Micro cruiser (sailboat).

[Tiny Turnip]

For perspective:

I have three boats.

First boat is a Winklebrig: http://www.jegsweb.co.uk/boats/winkl...inklebrig1.htm

It is a tiny, but very chubby (16ft) lead ballasted gaffer. We have slept 2 adults and two children on board, but that was extremely cosy. I regularly sleep me and my two boys (11 and 9.) It displaces 650kg unladen, and launches and recovers from the trailer. The launch/recovery, raising/dropping the mast, rigging, stowing etc takes the best part of an hour, without hurrying.

My third boat is a Solway Dory trimaran
http://www.solwaydory.co.uk/videos/17 - in effect a 18ft twin outrigger canoe with a modest unstayed main and mizzen.
two people can carry it, (it weighs perhaps 100kg rigged) the trailer is unbraked. It is just about car toppable.

In sailing performance, it totally trounces the WB on every front, dispite carrying less than half the sail area. It is nearly 3 times as fast, Points much higher, is stable to the point of being virtually uncapsizeable, (dangerous words, I know!) virtually sails itself. really. tacking and gybing without touching a sheet, and once on a bearing, a little trimming of the mizzen and you can take your hand off the tiller. You could sleep two on board at a pinch, with the addition of a tent, but it is really designed as a camping cruiser for beach hopping. A totally different boat from the WB, of course, and I dearly love the WB, but, with the exception of sleeping on board, (and with a microcruiser/trailersailer, how far away from the shore are you going to be without a tender anyway) I struggle to find *anything* my little chubby ballasted microcruiser wins on. Cuteness perhaps.

Oh, and the nearly new Solway Dory tri cost me half what I paid for the 20 year old WB.

BTW, the WB website owner swapped his own WB for a water ballasted Swallow Baycruiser a few years ago...

http://daisygracebaycruiser20no1.blogspot.com/

[Petros]

Originally Posted by river runner

The problem with cement (or epoxying lead shot in place) is you can't remove it for the trip home. I think removeable ballast sounds like the way to go and water would be the easiest.

The problem with water is it is not very dence, so it makes for a bulky slow hull. Concrete ballast would be removeable if you designed the chamber with proper releif, coated it with wax or polyethene sheets before you put in the concrete. You just need a hand winch or hoist to remove it (you could even rig something up from the on-board equipment to lift it out). And it is cheap enough to leave behind, you can add it to the local jetty or breakwater.

[rwatson]

Originally Posted by Tiny Turnip

.....

My third boat is a Solway Dory trimaran
http://www.solwaydory.co.uk/videos/17 - in effect a 18ft twin outrigger canoe with a modest unstayed main and mizzen.
two people can carry it, (it weighs perhaps 100kg rigged) the trailer is unbraked. It is just about car toppable........[/url]

All this is very true for multihulls - the only downside is the lack of carrying capacity.

I was very interested in Jarcats
http://www.duckflatwoodenboats.com/m...gallery?KID=63

which are a capable, robust and trailerable catamaran - but by the time you try to stow 3 peoples wet gear, snorkelling kits, food, spare clothes, toiletries, bedding, fishing gear, etc, there is no room to sleep, let alone a decent head.

And somewhere not too cramped to get out of the elements is imperitive to avoid sunburn or hypothermia. Light canvas shelters just dont do the job as well as solid decking.

Fairly reluctantly, I have decided on a monohull, just for the room and comfort.

[lumberjack_jeff]

Sugar is readily available, non-toxic and has a solubility of 2kg per liter (1kg) of water @25c. The resulting syrup has a specific gravity of about 1.4 and thus weighs 1.4kg per liter. (11.6# per gallon)

For 1000# of ballast, pour 660# of sugar in the 87 gallon-capacity bilge and add about 40 gallons of water.

(the sugar would cost about $300 or so... probably best to make arrangements with the costco nearest the launch site )

Pump it out when done.

Is the economics better than trailering the ballast and/or renting a travel lift? I dunno.

Probably the economical approach is rocks or (sea) water.

Thought exercise. Please check my logic/math.

[eyschulman]

Re; carrying capacity of a tri. Modern tris can have lots of extra boyancy. The weight will hert the performance to the point where it might be as bad as a very good micro mono. Both concepts are poor alternatives regarding creature comfort. If you choise to live in a hole the size of a big drainage tube you might as well go light and have excelent performance with the tri. The modern molded folding tris at 28ft with moderate WL beam and multiple widening flares of main hull actually have decent living spcace as much as many of the older mono designs of the same lenght. The tri also gets the bonus of all that net and ouside room to allow for steching out. For ten years I owned a 26ft Danish micro tri that fit in this catagory.

[rwatson]

Unfortunately, any multihull will always have a lot less room for a given amount of material.

And also, you have two, if not three hulls to build.

[river runner]

By this point in the discussion I would have thought it was obvious that by removeable ballast, we meant ballast you wouldn't take home with you. In the case of water, you'd pump it into the nearest storm drain. If you increased it's desity with salt (salt is much heavier than sugar), I'm not sure what the legal issues would be, if any. I'd think pumping it int any river that was entering the ocean would work.
I was just looking at trimarans a few days ago. I've always liked tri's as a trailerable option. One issue is that if I were building it myself, building three hulls and connecting them seems like more work than building a monohull. Monohulls can also carry more weight, though ballast could offset that. One large hull has more useable living space than than three small hulls. Some the tri's I looked at had a central hull that was nearly has fat as a monohull, but it seems to me this defeats the whole concept of the multihull, which is hulls so narrow that "hull speed" doesn't apply to them. I'm looking at something a bit more substantial than a canoe with outriggers. That's a young mans boat. I want to sit in the cockpit and sip a sherry while watching the sun set.

[troy2000]

If you're looking for a lot of trailerable microcruiser in a small space, you could do worse than Bill Short's Pelican family of sailboats. They were designed for San Francisco Bay, which means they're fairly seaworthy, and they're well-proven.

http://www.platypusboats.com/pplans.html

The attached picture is the Great Pelican: 16' overall, 8' beam, weight 950 lbs. You could probably extend the cabin back, if you wanted more space out of the weather.

Plans, parts, kits, or finished boats are available from Platypus Boats.

[philSweet]

yep, my kind of pocket cruiser.

First two- Mac 14 in the Florida Keys. Probably the only one in the US. Used a Jet 14 rig.

The rest are of my 16' skiff which I started as a teenager and eventually finished 9 years later. Both served long and well and proved to be remarkably versatile. 3.First sail. 4. Ten years later. 5. Twenty years later, and showing a bit of wear and tear.

[lumberjack_jeff]

Originally Posted by river runner

If you increased it's desity with salt (salt is much heavier than sugar),

Salt is heavier than sugar (72# per cubic foot vs 53#), but its relative lack of solubility reduces the specific gravity of a dissolved solution.

A gallon of brine weighs about 3# less than a gallon of syrup. That said... solubility may be a non-issue. Who cares that if salt is completely dissolved? (it'll take a lot of water to wash it out, though)

Rock salt is cheaper, too. Pour it into the bilge at the ramp and shovel it out on the way back.

[rwatson]

All in all, I think sand in sand bags, strapped to the bottom of water ballast tanks would be the most flexible arrangement. It has the weight of the cement that has been suggested, without the awkwardness of rocks and their sharp protrusions and potential unavailability, and is easier and cheaper to source than sugar and salt in commercial quantities

You could make the bags small enough to carry really comfortably, and they would bend through small openings. If any escapes, you can do a high pressure flush through the water ballast exit.

You are virtually guaranteed to be able to find sand not far from a launching place, and you wont mind leaving it behind on the return journey.

Can you imagine the tooth decay in the local fish population if you released 1000 litres of sugary water ?

[rwatson]

Originally Posted by troy2000

If you're looking for a lot of trailerable microcruiser in a small space, you could do worse than Bill Short's Pelican family of sailboats. ..... .

I really like that trailer sailer - a very useful little boat.

They are a bit light on with their info, like the ballast type (if any)

[eyschulman]

What about a S&S lightning with a small cabin and a kick up rudder. Now you have a beachable boat with lots of used boats and parts available.