I couldn’t go canoe camping anymore so I needed a new approach.
Plan A was a very traditional old school double ender in need of “TLC”. I couldn’t fix it enough to use it. Plan B was a less antique design but still quite old little wood sailing dory. It also needed “TLC”. Repairs on this one were less esoteric but my ham handed approach hadn’t been sufficient.
So I took on a 60 payment financing plan for a sloop. It’s a brand new, deep keel, two masted, 30′ fiberglass sailboat. It has a 15 HP outboard and all the electronic gadgetry; fuel injection, GPS navigation, VHS coms. It has a berth for sleeping and a galley for cooking. I also ponied up for a membership at the most exclusive marina in the state and have monthly slip fees.
Ha ha ha… of course I didn’t do that! Curmudgeons do things the hard way!
I started working on Plan C. My third attempt (but who’s counting?). I would rise above my inability to repair pre-existing boats by building entirely from scratch. In an abundance of caution (which was wise) I’d build the simplest, smallest, crudest, boxiest, sailboat you’ve ever seen!
I selected a ridiculously “simple” boat plan. Almost an insult to hydrodynamics. It would probably make anyone at a marina laugh and throw rocks at me. But screw them. I needed to start somewhere and how many people in a marina could build the boat they own?
This isn’t to say I was merely fabricating a toy. All reports indicate the very small boxy design is surprisingly seaworthy for its diminutive size. I think of it as the VW Beetle / dunebuggy of the sailboat world; tough and usable but crude, small, and slow. Also, it’s said to be fun… which, when you get right down to it, is the whole point. Most importantly, I’d build every damn inch of it. At the very least I’d know how to fix it when I (and this is almost guaranteed) inexpertly sailed it straight into a wall.
My “design specs” were that it had to carry myself and a week’s gear across lakes that would eat a canoe but nothing more. I would not mess with blue water, fast currents, or ocean level challenges. There are no passengers in my plans and it didn’t have to be fast. Settling on a squarish design meant it was easier to build but I wouldn’t win any beauty pageants. Speed is almost irrelevant. I only needed to travel at the speed of canoe (which is ridiculously slow). Later I added that I needed a gentle craft that a novice could handle alone.
This was to be my learning boat. But first, all hell broke loose…
What you needed was a shantyboat! The one I liked was a 22-25′ swing keel fiberglass sail boat that sold cheap with the trailer.
You pull the mast & all the sailing rigging, the keel, build a wooden deck on top of the fiberglass deck so you have more flat open space and a taller area to stand. Put a small outboard on the back, outfit it as you see fit & have at it!
The boat is cheap, fiberglass is good & you get to do some building…but not too much, just enough to feel like you accomplished something. You end up with a boat you can pull with your truck, you can sleep in or it will take you to the other side of the lake….put it in the river or go to the island in the protected sound.
Not an original idea, I saw a shantyboat web site where they guy had built a couple of them
I’ve read stories of people outfitting old sailboats as you described and taking them the length of the Mississippi. What a cool trip idea!
They’re slower than a planing motorboat but said to be vastly more fuel efficient.
Those people get talking about the 5hp-10hp outboard chugging along. No hurry.
I like the idea of a smaller motor. In particular, I like that they’re quiet. A loud shrieking motor is a blast but it hashes the mellow when I want to be chilling by the river. Also, pushing a sailboat (even without a mast) with a displacement hull is much more fuel efficient than getting a motorboat up on plane… or so I’ve been told.
“pushing a sailboat (even without a mast) with a displacement hull is much more fuel efficient than getting a motorboat up on plane”
Uh, isn’t being “on the plane” even more efficient than shoving aside all that water with the slower displacement hull? I’m sure I could answer my own question with some research, but I’m lazy.
Honestly, I only know what I’ve read on the internet and we all know that’s sketchy.
I don’t think it boils down to the speed. Certainly a car drops in efficiency as it pushes more wind but I think the difference between sailboat/motorboat is the “water resistance” of the hull. Generalizing, I think sailboats are built from the ground up to slip through the water with as little resistance as possible while motorboats bypass the limits of hull design in favor of bludgeoning tons of water with a powerful prop. I know I’m saying that wrong, obviously motorboats have hull considerations too. Maybe the best to say it is that a sailboat is built around a sail and its limited thrust. They necessarily make massive concessions to “get by” with limited pushing force. A motorboat doesn’t have to do that. They can design around a more comfortable setup for the passengers and let a hundred horsepower of petro-awesome to do the rest.
Incidentally, my Plan A boat looks exactly like a “boat”. It’s shaped like a hefty canoe. Pointed at both ends. It’s the idealized “boat” you’d draw with a crayon as a kid. My Plan C boat is totally different. It looks exactly wrong. From a distance it’s practically a brick. Not pointed at the front, transom is wide, sides are flat… you’d think it won’t sail at all… but they say it does and my experience is that it’s pretty good (allowing for the inefficiencies of tiny size). I think there’s a hell of a lot of complicated math in a sailing craft and sometimes the formulas allow for things that just seem weird. I’ve learned to open my mind to a multitude of possible hull arrangements. Certainly the “flying catamarans” of high end racing look more like wet spaceships than an idealized “boat”.
Then again this whole thing started because I didn’t want to mess with a motor. So a mastless sailboat isn’t in my plans (unless I decide to run the length of the Mississippi… I think that’s an awesome setup for such an excursion).