Looking for Designer for Small Sailboat

Jabberwock -

I have done some work on designing such a craft over the last year or so. We have very shallow tidal harbours around here. There is a Herreshoff design in one of my books which I will dig out. I can make a 3D of it inside a few hours. I recall that it is hard chine, which is a good option for alloy.

I assume you want it tralerable, which limits 2 factors: beam and ballast. Herreshoff’s design had leeboards. I cannot recall if he had internal ballast but will find out.

One problem with shallow draft hulls of the length you require is providing enough headroom in a cabin. If one does not want to stoop, the cabin looks too high and out of balance with the hull – in my view, ugly.

A second option is a trimaran with upward folding outer hulls. This is quite doable. If you don’t mind multihulls this is the better option in my view. No ballast required and you can stay within legal road width.

There is nothing wrong with alloy, you just need experts handling it.

ISO rules are rather flexible and easy to design to.

Michael C

 

Two steps at least: This is how contracts are usually written. In the case of a custom design, the first third of the design fee goes toward creating the Preliminary Design which generates enough detail to allow boat builders to quote a fairly reliable price. After soliciting a few bids and probably visiting with the proposed builders, the client selects the one of his/her choice. Then the designer can confer with that builder to style the construction details to what that builder is used to building.

For a production design, the builder is the client, and so a lot of the construction details and building style are already known. The design process is still broken down into the first third for the Preliminary Design and the second two thirds for the final design, the fee being paid in stages as the design proceeds.

The design rights are known from the beginning and these are not deducted in any way. The design fee pays for the creation of the whole design. Once completed, the builder builds the first boat and tests it. Final modifications may be made, and the production run begins with the second boat, and from there, royalties are paid to the designer for each boat built.

I will say that in my experience, this is the absolute ideal case, which these days is actually very rare. Most production builders have in-house designers, and there are only a very few independent designers who succeed in designing for outside companies. There are a number of instances I know of where the president of the boat building company is the designer, or at least he directs the design team as to what he wants. In those cases, the designers are all salaried employees and the head of the company gets his own salary plus a portion of all the profits.

Salesman smiles...makes as much profit: That's life. The builder is taking the majority risk by investing his money in the actual building of the boat and hoping he can sell enough boats to make a living for himself and his company in a very competitive market place. The designer usually isn't taking any financial risk at all if he is an outside designer. I had one client who willingly paid the few royalties on the short production run (as it turned out), but he had a standing offer to pay me a finder's fee that was about three times the value of the royalty if I was able to bring in potential buyers on my own behalf. So I would get both the royalty and the finder's fee. I have broker friends and associates who have offered similar deals--bring me the customer, and you can have a finder's fee.

I also know of a number of design firms where one person is the dedicated salesman for the design office. He's the suit--he wears the nice clothes to visit with potential clients, both custom design clients as well as production builders. He sells the talents of the design office. The designer stays in the office and designs boats--what he really likes doing best. They are successful enough that they have both reliable royalties coming in as well as a lot of custom work, all of which supports the whole office.

In the end, there is the whole spectrum of ways that design offices work. And you as the designer can write your design contracts any way you like. You are successful for whatever you negotiate.

Eric