The sheer variety in the world of power-driven boats is directly proportional to the variety of applications demanded by the boating public. We go diving, cruising, racing and fishing. We explore tidal estuaries, embark on far-flung expeditions, hold floating parties and welcome guests on board our boats for long weekends. We go boating in a variety of sea states, under a variety of climates and with an extraordinary variety of budgets. That encompasses everything from ten-foot runabouts costing a few hundred pounds to industry-defining megayachts costing hundreds of million. While guidelines like the Recreational Craft Directive can help define what a boat is designed to achieve, there’s therefore no doubt that understanding a little bit about hulls, layouts, design types and propulsion methods is a useful means of navigating your way through the modern powerboat market.
Planing or displacement?
For most leisure boaters, there are three primary powerboat hull forms to consider - displacement, semi-displacement and planing. A full displacement hull has to displace its own mass in water in order to move forward one boat length; and by contrast, a planing hull is a platform that uses a combination of lighter weight, greater relative power and extra lift from water flow over its contours in order to skim across the surface. Those in pursuit of sedate but efficient long-distance operation tend to go for displacement; those keen on rapid, agile, short-distance sport will go for a planing hull; and those who want the benefits of displacement with a little extra speed often look toward the semi-displacement camp.
One hull or two?
While their affordable construction costs and attractive looks has seen monohulls dominate the market, if you can afford the initial outlay and costly berthing, there are some extraordinary benefits to the twin hulls of a catamaran. They are more stable at rest, flatter through the turns and easier to manoeuvre at low speeds in tight marinas. They also offer more space, a softer ride, greater directional stability and radically improved fuel efficiency. Their effectiveness has seen them thrive in the offshore commercial world but for now, their cost and their sedentary image has restricted their prominence in the leisure market.
A powered catamaran has many advantages.
Application-defined layouts
The design compromises on any boat help optimise its performance in some respects at the inevitable expense of its ability in others - and just as the hull type gives you plenty of clues about intended application, so the internal layout helps tailor a boat to the needs of a given user.
For instance, those with compact open dayboats will often seek to maximise internal usability by means of outboard power and flexible seating configurations. Those who enjoy fishing tend to look for a Centre Console (CC) or Walkaround (WA) layout, as it gives the Skipper a great view and preserves plenty of open deck space for the uninhibited movement of anglers. Those who need an increased variety of entertaining zones will often favour a three-deck flybridge cruiser; and those who enjoy cruising will tend to look for a clear separation of sleeping areas, with sheltered seating and a properly equipped galley. If you’re a four-season adventurer, you will tend to favour the protection of a fully enclosed pilothouse alongside the economy and reliability of twin inboard diesels, while Med-style playboys seem to relish a combination of open-deck sunbathing space and closed-saloon climate control.
Powerboat types
There are of course plenty of boats that complicate the issue by straddling the boundaries (like hydrofoil-equipped craft and any number of non-displacement and amphibious vessels) but the basic, mainstream powerboat brackets can be broadly covered by the following powerboat types…
Tenders
A tender is a boat used to ferry people and equipment from a larger mother vessel to shore and back. While a tender for a superyacht can be an exotic, high-performance 30-foot plus offshore craft, the most common form of tender is a compact inflatable boat with a modest portable outboard engine that can be stowed, deployed and recovered with ease. Inflatable tenders come with PVC or Hypalon construction (PVC for lighter weight and lower prices; and Hypalon for extra durability); and an inflatable or rigid floor (inflatable for low weight and easy assembly; and rigid for higher performance applications).
Personal watercraft (PWs)
A PW (often incorrectly referred to as a jetski) is a compact platform in either stand-up or sit-down format. Capable of carrying anything from one to three people, it employs jet propulsion for thrust and it uses handlebar-style grips with trigger-operated throttle for easy, intuitive operation. Acceleration on a modern sports PW can be fiercely rapid, with a degree of poke and urgency unmatched by any conventional powerboat – and happily, the modern user interface is well equipped to help you make the best of that performance, with various manoeuvring aids and (in the case of Sea-Doo) the option of a suspension-equipped seating and console unit to help mitigate the impacts.
Bow riders
The bow rider is a particularly prolific style of day boat available in a variety of forms. The classic American-style family bow rider comes with communal cockpit seating plus additional loungers on a V-shaped seating arrangement in the tapered bow. The Scandinavian bow rider reflects the region’s cultural boating dynamic by sacrificing the additional bow seating for extra deck space, dedicated boarding points and a step-through bow with elevated rails. And the specialist watersports platform uses a regular bow-rider layout, but with some specialist tweaks, like generous inboard power, directional fins, uprated ballasting features to help control the wake shape and a range of pursuit-specific add-ons that can radically increase its price as well as its ability.
The bow rider is a popular fair-weather family dayboat.
RIBs
A RIB (or Rigid Inflatable Boat) is a vessel with a rigid hull and an inflatable collar wrapped around its perimeter. Originally designed as a serious sea boat for commercial applications and heavyweight load carrying duties, the modern, style-conscious leisure RIB tends to use inflatable tubes of lower diameter, alongside greater power and broader versatility of application. However, RIBs remain great favourites as patrol vessels, safety boats, support craft and powerboat tuition platforms - and while a good RIB remains a fine companion in a tough seastate, the key failing of the type for the leisure boater is a relative lack of inboard capacity for deck space, seating and storage.
Sports fishers
From 16-foot fast fishers to vast, 80-foot or larger, multi-deck offshore platforms with fighting chairs and observation towers, the sheer variety of sports fishers reflects the passionate dedication of sea fishing fans around the world. However, all good sports fishers have several things in common: a broad beam for extra internal space and stability at rest; a generous bow flare to help protect the occupants from spray; an acutely angled forefoot to help soften the impacts; and a bow shape with sufficient buoyancy to resist a stuffing at low speeds. You also tend to get a wide-open cockpit with deep secure gunwales and a central helm to provide shelter from the elements without inhibiting deck space or passenger movement. The classical centre console is a big favourite among fishing fans, as it gives the Skipper a great view from the middle of the boat, while keeping plenty of deck space open to enable anglers to move around unobstructed.
Cuddies and cruisers
The basic difference between a cuddy (a small, sporting cruise boat with compact accommodation for two) and a sports cruiser (which comes with at least one additional guest berth) is of course the size. However, the conventional ‘open-cockpit-closed-bow’ layout generally employed by these craft is by no means the only option. There are some lovely aft cabin cruisers on the market, where the main cabin is loaded into the spacious back end instead of the bow’s tapering ‘V’; there are plenty of traditional, semi-displacement, long-distance trawler style craft, with upright topsides to maximise internal capacity; and there are some famously capable walkaround, four-season vessels (from the likes of Targa and Sargo) that combine authentic seagoing hulls with great seamanship practicality and compact but carefully managed internal spaces. Whichever form you favour, you need to decide whether the ‘sports’ bit or the ‘cruiser’ bit matters most, because generous accommodation and sparkling performance rarely go hand in hand.
High-end custom craft
As the size, the complexity and the features of a powerboat develop, so the parameters change. Motoryachts give way to superyachts and superyachts give way to megayachts - and as they do so, the standard, market-ready, factory-fit vessel gives way to the bespoke, one-off, custom creation. Competitive one-upmanship is a key driving force among the world’s wealthiest boat buyers and as a direct result of that, the most extravagant megayachts can now extend well beyond 500 feet and (depending on the fit-out), well beyond £400 million.
Custom superyachts are built to a bespoke specification to suit the owner's needs. Photo: Boat International
What about propulsion?
In the broadest terms, a marine engine comes either as an inboard or an outboard. In inboard form, it either sits right at the stern, operating through the transom by means of a sterndrive; it sits further forward and operates via a fixed shaft that exits through the bottom of the hull; or it is hooked up to pod drives - integrated steerable pods, comprising transmission, outdrive and props, which protrude directly through the hull. As the name suggests, an outboard differs in that it is positioned higher up and further aft, on top of the transom itself – and as you might expect, the various methods have very different strengths and weaknesses…
Shaft, stern or pod drive?
Shaft drive remains a big favourite on serious watersports platforms, where secure grip, a central pull and balanced weight distribution are crucial. It is also valued on a great many larger craft where the reduction in inboard space is balanced by the reliable simplicity of a fixed shaft and a rudder for steerage. You do of course lose the capacity to amend the attitude of the boat by trimming the leg, but the positioning of the engine’s mass low down and toward the centre of the hull does a lot to help maximise ride comfort. Whether the gains in running efficiency and internal space (not to mention the delightfully intuitive joystick interface) of pod drives will see them supplant shaft drives on express cruisers, where they appear to be in their element, is currently a matter for debate.
Outboards for cruisers?
With power outputs on some outboard engines now exceeding 400hp, the choice between sterndrives and outboards on midsized sports cruisers is also a matter of particular interest. There are those who continue to swear by diesel sterndrives, even on relatively small boats, due to the efficiency gains and the superior weight distribution. The trouble is that you need to do at least a couple of hundred hours a year to offset the additional purchase price of the diesel route, so if you can get the weight distribution right, the outboard approach is likely to prove the more affordable ownership experience. And by freeing up the inboard space, it can also create an astonishing level of versatility, even on modestly sized family cruisers.
Jet drives
The fact that a jet operates by sucking water through an intake grate and blowing it out under pressure through a directional nozzle makes it inherently less efficient than a conventional propeller. However, it does have several benefits that make it particularly effective as a leisure choice. For instance, the absence of a propeller makes it safer for watersports and ideal for shallow water operation; and, once you get the hang of it, its close quarters manoeuvrability is also a pleasure. They can be great fun to drive at pace too and, with a simple bucket over the nozzle to direct the jet from forwards to astern (instead of a gearbox), a jet drive also gives your engine a relatively easy life.
Electric options
There are now various electric and hybrid solutions around, some of which go beyond the flattering of eco-conscious sensibilities to enable relative self-sustainability and increased cruising independence. The modest weight, compact size and unmatched cleanliness of electric outboards also make them excellent both as auxiliary motors for larger vessels and as primary motors for inland runabouts; and when a hull is purpose-built for electric propulsion, the results in terms of refinement and efficiency can be truly astonishing. However, battery banks can be large, heavy and expensive so while they are often favoured by commercial operators who put endless hours on their boats, most recreational users continue to view internal combustion as the most efficient means of primary propulsion.
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