A generic methodology is presented for implementing, within the CATIA® modelling environment, a parametric model for typical free-form ships so that each generated ship-hull instance is represented as a G1-continuous NURBS multi-patch surface. The methodology has been applied for constructing a container-ship parametric model that is able to generate robustly and efficiently valid hulls for a broad value range of the associated exposed parameters. The so-constructed parametric model is integrated with an, in-house developed, wave-resistance solver and the modeFrontier® optimizer for setting up an environment, that is tested for optimizing the bow area of a container ship against the criterion of minimum wave resistance under the constraint of given displacement. Our solver adopts the Neumann-Kelvin formulation and combines the Boundary Element Method with IsoGeometric Analysis for the numerical solution of the associated Boundary Integral Equation .