Tom Macnaughton's Silver Gull 28

[Archive]

Has anyone out there built one of these? Opinions? Thanks.
john harvey

Has anyone built one yet? I'm serioulsy considering doing so but I'd like some input from other builders before I start building. THANKS

[Scott]

I found Tom's own comments interesting (esp the second paragraph):

From: macnaughton.com (mcnghtn@nemaine.com)
Subject: Re: Are sharpies and dories suitable for offshore cruising
Newsgroups: rec.boats.cruising
Date: 1999/02/12

We have some keel dories in the catalog on our web site. They are the "Silver Gull" series. However just as I wouldn't recommend centerboard sharpies offshore, I wouldn't recommend centerboard dories either. Any of these boats are going to have to have keels and deep rudders to make much sense offshore.

Also one respondent is quite correct the only advantage to this type is the extra confidence in building a simple hull and the savings in time. You don't save anything in materials cost and you won't normally have quite as good a performance as you would in a fully round bilge boat. Trust me on this, I design them and I like them, but your only valid reason to do it is to save time in construction. Is that what you want? Granted you can save a lot of time. You could build the basic hull for our 28 foot "Silver Gull" in about three days with two people.

Also resale value isn't as high as a round bilged boat.

Tom MacNaughton
Naval Architect
http://www.macnaughtongroup.com