New Zealanders have long been known for their love affair with the sea, but owning a boat is seen as an expensive exercise for most. Tauranga-based boat design company Hallmarine Design has come up with a solution: its Purekraft boats, which are flatpacked kitsets, a bit like IKEA furniture, making them far cheaper to ship around and easier to construct.

Elly Strang writes in Idealog -  It’s a romantic notion that plays right into the Kiwi ideal of DIY and do it yourself ­– building a boat from scratch. However, aside from professional boat builders, most wouldn’t attempt to build their own for fear of the expenses involved ­– or worse yet, the risk of a poorly put together, leaky boat.

However, Jarrod Hall of Tauranga-based Hallmarine Design says his company has a solution for hobbyists: A boat which has parts that are cut by a CNC machine, with ink markings to show where parts meet and should be welded. It is then folded and are flatpacked to reduce shipping costs.

The result is a boat that’s innovative in the same way IKEA furniture was when it first shook up the furniture scene: A cheaper, build-it-yourself product that can be constructed from scratch, if you follow the (in depth) instructions. There's also the ability to customise the motor, seats and paint job.

“It appeals to those with the do-it-yourself kind of attitude, and they also know that it’s been well built, considering they’ve built it themselves,” Hall says.

Understandably, there’s a few more components to building a boat than say, a bookshelf.

Hall says it depends on the size and the model, but the design process couldn’t get much easier in terms of building a boat. While there may be hundreds of components, parts are printed by the machine and interlock together, while Hallmarine Design folds as many parts of the boat as possible so it reducing welding and build times, as well as wastage.

Continue to read the full article in Idealog here