Design Suggestions: Traditional Trailerable Day Sailor

[Benduffin]

I'm sure this is a question that has been flogged to death but couldn't find a set of search terms that gave me a good response. So here goes:

I work with a charity in Glasgow, we teach boatbuilding to folk who are long term unemployed many of whom have social issues such as addiction. The aim is by learning skills and being involved in interesting projects our participants gain self respect and become part of the community to help them move on with their lives. We're currently building a wee 8ft clinker pram and a Catspaw dinghy

We are planning a new boatbuilding project in partnership with a few organisations that mean we need some new boats to build. I bought plans for Paul Gartside's #173 (http://store.gartsideboats.com/colle...nded-ketch-173) as a big ambitious build that we could use for sail training on completion. It will come as no surprise that it was TOO ambitions!

So i'm looking to scale down the project but keep the outcomes similar, so i'm looking for suggestions on designs to suit the following brief:

• Traditional build (ideally carvel)
• Trailerable (we do have large 3.5 ton truck so can tow a significant weight)
• Good for sail training with novices on water you do not want to fall into (inner city glasgow has high quantity of raw sewage)
• Big enough to be inspiring
• Can be fitted with positive buoyancy without ruining looks
• Can be fitted with auxiliary power without ruining looks
• Would love it if it could have some sort of heritage link to Scotland though this is less crucial.

All suggestions welcome, I know there are hundreds of designs that would suit but i'd love to find something that is right.

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

Nigel Irens designed the "King Alfred School Expedition Boat"

http://www.jachtbouwbartjanbats.nl/view_doc.php?id=6433

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...d-class-Cutter <<< Previous thread.

Ian Oughtred probably has something suitable with a connection to Scottish historical working craft...
http://www.classicmarine.co.uk/boatsearch.asp

[kenjamin]

Iain Oughtred's St. Ayles Skiff:



Sure looks like fun to me — without the complication, expense and liability of sailing.

More about this boat as a community project (look at news articles):

http://www.oughtredboats.com/

They also race them:

http://skiffieworlds.com/

[Thorne]

I second Kenjamin's idea above -- why not build something that there is an immediate need for, and is actively being raced? Your builders wouldn't be racing her, of course, but you might get some positive interaction between builders and boaters once the boats get finished.

Don't get me wrong, I love sailing small boats. But considering where you'd be boating and/or launching, perhaps a performance pulling boat with immediate resale value might be a better fit for everyone concerned.

Traditional carvel is becoming rare these days, particularly for trailered daysailors. If you have to go trad, building solid wood lapstrake might develop even more skills and again produce something with greater resale value. Oughtred has at least one design that has been built from solid wood as well as marine ply.

[skaraborgcraft]

Its a noble project, but i wonder if carvel is not the best build choice for a boat that may be towed? Traditional clinker has as much heritage,and many fine coastal/beach fishing boats were built in that fashion in your area. Something like a wee scaffie , Portpatrick line boat, Oban skiff or the wonderfull Ayrshire skiff?

[Benduffin]

Thanks for comments so far. St Ayles Skiffs are great, so great we already have two! We do actively race them and though the best we've ever come is second last they are a lot of fun. As we're pretty set up to row i'm keen to do the sailing a bit more We also do sail training at the moment in a fibreglass drascombe lugger and I love the thought of complementing it with a smallish trad design.

The main focus of the project, certainly as far as the funding is concerned is in the building side of it. The funding is all around teaching traditional boatbuilding skills so while a glued boat would be more practical from a usage point of view its not really an option for the project. We have access to a pontoon where the boat can live on the clyde so carvel is do-able, however keeping the boat trailerable means we can launch and recover easily for more interesting adventures/bringing back to workshop for maintenance.

[Benduffin]

Skaraborgcraft's suggestion of clinker skiffs reminded me of Adam Way's Oban and Loch Fyne Skiffs. Beautiful boats with good local pedigree...

My main driver on the carvel thing is that we have built quite a few clinker boats and another part of the project will be producing two clinker boats, one a lifeboat the other a captain's gig. So to increase the variation in the skills taught i was thinking about carvel. But i'm not fixed on the idea, the Oban skiff is to my eye particularly beautiful.

[Jamesh]

Hi
I had a similar idea in mind when a number of guys came my way from her majesty 's pleasure.
The design that I felt the best was romilly. Great looks and sailing performance strip planked so no real skills needed to fit planking. High resale value. And rcd compliant. Other designs had some of these points but not all. However the guys found jobs .!!!
James

[stromborg]

Suffering from CRS this morning, help me out.

We just had (well within the last couple of months) a thread about a one design class of scottish sailboats, therewas an older gent building them-nice bit of video, he had a bunch of VWs in the background? The picture in my head fits all the criteria the OP was trying to meet.

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

How about a dragon - Anker waived the licence fees on all British built boats........

Carvel, traditional and suitable for teaching.....

http://www.britishdragons.org/racing-dragons.aspx

[RowAndSail]

stromborg, look up "Shannon one design" on Youtube, there are 3 parts. It is from a TV series from the 70s that was called Hands.

[stromborg]

Thank you R&S

Shannon One Design, I guess it's Irish as opposed to Scottish. (But close, eh?) Still seems to fit the bill.

[Sayla]

In a similar size range this one is 'British'

http://store.gartsideboats.com/colle...ger-design-124


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But THIS is Scottish - a clinker Zulu for some more displacement-stability - this one is a bit of a favourite picture


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Nevertheless from the original spec above, I thought you were looking at something a lot heavier - more than a ton in displacement

• Trailerable (we do have large 3.5 ton truck so can tow a significant weight)
• Good for sail training with novices on water you do not want to fall into (inner city glasgow has high quantity of raw sewage)
• Big enough to be inspiring
  

How bout a bit bigger Zulu - or skaffie?


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I'm a Queenslander all my life, but descended from a boat building family from Greenoch - would love to see your progress on this

[Sayla]

A few more pictures (I love boat pictures) - there's a Zulu gallery at the Scottish Fishing Museum at Anstruther - they may have lines etc - we need a Scottish boat thread

Sounds like an excuse for a bus trip though

[keyhavenpotterer]

On the subject of the Loch Fyne Skiff, if you appreciate Oughtred, in a previous Watercraft (can't find the edition at the minute), there was a design study by Iain Oughtred who studied and sailed them, took the lines off, then drew a set of plans for one to be built. 3-4 page article. I don't know if one did, but he has got a Loch Fyne Skiff planset in his draw if you asked him. I think he slightly re drew it for better performance without the need for such burden, but it was still the original form, long raking keel etc.

You should build a proper dipping lugger. With plenty of people available onboard you will be ideally placed to move the yard and sail from one side to the other when tacking. Plenty for everyone to be involved in.

Ed

[Peter Lord]

Hi Ben,

"by learning skills and being involved in interesting projects our participants gain self respect and become part of the community to help them move on with their lives."

I don't have experience of such a project, but have built a few small boats, including in a group. My first thought was that you have no time frame for the building in your list of requirements. Could it take years? How are you going to keep up the interest of the people if the completion date is beyond their span of interest? Is the idea that they should do a little bit of the boat and then go somewhere else, or are the going to stay with the project from beginning to end, regardless of how long it takes, and sail the boat that they helped build? Why is a big boat more inspiring than a small one? Who is to be inspired, potential donors or the participants? If the person helping build it never sees the completion, how is he/she inspired? Why is the type of boat more important than building time and how does traditional construction of a large sailing boat fulfil the stated purpose better than a series of small ones with a short building time? Which is more important, that the boat be traditional or that the people learn certain skills? What skills are they supposed to learn? Traditional boat building, carpentry, or social skills? Why not keep on building small boats? Sorry to be a bit of a wet blanket, but the responses seem to more about which boat is more traditional and not which boat fulfils the stated purpose of the project quoted above. Does the the "brief" below, best fulfil the purpose, quoted above?

Peter Lord

So i'm looking to scale down the project but keep the outcomes similar, so i'm looking for suggestions on designs to suit the following brief:

• Traditional build (ideally carvel)
• Trailerable (we do have large 3.5 ton truck so can tow a significant weight)
• Good for sail training with novices on water you do not want to fall into (inner city glasgow has high quantity of raw sewage)
• Big enough to be inspiring
• Can be fitted with positive buoyancy without ruining looks
• Can be fitted with auxiliary power without ruining looks
• Would love it if it could have some sort of heritage link to Scotland though this is less crucial.

All suggestions welcome, I know there are hundreds of designs that would suit but i'd love to find something that is right.[/QUOTE]

[Sayla]

Does the the "brief" below, best fulfil the purpose, quoted above?

I think you are right about the purpose and brief. i.e. spot on about the time-span thing; and two boats are more useful to a group than one (indeed a fleet can be started if a project continues).

That being said I wouldn't pick a really small boat - in that you haven't constructed something bigger than yourself, for protection and room for some provisions for a bit of a trip....as opposed to having turns at it after it's made. And on tradition, it is widely believed that connection to ones heritage assists with self-respect. I'm not Scottish other than by an ancestory, but nevertheless, I think I would have more passion for the completion of that small Zulu than I would an Italian craft. I suppose that could seem racist, but socio-cultural identity formation helps to establish community, and help people feel they belong.
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Once you start to look, there are so many seaworthy looking fishing boats from the wooden boat heritage that I can't understand why more people don't still make them

http://boatbuilders.jalbum.net/Loch%20Fyne%20Skiffs/
http://jalbum.net/en/browse/user/album/874016;jsessionid=eq3bhj7ti5k41520frxoc5v2b
http://www.caithness.org/community/c...ters/index.htm
http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...ipping-Lugsail
http://www.stivesjumbo.com/index.htm

There's some neat threads on this site here about "Inshore Fishing Lugger" too

[Benduffin]

Hey folks,

Thanks again for all the replies. Lots of good ideas to be sure. To answer some of Peter's questions about the project:

The funding we are going for will allow for a three year long project in partnership with another organisation. As a charity we already do a lot of general carpentry training as well as other skills like timber processing, small product and commission production as well as moving towards metal work. We are looking to expand on what we already offer in the boatbuilding line: we are already building a wee clinker pram dinghy and a catspaw.

As far as the larger boat thing goes it is partly about drawing inspiration from George Macleod (founder of the iona community and another part of the sotry that i can't get into without going wildly off topic...) who said "only demanding common task builds community". So by getting all our people working together on something which is big enough to be really eye catching they will come together. As getting funding is so much about being able to sell the story it is important that the design we choose has a heritage which can be linked to Scotland, not necessarily directly but it needs to be explainable to people with no knowledge of boats why we have chosen the design. Additionally as Sayla said above, we've found (and keep finding) that linking people with their own heritage is far more meaningful for them than bringing in traditional craft from further away. Having studied in the US I get the feeling that the UK sense of 'far away' is geographically much closer, i.e. to a Glaswegian the forty miles to the east coast (and so scaffies and fifies) makes it a foreign land. So all that said as we're west coast based i'm really interested in the idea of an Oughtred modified loch fyne skiff, its our home water but with a modern design slant. Kind of perfect maybe.

With three years we could build two smaller boats or one bigger one. A key constraint has to be around end use though, we've got to be able to teach folk to sail on it. So the stable, roomy inshore fishing craft are pretty perfect...

I hope this doesn't stray into advertising, more as information but the charity I work for is called the GalGael trust and for those who are interested you can get at bit infomation at www.galgael.org

Thanks again, its great to hear all the ideas!

[Jonathan Burke]

There's summat bonnie about they fashin' boats, eh?

[photocurio]

I'm not even Scottish, but I'm pretty sure Zulus were transom stern boats and Skaffies were pointy. The great Zulus were between 50' and 70' feet long, and the Skaffies a little shorter. A trailerable version would be sweet, sure, but why not build a boat that was originally more in the trailerable scale?

Here is a wee Baldie, and a Nabby, both drawn by the artist H. Warington Smyth:

I think they are both bewteen 25' and 30' on deck.

About the Nabby, Smyth was enthusiastic: "The favorite boat in the outer part of the Firth of Clyde and Loch Fyne is a skiff known as the Nabby, one of the prettiest, smartest, and handiest forms of sea boat to be found". [edit, just read more of the thread.. maybe the Loch Fyne Skiff and the Nabby are the same?]

Smyth was very into Scottish fishing craft, btw. If you want to read about the comparative advantages of the Zulu, the Skaffie, the Fifie, the Shetland Sixern, the Nabby and the Baldie, then you need to check out his book: Mast and Sail in Europe and Asia. And you don't even need to skulk around used bookstores to find it. Just go to Google Play and get it for free!

[boban saor]

Thought i'd give this a bump...Ben..did your project get going?

[Benduffin]

Hi Boban,

The update is that we have now secured all our funding, so we'll be getting going in about three months time. I ended up talking a lot to Iain Oughtred and he drew us a totally new design heavily based on West Coast skiffs like a Girvan Skiff/Loch Fyne Skiff. its a real beautiful design, 20ft long, looks scottish but a bit more easy to build/use than a fully traditional loch fyne skiff. Best of all worlds!

B

[keyhavenpotterer]

Came accross Mike Smylie's this book on Amazon 'The slopemasts: A history of the Loch Fyne Skiffs' when getting books on Amazon. Don't have it but might be worth perusal. Smylie knew his stuff.



http://www.amazon.co.uk/Slopemasts-H.../dp/0752447742

Good to hear it's going ahead. Perhaps stick up Iain's profile drawing so we can take a peek! At 20ft that could have wider appeal/ be buildable.

Ed

[PeterSibley]

Seeing this thread is floating again, something that takes my fancy .

http://store.gartsideboats.com/colle...yawl-design-83

[Benduffin]

I don't have a digital copy of the plans yet, but will be getting one soon enough. When I do i'll stick some images on here. It's going to an interesting build I think.

As always thats a lovely gartside boat, too complex for us alas.

[Dick Wynne]

A while back I commissioned from Nick Newland of Swallowboats the design for (as we called it) the Celtic Whaler, a modern design for rowing by up to 10 + helm, and cruising / raiding by 6 sleeping on board. It's epoxy/ply, which you may not like, but looks good, has a dipping lug (or any rig you like) built-in buoyancy and water ballast for sailing. About 30ft long. Thanks to the recession I never built her, but she embodies requirements which emerged from my experience of two other whalers - a Montagu and a US Beetle type, each of which I found to be compromised as regards regular use by a group of variable number. Let me know if you're interested. I have some CAD and specs at home, and a strong indication of interest might just get the drawings finalized, although the job is paid for, both client and designer have had other things on their mind!

Edited to add: Trad is good (as my boats have been, more or less), but maximum useability and versatility for an organised group might result from a more modern design / construction method. But of course a trad build will be a lot more interesting and fun.

[Craic]

... I work with a charity in Glasgow, we teach boatbuilding to folk who are long term unemployed many of whom have social issues such as addiction. The aim is by learning skills and being involved in interesting projects our participants gain self respect and become part of the community to help them move on with their lives. ...

Ben,

reading who you are and what you want this project for, I strongly recommend you to get in touch with Meitheal Mara in Cork City, http://www.meithealmara.ie/.

They have very similar objectives, and have years of expertise. They build trad Irish Currachs with similar teams, and race them in events like the "Ocean to City" http://www.oceantocity.com/ , with exactly the objectives -and results- you aim for.

Good luck.

[cluttonfred]

Many of Iain Oughtred's designs are listed with the note that "traditional planking" is an option. From the context, I understood that to mean carvel planking, so why not a carvel Caledonia Yawl?

[boban saor]

Ben.. I'm sure IO will have done you something fine..perhaps along the lines of the Scoraig skiff we saw in WB Feb11..I think that was a clever blend of Small Loch Fyne skiff with the Girvan line skiff PJ Oke recorded....although i don't know if the boat was ever built..

You mentioned "Big enough to be inspiring" at the start of this thread...to be brutal..Is 20' big enough?.. The Ayrshire (Girvan) line skiffs when expanded gave birth to the Nabbies of the Ayrshire coast...well known for both there looks and sailing qualities. Most Nabbies were around 28/30 LOA..although a few of the later ones were bigger. The extended Fife /Fyfe family built many of them. I'm not sure if any survive . Would a ,say, 28' Nabby not be a more inspiring craft? You would be building a 'local' design..or at least from the right shore of the Clyde..and following a fine boat building tradition..

A not dissimilar project was completed in SW Clare a few years ago. Very nice boat and very well built...now being used for sail training and community outings i think: https://www.facebook.com/SeolSionna

Of course money is money and your funding may not stretch to something bigger...anyway good luck with it all..