EPISODE 9 - MATTHEW WELTON
Welcome to the Impulse Spotlight where we meet with product development professionals and shine a light on the products they are most proud of.
In this episode we talk with a yacht designer about the exciting and challenging world of yacht design.
Matt Welton grew up in Mid-Michigan where his summers were spent immersed in boating, skiing, and swimming Those formative experiences instilled a deep love for the water and a fascination with yachting.
Following his passion, Matthew attended The University of New Orleans to pursue degrees in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. When he's not designing yachts, Matthew can be found spending the majority of his free time either on or around water.
At the beginning of 2024, Matthew took a bold step away from the corporate world to establish MW Yacht Design, a yacht design consultancy driven by his passion for innovation and excellence in yacht development.
In our conversation Matthew shares insights into one of his favorite projects, the Ocean 1 470, discussing its unique mission and the advanced technology onboard. We also explore the evolving landscape of yacht design, touching on trends like automation and electrification, and the impact these advancements have on the industry.
Matthew offers a holistic perspective on yacht design, emphasizing the importance of both creativity and technical expertise in shaping the future of ocean luxury. Join us as we set sail into the fascinating world of yacht design with Matthew Welton.
Show Notes:
Click here to learn more about MW Yacht Design and the Ocean 1 470.
Podcast Transcript:
Hi Matthew, welcome to the show.
Hi, Troy. Thanks for inviting me on to to talk about MW yacht design and our work in high speed naval architecture and custom YAP design.
Yeah, I am looking forward to it. So I started Impulse 25 years ago after working for another product development company, just kind of saw the writing on the wall that they were not going to be around much longer. So we started impulse and been living in the product development world since how did you get into product development ?
So grew up on the water and that led to wanting wanting to pursue a career in yacht design, so I have a degree in naval architecture and marine engineering from the University of New Orleans, and then I have spent the last decade or so I am working with design firms as well as in senior design and engineering roles within some large corporate large production boat builders. And then I have just recently stepped out on my own to open up my own design consultancy. So we currently have a small team of naval architects and industrial designers with focus across military pleasure and custom boat design.
Very interesting. So you said you started you you branched out on your own. Can you kind of expand on that and tell us a little bit about what you do and how things work?
So my firm is concentrated in high speed naval architecture from the engineering background side. So that would be planning halls, step tolls, specialty catamaran trim and type designs as well as the water sports side of things. So wake surfing, wakeboarding and kind of the very specialty skills that revolve around making those boats function. And then on the design side, leveraging our industrial design capabilities to also be able to provide a comprehensive product development service for for our clients, so. Be it either engineering production support or kind of the artistic design side, we are we were able to cover that broad range of topics to give a client a turnkey product at the end of the day that they can go out and manufacture if they were to say a new startup boat builder versus 1 that already has their own in house capabilities.
Sure. So you are not designing just the hull, you are designing everything interior, all the the fun gadgets and everything that are added.
Yeah, yep. You know, all of all the hardware that that might be customed to a particular product upholstery, you know, lighting all those things that go into making it a product versus just a part of the product.
Awesome. So tell us about the product that you wanted to highlight today?
Yeah. So the product that that I told you about was the Ocean 1 470. So it is a 47 ft first hall was a triple inboard diesel boat that was developed around a client brief for kind of the ultimate over the horizon yacht tender, so. The super yacht world is kind of this very, very odd small world of things being done to the absolute extreme and the absolute highest end finished quality that you can achieve, so this particular brief came from an owner of an 88 m yacht built by a Dutch yard called Ocean Co. And this client, who is relatively young, very, very active, and his passion along with his brothers is kiteboarding , so the design brief was around a boat that could take all of all of his buddies and him from the mother ship over the horizon so. Not just, you know, within sight of shore, but long distance runs to go find the the best and most secluded kiteboarding spots in the world. So what developed from that was was a boat that is capable of carrying 14 people, all of their associated kiteboarding gear with the ability to overnight on it. With about an 800 mi range. So put quite a long range, you know, they do not generally make runs like that with with just that boat, but the boat had to be able to function in that way as well as being able to be towed across the Atlantic. So this boat is big enough that. You know, you will you will either see smaller tenders that are set on the back of a larger yacht or on very large boats actually inside the the mother ship itself, but this vote being that it is so large is just toad behind it.
Sure.
That in of itself is is quite an engineering challenge to begin with.
Yeah, I would say from a captain's challenge, captain standpoint, it is got to be quite the challenge to be not you are not just responsible for this huge ship, you are responsible for the other 1 you are hauling behind you.
Right. And so there is technology that that they have that allows the 2 boats to kind of communicate back and forth. So if there ever was an emergency and the boat gets disconnected , they can come back and find it. But but yeah, so that that and of itself poses its own unique unique set of issues. But the owner of Ocean 1 is a former yacht captain himself that spent 30 years in the industry. So he is kind of had all of those experiences of what goes wrong when the tender is not set up right for towing or, you know, the different operations that that go on. You know, that that are not kind of the client facing pretty side of things. It is the the nitty gritty, everyday needs of the captain and crew that that he tends to focus on and that has led him to be able to do some of these unique projects like this where the client the end buyer knows that they are getting a boat that will have features that, you know, another tender manufacturer might not necessarily have because they they have not lived that life of dealing with both sides but
Sure. Sure.
which from the product development side, you know, it is very helpful for me as well of, you know, understanding the needs. Without necessarily having, you know, bend through all of those same experiences either so rather than having to, you know, think through the what ifs you have somebody with the built in knowledge of, hey, these are the things that you need to think about and that we need to work around or develop solutions for.
Sure. So you already touched on several, but what are some of the other key features of the boat or innovations that that you guys put into the boat?
So the boot is 100 % epoxy resin infused. So, you know, along with what we are talking about structural requirements , you know, infusing. So essentially sucking a giant vacuum bag down over the boat and that draws the resin through the fiber glass. So you get much better strength weight ratio. Versus kind of your traditional open moulding, you know, so so the entire boat is built that way. So you end up with a very rigid structure which helps with right quality that helps with, you know, just just your general strength. We did a full development process with computational fluid dynamics software to help optimize the vote for being run with triple diesel in boards, which is a fairly unique setup for a boat and the size range is but kind of sits in a size range where you would normally see it powered without boards. But because of regulatory reasons with large yachts, they they like to avoid carrying gasoline on board in any large amount just because of fire protection and and cascading issues surrounding that. So, you know, normally you would set this boat up with, you know, 4 or 5 outboards, but this 1 is designed around triple diesel so that Led to some some unique challenges and how to set up the drives to best work with the hall to get a boat that is still fast and responsive with less power than it would normally have. Because you your 4 or 5 outboards would all be in the 4 to 600 hp range, whereas the diesels are, you know, in the 300 hp range each.
Interesting.
So quite a decrease in horsepower.
Okay. Yeah, how fast does the boat go?
As it is currently configured, it runs about 45 kt.
That's getting it.
Yeah, so but to give you an idea, the the outboard variant with quad 600 s would run in the high 50 low 60 range. So there is quite a speed variance that you experience there.
And it would be the same hull, right? Same whole style and all that.
Yeah. There there is a few changes with how the outboards would attach versus the the end boards.
Yeah.
But yes, the the running surface would remain intact. So it is spending the time to design around both of those scenarios so that the boat will run correctly in either design configuration .
Sure. Did the person that ordered this hull. Like, do they own that whole design or is it how does that work?
Now, so generally the way and it kind of varies by a designer and manufacturer and what they are relationship is. But in this particular instance, the way the contracts were structured, you know, I retain the intellectual property rights to to my products. And and the client, you know, is essentially granted a license to build and or or use that design, but that that can vary by my project or by just manufacturer.
Sure. That makes sense. Was there anything like anything novel like novel technologies or materials or methodologies or anything like that that went into to this design?
Like I was saying, it is mostly around how the boats used. So we have the ability to carry 2 CD sparks on the back of the boat. So we have got a winch system that draws the the C D's up onto the back side of the boat. And then, you know, just around kind of the overall mission of the vote is quite a unique mission in and of itself of, hey, we want to be able to run anywhere in the world and be able to, you know, take our kite boards with us unique technology that is on board. There is a a system on board that is a very high definition sonar, THREED scanning sonar so that they can also use the boat to run ahead of the mother ship if they are trying to get into a secluded secluded area with a large boat, they can 3D map the bottom if there is not good soundings of the area, which is which is fairly common in kind of South America. And and some of the islands that you get into that are, you know, fairly sparsely populated in the in the Pacific, so that is kind of another mission that the boat has is to serve as this scout for the the big vote to be able to move safely and check for any any dangers that might be lurking that are not that are not on a chart somewhere.
Yeah, yeah. That is interesting. So we have helped design thousands of products literally and every every 1 of those is a little bit different journey, if you will. Can you kind of walk us through the journey of developing this boat, you know, like from I guess it was when the owner had the idea to, you know, when it was ready to to build. Yeah. So the boat, you know, I said was was kind of a custom ordered boat. So the way that that development generally goes is that a potential client would put out a request for information request for quote. And then, you know, we will have our initial meetings, we will start work working through, you know, what are what are the desires of the vote, what are, you know, any size restrictions? So this boat was limited in length overall. Due to the width of the mother ship, they did not want to vote that was wider or longer than the mother ship was wide, so if they come up alongside, there is there is not restrictions there when the boats in port. So there is those types of contractual. Specifications that will be developed, and then this 1, we worked quite closely with the crew to kind of work through what they want and how they wanted electrical systems, arranged mechanical systems arranged just for how they would use and maintain the boat because with large yachts like this, you will have a full time set of engineers that are on the boat. So they generally have their preferences of, you know, the the types of systems that they want on board the brands. So all of that really plays into kind of an end user experience that is is better for that owner in the long term with the crew being happy with, you know, how things are laid out where they are laid out at the service ability aspects of the product. And so and that is that is kind of an area that I really like to focus on is making sure that the end user, which you know, is not necessarily the guy that is is writing the check. You know how they truly need to be able to use the boat? You know, it is the client. The owner of the yacht is going to come in. He is going to use the boat a few times a year. But the crew has to live with it every day and and also be able to maintain it on a daily basis. So making that as easy as possible for them really generates a lot of goodwill and good business referrals because it is still very much an industry that relies on word of mouth of, hey, we bought this boat from from these guys, this designer, we really like how they set up the systems or how the boat rides versus, you know, your traditional kind of online marketing or, you know, website driven traffic, which is, you know, much, much harder to do with a custom product.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we know that. Well, I mean, referrals are so much more welcome than trying to churn out something that somebody just pops happens to find your website and, yeah, let us do business with them.
Yeah. Absolutely.
What was the timeline like for developing this?
So it was relatively relatively short timeline. It was about 18 months from, you know, first meetings to the boat being in the water ready to go, which for for a very small team on the build side is a pretty tight, pretty tight timeline.
Yeah. Was it tight because the owner wanted it that tight or?
Yeah, they had specific timelines that they wanted to be able to use the boat for some various trips that they had planned and and they were not happy with the previous boat that they were utilizing for this function, which was just a traditional center console fishing boat that that was not kind of designed around their needs.
Sure. What is a typical timeline like if they are not pressing you, what what would a typical.
That that can really depend on the product. So, you know, a boat for a large custom or a large production builder, I should say you are going to be looking at kind of a 2 year time frame, you know, maybe up to 36 months from initial sketch to reaching full rate production. The the custom side of the business tends to be a lot more compressed because you are working around, you know, somebody is timeline for when they want their their new toy, which which is usually around, hey, I want it for for this regatta or this, you know, my 16th birthday or, you know, whatever whatever the whim of that of that person is and and a lot of it is kind of a whim, it is it is not necessarily driven by a very concrete. You know, hey, we have we have got to hit model year 27 production. So we need to start on this day and end on this day.
Right?
It is it is a lot more esoteric than that for for these C projects. Sure, yeah. So you mentioned your team several times, tell us a little bit more about them, how many people were involved in developing this, what were their roles, etc. So this project was myself and another y designer who also runs his own firm, Patricio Fries. So it was the 2 of us as the main and then he ran a small team of 2 or 3 designers on his staff as well. You know, since this project was done, you know, I brought a few people in house myself, folks on the industrial side of industrial design side of things more just to kind of fill out and that and give it its own dedicated focus rather than, you know, trying to wear all the hats.
Sure. With all the products we have helped design, there is always been something that comes up that bump in the road, so to speak, what was the biggest challenge in the design of this boat?
On this boat, believe it or not, it was a set of hinges for for a door, so this boat has has some very custom hinges for the dive doors just due to some geometric restrictions because of how things were were laid out to kind of accommodate all of the the pieces that the the crew wanted on the boat, so we had to design and get manufactured some very, very custom, very fancy sliding and pivoting hinges, which also kind of came up at the 11th hour as well. So that was a bit of a scramble of this 1 last thing to get the product into the clients hands.
Interesting, so. I know we talked about this a little bit, but for the people that are watching this that do not know about the the boat industry, what CAD package do you use to design the boat?
Yeah, so most of the marine industry, at least on the small book side of things, tends to run rhino and then the myriad of plugins that rhino and the various developers offer. So, you know, Rhino THREED ORCA THREED for the naval architecture aspects of hydrostatics , weight studies that sort of thing. Or a THREED CFD, which utilizes a CFD code called some for the CFD side of things, and then, you know, the the engineering side is various calculators and whatnot that have that have been built out over time. By and large, the sub 100 ft side of yacht design tends to be very rhino driven just because of the surfacing capabilities. And that is a very large part of what you are developing when you are developing 1 of these products versus you know, some some of the.
Yeah.
Products that you see on the automotive side of things or maybe more of the the mechanical only side of side of the product development ?
Sure, yeah, it is interesting. So, I have known about Rhino forever and I have always viewed it as it is. It is that sculpting, surfacing software, right? And then of course after our first conversation , I kind of looked into it a little bit more because I was actually surprised like really the yacht industry boat industry uses rhino and then come to find out they built rhino for the yacht industry or the boating industry. So that was to learn.
Yeah, yeah. It is something where, you know, there there is very few straight lines on a boat. So the the more free form capability you have, the easier it is and and rhino.
Sure.
You know, also obviously has a very strong value proposition. You know, where you can set up a fairly advanced suite of tools for, you know, less than $10,000.
Right, right. And that yeah, that is like like you said, multiple extensions and things added in and yeah, pretty amazing. So what is it I assume you do not design all this in rhino and then just hand it over and have it be manufactured . There is got to be some prototyping involved. What does that process look like?
So prototyping with with a custom product like this, you are you are trying to capture as much of that risk in, you know, CFD runs and just good foundational structural design. So those are those are the 2 areas. With this sort of product that can bite you, you know, 1 the boat does not run or perform as expected. So utilizing CFD to mitigate that risk and understand the characteristics of the boat and then on the structural design side of things, you know, utilizing standards that have been developed for kind of this class of boat, which are, you know, pretty, pretty formulaic so that your, you know, like like I said, mitigating that risk you can get into. You know, very detailed finite element analysis and really go for the nth degree if you are if you are looking to shave every pound of weight out of the boat that you possibly can, but with this particular product that that was not really the goal of the owner or the builder. It was more, you know, have a robust boat that you are you are not going to worry about damaging and the the class rules that are that are in place for high speed craft and the size range are pretty, pretty robust once you get into open ocean certifications . But on the prototyping side, with with a custom 1 off boat, it is truly a 1 off boat, so there there is no prototype, it is you have got you have got to do it right on the first on the first go round.
It. Yeah, I was going to say, so you build the prototype, and if something is wrong, you build another prototype, I assume.
Yeah. And well and it is, you know, that that would be pretty catastrophic in this in this sort of scenario and that and that is a lot very true with most of the marine industry there is, you know, on the higher volume side of things, there is prototyping and just like you would see in the automotive world. But when you are talking about custom 1 off yachts ships, that sort of thing, they are truly and, you know, if you do not get it right the first time you are
They are prototypes.
You better figure out a solution on the fly.
Sure, sure. What about smaller things like Bezels and, you know, covers and things like that? I mean, again, you it truly is a prototype, but I assume you do not get everything a 100 % every time there is got to be some rebuild once in a while.
Yeah, and and there is there is always the the rework that occurs, you know, the the you know, maybe the part does not line up quite as you imagined it would or something is shifted or twisted or, you know, whatever the case may be and and there is rework in that aspect, but you try to capture as much of that as you can on the front end. And the marine industry also heavily relies on stock components . So your your dashes are all standard glass cockpit pieces just like you would see in a plane. So you have got you have got a rectangle that you are cutting out in a known piece that that goes in there.
Right. Right.
And so that helps mitigate some of that product development risk on a custom project like this. Whereas like I was saying, I am on the high volume production boats, you would tend to see prototyping occurring on things like dashboards and bezels and and full full size prototypes of the whole end product as well. It is just when you when you are talking a custom boat, there is. It truly is a 1 off piece.
Yeah, yeah, interesting. Switching gears a little bit, kind of starting to wrap up. What are kind of some of the trends you are seeing in your little world of product development ?
So on the custom side, the the desire to be as as green and sustainable as possible has become quite, quite a concentration . 1 of the kind of the preeminent large yacht builders has just launched the first a fuel cell powered yacht. You know, so there there is goals that vary kind of as you scale up in size and price to be able to hit net zero by 2030 or as close to net zero as possible. Which you know that that is 1 side of the industry and then kind of as you scale back into more the production side of the industry or just the smaller, you know, 20 to 50 ft size range of boats, automation, Internet of Things connectivity are playing a larger and larger role in that product, you know, kind of tracking. You know, kind of 5 to 10 years behind the automotive industry is kind of a pretty good metric of where kind of your large volume boat builders are from from a technology standpoint. So that is starting to become a very regular thing that you are seeing more and more of and then electrification obviously since those boats also tend to rely on power plants that are based around an automotive internal combustion engine. So as that becomes something that is more and more talked about being phased out on the automotive side, the more that. Bringing in electrification into the marine industry is is having to be looked at, but there is very real differences in how a marine application has to work. So those are kind of things that are very much at the forefront of kind of the smaller end of the spectrum, you know, how do you safely? You know, handle electrification in a boat from a battery management standpoint, powering standpoint and then also the recharge just having that much power around the water is obviously inherently problematic .
Sure.
So there is there is quite a bit of development going on there. And then from the naval architecture standpoint, figuring out how to. Better power or better utilize that power density since you are you are obviously moving through a much denser fluid than than a car has to deal with. And you and you do not have the luxury of a geared power train.
Yeah.
So we are seeing the adoption of more and more hydrofoil technology. And the control systems that go along with that as well.
The SP.
So there is there is quite a quite a broad range of product development that is that is going on in the marine industry right now.
Yeah.
And over the next 5 years it will be interesting to see kind of which direction the the industry trends towards. To keep keep the products profitable for the manufacturers as well as palpable from a price standpoint for the end user.
Sure, sure. These questions will show my ignorance a little bit, but it seems to me that when you put the batteries in the boat, weight would be a big factor. And then the other thing with like electric vehicles, you pick up all kinds of torque and the boat does not need that right or does it?
Well, you know, you can you can obviously design the propeller to handle the torque loads, but the 1 thing that you can not get around is the weight difference and that is that is kind of where the working through how to most efficiently handle that from a from a naval architectures perspective of, you know, how do I get this boat to move through the water with the least amount of added drag as possible becomes more and more important because suddenly you no longer have a variable weight of. Your gasoline tank, you have a fixed weight of. You know I am I am always carting around 7,000 pounds worth of batteries to get my boat to go. So how do I how do I offset that and mitigate it?
Is the obviously it is going to vary depending on size and number of engines, but is the offset somewhat equal like if you had a 4 engine boat with a full tank of gasoline, is that comparable to what the battery pack might be or is there any equilibrium in there?
No, no. Unfortunately, you know, the the weight you can kind of get relatively close, but the power density obviously is nowhere near the same and that is that is where in lies the problem with with electrified watercraft and it kind of hits the the increased focus on on hydrofoils and other ways to reduce drag in a very significant way. Because once you get a foil born you lose, you know, 70 to 80 % of the induced drag that you would normally see from from the water, but then you have obviously created a whole whole new set of technical challenges of now you have got something that is quite literally fine, so.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, very interesting. So you have been doing this for a while and reflecting on all the challenges and successes and everything you have encountered developing products. What words of wisdom would you share with somebody looking to make a big impact in the product development industry?
Well, specifically with with the marine industry, it is an industry that if if you are passionate about it is going to require much more than a 40 h work week to be successful at it because the teams are generally quite small and the projects like we talked about are generally fairly short timelines. So, you know, the the experiences that I have gotten to have, the places I have gotten to travel, the people I have gotten to meet, you know, I I would not have gotten those working for, you know, a large OEM automotive manufacturer. I also have not have not had very many 40 h weeks in my career either. So, you know, it is 1 of those as long as you are willing to work like , you can be you can be quite successful and and make make a big impact because the teams are generally small so you can really have an Outsized impact of what you get to develop and what you get to do at a relatively early age in your career.
Yeah. Yeah, that sounds awesome. This has been great. Is there anything else you want to mention in regards to the product or product development in general or boat design n general?
If you want more information about what we are doing, you can look up on the web at M. W. Y. Z. Comm and then on all the socials with with that same handle of M W yacht design.
Cool is the boat on MW design that we talked about?
Yes. Yes, it is. It is. It is actually the cover when you when you open up the website.
Yeah, awesome, yeah, awesome. I will I will be sure to put that in the show notes.
Absolutely.
So, yeah, I appreciate you doing this, Matthew.
Yeah, thank you very much, Troy. It is a pleasure.