Didi Mini for Sale

The Didi Mini "Livesey" is being offered for sale. She was professionally built in Russia and is currently berthed in Turkey. She is being offered for 20,000 Euro, which is way below her replacement price with equipment.

"Livesey", a Didi Mini outfitted for cruising.

"Livesey" is rigged out as a fast little cruiser, built with 9mm hull skin instead of the standard 6mm and with large double forward berth and quarter berths to comfortably sleep four. Unfortunately I dont have any interior photos.

"Livesey" out of the water. Fast planing underbody.

She is well-equipped, with racing and cruising mainsails, gennaker, asymmetrical, code 0, jib, storm jib and storm trysail. Other equipment includes Icom radio, Raymarine autopilot, instruments and GPS, solar battery charger, 6hp Mercury outboard, 4-man liferaft and an inflatable kayak.

"Livesey" deck view.

"Livesey" view from the masthead.

"Livesey" side view.

"Livesey" is the Mk1 version of the Didi Mini design, with the step-down aft deck. She is well-found and suitable for long distance cruising for those who want a compact little boat that will give fast passages. An owner cruising a similar boat in the North Atlantic reports that he can sail as fast as the bigger boats cruising the same route that are motoring because there is not enough wind for them to sail effectively.

If she interests you, please contact me by email, then I will put you in contact with the seller.

To see our full range of designs, please visit http://dixdesign.com/.

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It is the average of the job which matters advice for the perfectionists

This is the text of an article I wrote many years ago - the message is still important...

A Phil Bolger Micro and an Iain Oughtred Tammie Norrie in the workshop I rented after first turning professional

Ian lay against the wall of the workshop, seated on an off-cut of plywood placed across a pair of sawhorses. He raised his eyes from the jumble of boating magazines on his lap and contemplated the scene within the building. 

Mike Rowe was completing the final stages of the scarph joint which had changed two sheets of 9mm plywood into a single 4.8metre panel. Ian had been able to watch the whole operation as though a fly on the wall, his friend being almost unaware of another person in the shop.  

What interested Ian was the speed with which the scarphing operation had taken place, despite Mike having been interrupted by a customer call. 

“Hey Mike,” he called, “Do you realize that you would have taken three weeks to do that job a few years ago, but that that one took less than fifteen minutes?” 

Mike Rowe glanced over at him as he tossed a pair of disposable gloves into the bin and washed his hands in the grubby wall-mounted sink. “The reason that I used to be so slow,” said Mike, “was that I used to be frightened of making a mistake. I would plan the whole operation (whatever it might be) in great detail, but the more I planned, the more complicated it became in my head. Fear of wrecking the job really slowed me down.” 

Warming to the theme, Mike continued. “I’m still concerned about making errors, but part of the learning process involves understanding that mistakes and accidents will occur, but that just about anything can be fixed properly.” 

Having dragged his body away from the empty coffee cup and stack of books, Ian cast a critical eye over the scarphing job. He noted that although it was not perfect, it was neat and very accurate. The feather-edge of the plywood scarph showed some unevenness where the razor-sharp blade of the block plane had jagged the wood fibres – but these were minor errors of no structural concern. 

“It is the ‘average’ of the job which matters, not the occasional fault,” observed Mike. “If you just keep trying to be accurate and thorough, the job will work out well, despite the saw wandering or the chisel slipping”. 

Mike flicked on the kettle. “What used to happen was that I’d become discouraged by mistakes. Then I would either walk away for a week, or I would drop my standards because I thought the job was no longer perfect.” 

Nodding slowly, Ian reflected on the number of times he had experienced the same feelings…

A Phil Bolger Harbinger catboat in my second professional workshop. She was built strip/diagonal from one lamination of Western Red Cedar strip planking and two laminations of Hoop Pine diagonal planking

Let us leave this imaginary pair in the imaginary workshop, but think about their story. Once you lose momentum on a project, it is very difficult to get going again without encouragement.  

Most amateur builders work alone, juggling work, family, finances and time. A minor setback can seem disastrous, and it is no wonder that some boatbuilding jobs are never completed. Others get finished, but in a slap-dash manner because reality hasn’t matched the dream. 

Don’t lose sight of the dream, but be realistic about the outcome. As long as the wandering saw keeps coming back to the line, the overall result will be good, and the care will show. Attend to errors where they occur, but keep on working with accuracy in mind.

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Moth

Is it a boat is it a plane? Im guessing its a Moth the International development class which today manifests itself in these all carbon hydrofoil designs, described as Formula 1 for the water

Loads of great information on the UK International Moth Association site.

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Keel Sheer and Fairing

Early April was the time to laminate the stem. It was then aligned and supported in position at the bow.


The rabbet/keel offsets were marked on the frames.


After each floor was marked it needed to be leveled and shaped by sanding (faired) to exact height.
Notice the use of the particulate respirator while sanding....


And the appropriate "ladder".....


Not wife approved.......


But "one out of two" safety precautions is better than none. There was some issue of "ladders just not fitting in among the supports" anymore.




A temporary board shows the shape of the keel for fairing.

Quarters are tight, looking from the spraybooth area of the cabinet shop, past the folded lofting table, through the "boat room", toward the true garage.


The port side is pretty tight. Richard is not looking forward to squeezing back there to do the planking....

The transom is in position. Almost all of the beautiful transom is above water line. The placement of the 60 degree angled transom took quite a bit of head scratching and manipulation. The off sets that were plotted needed to be considered with the angle of the transom. The vertical placement and angle were scaled off the drawings.

Its difficult to envision the shape with a full thickness of keel and after planking. Lots of compound sweeps and curves.

Richard placed an extra laminated frame inside the transom to give a wider area to fair across and assist with supporting planking to the transom.

The next step was notching for the sheer. The sheer is basically the line of the boat deck as seen from the side. It is incredibly important in the overall look and feel of the boat. A nicely sweeping sheer helps with the look of a classic boat. Mostly all that can be done upside down and in tight quarters is to scale and measure from DWL to the sheer and get as much curve to it as a board (the sheer clamp) will bend. The bulkheads and frames were notched to accept the sheer clamp.

The batten running the length of the hull near the strongback shows the sheer.

For the next 100 hours Richard got to get very tired of fairing the hull. Fairing is done to bevel and smooth the shape of the frames and bulkheads to flow with the strips that will be epoxied to them. A batten is laid across the frames in a smooth line from stem to stern. All extra wood (high spots) are shaved away with the use of planes or a rasp. This is a very labor intensive and tedious process, but will effect the ease and solidity of the planking. The batten is moved around the hull in different positions, and a fair hull in which planking could be applied in most directions is produced.

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The Beneteau 36s7

Now that the Honcho is back home in its berth in Long Beach, Ive had some time to reflect on the boat and how well it performed as a cruising vessel on this voyage. First and foremost I should say that we had a fantastically enjoyable time while we lived aboard the Honcho. We set sail fully aware of the small size of the boat and planned the outfitting, provisioning and sailing route accordingly, and so got along very well aboard the Honcho throughout the voyage. Still, it would be valuable to anyone who is planning such a voyage as ours to consider some of the lessons we learned along the way. So Ill begin with the design and construction of the boat, then the outfitting and provisioning, and finally the sailing of the Honcho.

The Beneteau First 36s7 is designed as a racer/cruiser, with the emphasis more on cruising than racing. This results in a moderately lightweight boat that performs well enough under sail to make the sailing fun. It’s also important to be able to sail your way out of trouble, especially upwind, so you don’t have to rely on the motor if the weather turns nasty. The Honcho performed well whenever called on for such duty.

After living aboard the Honcho for nearly a year, I’ve had ample time to ponder her accommodations. I guess the fact that we never felt the desire to change anything speaks for the basic accommodations plan. We really like the large drop-leaf table in the salon, with its built-in wine storage, and the auxiliary wine locker over the port settee. One thing I would have changed if we had spent the summer in the Sea is the hot water heater plumbing. It uses engine cooling water to heat the freshwater. That’s good most of the time.  But the heater is located under the quarterberth and when it’s blazing hot out and the water temperature is over eighty degrees, it makes for a very warm berth. If I had it to do over, I’d rig a bypass line, so that I can bypass the heater when I want to.

The Honcho on the hard, getting an epoxy barrier coat

Given the size of the boat, the galley worked really well. I built a cutting board to fit over one of the sinks to expand the counter space, which is always in short supply on a small boat. The galley is equipped with a two burner stove, which is adequate for the cooking we did. When we stayed in marinas we dined out regularly, but it was almost always easy to find plenty of high quality fresh food in the local markets or big-box stores. Costco was our favorite of the big stores, though it was more  fun to visit the smaller stores and bargain for fresh picked fruits and vegetables.

We would have preferred a built-in freezer, but that’s not practical on a boat this size. The little freezer compartment in the icebox could be relied on to make two trays of crystal clear ice cubes, and that was enough for four tall cold drinks everyday regardless of the temperature outside.

One improvement we would have liked was a bigger cockpit. There is ample room to have designed a longer, wider cockpit with an open or step-through transom. As built, it was fine for a crew of two, but it gets tight with four or more. On the other hand, the transom extension was an invaluable addition.

When cruising as we did in Mexico, you’ll spend about 85 percent of the time at anchor or in a marina. Over a span of about nine months, we sailed a total of just over 5,000 miles. At an average of 5.5 knots, that works out to about 38 sailing days out of 270. Pretty good for a 36-foot boat. We would like to have gone further during the voyage, and would have if we could have gone faster. We missed some interesting places in the Sea of Cortez because we ran out of time. Of course we could have spent more days sailing, but we always enjoyed being where we were. So the lesson we learned is that in the future we would like to have a faster boat, which translates directly to a longer boat.

Cruising in Mexico involves a lot of sailing dead upwind or dead downwind. The Honcho is a pretty good upwind boat, but most of the time when our destination was upwind, we motor-sailed. Having raced thousands of upwind miles I had always thought that cruising sailors were a bit on the wimpy side for motoring when they could sail. However, it’s much quicker and more comfortable to motor-sail a hundred miles upwind than to spend thirty hours heeled thirty degrees in a twenty-knot headwind.  So the lesson here, for us at least, is that our next boat will be one that motors well and has plenty of fuel capacity. The Honcho has a nice three bladed feathering prop that proved itself many times, especially on the long bash up the Baja coast. Our 24-gallon fuel tank, adequate for local cruising was not enough for the longer passages we made, or for cruising in the Sea of Cortez where fuel docks are few and far between. We usually carried two 5-gallon jerry jugs of diesel on deck, and added four more for the passage between Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada.

Mexico has to be one of the world’s great cruising grounds, with literally hundreds of beautiful, remote anchorages in addition to many fine marinas. We always preferred to anchor whenever we could, and stayed in marinas only when there was a compelling reason to do so. Two things make riding at anchor a pleasure or a trial. Your ground tackle, and how the boat rides at anchor. I prefer to have big anchors and all chain rodes, so I fitted the Honcho with a 35lb Manson Supreme and 120 feet of quarter inch high-test chain. For backup, we had two Danforths of 22 and 12 pounds, with a 20’ chain and 150’ nylon rode. We also took another 150’ foot nylon rode for just in case. I’ve read the Internet arguments about the Manson vs. Rocna and the other brands…That’s mostly just wind in the rigging. But there is no doubt in my mind that the basic design of the Manson/Rocna type is superior to the plow and fluke type anchors. Ours never dragged, always popped free when we wanted it to and never gave us any trouble.

As for how the boat rides at anchor, the hullform of the Honcho, rather full in the ends and relatively light displacement, meant that it had a tendency to sail around quite a bit while on the hook. We didn’t over-burden the boat with a lot of extra stuff on deck so it didn’t roll much though, and I’ll take the sailing over rolling any day. With a chain rode, it was always prudent to rig a nylon snubber to keep the boat from being jerked as the chain went taut in windy conditions. I usually rigged a double snubber about 10’-15’ long led to the port and starboard bow cleats. This arrangement helped to dampen the yawing as the boat sailed around the chain, but a narrower, heavier boat would certainly have ridden to the anchor better.

The honcho at Catalina a week before departing for Mexico

The Honcho’s rig is a fractional sloop. When we bought it, the boat had a roller furling jib and lazy jacks on the mainsail. The main on this boat is quite big, and set up with slab reefing. In heavy air, it was easy to reef and we did so quite often. The boat sails well under main alone with the apparent wind at 40 degrees or more and we often sailed that way. Before we left, I took the roller furler off the boat. It was worn out and I thought it would be just as well to just hank the jib on the headstay. That way it would be easy to shift gears from the big jib to the little one. This system worked well, but it was labor intensive to set, douse and stow the jibs. Hanks are foolproof and furlers are not. But I found myself on the foredeck wrestling a jib more often than I would have liked, so in spite of the efficiency and safety of the hanks, our next boat will be fitted with a roller-furling jib.

As for safety gear, we took plenty of it and wore self-inflating life vests at night and whenever it was rough out. We carried a MOM and a LifeSling and thankfully never had to use them. Our jacklines were polyester webbing led to heavy-duty padeyes on deck. We carried a Switlick Rescue Pod instead of a full-fledged liferaft. It was a good compromise given that we were only going down the coast and not crossing any oceans.

No one should leave without a good EPIRB with integral GPS. We used an ACR Globalfix.

Wherever cruisers gather, the conversation eventually turns to communications and navigation equipment. Some argue that with Sat-phones, there is no need for a single sideband radio. I’m not convinced. We used our SSB regularly for weather reports and forecasts as well as to talk with friends who were hundreds of miles away, for free. We liked to get away and were always glad to find a hidden anchorage with no other boats around. But it was also nice to know that we could get in touch with someone almost instantly with the SSB. Could the same be done with a Sat-phone? Possibly, but I liked the ability to broadcast when I wanted to, while the phone only enables you to call a certain phone number.

We did not carry AIS or Radar. The AIS is a great piece of equipment and we won’t leave home again without one. There were times when Radar would have been handy. The Mexican coast has plenty of fog and more than once we waited for fog to lift a bit before entering a bay or anchorage. The newest models use less energy than before and we’ll install one on our next boat.

Finally, the sailing: We always enjoyed sailing the Honcho. She handled well in all the conditions we encountered, giving a good turn of speed reaching and running, and always well balanced and easy to steer. With her wide stern, I first thought the rudder would be too short to give good control when the boat heeled under sail, and I thought I might add some depth to it. But time ran out as we prepared to leave and I never got around to it. It was just as well because it proved to be just fine as is. We used the autopilot a lot and it worked flawlessly the entire trip. In my opinion it’s a good idea to get one that’s rated for a bigger boat than you have, and ours never strained or complained. Upwind in light conditions, I could skip the autopilot and just lock the wheel and the boat would sail along for miles with nothing more than occasional attention to the traveler in the puffs and lulls.

Before we left I went through the boat from keel to masthead, and made sure she was ready in all respects for the conditions and adventures we expected to encounter. Good materials and workmanship served us very well throughout the trip. We never had a serious breakdown and spent virtually no time on repairs except for routine maintenance and, once, a corroded connection at the windlass. That left us free to enjoy the wonders of Mexico, and share a leisurely and mostly carefree voyage along the coast and in the beautiful Sea of Cortez. I’m pleased to report that the Honcho arrived home after a voyage of some 5,000 miles in excellent condition, as did we.

When planning this trip, we decided to find a smallish boat that would be capable of handling the voyage we were contemplating with a minimum financial investment, yet still provide the comfort and safety we desired, and the Honcho filled that requirement beautifully.

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St Michel II Jules Vernes yacht returns!

The happy band of sailing men seen in the picture here are volunteers from the "Cale 2 lIle" association based in the French port of Nantes. The association aims to save some of Frances nautical heritage by restoring and maintaining old boats.

The boat theyre sitting on is one they all helped build - the St Michel II - a replica of Jules Vernes second yacht in which he enjoyed escaping from land to cruise and write his novels in peace. (The reason theyre all sitting on the rail, by the way, is that theyre helping the boats designer, Francois Vivier, to measure the boats stability.)

The 6 year project to build St Michel II was completed earlier this year and she was launched at Nantes where Jules Verne was born in 1828.

Jules Verne was, from an early age, an enthusiast for all things to do with ships and the sea. In 1865, with his books selling well, and his fortune increasing, he bought a small fishing vessel of around 25 ft at the small port of Le Crotoy at the mouth of the river Somme, and had it converted into a capable sailing yacht. Verne made many extended cruises in his little boat, becoming familiar with many ports in Northern France, the Channel Islands and parts of the English south coast. He even sailed up the Thames to London. It was on board this yacht, the St Michel, while cruising with his crewman Alexandre Delong, that Verne wrote his “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea”.

In 1875 after having been elected to membership of Frances premier yacht club, Verne ordered a larger 13m yacht from the Cherbourg yard of Abel Lemarchand. Although he took pleasure in working with the builder on the yachts plans, she retained the lines and character of a traditional northern French pilot vessel. The new boat was named St Michel II and launched in 1876. Once again Verne undertook a full programme of extended cruising, along the coasts of northern france, the south of England, Brittany, and even across the Bay of Biscay to Bordeaux and back. He loved the peace and solitude he found on board his boats, and was able to write very productively while at sea, unburdened by everyday social and family matters.

After only a couple of seasons, however, the St Michel II was replaced by a magnificent steam motor-sailer of 31 metres length, the St Michel III, a vessel befitting the worlds most famous author of tales of travel and adventure. This new boat required a crew of 10 men, and Vernes cruises became even longer and more extended, reaching as far as the Baltic, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, North Africa, Malta and Italy.

The original St Michel II was sold to the St Nazaire Pilot station where she served for many years. Later she became the supply ship for the prison on the island of Belle-Ile, off the Brittany coast. The St Michel II was eventually scrapped in 1911.

The new replica St Michel II has already taken part in a number of sailing events for classic and historic vessels around the coast of France. Her first public outing was at the famous "Semaine du Golfe de Morbihan" (Morbihan Week), a biennial boatfest which attracts hundreds of vessels of all shapes and sizes. Im hoping to take part in the 2013 event with my own boat - if my own restoration project is complete by then.

St Michel II

LOA: 13.27m
Beam: 3.52m
Draft: 2.25m

Acknowledgements and links:

Association La Cale 2 lIle

Images and story sources: La Cale 2 lIle and Francois Vivier

Additional images: Ouest-France, Mer et Marine.com

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Wooden Boat Festival 2015

The 2015 edition of the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, Washington, happens 11-13 September. Organised by the Northwest Maritime Center, it is their premier event of the year, attracting hundreds of wooden boats of all description, a wide array of exhibits and with 120 speaker sessions on boating subjects.

Some of the boats at the 2014 Festival, Didi Cruise-Mini in right foreground.

I will be taking part in three sessions, one on each day of the Festival.

Friday 11th - 2:45pm - Yacht Designers Panel Q&A - six designers to field your questions about boats and designing them. A session like this highlights the variety of opinions held by different designers on boating issues.

Saturday 12th - 2:30pm - Plywood Boatbuilding Methods - PowerPoint presentation showing information and details of the methods for which I design, illustrated with drawings and photos of my own projects and those of amateurs who have built these designs.

Sunday 13th - 1:15pm - Plywood Kits for Larger Boats - PowerPoint presentation about constructing kit boats that are larger than open dinghies and kayaks. This will cover boats from a 21ft lapstrake plywood trailer-sailer through to a 55ft radius chine plywood cruising catamaran.

Paper Jet "Water Rocket" at the 2014 Festival

The Didi Cruise-Mini "Segue" of David Blessing will be there among the on-the-water boats but I dont know yet what other of my boats will be there.

When not involved with other things, I am happy to meet with builders or anyone interested in my designs. If you cant find me then visit the Didi Cruise-Mini. Whoever is in attandance at the boat should know where I am and how to contact me.

If you are in the Pacific Northwest, or able to get there, this is an event worthwhile visiting.

To see our designs, visit our main website or our mobile website.

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Potpurri

Potpourri -  ...a stew with a wide variety of ingredients ... or ...any collection of miscellaneous or diverse items...

Well, it has been three weeks since I wrote anything here, and Ive been feeling mightily guilty about the delay. It has been caused by a range of things over which Ive had little control, but the result has been that Ive been so busy that somethings have had to slip. My website and this blog take a lot of time to maintain, and as I need to feed my family, a job at the local hardware store has had to take priority. The hardware store job will finish next Sunday afternoon, so I hope to get back to posting reasonably regularly.

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Sliding Seat Rowing Boat?

The sliding seat rowing boat on our verandah

Ive recently finished building a sliding seat rowing boat for a friend in Brisbane. You can read some earlier comments in this post.

The kit-boat has turned out nicely, although I have some doubts about the use of jigsaw puzzle joints to make full-length planks from eight foot long sections of plywood. It is the standard old problem faced by kit manufacturers - how do you pack a long boat into a flat-pack which is only eight feet long? Most use the so called jigsaw puzzle joint, but the problem with long planks is that there is too much possibility of misalignment due to the tolerances in the joint. This is particularly serious when the planks are narrow as is the case with a lapstrake hull.

In the photo above you can see one of the plank sections in the foreground prior to being cut free from the routed sheet of ply.

Next photo shows a close-up of one of the planks after being cut from the sheet.

The fuzz left by the router was lightly sanded.

And here you can see that the kit manufacturer did a nice job of producing the puzzle joints.

The photo above shows one of the planks being clamped up on my very sturdy and flat scarphing bench. In the background you can see another set of clamps over a second joint. As the boat is around 19 feet long, each plank requires two joints to make up the full length. Not visible in this picture is the matching plank for the other side of the boat which is being clamped-up on the other side of the bench.

Here you can see that when some of the plank pairs were stacked on each other to check that they were identical, significant variations were discovered. This pair was the worst result I got, but when you consider that the angular difference at the joint was only 0.75 of one degree to produce this error, you can see how tricky it is when the planks are so narrow. I was aware of the potential problem and took extreme care with pencil lines drawn on the bench top taken from stacked sets of dry assembled planks. Most of mine worked out reasonably well, but the set shown in the above picture was so bad that I had to pull the joint apart using heat to soften the epoxy. The planks were then re-glued to an acceptable standard

In the right foreground you can see the puzzle joints in the assembled hull

The patented Lap-stitch method used in this kit is a form of stitch-and-glue construction, and as with most stitch-and-glue designs, the hull does not require a strong-back nor a mold. However, any error in the shape of the hull components when laid out flat will result in a distorted hull after assembly because there is no mold to keep things aligned. If the plank shapes are wrong - even slightly - the hull will be out of shape. I do not mean to imply that the kit, nor the design, are in anyway sub-standard - I think it is an excellent boat. What I am saying is that if you are going to build a boat using jigsaw puzzle joints and a moldless construction, then you had better be extremely careful to ensure that there is no distortion induced by the use of puzzle joints - particularly in long, narrow boats with many (therefore very narrow) planks.

Here are a few more pictures of the finished boat, looking very nice to my eyes.

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Jim Michalak Scram Pram

 

A customer (and? friend) has delivered his partially-completed Jim Michalak Scram Pram to me to have the boat finished. Unfortunately, work pressure has prevented the owner from completing the work.

 

A Scram Pram photo taken from Jims catalogue on Duckworks

Im excited about getting this job for two reasons;

• I hold Jim Michalaks work in very high regard; and
• Scram Pram incorporates the Birdwatcher cabin arrangement, which was devised by Phil Bolger and put to excellent use by Jim in a number of his designs.

For decades I have been fascinated by the functional possibilities of the Birdwatcher cabin. The idea is that all crew members sit inside the boat with their heads covered by the raised-deck  of the cabin and looking out through panoramic plastic windows. There is a slot down the centre of the cabin - usually about two feet wide - which allows people to walk up and down the boat while standing upright, yet well protected from falling overboard.

This photo shows part of the interior of a Birdwatcher. I have taken it from the web, but Im pretty sure that it belongs to Mason Smith.

 The best way to describe the Birdwatcher concept is to read what Phil Bolger himself said about the idea. This essay is taken from the now-defunct magazine, Small Boat Journal.

Dear SBJ

The first time I ever heard of Phil Bolger was when I received the literature on Dovekie (see SBJ#39) from Edey & Duff. Dovekie encompasses ev­erything I want in a boat but is only avail­able in a sailaway version. I would rather build my own or something very similar. I’ve built three previous boats and en­joyed the experiences immensely. Does Phil Bolger have plans available for a homebuilt version of Dovekie?

— L.D. Blotter Ogden, Utah

PHILIP BOLGER REPLIES

Dear Mr. Blotter,

Several others besides you have asked for a home-built Dovekie, but even the prototype Dovekie was impractical for one-off building, and after several years’ development by Peter Duff, it’s out of the question.

What I take you to mean, though, is not necessarily a copy of Dovekie, but a new design with the same objectives: a very light and shallow boat combining cabin and cockpit into one large space, with oar instead of motor auxiliary, and capable of being sailed in an unstrenuous fashion. One should be able to enjoy this boat in intricate and inaccessible places afloat, as well as trailer it far and fast on the high­way. It is what 1984 Sea Trials judge Jack Dunn (see SBJ #39) called a “bird­watcher” a craft “in which one might poke through a marsh or backwater in search of nothing more than a pleasant lunch and a tan.”

For home building, the sharp-sterned “instant boat” shape has a good record. The sides are prefabricated simply by sawing three 4-foot-by-8-foot sheets of plywood down the center and butting them. Wrapped around four bulkheads with flared sides, these straight-edge pan­els produce the sheer, rocker, and raked ends shown: a hull not at all crude or ungraceful to my eye, and one that can sail and row most respectably.

Hulls like this go best trimmed down by the stern. They’re not happy if the harsh forefoot gets in the water, but they can stand a lot of weight if it’s kept aft since a pointed stern doesn’t drag much at any depth. Sail-carrying power is less than in a boat with a wide stern, but the loss isn’t prohibitive.

Galley Rower

A major advantage of this hull shape is that the oars can be trailed straight aft without shipping them, an advantage when passing through a narrow place or past an obstacle. This has been a problem for craft with closed oar ports ever since war galleys tried to scrape each others oars off. The closed ports are necessary in any high-sided boat meant to be rowed seriously, for an oar working at a steep angle to the water makes heavy work and little power.

The far aft placement also puts the oars where the sides are close enough together to use oars only 7 feet long. These have less drive than 9½-foot oars, but they’re easier to ship and unship and stow in the boat. They also can be worked in tighter quarters, such as narrow creeks and marina slips, and they’re much cheaper to buy and more easily replaced at short notice. She’s not meant to be rowed far or fast in any case. The 7-foot oars should move her 2½ mph in a glassy calm. With a short, quick stroke, it will be possible to move her a short distance against a fair breeze, or across a strong breeze with calculated use of the center­board.

I know very well that these oars, or even the longer oars of Dovekie, can’t do everything a motor can. Ingenuity and patience are supposed to substitute for power. Plan routes to go with swift streams, not against them. Till the tide turns or the wind shifts, sit and look at birds or read Francis Herreshoff on yacht design (he said it all). However, if nothing but a motor will suffice, I’d sug­gest the yawl-boat way — in this case a small inflatable with motor fitting to push or pull the mother ship. Birdwatcher can tow it quite easily under sail, though not under oars. An inflatable would also be useful for shoreside excursions because Birdwatcher isn’t light enough to drag or carry over flats at low tide or small enough to be welcome in a crowded dinghypark. Her shallow draft doesn’t make her an adequate substitute for a tender.

No boat meant to row can afford the tremendous drag of an immersed rudder or centerboard. A swinging-blade out­board rudder takes care of half the prob­lem. The proposed hull shape isn’t well suited to leeboards, so the centerboard is designed to come up flush with the bot­tom. There’s some drag from the edges of the slot, but I don’t think it will be very noticeable. Under sail, the centerboard’s broad, delta shape is designed to be effec­tive with less-than-optimum attention to the tiller.

Glassed-In

Now for the radical part of the concept. Live ballast, crew weight, is important to the sailing of any very light boat. Yet in this case, we want to avoid strenuous positions as much as possible. For our purposes, the best place for the crew is on the bottom of the boat. Hiking or trapeze riding is exhausting for birdwatcher-type crews, and it loses effectiveness if the boat heels sharply. Helmsmen and crew both have to concentrate fiercely to keep the boat sailing as upright as possible. But with the crew sitting on the bottom, the weight gains effectiveness with increas­ing heel. Crew can chock themselves comfortably in place and let the boat heel as much as she likes instead of scrambling to hold her down.

The catch is that even on the bottom the weight is not very effective unless it’s well over to the weather side. And if the boat is open on the weather side to allow this, it’s normally open on the lee side as well and will ship water if she heels a lot. Raising the sides high enough to come clear above the heads of crew sitting on the bottom, with enough deck overhead to allow the boat to float dry flat on her side or beyond, would make the boat uncapsizable, except in a breaking sea. The upper sides would be transparent plastic for an all-around view, with enough transparent panels in the top to watch the sail. The open center keeps most of the advantages of an open boat —mainly being able to move around with­out clinging precariously on top of the boat. As the cartoon section shows, an adult is waist deep for almost the full length of the boat.

To keep this “standing room” clear, I’ve located both mast and centerboard off center. The off-centerboard case is still far enough inboard to have its top open with no risk of flooding her through it. The space outboard of it forms a big bin for general stowage, even real mattresses. Since I want the weight kept aft in this hull shape, I don’t mind blocking off the bot­tom there. Underway, the crew would sit just abaft it, where they should be for best trim.

The tiller is hooked up to be comforta­ble for a helmsman sitting under the deck but pivoted so he can stand up with it still in hand. The connections are a little busy but can be made strong and positive. If I do working plans for this boat, I intend to add a triangular cap on the outside of the sternpost to reduce the rake of the rudder axis and tiller stock.

It’s possible that sometimes, in some places, this raised deck arrangement will be intolerably hot. I hope there will be an eddying air circulation through the cen­terline opening, but that remains to be seen. Opening panels in the sides would be complicated to build and degrade security. (The oar ports are bad enough, but even if one of them were caught open at the wrong time, they’re not big enough to flood her suddenly.) Using plastic with ultraviolet filtering, either the usual “black glass” or the outside mirror mate­rial sometimes seen in vans, should help by giving some shade and ought to reduce sunburn and eyestrain. Unless the wind is very strong, one could stand up now and then for a breath of fresh air. At any rate, if the ventilation turns out to be bad on a hot day, the shelter will be good on a cold one.

The long standing room can be covered by a tightly-stretched hood unrolled from end to end, with a stiffened section over the slope at the stern that could be swung up to get in or out with a minimum of drip. With this cover in place, she’d be highly streamlined for very low drag at highway speeds or for riding out a gale at anchor or on the beach. It would also be easy to design a full-headroom tent (see “Shallow Draft Boat Tents,” SBJ #44) or awning and put the hibachi on deck.

 

Docile Rig

The rig, disregarding the ballooner shown, is the most docile and foolproof there is. There’s no halyard, allowing the mast to be slender at the top and eliminat­ing expensive track or messy lacing. The sail is rolled from the clew toward the mast, keeping the leech tight inside the roll. Despite a little trick of angle and tension to avoid leaving a loose flap at the top, this arrangement reduces the tempta­tion of leaving the mast standing under oars or at anchor. Except when actually sailing, mast and sail are supposed to lie in the racks on deck, as shown, except that I drew it with the wrong end to — the heel ought to be forward. To sail, drop the heel into the step and walk it upright —no feat, given the secure footing and waist-high coamings.

The sail could be reefed by shifting the head lashing before putting the mast up, but I don’t think reefing will be necessary. The size of the sail is modest. By swaying on the snotter, the sprit boom will flatten this sail out all the way up, so the sheet can be eased without letting the head of the sail flog. The pull of the snotter will bow the mast forward to take draft out of the sail. With such effective feathering, in a hull that can heel any amount without problems, she can “lug what she can’t. carry.”

Off the wind, the sprit-boomed sail swings out without twisting forward at the top, so she won’t roll much, let alone threaten goose-winging. Since such a sail is very light to sheet in all points, the single-part sheet shown is perfectly ade­quate, saving tangles as well as expense. And the self-righting boat allows it to be cleated without qualms.

I doubt the balloon jib is worth the cost or space. Set from the offset mast, it would work noticeably better on port tack. It would set best tacked on a pole, spinnaker-fashion, but that involves the extra spar and two guys to control it. I’d rather relax and look at the scenery.

— Philip C. Bolger

 

Here is Phil Bolgers original sketch of the Birdwatcher concept. Note the centreline hatch or walkway in the cabin top, and also the transparent sections of cabin roof aft through which the skipper can view the sails

This an enlargement of a section of the above image to clarify the arrangement.

 

There are a number of significant elements in the Birdwatcher cabin arrangement, but the most important is: - 

• that if the boat is capsised, the walkway remains above the capsised waterline and due to the buoyancy of the raised-deck cabin and the weight of the heavy bottom panel, the boat is self-righting; and
• the occupants of the boat are protected from sunburn and/or cold water waves and spray.

The boat Ive been asked to finish is Jim Michalaks Scram Pram design, which is 16ft x 6ft 6in. Here are a few photos taken by the owner before transporting the boat to my workshop.

The bottom of the stitch-and-glue multi-chine hull. The boat may look a little boxy, but this is a slippery shape

A good view of the Birdwatcher - style cabin. Note the very handy stowage for anchor rode etc behind the bow transom, which is cut away to allow easy access to and from the boat on a beach.

A good view of the boat. The cabin windows will be tinted plastic.

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Swampscott Dory

 

For many decades the dory has held a fascination for me. The term dory is used incorrectly by many people to describe a wide range of boats. In reality, dory refers to a method of construction rather than a particular type of boat, but the construction method does tend to produce a distinctive styl of vessel.

 

The construction method incorporates the following elements (or their developments using modern construction materials): -

• a flat bottom panel which is relatively narrow, and planked longitudinally (instead of the cross-planking used on flat-bottomed skiffs and sharpies);
• topside hull planking laps over the edge of the bottom panel (rather than the bottom panel lapping over the chine and lower edge of the topside planking as is the case with the sharpie);
• substantial flare in the topside planking, which naturally produces a strong sheer.

It is said that the so-called Swampscott Dory type (named for one of the towns which had a strong dory building activity) represents the best type of dory for sailing. Dories were normally considered to be a rowing type, unsuited to sail, but the Swampscott and similar varieties had knuckle-sided multi-chine hulls which allowed the boat to carry a reasonable amount of sail.

 

Ive drawn an initial proposal for a sailing Swampscott Dory which is high on my list of designs for my own "Final Boat" ( Ive mentioned another candidate in a previous post). This dory incorporates a few of my own ideas, and may or may not be an improvement of the type - time will tell....

 

The two significant new elements of this design are: -

• stronger bottom rocker than normal for a Swampscott; and
• a combination of stitch-and-glue construction for the lower part of the hull and glued-lapstrake for the upper two planks.

Im excited about the second point because I feel that it capitalises on the strong points of both construction techniques and mitigates their weak points. In addition, I expect that this boat can be built without a strongback or mold, and yet it still uses true glued-lapstrake with properly bevelled plank laps. Ill write in more detail at a later date. Here are two early images.

 

Lines drawing showing the unusual amount of bottom rocker

 

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