Young Mouse - another new micro cruiser - ply or strip plank

[keyhavenpotterer]

Another new design for the micro cruisers. 15' build either epoxy ply plank or strip plank.

http://www.hensevalyachtdesign.com/souriceau4.75ma.html

Interesting to compare with Fafnir. Boats with such wide sterns as Young Mouse do not seem to go well upwind. In our local evening racing, 30 year old narrower sterned boats seem to leave these modern boats miles behind. This boat should go well off the wind though. Brian.

[JimD]

Has some nice features such as the bulb ballast daggerboard and plumb ends.

[kenjamin]

Ahh zee French! Young Mouse looks to be as quick as a young mouse and 2 feet longer than a Fafnir and availble as a well rounded faired hull she's got to be faster. Fafnir has character and can be built for less money and time and built in a much smaller space. I'm still waiting for a glimspe of Welsford's 17' cutter. That would be a more interesting comparison with Young Mouse. Still I have a fondness for the scale of the Fafnir and the capability of such a small craft. The Fafnir, to me, looks like something someone would crawl into and then attempt surviving the falls at Niagra Falls. I like the strength and scale of Fafnir but I sure wouldn't turn down a ride in a YM.

[keyhavenpotterer]

Eric Henseval has just confirmed that developed plank shapes are available as a table of dimensions or computer file for use by machine tool. This is really useful and helps a great deal. Brian.

[kenjamin]

Developed plank shapes are certainly good to have. Someday some enterprising designer should offer a complex cabin shape like the Young Mouse where a custom fitting cradle is part of the template package. Then the boat could be built stitch and glue upright on the already squared up cradle. Seems like it would be easier to square up the boat that way and you could visualize the interior space much sooner with much of the boat built right side up. A quicker, more fun way to build might be the result if we also knew the exact dimensions (and a nested parts full scale drawing) of the custom building cradle. Also if a box-like structure of connected bulkheads could be part of the design, that too could be pre-squared before dropping into the assembly. Maybe that would facilitate quick and dirty and yet near perfectly symmetrical stitch and glue, one off boat construction. With the computers and software available these days, it seems like it should be possible.

[keyhavenpotterer]

is this the kind of thing you mean, from Vivier

http://www.vivierboats.com/albumsen/ebihen_18/3d/index_en.html

Brian

[kenjamin]

Yes, except that set up is more traditional upside down construction. For a short fat boat like Young Mouse or Fafnir it seems like a custom (computer rendered) cradle could be built that you would square up before laying in the planks and the boat built right-side-up for a while.
And rather than a linear subassembly for the daggerboard, have it more box-like so it could be squared up in three dimensions (and set with epoxy) before installation in the empty hull of the stitched up boat (before the planks get any glue). Jacques Mertens has his Adelie 14 hulls stitch and glued right-side-up but I don't think there are templates available for the cradle. With the right drawings of the pieces of a support cradle, it could be self squaring as it was put together dry. Ply right triangles with insertion tabs might make that possible.

In comparing Young Mouse with Fafnir, if the need for speed were important to me, Young Mouse would get the nod. If I were exploring unfamiliar waters with a greater chance of running aground, then I'd rather be in a Fafnir. The Fafnir is 13' 1" and I believe the Young Mouse is actually 15' 7" so that's quite a bit of difference.