Some history

This blog will be about my (still theoretical) 15-footer sail- and row-boat.  It's called 176inches because that's the exact length in the plans, which I designed myself, in my first such effort.  Whether I will regret such arrogance remains to be seen.  You, dear readers, and the elements will be the judge of that.

Yesterday I ordered my first materials for my putative boat: 2 gallons of epoxy, 2 lbs bronze ring shank nails, three boxes bronze screws, gudgeons and pintles and some other stuff.  I haven't yet ordered the 12 sheets of marine plywood.  But first, some history.

Many months of  thought and design went into this project already (and it was all great and totally free fun).  My history with boats all started with a little 11 foot 6 inch dinghy I built several years ago.  It was a very old British design, called the Siren, still available from Clarkcraft.  It arrived on old-fashioned (actually blue!) blueprints, and I believe it was influenced by the ubiquitous Mirror dinghy.  By then I had heard about stitch and glue techniques, which I thought would be easier than the hard chine construction described in the plans.  I had to modify them significantly, but eventually I built a nice little sloop in marine plywood and mahogany, complete with home-made spars, rigging and sails I sewed myself.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say.  The boat proved to be wobbly, but hard to swamp nonetheless.  The biggest problem was the rig, with something called a pivoting Gunter mainsail and a tiny jib.  The pivoting Gunter proved a real pain: its impossible to reef, all or nothing nature forced me to launch with the full canvas on, which is pretty dangerous on a stiff wind.  On the first serious sail, first the centerboard got stuck.  I had to return across Indian River lagoon in the teeth of the wind, and tacking was out of the question.  I tried wearing (turning the boat 270 degrees through a jibe), something I knew from reading the naval adventures penned by Patric O'Brian of Master and Commander fame, but I was making very little headway.  Then the top of the rudder delaminated and the tiller came off. My brother-in-law and I had to beach it, walk to a phone and call for help.

So I had to do some repairs, but I finally realized how bad the rig was when the feeble remnants of hurricane Ivan reached a South Carolina lake just as we were launching, capsizing us about six times before we got under way.  So I changed the rig into a sliding Gunter, which boat designer and traditional rig booster David Nichols did me he honor of highlighting in his very nice book on traditional rigs and this e-zine article.  You can find David's designs (all lapstrake) for sale here.

For more of the plans' history, check the next installment of 176inches.

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