How to Become a Successful Yacht Designer, Part 1
The Thrill of Lines on Paper, the Agony of Success
Drawing boats is one of the three greatest things in the world (use your imagination).
Any moderately successful boat designer can tell his own stories of a misspent youth. I clearly remember frittering away weekdays of entire grade school and high school summer vacations with my buddy Rosco on the front porch of the family house in Beechhurst, New York drawing boats.
My school text books that have survived are full of boat sketches (in fact, there was really not enough room to do proper sketches, so my books are filled with papers inserted between the pages upon which sketches have been made). In high school, I nearly got booted off the cast of the senior play because springtime rehearsals conflicted with boat fit out season. In the college Library, I spent much more time studying back issues of Yachting and Motor Boating magazines than thermodynamics or calculus.
Burning Bilges
I have a picture taken on Christmas day 1945, I had just received my first paint set and a boat was my very first painting. The superstructure may leave something to be desired, however, the rake of the bow was a bit ahead of its time! The need to draw boats is something one is born with and, indeed, there needs to be a fire -- a burning desire deep down in your bilges to do so. Actually, “fire” is too mild a word “white heat” or “wild fire” or “conflagration” might be more suitable. Virtually everyone who is successful designing boats has “the fire” -- otherwise we could all be earning a lot more money doing “straight” work like selling ladies underwear or playing a piano in a whore house or getting murderers set free or rooting around someone’s molars.
We get into the boat business for love, not money. The thing is, however, if you do something for love and hang in long enough, sooner or later the money will follow. I know guys with engineering degrees who can earn a lot more money on the “outside” but simply love to draw boats. These are the true fanatics in the design business who will succeed (college degrees are not mandatory -- anybody with “the fire” to draw boats can be a success).
What exactly is it about drawing boats that makes it so enticing? Well, boats are one of the few “major vehicles” that can be completely conceived and designed by a single person. Think about it! In this age of “Design by Committee” -- corporate teams designing everything from cars to aircraft to buildings to mustard dispensers -- one little guy (or gal) with a Rapidograph pen and a drawing board set up in the spare bedroom can conceive, style and engineer an 86-foot motor yacht and then design its interior!
There are very few segments of the design world that can bestow this much power (and responsibility) on one individual. When I start a new design, the clean sheet of paper is an unlimited boating horizon -- an empty anchorage just waiting for a spectacular vessel to drop anchor there. The first line that appears is a big, bold waterline on which the new creation will float (hopefully, in proper trim). As the drawing progresses, you can see yourself aboard scrubbing the decks or tinkering in the engineroom or sleeping in a bunk or relaxing on the flyingbridge (of course, personally, it is easier to see myself aboard vessels up to, perhaps 75 feet because that is where my boating background lies.
A guy with a name like Timothy Gotrocks III could probably see himself lounging around on a 160-footer (but not tinkering in the engineroom). Although I’ve done numerous large boats -- up to 150 feet -- the bigger designs become more of a project than a personal pursuit.
How to be a Boat Designer in Ten Easy Steps (and Fifty Hard Ones)
Here is the typical sequence of events for a boat designer who makes good:
- From an early age has an extraordinary need to sketch boats on whatever surface is available. Loves boating to the extent that it takes precedence over other kid activities such as baseball, studying and yes, even girlfriends (of course, later on, the boat can be a real advantage when it comes to girlfriends).
- No matter what course is studied in school, it is looked at only from the standpoint of how this might apply to boats.
- Sets sights on an education or background that could be an entry into the boating world.
- Hangs around boat yards the way other kids hang around shopping malls.
- Tries to get into some aspect of the boating business directly out of the high school or college.
- Sets up a small one-man design office as a part-time job, financed by a full-time job.
- Loves drawing boats to the extent that the full-time job becomes a bothersome bore.
- Becomes moderately successful and drops the full-time job.
- Becomes more successful and starts hiring people.
- Is the head of a full-fledged design office with a number of people under him.
Well, hotshot, now you’ve made it! You’re in fat city. You’re a big-time boat designer.
Cream Rises to the Top -- Then Turns Sour
What’s wrong with the above scenario? Well, what is wrong is something aptly described in Dr. Wayne Dyer’s classic book “The Peter Principle.” The “Peter Principle” is simply this: In one’s work, one rises to his level of incompetency. That’s right! If you love your work and do your job really well, people will take note and promote you until you find yourself with work you don’t love so much and, therefore, don’t do well. You have become an incompetent. You are now a “success.” This is exactly what happens to boat designers who wind up heading multi man design offices. The thing that you love to do (draw boats) has promoted you to a point where you can no longer do that thing.
This is where I found myself two years ago until, one day, I decided to, in my spare time, draw a boat for myself. It was only then that I rediscovered the magic of drawing boats -- the very reason I got into the boat design in the first place! I realized I had become a dammed, useless boat design administrator. True, I have always kept my hand in the designs doing concepts, profile, arrangement sketches and checking plans and calculations but I was not doing what I loved -- complete drawings.
So, I decided I would go back to my roots and become a full-time boat “drawer” and a part time boat design administrator. I’m drawing more now and I always have “secret” design projects going on at my home office which I can turn to nights and weekends (and whenever I can sneak away from the main office). Call it my “private stock” drawings. These are concepts, completed plans and partially completed plans of various dream boats which are usually always between 40 and 80 feet.
There is a lesson here for everybody -- not just hullheads. I’ll bet Mr. Entenmann would love to be elbow deep in batter, Charlie Schwabb would love to be taking phone orders for stocks and Dave Thomas would love to be flipping burgers at the original Wendy’s stand. Go back to your roots. Become useful again!
(Reprinted with permission of Regina Fexas.)
If you would like to read more of Tom's pearls of wisdom, tune in next Friday -- "Fexas Friday."
Better yet, why not get a full dose of infectious Fexas whenever you need it -- and buy one of the volumes below. Better yet, why not buy all of them -- we call them the "Fexas Five." They will provide many evenings of fun reading (better than Netflix), and you'll make the widow Regina very happy knowing that Tom will live on with you the way most of us remember him.
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Tom Fexas (1941-2006) was one of the most influential yacht designers of the last quarter of the 20th century. With the narrow Wall Street commuters that were built in the 1920s and '30s always on the back of his mind, he wanted to design boats that were at once fast, comfortable, seaworthy and economical to operate. Over the years, he and his firm designed over 1,000 yachts for some of the most prestigious boat builders in the world, including Choey Lee, Palmer Johnson, Grand Banks, Mikelson Yachts, Burger, Abeking & Rasmussen and many others.
Even though toward the end of his career he only designed megayachts and superyachts, including the remarkably influential PJ "Time" in 1987, he is best remembered for his first major vessel in 1978 -- Midnight Lace -- which became a series of 44-52-footers. They were light, narrow, and fast with relatively small engines. He was also influential in the boating community because of the monthly column he wrote for Power and Motoryacht, which began in its very first issue in January 1985.