Eli5: How do water lines on a boat work?

Question

I’ve been watching a lot of boat building videos on YouTube but I never got the concept of water lines.

I get that you can draw a horizontal line across the hull but how do you determine that it will be the waterline? Is it just a rough estimate based on Archimedes or is there some other witch craft going on?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

As a former boat builder, I can tell you that the determination of the waterline before the boat is first floated is a mixture of about 20% calculation and 80% instinct. I got it right about 90% of the time