Small blue water boat?

Wow, forgot all about that great little boat. Good call.

 

Frank, in post 44 that is Benford's "Baby Badger" 29ft. (I think)

 

I think it is more like the 26 footer , or just a big skiff.
I put a quick rendering showing the transom in my gallery .

 

The Jay Benford cruising dory series is 6 different boats, all sibblings. The 26' and 30' versions have a transom. The 26' is a bilge keel boat with a fairly wide transom. The 30' is pretty much just a upside down pyramid shaped transom, with a standard ballasted fin keel. The 32', 34', 36' and 37' versions of this series are all double ended fin keelers. The 32 is the best preforming of them all, having the narrowest beam/length ratio and a D/L of 156. The 34' model is "Badger", the boat the Hall's built and wrote about in "Voyaging on a Small Income". The 36' and 37' are pretty much the same boat and share structural drawings.

Given a choice, the 37 is the boat I'd select, if forced to take a Benford dory to sea. I know Jay and he's a good man with a wonderfully disarming personality and a great designing style. He sat behind John Atkins in the Atkins and Company design firm, in the early 1960's, so his mentors were also gifted. He's made so many modifications to these "dories" (term very loosely used) that by his own admission, they aren't really dories any more, but do have enough topside flare to look some what dory like.

The 36' and 37' versions have enough length to make them suitable for serious off shore work, but you'll find the others just a bit too small. Being flat bottom boats, headroom is acquired by the use of a 3" - 4" deep bilge, which isn't enough to keep you socks dry in rough weather. Other then the 26', they all have good headroom. None of them are especially shoal, even though Jay is in the Chesapeake Bay (where I grew up), which is quite shoal. He needed the draft so he could place 40% of the displacement on the very end of the fin, so these things would stand up. I was aboard a schooner version of the 37' boat and it's a comfortable interior to live with. I was also aboard "Shoestring" when it was built (32' version) and it was a much "tighter" fit.

 

Par, What was Shoestrings performance like? I have always thought it was a cool boat ,
given its limitations.

 

Shoestring has the lowest D/L and highest SA/D of all the Benford dories in this series. It also has less freeboard and a high Cp, but I never experienced her plane. Here windward preformance is weak, with a gaff main and a big 'ol eyebrowed doghouse on deck. Flying a mule she'll probably dance pretty good. The problem with the smaller dories of this series is they need fairly tall deck structures to offer headroom. She has 6' 1" headroom, while the 37' version has 6'4".

 

just finished reading "Twenty Small Sailboats to Take You Anywhere by John Vigor" The author talks about production boats available on the used boat market 20' to 32' such as the Cal 20, Cape Dory 25D, and Folkboat 25. I know most of these boats are plastic, however, these boats have done it. It is well worth reading.

 

Voyaging is much more about the skipper and crew then the boat. Hell, you can take a raft of reeds and sail through the length of the Solomon chain, from the Galapagos islands if you like, tasting the water as you go instead of a GPS, but it wouldn't be my first recommendation for a cruising vessel, nor a preferred navigation method.

People looking to go to sea in a small boat should do this experiment first. Take an 8' inflatable raft down to the beach and row out into the surf. While rowing to maintain position in the surf, see how long you can tolerate this motion, let alone the waves breaking and filling your little boat. If this seems like no big deal then try a 20' boat in 11' seas and see how this works out for you. My point is, the motion of a small boat in a big sea, will quickly fatigue you. You can't eat, you can't sleep, everything that was on a shelf or in a locker in in a soaked pile on the cabin sole. This stuff is soaked in vomit from unrelenting motion sickness and boarding water. The romantic ideas of a man, boat and sea are a wimpier at the helm, praying for a merciful end to the madness. Seem harsh? It's not and anyone that's been to sea in a small, tough little boat, can attest to their greatest wish is being on a much bigger boat in these conditions.

I guess the point I'm attempting to make is, micro cruising is great until you actually need a real yacht. When I designed Discrete and her big sister, the biggest goal was to develop a package that could take the worst, assuming reasonable skippering and offer the most comfortable ride in the process. This meant the boat wasn't going to be a speed demon, but her motion at sea would let the skipper and crew stay healthy enough, to work their way free of the storm. The wost thing that can happen is the boat's motion and manners, force the crew to huddle in a mass and pray for the end, because they can't do anything with the motion of the boat the way it is. I've been in boats like this in really bad weather and have literally tied myself to the helm, knowing I can steer until I pass out, then it's up to the boat to save me. The reason I elected to take this drastic measure is the boat's motion was so violent, that I couldn't remain seated at the helm, I couldn't eat, use the radio, bath room, nothing. I was able to drink though a straw and figured I could survive 48 hours like this before fatigue took me out.

Go out in a small boat folks and take on a low pressure area or two. See what you can actually tolerate. Even the best of the best will get motion sickness if the movement is bad enough. With me it's up and down, others it's the rolling, but trust me, everyone succumbs, so don't believe the ones that say "not me", 'cause they're BS'ing or have never seen much motion.

After a few *** kickings, you'll find a Cherubini 48 and laugh at the time you thought a Cal 20 was a real sea boat. If you have an opportunity to sail a Cherubini 44 or 48, jump on it. These are some of the finest mid size yachts going. Take one into a big sea and drive her hard, you might have to dog things down, but the motion will permit the crew to continue (possably a level of discomfort to some). Once a sailor experiences this, they realize everything they thought about going to sea was wrong, because you CAN eat cake in the middle of a storm. It's hard to find design that can do this any more, judging by the production offerings, but there are still a few.

 

I've raced on a schooner rigged 48- nice boat. I've also spend time in conditions that make my sea kindly 42' Rhodes seem like a cocktail shaker.

I can't but think/believe though that the 'Go small, go now' crowd are on to something. I spend a goodly amount of time fixing the required 'big boat' that I could not afford to buy in ready condition.

 

Okay, take a Flicka out in 11' seas and take note of how you fair.

 

I agree with Par to the extent that bigger is better. More comfortable, faster, generally more seaworthy. Tank testing has shown that no design is immune to being rolled over if hit by a breaking wave hitting somewhere near the beam, if the wave is greater than 55% of the length.
If you cannot afford the 40 or 60 footer, a really well designed and outfitted 20 to 25 footer, will let you have a reasonable expectation of getting to the other side of the pond. In preparing for long passages in a really small boat, you should put much greater attention to the 'worst case scenario'.
Stability......a large range of positive righting, either very small range of stability inverted or no stability inverted.
Watertight integrity......hatches, vents, windows or ports, watertight and strong.
Adequate strength.......everything from shackles to the hull structure. You might consider a mast and rig that may survive a roll over.

 

This is a good thread but why does it always come down to the boat so much...why is weather and it's understanding so little talked about I wonder constantly..Why..and I am not necesarily one...are there not more 21 st century sailors who have come out talking about the importance of weather knowledge.... in this day and age where hard data that affects cruising offshore is so readily available...?
If your in the middle of the Atlantic in a 20-footer ...then your testing your faith In your God of choice....but even then, ... you have commercial shipping to avoid and though you can avoid a winter crossing and the accompanying cold fronts you still take your chances with hurricanes ...but wait...they can now be tracked when they are mere low pressure areas barely off the coast of Africa with now usually solid predictions related to their chance of development....the computer spaghetti models are improving alot...
If your crossing oceans in a 20-footer then you are expecting to run into a gauntlet at some point...many of the Fastnet crews were in boats that were 36-foot plus and they left their vessels...many of which probably had somehow allowed water into the cabin and were cold hard rollicking shellls to continue on in....though they might have traded them in a second for a water tight submarine-hatched 20-foot micro-cruiser with a modern JSD drogue and a dry cabin...I think 99 percent of the sailors in this forum could be safe with the right equipment for ANY size boat they happen to have , solid basic good seamanship and the right weather-knowledge....with weather being the primary factor in this skill-set...
It just isn't talked about at all in these forums or others...it's always seamanship and the boats they sail...it seems, and seldom about meteorlogical" metrics"...both of the former are equally important.... but still no more important than the seldom-talked about mealy-mouthed specialty of your mild-mannered channel 6 weather geek...you never hear about it much..oh no..it's always the boat you chose...Sparkman, stephens or Cherubini and his brother Ted..or Grandpa Moses Hereschoff and his nephew Charlie Morgan...how many paragraphs have we imbibed of that name-dropping criteria...? I for one would like to hear about weather phenomena and wave and the wind resultant from it more....and ways to deal with it....and less about boat builder names and size of boats...just MHO..no offense intended or implied...

 

Weather patterns, descriptions of trends, cloud formations, etc. is the stuff for books. Personally, you can gain a lot of useful knowledge from Chapman's "Seamanship". The rest is a life time of paying attention. There's only a few that I can trust to get reasonable predictions from and they are sailors and farmers. George is a buddy, the finest neighbor a person can have, 88 years old, and has lived across the street for 70+ some of these years. He's a farmer, working the land his father bought when he was a boy. He lives in a house that he built, which sits just in front of the house he was raised in. He knows his weather and he an I have been challenging each other for years as to who is better. He's better at the long range predictions, for example he thinks we'll be dry this summer, while I'm not so sure. I'm much better at the daily forecast, often getting the rain with in a half hour. George may not have much more time with us, he'll surely be missed, but what I fear most is, it leaves me as the only one around that pays enough attention, to know why it's going to rain in 12 hours and how the clouds the night before told me so . . .

 

Some very good points here. If one studies the pilot charts, as I have in decades past you can realize that in most tropical and semitropical areas the frequency of gale force winds is a very small percentage of the time, normally <1-3%. The trades are often a fresh breeze but seldom exceed 30 knots. Here on the west coast of Canada the common wisdom says you do not leave offshore after mid September, or before mid May. the Statistical frequency is greater than 10% and nearly guaranteed to get a gale before you get south. Gales are not really fun in any small craft, something to avoid.
How the boat is handled is critical, relative to the weather. Understanding the weather is a fundamental part of seamanship.
When you cruise in a small boat you are still more vulnerable to weather phenomena than in a larger boat. A 20 footer is not a 40 footer. The 40 footer is more comfortable at sea and less likely to be overwhelmed. The crew will come through more rested and relaxed. Still, a well found 20 footer in competent hands can take most of the normal weather that can or does happen.

 

Size does matter...many of us cannot afford large boats though...small boats can be kept in a backyard and readied for distance cruising cheaply in comparison to larger yachts...they can be sailed solo too,of course...long passages alone have been done by so many in small boats who often proceed to do them again, that we (in at least my case...the uninitiated) must surmise it is a desirable thing to do...there must be some great thing these solo small boat sailors have found or discovered...some have no doubt discovered the afterlife...but that fate is not reserved for just those in small boats....but many,many of them seem only to emerge form the experience stronger and more determined to sail even farther the next time...