Smallest boat to sail ocean safely?

Scamp. Available as a well-worked-out kit or plans only. Incredibly capable tiny boat. Just needs capable builder and crew.

 

Steve,

If you look at the food that the mini guys carry, it is almost all dehydrated vacuum sealed highly engineered stuff that runs about 15-20 dollars a meal. For them it works great because it is very compact and light, but unless you are wealthy enough to afford these types of meals they aren't an option for living on. Besides there are only about 15 menus, and after a while they get old.

 

Scamp is a fundamentally different type of boat, designed for coastal and protected water cruising with an anchorage or beach available every night. The cuddy in Scamp is a shelter for stowing gear, not for sleeping out of the weather. Interesting design that performs well for its intended purposes by all accounts that I've heard. Scamp has been heavily promoted by Small Craft Advisor magazine which commissioned the design and the prototype build.

Scamp is interesting from a design standpoint. John Welsford designed Scamp as a smaller boat at 10' 4" LOA, 4' 9" beam per the customers request. But when the design was being put into a CAD system it was realized that the design was somewhat small for the average adult male so it was enlarged to the current 11' 11" x 5' 4" with the Welsford's agreement. Quoted weight went from 195 lbs to 420 lbs. I've heard it said that one way to improve most designs is to stretch them without trying to add anything.
Original design: http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/10/designs/scamp/index.htm
Revised design: http://smallcraftadvisor.com/store/product.php?productid=275&cat=57&page=1

 

@ali3
If I'm not mistaken, post #2 is a photo of "Acrohc" a 12 footer, aluminum, built & sailed around the world by Serge Testa, an Aussie. Coincidentally, I'm reading the book for the 3rd time, right now. If you want it, send me a shipping address by pm & I'll send it to you. But, listen to what these guys are telling you because they know what they're talking about and the most usual weak link in an offshore excursion is the person in charge, rather than the vessel. As an example, I could have left L.A. without replacing my rigging, but if it let go, I'm to blame. In my case, I found an almost invisible crack in a tang & a few budding fishhooks near the top of my backstay. Lazyness or ignorance could have cost me, big time. Whatever you decide to build, make it the toughest little boat on the water. Don't have something that can fill with water or will turn turtle. These guys are your best friends because they're telling you what you need to know & need to have to be safe. You can't put a price on that kind of friendship.

 

Hey Mike, here's an even smaller one sailed from Canada to Australia. 'HAPPY II' is only 2.7m. It's at Brisbane Maritime Museum.

Thanks for the ref to the other book, I'm about to buy a copy as I didn't know it existed. One of these days a bunch of us must post the authors, titles & ISBN numbers of our sailing libraries so we can see what we haven't got or read.

I copied this photo from the Maritime Museum web site as there wasn't a direct link to it. Copyright is theirs.

http://www.maritimemuseum.com.au/

Go to the gallery.

PDW

 

sorry pdwiley. HAPPY2 was built in and sailed from Noumea to Mooloolaba and no further. She was seized by customs because of incorrect paper work and Wayne Smith returned to Canada in the clothes he wore. HAPPY was his first boat which he piled up at Noumea. Both vessels were designed by Jay Benford for the purpose of circumnavigation.

 

Wow, that's, um, really round! Must be about a metre worth of freeboard. But, if he made it that far... bow first, right?
I hope the boat's coming along, PDW. We'll be heading to Mexico at the end of Sep, then heading west & south starting in early April(?). Learning that splicing sta-set x is more of a challenge than dbl braid, but I got a "good" price, so 300' worth for halyards.

 

Yeah, the boat's progressing. Hull welding is done, making a pile of odds & ends now - bitts, through-hulls, etc. I'm making bolt-up fittings for the through-hulls so I can cut off the bolts if I ever have to. Spent the last couple of days running the lathe to turn all the flanges nice & round. If you have tools, might as well use them.

How far south are you coming? Not many bother to come this far but if you're getting to Brisbane or Sydney let me know.

I must have mis-read something about HAPPY II if he only did a short hop to Aus. I'm sure the placard said Canada but that might have been the entire trip including the other boat. Whatever, he was a lot tougher person than me.

PDW

 

pdw. Happy was the 14ft cold molded timber boat he crossed the pacific in before stacking her up at Noumea. All the gear was salvaged and as much as possible used in the Happy 2.Thats why the mast looks too big. I have several pics I took at Mooloolaba before Wayne was deported. When I asked him what it was like to sail he replied, "try living in a tumble-dryer for a month"he also said that the 9ft was about all he used in the bigger boat so thats what Jay B designed her about. Wayne was attempting to beat John Guzzwell's smallest record in "Trekka" with "Happy" but this was the result, maybe if he had avoided Australia he might have been successful. I think Serge Testa was the next to do it after Sir Henry Piggott in 19ft "Glory 2" and then the old Russian gent in "Said" all 12 ft of her. I saw both of those boats in Darwin when they passed thru.

 

Ali3 if you are still on this thread, in 1945 a former Australian Airforce officer and his wife sailed a WW2 amphibious jeep around the world. His name was Ben Carlin and his wife Elenore, the boat named "Half Safe" It still exists and I have sat in it. His estate donated it to Ben's old school "Guildford Grammar School" in Perth West Australia. If anyone is interested I can put up some pics of her, all 18ft. He also did things that the experts said can't be done.

 

On this trip I think we'll head as far south as the Cook Islands, then N+W to Davao, stopping in a few places. It has always been my dream to sail around Aus, so once our beach dev is done, I hope to head down there, although I'd prefer a different boat for your area. Despite all of the tales of woe, I'd really like to circumnavigate Aus.

I'd think that by the time that fellow had been through HAPPY & HAPPY II, he would have been HAPPIER with a bigger boat. He probably didn't save any money going smaller, either. Still, it's all "food for thought" for the OP.

 

I've got too much (non-boat building) stuff to do in the next 2-3 years so I expect to be here for that long at least. Might end up at Iloilo at some point though.

Back in the 80's I pretty much circumnavigated Aus in various fishing boats and got paid to do it. Downside was not being able to stop at interesting places. Maybe in a few years I'll head north.

The small boat thing is interesting. Originally I was going to build one of Sam Devlin's designs. I've got the plans somewhere. The more I looked into it the bigger the boat got until I reached the point of idiocy. At which time I went backwards to something I had reasonable assurance of being able to finish and if necessary single-hand. I also decided I hated working with epoxy so that ruled out stitch & glue. I'd happily own one but I wouldn't build one. Mind you I'm not too enamored with angle grinders these days either.

Really small, like HAPPY, why bother except to set a record few care about anyway? I think there's a good case for saying TREKKA is about as small as you can get to sail the world's oceans safely. How much time & money would it take to build one (or a close cousin) today?

I saw a lovely Benford BADGER clone sailing a few weeks ago. His 26' design would be nice if you wanted a small boat.

PDW

 

I would consider a boat much smaller then Trekka to be just a stunt boat for cruising offshore, Trekka is a small 20 ft boat. If one were to want to cruise a boat in the lower 20s range there are a number adequate older production boats that can be had for peanuts without having to build from scratch, of course they would require beefing up and minor modification just like bigger production boats, The Cal 20 and 25s come to mind. There are of course cult boats like the Flika but at the absurd prices they want for them you can get a decent boat in the high 20s - low 30s range which would be a much better choice.
Steve.

 

I think motored is the verb instead of sailed. Didn't he tow a string of aircraft drop tanks full of gas? Fabulous book I remember reading years ago. What a capable and daring guy!
So many of our returning WW2 vets found the life of peace boring and did incredible things like this just because they could.

 

Here are two design concepts of mine for really small ocean going sailboats.

The larger one is 20 ft long, 5.0 ft wide, and displaces 28,00 lbs. It has only 640 lbs of ballast and has a puny rig of only 150 sf. It is supposed to carry around 1,200 lbs of water, food and gear. The accommodations are spartan, to say the least. It has no cockpit and only a 2.5 by 10 ft strip of cabin sole for the one person crew. Heavier items, such as water, canned foods, and ground tackle are stowed beneath the cabin sole. Lighter items are stowed in cave lockers let into two length wise bulkheads at three levels, with the heaviest stuff on the bottom and the lightest stuff, such as charts and potato chips, on the top.

The smaller boat is only 10 ft by 4.5 ft, displaces only 1,700 lbs, with around 900 lbs allocated for stores and gear, but is set up pretty much the same way the larger one is. The Gaff Sloop rig shown is intended to fly the jib only when sailing down wind. The rig is deliberately designed to have a lee helm with the jib set. This is to make sure it sails down wind with maximum efficiency, doing so in a series of down wind tacks. For sailing up wind, the jib is furled and only the main is used. The tri-stay rig is supposed to have much over sized wire to survive brutal treatment by murderous seas. The long fin keel on this boat does not have a great deal of ballast. Mostly just enough for neutral buoyancy. In a capsize, it is expected to right the boat.

Neither of these two boats would be very good sailors. They have more in common with cargo carrying sailboats of the late 19th and early 20th centuries than they do with modern yachts. This is because they have similar employment.