As with any sort of qualification or classification, whatever you pick cannot and will never tell the whole story. For the sake of simplicity in explaining what powerboating is about we classify into four categories. We distinguish between V-hull boats including Rigid Inflatable Boats or RIB’s, Catamaran or tunnel boats, Hydro plane boats and Personal Water Craft or PWC. The first three categories are up here on PowerboatPro in sections as diverse as news and team sections as well as features. For PWC we hope to soon be able to bring you more news. We already have a strong following with JetSki and Aqua Scooter enthusiast on our FaceBook Page and we soon hope to be able to service them better here on our portal as well.
V-Hulls are boats that are designed when looking at them from directly at the front, to look as V-shapes. Further towards the back the hull will typically flatten and these boats are designes to skim the waves. Remember that we are talking about powerboats here, not boats in general. What you want least in a powerboat is water drag. So all of the boats we will discuss here are designed in one way or another to go over the water as much as possible. A V-hull would be your hull of choosing if you had to cross rougher seas at speed. Because the bow has a V-shape, this sort of boat is capable of cutting through waves on impact. The V-hull boats are represented in the UIM P1 World Championship section, the Powerboat P1 section and the Powerboat P1 SuperStock section. Have a look in the articles and pictures there and you will see what we mean with V–hulls. RIB’s are also a V-hull boat with the top of the V being inflatable and flexible when the boat encounters a wave. But the basis principles behind the design of the boat are the same.
Catamaran
The basic design of the catamaran or tunnel boat is that is has two smaller V-shaped hulls with a flat connection between them. This design reduces water drag because the smaller V-shaped hull, although there is two of them, usually displace less water than one bigger V-hull. In principle this means the basis design should be faster because less drag means more speed. In flat conditions as air and water can freely pass through ‘the tunnel’ this would be true most of the times. However, in rougher conditions when water starts hitting the top of the tunnel, drag can increase in the blink of an eye and get a lot of speed out of the boat. So what boat is fastest depends a lot on what conditions are present. Catamaran powerboats you can find in our UIM Class 1 section as well as with the Maritimo Racing and JBS Racing teams.
To be fair, the Hydroplanes are a form of Catamaran of Tunnel boat. The main difference is that in the design of a Hydroplane the designers specifically work with a wing shape design on the front of the boat that has the same properties as a wing on an airoplane does. This wing type design improves bouyancy when the hull is in the water and improves stability to the part of the boat that is out of the water once the boat is in plane. These types of boats can be found in our UIM F1 H2O section, F2 section and are featured with HRT Hughes Racing Team.
All designs we discussed so far are powered by either an inboard or outboard motor and are propelled through the water by a propeller at the back end of the hull.
Personal Water Craft (PWC)
The other type of boat we discuss here it the PWC or Personal Water Craft. These are smaller types of hulls, designed to be more stable at speed than they are when idle and to ride the top surface of the water. PWC’s come in two main types; the ones you stand up on, usually called JetSki’s and the ones you sit down on, usually called WaterScooter, Aqua Bike or Aqua Scooter.
