Custom Aluminum Boats Out of Florida Tarantino Boatworks

Hello everyone, my name is Sal Tarantino, and I make custom aluminum boats. I have been a fisherman my whole life on the gulf coast of Florida (specifically from Tampa to Pine Island) and as much as I love fishing, I have always been a huge boat nerd. Whether its skiffs, bay boats, or offshore I love understanding the engineering behind hull design. I always liked the abuse Jon boats could take growing up but I never really thought of aluminum as an advantageous building material until senior year of high school. My dad has a dolphin renegade pro Kevlar that we absolutely put through the ringer. We have had to flip that boat over and do patches many of times to the bottom side lol. That's when aluminum first started spiking my interest as a skiff building material. I then went to spend the rest of my waking time outside of school trying to learn as much as possible about aluminum boats, which to my surprise throughout the rest of the world are extremely popular if not more popular than fiberglass in certain areas such as Australia or Europe. There are probably many people reading this going duh aluminum boats have been a thing for forever, but for some reason Florida is completely blind to aluminum boats besides a simple Jon Boats, so I feel the need to do some explaining of aluminum boat building to some fellow Floridians.

I had my initial draw backs to aluminum given the amount of time I spent researching it, but a lot of the negatives come from poor boat building practice. Of course, there things that carbon and fiberglass designs can accomplish that aluminum can't do effectively (making extreme curves without having to build the boat in panels), but there are also many aspects of aluminum boats that composite boats come no where close to competing with. Besides the strength to weight ratio, cost to build, extreme ease of maintenance, and hull longevity (IF PROPERLY DESIGNED AROUND THE ELEMENTAL MAKE UP OF ALUMINUM!) aluminum allows the customer to customize the entire boat. I have no molds with aluminum boats only the 3D models I have saved on my computer. I can, if the customer wants, build a boat completely to their spec with no limitations of molds. This is an aspect of aluminum boat building that is rare to find in the US market besides up in the Northwest. As a boat geek my mind immediately goes to a million different things that I would want that I never would have thought to be realistic unless I built one myself, and my goal is to get that out to the people. I will be able to alter deck sizes hatch layouts length, width, and major hull designs specifically to the customer to give them a boat suited to exactly their needs.


I am also in the process of building a PC in order to get Orca 3D hydrostatics and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), this allows me with great accuracy to simulate, and test run the boats virtually to ensure that performance and hydrostatics are exactly where they should be with no second guessing. If I am going to be making a lot of customizations to hulls, I want to ensure that a customer's wants don't affect the general performance of their boat. Through using Orca 3D, I feel extremely confident that the boat being produced will match the results of the simulation, as this is the software Viking Yachts and Sea Vee uses before spending the insane amount of money for creating their molds. I am the one designing and building the boats so it's a very streamline and efficient process and is why I am able to allow extreme levels of customization creating the exact boat they want. Whether they want an asymmetric foil cat or a 14ft canoe with drop down wheels and a 20hp (which I have done already and is an insane little unit). I have built 3 boats so far 2 for myself and 1 for my friends but going forward from now these will be my first CAD designed boats. I am still early on with my boat building process, but I wanted to put myself out there for people to ask question, for me to receive feedback, and hopefully work with some people in making some dream boats that don't cost a million dollars. I have a hard time justifying spending 80,000 dollars on a skiff that I am going to abuse. I want to build an inexpensive, extremely durable, high performing boat, and I don't think carbon fiber is the answer. Not saying that carbon fiber isn't a good building material, but if you want a boat that is durable, light, and doesn't make you rethink your life when you see the price tag aluminum is the way to go.


Attached are pictures of a 18ft long 72inch wide skiff, 4 degree deadrise with delta pad, hull weight 500 pounds. With 3/16 inch thick aluminum 5083 alloy bottom. Once again please ask any questions or pose any concerns, I know that this is different and there are some preconceived notions with aluminum. At the moment I am in the process of expanding work spaces to build some of the larger skiffs, I can build skiffs right now on the smaller end, but I want to communicate and get the understanding of what people want now so when my whole set up is fully operational I can waste no time.
(The hard black lines are not all different panels of aluminum Most of them are bending lines and outlines of internal hull structure)



Here are other images of a 30ft x 10ft asymmetric catamaran I am in the process of designing.

 

Welcome to the Forum Sal.

Two questions:
Why no centre console?
Why the canted engine positions?
Thanks

Oops, three questions: any good quality video of these boat underway and making way?

 

Hey, the center console question is for the small boat I'm assuming. The reason for that is just to open up the middle of a smaller boat. It has gotten pretty popular for fly fishing skiffs in Florida because you get the room of a tiller with remote steering. I could of course design a center console if wanted.
The canted engines are a cool one, the reason for that is mostly to aid with turning, attempting to counteract any outward lean. I can't say I am the first to do this. Insetta 35IFC does this exact thing. The engines are canted at 5 degrees which allows the boat to lean into a turn more while not increasing drag by being canted to much. They get normal performance with the benefit of better turning.
Lastly, I don't have any videos yet, I am in the process of getting a PC set up for Orca 3D CFD where I can post the videos of the water simulation but at the moment I unfortunately do not.

 

Here in South Texas, no CC, no sale.

 

First alu yacht built was late 40s GULVAIN built U.K from Birmabright plate (Birmingham, England still sailing
Morag Mhor in 50s saw her in St Maartin, badly built but seaworthy
I was building from 84 on, Message me if you need advice
Laurent Giles celebrate 90 years of yacht design

Superyacht Investor
https://www.superyachtinvestor.com › News

He was the first to design an all-aluminium offshore racing yacht called Gulvain in the 1960s.

 

Aluminum, like plywood, is a sheet-type material well suited to design using conic projection techniques. It appears that you are using multiple computer programs to do all the computations. I agree that aluminum can be adapted to many different design conformations and with excellent accuracy using computer power for the detailed analysis. Good luck with your custom-build concept.