Seabright Skiffs..

[RonW]

http://www.boat-links.com/Atkinco/Utilities/SallieHyde.html

Has anyone been in one of these boats? Opinion as to how they ride or perform? Looking for information on the old time beachable seabright skiff under power. Yes I do have the seabright skiff and other jersey boat book.Just wondering if there is any firsthand information here.

[holzbt]

I own a 21' Verity skiff. It was built on Long Island but is VERY similar to a sea bright skiff. My boat had a 1954 Grey Marine 4-70 with a cracked block that had seen much better days. With three adults it would easily plane off and handled quite well. Easily beachable with the wide flat bottom. The only complaint was from SWMBO who felt it rolled a bit too much. This hull type needs very little HP to get on a plane and they also handle well at low speeds.

[nedL]

We had this in our family for about six years. http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid12/p6372ded70a7f371adb7c996a2ed4c12f/fe1ec158.jpg

24', built by Charles Hankins in Lavalette NJ 1972, white cedar on steam bent oak (traditional Jersey shore fashion), four cylinder Lehman Ford diesel. The hull is what you are looking at, only 2' longer & slightly larger all around.
Personnally I loved the boat. Easy motion, handled easily, EXCELENT sea boat, moved easily through the water (top speed = 17 knots, cruised nicely at 12 knots-about 4gph.)
Anything else? smile.gif

[RonW]

Thanks guys; It appears that you guys pretty well confirm the information published on these boats.Anything else you can think of, please feel free to add. I fell in love with atkins, sallie hyde, and think it would be the perfect utilitarian open launch, that can go anywhere and do anything, except waterskeeing. But I do have one change I want to make to the plans, think you could forget the inboard, and put in a outboard well tightly fitted to the transom and drop a 4 stroke 30 horse outboard in it.Think the prop can end up at the same place if not even a few inches further back. Put a circular type bench seat in front of the well and just run it from the tiller.Neat,simple and the perfect go anywhere fishing, sigthseeing, camping and exsploring boat that can be very beachable.Or at least that is my idea.

[nedL]

An outboard well is an interesting idea (& I usually like them), but i'd have concerns here. The well would be eliminating a good bit of the bottom right where the most lift is generated & I'd be afraid the boat would squat quite a bit. Ther isn't a whole lot of flat planing surface to spare.

[RonW]

Thanks NedL, appreciate the suggestion. So where are all these marine architects that hang out here occasionally. I have been giving this a lot of thought and examining the lines as much as one can. I think that the transom comes to a vee right at the waterline and then flattens out somewhat at the first full frame that is just above the end of the boxed keel. There seems to be a lot of planing area on the underside up till about the middle of the boat where it fades out.I have in mind as small of a well as possible, maybe 18 or 20in. wide by about 20 to 24in. long, just big enough to slide in a 30 horse 4 stroke. I think it will work fine, but must admitt I am not sure and will get a architect's opinion before going ahead. I would appreciate any feedback feel free.Thanks.

[nedL]

Ron, I took a closer look at the lines for "Sally Hyde". I would agree with you that her waterline seems to be almost at the top of the deead wood for the boxed keel. (This would make her expected performance noticably different than I was thinking.) She will be pretty much a displacement hull with with a top speed of 8+ knots (yes, just as is indicated on the Atkins site.) That in mind your idea might not be bad. Some considerations I'd give are that I think 30hp would be a much. With that easilly pushed hull (basically double ended at the water line) I would think that 25hp might be plenty. Also, given that there is very little wetted area aft you would want to minimize the weight of an engine back there so that she doesn't sit down by the stern, there might need to be some ballast placed forward to offset the engine weight. With such a rockered hull she will be sensative to weight at her ends. If you were to put in an outboard well it should run straight out the transom with an arc cut out of the bottom of the transom so that it doesn't scoop up a pile of water when the transom dips some.
I'd be interested in seeing the lines for the version "for anyone wishing speeds up to 16 miles an hour" that are mentioned at the bottom of Atkins' site. Some of the old boxed & rolled garboard keel Jersey skiffs were capable of speeds up to 30+ mph. They did some pretty interesting things to the bottom to allow that.

[RonW]

http://www.boat-links.com/Atkinco/

Nedl, since you also like these seabrights, just in case you didn't see atkins homepage, here it is. He has about 10 seabrights, mostly listed under inboard utilities- and inboard cruisers.
If you look above the sallie hyde at a nibble, it is a 17ft10in. seabright with almost the same lines. Main difference being a tunnel stern as atkins calls it. Just above the prop there is a slight concave area, and then the boxed keel isn't as much as a downward angle from bow to stern and the prop actually breaks above the waterline while sitting still. He says 35 horse and 18.5 miles per hour. Then below is the spermacetti a 27-10ft. seabright that is listed as 51 horse and 20 miles per hour, the main difference i see in the lines are the round chime and it sets lower in the water.So there are some neat lines to look at and I think I will order sallie hyde and find out exactly the difference between the lower and higher speed models. I am interested in the HIGH SPEED MODEL (16 miles per hour).ha, ha. I though some of the higher speed seabrights, 30 m.p.h. where actually called pound boats and didn't have the flat boxed keels for beaching, and they also had some tunnel stern models.

[nedL]

Ron, Yes, Atkin did quite a bit of design work around what he calls 'modified Sea Brhgt skiffs', most of them are quite nice looking designs.
Pound boats specifically were beached every day. As a result, yes they did all have either boxed or rolled garboard keels. Pound boats averaged around 30' though there were some up to 42'.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid49/pe79ce0750ec9bd9d20deab455ccdccdc/fcb63dbb.jpg
These pictures are ones I took of the last surviving of the actual pound boats (it ended its life as a 'sign' out in front of marina & restaurant in the later 1970's. It was a bit over 30' and had a rolled garboard keel (2nd pic down).
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/p764d053c11aaf82b8ab818cac4905cad/fdb6254e.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid21/pc0c46137354dd71dffc9661637aac7a8/fdb62592.jpg
When the boxed or rolled garboard keel was eliminated that also eleminated the ability to be kept on the beach. There were lots of builders that built for both commercial & pleasure use, that were up in the 30mph range even back in the 1930's. I do remember seeing, when I was growing up, a number of old jersey skiffs that had their boxed keels really tucked up in a pretty extreme fashion, to the point that you could almost have called them 'tunnel drive' boats, but that was not common. I will say that though Guthorn's book (The Sea Bright Skiff...) is an excellent book; there are a number of omissions, and it doesn't address the vast majority of the pleasure boat side of the picture. ( A book could easilly be written on that part of NJ boat building history alone.)

If you are interested in the HIGH SPEED types, you should check out the only type of Jersey skiff that is still being built; the "Jersey speed skiff" :D
http://speedskiffs.com/lb6.jpg

[ 03-23-2004, 01:31 PM: Message edited by: nedL ]

[Thad Van Gilder]

I have done quite a bit of rowing in wooden and glass sea bright skiffs (life guard boats) and just spoke to a guy who built a cedar on oak with an inboard one a few years back. He loved it. I haven't heard of any one else building one though... apparrently this guy used some really wide cedar for the garboards...

-Thad

[nedL]

One of our forumites (Pat Cox) built a nice 16' surf boat (Sea Bright skiff) to the lines of Warren Nau a couple of years ago, real pretty skiff. Yes, the planks required for the garboards can be awful wide.