History about Ray Hunt Hull Designs

[Skools Out]

Either Read Here or go to Link where found thanks

http://www.grandbanks.com/images/res...98_RayHunt.pdf


The Deep Vee: Ray Hunt's design legacy
By Steve Knauth
On a spring day in 1960, a 31 foot in-board roared out through
Miami's Government Cut and careened into boating history.
It was a hasty morning for a test ride, but that's just what owner
Dick Bertram wanted. The wind was "blowing out of the east at 22
knots and the seas were rough," he recalled. Looking at driver Sam
Griffith through the spindrift, Bertram wondered what to expect
from the boat with its radical bottom, a "deep-vee" designed by a
quiet New England innovator named Ray Hunt.
Bertram was excited by the potential of the odd-looking hull - vee-shaped for its
entire length with fore-and-aft strakes below a sharp chine. Hunt knew it ran faster
and handled better than other boats in high seas. Now Bertram was about to find out
for himself.
Griffith, the vetern racer, cut speed instinctively to take the first wave at about 25
knots. "After the third wave, Sam started smiling and eased forward the throttles,"
Bertram wrote later. Griffith spun Moppie around and headed downwind. Instead of
yawing, "the boat held it's course as though it were on tracks. We opened the
throttles and raced those following seas at 40 knots straight for the inlet."
In those first few moments, Bertram and Griffith became deep-vee believers.
Though hardly a household name, Hunt is the guy who made spped, stability and
handling an everyday part of motorboating. Through the genius of his deep-vee
design, this champion sailor changed the face of powerboating. The 24 degree deepvee
with lifting strakes remains a standard.
The deep-vee was just one of many achievements in the wide-ranging design career
of Charles Raymond Hunt, a complex man with a quick mind, little affinity for
business and no taste for fame. Among his creations are the classic Concordia yawl,
the 12 Meter Easterner and the ubiquitous Boston Whaler.
It's ironic that the man who so changed powerboating was a really dyed in the wool
sailor...
"He was a genius, a real wizard who did things no one else had done," Gribbins said.
Bertram was so impressed with Hunt and his deep-vee that he entered Moppie in the
1960 Miami-Nassau Race. The boat covered the rough, wind-whipped, 160 mile
course in record time, averaging just about 20 knots. A third of the fleet couldn't
even finish.
"...as Skipper Sam Griffith gunned the engines, the fleet dropped astern," recalled
Carleton Mitchell, a three-time Newport-Bermuda winner who came along to write
about the race. "Our wake stretched like a wide white road back towards our nearest
competitors. We grinned."
Many more deep-vee tales have followed. "You go out in rough water, and they sell
themselves," says Andy Wylie, an Irvington, VA yacht broker. "We called them the
water softeners."
Tom Oakes, a marina owner from Marmora, NJ, remembers showing off his deepvee's
handling while heading offshore to fish. "We'd see see who could go the longest
without touching the wheel and still hold a course," Oakes said. "I'd be standing
there for 45 minutes, still running true."
Hunt, who died in 1978 at 70, never successfully patented the idea and never got
rich off it. A private man, he shunned publicity and eventually faded from the public
eye.
Yet, when the Museum of Yachting in Newport wanted to kick off its annual
"designer" rendezvous series last summer, it chose Hunt's designs for the theme.
"He was so diverse and so immaginative, there's no doubt that he was one of the
really talented designers," said Jim Cassidy, 53, a marine insurance agent in Mystic,
Conn, who helped organize the event.
Hunt's designs have stood the test of time. When Rhode Island sailboat builder Alden
Yachts decided to get into motoryachts four years ago, it put its money on a Ray
Hunt descendant designed by C. Raymond Hunt Associatiates, the Boston desgin firm
Hunt founded in 1966. Hunt Associates continues to design versions of the deep-vee
for production builders, including Grady-White and Grand Banks, which uses it for its
new sedan and express models.
"Ray Hunt obviously did a good job of thinking through what at the time was an
innovative idea," said Ed Roberts, vice president of Grand Banks Yachts, Ltd. in
Greenwich, Ct. "Good design really doesn't go out of style. It's sort of like the
button-down collar."
Designers for Formula and Cruisers, Inc. also have produced variations of the deepvee
shape for their performance craft and family boats. "The deep-vee has had a
long and illustrious career," said Pat Laux, 35, a designer for Formula Yachts in
Decataur, Ind. "And it's still the technology used by many companies for their
lineups."
It's ironic that the man who so changed powerboating was a really dyed in the wool
sailor.
In 1932, Hunt found himself working for Boston designer Frank Paine. Although he
didn't have a formal design education, Hunt nevertheless had talent and instinct.
"His education came from the observations he'd been making since he was a kid,"
Gribbins said. " I think he started learning about design and how boats move
through the water as a young sailor in Duxbury."
While working for Paine, the 24-year-old Hunt met Waldo Howland, son of a Paine
designer. The two formed the Concordia Co. in 1932 to design, build and broker
boats. Their first effort was the B-class frostbite dinghy, soon being sailed
successfully by Corny Shields, Briggs Cunningham and others. With Howland as the
first of several compatriots who often handled sales and drew final plans, Ray Hunt's
uncanny, unorthodox career was off and running.
The Concordia yawl and the International 110, both introduced in 1938-39, stand out
as early examples of Hunt's versatility. The first was pure tradition, setting a tone for
more than 100 subsequent "Concordias." Built for Howland, the yawl and those that
followed earned a reputation for "speed, beauty, and sea-kindliness," according to
Elizabeth Meyer, head of the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport and a
former Concordia owner.
In the second, Hunt departed completely from accepted design norms with the 24-
foot International 110. A racing sloop with low wetted surface and lots of sail area
offset by a ballasted fin keel, it performed more like a modern sport boat than a
1930s club racer. "Similar configurations can be seen today in America's Cup boats,"
said John Deknatel, president of C. Raymond Hunt Associates.
Hunt brought that kind of innovation
to powerboats after World War II. For
nearly 50 years,planing hulls had
sharp bows and flat sterns; the
standard boat of 1960 got lift from
that basic shape. With transom
deadrise a flat 2 to 6 degrees, those
hulls had good lateral stability and
they planed quickly with relatively lowpowered
engines. But the boats
"pounded in high seas and were hard
to steer in a following sea," according
to speedboat historian D.W. Fostle.
Those were the problems Hunt solved through instinct and observation. "He was
intuitive as opposed to being an engineering type," said Deknatel, who began
working with Hunt in 1966. "He had an active mind that was wrapped 150 percent
around boats, and he could focus in on basic problems undistracted by outside
influences."
Hunt didn't put much deep-vee in his first effort. In 1946, he and son Jim and
daughter Diana were tending about 100 lobster pots from a 37 foot "Huntform" he'd
designed. Head on, the Huntform's bow profile resembled an upside-down bell with
its concave entry; the transom deadrise was just a few degrees.
The deep-vee begins to emerge in Hunt's 1949 design, Sea Blitz, which was
commissioned by Hunt enthusiast Bradley Noyes. The bow sections are straighter
and Hunt increased the deadrise noticeably, carrying it aft with virtually no flattering.
Instead of a broad stern, there was a vee something like the bow.
Hunt loved to build prototypes. By 1958, a wooden deep-vee, complete with lifting
strakes and 24 degrees of deadrise, was turning heads in Newport, RI. One July day,
Bertram, a crewman aboard the 12 meter Vim, looked up to see "something special
hurtling across" the bay. Bertram made a mental note to corner Hunt after the day's
racing. He took a short ride the very next day and immediately ordered the 31 footer
that would become the record-setting Moppie.
Mitchell's Miami-Nassau race story appeared in Sports Illustrated, spreading the
deep-vee story to an emerging class of postwar recreational boaters.
Businessmen noticed it too, and the race for the new powerboat market was on, with
Bertram at the forefront. Moppie was quickly turned into a plug and a mold was cast
to produce fiberglass versions under license to Hunt.
Hunt shunned the accolades that started coming his way and, as a result, some
people considered him stand-offish, Deknatel recalled. Meanwhile, other boat
companies copied the deep-vee, and Hunt was unable to patent his idea. Drawings
had appeared in a boating magazine early in 1958 as part of a story on the design.
Patent rules stipulated that a patent application must be filed within a year after the
invention has been written about or used - and Hunt had missed the deadline.
A phase of unsuccessful patent infringement suits followed, in which the oversight
proved his undoing, Deknatel recalled.
Even as he was working on the deep-vee, Hunt continued to design other craft. He
worked with partners Dick Fisher and Bob Pierce on the experimental tri-hull shape
that would becom the Boston Whaler. Hunt convinced Fisher and Pierce to make the
foam-cored boat an outboard instead of a sailboat.
He also kept sailing. In 1957, he captured six of seven races at the prestigious
Cowes Week in England in his own Concordia, Harrier. Jim Hunt raced a Huntdesigned
5.5 Meter to an Olympic gold medal in 1960, and Ray Hunt won the 5.5
worlds in his own design, Chaje II, in 1964 with Jim as crew.
Tributes came after Hunt's death as well. He was named to the National Marine
Manufacturers Hall of Fame and honored with the Ole Evinrude Award for his
contribution to powerboating. Almost all of his Concordias are still sailing, the
International 110 has fleets as far away as the Phillippines and Whaler is one of the
world's best known boats.
"Others can be credited with breakthrough designs," Deknatel said. "But the thing
that makes Ray Hunt different is that he did it in both power and sail."
Perhaps the greatest tribute to Hunt is the longevity of the deep-vee in a world of
change. After 35 years, it's still a sound, proven hull.
REPRINTED FROM SOUNDINGS TRADE ONLY - FEBRUARY 1998