Top innovations in boat design/equipment?

Was discussing this w/ pals.

If you were to put your finger on the top innovations - the real game changers - in power boating over the last 4-5 decades, what would they be?

Raymond Hunt's Deep-Vee? Pod drives? GPS technology? Vacuum bagging? CAD/CAM?

The move from hardwoods to fiberglass is an easy one. Perhaps no other innovation has had as large an impact. After that...which have been the Big Ones?

 

Low weight, high power engines

 

Aluminum rigs and synthetic sails

 

Dinghy sailing - wet suits, combi trailers

Motorboats - 4 stroke outboards

Sailboats - roller furling. Good seasick med

Multihulls

Richard Woods of Woods Designs

www.sailingcatamarans.com

 

Bimetallic transition plates, Spectra and high modulus plastics for the average man.

 

unfortunatley designers disclaimers

 

The computer and the use and miss use of auto cad and the mouse thing

Getting Part way throught a project a designer with a single click of a mouse can create a change that ceates hours and hours of rework that really is not nessasary .

 

4-5 decades? 1960? only one answer then, the self mixing chopper gun. Though the invention of the chopper gun pre-dates 1960 by a couple of years, the ability to pop out hulls like tupperware changed the way boats were made and marketed. Everything else is just a refinement, no real game changers.

 

Good responses, folks! Keep 'em comin'!

 

Oh, you can go further, if you'd like. Just looking for opinions on developments/innovations/equipment that helped change the industry and the way people boat!

 

I dont see many pieces of equipment that have revolutionized boats.

In the production sector I see many, many innovations. Simple things like Dust evacuation equipment for boat builders. Remember what a boat building shed looked like 25 years ago ?

Vacume bagging, infusion, peel ply . Incredible productivity innovations.

Flat panel products like plywood and foam and milling machines.

Cordless work tools !! Remember the kilometers of power cords ?

 

Was listening to an interview w/ Rich Lazzara recently, and he was explaining how the multi-axis router, and the freedom it gives when producing plugs.

Granted, some designers have taken the sweeping profiles and extreme angles made possible by these routers to ridiculous extremes, but the industry certainly moved beyond the conservative lines that were born in the 1960s...

 

Innovation in Sailboat Design

I hadn't replied earlier because you specified innovations in powerboats but there have been some replies specific to sailing so......
In my opinion, one of the biggest innovations in sailing in the last thirty years has been the use of lifting foils which have increased performance across a wide range of sailboats.
From large trimarans, to the 11' Moth, to the Open 60 Keelboats ,to sportboats,to small multihulls and many boats in between it seems to me that the introduction of these foils has been one of the most significant innovations in the history of sailboat design.
This was made possible, to a large extent, by the new materials that have emerged such as epoxy, carbon fiber and new techniques that have been developed to use these materials. The new materials technology has created opportunities in design that simply didn't exist, in a practical way, 30-50 years ago.

 

Those boards would be of little use at sea without an autopilot. Reliable electric autopilots are a major innovation in the past thirty years.

The other innovation that made ocean sailing accessible to the masses was roller furling.

 

If you're going back to the 60s, it would have to be the micro processor IMO, without it many of the things mentioned would not have evolved...CAD, design capabilities, GPS, maufactures of coatings, epoxies, resigns, plastics etc. have all relied on the ability to cut research and development time making it possible to make advancements that were marketable or financially feasible to do so.