KAPTEN BOAT COLLARS
WHERE IT STARTED
In 2009, while crossing a QLD harbour entrance in a 4.5m tinny, Pat Jones had a near fatal mishap. After that, Pat looked for a stabilizer that would improve his boats performance, and when he found nothing, he used his years of boat building experience and hydrofoil experiments to trial ideas. Finally, he invented the Kapten Boat Collar - a wide reverse chine made of marine foam, that attaches to the sides of tinnies, improving many aspects.
The performance and comfort now experienced in tinnies was so dramatically improved, the customers frequently said Pat should make tinnies with aluminium collars. Passionately curious, Pat designed and built the first Waverider. Even as a first prototype (below), the 490 exceeded his high expectations, and he knew he had something very special to contribute to the marine industry.
Pat works together full-time with his wife Megan, and two of his four children. His daughters, Nyomi and Belinda, along with Megan, manage the marketing, office, accounts & increasing enquiries and orders. Pat now enjoys supervising a team of dedicated workers, who are amazed at 'the old fellas' stamina and passion, still working 10 hour days, often 6 days a week.
Below: Pat talks about how his love of hydrofoils started, and how his research, development and failures led to the current Waveriders.
2012: 1st prototype Waverider - 490
2013: 2nd prototype Waverider - 560
2014: 3rd prototype Waverider - 610
2018: SUBMERGED HYDROFOILS FITTED TO WAVERIDERS
2019 - WINS GOLD AT 'GOOD DESIGN AWARDS' IN SYDNEY
Pat's 2010 patented invention, the Kapten Boat Collar - which share the same design elements of his designed Waverider Boats - won the prestigious gold tick at the Good Design Awards in June, 2019.
Pat was accompanied by devoted wife Megan, who also works full-time alongside Pat, for their family owned business, Marine Safety Innovations Pty Ltd (a.k.a; Kapten Boat Collar & Waverider Boats).
PAT JONES'S STORY
HOW & WHERE HIS PASSION FOR HYDROFOILS STARTED... THE 1980S
During the early 80s, when Pat was a 30 something local NRL player, living on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, with his wife, Megan and their three little girls and a baby boy all under 10. He was a keen weekend surfer and boat builder/designer, dating back from his early teenage days. He worked full-time as a qualified boilermaker, just like his dad.
During one family trip to the local library, Pat found a little book on hydrofoils... Standing in the aisle, he devoured it, poured over it, re-read it several times and, well, to say he was inspired by the ideas... that's putting it mildly.
Several dozen books later, he set his mind to building a small steel hulled catamaran with surface-piercing hydrofoils. The build was rough and crude, but it worked! The foils worked! And more importantly it inspired him to try harder... dream bigger.
Finances was tight so research and play was a slow journey, but he designed and built a 5m flat bottom, blunt nose fwd steer. The foil location determined where the steering was. Instead of the wave piercing hydrofoils, Pat opted to try a Delta wing hydrofoil - a single, central, disc shaped foil - that was set onto the base of twin legs set through centre-board casings.
As shown and explained in his Hydrodynamics Explained videos, the delta wing foil didn't work that great in offshore conditions. It was prone to 'catching' in the turbulence of a swell, particularly when running with the swell, which would suddenly and unpredictably cause the high riding bow to 'crash' down - because the foil got sucked down as the wave motion tumbled within.
So Pat put his thinking cap on and examined his understanding of wave dynamics. Realising that it's not viable to have an offshore hydrofoil run the same width ways as the swell, Pat designed a forward piercing hydrofoil, that cut into the rolling action of a wave, instead of running across it.
It worked. Brilliantly.
Pat sold the little black punt and built a 6m barge - another flat bottom, flat nose boat that was designed to be a rough ride. Why? Pat's thinking was... if I can get a boat that's known to ride rough in offshore conditions to actually ride softer and perform better, it'll prove the foils work.
Pat built several hydrofoil flat bottom boats - that he affectionately called UltraFoils.
He even featured on Chris Conroy's Wide World of Boats in the 80s - see video below - for your trip down memory lane, and to witness Pat's early foils in action.
It seemed Pat was ahead of his time, combined with the strains of a large family relying on his sole income, his hydrofoil dreams took a back seat for a while... until 2010 when he designed the Kapten Boat Collars. And the rest is history...
CHRIS CONROY'S WIDE WORLD OF BOATS - TEST RIDES THE ULTRAFOIL
A COUPLE OF PAT'S LARGER BOAT BUILDS
"How'd you like to live on a yacht?" Pat asked his wife one night. So began the rather quick procession of selling their house (that Pat had built), moving their 4 teenage children into a 3 bedroom rental, and self-supporting themselves as Pat built the family of 6 a steel yacht large enough to take them all. Pat & Megan designed the 50ft boat with 3 large cabins (total of 5 births) and 6ft ceilings for him and their growing son, Simon.
It took Pat all of 12 months, working 6 days a week, 6am-6pm, summer or winter. Pat did it all - welding, carpentry, fine joining, painting...
S/V Heartbeat Won (then later Lev Poem) was the family home for 8 years and took them all on many adventures. It saw the older children leave home, but the youngest daughter, Nyomi, and the family youngest, Simon, stayed aboard for 5 & 8 years respectively.
In the later years, Pat - in his constant desire for stability - removed the yacht's mast and replaced it with self made trawler-like stabilizers.
A few years after moving the family onto S/V Heartbeat Won, Pat was commissioned to head the build of a 47ft Peter Brady design catamaran, later known as S/V Born Free.
Pat converted the strip plank cedar plans over to aluminium to make the build possible.
ABN # 53 141 908 385
AUSTRALIAN REGISTERED HULL DESIGN #344536
Ph: 07) 5481 6133 or 0467 506 131