Design Choices

What went into the design you say?  Well, it was meant to be an open boat, about 15 feet, with plenty of stability and freeboard, and pretty dry in a chop.  It needed to be a capable sailer (including single-handed sailing) and easy to row.  Preferably it would look old-timey, but not be impossibly hard to build.  I would have a short unstayed mast or two, but the rig would be flexible.  It would have adequate storage, plus extra buoyancy in case of swamping or capsizing.  The oars had to be stowable out of sight, and the floor had to be flat.

That's a pretty complicated combination.  What I settled on was a lapstrake design (nice and traditional looking) with a V-bottom (ditto, and less slappy on the waves), with four strakes per side (easier to build but still nicely rounded), built around a total of eight frames, including transom and two full-size bulkheads.  Unlike regular lapstrake forms, the frames will be permanent and will increase rigidity.  The boat will have side benches all the way from transom to main forward bulkhead, with storage and buoyancy built into them, and large storage lockers fore and aft.  It will have a foredeck and side decks for dryness, and a removable plank floor with room under it for oar stowage and lead shot ballast in a special compartment.

The hull will be built upside-down over two sturdy sawhorses, connected with wooden runners on wheels, so the whole thing can be moved in and out of my small, unheated garage.  Most of the work will have to be done in the warm season, because epoxy doesn't cure in the cold.  The vertical risers of the side benches will sit on top of the saw horses, and the frames and bulkheads will interlock with them like three-dimensional puzzle pieces. 

The other decision to be made was the rig.  At first I thought that it should be switchable from cat to sloop, the latter with a jib and a bowsprit.  But that would have meant a tall mast, which I dislike.  I then considered a yawl rig, which I rejected for various reasons.  The chosen rig was a cat ketch with a balanced lug main and a standing lug/ sprit boom mizzen.  For more on all these old-timers, you could read David Nichols's book.  Still, there will be four different possible mast steps that can accommodate all four possible rigs.  I like the cat ketch design, because it is stable, has two smaller and more manageable sails, and is very easy to tack and to sail single-handed.  It also means that a mast hole goes through the rowing thwart, and the centerboard case has to be slightly off center.

So there you have it.  Next time I'll talk about the mechanics of the design and planned building techniques.

boatbuilder