CONFUCIUS -- 17 foot off-shore cabin sloop cruiser

Discussion in 'Sailboats' started by kvsgkvng, Oct 12, 2012.

  1. kvsgkvng
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    kvsgkvng Senior Member

    I found the attached article on the net and would like to make a model in Delftship software which I will post here. I have difficulties reading offsets table. Perhaps someone could help me in figuring these little numbers out and post it in this thread. I think it is able little cruiser which is worth recreating.
    Thanks.
     

    Attached Files:

  2. troy2000
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    troy2000 Senior Member

    Nice little boat.

    If you simply google 'how to read table of offsets,' you'll find so much information available that I see no point in trying to re-post most of it here....

    But basically, every set of numbers on a table of offsets refers to either a distance from the center line (for width) at a particular station, or a distance from some horizontal line at the station (for height). That horizontal line is often the design waterline -- in which case some of the numbers will be negative numbers, because the hull extends below the water line. A common practice is to take all measurements from an arbitrary line located low enough to make all the measurements positive....

    I have no experience with metric tables. But in the typical American table of offsets, each distance is rendered in feet, inches and eighths of an inch. For example, the measurement 2-8-3 would be read as two feet, eight inches, and three eighths of an inch.

    Hope this points you in the right direction. But again, let me remind you that google is your friend....
     
  3. alan white
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    alan white Senior Member

    Someone appears to have renamed the Ted Geary "Vagabond". The plans appear in a book by Ed Monk, and though I've never seen a built boat, the design, to my eye, is as nearly perfect as a design can get.
     
  4. troy2000
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    troy2000 Senior Member

    I have a reprint of Monk's 1934 How to Build Wooden Boats. If I remember correctly (the book's at home and I'm not), Vagabond is his pocket version of one of Ted Geary's larger boats, converted to a double chine hull.

    Confucius is round bilged, but sure looks like a kissing cousin at least...
     
  5. alan white
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    alan white Senior Member

    You're right. Both the same length, and nearly identical in elevation view. Geary's is a hard-chine design alright. If I remember, the displacement was about #2400.
    thanks for the correction!
     
  6. PAR
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    PAR Yacht Designer/Builder

    The Vagabond is 17' 3" LOD, 14' 2" on the LWL, 6' 2" in beam and displaces 2,760 with 866 pounds in ballast. The drawing surely does appear to be a Vagabond, though admittedly, there are many of this general class and style of craft.

    The Vagabond uses a similarly scaled fractional rig, but with no jumper, boomkin or fixed back, just runners. The aspect ratio is shorter compared to this one, but the sail area is also reduced a bit too. The cabin profile seems identical, as does the deadwood arrangement, keel and rudder profile. I'm fairly sure that Vagabond was also available as a round bilge too, though Monk's book only shows the multi chine.
     
  7. LP
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    LP Flying Boatman

    Typical of old designs, the cockpit seating is simply the regular decked hull with coamings added. There is a basic simplicity and functionality to a cockpit designed this way.

    Can anyone offer reasons for getting away from this concept?

    To throw out a few ideas, my first guess might be fiberglass, but even wooden designs deviate from this idea in newer designs. Higher freeboard in newer designs? Desire for deeper cockpits? It seems that with today's desire for greater internal volume, this style of cockpit would be in vogue.
     
  8. alan white
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    alan white Senior Member

    My email address begins with vagabond 172 (17 ft 2in) after that boat. Always liked it. I own the book but it's up in the attic.
    Anyway, critiquing the design, its a serious boat with real capabilities. I guess the Confucious has gone across an ocean according to the website.
    I would guess the designer of Confucious has been strongly influenced by Geary's design.
    Who claims to be the designer? I didn't see a reference. I assume its possible that its actually a Geary design----- his round-bilged rendition?
     
  9. kvsgkvng
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    kvsgkvng Senior Member

    This is all great, but I was actually was asking for physical numbers. Some of them I can see, some of them are too blurred. Can anyone help me with the numbers in the offset table? I did internet search and couldn't find anything about this boat. Thanks.
     
  10. troy2000
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    troy2000 Senior Member

    You may have to just put in the numbers you can read, and try to interpolate those in between. I'm no expert on CAD programs, but I think I could come pretty close to the original boat with battens and nails, using just a few offsets...
     
  11. troy2000
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    troy2000 Senior Member

    Speaking of Monk, one of the designs in the book I have is for 'Stubby,' a 9' pram dinghy. My nephew loved it. But he's a big guy all around, who looks like a blond Samoan.

    So I drew him a stretched version of Stubby. Since he planned on using it in protected waters I spaced the stations farther apart to give him a 12' boat, resulting in a flatter sheer. I also widened it proportionately, which made the shallow vee-bottom a touch deeper.

    The idea was for him to use a very small outboard on it to begin with, and add a centerboard (or leeboards) and simple sail plan later. Unfortunately I started working out of town again about the time he was almost done, and without my moral and technical support (such as it is...:p) he let the boat set until he finally moved out of state and it got cut up and discarded. I still think it would've been a very sweet boat....
     
  12. LP
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    LP Flying Boatman

    Here is a partial. I take no responsibility for acuracy.:eek:

    confusiousoffsets.jpg
     
  13. kvsgkvng
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    kvsgkvng Senior Member

    Great! I have half of the offsets now. If someone would come across another half that would be nice. Meanwhile I could just trace other lines off the plans. Thank you!
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2012
  14. PAR
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    PAR Yacht Designer/Builder

    I have no trouble reading every single offset in the image LP has posted. It's likely the offsets have an error or two in them anyway, so just punch up a text file and slap them into a simple program, like "Hulls" or similar. You'll get the shapes, abet with the errors that would have to be ironed out on the loft floor anyway.

    Is there a logical reason for a design like this, beside it's price? It's quaint, but slow. She'd look much better as a gaffer and she'd preform better with a substantial wetted area reduction and divided appendages. She will not back up worth a darn, except to the prop walk side and 3' 3" of draft on a 17' boat that really can't take advantage of it, seems a little silly too. Don't get me wrong, I offer designs like this, but at client request, not from a practical, small sailing craft point of view. Simply put, this is a boat twice as heavy as a modern version of a 17' cruiser and you have to pay for the materials used to build it, just to sail at half the speed and maneuverability of similarly sized modern craft.
     

  15. Ilan Voyager
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    Ilan Voyager Senior Member

    Well said, the design was already very traditional 70 years ago, and now it's almost archaeology. Very expensive to make because of the quantity of materials and the work involved (have you seen the work involved for the keel?), and apart to take it in "all varnished" wooden nostalgic shows, there is no real motive to build it. It's not a significant design nor a museum piece. These boats are a pain to sail; the old long keels are not very good upwind, and truly bad downwind, and slow all around because of the weight and the wetted surface.

    If you like traditional look, why not to search a modern boat with traditional look? I'm sure that PAR has hidden somewhere in his drawers a plan of roughly similar looking, half the weight, twice easier to build and twice faster. An acquaintance of mine had a 25 feet boat by Sergent, no keel but daggerboard to be able to pass the sand shoals of the river Etel in Brittany, classic looking superstructure and a rig that seemed at first sight a gaffer. But the waterlines were modern with NACA appendices, the mast in alu (painted wood-like!), the beautiful sails in terylene. The boat was true beast downwind with its big mainsail and the "old fashion" genakers, planing like a 505. The 1/4 toners of la Trinité were nervous to race with him in amateur regattas, as they were sure to lose the downwind leg at a point that there was no hope to gain the loss in the upwind leg, where the Sergent was almost as fast as them.
     
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