Do your worst!

That boats kind of nice for the shallows but a bit small to meet 25ft survey length and pretty low freeboard for the offshore aspect, but you can see the basic principal I kind of like.

The next Photo was what it's like out at the Houtman Abrolhos Archipellago...

This is the island I stay on, it's one of the smaller of the islands in the group known as Big Pigeon Island in the Wallaby group - one of only a half dozen or so islands occupied for just 3 months a year by commercial lobster fishers.

It's a safe anchorage within the island group - sheltered by islands and fringing reef from most directions - but indicative of the types of coral shoals there.

The Lobster Fishers at the islands tend to fish shallow corals with either jet boats or special adaptations like this 42ft vortex trihull with twin anrhessons.

When you do drift over the shallow corals, with fly gear - you can catch fish like these lovelly coral trout, out of the deep holes studded throughout the shoal - they hide in under the piatella (elephant ear) coral plates, and are a sucker for any red/white deciever fly stripped fast past their home.

Hooking thems simple - landing them almost impossible on fly gear - the are very hard to turn away from their hidy hole, and unless you put on enough pressure to turn them away they bust you every time.

If your lucky they will mistakenly go into a bigger coral trouts hole - and it will chase the interloper back out for you - have landed a couple good ones this way!

For the places like Dirk Hartog Island at Shark Bay,

Where there are sand flats - you can get out and wade fish so the shallow drafts like the small flats boats of only a few inches isn't so critical...and really not achievable in a 25ft boat I'd have thought?

From some of the deeper waters out around the Houtman Abrolhos archipellago we catch a few like this each day.

You get the odd ones of these too.

This is a 70ft Fitzharding / Geraldton boat builders vessel that is atypical of the larger deep water lobster vessels that are used out at the Houtman Abrolhos...

It has substantial underfloor live lobster holding tanks etc...sleeps 6, and is powered by twin 750 hp Fiat turbo diesels.

Vessels like this can and do go to work in the conditions I described earlier (48 knots breeze - 5 7 or even 8 meters sea/swell etc), not because they want to but economics of fuel / bait etc dictate it!. (Its not a lot of fun on such days trust me!)

Paul,

The idea of an "extending boat" isn't totally off the wall - while it sounds a little radical I guess if you threw $ at the problem it would be solvable in that manner.

I actually heard a story o someone whse recently launched a vessel of this style here - I haven't witnessed it myself but apparently it raised a few eyebrows at the boat ramp!


Will,

Re:contacting local cats builders.
I have spoken to the local Leisurecat builder here who was keen on shortening his standard 8 meter hull to 7.5 meters (25ft), however it's a cuddy.

He claims it's cost prohibitive to make a centre console plug, for only one vessel ....and that I'd need to secure orders for say a minimum vessels to mak it worthwhile for him to build the centre console liner plug.

A little like the chicken and egg if you don't make one you can't sell them - so...unless i'm in the market for a whole fleet it appears thats not the easy solution which is a pity as they are very nice hulls.

As for the towing - yes its a consideration indeed, and 25 ft is a lot to haul - even mre when you look at the distances involved.
Thankfully the west here is pretty flat mostly, so perhaps not as daunting as Tassie!

I've been looking at the new Ford F250 4.2 turbo diesel dual cab / tray back..made in brazil I'm told - should be capable of the job...I think. Might even be able to build the trailer as a "5th wheel" type mounting in the tray like a semi trailer rig - you sometimes see this setup for big horse floats.

Guest..

Re Ribs for sportfishing...we don't see a lot of them used for that purpose - the danger of hooks , gaffs, coral etc et c for puntures is real, and not to be dismissed lightly IMHO.

Do see a lot of em for surf rescue vessels etc..

Next Guest..

On the same vein with Ribs - we are seeing a few "Ocean Cylinder" alloy RIB's fully welded alloy cylinder with alloy V hull & floor...very capable boats, stable and not hard to meet survey with many individual flotation copartments withing the alloy cylinder, however they do tend to be "very wet" boats used a lot on the hire boat market and dive vessels etc...

Not sure how they would go for this role - but certainly wouldn't dismiss the idea out of hand!.

I've no doubt including all these pics has slowed this threads load speed tremendously so apologies to those who've persevered this far - perhaps if jeff knows how to shrink them in size and DPI count / file size - he could "edit the post to make it more user friendly?

If I knew how i would do so myself - but my skills don't extend that far yet...but I'm willing to learn if it'll save grief with threads load times.

Cheers!
This is the local leisure cat at 8 meter that would be a nice hull probably....if a whisker shorter and with a centre console plug!

[Willallison]

I wouldn't go to the trouble of building a plug, mould and subsequent all f/glass console.
To a competent builder, it should be no problem to do the job by something along the lines of the west epoxy system (glass encapsulated ply) or a composite cored building process similar to that employed by a lot of one off custom sailboats.

Wet encapsulated something or other?
I've heard it referred to but never had it explained?
As it happens, I own a timber furniture factory etc and produce a lot of sheoke timber for the boatbuilding industry.

Are you saying Will - that - I could say buy a hull built to survey from the company and then fisnnish it off myself / customise it to a centre console configuration with ply and glass myself?

It's not like I havent got the machinery and timber skills - have built one boat myself so far ( a 16ft alloy v nosed punt) so guess I could manage a console etc easy enough.

I've done almost NO fibreglasing in my life and have no experience in this area if you discount the foam filled thwart seat i made fro timber and ply for the rear of the alloy punt and coated with CSM and resin and some flo cote. It's rough but honest....

Would you think I could do this?...and get an acceptable result?..

Would Transport dept allow me to pass it thru survey if the hull manufacture was to survey standard bye the company and they inspected it?..during the laying up?

Would I be better to let to company do it?

The company said drawing the plans for the internal plug was no trouble - they just didn't want to invest the time & $ into making the plug so they could sell one boat, maybe two if lucky.

Maybe i could make the plug to their plans in my spare time and supply it to them to use to make my hull?

Just idea's - has to be a way I can do this - I was more interested in the multi tunnel hull concept than the cat per se, since the twin OB's could be jackplate rigged for shallow draft - which i don't think is doable with a cat hull?

Also a multihull tunnel might displace more water and hence draft less than a cat?...cats handle offshore stuff here real well - but they don't carry weight all that well IMHO....

Soooo - where to from here. we have so far:-

Cat
Multi tunnel hull
Alloy Rigid Cylinder
Hovercraft
McGyver, "Go Go Gaget" extendo ponttoons oo7 hull! ;o)

Anyone else?

Cheers!

[Jeff]

http://www.westsystem.com/ by http://www.gougeon.com/

[Jeff]

I think you could easily build a console yourself. The degree of difficulty, at least in my limited experience working with fiberglass, increases with the proportion of the scale of the object to the scale of the worker

Small things are relatively easy to do a good job fiberglassing. I've also found it easier working on positives like a deck than way down in a mold where I tended to run into problems using too much resin as a beginner, or else ending up with poor consistency as I tried to tackle too large an area. As long as the corners are nicely rounded, you won't have any problems. I suppose it also depends on the degree of finish you want. Your first job might not be quite as shiny as a professionally molded item, but with a little sanding, priming, and more sanding, it will look just fine

[Willallison]

I'm not quite so sure as Jeff.... you'll be investing a fair bit simply in the construction of the hull etc - it'd be a shame to bugger it up with a poorly finished off console / deck etc.
Which isn't to say that you couldn't do it yourself, just that it's a pretty big job to take on if you don't have any experience with f/glassing.
And then (as there always is with a commercial project) there's the problem of getting through the survey process.
Here in Tassie, anything over 6m must be inspected throughout the building process - I'd expect it to be the same over there. Things generally run a lot smoother and with less trouble if a) the person doing the building is familiar with the way survey likes it done, and b) if survey are familiar with the builder and having worked with them before are confident that the final product will meet their requirements.
I'd talk it over with a couple of manufacturers and see what they say.
Also, I have a friend who often fishes from a commercially built cntre console cat which is about 25 ft long - give me a day or two and I'll see who it was built by.

I was thinking more of me making the timber inner liner console plugs for the manufacturer to use to make the glass liner and console.

I doubt after one attempt at glassing I could take on an inner liner 25ft long! I reckon I could do a fair job of a console tho, it's a "bite sized project" I reckon I could do (having already made one timber console and gear locker for my little 16ft river boat!)

Timber works not a problem for me - I can take a log from the forest floor and end up with furniture on the showroom floor. timberwork doesn't scare me.....I had 8 years as a forester and now own a sawmilling / kiln drying / furniture making shop...so "makin stuff outta timber" isn't worry.

It's the glassing has me scared.

My ol dads 71 now but he was quite a timber boat builder in his day and has taught me the timber joinery furniture game over most a my life I guess at one time or another.

This was an 18ft Randall design he built when i was just a kid in our back shed...
It's a bondwood, with a glass skin, inboard.
I've kinda grown up around boats and timber work...

It's not like I've got a shortage of timber suited to boat building, and it only takes 3 or 4 months to produce another kiln full if I ran out - in truth I probably should start timber boat building - but I KNOW how hard they are to maintain and how they deteriorate rot and also how laorious they are to build with scribing and hand fitting each piece several times to get an acceptable fit.

These days to my mind it makes more sense to do a CNC plasma cut alloy vessel construction package professionally designed and welded just for time savings and maintenance reasons.

Having built the 16 ft myself this way - I can't see the point using wood, except for some fancy polished trim maybe inside a cabin or berths or for say a nice feature console or something!.

Check out this boat - she was a lovelly ol gal...18ft tumblehome ...
Len Randall was a great naval architect hereabouts in my dads day...many many of his boats still plying our coast.

Cheers!

This is one I built about 3 years ago now...it's what I use for river and estuary fly fishing tours - managed to get her thru the restricted survey for inland tours.

She's quite a cpable vessel in the right weather and operated with a little sense - here she is out at the end of Dirk Hartog isl - bout 34nm from civilisation. (She's the alloy punt on the right in the photo.

Now before she was surveyed it was (and still is) quite legal to take a small recreational vessel to these locations for a few mates fishing together (as was the case here - in company with another vessel as well - and with a 4wd land based support crew etc..

I just can't do it for paying tours, which is fair enough - who in their right mind would pay to go that far from civilisation in a little boat like that for a weeks remote fly fishing?

No - I need something 25ft long to legally offer commercial tours into these locations!.

Building one isn't the problem....finding a suitable design is the problem!

Let me worry about building it - just help me find a design that might meet the need!

Cheers!