ENGINEERING BOATS FOR SEAKEEPERS

On a recent sea trial, the owner of a Weaver 43 fishing boat pointed out how resolutely his vessel held a course against a quartering head sea once its Seakeeper gyroscopic stabilizer spooled up. Indeed, the boat's feel was uncanny.

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Waves be damned, it was going where he pointed it, urged on by its 550 hp Cummins QSB 6.7L diesel. The experience made us think about how the boat's structure withstood the combined pressures of the Seakeeper, the powertrain, and the Chesapeake Bay water through which we were traveling. There were multiple forces working on the four bolts holding the Seakeeper in its bed, as well as the hull structures of which the bed was part.

So, how do a naval architect, an engineer and a boatbuilder spread out those forces so the Seakeeper doesn't simply rip itself loose in the boat's bilge?

We asked our friend Lou Codega, a naval architect perhaps best known for designing Regulator Boats. "The gyro guys are very good at giving us the loads in multiple axes," Codega says. "And you have to design for all of them at once. They're huge, massive forces-big numbers, hundreds or thousands of pounds."