Hey Dan-- Yes, bolts can be a pain, but my new boat will use them. The idea only requires 4 bolts in all, so I think that can be done in just...
It's not so much that the question is dumb-- I've sure asked a lot of those. It's that I can't tell much from the drawings you provided. I'd...
I think Dan is here, like most of us, to learn what we think and what we think we know. That doesn't mean he has to take anyone's advice, but...
What do you use to lube a bolt rope?
Those beams seem pretty massive to me. I would agree with Manfred that you will want the lightest beam system that can do the job. On Slider, my...
Not to be overly critical of your young naval architect, but why must the boat be 8 meters again? I don't think there's any magic number that...
The boat I've been drawing for a few months now is a slider type trailerable cat. Beams are timber I-beams. I think it will work fairly well....
You know, if I were only going to sail the boat locally, I think a trolling motor would do it just fine. But after I wrote the above, I...
Maybe so. It's also occurred to me that maybe moving the motor aft a bit improves the prop wash effect on the rudder. I went out to the nearest...
Reuben, thanks-- those are some excellent pictures. Mik was very encouraging when he offered some comments on another forum. That pic of the...
Dan, my arithmtic comes out a little different than that. two hulls make 88"which I think leaves 14" for the spine. I know some small outboards...
Hey Dan. I think you're right that this might not work as well for larger cats. My opinion is that much larger than 20-24 feet, there's not a...
Reuben, thanks for the link-- very interesting stuff. I really like the 5 meter podcat. I'm a little dubious about the 9 meter cat, because the...
Thom, if you mean the centerboard, I was planning to box the I-beam at the point of rotation, and continue that box forward to the mast...
Yeah, maybe it's a sickness. But they're very small cats. They're sort of like mini-muffins. They can't have that many calories. Muffin...
Good points. Engineering will not be the sticking point, I hope. The central spine caries the mast and will be a fairly deep I-beam. The...
The new little cat I'm drawing has a central "spine," necessitated by the method of folding the hulls I'm using. As I understand it, there have...
Lots of interesting stuff here. I guess I'm just trying to reassure myself that if the new boat doesn't tack as smartly as Slider, it might still...
Doug, Slider is a relatively heavy boat at 16 feet and 500 lbs lightship. But she tacks with her board up just as reliably as with it down. When...
Thom, it's always been my impression that tris will tack as reliably as monohulls, as a general thing. I think maybe I just got bizarrely lucky...
