Albatross Marine Design

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NOTE: WE ARE DESIGN OFFICE. WE DO NOT SELL BOATS. We design elegant and practical boats for the sea, not just glamour toys for marinas.

21/09/2026

Our OASIS houseboat is a European Product Design Award 2026 Winner! 🏆

This 20-metre houseboat is designed for life on the water, gatherings with friends and open-air parties. Our goal was to create a clean, distinctive design that stands out and turns heads.

Proud to see that work recognised with an international design award.

PS And for the sceptics—and the idiots quick to dismiss it as “just another AI image”: OASIS is a fully developed vessel concept, backed by a detailed 3D model, layouts and preliminary engineering calculations, drawing on our experience in design and engineering.

20/09/2026

F2 design has entered service in the beautiful historic centre of Nizhny Novgorod, operated by a major Russian river tour operator.

This 70-passenger sightseeing vessel features battery-electric propulsion, with sufficient battery capacity for a full day of operation. Quiet cruising with no exhaust emissions at the point of use makes it particularly well suited to tourism along the city’s historic waterfront.

The vessel combines a steel hull with a composite superstructure. Our Thai team contributed as a subcontractor, designing both structures.

F2 is classed by the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping as an inland navigation vessel and designed for demanding conditions, including overwintering afloat, frozen into river ice. This is a serious engineering project supported by calculations, design documentation and classification approval.

A useful example for those building and operating dirt-cheap passenger boats in Asia—including Thailand—without a proper design and seemingly without a clue about safety, style or efficiency. If your business model depends on skipping the engineering, passengers are carrying the risk.

That is not our approach. We believe passenger vessels should be attractive, safe and economically efficient throughout their working lives. Cheap construction is easy. Good design and engineering deliver lasting value.

09/09/2026

Today, AMD team members are giving an open lecture on small craft design for naval architecture students at Kasetsart University in Thailand.

Working with young people is an essential part of our profession. We want to share our experience and meet enthusiastic future designers and naval architects — people eager to make boats better, more beautiful, safer and more reliable, and to develop new types of craft.

Learning firsthand from practising designers provides an important complement to the theoretical foundations taught at university. For graduates, entering professional practice can come as a shock: many things look different when working on real projects, with real constraints and responsibilities.

Introducing students to the practical side of design early helps bridge that gap. It also gives their theoretical studies context, helping them better understand what they learn and how to apply it.

At AMD, we work with both design students and naval architecture students, sharing practical experience and helping the next generation find their way into the profession.

08/09/2026

LIGHTER COMPOSITE BOATS START WITH BETTER ENGINEERING

One of the main advantages of composites in boatbuilding is the opportunity to reduce structural weight—and translate that saving into higher speed, better energy efficiency, greater payload or longer range.

But every weight-saving decision should be assessed against three criteria:

• Weight
• Cost
• Engineering risk

What do we mean by engineering risk? The possibility that the finished structure will not meet its targets because of incorrect load assumptions, calculation errors, manufacturing defects, failure in service or impractical repairs.

Reducing weight can increase cost and risk. But it does not have to. With the right approach, a structure can become both lighter and less expensive while maintaining the required safety margins.

Where do these opportunities come from? We group them into four areas.

1️⃣ MATERIALS — M

Sandwich construction and high-modulus fibres are two important options.

Sandwich panels provide high bending stiffness at low weight. Higher-modulus reinforcement can reduce weight where stiffness governs the design. The benefit depends on the application: material selection must also account for strength, impact resistance, durability, joints and repairability.

2️⃣ ENGINEERING, ANALYSIS AND DESIGN RULES — E

This group is often underestimated.

First, select the appropriate regulatory and classification framework for the vessel’s intended service. Applicable requirements and the approval body’s experience with composites can strongly influence design freedom. Conservative rules with limited provision for composite-specific analysis may constrain an otherwise efficient design.

Second, choose the right calculation methods.

There is a substantial difference between simplified calculations based on quasi-isotropic assumptions and detailed laminate analysis supported by finite element modelling. Properly applied and validated, advanced methods help engineers tailor fibre orientations, thicknesses, stiffeners and connections to actual loads.

This requires more engineering effort upfront. Yet it can reduce both structural weight and construction cost by eliminating unnecessary material.

3️⃣ MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY — T

Hand lay-up, vacuum infusion, resin transfer moulding (RTM) and autoclave moulding offer different combinations of investment, process control and achievable laminate quality.

Better control of resin content and consolidation can improve weight efficiency and consistency. More demanding processes may require additional tooling, equipment and expertise, although total production cost does not necessarily increase.

The key is matching the process to the structure, production volume and yard’s capabilities.

4️⃣ STRUCTURAL DETAILING — D

Good structural detailing creates opportunities before material upgrades are even considered.

Use hull and deck curvature to provide stiffness. Create clear, continuous load paths. Optimise panel spans and stiffener arrangements. Avoid unnecessary joints and duplicated components.

Where appropriate, integrate interior elements into the load-bearing structure—provided their connections, durability and future removal are considered from the start.

So which approaches offer the best balance?

Our Pareto analysis—comparing weight, cost and engineering risk—identified several particularly promising directions for the cases we evaluated:

✅ Sandwich construction
✅ Vacuum infusion
✅ Appropriate design rules combined with rigorous structural analysis

The first two are familiar. The third deserves much more attention.

Our design office specialises in composite structural analysis. We also develop our own software for these calculations.

We see higher engineering expenditure as an investment that can pay for itself through lower material consumption, lower structural weight and, in suitable projects, lower overall construction cost.

Unfortunately, engineering is still sometimes treated as an avoidable expense. In parts of Southeast Asia, including Thailand, we have observed composite boats whose weight and structural detailing raise concerns about the engineering behind them. Cracking or damage early in service should prompt investigation of the design, manufacturing quality and actual operating loads.

Installing engines beyond the power specified in the design without reassessing the structure adds another concern: increased speed can expose the hull to loads it was never designed to withstand.

Saving on engineering can become very expensive during construction—and even more expensive at sea.

Invest in proper design. Work with specialists. Your boat should not become an experiment funded by your repair budget, especially when people’s safety is involved.

01/09/2026

15m ASV1500W design - composite ferry cat for 54 passengers. Ready, proven design.

25/08/2026

IDIOT CLASSIFICATORS IN ACTION

Classification societies continue to surprise and entertain us with their unconventional approaches to ship design.

Our client is building a 15-metre excursion catamaran in India. It is a proven design that has been in serial production in Thailand for several years. Since the vessel carries more than 12 passengers, the Indian Register of Shipping (IRS) required it to be classed as a passenger vessel. For some reason, the client also decided to deal with IRS directly…

And that is where the fun began.

An IRS surveyor took the general arrangement plan and drew in red seven watertight bulkheads in each hull. This inevitably creates numerous watertight doors: at cabin entrances, inside toilets and even directly in front of a berth. To get into bed, a passenger would literally have to crawl through a dogged watertight door.

Then IRS remembered that, according to its rules for composite vessels, frame spacing must be 500 mm—and demanded that this also be implemented. Just like on a nineteenth-century wooden ship!

There is another question: why does a classification surveyor believe that he is entitled to dictate to the builder and naval architect exactly how the vessel should be arranged and constructed—and to “draw the bulkheads in red” himself?

When a surveyor starts personally arranging bulkheads and doors without understanding what vessel layout is, what purpose it serves or how it relates to the vessel’s intended operation, this is no longer classification oversight. It is an attempt by a would-be engineer to replace the naval architect.

Why not formulate a proper functional requirement: ensure that the vessel remains afloat after flooding of the specified compartment?

For example, on passenger versions of similar catamarans built for Australia, we provided emergency buoyancy by filling the double-bottom spaces with foam. But nobody had previously thought of turning cabins and toilets into a chain of dogged compartments resembling a submarine.

The solutions imposed here completely destroy the vessel’s habitability, functionality and very purpose as an excursion catamaran. Such comments reveal a total lack of understanding of real shipbuilding and vessel operation on the part of the IRS surveyors issuing them.

Sometimes it seems that certain classification surveyors are grown in vacuum flasks—far away from shipyards, design offices and common sense.

The best way to fight this kind of classification absurdity is to make it public. So have a look, have a laugh and share it.

The cartoon will also be sent to the management of the Indian Register of Shipping together with a covering letter. Let them see what their employees’ requirements look like when applied not merely to a drawing, but to a real vessel.

Because sometimes replacing such employees is easier than trying to cure this kind of thinking.

22/08/2026

Our 20m houseboat design...

07/08/2026

A Yacht Means Quality

In Asia, calling a company “Yachts” or “Yachting” does not make its boats yachts. Some vessels sold under such names are little more than fibreglass boxes—not genuine luxury products and certainly not automatically reliable, seaworthy craft.

A yacht is more than a boat. It is a cultural phenomenon and a luxury object with distinct aesthetic, emotional, and image-defining qualities.

Its geometry must be beautifully resolved from every angle—not only in a student-level side-view sketch. A yacht is not a collection of flat composite panels with an awkward layout, incomprehensible ergonomics, and construction defects visible even in promotional photographs.

Yacht quality means:

— refined geometry and proportions;— flawless glossy surfaces;— intelligent layout and ergonomics;— professional engineering and reliable systems;— genuine seaworthiness and safety;— attention to every detail.

Quality new yachts do not explode in marinas. They do not sink at anchor 300 metres from an island. Such incidents raise serious questions about design, engineering, construction, and quality control.

True yacht quality cannot be created in a rush or sold at an unbelievably low price. If a “yacht” is suspiciously cheap, the compromises are usually hidden in its design, materials, systems, safety, or production culture.

Our company creates yacht design and engineering for leading international manufacturers, including projects developed to meet European CE certification requirements.

Sophisticated geometry. Quality surfaces. Professional engineering. Genuine yacht quality on the water.

03/07/2026

Proven design of 7m RIB with infatable D-tube, composite.

01/07/2026

When people with no practical understanding or common sense are allowed to write/implement regulations, small boats end up covered in fire extinguishers.

A 14-meter workboat with just two crew members.

According to one classification society's interpretation, it should carry multiple large portable extinguishers, two independent fire pumps, and additional firefighting equipment—occupying valuable working space on a vessel where every square meter matters.

The question is simple:

Why does a boat with only two crew members need two fire pumps?

Safety is essential. But regulations should improve safety without destroying the functionality of the vessel.

Good engineering is about balancing risk, practicality, and common sense—not blindly adding equipment because a rule can be interpreted that way.

Rules should protect people, not make well-designed boats impossible to use.

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29/13 M9 Sukhumvit Road
Pattaya
20150

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http://amdesign.co.th/, https://albatrossmarinedesign.com/

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