WBS class? Build Your Own Houseboat!

[rbgarr]

I wish the WB School would conduct a class for building houseboats. I can imagine a whole fleet of them anchored in the shallows off the WB dock as alternative 'camping' sites for students. Wagbags and water jugs would do. I'd love to take a class building one with a bunch of others and would gladly buy it at raffle depending on the design. I wonder if one could be knocked together in a week or two? There's a sweet cove right nearby where we could moor one for our grandchildren to play and live on. Endless fun. When I was a teen a couple of friends built one on a discarded raft and we had so much fun with it.

[Etdbob]

I did design a minimal 16' plywood "shanty" boat last winter. Basically, an eight-foot cabin with four-foot stern and bow decks, about eight feet wide on centerline. Rockered bottom and curved sides to stiffen the plywood. The rockered bottom might make it a bit noisier at anchor than a true flat bottom, but by curving the surfaces I think we can get away with less framing than the typical barge boat. Standing headroom only on centerline with a curved roof.

I never quite finished the design or modeled it, but it was simplicity itself and certainly could be built quickly.
It looked like an awful lot of fun!

[jshaley]

I did design a minimal 16' plywood "shanty" boat last winter.

I know of the "Lisa B Good" and "Aqua Casa" - would be interested in learning more about this additional small shanty. Floating van life.

John

[Etdbob]

I call it R.O.U.S.


As in a "Rodent Of Unusual Size" from the film The Princess Bride. Which had nothing at all to do with house boats, but shanty boats are typically considered the lowest form of flotsam out there and it is big for a rodent!

I imagined building one and spending a season floating hidden backwaters and bayous down south, making a living hunting the Coypu (also called Nutria), which are Invasive Rodents of Unusual Size. They are also good to eat, are hunted for fur, and a bounty is paid for every tail turned in. Last year something like 200,000 tails worth more than a million bucks were turned in, by only 200-odd licensed hunters. If I were twenty years old again I'd go for it.

Anyway, the boat exists only on paper in my notebooks thus far. One day last winter I was out in my boat shop doing little more than tending the woodstove when the inspiration hit me and I started sketching furiously. I was quite taken with it, but figured I really had no practical reason to make one so I didn't finish the design. I'll have dig it out and take a look at it, see it fit's worth more effort.

[Hugh MacD]

We're waiting Sketches are always fun!

[Paul Schweiss]

Great idea, pulling back my boating dreams. Let’s see...build a shanty boat, build an outboard skiff and putt putt into a nice summer cove. Aaah.

[pcford]

Great idea, pulling back my boating dreams. Let’s see...build a shanty boat, build an outboard skiff and putt putt into a nice summer cove. Aaah.

great idea Paul.

[Hwyl]

Www.themainemag.com/rocking-the-boat

[rbgarr]

great idea Paul.

Exactly.

[jshaley]

Www.themainemag.com/rocking-the-boat

So that is nice but I think R.O.U.S might be scaled down a bit? But that one would get wifey on board.

For the 16' ply shanty I think of "Lisa B Good", "Aqua Casa" and I just stumbled on a Tennessee design by Bolger? Seems to be two: on a long thin sneakeasy like his other state designs but than this odd little sketch.

All of these sound like your 8' cabin, 16' rockered hull. All low freeboard, not sure if that is what you had in mind.

[Ben Fuller]

As I recall in the classic American Boy Handy Book or a title close to it there is a very simple house boat. It also has the classic flatbottom skiff with a single mold and the transom pulled in with a Spanish windlass.

[Woxbox]

I like it. If it were built in the traditional method -- timber and nails, maybe a few screws, then paint -- a week would be enough. But if the entire thing needs to be epoxified inside and out, every joint watertight and weatherproof, built to last two or three lifetimes -- then no. It's all of a sudden a 1,000-hour project.

[jabbu12]

That's great thread to help makes a house boat.
Vehicles

[wizbang 13]

I like it. If it were built in the traditional method -- timber and nails, maybe a few screws, then paint -- a week would be enough. But if the entire thing needs to be epoxified inside and out, every joint watertight and weatherproof, built to last two or three lifetimes -- then no. It's all of a sudden a 1,000-hour project.

no electric tools allowed ?

[StevenBauer]

I know of the "Lisa B Good" and "Aqua Casa" - would be interested in learning more about this additional small shanty. Floating van life.

John

Then get a flatbed trailer, winch it up and go on the road. Van life it across the country to new bodies of water along the way.

[Canoeyawl]

I think funky is the way to go.
As soon as you find a place you like they're going to kick you out...

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[cstevens]

https://smallboatsmonthly.com/articl...canal-cruiser/

[MattMKE]

Someone is building an Escargot over on Reddit. Fun to check in to their posts periodically. https://www.reddit.com/r/boatbuildin...cabin_windows/

[Woxbox]

The Escargot is the only boat I've come across that appears to be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Remarkable.

[MushCreek]

I had a partially-baked idea to build a minimum camper/shanty boat. It would be 12' long, and ride on a utility trailer. It would function as a dry land camper, a shanty boat, and with the boat removed, you'd have a utility trailer. I've camped in a van, which is much smaller than that. My plans included a pop-up top with canvas side curtains/windows to reduce windage when being trailer or if you got caught in a violent storm. On nice warm days, you could remove the side curtains for breezy shade.

[Touchatout]

"Lisa B Good" document is interresting and from "our time".
I suggest you to compare with https://www.simplicityboats.com/coolwater.html. Its a similar project as well documented but from the 1940's. Other times means other msterisls... nice to read.
Ok "Coolwater" is 18' so too long for that subject.

A shorter vintage project (16') is the "PM's Platform Boat" that you can find in Popular Mechanics from March 1966.

[StephanT]

I wish the WB School would conduct a class for building houseboats. I can imagine a whole fleet of them anchored in the shallows off the WB dock as alternative 'camping' sites for students. Wagbags and water jugs would do. I'd love to take a class building one with a bunch of others and would gladly buy it at raffle depending on the design. I wonder if one could be knocked together in a week or two? There's a sweet cove right nearby where we could moor one for our grandchildren to play and live on. Endless fun. When I was a teen a couple of friends built one on a discarded raft and we had so much fun with it. This idea first occurred to me when I was in college, but then I could not realize it. Once I even wanted to write my college essay and for https://papersowl.com/write-my-college-essay I collected photo materials and drawings of comfortable houseboats. But then I could not make such a complex project, but now if there are positive reviews and there are enthusiasts besides me, I think we can do it together.

I think this is a great idea! For many students this would be a fun project and if a class could be put together to study, design and build these houseboats it would be a cool project. But it's quite difficult. But also ambitious. I hope one day such a class will be successfully created.