About

Nic de Waal, managing director of Teknicraft started designing boats in the mid-eighties, soon after graduating in engineering. At that time South Africa was under a worldwide sanctions lock-out, and any and all engineering design had to be created from a clean sheet of paper. There was requirement for a patrol craft operating at high speed in open ocean conditions, and together with his colleagues they set out to create some truly innovative catamaran hull shapes to meet the requirements.

Many of the features developed back then can still be seen in Teknicraft’s hull-shapes. Of course, technology and know-how has progressed in leaps and bounds since then, and the designs are still improving all the time, keeping up with the commercial marine sector’s requirements and expectations, whilst staying at the forefront of vessel performance and seakeeping characteristics.

Teknicraft prides itself in creating designs that meet the individual client’s specific requirements. In many cases this demanded innovative, novel design solutions which enabled us to build experience in designing many different types of vessels and vessels with speed requirements ranging from 5 knots to 50 knots.

We have been fitting hydrofoils to our high-speed hulls for the last 25 years or so. We have over 130 of our vessel designs operating successfully with hydrofoils in commercial operations in many parts of the world. We believe our success is based on utilizing the advantages that a hydrofoil can provide to reduce the drag of the hull, but not at the expense of seakeeping, stability and safety. We also prefer to keep everything as simple and reliable as possible. Since our hydrofoil design only partly lifts the hull out of the water, there is always adequate buoyant forces at play to ensure safe operation without the need of sophisticated systems or specially trained crew.