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Comment by marktolson | Hacker News Reader

I'm no boat designer but this seems like such an inefficient hull design. This is supposed to ride low which makes it a displacement hull but the transom / stern would create a huge low pressure area behind the boat hence a very high drag coefficient. Is there something I am missing here?

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i'm no boat designer either, but I think what they've done is taken a normal boat and converted it, reducing the number of problems they need to solve?

Which I get, but why not choose a displacement hull that's designed to ride through the water as opposed to the over it? Even fewer problems to solve. They could use a smaller, quieter engine with no stern drive I/O leg needed (more reliable, less moving parts etc). My only theory is that these boats may be designed to plane (once the ballast has been dumped) to get away from threats at higher speeds.

The people making these are “boat designers” but they are not maritime nautical engineers. They are also working clandestinely and optimizing for cargo capacity and stealth, and likely working as fast as they can.

And most maritime nautical engineers could make good money doing legit work. So the labor pool to go out to a random jungle to risk your life, worry about being executed, worry about being arrested by law enforcement, and figuring out how to launder whatever money you make is probably pretty small.

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