The liveaboard cruising lifestyle
The beauty of building a semi-custom boat is that it is the customer who gets to put the finishing touches on the boat’s concept. Although we play an important role initially, with input from the client, the final concept bears the signature of those who will use her. But it all starts with the boat which is designed specifically for the liveaboard cruising lifestyle.
At the very core of our product, design and concept are linked at the most basic level as the concept literally drives the entire design. Everything is based on the quest for comfort and safety. For the live aboard cruiser, comfort begins with the interior. Having the space (volume) to carry enough consumables and still be able to live in the interior means that our boats are designed from the inside out.
We start by developing an interior that will achieve our goals and then design a hull form around it. For us, the hull must allow the boat to be safe and comfortable in the more extreme conditions; the type of conditions you might find when you are far enough away that you cannot simply run and hide. The classic, time proven formula of a moderate displacement allows the boat to be built with adequate structure and have enough excess capacity to give it the extended range that might be required.
This philosophy is why we historically have very few model sizes even though we have been in business much longer than our competitors. When we do build a new model, it is still based on the original parameters of the boat it replaces. Typically we would represent the new model with alphanumeric abbreviations instead of changing the boat’s length. To us making a new model a foot or two bigger just so it could be called new does not change the fact that the interior space does not change significantly enough to warrant the extra expense of the bigger boat. Once you have determined the concept of the boat and, unless you significantly change it, these “steps” between sizes should be the same for any builder… the use of other lengths in between is simply done so for marketing.
It is often remarkable how much a small change in interior can affect the function of the end product. We have been fortunate enough to have had many different clients with widely differing views and needs over the years. This exposure has granted us the luxury of being able to adopt the best of these ideas and keep them as our own and it gives each new client a wonderful base from which to start.