Edit: I decided to update this topic a little by compiling a list so people can get an overview in a glance. This reading list is a combination of the recommendations in this topic and my own opinions. If you guys have any feedback, like books or links which you think should be on the list, or entire categories which you think should be represented here, then share your thoughts! We’re all here to learn something. 😉

Getting started with proas and boatbuilding:
(1) Proafile - A Primer on Proas (in case you haven’t read it already!)
(2) “Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes: Modern Construction Methods for Three Fast, Beautiful Boats” - Gary Dierking (Paperback)
(3) “Building a Stitch-and-Glue CLC Kayak” - Chesapeake Light Craft (Youtube, DVD)
(4) “Epoxy Basics: Working with Epoxy Cleanly & Efficiently” - Russell Brown (Ebook, available for purchase here)

Honorable mentions: “The 40-knot Sailboat” - Bernard Smith (out of print, tricky to get hold of)

Delving deeper into construction methods:
(1) “The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction. Wood and WEST SYSTEM Materials” - Meade Gougeon (Hardcover, or free PDF available online—see bottom of post for link)
(2) “Moldless Composite Sandwich Aircraft Construction” - Burt Rutan (Paperback)

Delving deeper into design:
(1) “High Speed Sailing: Design Factors (A Study of High-Performance Multihull Yacht Design)” - Joseph Norwood Jr. (Hardcover)
(2) “Principles of Yacht Design” - Lars Larsson, Rolf E. Eliasson (Hardcover)—Note: Monohulls only! It does cover just about everything though.
(3) “The Elements of Boat Strength: For Builders, Designers, and Owners” - Dave Gerr
(4) “Seaworthiness: The Forgotten Factor” - C.A. Marchaj
(5) “Sail Performance: Techniques to Maximise Sail Power” - C.A. Marchaj (Hardcover)

Unfortunately the link for the Gougeon Brother’s book includes a % sign which really screws with the forum because a % followed by 2 digits makes the forum think you are trying to give it a char in hexadecimal form using percent encoding. I’ve found a workaround though, using a bit of percent encoding of my own 😉 to get the link displayed cleanly, so all people have to do is copy-paste:

<a href="https://proafile.com/?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.westsystem.com%2Fss%2Fassets%2FHowTo-Publications%2FGougeonBook">http://www.westsystem.com/ss/assets/HowTo-Publications/GougeonBook</a> 061205.pdf

Below is my original post:

Manik - 15 January 2013 02:01 PM

I’m pretty new to boating, and am interested in learning about boat design, being here in this forum, I’m specifically interested in proas of course.

I’m planning to start with a small proa for day-sailing at some point this year, and hopefully move onto larger, faster, more sea-worthy boats over time. I think I’ve pretty much exhausted most / all of the wikipedia articles on various hull, rig, and boat types, so I’m looking for some good books to get more details. I think I’ll keep my hands off sail aerodynamics for the time being though because from all I’ve heard, CFD is quite a nightmare.

So far I’ve started reading:

“Understanding Boat Design”—good to get some basic terminology down, a learn about the basic categories of hulls etc, but it’s very short and very general
“Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes”—I think I can draw a lot of inspiration from there for my day-sailing proa, particularly from the T2 design (deep V hull, strip-planked, 18ft LOA)

And I’m awaiting the arrival of:
“Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction”—should be a good primer on wood/epoxy construction

Even with all that stuff in the reading, I still feel like there are some major things I’m lacking completely at the moment:

(1) Some hard design criteria for hull design, where speed, seakeeping ability, directional stability etc are concerned. Are there any good engineering textbooks about hull design (possibly even specialized on multihulls) that anyone could recommend?

(2) A primer on structural mechanics for sailboats (maybe even specialized on multihulls?) consisting of: (a) how do I calculate / approximate the structural loads in the vaka, ama, akas, and mast and (b) how do I design a boat so that it can take that kind of abuse?

And finally, which books/texts did you find most helpful when it came to learning how to design your boats in general?

Marco

One book every sailboat nerd should read is Voyaging Multihulls by Tom Jones.

http://www.amazon.com/Multihull-Voyaging-Thomas-Firth-Jones/dp/0924486562

There’s a lot of thoughtful stuff in there.

Kasten Marin Design - Articles

A great set of articles about boat design i general. A lot of reference to different rules for minimum skantling and framing etc.

I like to build models and test whatever idea i get. I tend to learn much more and understand much more when working with my hands. Theories and complex mathematics is good in many ways, but i believe its important to get a “feel” for the kind of thing you want to do. There are literally millions of ways to build a good multihull. There is never only one solution. A hull is always a balance of many tradeofs and conflicts between opposite properties.

Wharram on design

The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction —406 pages
A free download of there book.

Cheers
Johannes

Welcome to the forum Manik

Yes, Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction is a must. (Johannes´ link didn´t work for me – try this:
http://www.westsystem.com/ss/use-guides/

The best books on my shelf is:
The Nature Of Boats – Insights and Esoterica for the Nautically Obsessed by Dave Gerr.
Pack with everything related to boatdesign. The author wrote this book for the rest of us, and he does it in a very entertaining way - so don´t expect to be cured!

Sailing Theory and Practice by C.A. Marchaj.
It´s mainly about aerodynamics and sails, so when you´re ready, this is the book.

Yatch Design Explained by Steve Killing.

None of these books are focusing on multihulls, but still relevant.

Articles on multihulldesign on the net:

Multihull Design Considerations for Seaworthiness:
http://www.john-shuttleworth.com/Articles/NESTalk.html

Richard Woods articles:
http://www.sailingcatamarans.com/index.php/articles/12-to-be-published-mainly-technical

Enjoy

By far the most read, referenced, borrowed, and otherwise used books on my shelves is Skene’s “Elements of Yacht Design”.  There are many different editions out there (including a couple of different printings of the eighth just to confuse things more…) and there is some different content included in each.  I have the sixth and eighth but either one of them covers so much information that it can keep you going for a very long time.

It is truly a design resource as opposed to a building resource. so it is chock-full of mathematics and proofs to help you figure out what your doodles actually have to do to be useful as a boat.  It’s certainly not an easy-to-read text, but I would consider it a must-have.

Thanks for posting all the resources, folks

The 40-Knot Sailboat, by Bernard Smith. Sadly out of print.

James Shanahan - 17 January 2013 02:03 PM

Thanks for posting all the resources, folks

Yeah, I second that, thanks a ton for all that material. That’s gonna be enough for more than a few weeks of reading. 😉 Keep ‘em coming though if your favorite book, article, or website isn’t on the list yet! I bet I’m not the only one interested in this stuff; when you’re looking for something, few things are better than a reference list written by people sitting in the same boat as you are.

Judging by how often “The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction” has come up, it sounds like that’s one of the best places to get started. I’ll get right on that once I’ve finished Dierking’s book “Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes” (which I’ve found great so far, definitely a good primer for a beginner like me).

Steen - 17 January 2013 08:11 AM

Sailing Theory and Practice by C.A. Marchaj.
It´s mainly about aerodynamics and sails, so when you´re ready, this is the book.

Where the sails are concerned, judging from the reviews I’ve read of both books on Amazon, it seems like Marhaj’s “Sail Performance” would be a better buy than “Sailing Theory and Practice” because the former goes more into the details, with more hard data and a clearer focus (according to the reviews that is). What’s your take on that, have you read both?

- Marco

What’s your take on that, have you read both?

- I´ve only read the one I mentioned (yet), so I really can´t tell wich one to pick.

Steen

Frank Bethwaite:

High Performance Sailing

Out in second edition now.  He and his family (especially son Julian) are pioneers in bringing fast sailing to new levels. Olympic and world champions, developers of the 49er, refined the 18’ Sydney Harbour Skiffs with the Grand Prix 18s, developed the 29ers, Tasers and many others.  His own multihull work was instrumental in quantifying wing masts, “humpless” planing hulls and flexible masts.

—
Bill

The gougeon bros. book is definitely a must.

Another great book—recommended by Gary Dierking—is Burt Rutan’s Moldless Composite Sandwich Aircraft Construction.  TONS of great tips and tricks from the man who brought you Spaceship One.

Some very special information about original proas you can get there:

Alele Aelon Kein
Alele Museum
P.O.Box 629
Majuro
Rep. of the Marshall Islands
http://alelemuseum.tripod.com/Museum.html

There are (even) some reports avalable by Dennis Alessio about outrigger canoes from different island, like eg. Ailuk Atoll or Namorik Atoll (both I have). Interesting descriptions of ancient building methods.

Annother must about is:

WANGKA
Austronesian Canoe Origins
by Edwin Doran Jr.
Texas A&M University Press
http://www.amazon.com/Wangka-Austronesian-Edwin-Jr-Doran/dp/1585440868

Thanks a lot for posting more resources! The Gougeon Brothers is definitely a fantastic resource where the actual construction of a wood/epoxy boat is concerned. I’m about midway through and I’ve learned A LOT while reading it so far. It’s definitely a book I’ll keep coming back to even long after finish reading it.

Luomanen - 29 March 2013 09:21 AM

Another great book—recommended by Gary Dierking—is Burt Rutan’s Moldless Composite Sandwich Aircraft Construction. TONS of great tips and tricks from the man who brought you Spaceship One.

I was not aware of the fact that Burt Rutan had written a book on composite construction. The guy is a like a living god where that subject is concerned. 😊 I’m definitely going to have to give that a read, and do the accompanying task of building that top-notch fiberglass-sandwich bookend! Too bad he hasn’t written anything on the design of composite structures though.

Bill S. - 29 March 2013 08:21 AM

Frank Bethwaite:

High Performance Sailing

The guys qualifications are very impressive, but reading the description on amazon I get the feeling this book is mostly oriented towards the actual sailing of the boats, getting that last bit of performance out of them, and less where the design is concerned, am I correct in that conclusion?

I’m still searching for a good resource where the hydrodynamic design of a boat is concerned. Can anyone recommend something in that regard? I’m very skeptical about picking up a copy of Skene’s Elements of Yacht Design for that purpose because I’m afraid of it being dated. The original was written all the way back in 1904; I’m not sure if fluid dynamics really even existed back then, and the design of high performance yachts has changed tremendously since then, or even since the 5th Edition from 1984.

So far Fabio Fossati’s “Aero-Hydrodynamics and the Performance of Sailing Yachts: The Science Behind Sailboats and Their Design” has caught my eye. Has anyone here read it? From the reviews on Amazon it sounds like it’s pretty hardcore, but the main advantage behind having all the equations is that you can bury them in a program somewhere and then you have all the numbers (albeit with a sizable amount of work initially). If the book additionally manages to give an understanding of the subject matter on an intuitive level, then that would be ideal…

Manik,

I have a copy of Fossati’s book….Looked promising, but way more theoretical than Marchaj.  Not a good book to be starting with.

Another 2 Books:

“Principles of Yacht Design” by Lars Larrson and Rolf E Eliasson:
A 1999 European version of Skene’s classic.

“The Elements of Boat Strength” by Dave Gerr:
For checking scantling sizes and lots of practical experience of materials, methods of construction, pitfalls and failures etc. Even though proas are on (beyond) the limits of the recommended scope of scantling calculation, it is still a good reference point, especially when you want to take account of speed.

I haven’t read it but Dave Gerr also has also written: “The Nature of Boats” which if it is as useful as the one above, should be well worth a read as well…..

Regards,

Rob

I have the Bethwaite book. He focuses on his particular areas of expertise - meteorology as applied to sail racing (which was fascinating), and the development of planing skiff hulls. At least, those are the parts I remember.
Curtis

I second the choice of “Principles of Yacht Design” by Lars Larsson and Rolf E. Eliasson; kind of hardcore theoretical, but they use the design of a sailboat racer-cruiser throughout the book to illustrate the process. Nothing on multihulls though…

If you are not only interested by boat design but also by boat building and you are considering plywood and “Stick and Glue” method, then I recommend “Devlin’s Boatbuilding: How to Build Any Boat the Stitch-and-Glue Way” by Samual Devlin

Not a book, but a series of articles on different yacht design ratios and coefficient, with range values; well written and clear:
http://www.sponbergyachtdesign.com/THE DESIGN RATIOS.pdf

Cheers,

Laurent