From his studio located on a peaceful island in the Pacific Northwest, Jack Sarin is busily working on a custom yacht series that will bear his name. For decades he has quietly but steadily put his imprimatur on pleasure yachts worldwide, more than 400 at last count. The first yacht of the Jack Sarin Custom Series will be in aluminum, which may surprise some who associate his name with a landmark all-composite vessel he created in the late 1980s.

"Naval architects who can design fully custom boats from beginning to end are becoming a dying breed"

Soon after it emerged in the 1960s, fiberglass-based fabrication became a major factor in the design and construction of increasingly large pleasure boats. Cored, or composite, construction – a technology introduced a decade later – is widely acknowledged as the refinement that enabled builders to go even larger, eventually leading to today’s 165+ all-fiberglass giants. Among the first to recognize the potential of cored fiberglass-sandwich-construction was a small cadre of Pacific Northwest designers and builders that included naval architect Jack Sarin. His portfolio reveals a clear – but not exclusive – affinity for cored composites and all their attributes.

A Pacific Northwest native, Sarin grew up on Bainbridge Island, a half-hour ferry ride from Seattle across Puget Sound. He went to the local high school before enrolling at the University of Washington, where he earned a degree in industrial design. After a short stint working in the field he studied, he signed on as a design draftsman at the venerable Stephens Marine yard in California. Meanwhile the Pacific Northwest was emerging as a center for yacht building and design, which provided Sarin the opportunity to return to Bainbridge Island to take a design job at the Ed Monk firm. Over the next 12 years, he worked primarily on commercial design projects, and along the way earned his naval architect’s license. In 1980, Sarin set up shop as Jack W. Sarin Naval Architects, and soon made a transition into pleasure craft. His early work in the recreational boating sector, for Sundowner Tugs, preceded more and larger designs, and an expanding roster of private clients and builders including Admiral Marine, Westport, Crescent Custom Yachts, NorthStar and Westship. To date, more than 400 of his creations have been built at shipyards around the globe.

His most notable works include the 130’ McMullen & Wing yachtfish Mea Culpa and Golden Delicious, as 98’ Westport raised-pilothouse, launched in 1988, that emphatically demonstrated the advantages of cored sandwich construction in large vessels (98’ was quite large back in the late 1980s). Sarin favors cored composites, not only for their structural qualities but also for the design latitude they offer. “It’s a nice material to work with because it allows you to do all kinds of things with compound shapes,” he says. The fully cored Golden Delicious established Sarin as an authority on lightweight composites at a time when Pacific Northwest yards like Nordlund and Westport were pioneering the technology as a preferred alternative to heavier solid fiberglass. "Along with Ed Monk, Jack Sarin was one of the first to understand the advantages of cored laminates in yacht construction, particularly their strength-to-weight ratios and impact strength," notes Tom Johansen (at the time an importer of Airex, a Swiss-manufactured polymer coring material and an author of textbooks on fiberglass construction). Daryl Wakefield, president of Westport Shipyard, adds at "His design work coincided with Westport’s early sandwich construction projects, and helped prove the feasibility of cored composites in larger yachts."

Not that Sarin ignores other materials; his LeClercq-built 92’ yachtfish Contigo, launched in 2005, features an aluminum hull by Kvichak Marine and a composite superstructure, a combination that Sarin says enabled him to meet a complex set of requirements that included a top speed of 29+ knots, and a draft limit of five feet.

Although perhaps best recognized for his contemporary styled raised-pilothouse and flush-deck yachts, Sarin defines his design style and philosophy in the context of his customers. "It ultimately comes down to whatever the client wants," he says. "It’s my job to integrate those wishes into a completed design that accommodates the required number of people and meets performance criteria." To that end Sarin seeks to establish a clear mutual understanding of the design concept as a critical first step. Mindful of the hassles – project delays and cost over-runs – posed by change orders, especially those that arise late in the build, he seeks to head off those risks at an early stage, well before the first phase of construction. "The best insurance is to do a complete design job and to anticipate as many variables as possible," he says. His firm’s range of services – naval architecture, exterior styling, interior design, ship’s systems and engineering – form a one-stop design resource enabling him to do just that.

Sarin sees his profession as a process of continual improvement. "The nature of this business demands that the next design should be an advancement over previous projects," he says. It also requires extreme attention to detail on multiple levels. While wrestling with arrangement and accommodation requirements within the physical constraints of hull form and dimensions, Sarin says, the designer also must meet structural, tonnage and classing mandates while delivering the desired speed and range. Complicating those issues yet further is a not uncommon desire among clients to shoehorn in a steadily increasing list of features and equipment, often including redundancies like two or three generators, extra toys, multiple entertainment features and electronics. "These invariably add complexity, cost and weight to any project," Sarin says, "so it’s critical to ensure that the client understand all the trade-offs that affect these decisions."

On the plus side of the weight issue and consistent with his emphasis on project-to-project refinement, Sarin habitually explores emerging technologies, materials and products that promise to improve the yachting experience while in many cases reducing weight. Advancements in vacuum-assisted lamination processes, for example, already are paying dividends in terms of higher speeds and reduced fuel consumption, he says, although in some cases builders have been reluctant to adopt advancements due to high implementation costs. Thanks largely to common rail diesel injection systems, engine manufacturers now offer lighter-weight, cleaner-burning engines in a broad range of horsepower sizes, an ongoing development process that Sarin feels obliged to follow closely in order in order to recommend the best combination of hull and propulsion system.

Although he likes custom projects, Sarin works often with builders who increasingly turn to semi-custom, series-built motoryachts. However, his firm resists embracing a growing trend among yacht designers toward specialization in hull design, systems engineering, exterior styling or interior design,. Perhaps with a trace of regret Sarin recognizes fewer and fewer can take on the complete design of a custom yacht from cocktail-napkin concept to finished product. “Naval architects who can design fully custom boats from beginning to end are becoming a dying breed,” he says. “Specialization and the growth of stock designs often deny designers the chance to work directly with clients.” For his part, Sarin is at home in both arenas; his work currently includes, in addition to custom designs, a range of Symbol yachts in raised-pilothouse, flush-deck, classic and yachtfish series from 50’ to 80’, with a considerably more customized 90’ RPH design in early concept stages.

Also in the works is a project Sarin has undertaken in collaboration with Lucid Yacht Group of Fort Lauderdale, a range of displacement and semi-displacement motoryachts that bear his name. First of this new Sarin Custom Series will be a 158’ all-aluminum, semi-displacement tri-deck whose design brief indicates speeds in the low-to-mid 20-knot range. Hull design work currently is progressing toward a series of tank tests planned for late summer. This initial project will be followed by the development of a 180’ full-displacement yacht with a steel hull and aluminum superstructure. “This is the first yacht series ever to carry the Jack Sarin name,” said Eitan Ergas of the Lucid Yacht Group. “The Sarin Custom Series will focus on full- and semi-displacement luxury yachts in a variety of classes and mediums: MCA, Ice Class and long-range in steel, aluminum or a combination of both.” Add to these series projects a more or less consistent flow of custom work, and Jack Sarin’s offices continue to hum along as they have for nearly three decades, at a pace that promises to sustain a comparable work load for yet more.

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