Very interesting program. I will have to check it out. Looks promising. Your model of this ship is outstanding, if not yours, then whomever it belongs to.
The initial drawing I made was very fast. It is a lofting, not a plank layout. The "FreeShip" program requires a lot of hand fitting, which, to be honest, you do not need any computer to do. If you actually just copy the forms off of a drawing scaled to the size you need, then you can make the ship without a computer, as was done for 1000's of years. the idea of NURBS modeling is to take away the need to fit, and fill, sand, etc any parts. As I stated, the Hull work did was around 20 minutes worth of work. The planking would not take long at all as the lines can be projected, and in all honesty, making a ship with that much detail almost demands individual planking, to really finalize the ship.
The model I rendered above has hard curves towards the end, but that is easily fixed, as once the shape has been established, by simply moving the control points, the radii can be blended. The idea behind is is to product a model that can be put together without any sanding or filling. If filling and sanding is not an issue, then the software I use, Rhino3D 5.0 cannot be beat for designing ships, as it will calculate the displacement of the hull, has parametric scaling, prints one to one, so you can actually print out the templates for a full size ship by aligning sheets of paper squares, or have the vectors sent to someone with a plotter and have full size templates made. My Epson `13" x 19" printer will actually print up to 4' feet in length, so a nice size, let's say 25' feet, personal sail boar, could have the templates printed up at your home, then taped together at the alignment marks, laid on plywood, and you can start building your boat.
I'm not sure if "FreeShip" is a drawing program as opposed to a CAD program. I think it's a drawing program. I also think, from what I have seen, as I have tried it a bit, it would work really well with other designs too. It is the final fitting of compound curves that is the bane of paper modeling. If filing, fillers, and painting are used, then you have a mixed media model, which is fine by me. I think you can get a better looking model that way.
Link to "FreeShip" and more programs =
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeship/
