The Sri Lanka Navy has designed and built the country’s first waveless referee boat, a catamaran for rowing and canoeing competitions at the Navy Water Sports Centre in Diyawanna, Battaramulla, the Navy announced on 22 September.
The boat is not new. The Naval Boat Building Yard (NBBY) delivered it to the centre in April 2026 and it has been in operational use since. What happened this week is the disclosure, not the delivery — the announcement comes five months after the handover.
Why a “waveless” boat
Rowing and canoeing need flat water. A referee or umpire boat has to travel alongside competitors for the length of a race, and the wake it throws off can reach the lanes it is supposed to be policing.
Both sources make the same point: surface waves can affect competitor safety, timing accuracy and the fairness of a race. The design answer here is a high-stability catamaran — twin hulls displace less water than a single hull of equivalent capacity — specifically shaped to minimise wake generation while running alongside rowers, and to give officials a stable platform to judge from.
The specification
| Hull number | NC/WL/001 |
| Length | 5.53 m |
| Beam | 2.30 m |
| Draft | 0.16 m |
| Weight | 0.45 tonnes |
| Propulsion | 25 hp petrol outboard |
| Capacity | 2 persons |
A 0.16-metre draft on a 5.53-metre hull is the number that does the work: the boat sits almost on the surface, which is what keeps displacement — and therefore wake — low.
The vessel was designed and approved by the Directorate of Naval Design to naval engineering standards and completed performance trials before deployment.
Part of a self-reliance programme
The Navy places the project under NAVSTRAT-2030, its Strategic Plan 2030, which it describes as focused on self-reliance, technological advancement and local engineering capability.
The Navy’s own release adds a detail the Daily Mirror’s version omits: the NBBY operates under ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 45001:2019 certification and holds an Environmental Protection Licence covering emissions and waste management.
The service frames the boat as an expansion of naval engineering into national sports infrastructure — a yard that builds patrol craft turning out a piece of competition equipment.
A note on sourcing
The Daily Mirror report is a close rewrite of the Navy release and carries no independent reporting. Every figure above originates with the Navy.
Not reported
Neither source gives the cost of the boat, how long it took to build, or whether the NBBY intends to build more. Nothing is said about what the Diyawanna centre used before, or whether the new boat has been used at a specific regatta.
There is no independent assessment of the wake claim — no measured figure for how much wash the hull actually produces, and no comment from rowers, race officials or the national rowing body on how it performs in competition.