Anna has happened. After years in the making, our brand-new, all-custom 66-footer slid into the seas in Thomaston, Maine, finally ready to carry the hopes and dreams of yachting’s greatest miracle — the paying customer. But christenings come with their gentle bummers. All the wonderful ideas and yard craftsmanship that get built over and hidden. No owner or sailor will ever see the engineering of the keel, the construction of the inner mast, or what makes the staterooms tight and dry. So why not, with Anna so new to this world, talk through one of the more interesting inner secrets […]
The Signature 24 at the New England Boat Show.
February was a big month here at Stephens Waring Yacht Design. After several years of development, one of our favorite smaller designs in our Signature lineage, became the CW Hood 24. And this lovely little daysailer formally debuted at the New England Boat Show, as part of the growing line of luxury yachts made by CW Hood Yachts, of Marblehead, MA. The event turned out to be as exciting as any launch we’ve ever done. The display was first rate. Our boat was in the company of the awesome CW Hood 32. And our 24-footer was selected as a top vessel to see […]
The “Spirit-of-Tradition” Replica.
It’s the question that defines this wee and wonderful Spirit-of-Tradition design world of ours: What exactly is the line between a lovingly restored historic replica, and a true blended modern-classic, Spirit-of-Tradition yacht? We had a clever idea: why not sit down with an owner of just such a period replica, and ask his perspective. Let us introduce you to Charles Colman, an amiable mid-westerner who does most of his sailing on Wisconsin’s Lake Geneva. And this otherwise reasonable fellow has spent the past several years pouring his heart and soul into recreating a turn-of-the-century sandbagger design, called Tattler II. All […]
A Winter’s Doodles: Design Notes from Early 2018.
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 […]
Boats Now Cheaper than Homes.
Here’s a scoop about marine living that surprised us: Living on the water is probably a better deal than living near the water. During the past 60 days or so, our little yacht design world has invested serious time in exploring how to live on marine environments. We’ve been digging deep into costs and benefits of various marine residence concepts from floating homes to houseboats to live-aboard yachts. And one of the biggest puzzles of living on the water are the values involved: What’s a better deal? A residence on real land near the coast. Or a residence floating on […]
On Powering Anna
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 […]
Bequia Wins Again: A Look at the Candy Store Cup 2017 Fleet.
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. […]
Marine Engineering 108: Why on earth does anybody pay so much for a custom boat?
And now, the customer: All the elegantly engineered keels, retro-installed electric drives and superyacht-regatta winning hulls matter not a whit unless these yachty wonders wind up into a real, floating boat. And that real boat requires the near magical, impossible-to-design thing: A real customer. We’ve been working the yacht design wheels for nearly 60 combined years, and we know less now about where the good clients come from than when we started. Where does the individual with the means, inclination and imagination come from to create a great boat? We have no idea. But it is impossible to overstate their […]