What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo's

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BIG_PLANS

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What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

If you where the head of a large mobo manufacturer what would you spend your R&D cash on?

Engine's?
Hull Form?
Interior design?
Exterior design?
or of course any other ideas.

This is a question I have to write an essay on, but thought it was an interesting topic. All ideas would be useful.
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

In almost all cases the R&D has already been done, by shipbuilders for the military. (Interior/exterior design obvious exception.) The challenge is to make this advanced stuff affordable.

Kelly Cook
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

How to fit IPS to every new boat and how to make it illegal to own a boat with shaft drive..... noisey, smelly, handles like a truck and burns fuel like and Iraqi oil well up in smoke.

Only joking. Its interesting though the difference in culture on accepting new technology. Euro bods taken to IPS like a duck to water can see straight away the benefits yet here we have a culture of knocking the ass out of anything that resembles a shift in thinking.....Its been that way for 80 years mate, never going to change, it will probably kill you or blow your boat up.

I've heard everything from the electronic bits will fizz and leave you stranded mid chanel, eh? half the stuff on any modern engine is controlled by electronics, goes fizz and it stops so why so anti IPS electronic/ lectrickery bits. Hit something and it will sink you, hit anything that hard and it will sink you, I mean two of you are in your 40' flybridgey jobs one IPS one Shafts and just for fun cus you both won the lottery you decide to both ram a submerged 40' container at 30 knts, do you really think the IPS one will come off worse, both will go to the bottom like a stone, well actually the IPS has a better chance of survival but half the people here will never wear that..........its new technology must be rubbish or a death trap.

Maybe the forces of economics will push us into considering it when five years down the line my 40' fly thingy sells for better money than you five year old shafty cus mine burns a third less fuel than yours and it now costs half a house to fill your tanks.

And with that I shall retire and watch from afar as I get lambasted from here to Green Meanie hell and back.
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

"it will probably kill you or blow your boat up" /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
apart from the fact it is totaly totaly totaly useless anywhere a boat is going to dry out.
What about upriver.Those dangling things are sticking down a lot further than the other two systems and if you can float in 3ft of water but not 4ft.Oops.
So thats upriver off the list,no drying out or mud berths.........anything left. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Anyway spend that R&D dosh on fuel consumption.Advances in hull development are not likely to be dramatic.
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

And drying out with most modern shaftdrive boats without keels is feasible ?

I can just imagine 10 tons of flybridge princess being supported by the props, shafts, and p-brackets.

NOT.

Okay, this is the point where "n" people chime in on how their shaft drive tubs take to the mud every day...

dv.
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

Take your point but in all honesty how many new £300K- £400K flybridge or sports cruisers do you find lying up in a mud berth or toottling along at 4 knts up river. The major gathering point for these type boats is and always will be Marina berths. I like the idea of drying out but unfortunately thats not what the vast majority of new whizzy fly / sports jobbie owners want, they want to flash down on a friday night spend a couple of days on board and off again, they want facilities, water, power, fuel, food all on hand and have to say with the family along and to keep their interest probably the only way of doing it, kids in the aft cabin with the play station mum dad watching the lastest DVD and the aircon on full whack.
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

I suppose that a more economical means of propulsion is required, other than sails!, and what ever happened to the 'wing' engine as a get you home or slow/river cruising?
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

Death of the flybridge boat I am afraid.......another few years of development with the hardtop sports cruiser design and will have a hard job shifting new flybridge boats. Will always be some demand for them but nothing like we have seen in the past. Will be mostly northern european builders producing them but even they are putting more and more of their R&D budget into sports cruisers with hard tops. Imagine soon a new tag for such will be out... like Single Deck Cruiser or some such. Big stuff will always have some form of flybridge but will evolve more into a 'sun deck' rather than a second helm position.
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

Like the Seline 365 from the late 80's, classed as a sports bridge, was planned to have inserts between the T bar and the screen, but never came about.
Good starting point as most of the design and testing has been done.

Why fit all boats with big engines that do very little work, just sit there in the marina and corrode.
How about an empty engine bay, and a small manovering engine, use this for marina and around the bay for picnic. For main runs you hire a serviced power pack with two big engines and fuel tanks. At the end of the trip the power pack is removed, serviced and fitted to the next boat. This means the engines get work, and the fuel is allways fresh, could be an engine pod in the centre with IPS, or one with transom and stern drives.

Brian
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

Other development for displacement boats will be electric propulsion, small diesel or bio fuel engine that charges the batterys but still linked to drive system as get you home but can be decoupled from drive whist in charging mode, with engine running in charge mode and full batterys you have (at present) six hours of cruising but still needs more delevopment to give constant running ability without engine connected to drive. Becoming quite popular on the inland waterways in europe but a while yet before reaches sea going craft. Up side is from a sound point of view it is almost as quiet as sailing as engine is much smaller and boxed like a genny so just a humming sound as you swish along.
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

Turbines for really big stuff is another area being closely developed with a couple of the Italian yards, down side at the moment is the noise they generate and the heat. Up side is they are tiny compared to diesels and give an huge amount of extra room in the hull. Super reliable and hardly any moving parts compared to diesels also big saving in weight. Thought is that you have electric pods for harbour and berthing use and the big doofer kicks in when you are out side the port and on your way.
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

I am of the opinion that we will all be driving economical cats as diesel will be £153.45 a litre - Supposedly.
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

"Advances in hull development are not likely to be dramatic. " Dont agree with this at all. Once we move to efficient hulls then we will start looking at more efficient forms of propulsion more seriously like electric, fuel cells etc. We need efficient hulls for electric engines, fuel cells etc to be worthwhile. A 2hp equivalent electric engine propels a 30ft displacement cat nearly 6 knots. I saw more efficient electric engines being developed at the London show and another big launch at Dusseldorf. Development of hulls and propulsion systems will go hand in hand. For the record I am involved commercially in displacement cats.
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

H'mm, R&D money: how much do I get? Blue sky thinking or a bit of improvement on what is already there? I'd suggest increasing battery capacity, or reducing battery volume, would be of immediate benefit if electric power is to make any serious progress.

Biofule. Make plenty and make it cheap, if its as carbon neutral as the makers claim let's test this properly and use the stuff everywhere. If fuel taxes are environment taxes as our glorious leader tells us then biofuel should be untaxed, shouldn't it? Now that would be a move forward.

IPS, I'm _almost_ convinced that the principle is sound but frankly I wouldn't contemplate it anywhere with a mean depth under the keel of less that 3m. Yes, I do have a shaft, yes now on a river and yes, previously in a drying berth. But in the almost tideless Med, that may well be another matter. Now if the protrusion below the hull was variable and the pod could be withdrawn into the hull for servicing _that_ would IMO be a much more acceptable bit of engineering. Harder to fit in the boat though:-)
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

Completely agree.

Cats are proven as economical and stable platforms. Big problem is accommodation in smaller sizes where double berths inside the hulls aren't do-able.

Longer slimmer hulls (Length to Beam of 6:1 or larger) cost about the same to build, need less power, have better seakeeping than planing boats. But again, the arrangement of accommodation is a problem, even in 60 foot loa.

My view is that the different markets(river/coastal/offshore) all deserve a comletely different sort of boat. I think that the more experienced owner knows that it is as stupid to have a planing hull on the Thames, for example, as it would be to have a canal boat in the Solent.

Their problems are that they want to be able to sell to all markets when they move on, and they may want to switch locations without a change of boat. So a generic planing hull is the common solution. Unfortunately.
 
Re: What would you spend R&D cash on for future Mobo\'s

Making sure that we use the best materiials at the lowest price and that our fiitters do a proper not rushed job and that warranty claims are not repeated over a range over and over.

I would also put it to stop problems that people say are hazard of boating like corrosion and also a large proporton to sound reduction.
 
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