literally fallen out. And one was a very well know European builder.

Another example is the increased height of boats not only for more headroom but also for more ‘presence’ has to translate to less stability. So fins and gyros become more important.

Increased electronics especially on engines and controls are great when new, most of the time, but not what some people desire when in remote areas. I am a firm believer of the KISS philosophy for the essentials on a boat. Knock yourself out with entertainment, high low tables, air conditioning or whatever.

As for fuel economy, the difference between a common rail diesel and a mechanical diesel both at their peak torque is not that great. Where the gains are is outside of the peak torque rpm, smoke and noise.

I better go hide now.

If it’s Porsche 911 you are referring to then …..

Nope .
Porsche do mid engined as a well .718 today and even a hot one GT 4 .
Besides they have been mid engined well before the family touring cooking 911 came on the scene .
View attachment 152324

The first version 901 circa 1963 which was relabelled 911 ( Peugeot tm d the middle zero number ) had retro fitted solid lead bumpers to somewhat counter balance the engine .

As said it’s not as if they didn’t know about weight distribution is it with the spyder ?

Without being funny Tony you have been sold “ IPS “ in boats and rear engined in a “sports “car .I see a pattern a familiar pattern .
All marketing hype .

edit - Peugeot zero thingy the relabel of the 901 to 911 .