Jump to content

Next build daydreaming...


ScottWidmier

Recommended Posts

LOL!!!, forum yes.......Every person has their ideas about whats the most ideal boat for them and their eyes sees different pluses and minuses as no two people's needs and uses are the same. For me I am not a narrow bottom guy and a spray in the face type of fellow, but also understand or think I understand that you are truely not looking for too complexed of a project, or so you perceive from your perspective.

I gather this from the simple rigs and designs that you have provided for us. But one thing that comes to mind and stuck out in your original post was that you wanted some comfort for four people with some area for laying down. Several of the shots shows hulls that are nothing more than sit down, shut up and take a spin around the pond, IMHO.

I also take it that your tow vehicle has more to do and restricts your choice which seems to be 180 to just two of your guildines for anything other than sprint around the park. A dory or the pictorial shot above, in my humble opinion would not make four people comfortable and happy for a day's trip around any park. Of course I am a few years ahead of you and my priorities and likes are not like anyone elses, and likewise cannot be compared to what I would be considering right now if I was in your shoes looking back at my past learnings.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


My problem is too many boats catch my eye!  ???  However, your assessment is accurate and much appreciated.  One of the reasons I wanted to post here.  I guess I need to really list my criteria and stick to it and not be seduced by sexy lines and a slim bottom...we are still talking about boats aren't we  :D ?  So, in order of importance:

1)  Capacity for a family of four (with wiggly kids) for a nice long daysail and possibly beach-camp cruising.

2)  Capacity for one to sleep on-board for a couple of nights (nice if two could for shorter trips.)  Both 1 & 2 require a boat with great initial stability IMHO.  Also, something that sits flat on the beach.

3)  Very easy to setup and launch-- every notice how launch-ramps are the hottest part of the whole boating trip?

4)  Light enough to tow behind my convertible-- 1000lbs total but 800lbs to be safe.

5)  Shallow draft with centerboard and shoal rudder for worry free sailing in shallow florida waters.

6)  Simple rig able to be deployed and the reverse quickly (narrow channels and wind gusts...not great in a boat that you have to turn into the wind to lower sail...

7)  Able to be rowed easily but also have some ability to hang a 2hp kicker on the back if distances are too far or wind is too high.  I got schedules to keep sometimes.

8)  Classic lines appealing to the eye (probably should rank earlier but I hate to admit I am that vain)

9)  Fairly dry boat for comfortable end of day sleeping and maybe cold weather sailing

10)  Able to take rough water (in protected bays)

11)  Comfortable in motorboat chop.

Looking through these requirements and the feedback from folks on this thread, I am thinking either a flat-bottom or slight V bottom sharpie fits the bill best.  I need the sharp chines for the initial stability and shoal water ability I am looking for (of course I could do a lapstrake flattie).  So, now to narrow down a design!  Has anyone looked at the Light Trow?  http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/gavin/lighttrow/index.htm  I love the rig he has set up for this boat and it definitely is slender enough but is it too slender even if scaled up?  I would need to both scale it up and switch from daggerboard to centerboard...preferrably offcenter to leave the floor open for sleeping.  Current dimensions are 15'4" X 4'4" which I could scale up to

aVVvLYA.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well Scott I find myself once again in a position to answer with what I personally feel are some "double negatives" in your laundry list, something that got me in hot water in the past. Looking back over some decisions I have personally made when I also had kidlets moons ago and wanted to step up from tent camping, I made some choices that came back to bite me.

So allow me to ramble a bit here. I purchased the bare minimum rv, that was 20 foot in length for many reasons, one being that it fit the moment in time, stored nicely along the side of the house, and was the maximum weight that I learned from others for my Chev 305 engine van. I placed four of us in it with gear and hit the highways, leaving the comfort zone of what worked in my existing area. I found out quickly that my tow vehicle that worked in my immediate surroundings did not even cut it on the first several inclines of the rolling hills of middle Florida, , and in some wilderness camping areas called Peace River. As I ventured up the highway, chugging along I also found out quickly this setup was a no go along the Blue Ridge parkway, not withstanding in the beautiful and scenic mountains of West Virginia.

See where I am going here? What I see here gives you a cap of around a 500 lb. boat, cap with you giving us a guildlines of around 800 pounds. Most trailers that will haul this potential boat will be or should be in the neighborhood of 300 lbs. to start.

While I agree that your choices of boats may meet and fit your criteria, I forsee a different tow vehicle in the near future for several reasons, one being the safety on the highways and to maximize the use of this boat for your intended stated use. Heaven forbid if you also find out that the listed boat does not meet your needs in the bays of some open water and the family, ie wifey gets cramped in what looks like a sit down and no move around hull that you have listed. These are answers that only you can answer thinking long term past these few posts and this thread.

As far as the boat only, if your intended use is single handling or if you truely intend on making this boat a four person family hull, I personally do not see an all in one in your pictured choices, cept I do not know much about the Welsford hulls at all. But I know that the lapstrake hulls are a stepup build from simplicity and quick builds.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I already have the "family boat" which is a MacGregor 26D that trailers fairly easy and the whole family fits nicely on.  In fact, I am planning on taking the whole family on the BEER cruise this year trailering the Mac behind the family minivan to Pensacola and, yes, I have trailered this boat a couple of places, including hills, with the minivan.  Nice setup overall but a bit big to trailer for a daysail and/or big and time consuming to setup when I trailer for a weekend cruise.  So, really the "family" boat is taken care of and each member of the family will have their own individual boat before I start the build on this hypothetical boat we are talking about (see the beginning of this thread).  So, that is where I am at and you do have a point about moving capacity for family of four down the list.

However, I still want it on there because I do want the option to trailer the family somewhere for a daysail or maybe even a daymotor on another lake.  Will it happen often? Probably not at all.  As for capacity, I have actually taken the family out a couple of times on the 12' catboat I had pictured earlier without problems though only for two hours max because of the wiggles.  I would think if a 12' beamy boat can handle that many folks then some of these 18' sharpies can as well...I have seen photos of some of them handling greater loads. 

Now, for the simple vs. more complex builds you have uncovered once again the exact problem I am having.  Yes, a simple build with time to focus on the details very much appeals to me but at the same time I am also attracted to a more complex boat (wanting to grow I guess) like a lapstrake.  I tell myself I have something in my 12' catboat "Little Gem" I can use perfectly well for campcruising but then I want to get the benefits of a longer/faster hull ASAP!  Well, before I have to pull the trigger I will get the chance to use my 12' catboat as a cruiser and see how well it keeps up with the larger boats.  I have slept on it for two nights just fine but this was at a dock so I need to try at anchor and near shore.  Being more than a shallow V, I can't park it on the beach without excavating a slip so it stays level...maybe I should make up some wedges that I can stick under the hull to keep it level...

Anyway, I think the beauty of your sharpies and others I have seen along with their initial stability and simplicity have me fairly convinced they are the boat for what I am looking for.  Now to look at all of the options and to figure out my rig... 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay now,the tow issue is settled. Lets look at the actual interior space of what you have actually seen. Again forget about this particular hull and begin to seek out designs that may meet or fit your criteria as far as weight and space. I present to you my 20 footer with bench seating fore and aft with a centerline centerboard. This boat is a straight side, hard chine hull drawing less than six inches at rest with the same shoe design and rests incredibly well beached. I can possibly find a shot of the boat on the beachead later.

This boat is a square stern that measures 42 inches. The widest beam on this boat is 72 inches and carries a plus or minus 8 inch covering boards on it. The fore deck is 4 feet fore and aft. The bottom is the same style bottom thats on the round stern. This boat and size is ideal for four adults and gear to camp for a weekend along the barrier islands, not to say that smaller ones do not work either, but just giving you my example of what meets my needs and like for a day's outing. I have had six full size adults with not issues for a daysail.  The boat can be sailed with a 12 foot mast and about 130 sq. ft of sail even though I overcanvased it with 165 feet and a 16 foot mast.

So now you can guage from that one and scale down from there and find a simular plan thats the simple slab sided plywood build. Even with the small vee, its nothing to place false floors on bottom frames of you wish a flat decking inside. The boat sides at midship is 15 inches with the transom at 12 inches plus the vee bottom on it. The boat built in traditional methods still only weighs in around 700 pounds. The mast and sprit fits nicely inside the interior space for traveling on seat cushions tied to a crutch in the mast step, or on crutches both fore and aft which also supports the nice cover that I purchased for about 100 bucks, the step up kind from wallyworld. Hope this helps.

Pq183v7J.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oyster, that is the boat you brought to Hartwell and got me really thinking about open boat cruising.  It got lots of eyeprints all over from all of us in attendance  :o !  I was hoping for stitch and glue construction over the more traditional frame to reduce weight and make the interior uncluttered.  Besides, I am a lot more familiar and comfortable with stitch and glue.  I also need to limit my boat to 18 feet due to storage and handling issues.  If I need more weight to bring the boat down to its lines, particularily for daysailing, I was planning on either sand (pebble or rocks would work as well) bags made out of polytarp or water ballast jugs.  The advantage of the former is if I go over they will fall out of the boat reducing the weight.  I can store additional empty bags to be filled just in case.  The advantage of the latter is the availability of water at the lake and ease of filling.  They would also be neutrally boyant so recoverable.  Not that I am planning on going over!  Camp cruising or sailing with a crowd I don't think I will need ballast.

I am also still thinking about a non-traditional off-center centerboard.  In my, and others, experience, an offcenter board has little if any impact on the sailing characteristics of a narrow boat and would open up the center of the boat for a whole bunch of different uses.  There also would be nice storage behind the board.  This may limit my choices of a boat a bit though it should work well on all sharpie types including V bottoms.  Heck, I could even copy B&B Belhaven idea where the offcenter centerboard sticks out a bit creating a tripod with a little keel on the other side of the boat.  I am probably making the traditionalists shudder!!!  ;D  On your boat that would give me around 60 inches wide open area taking away the flair and space for the centerboard case. 

Keep the ideas rolling as this is really helping my mind stop jumping around from design to design.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would strongly suggest that you look seriously at the Belhaven and make a call to Graham and discuss some minor changes that would transform that hull into what I think would be an easy build. That boat also can be built with the same style construction methods, too if you do not come up with the right stuff. But you are heading to a new frontier, but not entirely impossible, either.  ;) But let me address something that many folks rarely if ever consider and that is from numerous conversations of some of the older and antique guys. 16' and 20' seems to favor performance in those increments. Balast was never really an issue since most of the hulls were solid planked and used heavy framing timbers and almost all stayed in the water giving the hulls more weight anyway. There are delicate tendancies for most all log canoes and wantabe "log canoes" such as these hulls. I actually added some inches from the standard hulls and also used the additional widths of covering boards never having to use those funny looking outriggers in all the instances that I have been in including those cold fronts that I got caught in a couple of years ago. Talk later, or send me a pm and we can chat a bit. Back to gluing for now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ask anyone who has built one (I have not), I bet that the time it takes to get a CS-17 into "floatable-sailable" condition if one were to ignore as many details as is reasonable would not be significantly different from the time it takes to get a glass sheathed sharpie of the same size into floatable-sailable condition. The fact that a CS-17 cries out for a higher level of trim and more refined details than your average plywood sharpie is the time consuming part! 

As for me, I have very little time and money to spend on it so I would happily build an "Aunty Helen" or a Michalak "AF3" in preference to a CS-17 not because I wouldn't want the CS, but because I can get either of them done to a "low level of trim" for not much and very fast and not feel like I am wasting the opportunity for something nicer offered by the CS-17. I'd even trade one of them to you for your plastic MacGregor! (My kids don't yet appreciate the rougher side of life. And yes, that is a long story.)

To my mind, puttering about with the details is less rewarding than tweaking the things that make the boat fast, safe, and fun to be on. Get it done and get sailing, that's what I say. Arranging to get time on the water is my waterloo.

However, jawing about it gives us all huge amounts of pleasure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My dad just sent along a the picture I mentioned earlier. The tow-headed 7 year old in front of the Seagull outboard is me 43 years ago!

aV17H3Ar.jpg

It shows how roomy, and dry the thing was. Dad scaled it up from 16' to 19'. This gave it pretty high freeboard, but it made it nearly un-capsizable and really kid friendly. Yes, those are cotton sails!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions and a wonderful overall conversation about boats.  I have gotten plenty of hours of enjoyment as well as a better refined idea of my next build.  Plan is to enjoy my 12' campcruiser and finish the wive and kids boat but only after I make it through March hopefully alive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...


×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.