Books.

[weedeater64]

OK, so I'm about to order some books.

American small sailing craft
Building Classic Smal Craft
How to Build Wooden Boats

I already have

Boatbuilding
Rabl's and chapelle's
The Sharpie book
The Dory book
Boats to go

I'm looking for suggestions for books that contain lines and offsets?
In particularly I'm interested in small cruisers say 22 - 30 foot max.
Smaller is OK.

Thanks for any input.

[JimConlin]

Of the boat designs books on my shelf, only the Gardner books contain offsets. There are many good small designs there, and after that you need to talk with our sponsors, designers, museums or other sources.

[George Ray]

Chapelle and Gardner are the only ones I know of. After that there is the National Watercraft Collection and then the maritime museums. I would like to know what you find out.

[john welsford]

Can I suggest that you look through the back issues list of WoodenBoat magazine, find featured designs that are of particular interest and buy those back issues. There is usually a lot of information specific to that design and often the drawings have been reworked to give you more information than the designers plan or study drawing would.
Otherwise, the WoodenBoat plans catalogues have quite a few line drawings, albeit at a small scale.

John Welsford


OK, so I'm about to order some books.

American small sailing craft
Building Classic Smal Craft
How to Build Wooden Boats

I already have

Boatbuilding
Rabl's and chapelle's
The Sharpie book
The Dory book
Boats to go

I'm looking for suggestions for books that contain lines and offsets?
In particularly I'm interested in small cruisers say 22 - 30 foot max.
Smaller is OK.

Thanks for any input.

[dredbob]

No collection of boat design books is complete without a copy of L Francis Herreshoff's _Sensible Cruising Designs_. Prudence (H-22) and the H-28 are classic 'classics' for that size range.

Also, just about every one of the late Phil Bolger's books contained some cruising design in that size range, many with essentially complete plans.

The Atkins, William and John, had many designs in that range, and while their books don't have offsets, many of the designs were featured in older magazines and yearly serial "How to Build" books with complete plans.

Bob

[outofthenorm]

Jay Benford's books have everything you need for a really wide range of boats - plans, offsets, photos. Check his website:

http://www.benford.us

[CapnJ2ds]

With regard to the Atkins, father and son, many of their designs were published in the old Motor Boating magazine's "Ideal" series. Alas they've been out of print for yonks, and fetch quite reasonable prices when they do come up on the second hand market. Your local library might have some.

There were, I believe, over 50 of these books (one of mine is #47) and there's a good chance you'll find a likely candidate somewhere in them.

Most of the designs do have tables of offsets, and fairly detailed specifications in the accompanying articles.

[AstoriaDave]

Many of the Atkin designs can be found here: http://www.boat-links.com/Atkinco/index.html Revenue from purchasing these resources goes to support the widow of the younger Atkin. Particularly worthy is the Small Boat Book: http://www.boat-links.com/Atkinco/Books/SmallBoatBookOrder.pdf There is a Yahoo group, also: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AtkinBoats/

[Steve Paskey]

In addition to books noted above, you'll find lines and offsets in Harry V. Sucher's "Simplified Boatbuilding: The V-Bottom Boat" and "Simplified Boatbuilding: The Flat-bottom Boat" ...

Designs are limited by type as described, of course. The second one, for instance, has an interesting 24-foot "sharpie yawl" with a pop-up cabin top, as well as a 29-foot "egret-style" double-ended sharpie ... But both books are oriented more to powerboats and smaller sailboats.

Note that the MotorBoating Ideal Series books include designs by people other than Atkin. You can find an "incomplete" index to the books here: www.boat-links.com/Ideal/index.html Thus, if you're looking for the article on a particular Atkin design, you can find which volume (if any) it's in.

www.dngoodchild.com sells "reprints" of old magazine articles on all sorts of boat types, including cruisers. The reprints are very nicely done ... some have offsets but others don't, and you'd have to ask in advance as the online descriptions don't tell you.

As for Sam Rabl ... there are two editions of the book with slightly different boats, and both have lines and offsets. The second edition (the most common) has both v-bottomed and round bottomed versions of Picaroon, and a 24-footer called Pelican. The first edition has only the v-bottomed version of Picaroon, and a different 24-footer called Polaris.

Rabl likens Polaris to Thomas Fleming Day's "Seabird," but says that he thinks Polaris has better lines. Four rigs are shown: a ketch, a cutter, a schooner, and a Chesapeake-style bugeye (similar to the ketch, but with sharply raked masts, a leg of mutton main, and a boom on the jib). Just for fun, he also shows a suggested Hermaphrodite brig for the sea scouts.

There are also two different versions of titmouse, Rabl's 16-foot sailboat. In the 2nd ed. it's a rounded strip-planked boat. In the first, it's a v-bottom boat for plywood. But the off-sets in the first edition are wrong ... I have a copy of the publisher's errata sheet with the correct offsets, if anyone's interested.
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