Types Of Hulls

The hulls, or bottoms, of boats come in two basic styles: planing hulls and displacement hulls. Planing hulls are designed to ride fast on the surface of the water when enough power is supplied by the boat's motor. Displacement hulls are pushed through the water, creating wake as they go, when their motor is fully engaged. Planing hulls are extremely fast on flat water surfaces but cannot handle even slightly choppy waves. The four main boat hull types are flat-bottom, round-bottom, vee-bottom and multi-hull bottom.

  1. Flat-Bottom Boats

    • Flat-bottom boats are known as "go-fast" boats as they can easily skim the surface of the water at a high rate of speed. Flat-bottom boats do better on calm waters such as lakes and streams because they can get up on a plane much more easily than other types of hulls. Due to their design, flat-bottom hull boats are not often found on the ocean because of the pounding the occupants would receive, especially during a rough day at sea. Jon boats and some small high-speed runabout boats are examples of flat-bottom boats

    Vee-Bottom Boats

    • Vee-bottom boats are generally crafts with large motors that are designed to go fast through even rough seas. The vee-bottom hull is designed to cut through the waves without much resistance, but requires larger horsepower motors to achieve this. Vee-bottom hulls, sometimes referred to as deep-V hulls, are a hybrid between flat-bottom hulls and round-bottom hulls. Fishing boats, large speedboats and yachts are all examples of vee-bottom boats.

    Round-Bottom Boats

    • Round-bottom hulls are able to move through the water without too much resistance at moderate speeds, but end up having a lot of side-to-side motion in rough seas. Boats that fall under this category include canoes, kayaks, sailboats and trawlers. Canoes are sometimes set up with either a singular or dual outriggers to counterbalance the rocking motion and increase stability. Sailboats are usually equipped with a long keel set deep into the water to help with balance issues.

    Multi-Hull Boats

    • Multi-hull boats are wide boats that have both elements of a vee-bottom boat and a round bottom boat. Vessels that fall under this category include catamarans, trimarans, pontoon boats and some houseboats. These boats are designed to be extremely stable, yet have the ability to cut through the water easily a moderate rate of speed.