LEADING EDGE

Dreadnort Boats is a collaboration between Naval Architect Blair Lewis and Shipwright Stuart Dawe, who between them have a wealth of commercial and recreational aluminium boat design and fabrication experience.

Boating reviewed the larger Dreadnort D7500 with its unusual dreadnought bow profile in its March edition. Dreadnort’s smaller V5500 CC (Centre Console) shares many familial design features with that model, including a long waterline length, the performance characteristics of a much bigger boat and an exceptional interior volume. But unlike the D7500, this boat is a centre console with Dreadnort’s ‘V’ (for Vertical) plumb bow profile. While hardly commonplace, plumb bows are becoming increasingly familiar to the New Zealand boating public, as they are increasingly used in local and imported boats both large and small.

A ‘vertical’ plumb bow is certainly less radical than the bow profile on Dreadnort’s D7500, with its reflex-angled entry, but