Strange little floating cork with sails

I beg your pardon but your original post seemed so wildly optimistic that I immediately assumed you had little experience. I'm not sure how a gooseneck fails at the boat ramp but stranger things have happened.
I personally spent 4 Coast Guard years risking my life in rescuing over-confident people who made bad nautical decisions and have seen stranger accidents.
Also your choice of a small design you plan to scale up (complex, read the threads on this site) leads me to believe your actual time at sea in all reasonable conditions we might get caught in (force 1-9) is limited, possibly just enough to get you in serious trouble.
And more, your immediate focus on luxury and finish over design shape and rig, with an initial budget of 27k shows your charming wide-eyed beginner's innocence, no matter how much sea time you say you have.
As noted above, a Hunter or Beneteau crams all the amenities into a 35' hull, but at the price of great complexity of systems, which is boat geek talk for "something's always broken." Also, no matter how clever the engineer, these things (water heater, shower, tankage to feed these, and reefer/freezer) take a lot of space in what is already a too-small boat, reducing the room for people to actually move. If made extremely compact (Space Shuttle-like) it's just harder to access and fix as well as being again even more expensive.
In cruising, less is more. We go to relax, not fix things constantly, and if you have pressure hot water, freezer/reefer, gourmet galley, trick centerboards and such, you will be fixing things like water pumps to get the water out of the bilge tanks, the heat exchanger on the engine full of tropical life etc, every day when the gear in question is more than a few months old. Denial is a river in Egypt if you think this is not true.
The list is endless as anything that can break or wear out on a cruising boat will, and at a bad time, so if you don't have it, it doesn't break. Some take this to extremes and don't have an engine, like the Pardeys, but that is a bit too far.
A good boat is not the sum of the consumer products you have accumulated to fill it with, but the end of 130,000 years of seagoing development, so it's best to study that line before making decisions that will be regretted.

 

Maybe you could gimble the whole cabin like the guy with the 10' boat.My first boat was 7' and I always thought of all that open wasted space I could be "living the dream" in, Longlining for sword fish on the Grand Banks in the dead of winter,I thought about putting the whole boat inside a big glass bubble,like one of those nifty Japanese net floats that wash up on the beach.Buckely Smith has a book of designs with a story to go along with it called Moon Sailors,You can get it from The Woodenboat store.I met him along time ago in Camden Maine on a boat he built himself,A 32' Atkin Eric,ferro cement hull but eveything else was Wood,Gaff rigged,simple,Elegent.He sailed it from California to Labrador.

 

The first picture is what it does to your marriage. The others are very cheap "go sailing now" boats that actually went somewhere and did something.
You seem confused between wishing to have a floating well-stocked wine cellar slowly bobbing along unable to get out of the way of weather systems because she's so overladen with opulence and convenience, or making a film about something educational, when it's possible the audience is not the one needing the education.
One should have a "business plan" that has been vetted by others with experience before devoting 3 years of full-time work and at least $200,000 to do what you so blithely blather on about.
I'm actually quite polite. Others on these forums might be rude.

 

I get some crazy thoughts, but what I noticed from that video was that things did not appear to be in perspective at all. It's like looking at a doll house in minature and imagining that's it's life size. Look at the saloon, it appears to be so rommy in that circular arrangement, but scale it to the length of the boat and it's about the size of my hassic in front of my chair.

As to luxury (not really defined) I'm sure I could spend half your budget building and covering that circular sallon area, the rest would go for the cabin sole and trim work. Hopefully, I can get up to a 24/27 footer with the same budget with a workboat finish.

 

Surprise surprise. I went to the site and realized it was a PARODY, and a very nice one. Lampoons all the marketing conventions so well. Now that's film making!
Especially like the centerboard with only a few square inches of bearing. But it's made of Unobtainium which has infinite strength so not a problem.

 

Good morning everyone,

Just wanted to thank everyone for their wonderfully constructive and interesting comments.

I've been quite fortunate to find a Polish designer that feels that a sensible hybrid of that odd little cork with sails and a more conventional 8 meter sail boat is more than possible.

I look forward to sharing the finished boat in early 2014.

James.

 

Of course he does - the economy is pretty bad over there !

Please do post the design as it progresses - even the detailed statement of requirements would be good to see.

 

I look forward to seeing it.

 

Hey there everyone,

With due consideration to my Polish "can do guy" and the sensible advice provided by you guys, a few things have become apparent:

1) an 8 metre version of that strange little cork with sails is doable but not as a DIY project. Carbon fibre and all manner of complex construction methods would be required to create the hull volume that my aspirations require.

2) Polish guy has referred me to @750 and T800 designs that are a reasonable near match to what I want. My heart stopped beating when he sent me a link to something called Alien 1350. A great deal bigger than I anticipated, but as near a match to my requirements as I have yet found.

Thanks again everyone,

James

 

Hey there rwatson,

You have no idea how relevant your thoughts are.

Turns out my Polish "go to guy" has a knack for carbon fibre structures and was hoping to save his workshop by designing and building a "don't try this at home" product... Too bad he didn't understand the bit about DIY build it in your own backyard.

Too bad really.. The 8m and 10m sketches he provided, looked like yachts rather than corks just slightly odd with higher freeboard than might be expected or visually desirable.

Regards,

James.

 

I had an idea based on my own experience. I have spent the last 6 years getting my project ( not very dissimilar to yours ) off the ground.

The only people who I have ever got any satisfaction from have been the talented, financially motivated and very competent eastern Europeans in the design and engineering areas.

I have no doubt, if the boat was possible, they would have delivered.

 

http://www.stugna.kiev.ua/index.php?pirs=samostroy&st=alien1350
Is this it?

 

More Alien 1350.

 

Yep... That alien

Hey there Bataan,

Yep, thats it.

A radical departure from the 8~10 metre boat I anticipated.

Setting aside it's size for a moment, it has all the qualities I was looking for.

While I certainly have the space and means to build such a monster, it might well be too ambitious a project for me.

I'll spend the week fantasising about such a boat, before I give consideration to a more practical and manageable project.

Regards,

James.

 

Hey James, Fantasizing about dream boats is a wonderful exercise. When we mentally construct them we see the actual huge scope of the task, and hopefully make good decisions about just what boat we really want and why we want it. Don't get trapped in the 'vague nautical fantasy', but spend your time, treasure and Herculean efforts on a craft that will actually do what you need in your life. The Alien is obviously a fast sled using contemporary tech, but very very expensive per pound, and if you hit that narrow-chord fin on a coral head or log it would lever backwards, crushing the laminates and tearing out the forward bolts and costing vast amounts to repair. I know because I have several times been involved in such jobs. When you decide on a final design, make it for what you need and your actual future use, and not to impress others by novelty or "gee-whiz" factor. Shallow draft with the ability to explore interesting estuaries is much more satisfying to most families than making the boat go fast offshore, which quickly gets exhausting and boring if you're not a committed competitor. A boat like you're dreaming of here is very narrow-purposed, and while excellent for that, is poor at others, but still very costly to build and equip. A heavy boat does not race well. A light boat has few amenities. A deep boat is limited to deep, sometimes exposed anchorages. A shallow boat is harder to get to windward but has many more options on where it can go. It's always a trade-off and you have to decide what is important to you, the 'look' and 'feel' of modernity and swooshy design all dripping with carbon fiber and titanium to impress people (the sea is not impressed by anything but survival) or a simpler, more general-purpose vessel, able to tolerate the weight of all the household features you'd like to have, and suited to your actual use of making a film of the construction and voyaging.