Red Planet

Thanks for the warm welcome, Ken. Not too much excitement here on the "OK lets talk some designs" forum. I've taken your suggestion and looked for monster canoes. Found a few on the Selway-Fisher site. Charlie tells me that Graham Byrnes designed the amas for his John's Sharpie conversion and that he's delighted with the little tri. Now the sharpie wheels are spinning again. Hmm, if Byrnes designs that wonderful Core Sound series, and he also designed the amas for a sharpie trimaran... I've done some comparison of the John's Sharpie to the CS series, from photos only, of course, since I don't have plans for either one. The John's sharpie is slimmer, and seems to have a transom that's quite a bit narrower and lifted a little higher above the waterline. Maybe the thing for me to think about is scaling up a John's Sharpie to 21 or 22 feet, and scaling the amas along with it. Assuming, that is, that I could get hold of plans for both. Larry Martin

We like almost everything about the Sea Pearl tri. It's cat-ketch rig, stability, leeboards, roominess, easy handling, camping capabilities etc etc. The two principal obstacles are a) high cost of a new boat/motor/trailer with ground tackle and camping canvas, and unavailability of affordable, well-found used boats. One possible route is to buy an older monohull Sea Pearl and take it down to Marine Concepts for conversion, but even that's pricey. Dang. Which is why I'm thinking about about building a plywood sharpie and adding amas. Jim Brown, with his wonderful book, is actually the guy who started me down this rabbit hole back in the 70s, and I've had a soft spot for tris ever since. Ian Farrier's trailerable tris are hard to beat, but more boat than we want now, and more money, too. We talked to Farrier at the Annapolis Boat Show in the mid-80s and came very close to buying one of the first F-27s. The F-22 looks to be a great building project, but expensive and more complex than I'm prepared to undertake. A sharpie hull, though maybe not the best vaka for a tri, is so easy to build! When I say the Farrier tris are more boat than we want, I think I'm saying that we're not looking for a cabin. We've owned a Com-Pac 19 (in which we had a ball), a Hunter 25, and three or four trailerable power boats, one of which had a sleepover cuddy, and we've chartered on larger sailboats. We've also canoe-camped extensively, and we've learned that a permanent cabin is not our favorite part of the boat. A good open boat, with a bimini for sun protection and a fabric enclosure for sleeping fairly dry and moderately bug-free, I think that's the way we want to go. There are a lot of small, open tris around that do much of what I'd like except provide the opportunity for sleeping aboard. Your right, Ken. I should just go buy a Sea Pearl tri. But I'll probably keep noodling the problem for a while, trying to come up with something I can build and/or convert to do the job. Larry Martin

The photos of Charlie's John's Sharpie trimaran are intriguing. My wife and I (in our late 60s) once did a bit of camp cruising and trailer sailing and are looking to get back into it, this time with a more stable platform. Earlier this year we sailed for an hour or so in a Sea Pearl 21 tri and loved it. I've been looking ever since for a sharpie I might build and convert to three hulls for camp cruising in shoal waters. Charlie's tri conversion is beautiful. The John's Sharpie is a little smaller than we had in mind but it might work. If built from scratch, would it be possible to pick up a little interior room by exchanging the centerboard for a leeboard or two? Still, for camp cruising, not much freeboard there and it looks like it might be a wet ride. I like the Core Sound series and have been toying with the thought of building a CS 20 and adding an ama or two (again, for stability), but am concerned that the beam/length ratio of the CS is too great to make a tri that is capable of good cruising performance. If it were possible to convert the CS 20 into a camp-cruising tri that is weatherly (within reason) and comes about smartly, I think that would be my ideal boat. I look at photos of the CS 20 and imagine it with amas. Then I think, nah, won't work. Then I see Charlie's John's Sharpie and the thought returns. Now it won't go away. Surely there are folks on this forum smart enough to disabuse me of the idea of a CS trimaran. Larry Martin