Hunt and Hunt

Enlarge Photo

Photo by: John Bildahl

Hunt has been designing deep-V boats for commercial and military use for about 30 years, and the lessons the team has learned from these extremely demanding applications are often incorporated into Hunt Yachts’ production boats and the design firm’s custom pleasure boats, such as the lovely 55-foot Whistler built by Lyman-Morse in 2008-2009 (read the review here) — and vice versa. To demonstrate the importance of this give-and-take, C. Raymond Hunt Associates and Hunt Yachts arranged to have Blue Moon, a Hunt 52 yacht, join us at the pilot stations in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

The facilities for the Virginia Pilot Association and the Association of Maryland Pilots are cheek-by-jowl in Lynnhaven Bay just around the corner from the Lynnhaven Inlet. Although the Virginia pilots have been using the Hunt 51 Virginia Class boats for more than 20 years, the Maryland pilots didn’t commission their first Hunt-designed 53-footers until 2002. Known as the Chesapeake Class, the type also has found favor in Texas, Massachusetts, Delaware and Florida.



From the sheer line to the keel, the 53-foot Chesapeake Class is remarkably similar to the Hunt 52 yacht, and all of the magic takes place below the waterline. “These boats handle so well,” said Capt. Mitchell. The constant deadrise that C. Raymond Hunt drew into his early deep-V hulls no longer applies. All of the firm’s current hulls have a warped-plane bottom, meaning that the degree of deadrise changes gradually from the 55 to 60 degrees at the entry, to a relatively modest 20 to 21 degrees at the transom.

“If you’ve got a boat with constant deadrise,” said Winn Willard, director of Hunt Yachts and vice president of the design firm, “it’ll adopt one trim angle at almost any speed. A warped bottom causes the boat to rise and fall more gradually.”