The whaleback proa is a boat designed and built by Paul Vanden Bosch in midwestern USA. The boat was originally intended to be a narrower version of Matt Laden's Paradox sharpie. Both boats do away with the cockpit and the single crew is always in the center of the boat. However Paul's sharpie was built narrower than Matt Laden's boat and hence it did not have enough stability and was hence too tender. So rather than abandoning the boat, Paul has added an outrigger onto one side. Note that the original boat had 300 pounds of ballast in it, adding the outrigger means that ballast is not required, making for a lighter boat

More information can be found at the following links

Youtube Link 1
Youtube Link 2
Youtube Link 3
Youtube Link 4
Proafile.com forum thread Link

Update April 2015 - boat has been discarded

The Whaleback proa has been discarded. Its fair to say this has been an unsuccessful design. So where did it all go wrong? I would start by looking at the fineness ratio l/w. The boat was too fine and thus too tender to be a successful monohull. For a good monohull the Paradox would have been better, or the same center cabin layout on a more traditional boat form. The Whaleback Proa was too fat to be a successful multihull, the hull was high, lots of windage, the rig was low aspect ratio and not going to go fast. For a successful multihull, I suggest something like the Tipnol LINK

Its sad to see a boat junked, after all the work put in. But however much work was put into rectifying the boat was unlikely to ever make it work well. It was perhaps not the best concept, and sometimes its better just to cut your losses. Short fat multihulls dont work. I drew up one earlier and I look at it now and can see that it is junk. Thank goodness I did not build it (TO-19)

Update 2021 - boat has not been discarded - is now a motor outrigger

The owner contacted me, and I have been very slack in updating the webpage. Whaleback proa is now a motorised proa, where apparently it is performing well

Matt Laden's Paradox, a less deep and wider boat, thus more form stability