With years of hands-on experience in rough seas, Dag Pike suggests that powerboat builders and designers often forget they are in the boat business and are not just creating floating apartments.

I sometimes wonder whether the power sector of the industry is building floating apartments or sea-going yachts. During the course of a year I carry out a sea trial of 25 or so new boats and whilst a rare few of these are really superb, many of them are not really designed for serious sea-going use. Sure, they all have their bits of paper to say that they meet this standard or that standard and most of them look quite stunning, but when it comes down to the details that really make a boat work at sea they can be sadly lacking.

Take, for instance, one 80-footer where you could not see ahead when you were sitting at the helm. The dash was so high you had to look around it to see what lay ahead. Visibility from the helm is poor or very poor on many modern motoryachts, big and small, mainly because of very wide windscreen pillars. And as for a view astern, it does not seem to come into the reckoning.

Then there are other details like fast boats that have no handholds to provide security when you move about at sea. I do a lot of expert witness work, much of it involving personal injury, and in many of these cases it appears that people were injured because they had nothing to hold on to when the boat bounced in a wave. Another potential cause of injury are the heavy sliding rear doors of the saloon — trying to open or close these at sea can pose a serious threat to your fingers. One solution here has been to fit power-operated doors, but then you find you cannot open them if there is a power failure.

I think the classic fault that I have found on a new boat was the white masthead navigation light installed the wrong way round and no one had noticed. That does call into question the quality control standards of the builder.
I could go on and on about problems like these that I find on new designs, but what is the solution if we are going to curb these design failures? It would appear that the RCD just does not cover so many important aspects of design and anyway I am not sure legislation is the way to go. What it really needs is for builders and designers to have experience of pushing boats hard at sea. I do wonder just how much testing and sea trials are done on new designs before they are handed over to the customer and you will only find out where some of the problems lie when you push the boat hard at seaway.

In the motor industry you would never get away with it and it is interesting to see how many of the major manufacturers get involved in motor sport so that they can test new concepts and new materials to the limits. In sailing there are many of the big manufacturers involved in sport, but on the power side there are no more than two or three. I think Fabio Buzzi has the right idea when he tests virtually all his new designs in the hot fire of competition before putting them on the market. No wonder he is so successful in selling into the demanding patrol-boat markets.
I am not suggesting that there is a place in sport for many of the modern motoryachts.They would just fall apart anyway, but by participating in the sport you start to get to know what works at sea and what does not. You only find out where the limits are when you reach them and racing and record-breaking is all about stretching the limits.

I have done more than my share of racing during my career at sea and have been rescued 10 times, so I have found out where the limits of performance are more times than most. When we set out to break the Atlantic record in Virgin Atlantic Challenger we were going a long way into the unknown. We did not make it the first time but next time round we built on the experience and we set a new record.
You can read about it in my newly launched autobiography, Challenges. With years of experience in rough seas, offshore powerboat racing and record-breaking at the top level, I am beginning to understand what works and what does not work at sea. I think it is time that the builders of powerboats for the leisure market started to find out for themselves what really works and start to build better sea-going boats. Some are already there with superb boats, and if they can do it why can’t the others?

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