6’ nano cruiser

This is the sort of thing I had in mind

very similar to Elusion micro cruiser but less windage from the cabin

 

It will be slow yes, a couple of knots cruising is all I expect.

It will not be particularly dangerous in rough weather, well any small boat or even larger ones can be dangerous in bad conditions but good seamanship is to avoid said conditions.

It will not be swamped by the wake of any vessel if it’s completely sealed off and built very very strong and well designed to be self righting.

She could even be submerged for a short time and always right herself.

the beauty of being small and simple makes it easier to make her stronger so that it would take a fair bit of effort to break the mast

 

These are 6’

 

Check out the self righting at the end of this video

 

Build it!

 

Small boats are too slow to avoid bad weather. Have you ever been to sea for long periods?

 

My example of an Opti is more as an example of the construction strength of materials without the need for full bulkheads in such a small craft. The rest of it was about making a cruiser out of an open dinghy by adding a soft deck and cabin out of canvas-like material.

As a kid, I sailed my Opti all over Clearwater Bay, from Clearwater Pass to Hurricane Pass, with big boat traffic and never got even close to being swamped. I even designed a hard dodger to go over the forward half with fantasies of sailing across the Atlantic with her. I figured on using a canvas cover in the cockpit. It looked like taking another pram and inverting it over the top and cutting off the back half. Hey, I was young, wanted to do it before I turned 13.

-Will (Dragonfly)

 

It appears the OP has more than a passing fascination with "micro" boats, it reminds me of some people who like to fish out of kayaks, which I think is madness, as the smell of bait in the water, and struggling fish, attracts sharks, and sometimes the fright generated by a large shark coming in for a close look and a nudge, is enough to "cure" such aficanados, the micro boat "cure" would probably be an encounter with conditions that seemed likely to overwhelm the boat, but it is better not to test that out in the first place.

 

This is across the river where I grew up and learn to sail.
SAILKARMA.COM - Sailing News, Videos and Photos!: Optimist Kid's Go Big! http://www.sailkarma.com/2008/02/optimist-kids-going-big.html

 

That is way beyond my experiences in an Opti.

-Will (Dragonfly)

 

Personally I say go for it - if you like tiny boats, and you like designing boats, and you like building boats, and you want to draw up a tiny boat and build it...what possible reason could you have for not doing that?

One time I wanted to ride a motorcycle from my home at the time in Vancouver BC, to San Diego, the Grand Canyon, Texas, New Orleans, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Montreal. Would it be more practical to do it in a Camry? Obviously. All kinds of people told me I'd be freezing, soaking, and miserable, but that maybe it would be tolerable if I took a big bike with a full fairing.

I did it on a naked 350 2-stroke Yamaha, because I thought I'd enjoy it. I did. I took a passenger, too. We had a blast. It was dangerous the entire time. We slept behind rural gas stations and in fields. Who cares? That's how I like to live. I don't care if it doesn't appeal to every single other person on the planet. I did it because I wanted to.

Unless you're flat broke, building a little boat like that is cheap fun. I knocked off an 8' sailing dinghy not long ago for something like $1000, maybe less, I didn't count, but a thousand bucks is fairly reasonable. At the time, that was maybe two months of gas for my larger boat. But it was hours and hours of entertainment while I built the little boat. And then I got to play with it afterwards.


It's not like you're planning on crossing huge stretches of open water, are you? I take my sailing dingy around the islands here for fun and it's probably more vulnerable to swamping etc than any micro-cruiser. If the weather picks up, I'm rarely more than a couple of miles from shore, and the weather picking up tends to include the wind picking up, so I just head for a beach.

Bottom line: if you want to do it, do it.

 

Depends on your size and much discomfort you can tolerate. The Atlantic has been crossed in a 5 foot 4 inch boat.
Father's Day – the smallest boat to cross the Atlantic | National Maritime Museum Cornwall https://nmmc.co.uk/2019/06/fathers-day-the-smallest-boat-to-cross-the-atlantic/

 

The only sensible advice on micro-boats, do not treat them as suitable for anywhere you can't easily swim to the shore, they really are a safety hazard. So to are plenty of larger boats, but you just multiply your chances of coming to grief with something so small.

 

Actually, this is not an unusual concept. Before Yahoo eliminated their Groups, there was one dedicated to little cruisers like that usually in the 6 to 10 foot size. Some were cute and others were ridiculous. Its probably on Facebook now, but since I don't do FB, I wouldn't know for sure, but that's where most Yahoo Groups went.

 

I propose an experiment for the OP: take whatever cushions you'd use to sit/sleep on in the proposed boat, place them in your bathtub and get in. Bring your day's food supply with you, and a small bucket (you can guess what that's for). Make a note of the time, stay there until you absolutely can't stand it any longer, then get out and note the elapsed time.

Added option, for realism: plug the drain and run a couple inches of water into it. You're allowed to sponge this out, but then you have to pour it back in.