The Kspline

The kspline is a new curve designed for parametric modelling of ship and yacht hulls. It is easy on computing resources, helping the designer concentrate on the design instead of the computer.

French naval architect Jérémie Raymond used the kspline to develop a velocity performance prediction system for planing sailboats. To my knowledge, this is the first systematic study of planing sailboat performance. Previous sailboat studies do not investigate planing, and powerboat studies are useless for yacht designers because powerboats do not heel and because their powerplants do not fluctuate.

I wrote about Jérémie's project in Ship and Boat International*. Click to read the article.

I described the technical details of the kspline in a paper presented to the third High-Performance Yacht Design Conference in Auckland in December 2008.

If you're interested in the Kspline, email me at

* Reprinted with permission from Royal Institution of Naval Architects from Ship & Boat
International March/April 2010.