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Spirit of Tradition Yachts Designed In Maine

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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 […]

A Rock. And a Hard Place: Lessons Learned Going Aground in Hoi An

and filed under Boat Nerd Tech, Construction, Marine Engineering

Here’s what happened: It was a normal Maine summer day. Half work, half play. Paul and I were out of the office, moving Hoi An from her mooring in Blue Hill to Camden. Her owners had kindly loaned the yacht to us for racing in the Camden Classics Cup to act as sponsor’s boat. The morning fog had cleared and a cracking breeze had come up; we were closing Camden fast, beam-reaching at over eight knots. I was navigating using the older, below-decks-mounted chartplotter occasionally, confirming with dead-reckoning, sighting islands, buoys, and landmarks. These weren’t my home-waters, but I had […]

What is the Cost to Own An All-Electric Boat, Anyway?

and filed under Boat Nerd Tech, Cross Platform Propulsion

It’s frustrating, but true: Nobody seems yet to know exactly what it costs to own an all-electric boat. So, if you’re considering purchasing something like Hinckley’s nifty new all-electric Dasher — or joining our other clients and commissioning a custom boat from us — you will have to feel your own way to estimates on what that boat will cost to own. Here is the bottom line on electrons: Electric propulsion is simply too early stage for meaningful wide ranging cost estimates. Let’s start with Electric Cars. It seems nutty, but the automotive world is the place to start for […]

Boats Now Cheaper than Homes.

and filed under Construction, Marine Engineering, Spirit of Tradition

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 […]

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 […]

Zen and the Art of Spirit of Tradition Pontoon Boats.

and filed under Construction, Marine Engineering

It can take effort to sense the silver lining in the dark cumulus clouds of the custom boat business. We work in a mature market, of a discretionary product, for a flat demographic that makes little sense to the next generation. Boats are like golf, but with waves and even crazier names for sh#t. But there’s at least one ray of hope in the thunder clouds of the yacht-making game: Pontoon boats. Yup, pontoon boats: Floating packages of giant aluminum hot dogs are the runaway winners in the slowly recovering global boat building market, at least according the Boat Building […]

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