The design and development of new vessels is a cost and time-intensive effort, which is greatly reliant on expertise and experience. The prototype building and testing are, especially for small producers who do not sell on volume, often at the same time the production of the first vessel. This further increases the need for other means of reliable and accurate prototype experimentation. This paper presents a procedure for the virtualization of sea trials in which the vessel prototypes are tested, thus generating a concise and reliable data model of the trial, which can be used in simulation and other product development tasks.