©Unknown
This picture comes from googling wooden sailboat construction on the web. I have flipped horizontally the original picture, enhanced the colors and cropped it on the top and the bottom to adapt it to our website. The picture represents a medium scale two-mast wooden classic sailboat like many of us have in their living rooms. Warm colors and materials that remind us of the glorious past of sail navigation and make us dream of freedom in the wild open ocean… For many centuries there has been little improvement in boat design. Mostly in hull design to bring better hydrodynamics into play and improve sailing clothes and fabrics, with wood as the predominant construction material.

©Unknown
This picture comes from googling wooden sailboat on the web. I have enhanced the colors of the original photo and cropped a little bit on the top and the bottom to adapt it to our website. The picture represents a real scale wooden sailboat close reaching under full sails. If my information is right, it is the Summers and Payne 95ft Yawl Artemis. It is an iconic image of the traditional sailboat full of ropes and requiring a non negligent amount of crew members in order to make her cruise in an optimum way.

Both pictures are witnesses of the long history of navigation and the little changes that have taken place in boat design. Artemis still navigates with reasonable performance after a little bit more than a century since its construction back in 1900. I believe that the quest for fast transportation of people and the arrival of aircrafts are undoubtlessly responsible for the lack of development in boat design. Once the airplanes took the lead, boats were relegated to pleasure voyages where time and energy where no longer a critical variable.