Yacht Design

The classic book about boat design written for the everyday, non-professional sailor.

Cruising Sailboat Kinetics demystifies boat design terminology and concepts. It opens up for recreational sailors a new world of understanding why sailboats act the way they do. It explains how boat designers transform sailing dreams and abstract design criteria into today's sleek, functional three-dimensional craft.

Includes plans of some of the best yacht designs of the last twenty years.

Takes a complex technical subject and distills the essence into helpful, comprehensive and even entertaining terms.

Author John Wills introduces the reader to the subject of marine reinforced plastics (what most of us refer to collectively as “fiberglass”), offers solutions to blistering and other problems and then challenges the reader with recent discoveries and less conventional processes.

A highly readable critical analysis of how the search for racing yacht performance has led to the development of sailing yachts with potentially dangerous seakeeping characteristics.

Based upon the highest degree of practical and academic research, it demonstrates how modern yacht design often sacrifices safety for speed and for other considerations, and it maintains that dramatic changes in design philosophy are needed to prevent further loss of life at sea. This is a major work which will help change the thinking on popular design trends for both racing and cruising yachts.

Intended for people who are not boat designers, Preliminary Design of Boats and Ships describes how to bring a boat of your dreams into being.

The performance of any sailing craft depends on the power of the available sail—how the rig turns the wind into a driving force. But sail forces are determined by a host of factors. In Sail Performance, Marchaj describes how these factors affect sail power and why certain rigs are superior in power and efficiency.

The core of the book is vintage Beebe: his designs, his research and his wonderful cruising stories remain intact.

What's new are details of the advances of the past twenty years: electronic wizardry for navigation and communication, efficient new engines, roll-prevention devices that virtually eliminate seasickness; propeller nozzles and bow thrusters that improve maneuverability and ease handling for shorthanded crews; bulbous bow extensions that improve speed, fuel economy, and sea-keeping ability.