Coty Jones Martin Hardy’s crew at Composite Yacht (Trappe, Maryland) shift the freshly cured carbon composite hull of the 55’4″ (16.9m) sportfisherman Skinny Witch between halves of the vacuum-compatible split mold.
In 1974, 17-year-old Martin Hardy gathered his pizza shop earnings and joined a couple of classmates on an open-ended trip to Europe and Great Britain. He reckoned that a thousand dollars would fund the adventure. After a couple of months on trains and hitchhiking, living on bread and cheese, he ran out of cash somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. He somehow made his way to the hamlet of Scoraig, situated between two sea lochs and reachable only by boat along the rocky northwestern coast. He found work patching up the essential double-ended, lapstrake boats the Scoraigians used to cross Little Loch Broom to and from the only road in or out. Lessons from his grandfather, a patternmaker at the U.S. Navy Yard, served him well, and the Scoraig residents took him in, fed him, and paid him what they could. It took U.K. government officials about six months to discover that he was there working without a visa. Two agents made the 25-mile (40.2-km) road trip out to catch a boat across the loch, address the situation, and give him a year to get out. In that time, he discovered just what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
Returning to Maryland, he discussed his intent with his parents, and his mom soon passed on a magazine article profiling John Swain, the renowned traditional boatbuilder in Cambridge, Maryland. Hardy hitched a ride 90 miles (144.8 km) east across Chesapeake Bay to Swain’s shop, where he was put to work scraping barnacles and rolling bottom paint on rugged wooden workboats. Eventually he was promoted to boatwright, helping convert old oyster buy boats and skipjacks into yachts, and building custom boats and even a strip-planked racing sailboat.
A benefactor of the 1978 building of the replica ship Maryland Dove noticed his work and hired him to build the ship’s tender, which he did in his backyard, his first complete project.
Subsequently Hardy worked at a nearby boatyard and railway hammering copper bottom sheathing on supply vessels for winter duty and did various repair and maintenance work on pilot and commercial fishing boats. He got married, started a family, and joined the famed Dickerson Yachts operation building balsa-cored fiberglass cruising sailboats. In 1989 he began working at various boatshops in Oxford, Maryland, a yachting town favored by the wealthy. There, he partnered with Tom Campbell to buy Downeast-style hulls and decks from Duffy & Duffy in Maine and fit them out for the Chesapeake market. Hardy obtained a copy of the groundbreaking ATC Core-Cell Design Manual and “read it over and over, front-to-back, and back-to-front,” he says. “And I knew that’s what I wanted to do.” He reached out to one of the authors of the Core-Cell guide, composite engineer Al Horsmon, for advice on building composite decks instead of the usual glass on plywood. “Horsmon talked me through that, and since then has always been there to guide me and design composite panels.”
Coty Jones The Composite Yacht facility encompasses multiple climate-controlled build sheds and service bays and specializes in building Chesapeake Bay–style powerboats.
When Campbell shifted to marina management and ownership, Hardy opened his own shop in Cambridge, Composite Yacht, focusing on commissions to build 32’, 35’, and 46’ (9.7m, 10.7m, and 14m) fiberglass “deadrise” boats. Hardy’s two sons were now adults. Rob, the oldest, had the amiable personality needed to work with customers and the public. An excellent sportfisherman, he could also talk the talk and walk the walk. Lewis, the younger, “didn’t care much about anything except building hot rods, but he had excellent skills working out problems and finishing projects,” Martin Hardy recalls. “As the boat business grew, we needed help. Lewis filled in to take up the slack, and pretty soon, it became a full-time commitment.” With routine maintenance and paintwork, the Hardys’ fledgling but robust business needed more space.
Dorchester County, on the south side of the Choptank River, was dry. The nearest beer and booze was an inconvenient round trip across the river into Talbot County. A seemingly clever entrepreneur borrowed the cash to build a strip shopping outlet at the base of the bridge next to the old Ferry Point Marina including a high-volume liquor store. But as soon as the place was ready for occupation, the county council voted to open Dorchester to alcohol sales. The liquor store was abandoned, bankers ended up with the property, and Hardy paid them a visit. Thus in 2000, Composite Yacht became the region’s only modern, all-season, climate-controlled boat shop in a highly visible location along a major highway.
“At the time, 80% of our work was maintenance, paint, and repairs,” he recalls, but his heart remained in building boats. Over the next two decades the Hardys acquired or built molds for six Chesapeake Bay–style boats from 26’ to 46’ (7.9m to 14m) to serve the sport- and commercial-fishing market. They picked up the tooling for a 34’ (10.4m) Palm Beach–style sportfishing boat, and they built tooling for a Carolina-style 26 footer.
Over the next decade their list of standard models grew, and they focused on Corecell, modern resin systems, and vacuum-bagging. Whenever they scored a commission for a custom boat, they built a plug using bead-and-cove Corecell strips on a jig and then faired, glassed, refaired, polished, and waxed it to make a female mold, thus adding another boat to their production list.
As boat orders increased, the company needed more indoor space to keep up with demand. They invested in three purpose-built facilities for laminating, assembly, and paintwork: 16,500 sq ft (1,533m2) of additional production space. The crew grew to about 35 workers. They also took on the renovation and management of the adjacent Ferry Point Marina—a full-service boatyard with a repair shop, fuel-dock, ship’s store, tackle shop, and 50-ton Travelift.
The 55 Project
Coty Jones Designed by veteran naval architect Lou Codega, Skinny Witch runs comfortably at her design brief’s 55-knot target speed.
In the spring of 2017, a gentleman named Jerry Murrell came by asking if they could build a Chesapeake-style boat around 55’ (16.8m) long that could perhaps be the fastest sportfishing boat ever built. Lewis responded, “I don’t know, but we can try, and we know just who should design it.”
Martin immediately reached out to Lou Codega, a naval architect in Virginia who had designed rapid-response military craft and subsequently worked with naval architect Donald Blount on cutting-edge boats before designing the full line of Regulator boats and projects for Hells Bay, Carolina Classic, Rybovich, and Cabo Yachts, among others. Codega had also designed a 43-knot, Airex-cored/Kevlar sportfishing boat built by Sonny Hines in Suffolk, Virginia—the quickest inboard-driven sportfishing boat at the time. (For more on Hines/Codega collaboration, see “Hines-Farley 63,” in Professional BoatBuilder No. 54, page 56.)
Trip Ivey/Lou Codega Despite her lightweight carbon fiber hull construction, Skinny Witch’s profile reveals her conventional Chesapeake workboat DNA.
Skinny Witch Particulars
LOA: 55’4″ (16.9m)
Draft: 3’10” (1.2m)
BOA: 16’4″ (5m)
Disp.: 55,400 lb (29,129 kg) full load
Engines: 2 x 1,940 hp
MTU12V2000M96L
Hardy had previously cold-called Codega to consider a concept for a 32’ (9.7m) Carolina-style boat. “I had a customer who wanted something like that, but I didn’t have any money really.… I thought if I had a concept drawing, he might just hire us to build it,” Hardy recalls. “Lou said, ‘Sure.’” A couple of weeks later at IBEX, Hardy bumped into Codega, who was collaborating on a technical seminar with Blount. Codeaga said, ‘Wait, I have something for you,’ and he reached into a folder and handed me a very nice drawing, and I reached in my pocket and handed him $200—just about all I had on me. Blount witnessed the transaction and just laughed out loud.” The customer liked the concept but passed on the project. “So, when Jerry came to us about building the world’s fastest fishing boat, I knew who to call.”
Codega was considering retirement at the time, but he liked the challenge. “The hard part of getting up to speed is getting power into the water,” Codeaga says. “It’s not just about more power and light weight. Once you get over 40 knots, weird things start happening—props cavitate, rudders cavitate—you just start boiling water instead of producing thrust. You have to pay huge attention to all that stuff.”
In the discussions with Murrell, the initial goal was 50 knots. After working through some numbers and shapes Codega came back with a concept that would have the low freeboard and forward cabin of a Chesapeake deadrise, but the running surfaces would be nothing like a traditional boat—and yes, 50 knots or more would be possible. Murrell said, “Let’s just say 55 knots and get going on it.”
Murrell explains, “I like a project, and this was just so different. Chesapeake deadrise boats are so lovely and practical. I have some nice boats—a 92’ [28m] Viking and other fishing boats—but I don’t really know why I wanted to do this. It really doesn’t make a lot of sense. But, if I’m out fishing and I hear that the fish are biting somewhere else, I like to get there pretty quickly. A few builders said they could build what I was thinking of, but the Hardys weren’t so sure about the speed. The Composite team really had their heart in it. They were clearly excited about the project.”
Joe Evans Following extensive testing to optimize fiber-to-resin ratios to hit the 60:40 target, the crew hand-laid and wet-bagged carbon fiber laminates in the mold.
With that, Codega went to work. “A good planing hull begins and ends with a weight estimate,” says Codega. “It’s not magic. It’s just tedious. You know the weight of the engines and other essential stuff, so the big weight-saving target is the structure. You don’t want to skimp on the structure, but you have options—and the option is carbon.”
Codega’s design called for a bit of tumblehome, deadrise of 48° forward and 17° at the stern, 7° prop shaft angles, rudders nestled in shallow pockets, and extreme attention to saving weight at every turn.
For that part of the equation, they called Horsmon, who introduced them to Jef Benkelman, with whom he had collaborated on the ATC-Corecell Guide and who had worked for more than 35 years on countless projects around the world—America’s Cup yachts, submarines, Grand Prix racing sailboats, etc.
Testing
Codega calculated that the bare-boat structural weight needed to be “about the same as the Regulator 41—around 11,000 lbs [4,989.5 kg]—crazy light and still designed for 5-g acceleration.” Horsmon allowed that was possible with foam core and carbon fiber, but they would have to achieve a tight fabric-to-resin ratio. For that part, they turned to Benkelman.
According to Benkelman, the solution would lie with the choice of the resin and the process. “Infusion is the current buzz,” he notes. “But wet-bagging with plenty of working time is a better way to manage fabric consolidation and weight. It’s the king of resin handling to optimize confidence and results.” Working with Horsmon and the Composite Yacht team they came around to using a custom formulation of Crestapol 1250, a vinylester/urethane/acrylate resin from composites supplier Scott Bader. “We worked with the chemists to develop a very low, 150° to 180°F [65° to 82°C], temperature cure to allow working time, fabric consolidation, resin flow, vacuum pressure adjustment, heat, and weight savings,” Benkelman says. “We had done practical and instrumented testing with the Scott Bader folks while developing race car body parts,” Horsmon recalls. “This resin proved to be very tough and creates a tenacious bond to fibers—especially carbon.”
Next was the carbon material choice. Benkelman: “Horsmon spec’d the fabrics and core densities to meet the loads, and we worked together with various suppliers to find material with just the right hand and malleability we needed. The problem with a lot of the fabric is that it’s stitched so tightly and doesn’t have good conformability. Al and I have contacts who will work with us to get or make the right stuff.”
The structural material for the boat ended up being mostly 12-, 18-, and 22-oz [404-, 600-, 756-g/m2] unidirectional, ±45° and 0–90° carbon fiber with stitched carbon fabric in high-load and complex sections. The outer skin has a layer of fiberglass mat to avoid print-through and a double layer of 17-oz biaxial Kevlar for damage resistance, extra thickness, and sound abatement. The hull bottom core material is 1⅜” (35mm), 8-lb (140-kg/m3) density Corecell from Gurit. Topside Corecell is 1¼” (32mm), 5-lb (85-kg/m3) vacuum-bonded to the skins with Crestomer 1196PA adhesive. The builders thermoformed the Corecell on male molds in a high-temperature oven to match the hull and deck profiles to avoid any gaps and unnecessary filler weight.
Coty Jones The hull laminate was cured in a large insulated oven equipped with heaters and fans.
To evaluate and learn the process, the Composite Yacht crew, coached by the designers, initiated a testing program. Lewis Hardy, fabrication lead Paulo San Juan, and in-house engineer Leon Lahman spent late nights mocking-up lamination scenarios with combinations of temperature-control schemes, vacuum-pressure adjustments, various perforated films, peel ply, bleeder cloth, and carbon fiber to fine-tune the process and achieve the 60/40 fabric-to-resin ratio target. Scott Bader chemists from the Canadian facility joined them to adjust the resin and thixotrope (Garamite Thickener) formula.
Benkelman: “We were able to witness how, as the resin became catalyzed, it heated up and became more viscous and would flow and could even overflow and potentially dry the laminate out. We learned how to adjust the thickener, vacuum pressure, and heat to achieve good consolidation and curing while achieving the target weight and integrity.” Lehman recalls, “We got the program down to a 55/45 fabric-to-resin ratio.”
They set the successful test parts out in the sun where staff could regularly jump on them, beat them with a sledgehammer, and try to break them on the way to and from work. Benkelman observes, “It’s amazing what you can learn through basic destructive testing.”
Meanwhile, they reached out to the Davidson Lab at the Stevens Institute’s test tank in Hoboken, New Jersey, to build and run a model to assess the hull resistance and seakeeping characteristics. Codega says, “The tank tests and my calculations matched up almost exactly, so maybe we didn’t need to do all that, but it helped build confidence.”
Coty Jones Molds, including those for the shapely engine cover, were CNC-milled in Virginia.
Coty Jones The engine cover/hatch, complete with aft helm, lifts to provide open access to the engine room and other onboard systems.
They placed an order with Advanced Technologies Inc. in Newport News, Virginia, to cut the deck, engine box, and clamshell hull molds on their robotic 150’ (45.7m) milling table. They bought insulated wall panels to build the oven and sourced a 550,000-Btu indirect heater and industrial fans for the cooking. They laid-up, vacuumed, and baked a 26’ (7.9m) test boat for “pregame” practice and to see how the laminating choreography would come together. On Murrell’s next visit, they were looking over the bare test boat, and he said, “Why don’t we just finish it?” (That boat ended up with one of Murrell’s sons.)
Construction
Coty Jones Corecell foam core sections were thermoformed over male molds prior to installation in the hull mold and vacuum-bonding to the skins with Crestomer adhesive.
Construction began in June 2019. The crew built full-scale mock-ups of the interior using Composite Yacht’s five-axis CNC router table to prefit plumbing and equipment placement before installation. Michigan Wheel made the four-blade, 34.75” (88.26cm) props based on specifications from Ann Arbor, Michigan, hydrodynamicist Brant Savander (Maritime Research Associates, LLC), who also designed the tunnels, wake-adapted struts, and rudders based on the tank-test results. Robbie Wheeler at Miller’s Island Propeller in Sparrows Point, Maryland, made the shafts. Johnson & Towers in Baltimore supplied the twin 1,940-hp MTU engines. Everything else was fabricated in-house.
Coty Jones View from the belly of the beast between twin 1,940-hp MTU diesels.
The Skinny Witch was splashed in October 2021 weighing in at about 55,000 lbs (24,948 kg) including the 220V electrical system (which weighs less than a 12V system), a 12.5-kW generator, a 1,210-lb (550-kg) Seakeeper-9 Gyro stabilizer, ZF V-drives, bow thrusters, rigging, essential gear, and a yacht-quality interior and appointments.
The initial test run included Codega, Benkelman, the Hardys, Sevander, Horsman, Johnson & Towers’ MTU engine tech, and key Composite Yacht staff—San Juan and Lahman. Codega timed the first dash at 0 to 40 knots in 13 seconds. Benkelman recalls, “It was shocking how fast she was out of the hole. The engines have three sequential turbochargers tuned to kick in under rpm or load gauges. The boat is so light that the load trigger is not engaged at all. She just flies.” Codega has a GPS screen shot from the date showing 54.9 knots speed-over-ground.
Coty Jones Tight weight controls during the build blessed Skinny Witch with a modest displacement of 55,400 lbs fully loaded, allowing for enviable acceleration—0 to 40 knots in 13 seconds.
Postproduction Notes
Composite Yacht showed the boat at the 2022 U.S. Powerboat Show in Annapolis, which drew in an order for a 50’ (15.2m) Codega-designed glass-on-foam version. Subsequently, an order for a 39-footer (11.9m) came in, postponing Codega’s retirement again.
Codega notes, “The Hardys are the best people I’ve ever worked with. They are careful and they listen. Their workmanship is the best I’ve seen anywhere. And Murrell is the best and most realistic customer that a boatbuilder could hope for.”
Benkelman: “The Composite Yacht folks are a breath of fresh air. There’s none of that pushback and ‘that’s not the way we do it here’ stuff you get as a consultant. It’s so refreshing for an old dog like me. I can’t overstate how good these guys are to work with. Jerry Murrell is an unusual pleasure with the courage and imagination to roll the dice and do something unique…just what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur—guts, tenacity, a sense of humor, and vision. A rare breed and just a wonderful man.”
Murrell called the Hardys, the Composite Yacht crew, and the designers a “dream team,” adding, “The amazing thing is that there was no competition or conflict between them, as you often find with experts and projects. No egos. No friction. These guys, especially the Hardys and their crew, clearly enjoy what they are doing. It’s like a happy family there. In fact, we’re having them build a couple of smaller boats for us—a 39-footer and a small boat for shallow-water fishing.”
About the Author: Joe Evans was a sail designer (North Sails) and sail loft production manager before building and repairing performance boats, building race-ready Bruce Farr, German Frers, and Rob Humphreys designs, powerboat tooling, and a couple of first-generation carbon fiber racing sailboats for the Ultimate Yacht Race professional series. He subsequently produced films and articles for National Geographic, CuriosityStream, HBO Max, and various sporting magazines. He was editor-in-chief of Chesapeake Bay Magazine and now is an Orvis-endorsed Chesapeake Bay fly-fishing guide and freelance writer/producer.
