The Landing School

Hello,

My name is Charlie and Im looking at my options for a yacht design education. I love using boats and I thought it would be cool to design them too. In my research I keep coming across The Landing School in Maine. I don’t know very much about it as I am located in Florida. Im wondering if anyone on here is familiar with their yacht design education or has attended the school. I have tried reaching out to them for more information but I havent heard back.

Thanks

 

That says a lot about them, no?

 

They are (most likely) on summer break so I would expect a delay. I communicated with them and visited them this spring. The students were doing some neat projects.

 

Where in Florida are you located? There are a lot of great boat designers in FL. Maybe an apprentice position, to keep it closer to home. Also, Google "marine and ocean engineering". I believe a lot of modern naval architecture programs are called Marine and Ocean Engineering.

However, Maine is beautiful and has a deep maritime tradition. You will likely find a more traditional approach to boat design in Maine.

 

Hi Charlie;

I’m a graduate of The Landing School. I completed the Marine Systems program in 2018/19 and the Yacht Design Program in 2019/20. Full disclosure: I was a boatbuilder for almost 20 yrs earlier in life; The Landing School was a way to get reacquainted with the industry, refresh some things, and learn new tech - my prior design work was old school - ink on vellum. I’m a senior, so it was more for yucks & chuckles than for a career.

The school was an excellent experience - I learned a lot of good stuff, and had a lot of fun doing so. The yacht design course was demanding, with a lot of material to learn through the school year. It would be a very good approach for anyone who is interested in starting a career in yacht design; the hire rates for grads is pretty good - it seems like builders view the school as a good source of junior designers.

When you get to be a senior, you don’t like to waste your time (there isn’t as much left to waste) much less so if you are paying for it.
The Landing School was Time well spent.
Best wishes with your career

 

I was also interested in this topic and thought about what could be done. It turned out to be too difficult to understand design on my own: many nuances that you just can’t find. I decided to sign up for training, found a course on the la petite website, where everything is explained from scratch. I liked that they immediately give practical tasks - this helped me get used to it faster. Now I have already done a couple of my own projects. The main thing is to find a program where theory is linked to real practice, then the training will become interesting and useful.