A PT boat was a motor torpedo boat used by the United States Navy in World War II. It was small, fast, and inexpensive to build, valued for its maneuverability and speed but hampered at the beginning of the war by ineffective torpedoes, limited armament, and comparatively fragile construction that limited some of the variants to coastal waters. In the US Navy they were organized in Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons (MTBRONs).
A runabout is any small motorboat holding between four and eight people, well suited to moving about on the water. Characteristically between 20' and 35' in length, runabouts are used for pleasure activities like boating, fishing, and water skiing, as a ship's tender for larger vessels, or in racing. Some common runabout types are bow rider, center console, cuddy boat and walkaround. The world's largest runabout, Pardon Me, is 48 feet long and owned by the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York.
A rigid inflatable boat (RIB), also rigid-hull inflatable boat or rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB), is a lightweight but high-performance and high-capacity boat constructed with a rigid hull bottom joined to side-forming air tubes that are inflated with air to a high pressure so as to give the sides resilient rigidity along the boat's topsides. The design is stable, light, fast and seaworthy. The inflated collar acts as a life jacket, ensuring that the vessel retains its buoyancy, even if the boat is taking on water. The RIB is an evolutionary development of the inflatable boat with a rubberized fabric bottom that is stiffened with flat boards within the collar to form the deck or floor of the boat.
A motorboat, speedboat or powerboat is a boat that is exclusively powered by an engine.
A pump-jet, hydrojet, or water jet is a marine system that produces a jet of water for propulsion. The mechanical arrangement may be a ducted propeller, a centrifugal pump, or a mixed flow pump which is a combination of both centrifugal and axial designs. The design also incorporates an intake to provide water to the pump and a nozzle to direct the flow of water out of the pump.
Skjold-class corvettes are a class of six light, superfast, stealth missile corvettes in service with the Royal Norwegian Navy. The boats were formerly classed as MTBs but, from 2009, the Royal Norwegian Navy has described them as corvettes (korvett) because their seaworthiness is seen as comparable to corvettes, and because they do not carry torpedoes. They were built at the Umoe Mandal yard. With a maximum speed of 55 knots (102 km/h), the Skjold-class corvettes were the fastest combat ships afloat at the time of their introduction., as of 2023 beaten by the Abu Dhabi MAR WP-18 Interceptor.
Capsizing or keeling over occurs when a boat or ship is rolled on its side or further by wave action, instability or wind force beyond the angle of positive static stability or it is upside down in the water. The act of recovering a vessel from a capsize is called righting. Capsize may result from broaching, knockdown, loss of stability due to cargo shifting or flooding, or in high speed boats, from turning too fast.
A cathedral hull is a hull shape used in modern boats, usually power-driven. It has sponsons which extend almost as far forward as the main hull. The airspace between the hulls may be very small or nonexistent.
Sea Fighter (FSF-1) is an experimental littoral combat ship in service with the United States Navy. Its hull is of a small-waterplane-area twin-hull (SWATH) design, provides exceptional stability, even on rough seas. The ship can operate in both blue and littoral waters. For power, it can use either its dual gas-turbine engines for speed or its dual diesel engines for efficient cruising. It can be easily reconfigured through the use of interchangeable mission modules. Helicopters can land and launch on its deck. Smaller water craft can be carried and launched from its stern. The vessel is being developed under the program title Littoral Surface Craft-Experimental with a hull type designation Fast Sea Frame. The first vessel has been assigned the hull classification symbol FSF 1 and also has been referred to as the X-Craft. The vessel was designed by British company BMT Nigel Gee who continue with a role in the development of the vessel.
The supercavitating propeller is a variant of a propeller for propulsion in water, where supercavitation is actively employed to gain increased speed by reducing friction. They are being used for military purposes and for high performance racing boats as well as model racing boats.
A tunnel hull is a type of boat hull that uses two typically planing hulls with a solid centre that traps air. This entrapment then creates aerodynamic lift in addition to the planing (hydrodynamic) lift from the hulls. Many times this is attributed to ground effect. Theoretical research and full-scale testing of tunnel hulls has demonstrated the dramatic contributions of 'close-proximity ground effect' on enhanced aerodynamic lift/drag in operation of performance tunnel hull designs.
Boston Whaler is an American boat manufacturer. It is a subsidiary of the Brunswick Boat Group, a division of the Brunswick Corporation. Boston Whalers were originally produced in Massachusetts, hence the name, but today are manufactured in Edgewater, Florida.
Fairey Marine Ltd, latterly known as FBM Marine, was a boat building company based on the River Hamble, Southampton, England. The company was created in the late 1940s by Sir Charles Richard Fairey and Fairey Aviation's managing director, Mr. Chichester-Smith. Both were avid sailing enthusiasts along with Chichester-Smith's good friend and former Olympic yachtsman, Charles Currey.
The Type 22 missile boat is a ship class in the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy. The first boat was launched in April 2004 by the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard at Shanghai. The boats incorporate stealth features and are based on Australian-designed wave-piercing catamaran hulls that are more stable than other fast missile craft in high sea conditions. 82 of these missile boats are currently in service with three flotillas having been produced over a span of seven years, operating in squadrons of eight vessels each.
William Albert Hickman was a Canadian designer and manufacturer of innovative fast boats. He is best known as the inventor of the Hickman Sea Sled.
The Tolman Skiff is a boat design of Dory heritage created by Renn Tolman of Homer, Alaska. Tolman authored two books, initially, "A Skiff For All Seasons", in 1992 and a revised version "Tolman Alaskan Skiffs", in 2003. The books described advantages of the design and construction method Stitch and glue using plywood, fiberglass cloth, and epoxy. Included in the books were drawings and designs for simple skiffs suitable for backyard, Do-it-yourself, construction.
Oheka II was a private motor yacht built for German-born American investment banker Otto Hermann Kahn by Lürssen in 1927. Capable of 34 knots top speed, she became the blueprint for the Kriegsmarine's Schnellboot.
Forces on sails result from movement of air that interacts with sails and gives them motive power for sailing craft, including sailing ships, sailboats, windsurfers, ice boats, and sail-powered land vehicles. Similar principles in a rotating frame of reference apply to windmill sails and wind turbine blades, which are also wind-driven. They are differentiated from forces on wings, and propeller blades, the actions of which are not adjusted to the wind. Kites also power certain sailing craft, but do not employ a mast to support the airfoil and are beyond the scope of this article.
Juliet Marine Systems Ghost is a super-cavitating stealth ship. The ship's experimental hull design can reduce hull friction to 1/900th that of conventional watercraft. Ghost was designed, developed, and built by the private American company Juliet Marine Systems.
C. Raymond Hunt Associates is an American naval architecture design firm, based in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The company specializes in the design of fiberglass sailboats and powerboats.
