21. The Search For Heavy Weather: How WIND HORSE Changed Offshore Powerboat Design - with Steve Dashew

The Search For Heavy Weather: How WIND HORSE Changed Offshore Powerboat Design, with Steve Dashew

In this episode, Sue Grant is joined by renowned yacht designer, sailor, author and offshore passagemaker Steve Dashew to discuss FPB 83 WIND HORSE, the yacht that became the genesis of the FPB fleet and fundamentally changed the way he thought about offshore powerboats.

Sue and Steve discuss:

•  The origins of FPB 83 WIND HORSE 
•  The transition from sailing yachts to offshore powerboats 
•  Designing for heavy weather 
•  Stability, safety and offshore survivability 
•  Fuel efficiency and long-range cruising 
•  The evolution of the FPB fleet 
•  Testing boats in real-world conditions 
•  Challenging conventional thinking in yacht design 
•  Lessons learned from decades of passagemaking

The conversation begins with a simple question: why go looking for heavy weather? For Steve, the answer was straightforward. When designing WIND HORSE, "the bottom line was how comfortable they would be at sea and how they'd handle heavy weather." After decades spent designing and sailing some of the world's most capable offshore sailing yachts, he had never encountered a powerboat that inspired confidence in difficult conditions.

Steve explains how the journey towards WIND HORSE began aboard his final sailing yacht, BEOWULF, a 78-foot water-ballasted ketch capable of remarkable passage times. Yet an unexpected boom failure during a passage from Panama ultimately forced a rethink. Faced with the prospect of spending another three or four years designing and building a new sailing yacht, Steve and Linda began exploring an idea they had previously dismissed: a serious offshore powerboat.

What followed was a design process that challenged almost every accepted convention. Naval architects questioned the concept. Experienced boat owners doubted it would work. As Steve recalls, "everybody said we were nuts."

The result was WIND HORSE, a yacht designed around efficiency, comfort and offshore capability rather than traditional powerboat thinking. Yet even after years of design work, there was only one way to know if the concept really worked. Steve admits that they "wouldn't know the answer" until they had been offshore in genuine heavy weather.

The episode explores the early sea trials in New Zealand and the growing realisation that the boat was attracting attention from experienced commercial operators. Ferry captains and fishermen began taking notice. According to Steve, "when you start attracting the attention of the professionals in a country like New Zealand, you know you're onto something."

One of the most fascinating parts of the discussion centres around a passage from the Bay of Islands, where WIND HORSE encountered a confused sea state made up of multiple crossing wave systems. Steve explains that "the seas from one direction aren't what get you in trouble or make you uncomfortable. It's when you get a crossing sea state, or sometimes two or three seas crossing."

It was during this voyage that the FPB concept truly proved itself. Passing through squalls and breaking seas, Steve experienced something entirely new. After decades of offshore sailing, he suddenly realised that there was "nothing to do." The absence of sail handling, reefing decisions and constant weather management created a very different offshore experience.

Reflecting on those early passages, Steve admits that he "had never realised up to that point how stressful it was" sailing BEOWULF. WIND HORSE offered something different: the ability to maintain passage speeds while dramatically reducing the physical and mental workload associated with long-distance cruising.

Sue and Steve also discuss the realities of yacht design, the limitations of modelling and CFD analysis, and why real-world experience remains irreplaceable. As Steve puts it, "you really don't know until you get the boat in the water in a confused sea state." Despite decades of technical development, many of his final design decisions are still guided by instinct, explaining that "the final decisions are always made by feel."

The conversation goes beyond heavy weather and into the philosophy behind the FPB range. Steve discusses reliability, simplicity, maintenance and why accessible systems matter offshore. In his view, if "you have good access, then you can check things," preventing small problems from becoming large ones.

The episode concludes with the story of how WIND HORSE evolved from a personal project into the foundation of an entirely new fleet. Steve never intended to return to boatbuilding and recalls that "when we built WIND HORSE, we thought that was the last boat." Yet demand quickly emerged, and before long the FPB 64 was on the drawing board.

For anyone interested in offshore passagemaking, yacht design, heavy weather seamanship or the origins of the FPB fleet, this is a fascinating insight into one of the most influential cruising concepts of the modern era.

Host: Sue Grant
Guest: Steve Dashew

About This Series

The Dashew Talking Books is a special podcast series exploring the life, experiences and ideas of Steve Dashew. Across these conversations, Steve reflects on decades of innovation, offshore cruising, yacht design, business, adventure and the many unexpected stories that shaped his remarkable career.

To explore more of Steve and Linda Dashew's work, visit SetSail for articles, owner stories and technical resources.

You can also watch more conversations and videos on the Dashew Offshore YouTube channel, and explore FPB Motor Yachts at Berthon International to learn more about the cruising yachts that grew from Steve's pioneering design philosophy.

To explore more of Steve's writing, technical articles and cruising knowledge, visit:

SetSail:
SetSail.com

Dashew Offshore YouTube Channel:
YouTube

To learn more about FPB Motor Yachts:

Berthon FPB Motor Yachts:
FPB Motor Yachts

Steve Dashew - Dashew Offshore
Iconic yacht designer and one of the true legends of modern ocean cruising.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

So today I'm with Steve Dashy, and we're going to talk about Windhorse and finding heavy weather for her. FPB 83 Windhorse, um, the genesis of the FPB fleet. So Steve, um, why did you need to find weather uh um heavy weather?

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Well, when we started thinking about doing a uh I hate to say the word power boat, um, anathema to any good sailor, still is to me. Um we we we knew that the bottom line was how they would ha how how comfortable they would be at sea and how they'd handle heavy weather. And having done all the research for our book Surviving the Storm and all of our sailing designs, et cetera, over the years, we'd never seen a powerboat that we w we would want to be in heavy weather in. Uh it's just and we'd we'd interviewed a few a few uh owners of power boats in various ports around the world. And it was sort of uh when they made a passage, they did it with great fear and trembling, and it was very uncomfortable. And we just never could get our heads around the concept. Why would anybody do that? Uh we we ran into a a bit of an anomaly coming, bringing uh Beowulf back from the East Coast.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

So this was the the the last of the mighty um sailing boats from Dashu, Beowulf.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah, and she was a 78-foot water ballast that catcher, a real mama-pop cruiser that she was quick enough she could build apparent wind, she could build f the str strength of her apparent wind faster than she built drag, up to about 18 knots. So she would we didn't we we considered 300 miles a day kind of a nominal day in the trades. And we knew when we started thinking about power boats, we would never equal her performance downwind.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

So what made what made you decide that finally it was going to be a motorboat?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Well, we had actually designed it our normal pattern was we'd put a new boat in the water, and once we got it ring rung out, we were just cruising, I would start thinking about the next boat, and then it would start chiming in what we would change, et cetera. And by the time we'd had put a couple years on on Beowulf, we had another boat designed ready to go. Um it would have been a little quicker, and maybe uh she would have it took 17 to 18 knots to average 305 miles a day with her in the trades. We thought we could push that down to 14 knots, true, which is a big difference in sea state. So um we had completed that work, but we're weren't anxious for the three to four years of hard hard labor that takes to design a boat and build it and see trial at a minimum of three and a half years. And we were getting on.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

So you thought you'd do something really, really simple and um and do a motor boat which you'd never done before.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Well, we weren't really even we we went we went through the cycle, we thought briefly about a motorboat. This is crazy. Our our sailboats are faster under power and and they're way more comfortable, and they have much better range, so why would you why would you switch? And then we were coming, we were bringing Beowulf back from the East Coast, coming up from Panama, and we had a beautiful, unvery unusual southerly coming up the southern part of Mexico. And late in the afternoon we were off and we started getting some strange occasional b bands of rain, and it did they weren't actually banded range walls like you would see in a hurricane. But they the weather was just a little weird, and no, no, it wasn't forecasting anything. The guys that were using for rooting weren't forecasting anything. We could smell something was up. And in the process of um of uh uh running, we were running downwind under Maine only, having dropped the jib, and it's blowing about 30 knots now, and and so she was very comfortable, and we were losing on 14, 15 knots, kind of a seat stee. And pretty soon on the radar we start seeing these lines of of bands of squall, squalls, and and coming and going. And the the the the barometer was just very slowly dropping. Brees was stable, so we knew we had something forming out to the west. Nothing on the radio and and uh no on on Noah and uh and the N National Hurricane Center wasn't saying anything. So we had Sarah looking for trying to find cloud temperatures for us off the internet. Anyway, um uh about halfway into that afternoon, we had a wind shift and and the autopilot was driving, and some for some reason the boat went way way by the lee and she jibed. And it's a thousand square foot mainsail.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

It weighed 200 kilos and a big heavy boom, and the boom broke right at the where the clue where the the the sheet strap went over it.

SPEAKER_03 4:42

So this is this is your mom and pop um cruising boat?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Mom-pop cruising boat in 35 knots of breeze. So it was very difficult to get, we had to get the sail down because there's two jagged pieces of the boom that are only the only thing the clue the clue was attached with its strap and the the the the the this two or three foot two or three meter foot piece of boom is hanging down, held only by the internal reef lines. And we just had to get it down on deck. And it was sort of Linda had to steer the boat up and into the breeze, feather it, and I said, Linda, pay attention because if we do this wrong, I'm dead. And um uh I just wanted her to pay attention. She didn't she didn't appreciate the joke. Anyway, she did she did well in the helm, and we got the sail down, which is sort of miraculous, and got it secured on deck and proceeded under power, and and we we called in at uh Los Hadas, which is a port we hadn't visited in a while, and got in the got on the dock and spent three or four days there and cleaned the boat up and and then brought her home, and it was dead on the nose the rest of the way, and we just powered straight uphill. Uh didn't never even took the cover off the mizzen. So that's that's when we started seriously thinking, because if we sold if we sold Beowulf, we'd be in our early 60s by the time we got a new boat in the water. And we started to think if we wanted to cruise by ourselves without crew, then we sort of had to had to come up with a powerboat idea.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Yeah. So so I mean, then, you know, we've we've talked about Beowulf and and um and and the sort of thinking about um wind horse and the development of wind horse, and then wind horse is in the water and you're looking for heavy weather. Why is that? Where are you? Where is the boat?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Well, um I first give you a little background on how what happened through the design process. So we had done some very preliminary work and we thought, well, we should take a look at this. I did not understand the logic of trawlers. Uh they looked heavy, they looked slow, they looked dangerous, they didn't have good range of stability. If you got in a broaching situation, it was like a a death cry because you'd roll over and that was it, he wouldn't come back. We were used to boats that would recover from a capsize. So as we got into it, the more I studied them and looked at their signs and talked to experts. And we had several friends who were sort of at the at the top of the the species, so to speak, and um a couple editors of magazines were very experienced that gave us uh their thoughts. And I just didn't understand the concept. So we said, well, let's we here's what we knew when we started out. We knew if we if we took one of our sailboats, any one of our sailboats would power better than any any trawler, had better range underpower, generally speaking, without allowing for the sails, and was much more comfortable in almost all conditions. But you had to handle the sails. Uh now what so then we said, well, what if we take the sails off? What if we get rid of the rigging, get rid of the windage, get rid of the weight, get rid of the mass of the all the lead that's required, and get rid of a lot of the form stability in the hull, since we don't have to carry sails. And all of a sudden we have this beautiful, fine, balanced hull line that would go uphill like crazy without with very little pitching motion, and even more efficient and more comfortable. So it's it just seemed like it made a lot of sense. Now, a lot of our ratios were considerably different than would be normal in a power boat, and that was because that's what we were used to in our sailboats. We knew they worked because we've been doing it for years. So we we took what we had, because we're talking about it's a big project, a lot of money. We ran it by we have several very talented naval architects, friends. They all said we're Nazi, can't do this, can't do that. Uh, and we showed it to some of our experienced friends. They said, geez, we'd love to have a boat like that, but we don't think it'll work. And the the concern that I had was that there are often rules in in in in disciplines like naval architecture that are established based on history. And and and people may have forgotten. They know the rules, they forgot why.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

What I was wondering is there's is is there something, some reason that these boats are built this way that I'm not seeing. And we just we went over and over and over, and and it was a huge gamble for us. Well, especially when everybody say we're nuts. It could be three years of our lives or four years of our lives, and and a huge amount of money. And and we w we really wouldn't know the answer to if we'd made it, if we the boat was going to suit us or not, until we'd been offshore in some heavy weather. And we put we put the boat in the water, she she was almost exactly on our numbers uh under power, which we were used to. There was the some difference in fuel burn, which we corrected later with the news that it and this was in New Zealand, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_03 9:26

You you built in New Zealand? In New Zealand, right.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Yep, in New Zealand. And we we knew that we were on to something when the when the w we started having the ferry boat. So New Zealand has uh you know lots of uh like bus transits uh between their islands and the villages. They had all these ferry boat drivers, and they're all keen yachtsmen, they're observers of what's going on. They kept circling the boat, occasionally coming down to the marine and asking questions about it. So we knew we were catching their eye, and then we we started to catch the eye of the commercial fishing guys. And one one night we were going uphill to the Bay of Islands in a bit of a about, I don't know, four, six, seven, and maybe a couple meters of sea, and we just just slicing through the waves and not making any fuss, doing 11 knots. And we put we went between a couple of trawlers with their trawl nets and uh between their lights and talked to them on the radio and cleared. And they they were sitting there working in the sea state. They couldn't, they'd never seen anything go through the water like we were. They didn't see anything at the time, but in the morning when they were we were just getting up and and uh putting the flag out and and here come these two trawlers and they they circled the boat for about 10 minutes just looking. Seriously? Yes, just looking, they were looking at the bear hall. But they had seen her working at sea. So when when you start attracting the attention of the um uh star uh uh of the professionals you know in a country like New Zealand, you know you're on to something. So we we we had a series of of good blows up to 55 knots. Uh in fact, that was with our friend Jim Schmidt, who had one of our boats for 30-some years with our first client. And Jimmy always brought some breeze with him, and we had 55 knots when he was on board, but the seas were always from one direction. And what we know from a lot of years of experience is that the seas from one direction aren't what gets you in trouble or make you uncomfortable. It's when you get a crossing sea state, or sometimes two or three seas crossing. So we waited in the Bay of Islands for uh a typical uh let's see what time it was, it was uh fall. No, um, it was coming on the summertime, so it was late, late spring, uh, equinoctal gale, and got a good one, and it was blowing. When we fought we left up just before the f the front passed. So the breeze went around f uh from the from the was it the southwest to the from the southwest back to the northwest, and we we left with a n with a kind of a northeast breeze behind us.

SPEAKER_03 11:52

So you had a really confused sea state.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Well, they were there were there was a dominant wind wave wind wave that we were surfing, and then there was a crossing seat state at right angles. Wow. And plus it plus it uh two other sets of swells. And we never actually saw one up close, like against the hull side, but when we have lots of photographs of maybe 10, 12, 14 meter seas occasionally breaking around us. And it was like the first time we saw a black squall and it's pissing down rain and and uh and the the breeze is blowing the water flat, and you get this shot of adrenaline and you think we got enough sail down, and and but wait a minute, there is no sail down. And we just just powered through it. And that's when the sort of the I had never realized up to that point how stressful it was with the way we sailed Beowulf. Because we carried we if we were in the trades and the weather was stable, we carried two spinnakers at night. So that was six thousand square feet of sail combined. And Linda had the back back four thousand uh back two thousand, I had the forward four thousand. And we we enjoyed pushing the boat as a team, the two of us. But it was stressful. Uh it just I guess it was more stressful for Linda than it was for me. But and there was of course a big a jolt of adrenaline that came with that, but um, it was the most astonishing feeling when we f went through that first squall. And there was nothing, we realized there's nothing to do. So um the the the when we were designing the boat, this the thing that I I had the hardest time getting my head around was the fact that we were gonna go slower on our passengers. We knew this was the case would be the case than we did on Beowulf on the downwind passages. Because there there we we the boat was capable, wind horse was capable of of averaging 300 miles a day, but the fuel burn was too high. He just weren't gonna pay that price. But over the I don't know how many thousand miles we put on or 50 or 60,000 miles. I think our average speed was right around 11 and a quarter knots or something. And every time we say we're gonna slow down and save some fuel, we always could creep back up to that 11 and a quarter knot boat speed. And that seemed that was the sort of the combination of money going out and time saving, and it seemed quite worthwhile. But it was slower than we were than we would expect on on bail.

SPEAKER_03 14:08

But the reality is that you know the fuel was less expensive than the spinnakers.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Oh, the f the castonishing thing. On the expenses we got, we got really good deals on our on, we bought anything we bought except for fuel, we got big discounts, including the sales. And it was about I forgot the exact numbers now, but I think Wind Hort Beowulf was somewhere around three dollars in change per mile, nautical mile, for um that that includes that sail cloth, sail covers, running rigging, standing rigging, pulling the spars every other year and checking everything out. It's uh the you know which is actually it sounds like a lot of money, but it's it's not a great deal in terms of what most people spend. Uh wind horse with fuel that I think was averaging about three and a half dollars US dollars per US gallon, I think our our cost was right at about half or here, more than half.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

And of course, and and of course the other thing about the FPB, which of course is uh is common to all your designs, is that um quite a lot of the um or a significant cost and hassle is exterior bright work, fairing, varnish work, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da and all of that with um windows. One of the things I loved about them was the checkerplate decks and just so uh easy to keep. So easy.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Well, and like and and the other thing is is to fight the battle of keeping keeping everything simple and keep don't ever give up space around your systems for anything. Because that if you if you if you have good access, then you can check things. And you catch little problems, whether little b if you don't have good access, you don't check things, little problems become big problems, and then they become a big hassle and and maybe a safety issue. Well, and you you you know you know better than anybody, you saw how much work we put in the boat together already when we would come in and how how big a work list you had.

SPEAKER_03 16:07

Yeah, I mean it was it was it was absolutely nothing, and and you know, I've said it before, and people would be bored with me saying it, you know, when you rang up and said, right, we're coming because you um Winter West was overwintering at Perth in the UK. Um okay, so well, we're gonna come back and uh we'd like you to launch the boat on Wednesday and we'll be leaving on the Thursday afternoon. And I said water, it's it's it's a week, you know, you'll be here for a week. And sure enough, at four o'clock on the Thursday afternoon, um, I was just um standing on the hammerhead uh watching you drop the lines again. I mean no so coming back on this after you've done the weather the weather test what did that make you think? Did you think actually this concept has got legs, we're going to do more? Because you said earlier that um every time you started cruising on a boat, you were thinking about the next one.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

And the 64 is what came next um in terms of we didn't see we we we didn't when we built Windhorse, we we thought that was the last boat. We we were not we were not at all interested in uh in um in getting back in the boat business. I'm a hands-on type of guy, and and we've never never had never had a situation where where we had somebody that didn't everything the way we wanted it. We unless it's just much much easier for us to be there and say, do it this way, and that's what we want. And I mean you could you could have five experts around the table on anyone with a thousand different details on the boat, and you're gonna get five different opinions. And the one I want is mine. So uh and we just we didn't want to do go through that on another series of boats, at least at that point. And we we uh in order for me to proceed with another design, I had to be comfortable, I knew what was going on, and I mean we uh we understood the hydrostatics perfectly, and when we put the wind horse in the water because of all these question marks about motion, which is that was my our concern was would it be both as comfortable as we had hoped?

SPEAKER_03 18:19

I mean, were you afraid she was gonna slam? Were you w what were you concerned about on the motion?

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Well, just just just the the the vertical and the transverse motion of how the how a boat that theoretically that light goes through the water and and what the waves do to it in terms of the accelerations. So, you know, we were living almost in the middle of the boat, right near the pitcher world centers. We were very low low relative to to that height, and so the the the apparent motion was going to be minimized, whatever it was. We didn't really know, and the the we did it we did a fair amount of early CFT work to look at at various issues, and there were some things that were indicated and some things that weren't. So we had a little bit of insurance, but we you really don't know until you get the bolt in the water in a confused C state. And uh I I wasn't prepared to even think about another design until I understood what made her work so well, because the one thing we found out very quickly is the motion was incredibly good in the C-states we'd seen. It was so good that it made me mistrustful. I thought maybe I'm misinterpreting this. But when some of our very experienced friends were stunned by how comfortable she was, and a couple of the magazine guys that came and flew out to see her, uh, everybody had the same reaction, especially uphill. They just couldn't believe it. And so we started to think, well, maybe this is real, but it wasn't really until uh until we had the boat in California, which was almost an entire 6,000, almost 7,000 nautical miles, almost all which was uphill, that we really began to understand what was going on and and how to how to go from there. And and although I'm, you know, I'm I'm I've been involved with CFD and philosophy prediction computer analysis of boats since the late since the 1950s, mid-50s. We a friend of mine, Norm Reese, was uh one of the top guys at chip propulsion laboratories in the olden days, and uh he designed the hypersonic wind tunnels and and and solar simulators and stuff for them. And he had a personal account on the J JPL mainframe. You know, on weekends and evening when the computer wasn't busy, the guys like at his level could run their own stuff. So Norm Norm had Norm had run developed a uh a velocity prediction program and the the um which we used to to uh design uh Beowulf 6, our last category. And it was a complete parametric design before people knew there was such a thing. Loaded punch loaded the case code and punched cards, and we got this tractor fit printout, and uh which I still have, which we we designed, developed the whole shape, the the uh dagger boards and runners, and everything was done on the cow frame and mainframe, and then so we had we kind of early on the game with that stuff, and and then we were we were George Hazen and Bruce Hayes, who were the the guys that did uh Orca 3D. That was their is it's been considered the the premier velocity prediction and design software for for for well season by the Navy and big yards and stuff all over the world now. But we were their second customer, or most debatable was yeah, we and Bruce Farr were their first two customers. And so we go way back in that stuff. But with it also, with all the numbers and I have notebooks full of data and all this. At the end, when I make the decisions on on the hundreds of little details that go into the whole shape that you trade off, there's a TV that plays between my ears, and I see the boat, I feel the boat going through the water, and that's how I make the decisions. I have the the the technical data as a as a backstop uh and to play what if what if games with. But the final decisions are always made by feel.

SPEAKER_03 21:53

So is that true for all design, do you think that um you know people do tank tests and this and this? And this, the reality is that you get the boat in the water and then you know.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Well, the the pro the problem is it's so difficult when you when you have a trying to model something at sea. Smooth water model is one thing that's relatively simple. And even one one set of waves is simple. But when you have a chaotic sea state where you've got two or three or four sets of waves crossing, the there are there are there are some ways of of of modeling that, but none of them are very accurate. And uh at least nothing that we're aware of at the at the yacht level or were at that time. And um, so you you just you have to, you know, it's it's like how many seas you have like this, how many do you have like that? Like, for example, take when we brought the boat back from Hawaii. So the normally the trip from from Hawaii back to mainland for us would be a piece of cake. You know, you you you're going at the end of the summer or early fall, the the Pacific High is dropped from its summertime position up near the the center near the Canadian border. It drops down to more like off Southern California, and you you go you get to you go in day north of the Hawaiian Islands, head head north, get even with the center of the height, turn right, power a sail to it, and then come out through the through the east side, and then you surf down the from there to back to Southern California. It should have been a dream trip. But when we left, um, we had a wedding we were going to, and and which was the whole reason to get back to California. It was so much easier to take the boat than to find a place to stay and for the boat and for a place for ourselves in California and get tickets and say, well, hell, it's only 2,000 miles, let's just go. So, but what we didn't bargain for is we had northeast trades and a crossing northwest swell at right angles for eight of the nine days coming back. And we there was there was simply no speed, no angle, there was nothing we could do other than move to some other part of the ocean that would avoid getting banged occasionally. And if this would have been at the beginning of the passage, the beginning when we had to move, well, we would have thought, well, this is a piece of cake. No, it's not nearly as bad as with the Christmas trays coming up from Panama going to like Granada, which is really bad. Um, this was not not that bad, but it was it was we had begun soft. We had forgotten what it was like to go up in really bad conditions, and so getting soft, we just sort of complained to each other and then we get this over with. And when finally we said, well, we had to heave to and wait, which we weren't gonna do, or let's just put the put the hammer down and we just get over with.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Just push on.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

So we we just we we didn't we didn't take the ways at an angle, we didn't slow down, we just went blasted right through everything. And that's when you that's when all these things come into play because your body gets tired and you and you get tired, you make mistakes if you get if it's associated with heavy weather, you make bad decisions, um, it it becomes and it's it it happens once or twice, and often people just don't want to go to sea again. So it's g getting getting the boat to where she where she knows how to uh where she can deal with that sort of stuff, and your system set up so they can deal with it, is a is a critical part of this process for us because uh it may people may think we're you know we're these hoary bearded um professional sailors. We're really kind of pansies. We we we like being dry, we like being comfortable, and and and we don't like being knocked around. So, which is why we design the boats the way we do.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

Which is entirely reasonable. And and can I just ask you, Steve, you said that you said that when you did the design process, that um all those myriad of design decisions you're making using the you know, using the program and all that that kind of stuff, you actually feel the boat. When you were designing Wind Horse, did you like her?

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Um I was very intrigued with it. The problem that I had with it is that, and I had that to the to the uh with all of our FPBs today, so is that I grew I grew up hating powerboats and what they stood for because if you're um you must have the same problem in the UK. You you you're when you start as a kid sailing dinghies, and you're you're in a race or something, you're crossing a narrow spot in the race course, and there's a powerboat, and he's a uh half a kilometer away, and and he can slow down a touch and let you pass in front, or he can speed up. What are they gonna do? 900, 9900, a thousand times they're gonna speed up. And and it'd be big m m massive awake. And that's what I grew up with. And then if you're in a beautiful pristine anchorage, somewhere you and one or two other boats, and and there's lots of room for everybody else, a powerboat will come in, run its generators all night long, and smoke cigars, and they'll they'll anchor when they're when they come to rest on their anchor, they're they're probably their stern is sitting over almost on your bow. And there's there's all kinds of places they could. It's an in it's inevitable. So, you know, we hated power boats, and the people that and we felt in general the people that drove them were were sub subhuman. So when we that's where the FPB came about.

SPEAKER_03 27:04

Not generalizing at all, of course.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

No, not generalizing, but that that was my experience. I couldn't believe I was working on a fucking powerboat. I kept saying I that's I could not I just I I couldn't I that's the thing I couldn't get through my head. And but that's that's a that's a lifelong uh habit that that uh and I I st I still feel that way about them, but anyway, what can I say?

SPEAKER_03 27:28

But the reality is there are people who have power boats who don't speed up, who don't anchor too close, who don't run their generator all night. And now I think that uh FPB is at the vanguard explorers and the boats that go far and and all the rest of it. I mean, there's obviously nothing quite like an FPB, but I think that um maybe there are reasonable motor boaters, do you think?

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Um probably. We have we've met a few of them who bought our boats. I mean, we're we're as you know, we would never sell a boat to somebody we didn't know. Because if you're if you're in our position, when you when you agree to build a boat for somebody, it's like a marriage. I mean, it's you're you're married to these people for four or five years. And from the day they start work, you start work on their boat until the day they sell it. And you don't want to be married to somebody you don't enjoy. So we try to be careful with that. But the the the the thing that I I'm watching all these boats develop, and there's a I I don't quite know how to explain this, but there but anybody listening to this podcast should understand that that there's um there are always two there are always two ways of equipping a boat. You can there there's there's several basic things you have to accomplish. You have to stay warm, you have to stay cool, um, you have to have for be able to take a nice hot water shower, you have to make fresh water, uh, and you don't want to have to run your generator very much. Uh you can do those things very simply and at relatively low cost, but lots of space around the equipment, and it lasts forever with very little maintenance, or you can do them with complexity and lots of wires and circuits interconnects and this thing talking to that thing, and and you have all kinds of problems. And the difference between the two is so so small. And the problem is that the people that build boats generally they don't live with them. They don't they if you don't live with them, if you just boat comes in and you just service it, you don't understand the the trade-offs. And it's uh it's a it's a battle that everybody has to fight. And and if if you're an owner, you have to just just fight for every don't you you have your basic stuff, but don't do anything more than the basics and do it as simply as possible.

SPEAKER_03 29:43

But I think it must be really difficult to be a designer who stays in the office because you're not you don't know how to make the trade-offs. You're absolutely right. And of course you're always um thinking about how you're gonna conclude the project and move on. Yeah. And because you don't um you don't really know what it is that you've designed, it it must be really difficult.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

A lot of that comes down to your personal experience, because if you talk about ground tackle, you know, we we we joke, people they people always kiss about the size of our anchors. And our my our general ground tackle rule is is you know your anchor is starting to be large enough when people are laughing at you in the marina. If they're not laughing at you, then it's not big enough. And that's uh people say, well, that's crazy, but and if you look at like on on Coachese, granted she was what 24 or however many meters she was, 25 meters or something overall. Um but she we had a what was the anchor? 150 kilo high holding power anchor, and which is a huge anchor for boat like that. And you say, well, why would you want such a big anchor? Well, that if you look at the anchor, the anchor is a small part of the total anchoring system. And that that 150 kilo anchor, there's probably a uh there's over a ton of mass if you if you look at all the chain, the spare anchors, the spare rows, the windless, the cables, uh, etc., it's a huge amount of weight. And uh the only the only part that's doing any work is that little anchor. So whether it's 150 kilos or 300 kilos, as long as you can fit it, it's it's it's you know it the bigger is the better, and the bigger the anchor, not only does it get more holding power from its mass, but the flukes go up. So it's not a it's not a l uh holding power.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

In terms of wind horse, we'd done the heavy weather, we'd proved the concept, and now we're thinking about the next boat. And it's a 64.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

Yeah, so we we didn't actually start we we when we got to California with the boat, there were there were people already wanted wanted wanted us to build a one, and we we were we were not ready to get back in the harness. And so it wasn't until about a year after we got back that I finally I I felt I had enough we had enough miles on the boat and we had a pretty good handle on what we would do if we were gonna if we were going to do a sister ship is one thing. But but doing a s a smaller version, which is what we would want to do for production, um that that's you know, it's a different thing.

SPEAKER_03 32:13

So why did you decide she had to be smaller?

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Well she she's not that much smaller. She's you know the the boat with the bolt-on extension is sixty-nine feet. So although it's um, you know, we we we we cheat on our length. We don't make the boat long, we make it shorter than tell people shorter that really is. Um it it uh i I just thought that was a more efficient configuration.

SPEAKER_03 32:35

And and you also went for single engine, didn't you, and wing engine.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

Yeah, uh yeah, I thought well I I'm I I disagree with the wing engine. I think the wing engines are they if if you if you weigh all the factors carefully, I think the wing engine will cost you more than uh if you're gonna have a wing engine, then just go go to twin engines. Wing engines make no sense to me at all because they're not really good enough to get checked.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

I think before, you know, we've talked about it and you've said that uh it's the FPB sixty four owner's security blanket.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Exactly. And but but what you have to realize when you put that security blanket on, it's costing you probably ten or twelve miles a day every day off your off your average passenger on, you say, well, that's nothing. But that might be the difference between getting in before a major storm hits and not. Um because it's it will cost you some more. Yeah, exactly. If there's a lot of drag associated with that. And if it's gonna if you're gonna use it, you have to periodically use it, turn it on, run the boat under load with it, make sure everything's working fine, and that you know how to maneuver with it, because that's different. I just I think when you consider all those things, it's it it just it just makes no sense to me.

SPEAKER_03 33:43

But uh I under I understand the I mean I worry about two engines, so No, I mean that's the I mean you know that's entirely right, and I think they've all got uh they've all got wings now. So you then put that 64 on the drawing board, thinking that actually we can build these power boats in production now. We're gonna go back into the boat business, and all because of Windhorse and her performing as as I guess you expected when you had her on the board, the design board.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

She she she she per her her per her her her boat speed and fuel burn was it r once once we got the props worked out, were exit was exactly within as close as you can imagine, within a couple points, one way or the other. What was really different uh was the motion, and that was we had it was so much better than we expected. I didn't want to do anything until I understood what was going on. We had actually, as insurance, because we were so far out in left field design-wise, what everybody's telling us, we allowed for a ton and a half of of uh uh high polar moment uh mass lead in in the throughout the hull. We had we had a system that would allow us with lead on the ends of the booms to to trim the boat, uh to trim her polar moments uh to mitigate wave sits different wave states. In the end, we did we we even had the the seats in the fr in the in the flying bridge were were tanks. You could put a couple tons of salt water up there if you if you needed to to attenuate motion. Um we didn't use any of it. It were just the boat was so comfortable it wasn't necessary.

SPEAKER_03 35:23

So so can I ask you, Steve, when you when you actually put the 64 on the drawing board and you were on Windhorse, a boat that you were to go on to do over 60,000 nautical miles. How were you and Linda feeling about getting back into the boat business?

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Well, what we what we did was we we went through Windhorse we and we felt it when it was all said and done. I mean, Windhorse was that was a size of the hull shape, the length of which we were very familiar with. I mean, that was it was uh more or less the same length as Beowulf and our couple big motor sailors we built. So it was very comfortable territory for us hydrostatically. Uh and now that we had the mileage on Windhorse, we started looking at it and said, well, what as we do all our boats, what would we want if we're going to own this boat? Because that was uh originally that was our thought. We would take one of the six, take one of those, get a little bit smaller version. Um, and and in in the end we somebody ended up coming along and take taking wind horse away from us.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

You you bought something yeah, you built something much bigger. Yeah, so but I mean that's that that that that's for another chapter.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

But what but what what we what we what we want the first thing was how do we maintain the motion? Well that that's a a big part of that motion is where do you live on the boat? Because I mean you have you have the motion if the hull's gonna the hull's always gonna move somewhat. The closer you are to the pitch and roll center, the more comfortable you're gonna be, which is why the the the wind horse and and the 64s have the kind of a uh uh living accommodation they do. You're you when you when you're when you're going to see on on those on the 64, if you're in in the aft the larger aft guest cabin or the owner suite, you're never more than a few meters from the pitch pitch center of the boat. So going uphill you can sleep up uh forward, uh you can sleep in the salon, you can sleep back aft.

SPEAKER_03 37:12

But what I what I was sort of really asking is that when you uh approved the boat, you started working on the 64. Were you um did you think that the FPB would become the the fleet, the thing that it did? And did you uh want to get back into building boats?

SPEAKER_00 37:33

No, no way. Um we sort of got we actually almost it was almost like a group of people came to us and said, What do we have to do to get you in in to do this? And and I had some chats with the guys at Circa then who were then running the company, and we did some preliminary stuff, and I said, We we need four orders to make it work. And here's a rough budget, and uh a few weeks later we had deposit checks for four boats.

SPEAKER_03 37:57

So and that's how it that's how it came. So uh Steve, what we're going to do over the coming weeks, I hope, we're going to uh have a look at the FPB and some of the you've done so many things and build a few chapters around uh you and Linda and boats and everything else uh that uh comes with uh um dashu offshore and and uh you guys. Um put them into some chapters because I just love to chat to you, and we thought that might be um interesting for other people as well. So as you know, we've chatted about this um a little bit and decided that uh we don't know we didn't want to start at the beginning and end at the end. We wanted to start at a sort of midpoint and then we can dash about and go forward and backwards and look at um some of the amazing things that you guys have done. So thank you so so much, and um looking forward to uh chatting with you again soon for another uh another chapter.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

We're always happy to talk about all this comedy time.

SPEAKER_03 39:07

Thank you so much.