My own design

Your boat reminded me of an old design that I love a lot...take a look:

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b152/vega1954/26.jpg

 

Thanks, messabout, for your kind words.

I had leeboards similer to the ones you described. They drove me nuts trying to keep them submerged. As soon as there was a let up in the wind, the damn thing would pop up and I would have to reach over and reset it. I eventually made a crude set of racks, one on each side, so both boards could be kept down at once. It worked well enough that that the boat they were used on taught three beginners how to sail. (one of them being myself)

The boat itself was a board boat in the shape of a scow and, in the right conditions, whent very fast. It too had straight sides and a reverse sheer.
It was one of my two favorite boats. The other was a Super Snark. If you look closely at my design, you can see how I have tried to combine what I liked best about each in one boat.

The new leeboard arrangement will really resemble two side center boards in its function. It will actually be nothing but a piece of plywood that will extend down from the sheer to its proper depth and have bolt going through it halfway between the sheer and the chine. There will be indoor/outdoor carpeting between the board and the hull and, hopefully, friction alone will hold the board in its down possition. It will have a plywood 'washer' on the outside as well as a wide steel washer to keep the bolt from pulling through the board.

This, of course, is not my idea. I got it from one of my many visits to 'puddle duck.com'. (check it out).

As for the design ideas themselves, I got most of them from Phil Bolger. I had had suspicions previously that a boat like this could work, but it took hearing about the success of his 'tortois' and 'brick' designs to get me to find the courage of my convictions. (I will NEVER be convicted of having courage)

Anyway, it occured to me that if you made a scow long and lean, you would get most of its advantages and loose many of its disadvantages. So thats where I got the idea.

My first boat designed to this scheme was an entry to a design contest put out by "Wooden Boat" (still one of my favorite magazines) back in the '90's. It was supposed to be about a trainer for 5 to 7 year olds to learn on, but it was supposed to be useable once they reached their teenage years. The real rub was that the judging was to be done by children instead of adults.

The magazine was to have the winning design built.

As it turned out, my design did not even get 'honorable mention' or any mention at all. Waaaaah.

The winning design, as it turned out, was a double bottomed sharpie with a step like cross section, and with the floatation all in the narrow bottom.

It was while snearing at this winning design (which they later said couldn't be built) that I discovered the one major fault with my design. And that was that it would float way to high in the water with a sixty to eighty pound kid on board. If I had thought of the ballast box then, who knows. It would have bean able to hold a two hundred pound adult.

Its sail was to be a 45/90 boomed lateen sail which did kind of give it a certain mideast flavor. (I thought it was cool)

This present design could have a similer sail, a leg of mutton sail or, better yet, a sprit sail. But I would try to keep the Center of Area as low as possible if I were you.

The dimensions of this boat are:

Length 12ft
Beam 3ft
Depth 1.5ft
displ. 475lbs max
Sail Area 45 to 50sf

Bob

 

Sharpie2;
I recall the design contest sponsored by Wooden Boat. I viewed all that with interest. The boat that you mention as the winner, was suspect to me. With flotation in the floor it would float inverted quite nicely. By my reckoning a kid boat needs to be self rescuing. To do so most easily, the boat should have lively sheer and flotation in the ends so that it is unstable in turtled position.

Way back in time the Clearwater Florida Optimists Club asked clark mills to design a boat for the Optimists' children . Mills designed a pram that was wildly succesful on the local scene. It went on to become the Optimist Pram and achieve enormous national and international subscription.

Well sure enough the kids who were sailing the Opti-pram grew up to be teen agers. They needed a bigger, faster, more challenging boat, but it had to be easy and cheap to build. Mills set to work and produced a budget friendly plywood boat of a little under 16 feet. That one was known as the Windmill. It was, at one time, a very popular boat with outstanding performance. There were active fleets all over the east and southwest.
It was cheap to build and easy too. I think the windmill or its' clone would have been a more appropriate boat to have won the contest.

I salute you for wanting to build a boat that can introduce kids to the world of sailing. I may not agree completely with your design, but I agree most heartily with the pupose. There is merit in your design in that even the most inexperienced dads could hammer it together. I hope there are still plenty of fathers out here who might do so. Who knows ? Maybe you can be the next Clark Mills.

Gene

 

Thank you, Gene, again for your kind comments.

I am very optimistic about the return of small sailboats for the under twenty set.

My sister had a personal watercraft (a pw) (still does, to the best of my knowledge) for her kids to use. on the table in her cottage was a sizeable coffee can. In it, anyone who wanted to use the pw had to throw a five every time they took it out.

That was a few years ago. I imagine they might need a ten now. A few years from now, who knows? It might take a twenty.

The thing is, is that the pw is not very fun unless it's running full tilt boogy. And its done so for hours on end. At the local filling station, you could always tell who had pw's. They would be the ones with a pickup bed full of five gallon gas cans.

I can forsee a time in the not so distant future where this simply isn't going to work. And kids will have to find other ways to have fun. I can imagine a new type of pleasure craft which I call a 'personal sailcraft'. It will be able to carry one full size adult, maybe two, and it will be able to be reasonably fast under sail, but be useable for other purposes when the wind dosen't blow.

Such a boat will be compact and conveniet to set up. My offering is but one possible example of the type. Mini 12's are yet another. And so, to a lesser extent, are sailing surfboards. You can go to the 'Gecko' thread to see a possible multi hull version.

These boats will not only be used by the under twenty crowd, but, if they are easy enough to sail, the over sixty five crowd as well.

Imagine your local lake swarming with these craft. And the loudest noise you would hear would rausious laughter and the splash of water ballons.

The only trouble is... You'll never hear them comming.

Bob

PS- I'm going to find out what I can about the windmill class.

 

Replacement for PWC / Mill

The Windmill was/is a trully great boat! Narrow , light and huge fun! My Dad took me to meet Clark Mills a couple of years before I got a Windmill-he was quite a guy.My #1 at that time was Paul Elvstrom-#2 Clark Mills.
I believe that, if the boats can be produced inexpensively enough, a simple to sail jumping foiler has the best chance to replace the PWC with the under twenty crowd- no other sit in/on boat has the speed and ability to jump at will that a foiler has. I think there will also be a resurgence in windsurfing and kite boarding will continue to grow. New, very small kite boat foilers will probably be available as well but there are loads of problems with kite powered anything's regarding safety.
So, I think a small easy to sail hydrofoil has a huge potential in a gassless world in the under twenty crowd provided cost can be relatively low.....

 

In a thread about an easy to sail, relaxing rather than frightening, inexpensive, home built sailboat ... just how does a sailing hydrofoil fit?

Of 100 under 20 buyers/users of water craft how many are attracted to sail vs power? Of the ones attracted to power what percentage go with PWC's?

For the option of stunting around like a PWC rider, Sailboards already exist. They are faster and less complex that a sailing hydrofoil, and have been surfing and jumping waves for quite some time.

Bob's design just might get some people into sailing. People that find a $15,000 boat that you cannot sleep in a total joke.

The entry level ... the place where the design must be excellent (to insure a LARGE success rate) and the product must be affordable (no easy payment plan required). There is next to no profit in entry level vehicles, sailboats or bicycles, or whatever.

At a typical boat show, I'll bet you could sell 100's of Bob's boats in pre-cut kit form for every foiler.

Bravo Bob! Keep it dead simple to build and sail. I'll buy a set of plans off you and build one.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if you're right. The 'Moth' foiler looks pretty good to me. I wouldn't want one myself, you understand, but there is a real audience for high speed anything. Especially amongst the younger crowd.

If one could be designed to work both as a regular sailboat and a foiler, I bet you would get a lot of bites as well as nibbles.

If you could get one into the 'warter tribe' race even in the nonfoiler mode, I think you would stand a good chance of jump starting this thing.

Of all the bad things I have said about pw's (personal watercraft), let me say one good. They are very durable and, I might say, idiot proof (maybe that's why they are so annoying)

A foiler seems to be a delicate thing. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Bob

 

foilers

Bob, a Peoples Foiler doesn't have to be delicate and production boats would have to be well built and rugged. They can be built that way and still be lightweight state of the art boats if the design engineering is done properly. Getting costs low enough is a real problem, however. But if you want to build your own Moth costs come way down
even if you use factory foils.
My thought is that a foiler would probably have a better chance of drawing the PWC crowd away from those beasts if gas continues on up than most other sailboats would. And that might be a good thing because if they buy an aeroSKIFF they would be REQUIRED to attend a FFC(Foiler Flying Center). Whether they bought my boat or not a monofoiler will never make a Peoples Foiler without a serious committment to company backed instruction and training which would be good for everybody.

 

So, you won't be selling them abroad, I take it?

Seriously, I can't think of a dealer that would buy a sh..load of them, if he also has to do classes for people. And what if you don't live nearby. That's narrowing the customer base even further.

And if it is indeed a requirement, people will definately be thinking "What!! I need a driver's license for this thing!? Is it that unsafe!?".