Why Explorer Yacht Design Looks Like a Fishing Boat

Why Explorer Yacht Design Favors Commercial-Grade Equipment

My wife, Sebrina, constantly asks why I always lean toward commercial-grade equipment when the yacht market is full of flashier, more glamorous alternatives. My usual answer is simple:

“Fishing boats look like fishing boats for a reason.”

Eventually, it was time to explain why

A Lesson From My First Years at Sea

I first went to sea in 1976. A long time ago now, and I fully admit memory can embellish, but this incident made a lasting impression on me. Most of the details came from the first mate’s retelling in the ship’s bar later that night.

We were off the southeast coast of Africa, somewhere near Durban. A seven-hatch geared bulk carrier on passage to Indonesia. It was around 5 a.m., the middle of the 4–8 watch. Two crew on the bridge, the second engineer and a motorman below, and me, the cadet, doing routine chores. Moderate seas. A bright moon. A normal, slightly dull night watch.

And then the bridge saw it: a shadow across the sea, low and wide, off the port bow.

No clouds. No large swell. Nothing that should cast a shadow. But it moved toward us, and we moved toward it.

The Hole in the Sea

With a 10–15 mile horizon and 9–10 knots of speed, things develop fast. The “shadow” wasn’t a shadow at all.

It was a wide, soft-edged depression. A hole in the sea. Behind it rose a wall of water slowly, silently, impossibly tall.

Someone must have called the captain, because suddenly everything erupted.

The ship’s general alarm sounded. The Engine Room phone rang. The telegraph twitched double ring astern.

The second engineer shouted for another generator. As I moved for the switchboard, the main engine’s turbochargers backflowed as load came off, screaming like I had never heard. Bodies came sliding down ladders, leaping the last few steps into the ER.

Everyone was rushing but somehow still doing exactly what needed to be done. I did what I was told, even though I had no idea why. The bliss of youthful ignorance.

The shaft stopped. Then, against all odds, the engine went astern on start air. Someone must have opened the receiver valves; they’re normally closed at sea. Fuel trickled back in, the pop-off valves lifted, and there was smoke and debris everywhere. Cylinder head seals blew. The whole engine groaned as it tried to drive the prop backwards.

The ship began to tilt, not pitch but tilt, bow-down, as we dropped into the trough.

And then the entire engine room began shaking. I had felt that before the lightship, going upriver in Rosario to load grain when the prop tips came clear of the water.

Slowly it settled. Slowly it calmed. The telegraph rang again. Order returned.

What We Hit

In the retelling, we had likely encountered a freak wave or, more probably, the combined peaks and troughs of two large waves meeting at just the wrong angle.

A trough followed by a peak. An amplitude of perhaps 80 or 90 feet.

A monster.

When we entered the trough, the bow drove underwater. The wave climbed up and over, reaching halfway across hatch No. 2, an enormous amount of green water. It killed our forward speed entirely, leaving the prop sucking air. Eventually, very slowly, the ship lifted up and over the crest.

The sea returned to normal. But none of us forgot.

Another Example: The Derbyshire

Two of my friends, Paul King and Eddy Williamson, had a similar encounter far worse aboard the Derbyshire, a Bibby Line bulk carrier lost south of Japan in the North Pacific.

The inquest concluded that massive wave compression caused sequential bulkhead failures, sinking the ship within minutes. Everyone aboard was lost.

I remember seeing Eddy at the Ocean Fleets office in Birkenhead. He had just signed on as 4th Engineer on Derbyshire. Young. Smartly dressed in the style of the 1970s. Full of optimism.

Their faces stay young in my memory, even as mine grows older.

And This Is Why

Fishing boats look like fishing boats for a reason. Their shapes, equipment, and rugged commercial design exist for one purpose:

To survive whatever the sea decides to throw at them.

That’s why our explorer yacht leans heavily toward commercial-grade decisions. Not because it looks glamorous but because it looks like it will bring us home.