bdq sampler - WoodenBoat Store

Boat Design
Quarterly
No.42
Boat Design
Quarterly
No.42
May 2013
In this issue —
3 Point Comfort 18
Chesapeake Bay outboard skiff
by Doug Hylan
6 Sea Gull
Traditional 15' Cape Cod catboat
from Fred Goeller
12 Coastal Cruiser
From the Drawing Table
In this issue we talk about the Chesapeake deadrise. This shallow, and
relatively narrow, V-bottomed boat has evolved to live in the Bay’s
punishing chop.
A typical builder on the shores of that fine estuary cross-planks the
bottom of his deadrise hull. Up forward, he “staves” the bottom: short
planks, which approach vertical near the stem, get worked to shape.
Almost fifty years ago, as a young apprentice in a Chesapeake yard,
I scraped and painted many a deadrise hull…tough work, always given
to the new guy. Then one day, my teacher asked me to replace a stave
at the forefoot of an exhausted 36' deadrise, which rested on the railway.
My big chance! It soon became apparent that I was to go it alone, as
Roy moved to the other end of the boat to fuss with something.
Roughing out the stave proved easy because its decayed predecessor
offered a handy pattern. I pushed the new stave into place. It fit well
enough, yet stood significantly proud of its neighbors. Time for fairing.
What to use? Well, an old adze resided behind a bench up in the
shop. It resembled an axe, but with a slightly arched cutting edge
turned at 90° to the handle. Although I had read about these tools,
I’d never actually used one. Grabbing the dusty thing, I jumped back
down into the trench beside the railway. After taking a few tentative
swipes at the stave, I swung hard at it. Bad idea. The heavy adze
glanced off the hull, and nearly took out my left knee on its way to the
ground. Its working edge was dull, and aren’t we most often cut by dull
tools? In any case, I had little idea how to handle this antique.
My teacher, who had taken notice, came forward carrying his electric sander loaded with a 36-grit disc. Within three minutes, through a
thick cloud of coarse dust, a perfectly faired stave appeared. The man
could work quick miracles with that machine.
Some time later, when I knew enough to let the mass of the adze do
much of the work and had sharpened it, the old tool became one of my
favorites. No matter that Roy might accomplish the job at hand faster
with his Black & Decker.
Lessons learned: (1) We can be artists with power tools as well as
hand tools. (2) Just because I’ve read about a tool in a book doesn’t
mean I know how to use it.
Striking 22' faering for sail and oar
by John C. Harris
17 Outer Banks 20
Comfortable outboard cruiser
by Graham Byrnes
20 Trailer Sailer 24
Shoal-draft leeboard cruising yawl
from Karl Stambaugh
Editor and Publisher
Mike O’Brien
Art Director
Lindy Gifford
Proofreader
Jane Crosen
Circulation
Cynthia Curtis
Boat Design Quarterly is published as often as
possible by BDQ Publications, P.O. Box 98,
Brooklin, Maine 04616, U.S.A. Subscriptions
are $24 for four issues in the United States.
Foreign subscriptions cost $29 per four issues
(surface delivery).
You can receive copies of BDQ Nos. 1 through
42 by sending $7.00 for each issue (plus $1.00
shipping) to the address above. See back-issue
contents at www.boatdesignquarterly.com.
Copyright 2013 by BDQ Publications. All
rights reserved. No part of Boat Design Quarterly
may be reproduced without permission from the
publisher.
On the cover: Coastal Cruiser by John C. Harris
2
Boat Design Quarterly No. 42
Printed in the U.S.A.
by Penmor Lithographers, Lewiston, Maine.
COASTAL CRUISER
A faering for sail and oar
Particulars
nvbkcbnc
kbvn
LOA 22'6"
cvkbn
cvkbn
LWL
21'1" cvklbn
cvklb cvkb cjkckvj
Beam
ckvb
cv 4'10"
Draft (cb up)
(cb down)
Trailer weight
Max displacement
Sail area (sloop)
(lug)
H
ere’s a striking new coastal
cruiser that will take us alongshore and up an inviting estuary
to its headwaters. While drawing this
boat, John C. Harris kept the Norwegian faerings firmly in mind…yet many
aspects of this design break new ground.
Along with most of us, the young
designer-builder holds deep respect for
traditional faerings…small, open lapstrake double-enders: “I find faerings
absolutely intoxicating. There is an
elemental simplicity, with not a single
extraneous piece of wood. You can’t
show me a shape better suited to the
12
sea and the oar and the wind.
Those clever Vikings figured
out how to fasten together a
couple of wide planks in a way
that combines a fine underbody with
plenty of reserve stability….”
For all their spare elegance, faerings can prove extraordinarily difficult to
build in the traditional manner. Might a
contemporary construction technique be
appropriate here? Harris owns and runs
Chesapeake Light Craft, an Annapolis
firm that produces kits for stitch-andglue kayaks and other boats. He recalls
Boat Design Quarterly No. 42
8"
3'
530 lbs
1,260 lbs
143 sq ft
125 sq ft
that the thought of a stitch-and-glue
faering proved tempting: “In a faering,
prefabricated planks are given a sculptural
shape that folds into a boat when riveted
together. The framing is dropped in later.
In a stitch-and-glue boat, flat plywood
planks are given a sculptural shape that
folds into a boat when stitched together,
with frames added later. We can make
this work, right?” Well, yes, and in fact
he went on to design two faerings for
LapStitch construction, a CLC variant of
stitch-and-glue.
Along the way, Harris came upon
a surprise or two: “…the sheer plank on
Based upon the Norwegian
faering, the Coastal Cruiser’s
lines show an easily driven
hull that will behave well in
rough water.
a faering is wide amidships and pinched
at the bow. This was counterintuitive
to me as an American designer, until
my software ‘unpeeled the banana’
and I eyeballed the flat planks. Those
Vikings!” He figures that shaping the
sheer planks in this way “saves a lot of
material.”
The designer’s first successful efforts
at drawing a faering resulted in a 19'8"
open beach cruiser (page 16). Three hulls
have gone together to his preliminary
drawings. These include one assembled
by a “courageous and patient beta
builder” in upstate New York who plans
to launch his boat this spring.
Production plans for a CLC 19'8"
faering kit remain on hold. According
to Harris: “Only basic plans exist, and
even then nothing that the folks at home
could work from, alas. It would certainly
be an expensive kit, mitigated only by the
fact that it’s the only relatively easy-tobuild faering in the world.”
As good fortune would have it,
while the open-faering project sat on
the shelf, a client stopped by at CLC in
search of a custom design for nearshore
cruising and island hopping. The 22'6"
Coastal Cruiser shown here resulted
from that visit. This customer presented
three firm requirements: his boat must
sail, auxiliary power should be provided
by a sliding-seat rowing rig, and the
sleeping accommodations must reside
below a hard deck.
Harris didn’t entirely buy the concept. His first reaction: “Pick any two
of those, but not all three.” He went on
These patterns show
the shapes of the
expanded or “flattenedout” planks. Stitch two
sets of them together
to form the hull.
Boat Design Quarterly No. 42
13
COASTAL CRUISER
A comfortable
cockpit, cozy
cabin, and lots of
buoyancy at the
ends of the hull.
to explain that Phil Bolger’s Dovekie, a
production boat (BDQ No. 40), comes
close to satisfying the criteria: “…but
that’s a design you either like or you
don’t, and [the customer] didn’t.”
Eventually the young designer took
on the challenge, and after a dozen “uninspiring” sketches, he lengthened his 19'8"
LapStitch faering to 22'6" LOA. It then
14
proved feasible to “cram in a small enclosure aft, a sliding seat amidships, and a
decent layout for sailing.”
In drawing this good-looking new
boat, Harris borrowed an idea from the
faering’s longer cousins, the Norwegian
fembørings. These sometimes carry an
after cabin. So he raised the faering’s
Boat Design Quarterly No. 42
deck back aft to create sufficient room
(and flotation) below. Then he added
a raised foredeck, which gives plenty of
stowage (and flotation) at that end of
the boat. Although these decks lack
extreme crown, their effect still reminds
me of the highly arched whalebacks
seen on some 19th-century English
surfboats and many U.S. Coast Guard
Designer John C. Harris
describes this slooprigged variant as “sporty.”
double-enders of the 20 th century.
During the closing days of World
War II, I’d stand for hours by the bridge
over Shark River Inlet, New Jersey, and
watch the coastguardsmen play their
able double-ender through the breakers
blasting out through the surf, circling
around, backing down below the bridge,
and then holding station there. At least
it seemed like play from a young boy’s
perspective. Wonderful, exciting play.
When, on occasion, a steep breaker
would bury the tough little boat, it
quickly burst back up through the surface shedding water like…well, like the
back of a whale.
Although the Coastal Cruiser will
not right herself, we should be able to
right her easily enough and sail away
from a capsize…if we have the foresight,
or good luck, to secure the hatch covers
before we go over. The cockpit is selfbailing, and look at all that enclosed
volume at the ends of the hull.
Harris first drew a sloop rig, with
full-batten mainsail, for the Cruiser.
Traditional and
contemporary
elements blend to
form an elegant
new boat.
Boat Design Quarterly No. 42
The LapStitch joint:
Wire together precut
plywood planks,
and fill the gaps
with an epoxy mix.
He predicts this arrangement would prove
“sporty.” Owner and designer finally
settled on a balanced lugsail. This should
provide a healthy combination of good
performance and easy handling.
This hull shows fine waterlines, a
hollow entry, and a gentle turn to the
bilge. Harris explains: “In order to have
even a modicum of performance with a
solo oarsman, I had to retain the slack
underwater lines of the faering. This
will make for spirited sailing when the
wind is up.” Water ballast, 270 lbs of it,
will help the boat stay on her feet.
As I write this in April 2013, the
prototype Coastal Cruiser takes shape at
the CLC shop. At first glance it appears
to be a standard glued-lapstrake affair,
15
COASTAL CRUISER
The 19’8” CLC Faering,
predecessor to the Coastal
Cruiser, weighs just 300 lbs.
but there is a difference in assembly…
a big difference. The CNC machine at
CLC not only cuts the expanded planks
to shape, but it works a constant 90° rabbet into the lower inboard edge of each
plank. The square upper outboard edge
16
of the adjoining plank fits into the rabbet, and all is held together by wire ties
in stitch-and-glue fashion. Ah, but you
say there is no rolling bevel; therefore,
the planks cannot mate perfectly. Yes,
Boat Design Quarterly No. 42
but plywood and epoxy prevent any
problems.
We’ll fill the voids with silicafilled epoxy. Working on the stitchedtogether hull, we’ll inject the goop along
the length of each lap. Gravity will help
us. As do all glued-lapstrake hulls, this
one absolutely depends upon the gapfilling adhesive strength of epoxy and
the cross-grain strength of high-quality
plywood. If we plank this sparsely
framed hull with cedar (or any solid
lumber) it will split along the laps…
perhaps not today or tomorrow, but soon
and catastrophically.
How does LapStitch compare to
common stitch-and-glue construction?
The LapStitch hulls, in kit form, require
less time to build…at least if we’re after
a yacht finish. Much less fairing and
sanding are needed. And many of us
prefer the appearance of a LapStitch
(lapstrake) boat as shadows cast at the
laps define the sweet lines of a good hull.
Is a LapStitch hull ultimately as
strong as a multichine stitch-and-glue
hull? After all, we’re comparing simple
glue joints to well-radiused epoxy fillets
covered with fiberglass. Harris tells us:
“LapStitch boats now number about
6,000, and I’ve yet to have one ‘unzip.’
We’ve had some demo models destroyed
in auto accidents (alas), and the planking
tore laterally instead of ripping apart the
seams. There’s actually more gluing surface than in glued-lapstrake planking.”
So, here we have an exciting new
design, but at present Harris seems disinclined to produce it as a stock kit: “The
costly and thankless task of documentation for plans and instructions gives us
pause.” Perhaps if several of us let him
know of our enthusiasm, he might be
convinced to proceed. He does seem to
have pleasant thoughts about sailing and
holing up aboard the Coastal Cruiser:
“The cabin is roomy enough for a solo
sailor to wait out a gale at anchor, enjoying a good book, the view through the
ports, and the sound of rain on deck.”
— M.O’B.
Contact designer John C. Harris,
Chesapeake Light Craft,
1805 George Ave., Annapolis, MD 21401;
410 –267– 0137;
[email protected]; www.clcboats.com.