Services
Sorensen Maritime provides independent advisory services focused on how vessels actually perform at sea—over time, in real conditions, with real crews.
Our work focuses on early decision points, before design choices, specifications, and operational assumptions are locked in. We help clients examine how design, layout, propulsion, and control decisions influence safety, comfort, workload, and long-term mission effectiveness—and we translate those observations into clear, usable requirements and evaluation criteria.
Outline:
Who We Work With · Yacht Owners & Buyers · Commercial & Government Clients · Strategic Advisory · How Engagements Work · Technical Focus Areas · When This Work Is Most Valuable
Who We Work With
Sorensen Maritime’s advisory services are tailored to the different risks and decision contexts faced by private owners, commercial operators, and institutional clients. While the analytical tools are often similar, operating environments, constraints, and success criteria vary by client type.
What unites these engagements is a common goal: making critical performance characteristics explicit, assessable, and defensible early—when better outcomes are still achievable.
Yacht Owners & Buyers
Independent guidance for high-impact decisions
For owners making significant investments—and assuming responsibility for the safety of family, crew, and guests—Sorensen Maritime provides independent, experience-based guidance throughout the acquisition and design process.
Typical engagements include:
Mission and operating-profile definition
Pre-purchase vessel evaluation and comparison
Sea-trial participation and underway analysis
Design and layout review for new builds and refits
Identification of comfort, fatigue, and safety tradeoffs
Beyond identifying strengths and limitations, this work helps translate subjective impressions—ride quality, visibility, control feel, fatigue—into clear priorities and decision criteria that can meaningfully guide selection, specification, or refinement.
The emphasis is not on marketing claims or paper specifications, but on how a vessel behaves in real offshore use—and whether that behavior aligns with the owner’s experience, expectations, and tolerance for risk.
Commercial Operators & Government Clients
Reducing operational and crew risk before it is designed in
Sorensen Maritime works with commercial operators, fleet managers, and government organizations to examine operational and crew-performance considerations early—before design decisions, specifications, or contracts lock those characteristics in place.
This work is particularly relevant for patrol craft, workboats, rescue vessels, and other platforms operating at high tempo, in demanding sea states, and under sustained crew workload.
Typical engagements include:
Mission and operational-profile analysis
Review and refinement of acquisition requirements and performance criteria
Evaluation of hull form, propulsion, and motion behavior
Assessment of helm visibility, ergonomics, and control layout
Identification of long-term safety, fatigue, and maintenance considerations
In addition to identifying risk areas, Sorensen Maritime helps clients develop clearer, more operationally grounded specifications—including measurable criteria for visibility, ergonomics, ride behavior, responsiveness, and controllability—so these characteristics can be evaluated consistently and defended within existing engineering and acquisition frameworks.
The focus is not compliance for its own sake, but whether a vessel can be operated safely, effectively, and repeatedly by real crews over time, in real conditions.
This work includes advisory support for U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy small-boat and patrol-craft programs, complementing existing engineering and acquisition processes with added operational and crew-focused granularity.
Strategic & White-Space Advisory
Identifying emerging demand before the market catches up
In addition to vessel-specific advisory work, Sorensen Maritime provides strategic and analytical support focused on identifying emerging operational needs, capability gaps, and underserved segments within the maritime market.
This work is most relevant where missions, operating environments, or user expectations are evolving faster than existing vessel offerings or acquisition frameworks.
Typical engagements may include:
White-space and market-gap analysis
Identification of unmet operational or crew-performance needs
Early concept definition and capability framing
Competitive and fleet-level assessment
Advisory support during early planning or portfolio decision phases
This work is analytical and advisory in nature and does not involve representing or promoting specific builders, products, or equipment vendors.
Engagement Structure and Approach
Disciplined, focused, and results-driven
Engagements are tailored to the client and vessel, but typically follow a consistent structure focused on early identification and clarification of operational and crew-related considerations.
Work usually begins with a clear definition of mission profile, operating environment, and decision context. Analysis then targets the design, layout, propulsion, and control factors most likely to influence safety, workload, comfort, and long-term effectiveness.
Where appropriate, this includes helping translate qualitative concerns into explicit evaluation criteria, decision thresholds, and specification language that can be used during design development, vendor evaluation, or acquisition review.
Engagements may include document review, comparative analysis, design and specification input, and—where appropriate—participation in sea trials or underway evaluations. The emphasis is on informed judgment and practical guidance, not report volume.
Sorensen Maritime works independently and does not represent builders, brokers, or equipment vendors. Advice is provided solely in the client’s interest.
Technical Focus Areas
How design choices translate into real-world behavior
Areas of technical focus commonly include:
Translating operational requirements into meaningful design specifications
Hull form, displacement, and deadrise distribution
Longitudinal and transverse stability, including dynamic effects
Roll behavior, damping, and moment of inertia
Vertical and longitudinal accelerations and fatigue exposure
Yaw–roll coupling and down-sea handling
Visibility, sightlines, and operator field-of-view
Helm layout, control geometry, and decision workload
Propulsion system selection and integration
Trim behavior across the speed range, including hump-speed performance
Effects of appendages, keels, interceptors, and stabilization systems
The emphasis is on how these elements interact as a system—and how their combined effects influence safety, comfort, efficiency, and long-term operability.
When This Work Is Most Valuable
Before early decisions create long-term limitations
Sorensen Maritime’s advisory work is most valuable when key decisions are still flexible.
Engagements are particularly effective when:
A vessel is being evaluated prior to purchase or acceptance
A new build or refit is in early design or specification stages
Operating profiles or mission expectations are changing
Comfort, fatigue, or safety concerns have emerged but root causes are unclear
Tradeoffs are being made between speed, range, seakeeping, and efficiency
Responsibility for crew or passenger safety rests with the owner or operator
Our objective is never to second-guess past designs, but to support informed decisions when relatively small changes can materially improve functionality, crew workload (how much effort and energy it take to operate the vessel) and long-term outcomes.