Tank Tested

Boating feels far away. It’s a chilly February morning in Hoboken, New Jersey, and it’s still a few months before we’re back on the water in the Northeast, a few months before the wind is whistling in our ears as our boats pound through familiar Atlantic chop. We’re not listening to the wind and the waves now, just the constant hum in the Davidson Laboratory at the Stevens Institute of Technology, the sound of mechanical procedures at work. These are the procedures that underpin many of the aspects of boating we know and love; this is the behind-the-scenes design process that is often forgotten once the boat hits the water.

I wouldn’t normally expect to meet a yacht designer and his client on a college campus, but the Davidson Lab offers a service that is a rare find in the digital era. Plastic and wooden hull models line the walls, stacked on top of each other like coffee mugs crowded in a cabinet, representing decades of industry development. In the center of the lab is a tank that spans the entire length of the