How much is it for custom boat design?

[Tad]

Chris,

I guess I should have said, "A weight study might take 120 man hours, but it's not required to create a boat that floats.....sort of."

[yipster]

came acros a relation between weight study and construction cost i want to share, some funky boats too ( cats probably more expensive )

Costs for boatbuilding these days (2002) are fairly directly tied to the volume or displacement (weight) of the vessel involved. The feedback we've been receiving from our various builders indicates to us that costs are running from about $3.00/pound for the very heavy displacement types to over $5.00/pound for the lighter displacement boats. For an example, look at the range of displacements for our 50' designs - they range from 32,750 to 110,000 pounds. Use of the lower $3.00 price times 110,000 gives $330,000 and the higher $5.00 times 32,750 gives $163,750. These prices are for materials only, exclusive of any hired labor, tools, building site, building shed, insurance, launching, and inflation over the time during which the vessel is built. A professionally built boat is running from a low of around $5.00/pound for the very heavy ones to sometimes well beyond $20 for the lighter ones. This would include the materials above plus the labor to transform them into a boat, but with no allowance for inflation. This figure can readily be run up, depending on the level of finish and detail, plus the costs for electronics and other extras that may be added as the boat is being built. Of course, the costs in a boat can be unlimited, as we all tend to add "just one more" item to them in an ongoing fashion, but these figures generally include all the basics such as engines, sails, berths, head and galley. http://www.benford.us/index.html?articles/index.html

[Nordic Cat]

I am in the process of designing a 49 ft sailing cat, and am using a NA to finalise the design, and do all the detailed engineering. I initially asked around regarding prices, but only NA's who had proven sailing cat design experience.

The prices I was originally quoted are in the region of the 50-100k. But once we got down to defining exactly what was required, they crept up closer to the 100k mark OK, if I could use an earlier design that the NA could reuse to a large extent then we came down to 40-50k. The estimates were based on a very detailed weight study that needed to be done, and I would never even consider a catamaran design without one. Our weight study has more than 1000 data entries at the present time. Just defining the equipment, deciding on the supplier, getting the weights is a time consuming job.

Building costs: You can get a 50 footer built from stock plans in foam/polyester from around 400-500K if you go to a low cost labour country. If you want some good kit on board, and a reasonable internal finish the hours pile on.

The hulls, deck and bridgedeck and bulkheads weigh around 2,3 tons using infusion and foam/epoxy.

I expect around 10000 - 12000 hours for my boat with most of the insides painted.

For the designs pictured, I would estimate build costs to be >700K for a one-off boat.

So if there are any NA's here who will design a 50 ft sailing cat to ABS or ISO, and do it for 30 K, let me know, as I have another project in mind.

Anyone who will build one for 250K including 2 engines, good rig, then get in touch please.

Regards

Alan

[Bullshipper]

Roger Hill or Chris Tucker are very capable, with lots of experience.

$100K is 2x what this should cost of you go with a proven hull design and a custom layout for yor needs.