Mini-Cruiser

[Meerkat]

Originally posted by paladin:
actually.....i think jay did a follow on to Happy...However.....

Displacement or load carrying ability in a very small boat means very little cargo and many stops and carrying lotsa money or equal..about 18 -20 feet is tha absolute minimum that I would choose for serious voyaging...and a multi chine version of a Flicka would work well. It can be done and is done all the time...but it's a minimal cruiser...not much in the way of electronics, no refrigeration, manual water, single burner or two burner cooker, bare celestial navigation and minimum radios...a serious builder, perhaps retired, working full time could build such a boat in a year and basically outfit it for about 20K....another choice would be something akin to a 30 foot 'dory' design like one of jays'...are you after a beautiful boat that gets compliments everywhere you go or do you seriously wanna go sailing?Few Electronics - check!
Minimal or no fridge - check!
Cooker: 2-3 burner with small oven - check!
Bare celestian navigation - come on, GPS' aren't that big, but a sextant would be a mandatory backup check!
Radio - R/O Shortwave, maybe "barefoot" QRP Ham rig - check!

In the neighborhood of 20'

I don't want a boat that looks like the box the real boat came in, but I don't need a classic bijou either! "Slab sided" (single chine) is offputting though. "Weird rigs" ditto (and, sorry to say, but junk rig counts as "weird" with me).

I'm reminded of a few things that John Guzzwell said after his 'roundabout with "Trinka": A cutter rig and a windvane would have been better than "Trinka"s yawl (ketch?) rig; A place to sleep that's separate from the general sitting area and at least one small bit of space to stand up to put one's pants on.

"Happy" is not my idea of a really pretty boat, but, perhaps because of the bright finish and the bronze portlights, attractive in her own right.

http://www.benford.us/images/14-happy-bow-quarter-large.jpg

On the other hand, I find "Swirley World" pretty attractive - better flush decker than "Happy" (which is ugly (to me) in the same way that Benford's 34' Dory (like the Hill's "Badger") is - looks like the cabin was sort of pinched up out of the rest of the deck).
http://www.oz.net/~whisper/images/SwirleyWorld.bmp http://www.oz.net/~whisper/images/SwirleyWorld-companionway.bmp
(My only 2 pics of "Swirley World" - notice the multi-chine hull)

I agree with Jim about "Swaggie" - good hull (maybe a bit "snouty"), but deck plan is a little crazy. I want a small cockpit, but not virtually no cockpit!

I imagine a flush decker with a small turret (a true "dog house") for that bit of standing headroom (but please, spare me from the hemispherical plexiglass dome!).

[JimConlin]

If looking for a low-cost boat capable of serious voyaging by one or two people, look at the Pearson Triton. A number have circumnavigated. They are not bringing large prices.

[ion barnes]

Swirley World looks like a f/g Haida class boat.

[Meerkat]

"Swirley" is 17'6" - I found info on a 26' Haida. One is for sale up in BC.

[JimD]

If you like Swirley why not just go for a 20 foot Vagabond?

[Meerkat]

What's a Vagabond?

[Venchka]

One of these...
Vagabond 20 (http://amateurboatbuilding.com/ProjectJustRight/)

http://amateurboatbuilding.com/ProjectJustRight/st5.JPG

Y'all need to stop looking at boats from 50' or 50m away. Look at boats from the business end of the tiller. Or your bum's eye view of the cabin. Eliminating the side decks gives you more room below and (big plus in my pea brain) eliminates two corners that can injure you. Carrying that thought further, a raised deck design eliminates the other corner that can injure you at the expense of a few inches of headroom. It's all one big series of compromises. If you need room to pull up your pants, open the companionway hatch. If it's too wild outside to open the hatch, you've got more to worry about than pulling your pants up. Now, if it's so wild outside that you NEED to change your pants... :D

More later...film at 11.

Wayne
In the Swamp.
:D

[paladin]

I LUV IT....!

[Paulyboy]

It's all one big series of compromises. If you need room to pull up your pants, open the companionway hatch. If it's too wild outside to open the hatch, you've got more to worry about than pulling your pants up. Now, if it's so wild outside that you NEED to change your pants... :D

More later...film at 11.

Wayne
In the Swamp.
:D [/QB]I think that sums up my theories on being in the middle of a puddle too far from land to see it! :D

[paladin]

Who wears pants out there.....?

[JimD]

Originally posted by paladin:
Who wears pants out there.....?Except when trying to get the cat to take its medicine.

[Venchka]

Originally posted by paladin:
Who wears pants out there.....?He's been there folks. He knows! :cool:

Wayne
In the Swamp. :D

[Venchka]

Originally posted by Meerkat:
"Swirley" is 17'6" - I found info on a 26' Haida. One is for sale up in BC.There are 4 Haidas for sale in B.C. for less than the cost of plywood, sails and trailer to build a 16' boat. On the other hand, a boat that lives in the water has ongoing expenses. Somewhere down the road the cost curves cross.

Wayne
In the Swamp. :D

[Venchka]

Originally posted by JimD:
...

Except when trying to get the cat to take its medicine.Cat? What cat? :rolleyes: Ain't taking no cat on my boat. :cool:

Wayne
In the Swamp. :D

[JimD]

There are so many sloops with sail plans similar to Vagabond with a rather modest main and a big jenny on a roller reef. Anyone know off hand how well those head sails hold their shape when they are half rolled up?

[paladin]

not so well...but it beats crawling across the deck of such a small boat in really bad weather......

[Venchka]

Everything I have ever seen, heard or read says the roller furling is just that. A device to furl the sail. In or out. Not in between. Better to roll up the larger jib and set a smaller heavy air jib inboard. Like the sail plan on Spartan. The sail plan you would hang yourself in. :D

Wayne
In the Swamp. :D

[Wild Dingo]

What butt ugly fugly boats... mmm sorry but they are :rolleyes:

tongue.gif Own opinion of course... a matter of different kicks for different chicks eh ;)

[JimD]

If you're going to have a big sail up front I prefer the Dudley Dix approach found on CC19 and CH21:

This rig looks like conventional cutter but is not intended to be sailed with both headsails at the same time except when reaching. To work well together with a staysail, the jib needs to be a Yankee, ie a high-clewed high-aspect working sail. Instead, this rig has a large genoa on the end of the bowsprit for use as an all-round headsail in light to moderate conditions. It is set on a roller furler so that it can be doused without crew having to venture out onto the bowsprit. The sail that is tacked to the stemhead looks like a staysail but is really a working jib for heavier conditions. It brings the rig inboard for safety when the weather gets rough.

[JimD]

Has everyone seen Luis's website for his Swaggie posted in Building/Repair? Looks like a very big 18 footer. Now if we can just talk Mr JW into using that hull for a conventional sail boat...

[Venchka]

Originally posted by JimD:
If you're going to have a big sail up front I prefer the Dudley Dix approach found on CC19 and CH21:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> This rig looks like conventional cutter but is not intended to be sailed with both headsails at the same time except when reaching. To work well together with a staysail, the jib needs to be a Yankee, ie a high-clewed high-aspect working sail. Instead, this rig has a large genoa on the end of the bowsprit for use as an all-round headsail in light to moderate conditions. It is set on a roller furler so that it can be doused without crew having to venture out onto the bowsprit. The sail that is tacked to the stemhead looks like a staysail but is really a working jib for heavier conditions. It brings the rig inboard for safety when the weather gets rough.
</font>[/QUOTE]That's what I said. Spartan uses the same principle with a shorter bowsprit. Any of the Atkin's gaff sloops could be rigged the same way.

QUESTION: While we are talking about headsails, how do club footed jibs perform? Good? Bad? Ugly? In the case above where a small heavy weather jib is used tacked to the stemhead, would a self-tacking, club footed, reefing jib be acceptable? Like the jib on Helga...

http://www.boat-links.com/Atkinco/Sail/images/Helga-1.gif

Don't even look at the leeboards, ok? :D

Aye! Swaggie Lite, Swaggie Tropical, Swaggie Versatile, Swaggie Universal. The boat on John's "To-Do" list that might grab your attention is the 26' trailer sailer he's doing for Barrett Faneuf. But you know about that boat.

Barrett's Boat (http://www.woodenboat-ubb.com/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=002616&p=)

Or have we scaled back a bit? 26' is a big chunck of boat. Maybe the 16'-17' cruiser John has promised will be the ideal?

Wayne
In the Swamp. :D

[Bruce Hooke]

Originally posted by Venchka:
If you need room to pull up your pants, open the companionway hatch. If it's too wild outside to open the hatch, you've got more to worry about than pulling your pants up. Now, if it's so wild outside that you NEED to change your pants... :D

More later...film at 11.

Wayne
In the Swamp.
:D I lived on a 23' (3000 lb) boat for a year (granted I was coastal cruising not offshore), and pulling up my pants was never an issue for me (granted I was about 21 years old at the time). It's like camping in a mountain tent. What I would put a priority on is someplace comfortable to sit in the cabin with something to lean your back against. Ideally you should be able to cook, navigate, etc. from this comfortable seat. On boats with raised cabins there is often no comfortable place to sit in the cabin and this is annoying. I found that the biggest compromise with being on a small boat was things like the faster and more constant motion relative to a larger boat. An anchorage that would feel almost like a mill pond on a larger boat could be rolly enough to be quite unpleasant on a small boat. Also, a small boat is much less able to make distance upwind in rough seas. Waves that a larger boat would plow right through stop the smaller boat cold. Of course it could well be that in slightly larger seas the small boat would fit between the waves and so just roll up and down over them while the larger boat spans the wave trough and so digs into each wave, but I'd guess that waves that the bad conditions for a small boat would be much more common in most places.

Visiting someone else on a 23' 5000 lb. boat also drove home to me that weight is a much better measure of boat size than length is. His boat had standing head room (without having high freeboard) and overall just felt much larger down below. Of course his boat also drew 5' versus my boats 4', which made a lot of difference at times in the shollow coastal waters of the mid-Atlantic and Southeast coast of the USA.

[JimD]

Bruce, a heavier boat has always appealed to me for the reasons you mention. The near perfect small cruiser for me might still be Lyle Hess's Falmouth 22 cutter. But such boats stop being conveniently transportable as soon as they become deep heavy hulls. I wonder how well a heavy very small boat like Selway-Fisher's Tideway sails. Fourteen feet long, 700#s of ballast. This appeals to me for safety but it sure sounds slow.

[JimD]

Originally posted by Venchka:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by JimD:
If you're going to have a big sail up front I prefer the Dudley Dix approach found on CC19 and CH21:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> This rig looks like conventional cutter but is not intended to be sailed with both headsails at the same time except when reaching. To work well together with a staysail, the jib needs to be a Yankee, ie a high-clewed high-aspect working sail. Instead, this rig has a large genoa on the end of the bowsprit for use as an all-round headsail in light to moderate conditions. It is set on a roller furler so that it can be doused without crew having to venture out onto the bowsprit. The sail that is tacked to the stemhead looks like a staysail but is really a working jib for heavier conditions. It brings the rig inboard for safety when the weather gets rough.
</font>[/QUOTE]That's what I said. Spartan uses the same principle with a shorter bowsprit. Any of the Atkin's gaff sloops could be rigged the same way.

QUESTION: While we are talking about headsails, how do club footed jibs perform? Good? Bad? Ugly? In the case above where a small heavy weather jib is used tacked to the stemhead, would a self-tacking, club footed, reefing jib be acceptable? Like the jib on Helga...

http://www.boat-links.com/Atkinco/Sail/images/Helga-1.gif

Don't even look at the leeboards, ok? :D

Aye! Swaggie Lite, Swaggie Tropical, Swaggie Versatile, Swaggie Universal. The boat on John's "To-Do" list that might grab your attention is the 26' trailer sailer he's doing for Barrett Faneuf. But you know about that boat.

Barrett's Boat (http://www.woodenboat-ubb.com/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=002616&p=)

Or have we scaled back a bit? 26' is a big chunck of boat. Maybe the 16'-17' cruiser John has promised will be the ideal?

Wayne
In the Swamp. :D </font>[/QUOTE]Re: Barrett's boat: The perfect boat for Barrett but not much there that appeals to me. Leeboards??? Did you say leeboards??? :eek: :D

[Venchka]

The club foot jib drawing from Atkin above. Not the new 26' boat from John Welsford. Standard keel-centerboard on that one.

No takers on club jibs huh?

Wayne
In the Swamp. :D

[Hwyl]

Wayne, I hate them, but I've been too negative lately. That's why I didn't post. They just don't seem to draw as well as a jib with a sheet.

I think the Soing, has a large clewboard (new word?) with a block hanging from it, an arced tack on the deck, so the sheet goes through one block on the car, through the block on the jib and back down to another blok on the car. So you have self tacking, but you can adjust foot/leach tension. I've never sailed one, but it seems like a compromise idea.

i sailed a boat with a club jib, we made a fitting for the mast, so you could release the swivel of the club, drop it into the mast fitting, and voila, instant whisker pole.

[John Bell]

I've only sailed one boat with a club-footed jib, a Cape Dory Typhoon. I wasn't impressed with it, at least the way it was rigged on that boat. Maybe there are ways to rig it so it works better, but on that boat I never felt like the jibe was ever properly set. With the wind anywhere from just above the beam aft, the clew would lift up and dump all the wind out of the top of the sail.

Gary Hoyt's self-vanging jib boom as seen on some the Alerion Express line looked like a good solution to the problem, but it would be very out of place on a traditional boat.

[rbgarr]

The club jib arrangement may be useful for coastal cruising particularly along rivers and to windward where frequent tacking and shorthanded maneuvering is needed.

[Venchka]

Thanks folks! Seems like an either/or thing? Handy in short tacking where sail shape takes a back seat to self-tending? Undo the club if tacking isn't anticipated? Hmmm...maybe dispense with the club. These are small jibs I'm talking about. My first boat had a small jib and short tacking it was a piece of cake. Thanks again for the help.

Wayne
Tending a jib by hand In the Swamp. :D

[ 04-15-2005, 02:00 PM: Message edited by: Venchka ]

[Venchka]

Originally posted by Hwyl:


Wayne, I hate them, but I've been too negative lately. That's why I didn't post.

Shoot. Don't let that stop you from speaking your mind.

Wayne
In the Swamp. :D

[Meerkat]

Club...
http://www.swallowboats.com/storm17/storm17-3002.jpg
http://www.swallowboats.com/storm17/storm17-3013.jpg


We first tried the club boomed jib on Storm Petrel in summer of 2000. Since then we rarely go out without it. It is simple, self tacking and quiet (doesn't flog too badly). This latter point may sound funny, but when sailing with novices or reluctant sailors, the intense flapping of a headsail can be hard to hear above, and gives the inexperienced a sense of mild panic... At least, that's what I've found!

We love the club boom and have managed to figure out a way to rig it on Storm 17 with roller furling too. Its great advantage is that it’s self tacking. Going about is simply a matter of putting the helm over and all three sails take care of themselves (tacking is much quicker as a result). It also improves the jib’s performance when off the wind too as the sail does not bag in at the clew like a standard jib does. It is also very close winded when trimmed correctly. That said, we appreciate that they may not be everyone’s cup of tea and so we have ensured it is still possible to rig the jib in the conventional manner, leading a pair of sheets down to the foredeck and back to jam cleats. In this manner the jib is attached to the stem head and the clew is slightly overlapping. http://www.swallowboats.com/storm17.htm

[John Bell]

I wonder if the over-center arrangement of the club on the Swallowboats design above makes the jib somewhat self-vanging? It would be good if it did. Anyone?