Bad Boat Design: Dual Consoles, Bowriders and Weight Distribution
In the past I have written a couple articles about bad boat design that were directly focused on the bowrider boat design. The intent of the articles were to shine a light on how bad the design is from a safety perspective but also to show how many large scale manufactures don’t really care. Recently I drove a Boston Whaler 230 Vantage, a popular dual console from the storied brand, and like many boats in this category it commits a glaring design flaw. Let’s take a look at what the Whaler 230 and many other generic boat builders get wrong. Not only is it a bad design but it is potentially dangerous too.
The flaw is so obvious that you almost don’t notice it at first glance but every passenger seat is on the port side. There is a captains chair on a pedestal with a sink behind it. Aft of that is the transom door, so no passenger can sit on the starboard side. A fold out rear bench is on the port side and can maybe hold 2 or 3 people. The reversible lounge passenger seat can hold 2 facing forward and potentially 2 facing rearward. Technically, you could have 6 or 7 people on the starboard side. You have the standard rotation single engine, so when underway you get an incredible lean to one side; even with just a few passengers.
Not only is all the seating on the starboard, so is the storage and head. The adjustable lounge has a flimsy bracket that rattles.
Why is it dangerous? First, the boat can be listing to one side badly, now have the boat navigate some serious rollers or a waves while trying to maneuver. Obviously this creates a really bad dynamic. Of course, you can use the trim tabs to level it out but that is an awful solution as running one tab down in the above situation can create some really bad dynamics, like forcing the bow down unevenly, causing it to pitch or stuff the bow.
Running the tab constantly also ruins efficiency. Not that the big Whaler is efficient. Whaler has rebranded this boat as a 240 now. The hull is 24’8” with a 8’6” beam and 5,800 Lbs rigged. This thing is an absolute pig.
A tandem foldable passenger seat can potentially seat 4, if you don’t mind your heads banging and the foldout bench is on the port side of the rear, 3 could sit there. The captain has a single pedestal seat.
Problematic is the fact that there is almost no ability to balance the boat as a captain beyond the tabs as there are no seats at all on the starboard side. Instead you get a little bar sink, which to me is extremely useless, in that location. Boston Whaler is not alone here, they are just one of many dual console boat builders that makes this mistake. In general, many small boats are designed to have weight slightly favored to the captains side, the single prop, with standard rotation, has a small lifting effect on the starboard side.
This layout in the Boston Whaler is categorically a bad design. Dual consoles are bowriders, which are really bad designs in general, but at least you should get the seating layout right. At the very least, have some seating on the starboard side to help balance the boat. Some of these new boats illustrate how far behind the marine industry is when it comes to understanding how boats function and how boat safety should be the number one thing. Being able to pack as many people as possible on a boat is never a good design for safety or performance.
