Does anyone have experience of Fenwick William's ''Annie " ?

[PeterSibley]

Some might remember my posting a question about the largest boat that could be (reasonably ) built using glued lap .Well ''Annie'' is a boat that I have always liked , despite a suspicion that she might be a liitle slow(!) and of unpleasantly rolly behavior .WB #41 ran an article on the building of the original ''Annie'' and my copy is well thumbed .

It does seem that she would be a good contender for glued lap and even more importantly , for a slight lengthening ,by say 15% to 27 foot 6' from her standard 24 foot .

Does anyone have a comment or two ?




The boat above was photographed at the 2008 Hobart WBShow .Clinker and lovely !

[PeterSibley]

Bump .

[Duncan Gibbs]

Peter. If you're going to do with Annie what I'm trying to do with Eric Jr it might be a worthwhile exercise to scour the pages of Wooden Boat and Classic Boat, books and the intertube to come up with a set of numbers to crunch with the ones I'll be crunching. I'm going to set up an Excel spread sheet tomorrow, with all the formulae automated to look at the constants we will both require.

[PeterSibley]

You're right ...I'll cheat from your sheet ! I'm sure you will be more conscientious than will I at this stage of the game .With ''Annie"" I had envisaged increasing the ballast sufficient to raise the WL by 3'' ,around 2000 pound by eye .Say 3000# outside with 1000# as trim ,just to stiffen her up .With no transom to drag it should be OK .

[PeterSibley]

OK ,I take it that none of our contributors have any experience of this design ...a pity !

[Thad]

I sailed Annie once, watched her many times and built her interior. I don't know why you would want her to be stiffer. Looking in the Alden design book I don't see any double ended yawls in the size you want (there is a 21' and a "Tahiti class" 35' ketch). If you stretched the Annie design to 27' your 2000# might just maintain her waterline, but how that would all work out would be up to your experiment or another NA to evaluate.

[Roger Cumming]

I owned Rarus for many years, an Annie modified by Williams in 1980 and built by John Seaman in Long Island in 1982. I think glued lap construction applied to this boat makes no sense. I will elaborate tomorrow - it's too late now.

[PeterSibley]

Thanks Roger , I look forward to your elaboration , but I should add here that the reason is a desire to be able to dry store whatever boat I build and glued lap gives that option .

[PeterSibley]

[StevenBauer]

Matt J currently owns Rarus. You might try PMing him. Or searching for posts about her.


Steven

[PeterSibley]

Thanks Steven ...I'll have a look .

[PeterSibley]

Roger ?

[Duncan Gibbs]

Wilco?

(Sometimes ya jus gotta do these tings!! )

[P.L.Lenihan]

Mr.Gibbs,you scoundrel! Control yourself for a moment!

Peter S.,
I once thought I was in love with ANNIE years ago after seeing her in WB. Went down to visit her too when in Kennebunkport. Up close she became very small compared to what I had imagined in my minds eye from the drawings and pictures of that time.Both my gf and I decided,nope, too small for our then boat-bum-cruising-life future plans.

If I were to ever change my mind and wish to build this Wiliams design, I would be sorely tempted to do her strip planked mahogany with a nice, darned near bullet proof, 'glass and epoxy treatment from the waterline down. Topsides would get painted just like ANNIE too for both nostalgic reasons and for the sake of making he look longer/leaner than she really is.Varnished hulls tend to shrink a boats length, I find, and represent a slighty more involved maintenance regime than I enjoy sticking too.

Wish I could offer more but trust others will be more informative for you.

Good luck!


Cheers!


Peter

[PeterSibley]

Hi Peter ...Annie would certainly NOT be varnished ! Perhaps cabin sides at most , our climate is extremely unkind to varnish .
I'd say ,a light grey with either blue or green bulwalks ,perhaps a gold cove stripe ? I'd space her frames out by 15% more too ..I just think it would make her a better sailer .

A smaller boat is good these days too .

[Roger Cumming]

Peter, sorry not to have replied sooner. The Annie design is for a very robust boat built in the traditional manner. She isn't light - of the 9200 lbs of displacement only about a ton is in ballast. Consequently she has an easy motion and considerable ability to sail in rough water without getting everyone wet and sick from her motion. And solid spars help her to react more slowly to wind gusts. This is not a boat that sails close to the wind - 55 degrees was usual. If you were to build an Annie with a wood/epoxy hull which would be lighter than the original carvel design you would have to add ballast because the wood/epoxy hull would be lighter. This would change the boat's motion but not for the better. A stiffer boat would theoretically stand up better to its rig but what would be the purpose? She may be slightly better to windward but I doubt it. My experience with Rarus was that going to windward she was slowed down by big waves, not by being overpowered by the wind. She had the mass to push through the waves with a fairly easy motion for a boat 24' long. This is what I liked about her. Rarus has high bulwarks supported by oak stanchions and a wide oak cap rail. This is not the sort of boat one imagines should be held together with glue. Her details are straight out of the John Alden office, where Fenwick Williams spent many years. The Annie design was meant to be a yacht for the Depression - a proper yacht but smaller because of the economic times. I doubt she was cheap to build even in 1930. Rarus has a gaff mainsail laced to a solid spruce mast. The mizzen has a sail track. She is rigged with lazy jacks on the mainsail and on the boomed staysail. Having no running backstays she can be comfortably handled by one person with ease.

If you notice the boats featured in the Gougeon Brothers book on wood/epoxy construction, they are all modern designs which feature light weight, monocoque design. This is terra incognita to a boat like Annie. It offers no improvement in performance or longevity and would only detract from the boat's authenticity. Like putting a modern rig on a traditionally-detailed schooner.

[Roger Cumming]

I have a very nice picture of RARUS under sail but I can't seem to post it.

[PeterSibley]

Hi Roger , thanks for expaining your point of view .I like traditional boats and was in the process of building one , a 30 foot carvel cutter until changes in family life rendered continuing her impossible .

I am envisioning a smaller traditional boat ''of traditional appearance" that can be dry stored , a requirement now .I do not see why I have to confine myself to modern designs just because carvel will not stand dry storage .I like tradition boats and traditional appearance ,I will have to be a bit flexible as to construction method .I suspect your objection is to the very idea of reworking a traditional design to use this method .

From a structural and weights perspective ,my proposed method is doubled 10mm ply which would have the same outside appearance as 20mm (between 3/4'' and 7/8'') clinker or lapstrake,especially painted .The internal structure would otherwise be very similar .Lap battens would weigh about as much as ribs .

Any other mods are not specific to glued lap .

[Roger Cumming]

Peter, there are designs which lend themselves to conversion to modern construction techniques. I've seen a Herreshoff Buzzard Bay 25 built in wood/epoxy which is every bit as beautiful as the carvel originals. There are Rhodes designs first built in wood and later built in fiberglass, such as the Reliant and both are beautiful boats. But these are relatively modern designs without traditional wooden boat detailing which converted to fiberglass very easily. I think there is great advantage in boats that can spend the winter in dry storage. Rarus stayed in year round which was worrisome being 100 miles from my residence. Why not build her in strip planking with several veneer exterior layers using epoxy? With the same or similar interior framing she would weigh the same but would have a monocoque hull capable of drying out during the off season. It might also be easier for one person to build. Most if not all the boat's very nice original details could be kept. And she would perform identically to the original design which I think is worth trying to preserve.

[PeterSibley]

Roger ,I freely admit that I very much like the look of this particular boat ,I like her appearance even though it is not per plan .It certainly looks as good to my eye .I have to admit to an interest in glued lap ply ....so there is a convergance here !

How do you feel about her appearance ?

[donald branscom]

Mr.Gibbs,you scoundrel! Control yourself for a moment!

Peter S.,
I once thought I was in love with ANNIE years ago after seeing her in WB. Went down to visit her too when in Kennebunkport. Up close she became very small compared to what I had imagined in my minds eye from the drawings and pictures of that time.Both my gf and I decided,nope, too small for our then boat-bum-cruising-life future plans.

If I were to ever change my mind and wish to build this Wiliams design, I would be sorely tempted to do her strip planked mahogany with a nice, darned near bullet proof, 'glass and epoxy treatment from the waterline down. Topsides would get painted just like ANNIE too for both nostalgic reasons and for the sake of making he look longer/leaner than she really is.Varnished hulls tend to shrink a boats length, I find, and represent a slighty more involved maintenance regime than I enjoy sticking too.

Wish I could offer more but trust others will be more informative for you.

Good luck!


Cheers!


Peter

I agree about the strip planking.
Also the glued lapstrake design makes more noise and drag in the water.
Those laps are real bottom growth hangers too. And the laps can get caught on things like rocky shores.
If the boat is "rolley" and you lengthen it to 27 feet I think it will be worse - like a Navy destroyer.
You WOULD need a marine architect to evaluate it then.

[PeterSibley]

I agree about the strip planking.
Also the glued lapstrake design makes more noise and drag in the water.
Those laps are real bottom growth hangers too. And the laps can get caught on things like rocky shores.
If the boat is "rolley" and you lengthen it to 27 feet I think it will be worse - like a Navy destroyer.
You WOULD need a marine architect to evaluate it then.

I'm not sure I understand what mechanism would make a longer boat of a particular hull shape and ballast configeration more ''rolly'' than a short boat with same hull section and proportional ballast ?

[Roger Cumming]

Peter, I like her appearance but I am not sure whether it is because of the varnish or the lapstrake planking. Rarus had a varnished hull while I owned her and I liked the way she looked - she was after all designed as a yacht. I had no trouble putting 2 coats on her myself every spring. I liked being able to see the condition of the wood under the finish. Lapstrake planking in the US is associated mostly with boats smaller and lighter than Annie (unlike Europe) but there is no reason the boat could not be adapted to it. Especially if the weight of the hull's components is not too different from the original carvel design. Pete Culler designed a beautiful "Newport Point Boat", a cat-rigged deep centerboarder for lapstrake construction. Displacement was 4,500 lbs, approximately half of Annie. It's also a very robust design. Obviously, Culler thought lapstrake appropriate for heavier boats. I would not go near plywood, however, because I think it is an inferior material for lapstrake with its miles of edge grain. But this is just my own prejudice, not based on building experience. Many production boats, especially powerboats were constructed this way in the US years ago and are probably still going. By the way, Culler thought lapstrake was easier than carvel. Why not just build Annie in lapstrake and avoid epoxy altogether? It's blasphemy to say but it might be a more pleasant experience.

[PeterSibley]

Roger , I can agree with most of what you say , my requirement if for dry storage however .Glued lap will allow that ply being (despite it's various disadvantages ,end grain exposure for one ) it is extremely stable and will not move as it goes from sailing to dry stored .

Avoiding epoxy is certainly desirable ! I just can't work out how to do that if I need a dry storable boat .

[Roger Cumming]

Here's another attempt at inserting an image of Rarus:

[PeterSibley]

Thanks Roger , I have to admit that I really prefer the short cabin version .

[Matt J.]

Roger has far more sailing experience with RARUS than I do. I can speak somewhat about her structure/design, as I've become incredibly intimate with her construction over the last several years.

As to her sailing qualities, I'll say she has high secondary stability; though she's happy to put her shoulder down, it seems that once she does she hardens up beautifully. My favorite point of sail on her is rail down, not quite to have the rail under; there was a feeling of power once she put her rail within a couple inches of the water. Lengthwise, I did have one experience in just about the exact wrong conditions in which she was hobby-horsing badly. Lengthening her would only change the period of the waves which cause this, though - it would not prevent it from happening.

I'm seriously leary of altering an established design like RARUS/ANNIE w/o input from a good Naval Architect. Fenwick drew Annie many decades ago and several have been built to the design, now. Fenwick himself came back to alter the design for RARUS as Roger knows best. He did not modify her hull, but only her interior and deck layouts. I've never heard general complaints of the hulls' sailing qualities. My sailing friends who did go sailing with us seemed to generally agree that she sails like a very small big ship - she's not going to impress anyone in under 10 knots, but shows real power above that range. My suspicion is if you like the general shape but want something different, then look for the design you like specified to the method you want. Taking an old design and somewhat capriciously altering her length, beam, and construction method is going to either be a beautiful sailer, or quite possibly a real dog. There are plenty of designs out there with that British fishing vessel look designed to be built clinker/ply lap/epoxy, etc.

The other concern I have with building a sister to Rarus in glue-lap is that her originally specified scantlings failed. Her surveyor called her structure very stout, and it failed anyway after ~ 20-25 years in service. I'm replacing nearly all of her frames and several of her floors with enlarged sections to avoid future failures... to change from her design to a completely different method, with larger dimensions, would not be a simple guesstimated calculation for epoxy/plywood scantlings. I'd be highly reluctant to do so.

[PeterSibley]

Thanks Matt , good advice .I'm certainly going to look at a variety of designs .I'm not free to build a large boat right now anyway .

Could you tell me the dimensions of the backbone ,stem and stern timbers ? I have a copy of the study plans and a few pages of the construction plans but can't find those numbers .

Peter