On The Fishy Side

A traditional style boat with today’s building practices, thats one of the things that make this an interesting design project. We have been jokingly calling it “Old school style with new school technology”. Well that’s how our design started out anyway. I’m about four weeks and about 150 changes into the design and the 37 profile is starting to take shape. It now has a tasteful blend of traditional and modern style. It’s funny how boat designs can evolve. Sometimes it turns out to be nothing like your original thought, but ending up being exactly what you want. It’s amazing how subtle changes in the design can make such a big difference.

The arrangement plan for the 37 is another challenge. We always have to come up with a better layout than the other guy. That’s not always easy to do, especially in a 37 foot boat. So there we are, all sitting around the conference table, which you can’t see because there are many, many, and did I say many… sets of plans covering the top. We are looking for the best arrangement plan we can get that would be the most useful to a person who likes to fish. Well, we spent a great deal of time and of course a box of pencils and erasers. But when we were through, I can say we all left that room satisfied that we were on the right track to designing the best arrangement plan for this particular boat.

One of our important decisions in the development of this project was to create a hull form based off of Ocean’s successful rough water planing hulls. Every new Ocean model over the past 6 or 7 years has been designed with rough water performance in mind. Ocean’s new hulls have a deep-vee forward with a modified-vee at the transom. They also feature two down-angled lifting strakes (one on each side) and a tapered double chine. These features contribute to Ocean’s excellent hull efficiency, and the deep-vee forward keeps the ride smooth even in the roughest seas. After years and years of being an understudy to Dave Martin, Mike Hartline was the perfect choice of Naval Architect for this in-house project, and has stepped up and is doing a superb job designing the 37’ and it’s hull bottom. When you look at it’s lines you can see Dave Martin’s legacy with a Mike Hartline flair. From this new 37′ hull, we expect the same great speed and ride as the other Oceans without all the extra horses to push it!

John Leek III came into my office the other morning and stood in the doorway with his coffee. “Mike, you know those old Merritts? Nice fishing boats, that’s all you need, something comfortable just to get you out there. And if you need to stay over night, you can”, he says. “You hear this kind of dock talk quite a bit. When one goes by, everybody’s head turns. Even the guys on 60 footers”, he adds. “I think Johnny (John Leek IV or J4 as we call him) has an idea.” He’ll be over later to talk about it. A couple of hours later J4 and Terence Watson are sitting in my office saying they might have a little project for me. Then after about an hour of chit-chat and some what-ifs there was a moment of silence and then… “Well, do you want to do it?” Of course I did. “Yeah, but it has to be done right”, I can remember J4 saying. Then the three of us agreed to spend a couple of weeks jotting down any ideas we could come up with and gathering all the information we could possibly find. And I was to start some preliminary plans using some of J4’s thoughts and specifications. We would meet again in two weeks. After they left my office I can remember telling myself, “Finally, something different that no one else is doing”.