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Bob Perry's take on Wolfenzee's dream boat

187K views 1K replies 48 participants last post by  Rhapsody-NS27 
#1 · (Edited)
In the "Modern Hull forms and Motion Comfort" thread,

Post # 142, Wolfenzee said to Bob Perry " BOB: take a close look at the lines of my boat and tell me could a fin keel have been designed in relatively easily http://atkinboatplans.com/Sail/images/CaptainCicero-3.gif
[/I]"

And in Post #152 and #153 Bob Perry Responded:
(#152)"Damn it Wolfer!
You made me think.
I hate it when that happens.

Sure I could do your boat with a fin keel and a nice skeg hung rudder or better yet a spade rudder.

It would look just like your boat....above the water. Under the water you would not recognize it. I would have to shave away all that deadrise and reduce displ while carving away some volume forward and reducing some hollows aft.

But in the end you and me would love it. It would be a WOLF in sheep's clothing like NIGHT RUNNER."


(#153) "Wolfy:
Next Wednesday post your hull lines again and a photo or two of your boat.
When I start thinking about a new boat I need to see it and I think it would be fun for all of us to see what your boat would look like with a more modern hull combined with that traditional Atkin look.

I have to do this to get it off my mind. I'm built like that.

Or, Jeff could do it. I know he could.
Or, Jeff and I could do it together.
He'd do the hard work and I'd do the pointing and gesturing.

Either way let's see if we can produce a boat that will get your juices flowing."


And I am bowled over by that.

As a SailNet Moderator, I can only thank Bob Perry for that generous offer to come up with a design that explores Wolf's question. That is a true gift to this forum. Normal folk rarely get to see a custom design process and so this should prove interesting.

And I am truly honored that you would be willing to do this with me. I truly appreciate Bob's willingness to give that a try.

This is a thread for that process. I am excited to see where this ends up....

Jeff
 
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#768 ·
Jak:
No worries. I washed the Subaru and It's looking sharp There is some dog stuff in the back seat that is looking odd but Iml sure a good vacuuming will cure that.

Rest knowing I can wait another two weeks for my new Mercedes.

Just got back from the dojo expecting a few rounds of kumite with Brent but noooooo.
 
#769 · (Edited)
Cool Bob, Glad you understand.Hey Dog stuff is good,better than finding a homeless tweaker in the back.Now back to boats.I have to chime in here on this notion of the "average" guy and sailing.There is no such thing.The average guy in the 'states' doesnt sail, period.Sailors I am sure make up less the 1.5% of the population.Of that 1.5% half of that are what used to be refered to as upper middle class,(sounds like Yogi Berra '90% of baseball is half mental')the rest are rich.There is a small group of us who are niether.We work on boats and sail.Some of us build our own.This is an even smaller group.The 'average' Joe doesnt even prepare his own food let alone build anything.The average guy,The 99%'er goes to work for 30 years or so retires and dies withen 3 years sitting on the couch watching TV.I applaud anyone who builds anything on his own. I have havnt built my own boat yet but Ive done tons of boat work for others.From that and a life time of sailing I know pretty much what I want in a sailing vessel.She must sail well,all around,have a comfortable motion,I spent many years sailing a Cal 33,.Fun,fast off the wind but that flat bottom would pound your fillings out.Strong,seaworthy,ya we all get that.As far as finish I am not a big fan of varnish,unless I am getting paid to take care of it.
And a little off-white decks so you dont burn your toes or get blinded in the tropics.Another thing I dont like is cockpit led controls.I like my halyards on the mast and my cockpit clear.Sooner or later your going on deck anyway no matter how well laid out the leads are and it will be in the middle of a cold dark and stormy night,Murphy's law.Down below, I like a good galley.Bob,I have to say all the boats of been on of your design have the best galleys,very well laid out and useable.It always amazed me how people could prepare food in the six by six inch space some boats have for cooking.My friend has a fairweather/westsail 39 he lives on in Sausalito,great layout all around.I appreciate good joiner work,not the fancy intricate busy kind of the Asian yards but like Walsteds from Denmark.I am not rich, not even close.Not even a little,But Ive done everything Ive wanted that I set my mind to.I could build the boat I invision.I wouldnt do it to go cruising Id do it to build the boat,That would be the goal in itself. The problem Ive seen people have is that they get bogged down trying to tackle to many details at once. There needs to be a course that teaches you How to work, before you do anything else,like learn carpentry or welding.I learned how to work from a 65 year old Chinese guy I worked with in the late 80's here in San Francisco.We were doing seismic retrofitting on a very big house in Pacific hights.Just me and Wing, the boss was parked at Danny's bar all day.Wing was 100lbs soaking wet,maybe 5'2",but he could produce more quality output in a day than 4 younger guys.He never rushed but was always moving, was organised and kept focused on the immediate job.he didnt talk unnessesarily and was a master at conserving his energy.He was my best teacher.I didnt learn carpentry or plumbing or painting from him but I learned how to get things done without killing myself in a timely manner.The 89 quake hit as I was doing the final finish painting.The house is still there.
 
#770 · (Edited)
Brent's comments are very reminiscent of Bruce Roberts stock plans business and John Samson back in the days of ferro.

The fact is that nothing is cheaper than a shrewdly purchased used boat - especially now in this depressed market.

I know this for a fact as I've built, restored and bought turnkey used.

Building was by far the most expensive.

Having said that, if I was for some reason possessed enough to take a 30' through the North West Passage, I think one of Brent's boats would definitely be on the short list. ;)
 
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#771 ·
Brent's comments are very reminiscent of Bruce Roberts stock plans business and John Sampson back in the days of ferro.

The fact is that nothing is cheaper than a shrewdly purchased used boat - especially now in this depressed market.

I know this for a fact as I've built, restored and bought turnkey used.

Building was by far the most expensive.

Having said that, if I was for some reason possessed enough to take a 30' through the North West Passage, I think one of Brent's boats would definitely be on the short list. ;)
Back in the mid 90's I was seriously wanting to build a boat. I was corresponding with Dick Newick.I liked his 36' tri Echo .I also liked Pats which was his personal boat.She was 52', constant camber.He wrote me back saying the materials for Echo would be about $40K for the basic boat with a main and jib, Pats would be about $150K for materials.He said for the money it would cost for the basic materials for Echo he had a 38 foot native fully equipped and ready to go.He gave me a nice lesson in fiscal reality.
 
#772 ·
Brent and I have debated this around the web probably for at least a decade. This is from some of the earlier discussions on this topic.

Build time and cost: While it is true that you can tack weld a steel hull very quickly using an 'origami' technique, if you compare the overall build time with welding, finishing and constructing an interior to an equal level of finish, in prior analysis that have been posted previously on other sites where we have debated this in the past, other techniques require similar cost and time to build, which is especially true since steel prices have ratcheted up relative to other materials.

If time and money are the prime determinants, in the size boats that we are taking about, then stitch and glue sheet plywood sheathed in epoxy and glass inside and out would easily beat steel on cost (and on strength if of equal weight). The time is greatly shortened on either Orgami boats or on plywood boats with accurate cutting patterns for the interior bulkheads and hull panels.

The Steel vs. Fiberglass hammer argument:

This is a favorite of the steel guys which says steel is better than glass because a steel hammer would damage a glass boat.

Again, I will refer to my previous analysis on this one. Start with the hammers, to begin with we need to compare hammers of equal weight and weight distribution. In other words, for example, to maintain that weight distribution, we need to compare say a 20 oz framing hammer made of steel to an fiberglass hammer of equal weight and weight distribution. The fiberglass hammer would have a head nearly 2 feet long and 3 inches in diameter. If we use the laminates that I have advocated in the past, I would use the vinylester resin typically used in bullet resistant military and crash helmets and a kevlar laminate in the actual impact areas. The impact resistance of that hammer would be several times greater than the steel hammer.

Then we need to look at the steel and glass that we are beating up with these hammers. In a past analysis that I posted on the Origami website, I had calculated that a fiberglass panel able to stand up to a 20 oz framing hammer would be somewhere between 3/16" and a 1/4" thick if the panel size was limited to around 2 feet span. If we compare that panel to a steel panel of an equal weight steel, the steel would be just a tick thinner than 5/100's of an inch (.05"), in other words something slightly thinner than the thickness of steel sheet metal used for body panels on a modern automobile. I'll take the equal weight fiberglass hull and steel hammer any day over the 20 oz. fiberglass hammer beating on an automobile body panel.

Demolition Derby:
It comes down to the same thing here as well. Again we are talking about equal weight boats of steel, fiberglass and engineered laminate over cold molded plywood.

Lets start with the problem at hand namely the equal weight part of this sentence. If we compare the relative density of the materials involved, they are as follows: Steel= 7.85, Fiberglass= 1.92, and cold molded construction= .45 (3/4" port orford red cedar strip plank with two diagonal layers of 1/4" port orford red cedar veneers and a final longitudinal layer of douglas fir with an exterior laminate of vinylester resin and kevlar with minimal non-directional glass), So if we start out with a 1/2" thick fiberglass hull, the comparable weight steel hull would be something less than an 1/8" thick (roughly 3 MM), and a cold molded hull would be roughly 2 1/8" thick. And when the numbers are run, the fiberglass hull would have slightly more than 4 times the bending strength and roughly double the impact resistance. The cold molded hull would have nearly 11 times the bending strength, and somewhere between 3 and 4 times the impact resistance of steel.

Again, in a demolition derby, I will take the other materials over steel any day, especially when you consider how little steel would be left out of 1/8" plating after a decade of rust.

And as you noted the last time I posted these numbers on another website, if I remember correctly, your hulls are typically 1/4" and 5/16" plate. If we compare a 5/16th steel plate, to equal weight fiberglass and cold-molded hull panels, the fiberglass hull would be nearly 2 inches thick and the cold-molded hull would be 5 inches thick. The strength ratios remain the same.

I come back to my original contention, that of all of the materials that one can build a boat, on a pound for pound basis, steel is one of the weakest materials to build a boat, and if maintained in an equal fashion to the other materials, over the life of the boat, according to all studies that I have seen, a steel boat is one of the highest lifecycle maintenance forms of construction that one can chose.

But in the end, little of that matters, in sailing we make choices based on our goals, fears, and sailing venues. For some steel make sense. For most, there is little logic to owning a steel boat. The above was intended to illustrate the relative strength of materials by weight. I chose to use panel thickness as clearest way to illustrate basis of my comments on the relative strength of materials by weight. In the example, the greater thicknesses of fiberglass and cold-molded construction result in strengths that are substantially higher than comparable weight steel.

But as sometimes noted, no one would build a boat a boat this size with panels as thick as those in my example. But if you reduce the panel thickness and the strength of the panels equal to steel, you end up with a hull thickness that is closer to normal practice. In that case, you can still achieve equal strength to steel, but a very significant reduction in weight. And that is my primary point.

I don't disagree with Brent’s argument that "The truth is that steel puts a great deal of strength and toughness into a compact package” but I add that this strength comes at the cost of significant weight. In fact, more or less that is my key point. I raise this point in reference to someone considering custom building a boat with concerns towards the relative strength of the material being chosen.

The steel guys like to ask questions like; "Why don't they make icebreakers out of fibreglass or wood?" but to answer that question, until the early 1950's icebreakers were typically sheathed in Ironwood. Since then specialized steels have become the norm. As I have mentioned in prior discussions, steel really comes into its own as a vessel gets larger. When you talk about a vessel the size of an icebreaker, the compactness of steel becomes a significant advantage. Also Commercial vessels tend to be short lived compared to yachts. Beyond that, when you talk about an icebreaker, high weight is an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

Lastly, I am in agreement with statements in other discussions that, "Steel is certainly not for everyone, but neither is fiberglass, nor cold-molded wood." That is essentially the same point that I was making in my conclusion, "In any event, in sailing we make choices based on our goals, fears, and sailing venues. For some steel make sense. For most, there is little logic to owning a steel boat."

Respectfully,
Jeff
 
#807 · (Edited)
Brent and I have debated this around the web probably for at least a decade. This is from some of the earlier discussions on this topic.

Build time and cost: While it is true that you can tack weld a steel hull very quickly using an 'origami' technique, if you compare the overall build time with welding, finishing and constructing an interior to an equal level of finish, in prior analysis that have been posted previously on other sites where we have debated this in the past, other techniques require similar cost and time to build, which is especially true since steel prices have ratcheted up relative to other materials.

If time and money are the prime determinants, in the size boats that we are taking about, then stitch and glue sheet plywood sheathed in epoxy and glass inside and out would easily beat steel on cost (and on strength if of equal weight). The time is greatly shortened on either Orgami boats or on plywood boats with accurate cutting patterns for the interior bulkheads and hull panels.

The Steel vs. Fiberglass hammer argument:

This is a favorite of the steel guys which says steel is better than glass because a steel hammer would damage a glass boat.

Again, I will refer to my previous analysis on this one. Start with the hammers, to begin with we need to compare hammers of equal weight and weight distribution. In other words, for example, to maintain that weight distribution, we need to compare say a 20 oz framing hammer made of steel to an fiberglass hammer of equal weight and weight distribution. The fiberglass hammer would have a head nearly 2 feet long and 3 inches in diameter. If we use the laminates that I have advocated in the past, I would use the vinylester resin typically used in bullet resistant military and crash helmets and a kevlar laminate in the actual impact areas. The impact resistance of that hammer would be several times greater than the steel hammer.

Then we need to look at the steel and glass that we are beating up with these hammers. In a past analysis that I posted on the Origami website, I had calculated that a fiberglass panel able to stand up to a 20 oz framing hammer would be somewhere between 3/16" and a 1/4" thick if the panel size was limited to around 2 feet span. If we compare that panel to a steel panel of an equal weight steel, the steel would be just a tick thinner than 5/100's of an inch (.05"), in other words something slightly thinner than the thickness of steel sheet metal used for body panels on a modern automobile. I'll take the equal weight fiberglass hull and steel hammer any day over the 20 oz. fiberglass hammer beating on an automobile body panel.

Demolition Derby:
It comes down to the same thing here as well. Again we are talking about equal weight boats of steel, fiberglass and engineered laminate over cold molded plywood.

Lets start with the problem at hand namely the equal weight part of this sentence. If we compare the relative density of the materials involved, they are as follows: Steel= 7.85, Fiberglass= 1.92, and cold molded construction= .45 (3/4" port orford red cedar strip plank with two diagonal layers of 1/4" port orford red cedar veneers and a final longitudinal layer of douglas fir with an exterior laminate of vinylester resin and kevlar with minimal non-directional glass), So if we start out with a 1/2" thick fiberglass hull, the comparable weight steel hull would be something less than an 1/8" thick (roughly 3 MM), and a cold molded hull would be roughly 2 1/8" thick. And when the numbers are run, the fiberglass hull would have slightly more than 4 times the bending strength and roughly double the impact resistance. The cold molded hull would have nearly 11 times the bending strength, and somewhere between 3 and 4 times the impact resistance of steel.

Again, in a demolition derby, I will take the other materials over steel any day, especially when you consider how little steel would be left out of 1/8" plating after a decade of rust.

And as you noted the last time I posted these numbers on another website, if I remember correctly, your hulls are typically 1/4" and 5/16" plate. If we compare a 5/16th steel plate, to equal weight fiberglass and cold-molded hull panels, the fiberglass hull would be nearly 2 inches thick and the cold-molded hull would be 5 inches thick. The strength ratios remain the same.

I come back to my original contention, that of all of the materials that one can build a boat, on a pound for pound basis, steel is one of the weakest materials to build a boat, and if maintained in an equal fashion to the other materials, over the life of the boat, according to all studies that I have seen, a steel boat is one of the highest lifecycle maintenance forms of construction that one can chose.

But in the end, little of that matters, in sailing we make choices based on our goals, fears, and sailing venues. For some steel make sense. For most, there is little logic to owning a steel boat. The above was intended to illustrate the relative strength of materials by weight. I chose to use panel thickness as clearest way to illustrate basis of my comments on the relative strength of materials by weight. In the example, the greater thicknesses of fiberglass and cold-molded construction result in strengths that are substantially higher than comparable weight steel.

But as sometimes noted, no one would build a boat a boat this size with panels as thick as those in my example. But if you reduce the panel thickness and the strength of the panels equal to steel, you end up with a hull thickness that is closer to normal practice. In that case, you can still achieve equal strength to steel, but a very significant reduction in weight. And that is my primary point.

I don't disagree with Brent's argument that "The truth is that steel puts a great deal of strength and toughness into a compact package" but I add that this strength comes at the cost of significant weight. In fact, more or less that is my key point. I raise this point in reference to someone considering custom building a boat with concerns towards the relative strength of the material being chosen.

The steel guys like to ask questions like; "Why don't they make icebreakers out of fibreglass or wood?" but to answer that question, until the early 1950's icebreakers were typically sheathed in Ironwood. Since then specialized steels have become the norm. As I have mentioned in prior discussions, steel really comes into its own as a vessel gets larger. When you talk about a vessel the size of an icebreaker, the compactness of steel becomes a significant advantage. Also Commercial vessels tend to be short lived compared to yachts. Beyond that, when you talk about an icebreaker, high weight is an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

Lastly, I am in agreement with statements in other discussions that, "Steel is certainly not for everyone, but neither is fiberglass, nor cold-molded wood." That is essentially the same point that I was making in my conclusion, "In any event, in sailing we make choices based on our goals, fears, and sailing venues. For some steel make sense. For most, there is little logic to owning a steel boat."

Respectfully,
Jeff
Wow! What a collection of disinformation, misinformation, and outright falsehoods in that post!
I use 3/16th plate not 5/16th in my boats, which weigh considerably less than a Hereshoff ,Atkin or many other cruising designs in the same size range. You claim that there would not be much left of 1/8th plate after ten years?
If that is the case, then the thicklness of my current boat, made of 3/16th plate, 29 years old, must be a negative value! Actually, except for the odd paint chip, the steel and paint job are as good as it was 29 years ago, inside and out, with an hour a year maintenance. I read in a metal boat magazine about a couple cruising the tropics, who couldnt get paint to stick behind the head due to it being always wet. It took 15 years for corrosion to go thru constantly wet 3/16ht plate ,in the tropics. Dont get your advice on steel corrosion on a boat from someone who has never owned one. They have no idea of what they are talking about.
Steel prices did rise, and have now fallen, to near what they were over ten years ago. The steel for the basic shell of my 36 is around
$9k. Try buy the resin and fibreglass materials to build a hull, decks, cabin, wheelhouse, cockpit , keel, rudder, and skeg for a 36 ft fibreglas shell for that much! The left over scraps, around 4%, make up your anchors, woodstove etc. Your cleats, instead of costing $40 each from a ship swindlers cost $1.80 a pound from the scrapyard, and once welded down with a dollars worth of rod, will never work loose or leak. Ditto your self steering, anchor winch, fittings, etc etc
A friend priced the fibreglassing materials for a 26 ft bristol channel cutter at $12,000, when I was building a 31 for $3,500. The ratio is the same today , as oil prices have not exactly been static since then.
When I was able to get a 36 ft shell together for around $8K, the cheapest commercial builders were doing it for was $25,000. Colvin estimated 1,000 hours to put a hull and decks together, using his outdated methods, something I do in 100 hours. One has to question the math skills of anyone claiming that 100 hours is the same, and costs the same as 1,000 hours!
Your 20 ounce fibrglass hammer will do zero damage to 3/16th plate. To get something closer to pounding on a sharp rock , use the claw end of your fibreglass hammer on a piece of 3/16th plate. It will do zero damage befoe disintegrating. .Then use the claw end of steel hammer on your fibreglass. The fibreglas will disintegrate. Then try it on your epoxy cedar combinatioin. "Reality at last!" So much for theory!
Wood has a tensile and compresion strength of 1,500 psi, steel 60,000psi , 40 times the strength to weight ratio. How many fibreglass boats in the same weigh range as mine have survived 16 days pounding on a Baja leeshore in up to 12 ft surf? Mine has. How many have survived pounding across 300 yards of Fijian coral reef and been dragged back across it with no damage? Mine has. If your calculations say otherwise ,then your calculations are obviously wrong, and clearly missing a factor..
Steel can stretch to 1.4 times its lenghth with out breaking. Tie a knot in a piece of steel wire. Then try the same with fibreglass. That is the kind of toughness other, more expensive materials simply dont have.
So bring me a cold molded boat roughly the same weight as mine, and lets have our demolition derby. I could sail right thru yours with no dammage whatever to mine . Theory and reality are light years apart, based on decades of expereince, pounding on lee shores, steel barges and ice, not on juggling numbers in an office.
The logic in owning a steel boat is in not having to worry about hitting Fukashima debris in the night and losing your life and that of your crew and kids in the night . Had the Sleavin family been in a steel boat ,none would have died . Discouraging people from the wisdom of choosing the greatly enhanced safety of a steel hull for offshore cruising, is life threateningly irresponsible.
I would recommend anyone considering offshore cruising, read Moitessiers book "The Long Way" and compare how trouble free, and failure free his circumnavigations in the roughest oceans of the world, in an industrialy rigged steel boat compare with any similar voyages made in fibreglass or wooden boats, rigged witrh trendy yachtie gear.
 
#775 ·
Jak:
Another 100 yards and they would have made it to my beach shack! That's an amazing video.

What I really want is a So Cal Woody wagon with big, fat tires and a blower sticking out of the hood. Ok, maybe not the blower but a souped up classic woody would be my dream car. But I'd settle for the AMG Mercedes.

I did several boats with Dennis Choate and Dencho in Long Beach. At lunch time we would walk about three block through an industrial section of Longbeach to a little Mexican restaurant. Great food. On the way to the Mexican joint we would walk by a guy who restored cars. His place was usually filled projects in every state of completion and maybe one or two completed cars parked outside. For me this was car dreamland. You could just walk into the shop and poke around. Nobody said anything. My fantacy was to buy one of his restorations or hot rods and drive it back to Seattle.
 
#777 ·
We hit a ledge going 6 knots under power in my Fathers Cal 33.It was a super low moon tide.It was in the channel.Nobody new this ledge was there until we hit it.It was in the channel into Cohassett harbor.This was the lowest recorded tide in decades.I was in the companion way.the boat stopped dead.I flew forward and landed on the table and banged my head on the galley sink.The boat was fine.No leaks.In 1976 there was a freak May northeaster in New England.100mph winds and a blizzard to boot.It created a massive storm surge.Most of the boats in the outer harbor at Cohassett broke there moring pannants and wound up on Bassings beach.While bouncing up and down in the surf
a crack devolped in the trailing edge of the keel right where it joined the bottom.Many patches were applied but it consistantly leaked.The boat flexed to much at that point.Finally they glassed in some floor timbers to deal with it and it worked.But the Call 33 had a very flat bottom so the floors rose well above the cabin sole.We had to cancel all the dances in the main cabin after that.
 
#779 ·
Advantage metal ( Fe/Al) has is they are iso in all directions ( compression/extension etc) and they will generally fail gradually ( e.g. dent rather than fall catastrophically). In engineering terms one can make the joke they are more plastic then the plastic boats especially the cored ones... However in all other regards except for specialized applications for the average cruising sailor other options make better sense when you crunch the numbers. Thought the "little" Bougainvillea was a thing of beauty until we ran the numbers. One of the troubles is on this side of the pond the market is limited. Still, there are some truly glorious boats in metal The Kanters K+M s, Puffins, Boreals would make most reading this thread quite pleased. Modern coating systems have come quite a way and I like the look of bare aluminum if the hull is fair. Service life is likely to exceed your own with adequate maintenance. Feel any material can make a great boat with a good design and good execution. Think some of the above posts are a bit harsh.
 
#785 ·
Yup, The joys of sailing there.Shoals,rocks and lobster pots.Out here in SF Bay there are only a couple of ledges to worry about.We have lots of wind,fog,strong currents. a steady stream of BFS's(big fookin ships!).Heres a vid of my favorite boat, an Avance 36, somewhere in the Baltic, I think,with a nice traditional sound track;

 
#781 · (Edited)
I remember Scanmar yachts, a very attractive, well built and fast FG Swedish boat, were built to be able to hit a submerged rock at 5kt with not structural damage....one of the building requirements. The Scanmar 40 which sold for $130,000 new in 1990 sells for $100,000 now (if you can find one, there were only 20 built). Not my "style" of boat, but is I were to go with a glass boat and had the $, I'd seek one out.
 
#796 ·
The green double-ender looks like a Tumlaren. There appeared to be at least 4 of them in the race. There was also a sdouble ender which appeared to be smaller than the Tumlarens and may be a Goteborg Flyer. Now how these uniqulely Scandinavian designs got to Australia is beyond me.

Jeff
 
#797 · (Edited)
As unlikley as is might be (actually the chances are down right astronomical) I located a used racing mainsail that will fit my boat with no alterations (Sobstad Genesis Platinum laminate Mylar/taffeta etc) , it's loose footed, but that's not a problem and might even be a good thing. It has minor issue with the leech which can be fixed with a reinforcing leech tape (which is a good thing to have anyway), but over all is in good shape and a really good price, it will give me the chance to try out a laminated sail with out investing a lot of money (and it gives me a chance to save up enough to have a new sail cut)
 
#798 ·
Wolf,
Do you know what kind of boat that the sail is from. Your boat has a lot of mast bend, and so you will want a sail cut for a boat with similar 'pre-bend' or the sail will be too flat for your boat.

Also mylar/polyester taffeta sails are very short lived sails compared to other laminates.
 
#800 ·
Me too. Truly beautiful boats.

I have also liked some of their construction details like the planked down hull to their plank keel, especially as this was combined with their bronze or iron floor timbers extending far up thier topsides. That has always struck me as strong, light and maintainable.

At least some Tumlarens were copper riveted either into double planking or carvel.

The one that I knew best had a mix of sawn and steam bent frames. I always suspected that she was skip planked over the sawn frames and then the bent frames were bent to the planking. Of course, that is only speculation on my part, but its a nice way to build a boat.

Jeff
 
#806 · (Edited)
" I broke out by ramming it at full throttle for three days. The only damage was chipped paint on the stem and on the leading edges of the keels. Try that with a non metal boat.
In winter, I find the easiest way to clean my hull is to motor thru a quarter mile of ice."

You crack me up Brent. You make it sound like "yachting for the mentally impaired" or some kind of Monty Python skit.


Jak:
My client for the 62' SLIVER project once owned a Swede 55. That was one of the inspirations for the new boat, long and skinny.
 

Attachments

#811 · (Edited)
Perhaps a Udell? ..or it could simply have been a scaled-up Tum, since most of these boats were built locally off the plans.

IMO, the one and only thing Mr Reimers got wrong with the Tums is the lack of a self-draining cockpit. That means (over here) we're, technically, not allowed to race them outside 'protected waters'.. not that any have ever come to grief sailing to Geelong and back whilst the powers-that-be were looking the other way. ;)
 
#814 ·
Jak:
Yes. I had known the client Kim for over 25 years and we had talked about doing a boat "some day" for a long time. We have very similar tastes in boats and a similar sailing style so the design process went quickly and smoothly. Engineering was done by Tim Nolan in Pt Townsend and all 3D work for CNC cutting was done by James Franken in Pt. Townsend. I had some very skilled help with this project.
 
#819 ·
Id love to do that.I would give you a basic out line of what I wanted then let you go to town.I read a interview with Dick Newick where one of clients came to him with a list of things his wife wanted.He told him 'I am not going to let your wife design my boat for you'.
 
#834 ·
My father was old school USN and of the many things he drilled into me one of them was There is only one thing more important than personal safety, and that's the safety of the crew (the safety of the vessels falls under both). I am constantly amazed how many of the things I learned from which can best be described as seamanship....people just don't consider anymore.
 
#818 ·
Back in 2004 had Alan Pape draw up plans for a nearly flush deck cutter with a pilot house/half house aft. Small cockpit. Rudder hung on gudgeons/pintles with a tiller. Went as far as to go to the local voc school and learn to use plamsa cutter and the three welding styles. Had a Miller in the basement for years. Wicked fun "pulling a puddle" and so different then my day job. At this point think above 40' Al still can make a lot of sense and >50' steel isn't a bad choice.
If someone dropped a huge bag of money on me would think about a 50-60' ketch in monel. No through hulls just standpipes. Have it compartmentalized fore and aft with integral tanks to make it in effect double hulled in the middle. Maybe Bob would like to draw it. Radius chine or at least soft chine.
 
#833 ·
Lary Pardy once told me his" Dream boat" would be copper nickle, no fouling and zero mainenance. I suggested he first ask Winston how much maintenance he does on his steel boat in a year before justifying the expense. My boat is an hour or two maintenance a year.
I once sold a set of plans to a guy in SE Asia who planned on building her in Copper Nickle. Some boats in Britain have been built out of the stuff.
Self antifouling. Very expensive.
 
#820 ·
Brent:
What the hell difference does it make?

You have clients who pride themselves on hitting rocks. I call that bad navigation and then I call it stupidity. Yachting for the mentally impaired. I don't care how my boat was built. I would do everything in my power to keep it off the rocks. Period!

You like your agricultural looking boats and some of us don't. Go your own way and we can go ours. If you want to anchor in quiet cove looking like the dog's breakfast then fine. I want my boats to enhance any environment they find themselves in. I am a yacht designer.

We will NEVER agree. NEVER
183 degrees limit of positive stability?
 
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