10m, 10 passenger canoe for use on Amazon River

Hello all. I am attempting to create a canoe-esque design for use by an indigenous population in rural Ecuador. It needs to be about 10m long and house 10 passengers with an outboard, torqueedo engine mounted on the back. I am in immediate need of assistance in designing this and have little idea of where to start. Boat design is not particularly in my repetoire, but I am an engineering student and willing to learn. Most of what I've found don't really deal with making large canoes, so any resources would be really helpful.

 

I work building these canoes:
Our big canoes - 13-seater Canadian Canoes https://expeditioncanoes.co.uk/our-big-canoes/

 

If you are in a hurry, and it doesn't have to be pretty, there are various possibilities based on a hollowed-out log? That approach would lessen the concern with getting materials shipped to a rural area, have a lower cost if acceptable large logs and low cost labor is locally available. Google has lots of info on these, dugout lengths up to 20 meters have been made...

 

For more context, dugout canoes are what are in use now, and I and my team are in charge of creating an alternative made of fiberglass. Unfortunately, none of us have a background in this. We need a deliverable plan for a boat by next spring, but are struggling to get there so far. I would think that plans for something like this already exist, but we're at a loss for where and how to find them.

 

Many years ago, my Uncle Jim and his friend bought two Herters freighter canoes and fished all over southern Ontario in them. He said they could carry them with 4 men to each and they were 20' long.

Thanks for the memory. Jim died a year and a half ago.

You can google freighter canoes and see if they look possible.

Another search could be a war canoe, but they are double enders and would need a side plate for the Torqueedo.

 

FAO Fisheries & Aquaculture https://www.fao.org/fishery/en/vesseldesign/search

Here you go, no need to learn anything, just select one you like. You will also find a boatbuilding manual in the library.

Now before you run off doing good and feeling happy, take a moment to consider what your "help" will achieve. Fiberglass, Torqueedo's and batteries don't grow in the jungle, you will make this people depend on industrial products they can't really afford to buy and maintain, plus deeply upset the local economy. The trees you supposedly save from beeing turned into boats will become charcoal, people got to eat something.

 

Reinventing a canoe makes little sense when there are so many commercially available products. On the other hand, it seems like the choice of a canoe is more romantic than practical. Any damage on those canoes will make them unusable because there are no skilled laborers to fix them. One of the wooden FAO boats would be more practical and cheaper.
Fishing Boat Designs 1 Flat Bottom Boats Fao Fisheries Technical Paper No 117 Revision 1 : Arne Fredrik Haug : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/fishingboatdesig034778mbp/page/n5/mode/2up

 

I am curious about one thing. One of the plans you linked says you can make 3 canoes from one cant. I don't understand how you can hog out a canoe without damaging the inside piece.

 

Cant? Can you tell me wich one exactly please?

 

One of the canoes. I can read it myself, just lazy after working all day on the boat.

Cant is a cut section of log with at least one side cut.

I misread. It says a 30M tree can make a 15M and a 9M canoe..

I read it as a 20M tree can make a 15m and 9M...what threw me off was I didn't understand why they'd harvest a 30M log for a 15m canoe is all..but I was probably tired..

The Ghana dugout canoe is really a cool plan..