Stephens Waring Yacht Design

Spirit of Tradition Yachts Designed In Maine

A Winter’s Doodles: Design Notes from Early 2018.

and filed under Design, Spirit of Tradition

If you leave scrap paper and pencils around this place long enough, sooner or later they get filled up with weird and wonderful boat design notes. And after a long winter of listening to our clients’ hopes and dreams, some dang interesting sketches have piled up around the office. Since it is cold and gray now, why not brighten things up by showing off what the Spirit-of-Tradition world is most interested in, here in early 2018. The big questions so far are, what does a family need to go sailing and camping in and what does a true, hard core […]

Signature 24 Named Top 5 Must-See Boats at 2018 New England Boat Show

and filed under Brokerage, Design

Top 5 Must-See New Boats plus “Queen of the Show” at the 2018  Progressive Insurance New England Boat Show February 10-18 at the Boston Convention Center Feb. 8, 2018, Boston: Looking for something to float your boat this winter? Search no further than the iconic New England Boat Show! With 600 boats and 250 exhibitors, the show offers a bedazzling array of marine magnificence. To help navigate, here are the top 5 must-see new models: Boston Whaler 350 Realm The 350 Realm is perfect for entertaining family and friends. As the first in a new family of Boston Whaler express […]

In the Spirit of Fazisi: A Designer’s Notebook.

and filed under Design, Racing

What is it with Russians and nostalgia? In movies there’s Nostalghia, Andrei Tarkovksy’s brooding 1988’s film masterpiece about the lurid horrors of a collapsing Soviet Union. (Yeah, this is a boat-design newsletter, get over it.) And in raceboats, there is Fazisi. The brooding 82-foot, late 1980’s Whitbread round-the-world speedster, that ran the 32,932 mile event with no sea trials, little funding and lots of stress. The skipper on the first leg, the poor Aleksei Grishenko, hanged himself from a tree in Uruguay. Leaving American, Skip Novak, to take over the fight making his way around the globe and write a […]

Dasher: The Un-revolution in Electric Boats.

and filed under Boat Nerd Tech, Construction, Design, Marine Engineering

When it comes to boats, the revolutions seem to happen when they’re not that revolutionary. Take all-electric runabouts. Our shop has spent nearly 10 years exploring electric propulsion in smaller craft. And earlier this year, the once impossible quietly happened: A major, high-quality American production boat builder began shipping an all-electric powerboat. Branded as the “world’s first all electric luxury yacht,” the svelte 28-foot Hinckley Dasher features twin 80hp inboard Torqeedo all-electric motors, BMW’s i3 waterproof lithium-ion batteries, and high capacity, dual 50-amp charging cables that can repower this boat in less than 4 hours. We’re sure that electrical pioneers, […]

On Powering Anna

and filed under Boat Nerd Tech, Construction, Design, Spirit of Tradition

Sailboats are just that: Boats that move because they have sails. So while we spend lots of our time figuring how out how slick mechanical systems operate winches and cool the air below, at the end of the day a boat like our new 66-footer Anna, just finishing up at Lyman Morse Boatbuilding, is a sailboat: Her central role is to provide her owners and crew the delightful experience of cajoling the wind into pushing or pulling all through the water — in more or less the direction the crew wants to go. Since Anna’s chief propulsive force is the […]

Retro Golden Globe One-Design Racer Gets Lost In Design Time.

and filed under Construction, Design, Marine Engineering, Racing

Hey, Don McIntyre! You’re the organizer of the Golden Globe 2018 single-handed round-the-world race. You know, the one where anybody can grab a select list of old fiberglass boats and go around the world non-stop, with not much more than a sextant. Is there a rule we missed that says the new one-design for your race has to be a slow boat to China and back? It’s not like we’re not big fans of the coming Golden Globe Race 2018. We flat out love how your GGR will send off a mixed fleet of about 30 professional and amateur sailors. […]

Marine Engineering 111: Why is my cockpit eh … a cockpit?

and filed under Construction, Design, Marine Engineering

We all sit in them, we stand in them, haul lines in them, and have lunch in them. But do we know why a cockpit is what it is? In many boats, the answer is no. Cockpits seam to slouch in as pre-ordained stories. And that’s a shame, because roughly 7 out of the 10 of the design choices in a vessel involve the design and function of a cockpit. Cockpits expose the inner guts of a boat to the elements and bad luck. Soles that are too low can sink a vessel through downflooding. And it’s the cockpit that […]

Bequia Wins Again: A Look at the Candy Store Cup 2017 Fleet.

and filed under Design, Racing, Spirit of Tradition

It may be shameless self promotion, but … one of our favorite boats, Bequia, took another decisive win on the race course earlier this summer. She took first overall at this year’s pretty darn competitive Candy Store Cup, in Newport, RI.  When we find luck on the race course, we like to take a moment to compare the boat to the others on the race course. That way we learn where the speed might have come from; and dig into what we can improve in future designs. The very talented marine photographer, Mark Krasnow, was very generous to share his spectacular race photos. […]

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