Speed Boat is the activity you turn to when you want to interject a little life into your process while also framing the obstacles that are holding back the success of your project. Setting it up can be as quick or time-consuming as you’d like to make it. I tend to go the extra mile when it comes to prep-work because the added graphics really help people to engage in the work.
So what is Speed Boat? Simply put, it’s a metaphor that helps you visualize the obstacles that prevent you from achieving your goal. Your project or service is the boat, and anchors are the obstacles, risks, and/or uncompleted tasks preventing you from reaching your destination, the goal.
It’s so easy to get caught up in day-to-day activities that it can become hard to understand why goals aren’t being achieved or where areas of risk have bubbled up. Bust out this activity when you want a quick lay of the land, or in this case, the sea.
You can choose the basic or advanced version of this activity. I’ll begin with the simplest one.
To begin, you’ll need a large whiteboard or wall space, activity graphics of a boat and several anchors, Post-it notes, Sharpies, whiteboard markers, and tape. If you don’t have access to a printer, you can draw the boat and anchors on the board or Post-its as you go, but I’ve found that printed cut-outs make it easier to see the images and move them freely about the board.
Tape your boat to the whiteboard and give it a name, mostly likely your project name. Next, draw an island and put the question you’d like answered at the center of it. This is where you can be really creative with how you structure the activity.
These could be helpful if you’d like to use the framework for something other than project work.
Finally, pass out Post-its and Sharpies to each participant, and scatter the anchors about the table so that everyone can grab them as needed.
Present your island question, and explain that the anchors represent obstacles that are slowing down forward progress toward this goal.
Allow participants to ask clarifying questions, and then give them 10 minutes to begin listing anchors. Each Post-it should mention only one anchor.
Once the time is up, ask participants to describe their anchors one by one. Connect the anchors to the boat by sticking the Post-it notes to the board and drawing an anchor line between each note and the boat.
Group any like observations, tasks, and insights together. Finally, ask the group to estimate how much faster the boat would go if all the anchors were cut free.
Take your findings and list them in a spreadsheet, mind map, or backlog so you can keep track of them. You might need to assign owners and dates to some items or tasks to keep moving forward.
Now that you understand the core activity, we’re going to add in two extra elements: scissors and buoys. Scissors are the tasks or ideas that cut an anchor free altogether, and buoys relieve pressure from anchors, but don’t eliminate them completely.
These two extra steps or graphics can help you define solutions for your problems (a.k.a. anchors). They’re helpful if you have extra time and/or a very action-oriented team who wants to assess and take action.
However, they do add an extra 30 minutes or so to the activity, so take your time constraints and group size into consideration when scheduling. Running this activity can be done with a large team, but the process will be more time-consuming.
You’ll prep the activity the same way as the basic edition. However, for this version, there are a few additional graphics (the scissors and buoys) to print and cut ahead of time.
Once again, run the activity as you would in basic mode, all the way to the point where everyone has discussed and posted all of their anchors.
Now that the group has a good sense of everything that’s holding back the boat, ask everyone to gather around the whiteboard to collaboratively post buoys and snip anchor lines with the scissors.
Keep in mind, buoys are ideas, tasks, services, people, etc. that can help relieve pressure from an anchor but cannot cut the anchor line altogether. For example, if an anchor is “poor WIFI connectivity,” a buoy might be “adding another access point,” while a scissor would be “hard-wiring internet capabilities to the device.”
It’s easiest to review one anchor at a time so that the group can brainstorm ideas and discuss the challenges together. It’s also helpful to gain group consensus on how to solve a problem.
Finally, wrap up the activity in the same way as you would for the basic edition.
There are many ways to run Speed Boat, so be creative with your implementation. Most importantly, have fun! Visualizing project risks and obstacles in this way may seem cheesy, but it’s a much more pleasant exercise than wading through the soulless cells of a spreadsheet.
Leave a comment below if you’ve tried this activity, and keep your eyes out for our next activity, Visualizing the Vote!
This is an updated version of a post originally published in June 2018.
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The Sailboat Retrospective is a fun and creative way for teams to reflect on the sprint and identify areas for improvement. It’s called “Sailboat” because the metaphor of a sailboat helps the team visualize their journey, the obstacles they faced, and the direction they want to sail towards in the future. The Sailboat or Speedboat Method for Sprint Retrospectives is an easy way to: adopt, reflect and map the team’s way forward easily, in a fun, tactile and visual way. It helps the team to reflect on what’s going well and what could be better, analyze their sails and anchors and identify opportunities for improvement or change.
The idea is that the team is on a sailboat, heading towards their goal while dealing with winds and icebergs along the way. Winds help propel the boat forward but obstacles such as pirates, rocks, and stubborn anchors represent the risks that the team might encounter that could slow them down or even stop them from getting to where they need to be.
Note : The original Sailboat technique doesn’t have a Sun – I added it to give them a feeling of accomplishment as most teams should understand that there are already things that work just fine. And it’s definitely worth the time to help the team to build on this base.
Step 1: set the stage – draw a sailboat.
Start by setting clear expectations for the meeting, including the purpose, goals, and agenda. Make sure everyone is aware of the retrospective’s purpose and that it is a safe space for open and honest communication.
Let the team draw a picture of a sailboat floating in the water, and fill half the space above and half below the water with the sun, anchors, wind, rocks, reef, and an island or you can simply print pictures and just attach them to the board or any available wall space. This visual representation can help the team better understand their progress.
Note : Team drawing the boat helps to act as an icebreaker and get the group participating and on the boat.
Decide the topic/theme of the retrospective and name the boat accordingly.
Ask the team to write what their mission is, what they want to achieve, and what their goal is, and add these post-it notes to the hull of the boat. The team can amend or clarify or replace as the game continues.
The boat can be saved and revisited as part of sprint reviews, where sails and anchors can be reviewed, rescored, removed, and new sails and anchors added.
Tips : Ask team members to share their successes and challenges during the sprint or project. This allows everyone to see what worked well and what didn’t, which can help identify areas for improvement.
Ask the team to add sails and anchors to their boat. Sails represent things going well, what’s good, and what is putting the wind into their sails. Anchors are the things that could be going better, the anchors holding them back and limiting progress.
Ask the teams to scale their sales and anchors, their sails from +1 to + 10, is it a +1 or 2, a nice but relatively small in-value sail, or a main sail that’s providing huge momentum, a +9 or +10? The anchors from -1, a minor impediment, or -10 this anchor have stopped us from moving forward at all.
Now team should brainstorm and discuss each note, seek to clarify the meaning of the note, and then decide as a group where on the scale it should be. Teams can vote by Dot Voting. The team can compare Sails and Anchors. Is it a bigger or smaller sail/anchor than the previous one? The key here is engaging in group discussions, awareness, and consensus on what the sail/anchor is and how it impacts the team. Sticky notes may need to be clarified with extra information or split into multiple notes to score separately.
Once all sails and anchors have been discussed and scored ask the team to capture activities and improvements to help raise sails further and raise up anchors. Ask the team to think of small actions that would raise one of the sails, or anchors on the boat by just one point, raise an anchor from a -6 to a -5, or raise a sail from a 2 to a 3. Capture ideas for improvements on post-it notes and place them beside the relevant anchor or sail.
Remember to celebrate success and plan action items for current as well as future obstacles that have been identified during the above brainstorming.
If there are numerous suggestions for raising sails and anchors then team activities like estimation games, MoSCoW prioritization, and Dot Voting to help discuss, rank, and decide upon which improvements to take forward. Map the improvements/actions into the team backlog/future work or on a dedicated change and improvement board to help track and measure progress.
Let’s take an example of a team that developed a mobile app during the sprint. The team was able to deliver the features on time but faced some challenges during the sprint. Here’s how they conducted the Sailboat Retrospective:
Sailboat Sprint Retrospectives are an important part of the Agile development process, as they allow teams to reflect on their progress and identify areas for improvement. However, there are several common challenges that teams may face during these retrospectives. Here are some of the most common challenges and tips on how to overcome them:
The Scrum Master plays a critical role in facilitating a successful Sailboat Sprint Retrospective. Here are some key responsibilities of the Scrum Master in this process:
You know the old saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same”? As a judge for the 2020 Boat of the Year (BOTY) competition at this past fall’s US Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, I helped inspect and test-sail 22 brand-new current-model sailboats. And I came away thinking, Man, these aren’t the boats I grew up on. In the case of new boats, the saying is wrong: “Nothing stays the same.”
OK, sure, today’s boats still have masts and sails, and the monohulls still have keels. But comparing the Hinckley Bermuda 40, considered by many to be one of the most beautiful and seaworthy boats of the 1960s, ’70s and even ’80s, with, say, the Beneteau First Yacht 53, which debuted at the show, is pretty much apples and oranges.
To get a better sense of what has happened to yacht design, boatbuilding and equipment over the past three, four or even six decades, let’s take a closer look.
At the risk of oversimplification, since the fiberglass era began in the late 1940s and ’50s, the design of midsize and full-size yachts has transitioned from the Cruising Club of America rules, which favored all-around boats (racers had to have comfortable interiors) with moderate beam and long overhangs, to a succession of racing rules such as the IOR, IMS and IRC. All of them dictated proportions, and each required a measurer to determine its rating.
As frustration grew with each (no handicap rule is perfect), alternatives arose, such as the Performance Handicap Racing Fleet, which essentially based one’s handicap on past performance of the same boats in the same fleet. Also, one-design racing became more popular, which spread beyond identical small boats to full-size yachts, popularized in part by builders such as J/Boats and Carroll Marine. The ethos there was: Who cares about intricate rating rules? Let’s just go out and sail fast and have fun!
And that might best sum up the design briefs for the monohulls in this year’s BOTY competition: good all-around performance with comfortable, even luxurious accommodations. Gone are interiors that noted naval architect Robert Perry called “the boy’s cabin in the woods,” deeply influenced by stodgy British designers of the past century and their now-old-fashioned (though sea-friendly, one should note) concepts of a proper yacht, drawn and spec’d by the same guy who designed the hull, deck and rig. Today, dedicated European interior designers are specially commissioned to inject modernity, home fashion colors and textures, amenities, and more light—even dubiously large port lights in the topsides.
Overhangs, bow and stern, have virtually disappeared. Why? It seems largely a matter of style. Plus, the bonus of increased usable space below, not to mention a longer waterline length for a given length overall, which translates to more speed. Former naval architect for C&C Yachts and Hunter Marine, Rob Mazza, recalls that 19th-century pilot cutters and fishing schooners operating in offshore conditions generally had plumb bows, so in a sense, bow forms have come full circle.
Today’s boats are carrying their wide beam farther aft. Gone are the days of the cod’s head and mackerel tail. Wide, flat canoe bodies are decidedly fast off the wind, and might even surf, but they pay a comfort penalty upwind.
These boats have lighter displacement/length (D/L) ratios, which means flatter bottoms and less stowage and space for tanks. The Beneteau 53 has a D/L of 118, compared with the aforementioned Bermuda 40 of 373. Among entries in this year’s BOTY, the heaviest D/L belonged to the Elan Impression 45.1, with a D/L of 195. Recall that when Perry’s extremely popular Valiant 40 was introduced in 1975, the cruising establishment howled that its D/L of 267 was unsuitable for offshore sailing. My, how times have changed!
Perhaps more important, one must ask: “Have the requirements for a good, safe bluewater cruiser actually changed? Or are the majority of today’s production sailboats really best-suited for coastal cruising?”
The ramifications of lighter displacement don’t end there; designers must consider two types of stability: form and ultimate. As weight is taken out of the boat, beam is increased to improve form stability. And with tanks and machinery sometimes raised, ballast might have to be added and/or lowered to improve ultimate stability.
What else to do? Make the boat bigger all around, which also improves stability and stowage. Certainly the average cruising boat today is longer than those of the earlier decades, both wood and fiberglass. And the necessarily shallower bilges mean pumps must be in good shape and of adequate size. That’s not as immediate an issue with a deep or full keel boat with internal ballast and a deep sump; for instance, I couldn’t reach the bottom of the sump in our 1977 Pearson 365.
And how do these wide, shallow, lighter boats handle under sail? Like a witch when cracked off the wind. We saw this trend beginning with shorthanded offshore racers like those of the BOC Challenge round-the-world race in the early 1980s. As CW executive editor Herb McCormick, who has some experience in these boats, says, “They’ll knock your teeth out upwind.” But route planning allows designers to minimize time upwind, and cruisers can too…if you have enough room and distance in front of you. Coastal sailors, on the other hand, will inevitably find even moderate displacement boats more comfortable as they punch into head seas trying to make port.
A wide beam carried aft permits a number of useful advantages: the possibility of a dinghy garage under the cockpit on larger boats; easy access to a swim platform and a launched dinghy; and twin helms, which are almost a necessity for good sightlines port and starboard. Of course, two of anything always costs twice as much as one.
Some multihulls now have reverse bows. This retro styling now looks space-age. Very cool. But not everyone is sold on them. Canadian designer Laurie McGowan wrote in a Professional BoatBuilder opinion piece, “I saw through the fog of faddishness and realized that reverse bows are designed to fail—that is, to cause vessels to plunge when lift is required.” Mazza concurs: “Modern multihulls often have reverse stems with negative reserve buoyancy, and those are boats that really can’t afford to bury their bows.”
McGowan also cites another designer critiquing reverse bows for being noticeably wet and requiring alternative ground-tackle arrangements. The latter also is problematic on plumb bows, strongly suggesting a platform or sprit to keep the anchor away from the stem.
If there was a boat in Annapolis with double lower shrouds, single uppers, and spreaders perpendicular to the boat’s centerline, I must have missed it. I believe every boat we sailed had swept-back spreaders and single lowers. An early criticism of extreme swept-back spreaders, as seen on some B&R rigs installed on Hunter sailboats, was that they prevented fully winging out the mainsail. The counter argument was that so many average sailors never go dead downwind in any case, and broad reaching might get them to their destinations faster anyway—and with their lunch sandwiches still in their stomachs.
That issue aside, the current rigging configuration may allow for better mainsail shape. But as Mazza points out, it’s not necessarily simple: “By sweeping the spreaders, the ‘transverse’ rigging starts to add fore-and-aft support to the midsection of the mast as well, reducing the need for the forward lowers. However, spreader sweep really does complicate rig tuning, especially if you are using the fixed backstay to induce headstay tension. Swept spreaders do make it easier to sheet non-overlapping headsails, and do better support the top of the forestay on fractional rigs.”
Certainly, the days of 150 percent genoas are over, replaced by 100 percent jibs that fit perfectly in the foretriangle, often as a self-tacker.
Another notable piece of rigging the judges found common was some form of lazy jacks or mainsail containment, from traditional, multiple lines secured at the mast and boom; to the Dutchman system with monofilament run through cringles sewn into the sail like a window blind; to sailmaker solutions like the Doyle StackPak. This is good news for all sailors, especially those who sail shorthanded on larger boats.
Improvements in tooling—that is, the making of molds—are easily evident in today’s boats, particularly with deck details, and in fairness. That’s because many of today’s tools are designed with computer software that is extraordinarily accurate, and that accuracy is transferred flawlessly to big five-axis routers that sculpt from giant blocks of foam the desired shape to within thousandths of an inch. Gone are the days of lofting lines on a plywood floor, taken from a table of offsets, and then building a male plug with wood planks and frames. I once owned a 1960s-era sailboat, built by a reputable company, where the centerline of the cockpit was 7 degrees off the centerline of the deck—and they were one piece!
Additive processes, such as 3D printing, are quickly complementing subtractive processes like the milling described above. Already, a company in California has made a multipart mold for a 34-foot sailboat. Advantages include less waste materials.
Job training also has had an impact on the quality of fiberglass boats. There are now numerous schools across the country offering basic-skills training in composites that include spraying molds with gelcoat, lamination, and an introduction to vacuum bagging and infusion.
The patent on SCRIMP—perhaps the first widely employed infusion process—has long ago expired, but many builders have adopted it or a similar process whereby layers of fiberglass are placed in the mold dry along with a network of tubes that will carry resin under vacuum pressure to each area of the hull. After careful placement, the entire mold is covered with a bag, a vacuum is drawn by a pump, and lines to the pot of resin are opened. If done correctly, the result is a more uniform fiberglass part with a more controlled glass-to-resin ratio than is achievable with hand lay-up. And as a huge bonus, there are no volatile organic compounds released into the workplace, and no need for expensive exhaust fans and ductwork. OSHA likes that, and so do the workers.
However, sloppy processes and glasswork can still be found on some new boats. Surveyor Jonathan Klopman—who is based in Marblehead, Massachusetts, but has inspected dozens, if not hundreds, of boats damaged by hurricanes in the Caribbean—tells me that he is appalled by some of the shoddy work he sees, such as balsa cores not vacuum-bagged to the fiberglass skins, resulting in delamination. But overall, I believe workmanship has improved, which is evident when you look behind backrests, inside lockers and into bilges, where the tidiness of glasswork (or lack thereof) is often exposed. Mechanical and electrical systems also have improved, in part due to the promulgation of standards by the American Boat & Yacht Council, and informal enforcement by insurance companies and surveyors.
We all know stainless steel isn’t entirely stainless, and that penetrations in the deck are potentially troublesome; allowing moisture to enter a core material, such as end-grain balsa, can have serious consequences. The core and fiberglass skins must be properly bonded and the kerfs not filled with resin. Beginning in the mid-1990s, some builders such as TPI, which built the early Lagoon cruising catamarans, began using structural adhesives, like Plexus, to bond the hull/deck joint rather than using dozens of metal fasteners. These methacrylate resins are now commonly used for this application and others. Klopman says it basically should be considered a permanent bond, that the two parts, in effect, become one. If you think a through-bolted hull/deck joint makes more sense because one could theoretically separate them for repairs, consider how likely that would ever be: not highly.
Wide transoms spawned an unexpected bonus; besides the possibility of a dinghy “garage” under the cockpit on larger boats, swim platforms are also possible. In more than one BOTY yacht, the aft end of the cockpit rotated down hydraulically to form the swim platform—pretty slick.
Teak decks are still around, despite their spurning for many years by owners who didn’t want the upkeep. In the 1960s and ’70s, they were considered a sign of a classy boat but fell from favor for a variety of reasons: maintenance, weight and threat of damaging the deck core (the bung sealant wears out and water travels down the fastener through the top fiberglass skin into the core). Specialty companies that supply builders, like Teakdecking Systems in Florida, use epoxy resin to bond their product to decks rather than metal fasteners. And the BOTY judges saw several synthetic faux-teak products that are difficult to distinguish from real teak—the Esthec installed on the Bavaria C50 being one example.
LPG tanks no longer have to be strapped to a stanchion or mounted in a deck box because decks now often incorporate molded lockers specifically designed for one or two tanks of a given size. To meet ABYC standards, they drain overboard. In tandem with these lockers, some boats also have placements or mounts for barbecues that are located out of the wind, obviating the common and exposed stern-rail mount.
Low-voltage LED lights are replacing incandescent bulbs in nearly all applications; improvements in technology have increased brightness (lumens), so some even meet requirements for the range of navigation lights. Advances in battery technology translate to longer life, and depending on type, faster charging. And networked digital switching systems for DC-power distribution also are becoming more common.
Last, I was surprised at how many expensive yachts exhibited at Annapolis had nearly the least-expensive toilets one can buy. Considering the grief caused by small joker valves and poorly sealed hand pumps, one would think builders might install systems that incorporate higher-quality parts or vacuum flushing, and eliminate the minimal hosing that famously permeate odors.
Dan Spurr is an author, editor and cruising sailor who has served on the staffs of Cruising World, Practical Sailor and Professional Boatbuilder. His many books include Heart of Glass , a history of fiberglass boatbuilding and boatbuilders .
Here are a few other (surprising) items gleaned from several days of walking the docks and sailing the latest models:
My Cruiser Life Magazine
There are a lot of different sailboats in the world. In fact, they’ve been making sailboats for thousands of years. And over that time, mankind and naval architects (okay, mostly the naval architects!) have learned a thing or two.
If you’re wondering what makes one sailboat different from another, consider this article a primer. It certainly doesn’t contain everything you’d need to know to build a sailboat, but it gives the novice boater some ideas of what goes on behind the curtain. It will also provide some tips to help you compare different boats on the water, and hopefully, it will guide you towards the sort of boat you could call home one day.
Displacement hulls, semi displacement hulls, planing hulls, history of sailboat hull design, greater waterline length, distinctive hull shape and fin keel designs, ratios in hull design, the hull truth and nothing but the truth, sail boat hull design faqs.
When you think about a sailboat hull and how it is built, you might start thinking about the shape of a keel. This has certainly spurred a lot of different designs over the years, but the hull of a sailboat today is designed almost independently of the keel.
In fact, if you look at a particular make and model of sailboat, you’ll notice that the makers often offer it with a variety of keel options. For example, this new Jeanneau Sun Odyssey comes with either a full fin bulb keel, shallow draft bulb fin, or very shallow draft swing keel. Where older long keel designs had the keel included in the hull mold, today’s bolt-on fin keel designs allow the manufacturers more leeway in customizing a yacht to your specifications.
What you’re left with is a hull, and boat hulls take three basic forms.
Most times, the hull of a sailboat will be a displacement hull. To float, a boat must displace a volume of water equal in weight to that of the yacht. This is Archimedes Principle , and it’s how displacement hulled boats get their name.
The displacement hull sailboat has dominated the Maritimes for thousands of years. It has only been in the last century that other designs have caught on, thanks to advances in engine technologies. In short, sailboats and sail-powered ships are nearly always displacement cruisers because they lack the power to do anything else.
A displacement hull rides low in the water and continuously displaces its weight in water. That means that all of that water must be pushed out of the vessel’s way, and this creates some operating limitations. As it pushes the water, water is built up ahead of the boat in a bow wave. This wave creates a trough along the side of the boat, and the wave goes up again at the stern. The distance between the two waves is a limiting factor because the wave trough between them creates a suction.
This suction pulls the boat down and creates drag as the vessel moves through the water. So in effect, no matter how much power is applied to a displacement hulled vessel, it cannot go faster than a certain speed. That speed is referred to as the hull speed, and it’s a factor of a boat’s length and width.
For an average 38 foot sailboat, the hull speed is around 8.3 knots. This is why shipping companies competed to have the fastest ship for many years by building larger and larger ships.
While they might sound old-school and boring, displacement hulls are very efficient because they require very little power—and therefore very little fuel—to get them up to hull speed. This is one reason enormous container ships operate so efficiently.
Of course, living in the 21st century, you undoubtedly have seen boats go faster than their hull speed. Going faster is simply a matter of defeating the bow wave in one way or another.
One way is to build the boat so that it can step up onto and ride the bow wave like a surfer. This is basically what a semi-displacement hull does. With enough power, this type of boat can surf its bow wave, break the suction it creates and beat its displacement hull speed.
With even more power, a boat can leave its bow wave in the dust and zoom past it. This requires the boat’s bottom to channel water away and sit on the surface. Once it is out of the water, any speed is achievable with enough power.
But it takes enormous amounts of power to get a boat on plane, so planing hulls are hardly efficient. But they are fast. Speedboats are planing hulls, so if you require speed, go ahead and research the cost of a speedboat .
The most stable and forgiving planing hull designs have a deep v hull. A very shallow draft, flat bottomed boat can plane too, but it provides an unforgiving and rough ride in any sort of chop.
If you compare the shapes of the sailboats of today with the cruising boat designs of the 1960s and 70s, you’ll notice that quite a lot has changed in the last 50-plus years. Of course, the old designs are still popular among sailors, but it’s not easy to find a boat like that being built today.
Today’s boats are sleeker. They have wide transoms and flat bottoms. They’re more likely to support fin keels and spade rudders. Rigs have also changed, with the fractional sloop being the preferred setup for most modern production boats.
Why have boats changed so much? And why did boats look so different back then?
One reason was the racing standards of the day. Boats in the 1960s were built to the IOR (International Offshore Rule). Since many owners raced their boats, the IOR handicaps standardized things to make fair play between different makes and models on the racecourse.
The IOR rule book was dense and complicated. But as manufacturers started building yachts, or as they looked at the competition and tried to do better, they all took a basic form. The IOR rule wasn’t the only one around . There were also the Universal Rule, International Rule, Yacht Racing Association Rul, Bermuda Rule, and a slew of others.
Part of this similarity was the rule, and part of it was simply the collective knowledge and tradition of yacht building. But at that time, there was much less distance between the yachts you could buy from the manufacturers and those setting off on long-distance races.
Today, those wishing to compete in serious racing a building boat’s purpose-built for the task. As a result, one-design racing is now more popular. And similarly, pleasure boats designed for leisurely coastal and offshore hops are likewise built for the task at hand. No longer are the lines blurred between the two, and no longer are one set of sailors “making do” with the requirements set by the other set.
So, what exactly sets today’s cruising and liveaboard boats apart from those built-in decades past?
Today’s designs usually feature plumb bows and the maximum beam carried to the aft end. The broad transom allows for a walk-through swim platform and sometimes even storage for the dinghy in a “garage.”
The other significant advantage of this layout is that it maximizes waterline length, which makes a faster boat. Unfortunately, while the boats of yesteryear might have had lovely graceful overhangs, their waterline lengths are generally no match for newer boats.
The wide beam carried aft also provides an enormous amount of living space. The surface area of modern cockpits is nothing short of astounding when it comes to living and entertaining.
If you look at the hull lines or can catch a glimpse of these boats out of the water, you’ll notice their underwater profiles are radically different too. It’s hard to find a full keel design boat today. Instead, fin keels dominate, along with high aspect ratio spade rudders.
The flat bottom boats of today mean a more stable boat that rides flatter. These boats can really move without heeling over like past designs. Additionally, their designs make it possible in some cases for these boats to surf their bow waves, meaning that with enough power, they can easily achieve and sometimes exceed—at least for short bursts—their hull speeds. Many of these features have been found on race boats for decades.
There are downsides to these designs, of course. The flat bottom boats often tend to pound when sailing upwind , but most sailors like the extra speed when heading downwind.
Ultimately, the job of a sailboat hull is to keep the boat afloat and create stability. These are the fundamentals of a seaworthy vessel.
There are two types of stability that a design addresses . The first is the initial stability, which is how resistant to heeling the design is. For example, compare a classic, narrow-beamed monohull and a wide catamaran for a moment. The monohull has very little initial stability because it heels over in even light winds. That doesn’t mean it tips over, but it is relatively easy to make heel.
A catamaran, on the other hand, has very high initial stability. It resists the heel and remains level. Designers call this type of stability form stability.
There is also secondary stability, or ultimate stability. This is how resistant the boat is to a total capsize. Monohull sailboats have an immense amount of ballast low in their keels, which means they have very high ultimate stability. A narrow monohull has low form stability but very high ultimate stability. A sailor would likely describe this boat as “tender,” but they would never doubt its ability to right itself after a knock-down or capsize.
On the other hand, the catamaran has extremely high form stability, but once the boat heels, it has little ultimate stability. In other words, beyond a certain point, there is nothing to prevent it from capsizing.
Both catamarans and modern monohulls’ hull shapes use their beams to reduce the amount of ballast and weight . A lighter boat can sail fast, but to make it more stable, naval architects increase the beam to increase the form stability.
If you’d like to know more about how stable a hull is, you’ll want to learn about the Gz Curve , which is the mathematical calculation you can make based on a hull’s form and ultimate stabilities.
How does a lowly sailor make heads or tails out of this? You don’t have to be a naval architect when comparing different designs to understand the basics. Two ratios can help you predict how stable a design will be .
The first is the displacement to length ratio . The formula to calculate it is D / (0.01L)^3 , where D is displacement in tons and L is waterline length in feet. But most sailboat specifications, like those found on sailboatdata.com , list the D/L Ratio.
This ratio helps understand how heavy a boat is for its length. Heavier boats must move more water to make way, so a heavy boat is more likely to be slower. But, for the ocean-going cruiser, a heavy boat means a stable boat that requires much force to jostle or toss about. A light displacement boat might pound in a seaway, and a heavy one is likely to provide a softer ride.
The second ratio of interest is the sail area to displacement ratio. To calculate, take SA / (D)^0.67 , where SA is the sail area in square feet and D is displacement in cubic feet. Again, many online sites provide the ratio calculated for specific makes and models.
This ratio tells you how much power a boat has. A lower ratio means that the boat doesn’t have much power to move its weight, while a bigger number means it has more “get up and go.” Of course, if you really want to sail fast, you’d want the boat to have a low displacement/length and a high sail area/displacement.
Multihull sailboats are more popular than ever before. While many people quote catamaran speed as their primary interest, the fact is that multihulls have a lot to offer cruising and traveling boaters. These vessels are not limited to coastal cruising, as was once believed. Most sizable cats and trimarans are ocean certified.
Both catamarans and trimaran hull designs allow for fast sailing. Their wide beam allows them to sail flat while having extreme form stability.
Catamarans have two hulls connected by a large bridge deck. The best part for cruisers is that their big surface area is full of living space. The bridge deck usually features large, open cockpits with connecting salons. Wrap around windows let in tons of light and fresh air.
Trimarans are basically monohulls with an outrigger hull on each side. Their designs are generally less spacious than catamarans, but they sail even faster. In addition, the outer hulls eliminate the need for heavy ballast, significantly reducing the wetted area of the hulls.
Boaters and cruising sailors don’t need to be experts in yacht design, but having a rough understanding of the basics can help you pick the right boat. Boat design is a series of compromises, and knowing the ones that designers and builders take will help you understand what the boat is for and how it should be used.
The most efficient hull design is the displacement hull. This type of boat sits low in the water and pushes the water out of its way. It is limited to its designed hull speed, a factor of its length. But cruising at hull speed or less requires very little energy and can be done very efficiently.
By way of example, most sailboats have very small engines. A typical 40-foot sailboat has a 50 horsepower motor that burns around one gallon of diesel every hour. In contrast, a 40-foot planing speedboat may have 1,000 horsepower (or more). Its multiple motors would likely be consuming more than 100 gallons per hour (or more). Using these rough numbers, the sailboat achieves about 8 miles per gallon, while the speedboat gets around 2 mpg.
Nearly all modern sailboats are made of fiberglass.
Traditionally, boats were made of wood, and many traditional vessels still are today. There are also metal boats made of steel or aluminum, but these designs are less common. Metal boats are more common in expedition yachts or those used in high-latitude sailing.
Matt has been boating around Florida for over 25 years in everything from small powerboats to large cruising catamarans. He currently lives aboard a 38-foot Cabo Rico sailboat with his wife Lucy and adventure dog Chelsea. Together, they cruise between winters in The Bahamas and summers in the Chesapeake Bay.
UI/UX Design
When developing a digital product, the classic process involved documenting requirements, designing solutions, and building and testing in a waterfall approach. Then Agile came around and changed everything, decreasing the time it took to deliver working software and reducing the need for front-loaded documentation.
By working in ‘sprints’, development teams can focus on core requirements to build a product, while allowing for the ups and downs that come with developing complex technology. An added bonus is that clients can deliver feedback after sprints rather than at the end of the ‘completed’ project.
Agile is a system of working, but it’s also a mindset based on promoting better interaction between the people involved in the project, the flexibility to change things when required, and focusing on working, functional product over bureaucracy. It’s a flexible way of working - hence the name ‘agile’, but it also encourages the concept of taking stock after a sprint to see what worked and what didn’t.
This is often called an Agile retrospective. These are exercises performed after a sprint or project to determine efficiency and spot problems or issues so a team can avoid them in the future. It also ties into a Lean methodology in that a retrospective helps cut future waste.
One of the most powerful forms of retrospectives comes in the form of the ‘sailboat exercise’.
If you’re planning to work in an Agile system, or working with an agency that utilises Agile methodology (hint hint, it’s us), then you’ll probably encounter the term sailboating.
Even if you’re NOT an agile organisation, the sailboating exercise can still be a great way to help rethink your projects and prioritise the production journey. It’s a visual metaphor and an exercise that focuses on the team and future direction.
A sailboat workshop involves two main processes: the team writing down answers to a few questions and then mapping these answers against the ‘sailboat’ metaphor.
You can use a digital board such as Miro for this, or Sticky notes will do the trick if you’re doing it in person. Ask your team the following questions (adjusting based on whether you’re running this as a sprint exercise or at an operational level.)
At operational level:
What’s moving us forward?
What are our goals?
What’s holding us back?
What’s not gone so well?
For sprint exercises:
What risks did the sprint/project face?
What delayed the sprint?
What propelled the sprint forward?
The Sailboat in action at a KOMODO Innovation Workshop.
Once your team have created their answers as Sticky Notes, ask them to stick them to a graphic you’ve drawn or printed that includes the following elements:
A boat - this is your team/project.
An island - this is the goal you’re working towards. It can be the specific features designed in a sprint or a more operational-level goal.
Wind in your sails : what propels your team/project forward.
Rocks : the risks your project faces in the future as it reaches the goal.
Anchor : the problems and challenges which delayed the sprint/project.
Once the team has had a chance to place their sticky notes, go through as a group and see if you agree on the placements. Then see if there’s a common theme being suggested by multiple people as a delay.
Just like you would in an Agile sprint, you can use this information to pivot and enact change. For example, if there’s an anchor problem holding your team back, prioritise a way to remove it. Outlining the ‘rock’ or future risk also helps you spot potential obstacles that should be dealt with before they become a problem and ‘sink’ the ship.
The sailboat exercise is great because it’s a visual metaphor that is easy to understand. It aligns the team and quite literally puts everyone in the same boat. For an agency/client relationship, sailboating also helps both sides of the relationship feel they are aligned and heading in the right direction.
While the Sailboat method is so often used in a retrospective fashion, we believe it has great value as an onboarding process for new projects and why it features as the first activity in our innovation workshop process.
The sailboat system can also be used at the beginning of a project to help map out your strengths and weaknesses.
Demand for your product.
What your user’s needs are.
What solutions are most important in terms of priority.
We’ve written about this sort of thinking many times - but it’s so important we thought we’d mention it again here in the context of the Sailboat exercise. You can’t, for example, just go into a planning session with ‘general ideas’ of what your customers want. Instead, you need to do research and ensure that your product can solve a genuine need . Otherwise, it’s all based on guesswork.
Once you know enough about your users, you can use Sailboat to plan the overall product or project. This time, you’d define the elements as:
Rocks : what risks does the product face in terms of competitors, technical issues, user error?
Island : what functional requirements are most important - they should be positioned closer to the ‘shore’ to create priorities.
Anchor : what issues could delay the project. Think of factors like stakeholder intervention, poor client/agency communication etc.
Wind/sail: what can contribute towards the product being completed to the right timeframe?
While you might not have the same retrospective analysis to assign actual, tangible things that went wrong for your rocks etc. The sailboat is still a good way to map out a project at the beginning to get your team on the same page.
Remember that the sailboat as a concept is not really that important. It could be many different visual metaphors - all of them just have to share a way to map goals, threats and success factors.
By completing these exercises either at the start of a project or as a retroactive after a sprint as intended, you’ll be putting your team on the right track and creating a more collaborative process both internally and, if working with an agency, externally too.
The sailboat is just one Agile exercise we love. If you choose to work with KOMODO for your digital product development, we’ll lend our workshopping expertise to your project journey to help ensure the product is as functional and successful as it can be. Get in touch if you’d like to know more .
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This canvas was inspired by a tool described in Alex Osterwalder’s Value Proposition Design book. We’ve had amazing success deploying this to teams in order to develop a strong foundation for strategic planning. It’s a really simple and versatile tool which allows you to clearly display the forces that are acting on you, your team, or organization. So you know what direction you are heading, right? Well, what’s helping you get there and what’s holding you back? It’s that simple! Yet, so powerful when used as a team alignment tool.
This version designed by Matt Kelly and licensed to Do Tank Do LLC.
What is helping to push you forward? What are the positive forces that you would want to amplify and leverage in your strategy?
What is holding you back? What are the obstacles that stand in your way? What must you navigate and overcome going forward?
Personal self reflection.
Call the boat the “<I NSERT YOUR NAME>” . In your own time and space, use this canvas to think about you own personal situation. What are you currently looking to achieve? What are the things that are driving you to success? What’s holding you back? When reflecting, challenge yourself with these questions; Is your direction clear enough? Does it excite you? What enablers can be amplified? What else could help enable your vision? What’s the number 1 blocker that is slow you down? What options do you have to remove it? If you were going to change 3 things to you current situation what would they be?
Call the boat the “<INSERT YOUR NAME>”. Like most of the business design tools, you maximize the value when using them as part of a team sport. It’s simply an amazing tool for teams to conduct a quick “current state” exercise to help identify hidden challenges or provide the climate that enables conversations about known challenges. Consider the “so what?” question when doing this exercise as a team. Make sure that there is general alignment on the current state and where possible agree as a team the top 3 areas that should be worked on to help the team achieve its vision.
Call the boat the “<INSERT YOUR BUSINESS NAME>”. You can see where this is going, right? You can essentially call the boat anything you like as long as it’s something you care about that has a purpose and it’s on a journey to realize its vision. For example doing this at the business level within workshops that have multiple teams is a great way to extract different points of view from across the business. It’s also interesting to see where solid alignment exists and where it doesn’t.
Call the boat the “<INSERT PARTNERSHIP NAME>”. This can be a powerful way to either assess of design partnerships with the actual people involved in the partnership. What better way to assess and/or design than co-create it together. Instant buy-in.
Call the boat the “<INSERT SERVICE OR PROGRAM>”. This could provide a way to slice across parts of the business when focused on a product or service. Let’s assess the current state of a product/service with everyone that’s involved, from R&D, support, sales, marketing, operations, finance etc to really understand what is working and what is not if we seek to turbo charge the performance. This provides a good foundation for value proposition design as well as business model innovation.
It seems simple, but putting a name to the boat gives it personality and a sense of purpose. Make sure the FIRST thing you do it agree on the name of the boat and then the purpose it has.
The theme of a “sailboat” lends itself to so many metaphors. What are the lighthouses that are keeping your idea from smashing on the rocks? What is the main heavy anchor that’s stopping you from moving? Are there sharks in the water? Warm currents to play towards etc. There is enough whitespace on the canvas to play with this in a fun but serious way.
Because of it’s simplicity, this canvas can get full fast. Once you’ve filled it up with thoughts, go through them all again and pick the top 2 enablers and the top 2 blockers. Focus your efforts on those and you’ll soon find you’re making waves.
A good visualization for blockers is to have “anchors” at various depths. The deeper the anchor, the more impact it’s having on the subject and the higher a priority it should be.
This can be a quick exercise. It’s fun and easy to explain, so it makes a great warm-up activity to break the ice at a team meeting or event.
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Is the quest for speed and interior comfort trumping smart design in todays sailboats.
Practical Sailor editors have noticed the increasing tendency in newer-model sailboats to be ill-mannered in gusty conditions. Establishing balance between the sails and the hull is one of the main factors in quality boat design. For correct trim, many things must be considered: the ballast package location, the combined longitudinal center of gravity (LCG), and the longitudinal center of buoyancy. At the same time, to maintain a balanced helm, the keel must promote sufficient lead (the fore and aft distance between the center of effort and the center of lateral resistance). To highlight how these boat design principles play out, Practical Sailor looks at classic sailboats such as the Bill Shaw-designed Pearson 32, Ericson 41, Valiant 40, and Peterson 44, and compares their keel/sail ratios and lead values to more modern sailboat designs such as the Catalina, Hunter, Tartan, and Beneteau.
In the course of taking out boats for testing, Practical Sailor editors have observed an increased tendency for new-model sailboats to be ill-mannered in gusty conditions. We have been watching this trend for several years, and it seems to be becoming more usual than unusual.
In a typical situation, we will be sailing the test boat on the wind in 12 or so knots of breeze and everything is fine. Then, the breeze picks up to about 15 knots and the helm loads up. OK, thats to be expected, so we flatten the main, drop down the traveler, and that takes care of it.
Then we get a puff. Were already on the point of needing to reef, so in the puff, were overcanvassed. Instead of just heeling farther, the boat begins to round up. Fighting it with the helm is hard work, and easing the main so it luffs doesn’t help much.
Photo by Ralph Naranjo
We take in a reef, which usually means we roll in a bit of the jib or a bit of the main, or both, and the helm lightens up. We trim to the new wind and sail along, a bit slower now in the light spots, but then the next gust comes along, and the helm immediately loads up again.
In the worst case weve experienced, the boat rounded up so quickly that it tacked, even though the helm was hard over in the opposite direction. To prove that wasnt a fluke caused by a temporary diversion into a parallel universe, it did the same thing on the other tack.
Practical Sailor editors are old enough to remember a generation of cruising boats that didnt behave in this manner. For sure, there have always been twitchy boats, but most, when hit by a gust, would heel a little more, put some pressure on the wheel or tiller, and once the boat picked up speed, the pressure would come right off. A boat like that will sail for a long time with a loose lashing on the helm.
So, where does this bad habit come from? Several trends in modern cruising yacht design can share the blame. One of them is builders inclination to tilt their designs toward the performance end of the cruisers spectrum. Many recent and current cruising boats, if suitably fitted out with racing sails and the hardware and software to tweak them, could put up an impressive show on the race course.
The sensitivity to trim that accompanies such potential isn’t always suited to cruising shorthanded or with a family, when balance and good manners are key both to enjoyment and, to a degree, safety.
Establishing Balance
Many factors contribute to the balance of a sailboat. The obvious and principal pair are the sails and the hull. When working up a new design, the architect develops these in close association, but both are in turn influenced by other aspects of the boats design as it evolves.
In the standard approach, the designer works up preliminary drawings to express the basic requirements of the design brief, which normally include a desired length, displacement, cabin arrangement, and sailplan to provide the desired performance.
He then sketches out the hull lines (the matrix of contours that define its three-dimensional shape and its volume) to enclose the interior and meet expressed performance goals. The preliminary lines also serve as a basis on which to perform a number of calculations, one of them being the location of the center of buoyancy (CB).
With everything roughed out, the designer then “weighs” every item that will go into the complete boat, from the hull laminate to the toothbrush holder, but excluding the ballast. He combines these weights and their locations on the three axes, X, Y, and Z, to calculate the center of gravity (CG) of the whole package. Computer programs have helped to speed up this process and make volume calculations more accurate, but the process hasn’t changed much.
For the boat to float on its desired lines, the ballast package must then be designed and located to bring the combined longitudinal CG (LCG) of hull and ballast to the same fore-and-aft location as the CB (LCB). Once everything has been resolved satisfactorily, the designer can finalize the lines, carry out the necessary calculations, and establish shape and locations for the keel and the sailplan.
On most boats of current design, the ballast also constitutes the fin keel, and in that role, its location determines the center of lateral resistance (CLR), which in conjunction with the center of effort (CE) of the sailplan, influences how the boat balances under sail.
Even as boat design procedures have evolved from three-dimensional modeling using half hulls, through two-dimensional modeling using pen on vellum, to three-dimensional virtual modeling on computers, the fundamental principles have remained constant. One of the fundamental values used for predicting the proclivities of a boats helm is the dimension termed “lead.” Lead, pronounced “leed,” is the fore and aft distance between the CE and the CLR, expressed as a percentage of the waterline length (DWL).
“Skenes Elements of Yacht Design,” as revised by Francis S. Kinney, and other references for yacht design provide rules of thumb for calculating lead from the sailplan and the hull profile. (See illustration above).
Looking at the diagram, its easy to see how lead is an elusive quantity. First of all, no boat sails with the sailplan as shown-the sails are never flat and on centerline. The traditional range for lead places the CE forward of the CLR by 14 to 19 percent of DWL. This value is lifted from “Skenes,” for years the first reference for any designer. Since that book was written and updated, hull forms have changed, and with them, optimum values for lead.
On designs with fin keels, lead is often calculated with reference to the keel alone. One feature remains constant whatever the design. Moving the centers closer together-reducing lead-increases the tendency to weather helm. Moving them apart reduces that tendency. If the lead is too great, the result may be lee helm, which is generally considered undesirable-and is in fact, rare.
In Kinneys prime years, the 1960s to the 1980s, the basic working sailplan of a sloop included a 150-percent genoa, which would have the effect of moving the CE closer to the CLR. Many designs today have headsails with short or even no overlap and very often a full-battened mainsail with lots of roach. The different aerodynamic characteristics of such rigs might well affect optimum lead, something which designers can only determine through experience. (If a boatbuilder offers an in-mast furling mainsail as an option, its effect on lead will differ from that of the “classic” sailboat.)
The effective CLR can also be very different from that calculated. On a deep-bodied, full-keel hull, that difference simply might be the difference between the geometric center and the center of hydrodynamic pressure of the whole profile.
A sharp bow with a pronounced “chin” might well move the effective CLR forward. On a modern, fin-keeled boat with a shallow, broad canoe body like that of a dinghy, the keel makes a proportionately larger contribution to lateral resistance, so the location of the keel will strongly influence where that resistance operates.
Obviously the rudder, too, is part of the lateral plane, but if our objective is to sail with light to neutral pressure on the helm, under normal conditions, it should not be making a significant contribution to lateral resistance. Its role is to provide a means to change the boats direction and to compensate for the constant fluctuations in the forces applied to the boat in the normal course of sailing. A certain amount of pressure in the form of weather helm helps by providing positive feedback to the helmsman on the state of balance. That said, on many racing hulls, the rudder is designed to contribute lift and has an active role in driving the boat to windward. (It is worth noting that those wide-bodied race boats also tend to have twin rudders.)
Then and Now
Even in the age of computer modeling, yacht design remains a series of compromises. At the moment, it seems the pendulum has swung to a point where high-volume, wide-beam shapes dominate. With them come large rigs to overcome skin drag and its negative effect in light air. As a result, theres a need to sail the vessel as flat as possible or suffer the consequences.
The sailplan and outboard profiles of boats from different eras represent the shift in yacht design that has occurred during recent decades. The modern boats have longer proportional waterlines, indicating higher potential speed. It also means that the boats immersed volume, or displacement, has been distributed over a greater length.
Given two boats of similar displacement like the classic Pearson 32 and the modern Tartan 3400 (above), the Tartan winds up with a shallower canoe body. This also contributes to its being potentially faster and, if both boats had the same draft, would give the keel a slight advantage in span, and therefore effectiveness to windward.
So far so good, but a shallower canoe body forces the cabin sole upward, especially if the belowdecks accommodations are to take full advantage of the wide beam favored in the modern hull. To achieve comparable headroom with its older counterpart, the cabintop has to go up, too, and to ensure sitting headroom on the settees under the sidedeck, so does the freeboard.
Ultimately, the whole deck moves upward. To ensure the boom doesn’t sweep everybody out of the cockpit during an unplanned jibe, the boom too goes up. If sail area is not to be compromised, the entire mainsail goes up, and with it, its center of effort. The bigger the boat, the less pronounced these differences become as the proportions become more relaxed.
Differences are visible, too, between the boats keels; the modern Tartans is smaller in area. While it might be claimed that less wetted surface promises higher sailing speeds in light air, some builders accept a smaller keel to simplify the manufacture of the hull.
In a perfect world, the designer draws a keel to suit the boats sail area and other characteristics, places it to obtain the desired sailing performance, then massages the needed ballast to both fit the keel and trim the boat correctly. The volume of the ballast is usually less than that of the keel, and the builder has to do some intricate laminating work to mold a keel to receive ballast internally or a stub to which to bolt it externally.
On many production boats today, the keels are bolted directly to the bottom of a fair canoe body, a practice which eliminates much labor. The consequence is that the area of the keel is determined by the weight, and therefore the volume, of the ballast. To achieve the desired hydrodynamic properties and mechanical strength-it mustnt bend under the influence of normal sailing loads-a given volume of ballast can be formed into a limited range of shapes. Placing ballast in a bulb at the bottom aids the keels efficiency by creating an endplate effect and raises stiffness by placing ballast low, but it means that the keels lateral plane is sharply reduced.
For a more dramatic representation of how changes in keel design can affect helm balance, compare a Cruising Club of America (CCA) design like the Ericson 41 above, to a modern equivalent with comparable sail area like the Beneteau 46.
When sailing, two boats are subjected to similar forces on the sails. Resisting that side force are the immersed hull, the keel, and the rudder. If the hulls offer similar resistance, the remaining force is shared between the keel and rudder. If one keel is smaller than the other (as is clearly the case here), the effect is to increase the share taken by the rudder.
When the sails are trimmed properly and all is in balance, the rudder will carry a small load. If however, you hit a gust, the rudder must pick up a high proportion of the added side thrust until balance is restored, usually by some adjustment to sail trim.
Simply put, boats of the general modern type are not forgiving in changeable conditions, say, for example when the apparent wind is in the 12- to 18-knot range. At the higher end, youd want to be reefed; at the lower end, probably not.
On a day when you expect the wind to soften rather than harden, youd rather not put in the reef, so that you can maintain speed in the lulls. In the puffs, you want your hands free to ease the traveler and flatten the jib, which is hard to do if the helm is a handful. Compounding the problem on most boats, the mainsail controls are usually not within reach of the helm.
On racing boats, such sensitivity isn’t an issue. On the contrary, sufficient crew are on hand to make adjustments on the fly as quickly and often as needed to keep the boat sailing at her fastest.
Cruising boats are often sailed shorthanded and by crews who are not looking for a constant physical workout. An autopilot might be doing most of the steering, and good balance is helpful in protecting it from having to work too hard-or from being overpowered.
Another striking difference between the older and newer designs is visible in the plan (overhead) view. By 1980, cruising-boat hulls were already becoming beamy relative to boats of the 1960s and 1970s. The current trend is to carry the beam aft, so that in the region of the rudder, its as much as 85 percent of the maximum beam, far wider than the 55 percent to 60 percent once considered acceptable. The principal beneficiary of this extra breadth is the boats interior-builders often offer twin double cabins aft where a generation ago they might have squeezed in a quarter berth and a cockpit locker. The cockpit, too, becomes roomier, and the transom, scooped and sculpted, is transformed into a swim platform and dinghy dock.
Photo by Jarrod Scanlon
All this additional boat aft adds weight aft, in both construction materials and outfit. To compensate, the ballast-that is to say, the keel-has to be fitted farther forward.
The full beam aft does provide a significant boost to the boats ability to carry sail. As the boat heels, the center of buoyancy moves quickly outboard, away from the center of gravity. This lengthens the righting arm, giving a positive contribution toward stability, but it also moves the immersed centerline of the hull away from the static centerline along which both the keel and the rudder are attached. Depending on the hulls shape, this can create a distortion in the immersed volume, which can in turn affect the dynamics acting on it.
Effect of Keel Area
Another factor entering the equation is the area of the keel. This, too, is apparent when comparing the drawings of the older and newer generation boats. Many of the standard tracts on the design of sailing yachts are, lets say, vague on what keel area is adequate or even desirable, although many designers have come up with their own formulas.
Because the keel is reacting in the water to forces generated on the sails by the wind, it makes sense that the area of a fin keel should be related in some way to sail area.
When naval architect Dave Gerr took over as director of the Westlawn Institute of Marine Technology, he found the course materials for sailing yacht design had little detailed explanation on this topic, a gap he subsequently filled. Briefly, he recommends no fin keel should be less that 2.5 percent of the sail area (mainsail 100 percent foretriangle) and need be no more than 5 percent. The smaller value is appropriate for a racing boat with a full crew aboard to trim and tweak the sails to every change in the wind. The larger area is suited to cruising boats, which need to be more forgiving to shorthanded crews.
Current Design Trends
In the past, racing measurement rules have been criticized because the boats designed to compete under them have become type-formed, sometimes with unwelcome consequences in how they handle. We might just as easily level criticism at present-day marketing and manufacturing methods for doing the same to cruising boats.
Lets face it, but for a few differences in sailplans and keel shapes, modern cruising sailboats are quite generic below the sheerline. They are all beamy; they carry their beam aft; they have long waterlines; they have dinghy-like underbodies; and they have spade rudders. The forces that have created this shape have at least as much to do with how many people can sleep and shower in them comfortably as with how the boats will sail.
Dishing out the hull shape in this manner makes it fairly easy to push through the water, but arranging the keel, rudder, and sails so they work in concert has become a more complex problem, exacerbated by having to compensate for extra weight of accommodations aft, something thats less of an issue in raceboats.
The byproduct of these design parameters is zesty performance, a bonus for the marketing department, but speed for its own sake is not the first priority of cruising sailors. In the brochure for the Beneteau 37, the boats polar diagram shows a maximum theoretical sailing speed of over 12 knots in 30 knots of wind. When cruising sailors encounter 30-knot winds, they are more likely to hunker down in the expectation it will blow even harder than they are to set the chute to go surfing. What they want is a boat that will take readily to hunkering, and all the signs indicate those boats are getting fewer in number . . . and they are mostly older designs.
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An unconference approach to running productive team retreats.
I thoroughly enjoy planning and facilitating team retreats. When done well, they are a rejuvenating time for team members to reflect on the previous few months, to plan what’s coming next, and to just straight up have some fun together.
As a manager, I’ve found these retreats essential in keeping a team aligned and empowered to take ownership of what they’re building together. Even in Covid times – when the idea of getting together in-person seems quaint – taking time off from "normal work" to connect with your team in a less formal setting can still be quite valuable.
I’ve experimented with different approaches to running these retreats, but one exercise that has become essential is the “Sailboat Exercise”*:
At its core, the Sailboat Exercise is a brainstorming process for garnering honest feedback from employees about the state of the team / product / company. As such, it can be used independently of team retreats. That said, I’ve found it particularly effective in such a setting because it’s a fun, low pressure exercise at a time when folks are in a mindset to candidly assess the state of things — i.e. they’re removed from the stresses of their normal day jobs, and able to come up for air to think more holistically.
In fact, I’ve found it to be such a good exercise for divining the zeitgeist of the team — what’s been good/bad/indifferent and where should we head next? — that I use it to kick off the retreat, with its outcome driving the topics to be discussed during the rest of the event.
In this way, it essentially becomes a tool for running a team retreat as an unconference (i.e. a participant-driven conference), but with enough structure in place to achieve the goals of 1) clear-eyed retrospection, and 2) forward-thinking planning.
For those wanting to try out the Sailboat Exercise, the steps are as follows:
3. Let the team members independently brainstorm these ideas for 20–30 minutes, encouraging them to not overthink it. At the end of the brainstorming process, have them affix each sticky note to the whiteboard near its appropriate visual element. People are often inclined to avoid affixing a sticky note that duplicates one already on the board, but it’s important to help the group fight that urge since it’s actually quite useful to see which topics were brought up by multiple team members.
4. At this point, the facilitator’s job becomes to organize the stickies on the board so that similar ones are physically connected (see image below). This can be done with the full group’s participation, or with just 1 or 2 others while the rest of the group mingles. Either way, it’s useful for the facilitator to have at least some help in order to group these sticky notes together into thematic topics.
5. Once grouped, the facilitator asks each team member to assign a total of 5 votes to whichever topics that they personally would like the group to discuss while at the retreat. I’ve found that five votes seems to be the right number for most situations, and that the fastest way to enable the voting is to let each person write their own tally marks:
6. The most popular topics become the basis for the set of follow-up sessions during the rest of the retreat. The scheduling of which topics to discuss when can be outlined at this point, or left fluid as the retreat unfolds. As facilitator, your goal is to help the team cover as many of the highest ranked topics as possible while ensuring that the group is energized going into a given session at a particular time. If they don’t seem ready for a discussion because they need a break, some food, a lighter topic, etc. it’s best to delay or forgo the conversation rather than plow ahead.
7. Whenever possible, I look for others on the team to facilitate and/or drive the conversation during a particular session, only speaking up myself when necessary to move the discussion along, or to alleviate any buildup of tension.
8. At the end of our time together, we run a retrospective on the retreat as a whole — what did people like/dislike, and what might we do differently next time. This includes feedback on the Sailboat Exercise itself, as well as the topics that were brought up / discussed. As part of this retrospective, I make sure to thank everyone for their time, energy, and input. I also outline a few actionable steps we’ll be doing as we come out of the retreat because it’s important to a) ensure that team members have felt heard, and b) carry the positive momentum and energy from the event back into the workplace.
That’s it! The Sailboat Exercise has been a crucial tool in my manager tool belt largely because it’s simple to run and consistently produces great results.
I was recently asked by a fellow technologist what advice I had for creating a highly productive team. I said that, amidst a dizzying number of variables, the underlying foundation is almost always that each member of that team feels empowered — to share their opinions, to take on responsibilities, and to be a tangible part of contributing to something larger than themselves. It’s a cliched answer, of course, but as with most cliches, the devil is in the details; accomplishing this goal requires constant nurturing through thoughtful intent, communication, and processes.
In my experience, the Sailboat Exercise has been a great concrete tool for showing, not just telling, team members that they are central to the process of steering the ship.
* Note: I was introduced to this idea by friend and former colleague, Christopher Atkins . He had seen a few folks in the agile community using a version of it for sprint retrospectives, and we decided to experiment with the idea of leveraging it to run our next team retreat. It turned out to be a highly successful experiment, and I’ve since run the process numerous times / adapted it a bit as I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. It’s worth noting that in doing research for this post, I discovered that the original inspiration for this type of process was a “Speed Boat Exercise” developed by Luke Hohmann .
As many managers know, it’s damn hard to create and cultivate healthy teams.
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Owen Clarke Design, yacht designers and naval architects, exist to continually advance yacht design, fulfilling sailors' requirements for fast, beautiful sailboats. OC believe in innovative thinking and pushing technological frontiers achieving excellence in racing, cruising, and explorer yacht design. Sailing is our business and our passion. We are one of the world's leading companies of yacht designers and naval architects. OC specialise in custom sailing designs and naval architecture of racing boats and performance cruising, expedition and explorer yachts. Our studio has designed sailboats ranging from a 6.5m Mini Transat to a 76m superyacht, are specialists in the use of high-tech composite materials as well as experienced in more mainstream construction methods. Take your time to review the areas of our site that are relevant to you, after which we hope you’ll contact us at and/or: For an explanation of the technology behind the design process go to: For an insight into our engineering and detailed design work go to: |
The design thinking methodology is participatory in nature, and it works best when harnessing a multitude of ideas and viewpoints. So if endless Zoom calls are sucking the creativity out of your team, it might be time to reinvigorate your remote design thinking workshops. We’ve curated a list of design thinking tools and activities you can use today to turbo-charge your sessions.
Best of all, with Conceptboard’s collaborative digital whiteboard , everyone can participate regardless of location. Simply jump onto a board and work together via live cursors, digital sticky notes, sketching tools, video conferencing and more.
These five tools are simple ways to implement the design thinking process within your team. So, instead of overthinking it, get started now and see what creative problems you can solve.
In each of the five frameworks below, the steps to design thinking are the same:
This design thinking tool is designed to collect actionable feedback quickly, easily. By encouraging participants to share their opinions in this fashion it flips negative criticism into positive constructive feedback.
Pull up this template at the end of a project, workshop, meeting or even marketing concept or design. Its simple design needs no explanation, so simply give team members 5-10 minutes to add up to five sticky-notes under each heading. Then, open the floor for discussion and reactions which may lead to new ideas or suggestions.
Depending on the purpose, you may then assign tasks for the group to implement themselves, or you may take the feedback on board for internal use.
Use template
Rose, thorn, bud is an extremely versatile design thinking tool. It’s designed to identify what’s working (Rose), what’s not (Thorn) and what can be improved (Bud) so it could be used by teams to self-reflect on current projects, day-in-a-life artifacts or overall processes. It should be able to help open up ideas for opportunities to create positive changes.
Start with the roses. The aim is to identify areas of excellence. You could ask questions such as:
Move onto the thorns. Here we want to identify the challenges so we can work out how to overcome them. Ask your team:
Lastly, let’s identify the buds. These are the areas of growth, the emerging possibilities and the future opportunities. Ask your team:
In a standard brainstorming session , terrible ideas may overshadow the brilliant ideas placed next to them. The What’s on your radar template is designed to simultaneously collect lots of ideas and rank them in order of importance. Its circular dartboard design places the most important ideas at the center, with less important ideas relegated to the outer circles. The board is then divided into four conceptual quadrants, which can be labeled however you see fit.
This is a useful design thinking tool that also works as an icebreaker . Give everyone 10-15 minutes to add their ideas on Sticky notes to the board, then ask everyone to explain their idea and placement.
This is another reflective template tailor-made for design thinking. Instead of focusing on the physical accomplishments and roadblocks, it asks team members to reflect on their emotional responses. Often used at the end of a sprint, which can be an exhausting journey, it will help to understand the areas that are critical to team morale.
The first step is to give everyone time to truly reflect on their individual emotions throughout the sprint without the influence of others. Give everyone 30-60 minutes to privately compile, then ask them to share them on a collaborative board.
Mad – List the things that are driving you crazy. What is stopping you from performing at your best?
Sad – What are some of the things that have disappointed you or that you wished could be improved?
Glad – What makes you happy when you think about this project? What are the elements that you enjoy the most?
This activity encourages people to be vulnerable, so make sure you create a trusting and open space where everyone feels comfortable sharing their feelings. Ensure there’s a no-blame rule and understand that while each problem may not be able to be immediately fixed, this tool can help open up the dialogue.
The fifth tool in our beginner’s design thinking toolkit is the sailboat retrospective. Designed to help teams (the sailboat) navigate to where they want to go (the goal); it helps identify risks along the way that may be hindering progress (Anchors) and what is helping them move forward (Winds).
The first step is to agree on the goal that you are trying to reach, then add that to the board. Then ask your team to individually brainstorm their thoughts and add them to the board under each category:
Once the board is full, begin discussing as a team which ideas are most important and how identified risks can be mitigated. If your team uses agile principles in addition to design thinking, you could also refer to our agile retrospective templates .
So as you can see design thinking is easy to implement and can be applied to a range of situations that require problem-solving. With Conceptboard’s digital whiteboard all these exercises can be completed by collocated or remote teams with ease, and all information will be stored securely in your account for later use.
If you want to see other ways Conceptboard can help your team embrace design thinking, read our other articles about how to Transform your remote Design Thinking sessions , The best Visual Thinking Strategies for 2023 and a guide to low-fidelity prototyping .
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Wow, thank you so much for all these great articles on creative processes and tools, Kat, very well done!
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What is a sailboat retrospective and how can it help you and your agile team conduct better sprint reviews? Here's what you need to know about this technique.
The sailboat retrospective is a fun retrospective technique for sprint & project retrospectives. Use our collaborative template for free and make your presentations more interactive.
INTRODUCTION TO SAILBOAT DESIGN: A TECHNICAL EXPLORATION Sailboat design is a complex and fascinating field that blends engineering, hydrodynamics, and aesthetics to create vessels that harness the power of the wind for propulsion. In this highly technical article, we will delve into the key aspects of sailboat design, from methodology to evaluation.
The Sailboat Retrospective is a technique that will help your team easily visualize a sprint's obstacles, risks, and ultimate goals. Here's how to run one.
Ever wondered about the thinking behind sailboat design? There is rather more to it than you might have imagined, and the basics are explained here
The 'Sailboat' is a design thinking activity aimed to improve ourselves or the procedure after every iteration. This activity is ideal for a group of 3-8 core design cohort team members and takes around 60-120 minutes.
This post explains how to use the SailBoat Retrospective or sometimes called Sailboat Exercise. This technique is extremely simple but powerful.
We have previously discussed both form stability and ballast stability as concepts, and these certainly are useful when thinking about sailboat design in the abstract. They are less useful, however, when you are trying to evaluate individual boats that you might be interested in actually buying. Certainly you can look at any given boat, ponder its shape, beam, draft, and ballast, and make an ...
Agile Coach Indeep Kaur shares her tips and four-step process on how to use the Sailboat Retrospective to help teams be successful. Read on learn more about how you can do it, too!
The Sailboat Retrospective (also known as the Sailboat Agile Exercise) is a low-pressure way for teams to reflect on how they handled a project. Originally based on the Speedboat retrospective by Luke Hohmann, the exercise centers around a sailboat as a metaphor for the overall project, with various elements broken down: Rocks - represent risks ...
Retrospectives 102: The Sailboat Method. Summary: After each sprint, the team should have a retrospective session to identify what went well or not so well. The sailboat metaphor is a nice way to structure such retrospectives. Retrospectives allow design teams to reflect on their work process and discuss what went well and what needs to be ...
Speed Boat is a design thinking activity to help frame obstacles holding back your project's success. Inject a bit of fun into your process!
The Sailboat Retrospective is a fun and creative way for teams to reflect on the sprint and identify areas for improvement. It's called "Sailboat" because the metaphor of a sailboat helps the team visualize their journey, the obstacles they faced, and the direction they want to sail towards in the future. The Sailboat or Speedboat Method for Sprint Retrospectives is an easy way to: adopt ...
You know the old saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the same"? As a judge for the 2020 Boat of the Year (BOTY) competition at this past fall's US Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, I helped inspect and test-sail 22 brand-new current-model sailboats. And I came away thinking, Man, these aren't the boats I grew up on. In the case of new boats, the saying is wrong ...
Basics of Hull Design When you think about a sailboat hull and how it is built, you might start thinking about the shape of a keel. This has certainly spurred a lot of different designs over the years, but the hull of a sailboat today is designed almost independently of the keel.
The Sailboat in action at a KOMODO Innovation Workshop. Once your team have created their answers as Sticky Notes, ask them to stick them to a graphic you've drawn or printed that includes the following elements: A boat - this is your team/project. An island - this is the goal you're working towards. It can be the specific features designed ...
Sailboat Retrospective It is one of the alternative retrospective tools you can use instead of Rose, Bud, and Thorn. The sailboat retrospective is a design thinking toolkit used by thinking designers. Like the rose, bud, and thorn, it also has a sailboat, anchors, and winds.
Sailboat Canvas. This canvas was inspired by a tool described in Alex Osterwalder's Value Proposition Design book. We've had amazing success deploying this to teams in order to develop a strong foundation for strategic planning. It's a really simple and versatile tool which allows you to clearly display the forces that are acting on you ...
To highlight how these boat design principles play out, Practical Sailor looks at classic sailboats such as the Bill Shaw-designed Pearson 32, Ericson 41, Valiant 40, and Peterson 44, and compares their keel/sail ratios and lead values to more modern sailboat designs such as the Catalina, Hunter, Tartan, and Beneteau. ****.
The Sailboat Exercise is an interactive brainstorming process (and neat visual tool) for garnering honest feedback from employees about the state of the team / product / company during team retreats.
Welcome Owen Clarke Design, yacht designers and naval architects, exist to continually advance yacht design, fulfilling sailors' requirements for fast, beautiful sailboats. OC believe in innovative thinking and pushing technological frontiers achieving excellence in racing, cruising, and explorer yacht design. Sailing is our business and our passion.
The best 5 Design Thinking activities & tools for 2023 The design thinking methodology is participatory in nature, and it works best when harnessing a multitude of ideas and viewpoints. So if endless Zoom calls are sucking the creativity out of your team, it might be time to reinvigorate your remote design thinking workshops. We've curated a list of design thinking tools and activities you ...