Drift Boat Designs

I ran Home made drift boats in Western Washington in the 50's.
Memory is old now and cant remember much details about the boats we made.

But...you want to keep the foot print small and the bow/stern angles high. I think we followed the McKenzie boats in design.

If you don't keep that footprint small, rowing that thing back up the hole is gonna be brutal!
Keep the weight down.
Make the bottom removable and replaceable in a jiffy. About Three thousand bronze screws as I recall.
Give your customers a flat foot place and something to bang their thighs against to keep them in the boat.

Forget gooping those seams and joints. Water in the boat is as normal as water under it. It takes less time to change the bottom out if there's no Goop to deal with.

The Oarsman has a Rope seat, and a Pylon Anchor on a Rope lock. He's got to be able to do it all from that rope seat.

Big strong Oars! That way you don't kneed a spare oar.

I miss those days of excitement. I don't think it can rain as hard anywhere in the world as it can over on the Coast near LaPush.

 

When I went seakayaking on Lake Powell, I took along several screw top plastic jars for human waste, but crapping on the ground, then scooping it up and into a jar, some dribbling down the sides, isn't for everyone. A lot of rivers that I do are too full of silt to filter. About three strokes of the pump and they are done for, but I admit those aren't rivers you'd fish.
I guess my point is that the sort of person that would go fishing with a drift boat isn't the sort of person that would do the same trip with an SOT. Imagine stopping for the night and pulling out your grill, getting steaks out of the cooler, and opening a cold brew, then sleeping on thick air mattresses (not the 1" thick Thermarest you'd take on the SOT).

 

Well.... I used to do those overnighters in a boat or sometimes just walking.
In the ARMY we learned to dig a Cat Hole for Human waste. I never thought of saving it in a jar!
Silty Rivers have good fish. Almost all Alaskan Rivers are silty and all the fish are good to eat up there.

If you take Customers or Buddy's down river in your drift boat, beach it every so often for those 'breaks' that involve a Fire or a nature call. Always take the little shovel off to the beach with you. Make sure the animals cant dig it up.

 

Very good job. BRAVO Jeff

 

Seems they removed my last response. Must not have liked the potty talk. I'll try to put it more delicately. While seakayaking Lake Powell, I used the Park Service recomendation for dealing with solid waste. I won't go into what that is for fear they'll remove this post too. But I think there are a lot of people that wouldn't like doinig what I had to do. Comparing fishing from a drift boat to fishing from an SOT is like comparing RV camping to backpacking. I've done a heck of a lot of backpacking, but the older I get the more appealing the RV looks.

 

Lot's of those Government Organizations make 'recommendations' that are way beyond reasonable, necessary or even safe.

 

The older I get (64) the less weight and more compact I like my boats. That's why I went from a small 20# pontoon to a 7# float "V" tube and cut the length of excursions. My scope of travel has been widely expanded, including rivers near any airline access. My total boat/equipment/food excursion pack weight is under 40# max and sometimes closer to 30#. Superb comfort, like riding an easy chair downriver with all equipment within hands' reach. Self bailing, no waders modified, and with a raised footbar to speed feet drying. Stand up immediately to hold position in shallows or hover in deeper water all hands free. RV camping=driftboat reaches the accessible trampled down places, and that may be the point for those that dislike discomfort without their at home sustenance/entertainment devices. But a quality destination designed inflatable goes anywhere a driftboat/SOT goes, (even lakes with electric paddle http://www.electricpaddle.com/ ) PLUS many almost virgin, places they can't go.... JMHO.

Does the BLM allow compact, inflatable pack in toilets?
Non potable water filters with charcoal polishers are reputed to remove the bad taste.

Porta

 

Come to think of it, some chaps have use a large drift boat as a base camp for their tubes and toons. One per person could easily be packed aboard a drift boat, then each can venture out to the smaller tributaries.

P.

 

One doesn't hang one's pickup tube directly into a silty body of water. The gambit is to scoop out a pot full of the water, let it sit and the silt will settle out to the bottom in a fairly short time. Then you pump the water through the fiter into your drinking water container.

I've run the Green from Flaming Gorge Dam down to the confluence with the Colorado and when you've completed the A, B and C sections below the dam, the water gets silted-up enough from eroding sandstone that you have to use the above strategy. The further down you get, such as in Deso Canyon, and beyond, it's standard operating procedure except for the tributaries when they are running, or canyon wall weeps, which are clear all the time.

For a number of years, I used to pack fresh water in cleaned-out boxed wine bladders and place them inside heavy duty ziplocks and then lay them in the bottom of the boat, spread fore to aft to keep the boat in trim. They make for great, stability enhancing ballast and come in handy at those camps where you're just too tired to screw with the sediment settling thing.

I was pulled over once on the way home from a Deso Canyon trip. The cop was smiling when he saw my bladders on the back seat of my car, thinking he had me for open container. I suggested that he crack them open and have a whiff to verify that he was busting me for Chardonnay, or Merlot. When he found water, he grinned and asked where I kept the adult beverages. I told him in was in the cataraft being towed by the pickup that just went by us while we were on the side of the road.

River trips are fun, aren't they? It doesn't matter what kind of boat you choose to do a river, as long as you have a great time and have bitchin' stories to tell your buddies who stayed home to do the yard work.

 

Sea trial findings

Here are some photos of drifter on the water. We're really quite pleased with the performance, and although any boat with a 76" beam is bound to feel a bit like borrowing Paul Bunyan's boat, rowing is comfortable and pleasant.

 

Looks great, but the issue I see is that going through large waves you are going to get a lot of water over the transom. Plus, that blunt end isn't going to punch through waves very well. If you only use it for water like in your photos, it'll work great, but many trout streams have rapids. Remember, the normal MO for drift boating it to face downstream so you can see where your going and avoid dangers. This means your transom is the direction of travel. If you turn around, it'll go through rapids better, but won't row as well. This is why I went with a double ender. The end going through the waves is pointed and the end that is the direction you are rowing is pointed. You just can't put a motor on it, but I'd never put a motor on a drift boat anyway. That's why they call it a drift boat.

 

I would add that rowing from the Center is not so advantageous.
All my Drifters had a "Kneeler" aft of Center.
Its not a Seat.
It's a (in my case) a Rope (multiple laps) going across a stand aft of center.
You put one knee on that, and row from there.
Your head is higher so you can plan your route better.
Control of the boat is better all the way around from the Kneeler.

Also, you don't seem to have the right kind of Anchor for a Drifter.
The Anchor you want, dangles over the stern, and is dropped or raised by a Rope going along the edge of the Kneeler, with a "Friction latch" at the aft Deck.

When you get a big one on, or get into trouble, you never leave that Kneeler. All the operations is done from there.
Drop the Anchor first, then go handle the Emergency.

River Runner's absolutely correct! you do not want a motor.
Only the Anchor in the stern. You want the Stern high and mostly pointy so the Anchor will hold and the oncoming water will wash by the boat.

That leaves the Center of the boat for the guys standing up fighting the fish.
With the weight in the Center, the biggest flat spot, the boat will easily ride on the surface as you guys haul in those smelly fish.

When under way, either or both passengers sit on that front seat. Not in the center.
Thats the balance that gives your Oars the ability to slide sideways, or skid over to the Reverse current to go back up river to a hole you missed.

Big powerful Oars are the order!
Or you may learn what it's like to Paddle down stream in a Drift boat with only one Oar.

 

I don't envision that this boat would be a good first choice if your only fishing grounds are class II and III rapids, but it is a good choice for all the fishable rivers I'm familiar with.

In significant rapids, I expect the boat will go downstream bow first. Because the seating surface is longitudinal as opposed to athwartships, the operator can turn around in the boat to face whichever way makes the most sense for conditions.

In general, when drift fishing the fisherman stands in the end opposite the anchor gear. It is planned that the anchor gear will be attached off the corner of the transom.

The belief that a drift boat can't be anything else is demonstrably false. The philosophical grandfather of the WSD is the Rapid Robert, dozens of which are out there right now drifting rivers, fishing in lakes and crabbing on the bay. People who have little problem with the idea of a "camp cruising sail and oar adventurer" can't seem to contemplate the idea of a driftboat which can move independently of the river.

It doesn't seem that much of a stretch to me.



There's ample buoyancy in the ends, as well as enough rocker for nimble handling, but enough beam to keep draft minimal. The slight v in the bow does improve rowing performance and doesn't compromise draft. Also, the fact that the bulk of the bottom is flat eliminates the vulnerability of a v-bottomed boat when going over a submerged log or other river obstacle.

One other thing; without the ridiculously high ends, it's less necessary for the oarsman to stand/kneel.

But yeah, heavier oars are on the list of things to do.

 

Not true, by a long shot. This is a perfect example of why you need to be very careful of taking what you read on forums to heart. If the "intent is that the boat will fill with water, ground itself and stay put" than canoes and kayaks would not have positive flotation, as these are both designed, primarily, for river use.

 

Actually very few canoes have flotation. In fact there are no regulations or standards requiring flotation in canoes. I spent over 30 years of my life in the Coast Guard Office of Boating safety dealing with standards for recreational boats and advising manufacturers. Canoe builders may put flotation in if they wish, and a few do, usually as small foam tubes on the outside of the canoe. A few put an air chamber on the ends. But most canoe builders do not put any flotation in their canoes. Kayaks generally do have flotation chambers. Few of them use foam. Mostly they are air chambers and some use flotation bags that can be inflated in a swamping situation. But for the most part they use airchambers because they also want to be able to use the compartment as storage, and they put in a watertight access panel to allow access to the chamber.

As for the drift boats, the USCG has been issuing Grants of Exemption (meaning they don't have to do it) to drift boat builders for many years, since the flotation regs went into affect in the late 70's. The builder's main argument for not complying was as I stated above. They don't want flotation in these boats because they deemed it a hazard. Unfortunately, since then people have expanded the use of drift boats to all kinds of uses far from the rivers they were intended for, just as they have with other types such as jon boats. Jon boats were originally for use on bayous and shallow water and now you see them everywhere including out on open ocean waters. Dories on the other hand are required to have flotation and i have no recollection of anyone trying to argue the point.