Deep-vee without the penalty? The Petestep hull

It’s an adage so old that nobody knows to whom it should be attributed anymore; that good design is always about making the right compromises.

When it comes to planing monohulls, one of the biggest compromises is deadrise, the sharpness of the V angle of the hull when viewed forward from the transom. A shallow deadrise creates a shallow-vee hull, which, all other things being equal means the boat will plane earlier, achieve more speed in flat water for a given horsepower, but ride more harshly in chop than the same hull with a steeper deadrise, or deep vee.

The Petestep hull began development as the brainchild of Swedish powerboat racer and innovator Peter Bjersten in the 1990s. Bjersten had