A Feel for
HANDS-ON: Engineer
Ugo Conti in his home
workshop, where he
designed the wave-absorbing Proteus, an
ocean-crossing boat
that sits high above
two 100-foot-long
inflatable pontoons.
Engineering
Ugo Conti’s Proteus boat reflects
a unique instinct for design.
By Todd Lappin
Humans have been building ships for thousands of years,
but it took a retired engineer working in his garage to figure
out a way to span the seas without rocking the boat.
At his hillside home overlooking San Francisco
Bay, Ugo Conti designed and built Proteus, a
prototype of a radical new class of watercraft
that looks like a cross between a common
waterbug and an invading spaceship from War
of the Worlds.
Called the Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel,
or WAM-V, Conti’s innovative design solves a
problem that plagues all conventional boats:
maintaining a smooth ride while traveling
through big waves and pounding surf.
To accomplish that, Proteus is built on a
pair of 100-foot-long inflatable pontoons with
a cabin suspended by a set of arches 20 feet
above the water. The pontoons are articulated
and the arches are flexible, so Proteus adapts
to the changing contours of the ocean’s surface
in much the same way that the independent
suspension of a car absorbs big bumps to give
passengers an easy ride.
As an added bonus, the WAM-V configuration
is also extremely fuel efficient, enabling Proteus
to travel 5,000 miles while carrying just 2,000
gallons of onboard fuel. All told, the idea works
so well that it has attracted the interest of the
U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research, which is
evaluating Proteus for possible military use.
Superficially, Conti is an unlikely candidate
to revolutionize ocean travel. Born in Italy, he
emigrated to the United States in 1965 and got
a Ph.D. in geophysics and oceanography from
the University of California at Berkeley. For
much of his professional career he worked as
an electronics design engineer, specializing in
low-frequency antennas and geophysical instrumentation systems. Along the way he dabbled
with boats in his spare time, including
several that he built and sailed himself. >>
Photograph by Robyn Twomey
30 Make: Volume 19
