Duckworks/Small Craft Advisor
- Design Contest #7 -
Class IV Everglades
Challenger
ENTRY #5
Everglades
Challenger
After much thought, it is finally time
to pick up my computer and type in my words and, oy
veh! today is the deadline! What follows is a sketch,
not the detailed plans that I would build from.
This entry consists of this text file, and an acrobat
file with an initial rough sketch giving
a general idea of the boat’s shape.
Quick stats:
- Length: 16 feet
- Beam: 40 inches (3 1/3 feet)
- Hull Depth: 2 feet
- Empty weight: 160 to 200 pounds
- Cruising weight: 400 to 500
pounds
- Sail area: 100 sq. feet (or
thereabouts)
- Sail controls all lead to the
cabin.
Construction materials:
- Hull: 3 mm (1/8 inch)
plywood, with canvas on the exterior, stitch and
tape
- Keel: 1x12 16 feet long
- Masts: 2 inch aluminum tube
12 feet long, keel stepped, can also be 2 inch wood
poles
- Sails: canvas or Tyvek
- Optional, though recommended:
waterproof foam for flotation inside
- Ballast: none, heavy items to
be secured as low as possible
- Alternate propulsion: oars for
windless conditions, maybe a yulow for slower, harder
conditions.
- Interior: mostly taken up by
a sleeping / living area, with a tiny stove and
kitchenette along with other supplies tucked away
in one end. Also included small personal hygiene
supplies.
- Cabin construction: open cockpit
with a cockpit coming designed to take a canvas
dodger for warm conditions. If built where conditions
often cold and wet, recommended that a cabin be
built with sitting headroom, 40 inches for normal
people.
Longer description:
Though the contest is specifically for a boat to
enter the Everglades Challenge, the boat described
in this brief is actually a fair weather micro cruiser
for a single person to gunk hole in sometimes shallow
and narrow waterways, where the wind is sometimes
blocked off by buildings or trees, where the boat
can be beached, and brought up and launched from a
beach by a single individual. In other words, these
are the same conditions as exist for the Everglades
Challenge.
The idea is to have a light weight, easily driven
hull with a low, split rig on two masts to reduce
heeling, then to make it as simple as possible to
operate for a single sailor (actually, I’m so
slender that two people my size can fit in it). The
reason for easily driven is because I do not expect
that there will be sufficient wind all the time for
sailing, so the plan is to include a couple of oars
and at a comfortable pace, one should be able to row
the boat at between four to five knots. I assume that
when the oars are used, there is no wind.
What I settled on is a 16 foot long (two sheets of
plywood) by 40 inch beam boat with a rig based loosely
on that of the recently built megayacht Maltese Falcon,
though on only two masts. The construction of the
hull will be out of 7 sheets of 3 mm (1/8 inch) exterior
plywood for the hull, with 16 foot long 1x12 (cut
out to shape) for the keel with the scrap left over
from both the keel and the plywood should be sufficient
for all the little details of the boat such as two
bulkheads, storage bins, and so forth. The exterior
of the hull will be finished with a layer of canvas
embedded in paint (I don’t think epoxy is needed,
but others may use epoxy instead). I figure the completed
but empty hull should weigh about 160 pounds. If I
add waterproof foam for flotation, that may bring
the total empty weight up by 20 to 40 pounds, to a
total of 200 pounds. In cruising mode, including stores,
battery, stove, crew, etc. should bring the total
up to about 400 to 450 pounds.
Construction is basically that of a monocoque structure,
with each part helping hold its neighbors in shape
and place, resulting in a light weight though rigid
hull that needs a minimum of internal frames. The
deck is arched between the bulkheads, while the curve
for the upswept bow and stern requires a different
shape. Plywood cannot take the complex shapes to combine
the two into one smoothly curving shape.
The design is that of a decked sailing canoe. It
will have identical fore and aft sections. The depth
of the hull will be only two feet, which is not sitting
height for a normal adult, so for at least 4 feet
of the cabin should be higher, 40 inches for at least
part of the way. How that raised top of the cabin
is to be accomplished will vary by how and where the
boat is sailed: if it is sailed mostly in warm and
mostly sunny conditions, that raised top can be a
canvas dodger that can be folded out of the way when
it is not needed. But if it is sailed in an often
cold and rainy area, one option may be to have a low,
slightly raised cabin, topped by a plexiglass dome.
For the Everglades Challenge, the canvas dodger will
be used.
I am not as sure about the weights of the masts and
rigging, not even the size. Once I crunch some numbers,
the final shape and size of the sails will be determined;
the sails look like they may be too large as pictured
in the accompanying acrobat file with the drawings.
They will be a cross between a Chinese junk rig and
a square rig, with a somewhat eliptical shape. Reefing
will be according to the Chinese junk rig practice,
just lower it panel by panel. But the sails will be
trimmed as on a square rigged ship. One advantage
of the square rig, is that it is possible to connect
the two rigs in such a way that trimming one mast
will automatically trim the other to the same angle.
I plan to have all controls to lead to the cabin I
am not so sure about the weight of the rig, but I
don’t think it should add no more than about
50 pounds to the total weight above.
The interior will consist of a “cabin”
that is 8 feet long by the width of the boat. It will
be closed off on both ends by waterproof bulkheads
accessible only by hatches on the deck. Because I
anticipate using such a small boat only for river,
lake, coastal cruising that may include an occasional
short jaunt at most a couple of days, so there should
be no reason to access those areas when underway.
One thing that can be stored in those areas is wheels
to make it easier to bring the boat up on shore.
The layout of the interior of the cabin is of necessity
simple. Most of the area will be taken up by sleeping
/ living area. The best is to design the sleeping
area to extend to one of the bulkheads. For most comfortable
sleeping, the bed should be slightly longer than the
crew is tall. The remaining 1 1/2 to 2 foot section
will have cabinets to hold the kitchenette, enough
stores for a few days, and other odds and ends so
necessary for comfortable living.
In closing, what I have presented here is not a boat
specifically designed for the Everglades Challenge,
rather a very small cruiser that can be used in the
Everglades Challenge.
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