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Deep-vee without the penalty? The Petestep hull
16th Jun 2026
Vexus Boats DVX23 was designed to run a single 500hp outboard (image: Petestep)
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