Unlike automobile and house construction, there are no government mandated minimum building standards for yacht construction.
Even the voluntary standards that are used by some builders in the US and in Europe are intended for the low-end mass production yachts. Shannon's construction techniques and building materials have set the benchmark for quality offshore yachts. Shannon has been building composite linear PVC foam cored one piece hulls since 1981. In the test tank of the oceans of the world, Shannons have been up on reefs, rocks, breakwaters, coral heads and even picked up and dropped off a pier by Hurricane Andrew without holing the hull to prove the strength and integrity of our construction methods. There is no balsa wood used in any Shannon hull and deck. The one piece decks are built using rigid closed cell foam sandwiched in between two rugged fiberglass laminates. The hull to deck joint on Shannons is comprised of an internal hull flange which receives the deck that is both bolted on 8" centers as well as being bedded in adhesive bonding compound. All structural bulkheads are attached to the hull with continuous fiberglass filaments that are threaded through the bulkheads and tabbed using vinylester resin. The ballast lead is internal and encapsulated creating a second hull skin above the lead. Water tanks are 316L stainless steel, and fuel tanks are 5052 marine alloy. All tanks are designed and placed to be removable without having to cut the boat apart using a chainsaw. All the solid hardwood furniture, fiddles and joinerwork are both glued and screwed with non-ferous fastenings. The polished bronze or stainless steel portlights all open and are fitted with armor plate glass. The electrical system on all Shannons is fully bonded and wiring is tinned copper strand, color coded and accessible. The companionway sliding hatch and weatherboards are custom designed to withstand the rigors of crashing following seas and knockdowns. The structure under the cockpit was engineered to hold the weight of a water filed cockpit. Over-sized self-tailing winches and deck hardware are standard, not extras that can add tens of thousands of dollars to the final cost of the boat. The thru-bolts of all deck hardware on Shannons are accessible without having to cut apart the interior woodwork, a common problem on many top-end sailbots built with no provision for long-term maintenance. At the same time, Shannon emphasizes sophisticated building methods to keep weight down without sacrificing structural integrity as a heavy boat is a slow boat. The fact that there are so many Shannons still sailing across oceans decades after they were built without major refits is testimony to the longevity of our bullet proof construction methods.
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