Ray Hunt; Deep V and the Boston Whaler

 

Better Boating, July 1966

Ray Hunt in Toronto working on an adaptation of the Hunt 14 for the Canadian Navy, the hull is mapped out to analyse water flow. 

In 1870, Rev. Charles Ramus, an English pastor in Sussex, England, discovered the planing hull. During experiments he found that a flat bottomed boat would skim over the water instead of ploughing through, when provided with enough power. As steam and internal combustion powerplants improved towards the end of the century this became the standard for fast pleasure boats. However, it wasn't perfect; when the waves came up, the boats had to slow to a crawl and push through the waves like traditional hulls. There was a lot of room for improvement. 

In the days after WW1, Ray Hunt was a young sailor in New England. He made a name for himself as a natural on the water, this success in racing and boat handling led to him being employed at the office of the yacht designer Frank C. Paine of Boston. It was a perfect apprenticeship program for a young man with no formal education in boat design. He learned well, by 1938 he had branched out on his own, designing a number of successful sailboats including the Concordia yawl. 

During WW2 he found himself in the design section of the Navy Bureau of Ships, where he worked on the hull shape of a high speed destroyer. Though it wasn't completed before the war was over, Hunt scaled his ideas down into a small personal powerboat which he built for himself. This hull shape was the beginnings of the deep V hull and became known as the Huntform. In 1950 he designed a 42 foot cruiser capable of 55 mph, this led to other commissions for both power and sailing yachts.

 He also developed a flat bottom skiff into a hull that featured two sponsons for stability. After some testing he added a center sponson. This became the Boston Whaler. Produced in fibreglass, this was a hull shape that transformed the powerboat industry. 

He continued with the Deep V hull development, perfecting the longitudinal strakes which add to the stability as well as supporting the boat along the entire hull length to slice through choppy water at speed. In 1960, Moppie, a thirty-foot deep-V hull design, easily won the Miami-Nassau powerboat race, that hull was used as the basis for the Bertram 31 and the Deep V has been another leading design for powerboats ever since. 

 Ray Hunt had an amazing and fulfilling career, his innate abilities gave him the intuition to create a series of innovative designs across a wide range of successful boat types. What could be better?

  Below; the Boston Whaler in 13 1/2 foot length and bottom; the 55 mph Hunt 42.

Bill Robinson, The Great American Yacht Designers, Alfred A. Knopf 1974