Commercial Fishing Sailboat

Discussion in 'Boat Design' started by MickT, Nov 14, 2010.

  1. peter radclyffe
    Joined: Mar 2009
    Posts: 1,454
    Likes: 72, Points: 58, Legacy Rep: 680
    Location: europe

    peter radclyffe Senior Member

  2. peter radclyffe
    Joined: Mar 2009
    Posts: 1,454
    Likes: 72, Points: 58, Legacy Rep: 680
    Location: europe

    peter radclyffe Senior Member

  3. peter radclyffe
    Joined: Mar 2009
    Posts: 1,454
    Likes: 72, Points: 58, Legacy Rep: 680
    Location: europe

    peter radclyffe Senior Member

  4. MickT
    Joined: Nov 2010
    Posts: 22
    Likes: 0, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 10
    Location: New Orleans

    MickT Junior Member

    I was just trying to see if I was barking up the right tree, before I started worrying about climbing it, but since there seems to be a good bit of interest..
    http://www.amazon.com/Frozen-Sashimi-Albacore-Fillets-Maguro/dp/B0043SE1UK/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=grocery&qid=1289975379&sr=1-5
    This price doesnt include the $25 shipping. Properly frozen product is better that most fresh, it's just taking a while to convince people of that.
    The problem with direct sales is it takes a lot of marketing, cold storage, other infrastructure to work, plus airfreight costs. However, if you can bring the product to a west coast port and sell it direct to retail/wholesalers, you can take a lot of that out of the equation. This is already done with albacore, but there you have the problem of a lot of vessels trying to do the same thing, which floods the market. I think a vessel pulling into San Francisco or San Diego in March with 30-40,000 pounds of blast frozen Yellowfin, Big Eye, and Skipjack steaks and fillets could easily gross 125k if you could take a month to sell it. Having the boat be the cold storage, you could talk to buyers in Vegas, Phoenix, Sacramento, and possibly gross more. Planned fishing grounds would be the Eastern Pacific, which is about a 2 to 3 thousand mile run from San Diego. You could also fish the Western Pacific in the winter, but it wouldn't really be feasible to come back to sell the fish. You could make more trips, however. In the summer the boat could fish Troll Albacore with all the other boats, although I would plan on keeping my menhaden job to start(April-Oct).
    So,
    8,000 gal fuel at $4/gal (I think a sustainable price for the next 20 yrs or so)
    $32,000
    Grub for 3 months $6,000 Bait $10,000 Gear $10,000 Sundries $10,000. (These prices are inflated for feasibility purposes).
    $68,000, call it $70k. So if you could gross 100k you could make a profit.
    These numbers are simple and don't include replacement of gear, sails, moorage, regular boat costs. But if you want your own liveaboard youre going to pay them anyways, if you sail the boat. Boats seem to rot just as much if not more sitting at the dock.
    Economics, when youre talking about lifestyle, is a funny thing. Dislike of working for others, or dealing with some of the stress involved in running a boat in most other fisheries is what they call an externality. And one of the ways to deal with an externality is to expand the market to include it. If I had to take other work after a few years to replace worn out blast freezers/other gear, thatd be fine. If the boat made enough profit to pay for them, great.
    The big money in fisheries isn't made following in other peoples footsteps, but in discovering and developing new ones. I think, with trolling poles, jigging machines, a longline reel, and 30 tons blast freezing capacity, you'd have a good platform for exploring new fisheries options in the Pacific. A high-seas permit from NMFS only costs $47, versus $130,000 for a Southeast Alaska seine permit. Don't discount wingnuts.
    Tad- Your house aft design is perfect. I'd say you're an experienced fisherman, just from looking at your designs. If the hold capacity went down to 10 tons, would there be a big difference, or is it close to the same problem? I'm sure there's a point where the sailing physics get better.
     
  5. Tad
    Joined: Mar 2002
    Posts: 2,321
    Likes: 214, Points: 73, Legacy Rep: 2281
    Location: Flattop Islands

    Tad Boat Designer

    Most design problems are not black and white....but rather shades of grey....so it's a question of degree......make the boat longer, deeper, and narrower, she'll be more comfortable in a sea but carry less = less profit per trip....at what point does that become acceptable?

    If I was trying this I'd go for less boat and less capital investment.....probably a modified one of these....My Ocean 55' design......http://www.tadroberts.ca/services/new-design/ocean-55.php

    OC55ports5.jpg
     
    2 people like this.
  6. MickT
    Joined: Nov 2010
    Posts: 22
    Likes: 0, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 10
    Location: New Orleans

    MickT Junior Member

    It's hard to say. I was wondering if the sail area/wetted surface thing was linear.....if theres a point right before the graph goes up, i'd look at fisheries/markets that would fit that boat and its carrying capacity.
    Alot of seafood marketing is mystique. Look at the price difference the tuna guys got when they started calling it Ahi, instead of yellowfin, and Mahi-Mahi, instead of dolphin.
    So it's hard to say. I'm confident I could catch all the skipjack I could process, and possibly do well on bigeye and yellowfin too. The mix would determine how much capacity i'd need. This is not something that can be accurately determined, which is why i'd want the bigger hold. But the market for skipjack is undeveloped, as is a lot of the tuna market. So the sailing physics would determine what i'd try, as would the ability to modify an existing hull.
    I guess the hard point would be the ability of the boat to sail well enough to be 'enjoyable' when it is no longer a fishing boat. Which is something i'd need more sailing experience to determine. I'm just curious about the physics of the thing at this point.
    I sent you an email.
     
  7. WickedGood

    WickedGood Guest

    The Bark is Worse than the Bight

    Prehaps you may cobble this simple Bark together in your basement in your spare tyme?



    [​IMG]
     
  8. Tad
    Joined: Mar 2002
    Posts: 2,321
    Likes: 214, Points: 73, Legacy Rep: 2281
    Location: Flattop Islands

    Tad Boat Designer

    Mick,

    No, scaling is subject to exponential increases, there are no kinks in the curves. Surface area increases with the square, volume (displacement) with the cube, stability to the 4th power....thus boats aren't scaled directly in all dimensions..... see scaling laws

    http://www.av8n.com/physics/scaling.htm
     
  9. MickT
    Joined: Nov 2010
    Posts: 22
    Likes: 0, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 10
    Location: New Orleans

    MickT Junior Member

    So, are there local minima/maxima that kind be found relating different displacement configurations to sail area? Is there a computer program out there that can do these equations?
     
  10. tazmann
    Joined: Aug 2005
    Posts: 329
    Likes: 17, Points: 18, Legacy Rep: 215
    Location: California

    tazmann Senior Member

  11. M&M Ovenden
    Joined: Jan 2006
    Posts: 365
    Likes: 80, Points: 38, Legacy Rep: 527
    Location: Ottawa

    M&M Ovenden Senior Member

    I just skimmed quickly threw this thread, I've been away from the forum for the past few weeks as I'm trying to get as much done as possible before winter really hits us.
    I'm a big fan of fishing sailboats. Actually I'd say from my point of view that there is no sexer boat as a working sailing vessel, I'll call those He's.
    In Brittany the sailing work boats only stopped working as late as the '60's. Around '50, '60 many fishing sailboats were converted in motor boats but kept a stub mast with an auxiliary sail.

    This boat (transport boat) is a good example of those later working vessels which went from primary sail, to engine and now back to sail as a tourist vessel. It's still around, never stopped working if showing off can now be considered it's job. It actually still has it's original engine in it, really cool. http://www.antest.net/-Le-bateau-

    Here's a neat website which lists some fishing Tuna boats from a small region of Brittany around Douarnenez starting around the late '30's. http://thoniers.free.fr/ Even if you don't read french, it's still neat to click threw the photos and see how the boats change threw the years...which actually, the boats don't change as much as one may think. Even while they're getting motorized the boats keep there mast on.

    Well and here's my project : http://www.magma.ca/~ovenden/index.htm
    It's not a commercial fishing boat but I hope when eventually it makes it way into the water to rig a couple tuna fishing poles on it :)

    cheers,
    Murielle
     
  12. BATAAN
    Joined: Apr 2010
    Posts: 1,614
    Likes: 101, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 1151
    Location: USA

    BATAAN Senior Member

    Came to this thread late but here's 2 cents worth. Back in the 70s quite a few fishermen experimented with sail, but all seemed to stop soon. Problem is (I've worked both on trollers and I'm a long-time commercial sailor) since you can't always sail the direction you want to fish in, you wind up using the engine anyway. You get tired enough fishing and running the boat on autopilot there's nothing left over for handling sail, which can be challenging and exhausting no matter what gee-whiz roller snarlers the chandlery got you to buy. Everything breaks, and sailboats have to be very simple and rugged to survive as commercial profit makers. Another reason is that the shelter and gear requirements for fishing raise freeboard, cutting available room for possible sails and adding drag. Pulling a set of trolling gear needs power beyond that required to sail the boat, so the sails need to be bigger yet. The French had sailing "tunnymen" that fished tuna with a pole setup with a large rig and crew, but most sailing fishermen were drifters or draggers, again with large crews.
    Sailpower is just that, power, and as such it costs money. More power = bigger sails = more initial cost and maintenance = more difficult to handle etc. To get realistic savings from sail assist is probably not feasible for most fisheries.
    However, to easily get a 40 percent increase in fuel economy plus 15 percent increase in horsepower see the use of self-generated hydrogen gas to supplement diesel engines.
    The October 2010 issue of National Fisherman has an article on the TERRI'S GALE, a troller actively fishing out of San Pedro CA, who is getting wonderful results from his experiments with homemade equipment. Try nationalfisherman.com and the article may be on-line.
    Every time I've seen a sailing f/v at sea, it's usually been a schooner with the mainsail removed to accommodate the gear and a small foresail set to stop rolling. Nobody seems to use the sails for locomotion these days.
     
  13. RHP
    Joined: Nov 2005
    Posts: 840
    Likes: 87, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 1183
    Location: Singapore

    RHP Senior Member

    Just spent the last 24 hours trawling through your website - some great designs Tad, congratulations.

    The Passagemaker Lite series look fascinating and in truth are the first 'motorboats' (to a yottie...) I have ever thought I could see myself voyaging in. I was down in Fjordland, south island New Zealand and was struck by the idea of returning, the PML would be the ideal vessel.

    Congratulations on a great concept and I wish you every success and many sales. The 74 is wicked.

    http://passagemakerlite.com/news/ for those who haven't seen this great series.

    Richard
     
  14. Chuck Losness
    Joined: Apr 2008
    Posts: 350
    Likes: 48, Points: 28, Legacy Rep: 135
    Location: Central CA

    Chuck Losness Senior Member

    Richard,
    I have to agree with you about Tad's Passagemaker Lite designs. I especially like his 39 and the 46 is a close second. My finances will never be sufficient for me to afford one. But it is nice to admire and dream about.
    Chuck
     

  15. michael pierzga
    Joined: Dec 2008
    Posts: 4,862
    Likes: 116, Points: 0, Legacy Rep: 1180
    Location: spain

    michael pierzga Senior Member

    What would be interesting to know is how you handle a vessel when offshore longlineing. I assume during actual fishing operations the vessel would be in 100 percent motorboat mode, with the sails used to add efficiency during passages. How you handle your gear and drive the boat would be important. Masts and rigging add substantial windage aloft. as a result its difficult to hold a sailing vessel on station when motoring at low speed. Typically the bow of the boat will blow to leeward from the windage of the masts. How do you fish ???
     
Loading...
Forum posts represent the experience, opinion, and view of individual users. Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post.
When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. Your circumstances or experience may be different.