Preliminary Design of Boats and Ships

by Cyrus Hamlin

Book Overview

Intended for people who are not boat designers -- and not to make them into naval architects -- this book describes how to bring a dream boat into being. Written by an experienced naval architect, it prepares intelligent amateurs to create conceptual vessel designs ready for a naval architect's finishing touches. Included are all the basic rationales and data needed to undertake a designing project, presented in a style that successfully bridges the...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870333917
• ISBN13: 9780870333910
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
• Length: 314 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.2" x 10.2"

Customer Reviews

The Title Says It All

This book is filled with the 'rules of thumb' a boat or ship designer uses to create a new design. The idea is to develop the design to the point where it will function at all levels. The 'rules of thumb' are clearly developed and include the significance of each one. The book takes you through the design process, balancing each feature against others until a complete preliminary design emerges. The next step in the design process, though not covered by the book, would be detailed design. This is where serious mathematics, hydrodynamics and so forth would be used. Cyrus Hamlin does not go into these more advanced aspects of boat and ship design. Besides the physics and math being beyond most folks, many hundreds of pages would be needed for even a cursory review of detail design, so this is a good thing. I am a Professional Yacht Designer and a Naval Architect and refer to this book fairly regularly. I also recommend it to customers and associates who are interested in yacht design. They usually find the book informative and helpful. It does a very good job of explaining the inter-related aspect of design and allows one to quickly realize what is practical and what is not.

Cy Hamlin's two cents on the art of small craft design

Cy Hamlin is a designer with a broad range of designs to his credit - from the Hudson river sloop Clearwater to the Controversy series which he co-designed with Farnham Butler. In Preliminary Design of Boats and Ships he has written a very clear and sensibly organized treatise on his approach to the design process. In addition to his work as a designer Cy Hamlin has taught design to students at the Landing School of Boatbuilding and Design for many years. The text has been informed by this experience. The basic terminology, physics, mathematics, construction details, and aesthetics relating to boat design are described with enough detail and clarity that any one with a pencil, ruler, calculator and clean sheet of paper can create a preliminary design in which all the basic parameters of the boat are defined. This is a great reference book for amateur designers, design students, and curious boat owners.