Zurn Yacht Design

Marblehead, and thirty years of one name on the hull

Doug Zurn founded his naval architecture practice in Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1993, and has spent more than three decades since putting his name on production and semi-custom powerboats rather than one-off superyachts. The studio's own count runs to 149 distinct designs and more than 500 hulls actually built, a track record that comes from working with production builders rather than a handful of bespoke commissions.

That volume is the practice's defining trait. A custom yacht studio might deliver a handful of hulls a year at most; a production naval architect whose designs get built repeatedly by multiple yards compounds a track record differently, and Zurn's client list, MJM, Hinckley, Bruckmann, Vanquish, Marlow, Hylas and more, reads like a roll call of the American Downeast and performance-cruiser market over the same thirty years.

The Shelter Island Runabout, and the client who kept coming back

Billy Joel commissioned the Shelter Island 38 Runabout, the design that is widely credited with launching Zurn's career beyond New England's own boating press. Built by North End Composites and assembled at Coecles Harbor Marine in Shelter Island, New York, the boat combined a classic Downeast profile with a composite build the same team behind the boat chose deliberately for weight and performance.

Joel did not stop at one commission. He went on to order the Shelter Island 50, a larger lobster-yacht-style follow-up also built by Coecles Harbor, and later the commuter yacht Vendetta, a genuinely different brief. Three separate commissions from the same owner over roughly two decades is a stronger endorsement than any single review, because it reflects a client who kept choosing the same naval architect after seeing the previous boat perform.

Vendetta hit 47 knots on 2,600 horsepower and a hull shape borrowed from 1920s Long Island commuters, and Billy Joel liked it enough to commission Zurn twice more.

Vendetta, and the torpedo-boat stern that hit 47 knots

Vendetta is a 56 to 57-foot commuter yacht launched in 2005, styled in the manner of 1920s Long Island Sound commuter boats but built for genuinely modern performance: 2,600 horsepower driving the hull to 47 knots. The hull itself used a resin-infused Kevlar and Corecell-foam composite laid up with SCRIMP vacuum-infusion technology, a construction choice made specifically to keep weight down at that power level.

The boat is the clearest example in Zurn's portfolio of a design that borrows a historical silhouette without pretending to historical performance. Where the original 1920s commuters were fast for their era on far less power, Vendetta's torpedo-boat stern and flared sheer are doing genuine hydrodynamic work at 47 knots, not just evoking a period look, which is the specific engineering claim behind a boat that gets described in the press mostly for its styling.

MJM, and the letter stamped through a whole model range

MJM Yachts has built a long enough relationship with Zurn that the practice's initial appears directly in the builder's model names: the 29z, 34z, 35z, 40z, 43z, 50z and 53z all credit Zurn's naval architecture in their own designation, an unusually direct form of attribution for a production boat brand. That naming convention alone signals how central this one relationship is to Zurn's production output.

For a buyer, an MJM model with a z in its name is effectively a guarantee of Zurn naval architecture without needing to check a separate credits page, which is a genuinely useful piece of practical information: the naming convention does the disclosure work that most builders leave out entirely. It also means a large share of Zurn's built hull count runs through a single production relationship, the same concentration risk that shows up across this practice's other builder relationships.

From Downeast day boats to an expedition catamaran

The bulk of Zurn's portfolio sits in a recognisable Downeast and commuter idiom: flared sheers, moderate deadrise, efficient semi-displacement or planing hulls in the 22 to 50-foot range, boats built for New England and Long Island conditions rather than open ocean passages. The Zurn 60 Expedition Cat breaks that pattern deliberately, a long-range power catamaran aimed at genuinely different owners and different water.

That range matters because it shows the practice is not a one-trick studio limited to a single hull form. A naval architect who has proven a fast planing monohull at 22 feet and a long-range cruising catamaran at 60 feet has demonstrated two genuinely different sets of hydrodynamic problems solved successfully, even if neither approaches the scale of a custom superyacht.

What a production naval architect is actually paid for

A production naval architecture commission is a different commercial relationship from a one-off superyacht brief. Instead of a single owner paying for a bespoke hull, a builder pays a design-and-development fee once, then typically a royalty on every hull subsequently built to that design, which is why a naval architect's name can end up on hundreds of boats without hundreds of separate client relationships.

That structure is also why Zurn's name appears on so many different builders' ranges: MJM, Hinckley, Bruckmann, Vanquish, Marlow, Hylas and New England Boatworks are all separate commercial relationships, each presumably negotiated on its own terms, rather than one studio building everything itself. For a buyer, the practical effect is that the naval architecture cost is already baked into the boat's list price long before a specific hull is ordered.

What the fee looks like, and why it is never one number

Neither Zurn Yacht Design nor any comparable production naval architecture practice found in this research publishes its royalty rate or design fee, and that is standard for the industry rather than unusual secrecy. A production royalty scales with the number of hulls built and the negotiating leverage of each builder, so a single public number would misrepresent the actual range of deals a practice like this signs.

For a one-off commission, such as Vendetta, the commercial structure is closer to a traditional bespoke naval architecture fee, engaged directly by the owner rather than through a production builder, though even here no figure was found in this research. A buyer genuinely needing to compare costs has to ask the specific builder or the practice directly; no public benchmark exists at this end of the market the way SuperYachtReview's percentage bands exist for full-custom superyachts.

Who else draws boats this size

Zurn competes in a genuinely crowded field of American production naval architects working the same 22 to 65-foot Downeast, commuter and sportfishing market, rather than the small handful of studios that dominate full-custom superyacht naval architecture. The practice's specific edge, based on the builder relationships documented in this research, is longevity with individual clients: MJM's naming convention alone is thirty years of continuous work with one builder.

That longevity is a genuinely different kind of evidence from a superyacht studio's portfolio of one-off flagship projects, and it is worth weighing on its own terms rather than against a different market segment entirely. A buyer choosing between production naval architects in this size range is choosing a hull form and a builder relationship track record, not a signature look in the way a custom exterior designer sells one.

What buying a Zurn is worth against a one-off custom design

Choosing a production model designed by Zurn, an MJM z-series boat or a Hinckley, buys a naval architecture pedigree that has already been proven across dozens or hundreds of sister hulls, with the design cost already amortised into the builder's list price. That is a fundamentally different value proposition from commissioning a bespoke hull, where the naval architecture fee is a line item the owner pays for directly and the result is unique.

For most buyers in this size range, the production route is also the faster and cheaper one: the hull is already tooled, the naval architecture is already proven at sea across other owners' boats, and the only real decision left is fit-out and options. The one-off route, as Vendetta shows, remains available for an owner who wants something the production catalogue does not offer, at a cost this research could not independently verify.

Pour qui: Buyers and builders in the 25 to 65-foot Downeast, commuter and expedition-catamaran range who want a hull that is fast, efficient and recognisably handsome, rather than a full-custom superyacht.