DASHING AHEAD
How do you get the next generation into boating? Some leading boat designers have ideas.
The future of boating is here. What will the next wave of technology and design bring to boaters? Legendary designer Peter Granata has some bold ideas.
RRemember when we used a telephone just to call someone? In those days, if we wanted to listen to music, take photos, plan a road trip, crunch some numbers, look at local restaurant options and do our own fact-checking, our available toolbox included a radio, camera, map, calculator, the Yellow Pages and a set of encyclopedias. To have access to all of those things through one device, right at our fingertips? Unthinkable. Might as well turn on Star Trek reruns. Now, of course, we can do all that and so much more. The smartphones we hold in our hands are more powerful than the Apollo 11 guidance computers, the mid-1980s Cray-2 Supercomputer, and even our fancy 21st-century laptops. They also are powerful extensions of ourselves, and we seek to have this same sense of connectedness in all of our living spaces, from our homes to our vehicles. Now we’re looking more closely at our boats. What’s next?
A NEW VISION
We like to think of boats in the future as having some sort of spaceshiplike design, such as the one shown here from Peter Granata. If you took away the outboards, maybe someone could mistake it for something Elon Musk might launch into space for his purported Mars expeditions. But it’s hard to envision boats changing too much in outward appearances beyond today’s hull forms, which are based on centuries of trial and error, as well as modern advancements in understanding hydrodynamics. The future, to borrow from a popular saying, is in the details.
Many boat and engine companies have already implemented technology that’s designed to appeal to the next generation of boaters. We’ve been to press introductions where we’ve seen self-docking boats ease in and out of a slip without assistance from the helm. We’ve run countless boats with joysticks that help alleviate the crunch factor while docking. Fly-by-wire steering technology that seemlessly integrates the helm with the engine and other NMEA technologies is also nothing new.
These are the types of things that designers are trying to combine into one unified dash, one that is so simple for the end user that it will make boating more relatable to today’s generation and beyond.
WWhen we talk about the boat of the future, we imagine revolutionary hull designs, new engine configurations, clever floor plans, and even the promise of better batteries and electric power. Some contemporary yacht designers, however, believe the most exciting leap forward involves reimagining something so obvious, we just might miss it: the dashboard. In nauticalspeak, it’s the helm. Get ready to level up the way you communicate with every part of your boat and how you experience your on-water lifestyle. designers. He’s produced an array of award-winning designs and patented more than a dozen ideas. This magazine named him one of the top four game-changers in marine design (boatingmag.com/ photos/game-changers).
Boats weren’t his first love, however. In the beginning, he was a car guy.
When Granata was 21 years old, he came up with a patent for a power seat that would allow the driver to push a button to readjust the seat’s position. He hired a Japanese artist to create six hand-painted
brochures, and he drove to Detroit to sell his idea.
Now-defunct American Motors allowed the young innovator go through his full presentation before telling him they didn’t make power seats. Granata went on to Chrysler, General Motors and Ford. Ford bit, promising to issue a purchase order for 50,000 units, which the company rescinded a few days later.
Although his patented design didn’t make it in the Motor City, Granata says he gained a valuable lesson that has served him well ever since.
“Observation is everything,” he explains. “I loved cars, so I watched people get into their vehicles, adjust their slide seats, and use their pushbutton radios. Now, of course, power seats are everywhere.”
Granata’s first boat design came out in 1974, and it launched his career. What remains constant is Granata’s most important consideration: people. And that’s where the power of observation comes in.
“You have to study them, how they interact and how they want to use the boat,” he explains. “People have to come first.”
Keeping that in mind, the designer created a new dashboard that essentially serves as a user interface for a hypothetical 35-foot twin-engine cruiser. Yes, it’s a helm, but perhaps not one you have seen before—not on the water, at least.
To be fair, boatbuilders in partnership with engine and marine electronics brands are already moving in this direction. Case in point: the Volvo Penta Glass Cockpit system developed by Garmin in collaboration with Volvo Penta for helms on Volvo-powered