High-Tech Boat Testing

Why isn’t your new yacht making her contract speed? Why are her turns to starboard tighter than those to port? Answering such questions definitively has been virtually impossible over the years. Not any more. 

- Bill Pike

Scientific Expert Analysis, or S-E-A Ltd., is an American enterprise that’s been doing forensic analysis and investigative research for more than four decades. Today, S-E-A has approximately 260 employees, most of them highly credentialed engineers and scientists who deal very precisely with a variety of concerns, from the vicissitudes of hydraulic fracking to the safety of candles for sale on the open market.

Although S-E-A is a multidisciplinary player, the venerable company has remained quite focused over the years. It performs automotive-related rollover and crash simulations and testing for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and other governmental agencies. It designs and sells sophisticated testing equipment to corporations like Ford, General Motors, Nissan, and Toyota. It investigates accidents arising from mechanical, chemical, metallurgical, electrical, and fire-related causes. And it provides expert legal testimony, relating to a host of topics, all over the world.

Recently, however, a new wrinkle’s been added at S-E-A, albeit one that arises from its forensic roots—a high-tech boat-testing program that promises great things for custom and production boatbuilders, high-end yacht buyers and owners, engine and propeller manufacturers, and even naval architects and marine designers. The program is headquartered in an office and laboratory complex in Ft. Lauderdale, and staffed by a cadre of former professional mariners, retired U.S. Coast Guard and Naval officers, and salty young mechanical engineers. And it’s outfitted with a veritable arsenal of super-sophisticated data-acquisition equipment.