oats are holes in the water that owners throw money into, the saying goes. That money pays not just for operating a vessel but for customizing it. When a stock model can’t get the job done, it’s time to call on the skills of a naval architect.

Boat customization isn’t a process to jump into lightly. Time and money are both major investments in a start-to-finish project. Any naval architect will happily work with a client to design and bid out a custom vessel; a really good one will tell you when customization isn’t absolutely necessary.

“We take the time to talk with boat operators about their needs from the start,” says John Waterhouse, principal at Elliott Bay Design Group (EBDG), a nationwide engineering firm with offices in Ketchikan. “If there is a stock model that we know about that can do the job, we are happy to point them in that direction.”

Waterhouse says understanding the goals of boat owners is key to delivering the best design. A few things influence how easy it is to determine these goals, such as the experience of the boat operator, the clarity of their vision, and the ability to communicate their needs.

“Sometimes we expect the owner to know how to get to the result they desire,” says EBDG President Robert Ekse, “but often it’s just as much as a discovery for them as it is for us. Selecting the right approach is really a process walking them through the different methods’ possibilities.”

“When the conversation between us and the client works, it’s wonderful,” says Waterhouse. “The design creation and build are magic.”

Elliott Bay Design Group developed the contract and detail design for the two Alaska-class ferries, Tazlina (pictured) and Hubbard, for the Alaska Marine Highway System. The 280-foot vessels include twin side casings with walk-on passenger access and drive-through vehicle loading and unloading.

Vigor

Elliott Bay Design Group designed the 4,500-passenger Ollis-class of ferries following the successful completion of its multi-phase preliminary design investigation of the Staten Island Ferry fleet. Naval architects relied more on design than technology to meet the ambitious goal of an 8-minute turnaround.

Eastern Shipbuilding Group

Once the naval architect fully understands the purpose of a vessel, the design process begins. As with any customized project, this process ranges in complexity. The more specialized equipment and specific requirements for the vessel, the more complex the design. However, the experience of the naval architect also comes into play. An architect who has designed custom boats for a variety of industries will have a better idea of what configuration of space, technology, and equipment could possibly work. They use previous designs as a reference point for clients with similar needs.

State and federal regulations have a powerful influence on design, and those regulations are often in flux. Alaska has a minimum set of requirements for all water vessels, such as display of information, life jackets and accessible storage, visual and electronic distress signals, fire extinguishers, ventilation, navigation, pollution, and sanitation. Though the US Coast Guard (USCG) regulations for recreational boats in District 17 (which encompasses Alaska) reflect the state requirements, commercial vessels operating within the district have additional USCG requirements based on vessel size, water temperatures, passenger load, and vessel purpose. According to the USCG website, standards for design and construction of commercial vessels changed significantly between 2010 and 2018. Federal regulation manuals encourage commercial ventures to work closely with a naval architect and USCG examiner when having new boats constructed or older boats converted to meet current standards.

The length of time for full customization of a new vessel depends on the industry and the number of stakeholders involved. For instance, a project with one or two owner/operators generally progresses faster than a government project with multiple stages of approval or a public process. Once designs are approved, a bid package is assembled and a shipyard is selected. Waterhouse says on average small projects take two to three months to design and nine to twelve months to build, while larger commercial projects take six to nine months to design, two to three months to bid, and eighteen to twenty-four months to build. The exact amount of time depends greatly on scale and complexity.

At a certain scale, customization is appropriate for amateur boat builders. Prepackaged plan sets and corresponding kits provide all the instruction to build a limited series of customized boats. Brian Dixon, owner and designer at Glacier Boats of Alaska in Anchorage, first developed the idea of creating plan sets while attending the Westlawn Institute of Marine Technology. One assignment required that he draw up his dream boat, which turned out to be comparable to commercial boats like the SeaSport or Orca. Early in his career, he realized that other people might be interested in building their own boat for a fraction of the cost while still having the ability to customize it.

Glacier Boats of Alaska offers plans for two models of inshore/offshore powerboats: the Great Alaskan and the Great Alaskan Kodiak. The standard Great Alaskan is 25’ to 28’6” long by 8’5” wide and designed for offshore use, cruising, and boat camping. The bow contains a queen-sized bed, and the pilothouse has room for appliances, galley, seating, dining, and heating. The larger Kodiak model is 27’ to 30’ long by 9’4” wide and equally as customizable. Dixon says both models are seaworthy, beach-able, and can also operate in shallower water than most deep-V (heavy) fiberglass or aluminum types.

“Target waters when designing these boats were southeast Alaska and nearby islands, Kachemak Bay, Prince William Sound, and the Gulf of Alaska,” says Dixon. “These boats are now used all over the world in a variety of waters, including rivers and lakes.”

Dixon made the plans as self-explanatory, educational, and complete as possible. The standard model, which serves as the basis for all variations, including the Kodiak, consists of two fully illustrated manuals and associated large format drawings. The first manual covers the basics of using epoxy, fiberglass, and wood to build a boat and how to stretch or shrink the hull length as desired. The second manual includes instructions for building the superstructure—the pilothouse and cuddy (or cabin)—and any variants. Kits also instruct builders how to customize pilothouse and cuddy size, style, or contents. Plan sets also have a “brief construction manual” with an illustrated bird’s eye view of the build sequence, which is often enough for experienced boat builders to follow.

“It’s hard to imagine any other set of boat plans that include more variation,” says Dixon.

In addition, Dixon provides instructional support via Facebook, YouTube, The Builder’s Forum, email, and phone. Amateur builders contact him regularly with questions or simply to discuss their ideas.

“I support builders in each of these venues,” says Dixon, “but they also obtain a very large amount of support, learning, and information from others who are currently working on or have completed their own vessel.”

After seventeen years, Dixon considers these plan sets as proven. Both designs were reviewed by a naval architect and mechanical engineer before they went online. This means he also knows the limits of his plan sets and addresses those limitations clearly and firmly within the instructional text. He says the plan sets cannot be further altered to make the boat longer or wider than what is outlined. For instance, making the boat longer than suggested can result in moving the center of buoyancy aft more than the center of gravity can move aft, which can result in bow-down trim at rest and may lead to less-than-optimal handling characteristics, such as piercing too deeply into oncoming waves, porpoising instabilities, or “chine walking” where the boat flops side to side.

“The upper limits are non-negotiable,” says Dixon. “If exceeded, it is not something that I can support. It places them in the world of experimental watercraft, and they’re on their own.”

The Great Alaskan model is fine for cruising, camping, fishing, and island hunting access, Dixon says, while the larger Kodiak model frequently serves as a charter or light commercial fishing boat.

EBDG’s custom vessels also have a wide range of recreational and commercial use. As a global company, they have customized as many passenger, fishing, cargo, and research vessels as they have barges, ferries, workboats, and tugs. Ekse compares the variety of water vessels with that of wheeled vehicles.

“There’s a number of wheeled vehicles that you see every day, and you instantly recognize them as a car or a truck,” says Ekse, “and then there are different types of vehicles or custom farm equipment that are developed for a specific application that aren’t seen every day. The same is seen with boats and larger vessels.”

Designing for that specificity has led to some unique projects. Recently, Elliott Bay Design Group joined with Maritime Partners, e1 Marine, and multinational heavy equipment maker ABB to design and build the first long-range towboat that complies with the IMO 2030 reduced carbon emissions target. The 86-foot vessel is meant to push barges on the Mississippi River using electric motors powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Instead of hydrogen gas, the engine uses e1 Marine’s patented reformer technology to convert methanol to hydrogen. The onboard conversion avoids fuel transfer and storage complications while still enabling a range of 550 miles, or about four days underway.

Chuck Mazzola of Bend, Oregon built a 30-foot Kodiak Great Alaskan vessel from plans developed by Glacier Boats of Alaska. The Kodiak plan set is an addendum to the Standard Great Alaskan and offers additional customization in addition to greater vessel length and width.

Glacier Boats of Alaska

Other projects EBDG has worked on are more deceptively challenging. For instance, creating a vessel for the Staten Island Ferry Service in New York to carry 4,500 passengers and allow for quick offboarding of materials and foot traffic required some creativity. The goal was to have the boat turn around in eight minutes, and Waterhouse says the solution lies in the design more than technology.

The Staten Island project cost around $250 million to build three Ollis-class ferries; however, EBDG has many other projects larger or smaller than that amount. Waterhouse says the price tag boils down to the client’s needs, financial resources, and the amount of time available.

At Glacier Boats of Alaska, Dixon says it’s much easier to directly compare a vessel built from his plan sets with off-the-shelf models. He says a builder could realistically build a Great Alaskan for somewhere between $35,000 and $100,000, whereas a used 27-foot SeaSport sells between $80,000 to $150,000. The benefit, according to Dixon, is that amateur builders invest their “sweat equity,” plus his design is cheaper to operate than an older off-the-shelf model, burning less than half the fuel.

Just as boat owners can customize the shape and size of their hole in the water, they also have some control over how much money they throw into it.