Best Design for Minimalist Trailerable Coastal Cruising

Tanton's Boats

I really like the lines of the User Friendly 21 as well as the simple, direct, ease of use patterns that the water ballast provides for the boat. But then, I like a lot of Ive-Marie's design work, especially the freestanding, wishbone boom rigs he uses on some of his cat-ketch oriented design work.

Just beautifully simple and elegant solutions that show the experienced sailor in his blood.

Chris Ostlind
Lunada Design

 

cant tell you what to do............but scoffers dont do anything,,,,,,,,,,,longliner

 

Righto - time for me to chime in with an idea I've been tossing around for a powerboat that should fit the bill here. VERY minimalist....
I call it the displacement monomaran. Soemewhat of an oxymoron perhaps, but it best describes the boat's attributes.
This is a cross between the hullform of a displacement powercat, a RIB, and at a pinch a sea kayak. Powered by a small 4-stroke outboard it should give outstanding economy at cruising speeds in the low to mid teens.
LOA 7m
Beam 0.5m (+inflatable tubes)
Foredeck is a button-down hypalon affair, allowing limited storage and even overnight sleeping - strictly for one - or 2 VERY friendly people! Aft of the seat is open to allow 1 - 2 passengers, fuel tank etc

Please excuse the extraordinarily poor drawing - don't have any of the required facilities at my work computer to do anything more...

 

A little further thought and one could incorporate collapsible outriggers, a reversible sliding seat and oars. The latter would be stored on top of the tubes and when slid fwd would protrude out the fron of the boat such that they would be used for portaging, along with fold down wheels on the transom

 

Hi I'm new...This subject is dear to my heart so I thought I would chime in. Being a canoe paddler I have seen the benifits of a light weight craft. The biggest benifit is the ability to haul the boat out and above the high tide line. There are so many places I have been that I would not want to anchor a boat at. I don't want to be forced to go to a good anchorage possibly miles away from that really interesting spot. Problem is making this craft sail well, be sea worthy and safe, and be light enough for the crew to carry. I love the designs Chris has been working on, but can they be lighter, say no mote than 200lb with sails rigged?

 

Great topic! Close to my heart and my daily sailing.

Shallow draft and coastal ability are both ingrained in my personal demographic profile for preferred craft......my home berth dries every tide.
This has led me to own build and sail Cornish Crabbers, Drascombe Luggers and Longboats, Buckie Luggers, One-designs, Tuckers, Wharram Catamarans, and various other beachable, trailable boats .

Drying-beaching capability tends to come free with trailable specifications.
That said, experience says "add upright drying geometry" via small bilge runners or keels, or flat bottoms: you get to sleep better when beached up for the night! Huge difference in quality of sleep & comfort ,as opposed to lying at even small angles in your bunk or on the boards in your cosy sleeping bag.

Ease of mast handling is next: tabernacles rule here, or similar swinging arrangements. Lifting even short masts into deck holes or thwarts sucks.
Gaff , gunter or junk rigs offer best easy methods of getting meaningful sail areas without high masts and easy reefing too.

Drop keels if fitted should be steel, and SWINGING action NOT vertical dropping angle! The difference in the two for SAFE & practical useability is massive.
How so? ONE example:- You are approaching what looks like a nice anchorage up a creek or fiord, but lack of local knowledge and/or charts/depth sounder etc makes you nervous to proceed further inshore, but you need to get in there somehow: perhaps a gale is imminent ?
Swing keels which hang down at a shallow angle, pivoted, have natural ability to feel the bottom as you approach the beach etc, in total safety, the keel just bumps along, giving the cautious skipper plenty of warning in the most accurate way, of shoaling water.
Swing keels are also way easier to fit & arrange lifting tackle within the boat, needing less effort to operate.
Lee Boards work good too, and have the advantage of needing no hole in the hull, right where stones have a tendency to jam. Port and Starboard boards can be lowered to act as beaching legs too, an elegant multi-tasking use of resources......you sleep upright again! The weather board also provides a neat spray and wing dodger when raised above the gunwhale, a small oasis of calm for the exposed helmsperson. Cosy.

For balanced, unattended sailing the cutter or yawl rig is better for ease of set-up and docility. Bowsprits which drop down/up or slide in/out are a bargain method of tuning the rig, and provide useful spar length for other purposes like jury masts, poling, winching heavy loads on/off the boat....etc.

If equipped with a cabin, headroom is good.......so is width. Take the cabin sides right out to the extreme of beam: side decks are pointless on small vessels. Raise the coachroof as much as your taste in profile allows.

Whoa...........gotta go and empty the bilges in the harbour now, low water beckons.

I hope you all enjoy some great sails in a small boat soon!

 

how about a pontoon boat?you can take the hulls off,and if needed split the cabin in half.that would of course only work with a sailboat,though.

 

Holy Cow!

Hi Will,

Strangely enough, I had also been cooking around with a rather strange, skinny hulled, 12-1 sea kayak with integrated sponsons for stability as a serious solo, or lightly equipped, double. I had not thought of hanging an outboard on the stern for extremely economical motoring capability. I suppose that with a bit of a tweak to the aft sections that could begin to look interesting.

Would you like to see my renderings? (Not the same as being invited to view one's etchings)

Could you supply any more drawings of what you had in mind?

Chris Ostlind

 

Chris - LOL - would love to see your renderings
What you see is pretty much all I got at this stage - apart from a few "napkin scribbles" that I wasn't able to scan for lack of a scanner. I'm going to do a bit more work on it in the coming months.
As far as the hull shape goes, I was primarily looking at this as a powerboat - with the oars as an auxilliary form of propulsion. I had considered using more of a canoe shaped stern with large chine flats, as you often see in displacement powercats, but was concerned that it might provide too much directional stability. As a result, at this stage at least, I'm looking more at fairly flat bottomed aft sections to prevent squatting under power. This will of course reduce the craft efficiency as a row-boat.
I have to run some preliminary numbers before settling on anything though...

 

Hey guys, I have one interesting boat to post, from a well known French Architect, Julien Marin. This Guy is incredible polyvalent. He has designed a lot of interesting and very different boats. One of them is the Mercator 40, the aluminium twin keel that has been discussed recently in another thread, others are the Irisoft 40, the Lux 7.30, Sail cats, Power cats, racing boats, and also the I-KONE.

I guess that he had a lot of fun while designing this one.

I think that it fits well in this thread.

The links I will post are only in French, so I will tell some of the boat’s very unusual characteristics:

Length: 5.98 m; Beam: 2.5 m; Sail Area: 17 m2 ; Engine (max) 15 hp; Mast weight: 15kg
Water Ballast on the keel: 140 L; Draft 0.4/1m; Boat classified as insubmergible.

Motoring speed: +7k; the sail is furled around the mast; Boat + trailer weigh less than a ton; Price: 20 000 euros.

Take also a look at the new I-koneJ. It looks even better.

http://www.espace-vag.com/fr/IKone/Descriptif technique/42.html

http://www.espace-vag.com/fr/IKone/Ses atouts/41.html

http://www.espace-vag.com/images/photos/cockpit.jpg

http://www.julienmarin.com/gb_projets.asp

http://www.julienmarin.com/gb_architecture.asp

http://www.julienmarin.com/_gb_newslire.asp?num=17

http://www.espace-vag.com/fr/IKone J/Ses atouts/48.html

http://www.espace-vag.com/fr/IKone J/Descriptif technique/49.html

 

sean those 45ftrs are nice but were do you get the giants from?

 

In Norway it rains a lot, at least on the west coast and that is most of the coast...

So I think a minimalistic cruising boat for a couple with two kids would be a 20 feet long open daysailer with a small inboard diesel, a windscreen and a watertight "canopy", a simple rig with main and self-tacking jib and a ballasted centerboard + maybe some water ballast.

 

I'm planning on a 100 mile coastal cruising / camping trip this (southern) summer in my Windrider 17 around Banks Peninsula. With 800 pound load capacity there is enough capacity for a sailing buddy, large standing room tent, food, etc. On this route there are plently of deserted inlets suitable for dragging the boat up on the beach at night, so no worries about finding good anchorages. The hulls are rotomolded polyethalene and are good at flexing rather than chipping or cracking in contact with solid ground.

My preference for both kayaking and sailing is to be close to the shore, as the view is much more interesting than being out at sea. Also I spend enough time maintaining houses and I don't really want to maintain house-like features on a boat. So for me the Windrider is a real minimalist coastal cruiser without toilet, cupboards, plumbing, electrics, etc to worry about. I have a small 2hp outboard to provide backup for no wind conditions.




Re kayaks - A friend of mine created a frame to mount two sea kayaks into a small catamaran with outboard, but kayaks were never designed to go fast, so the main result was lots of spay splashing everywhere, even at low speeds.

 

Wow, what a paradise to go gunkholing in. You could take a couple of months to explore all the nooks and crannies there.

Steve

 

That Skinny Boat Idea

Hi Will and all,

Here are those renderings I promised on that skinny cruising boat idea you penciled-up last week.

I came at it as a very slender design with a 12-1 hull in the water and integrated sponson flare. The water part of the design has a 15 degree vee at the transom and a nice spray chine taken aft. Above the hard chine the hull rises to a pronounced sponson flare to give huge secondary stability while being able to take advantage of the slender sections.

The boat is 24' LOA with 24" beam in the water.

The rest of the stuff is a conceptual approach to a contemporary look with some retro touches. The entire hull is s&g plywood with a strip-built deck surface. An easy boat to build and quite light for launch handling

I see this boat with a 5-8 hp outboard, terrific fuel mileage and room to stash any gear necessary for a nice trip on the water in classic motoring style. It could also be a very cool harbor cruiser with a significant other.

A very simple enclosure from the windscreen aft would keep out the rain and the sides could be stripped away to provide a sun relief Bimini if driven in hot weather.