designing a fast rowboat

Rowing boats

To dcnblues, your address is San Francisco, and there are two clubs out there that have some boats you may be interested in. I'm not sure if they are rowing clubs or swimming clubs. One is the dolphins and the other is the south end club. the have rowing boats to support their swimmers in the rough water and some of the boats are real beauties.

 

Record thread yet?

Just wondering if the length of this thread is nearing a record? Mr. Harris; Absolutely stunning. I live les than an hour from NASA, they are right on the coast...you could teach them a few things!
Nordvindcrew...When is the next race? Your original post got me stated on fast rowboats, and now I have a problem...Hello, my name is Paul, and I am a boataholic. Launch of the Selway Fisher Mandarinn 17 is scheduled for next Sunday. I entered it in a local boat show and took best in class! Rowboats are so rare down here...I entered the "custom" bracket, as there is no classification for human-powered. The second place boat was a 37' custom built Italian motor launch, complete with mahogany-enclosed air-conditioned cabin. Go figure. Plans for the new boat yet? Have you looked at the Selway Fisher site? I joined their yahoo builders group, and was surprised to find that Paul Fisher regurlarly comments on questions posed by the various amatuer builders. He seems, from his messages, to be very approachable. His site has drawings for gigs, adirondack guideboats, thames river skiffs...I am just wondering out-loud (out-type?) if you might try a note to him to see if he would draw something to fit your needs?
Clint Chase, got yer ears on? (It's a Texas thing). Have not looked at your website lately, have you turned out one of the Scandinavian fast boats yet?

 

Wow, that Mandarin 17 is beautiful. Congratulations!

And thanks Jeff but if you read the last few pages you'll see those are my pics from those two rowing clubs and hear me talk (as a former member) about how their boats handle on the water. While I love that I can take those solid, heavy whitehalls out in almost any weather, 14 foot length, 200+ lb weight, and short oars get tiresome after a while. They do have sliding seats, however. And while I like the Viking's Daughter class, I haven't been able to try one and I simply want my own boat. I want, and am crushing on a St. Lawrence Skiff.

Here's a gorgeous pic of a 21 footer from Nextwave boats, (probably the SLRS design known as Bobby: 21 feet LOA, 43 inch beam, 220 pounds, 74 sq. ft. sail area, folding bronze centerboard.):

http://www.nextwaveboat.com/ (this page also has some great pics of the prettiest smaller rowboat I've ever seen, also previously covered in this thread, The Rushton Wee Lassie).

 

I found a good and interesting resource at Antique Boat America, a sales website (whose search function is broken). If you just go to their boats by length, give it time for several hundred boats to load, then scroll down to go through the 18-footers, you'll find numerous St. Lawrence skiffs for sale or sold, with some good pics that show how these boats were made, and their hull shapes:

http://www.antiqueboatamerica.com/ab_list_boatNew.asp?Left=ForSale&Type=ListAllByLength

Here's a good example from 1940:



http://www.antiqueboatamerica.com/ab_list_boatNew.asp?Left=ForSale&Type=ViewBoat&BoatId=30040

------------

And here's an interesting pic of a flashboat (also previously covered in this thread) and a SLRS, in a thread that circles back to this thread:

 

But the prettiest of the type is Annie, a St. Lawrence Skiff built by Bain & Company, Clayton, NY. At first, the closest I could find to original plans were at the Antique Boat Museum on the St. Lawrence River in Clayton, NY (formerly the 1000 Islands Shipyard Museum). It's funny with all the computer hull analysis that's gone on in this thread, I end up fixated on a Viking mutant hull from the 19th Century. I guess the boatbuilder guild's practical evolution wins this round:

Bain St. Lawrence Skiff / Built 1885 by Bain & Company, Clayton, NY. Length 18' 23/8". Beam 41 13/16"
http://www.abm.org/view-product.asp?pid=1226

That Bain skiff doesn't seem as perfect as Annie, so I kept looking, and Keith Quarrier put me on to a two part article in WoodenBoat from 1978 by Andrew Steever, where he draws plans from an existing boat. $3.50 each for PDF's of the back issues, so I bought them. Interesting reading about the history of St. Lawrence river skiffs, and their origins (some Viking DNA? probably). If anyone is interested, here's links:

ANNIE (St. Lawrence River skiff): construction commentary, plans, 20:48
http://www.woodenboat.com/wbstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=416:4345463b5a834c7c425ebf7b24a8b1bd

ANNIE (St. Lawrence River skiff): comments, plans, 21:26
http://www.woodenboat.com/wbstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=83_84&products_id=416

Isn't she purty?

 

Clint Chase and the WoodenBoat School are going to offer a very sexy, I imagine fairly light kit for Annie, possibly out this year.

I can't wait to see it as I think it's exactly what I want. Thanks to this thread for letting me vent my boating obsession. Hope I didn't go overboard.

 

Plans for Annie (same as published in WoodenBoat but the original, as-drawn size) are available from the Adirondack Museum for $15.
http://www.adkmuseum.org/
http://www.adirondackmuseumstore.com/plans.html
They also have plans for two Adirondack guide boats.

 

mandarin

I see you are a boat builder while I am but a person who builds boats strictly work quality. Congratulations on your beautiful build. RE Annie. A beauty to be sure, but Paul Neil who is one of the premier racers in the NE tried a SLRS and went back to a guide boat. They( guide boats ) are very seaworthy and fast as well as good looking. There is a bit of a problem with boats that are too long and too light: they tend to get up on the crest of two waves and get VERY tippy. In our one outing in our 20' boat we did notice the effect to a small extent.

 

Actually, Annie isn't really any longer than a guideboat. Neil usually rows a 17 footer which is all waterline, and Annie is only 18 feet with some overhang in the ends. She's also beamier than a guideboat, particularly on the waterline. This means more wetted surface, and I suspect it's the main reason Neil went back to a guideboat. Less wetted surface = more speed for less effort.

 

" I want, and am crushing on a St. Lawrence Skiff."

Steever rowed St Lawrence skiffs. His book is all about tuning oars and setting up St Lawrence skiffs and ADK guideboats. Last time I'm going to suggest that you read his book on this thread.

 

Thanks for the link DCockey, good to know. I have an email in to them to see how big their plan printout is as the description doesn't say.

Jeff, Rick Willoughby talked about the 'long, light, tippy' problem early in the thread and called it 'Flop Roll.' I like that term. Thanks for bringing it up, as it's a concern I do have. I'm also curious about the relationship of strength to weight - I'd hate to build cedar-strip super-light flyer, and then have her start cracking on me when I get caught out in bigger swells. Nobody's talked about that in all 73 pages of this thread: building a boat light for speed, and overdoing it. I guess it's not that hard to reinforce the hull interior if that's a problem, right?

And thanks Dick, really, for persevering: I didn't make the connection between the author of the book on wooden oars and the writer of the magazine articles on Annie. I've gone ahead and ordered the book. It was less expensive at the Mystic museum even than getting it used off the internet, so that was a big help too.

 

Plans of Annie as drawn are 24" x 36", two sheets.

 

AGB for Two

So I keep reading about Mr. Neils' success in his guide-boat. Considering his numerous wins, in varying conditions, that form seems to be the best, or at least nearly the best for open water rowing from calm to rough water. I am surprised to read that his boat is 17', as most of the plans I see are for 13-15 foot guide boats. Would a "standard" guide-boat form still keep its' shape and rowing qualities if stretched to 20 or 21 feet to allow room for two rowers? Could the upper 6" of the hull be flared out to allow for oar-on-gunnel rowing, without the need to overlap oars? Nordvindcrew wants to build in strip form, so it seems he could achieve some pretty drastic flowing forms if needed to get the beam where he wants it.

 

hull selection

I'm still looking around at different sources and haven't even come close to settling on a design for a strip built boat. It would be interesting to contemplate a 20'+ guide boat. Another interesting design is Paul Gartsides Flashboat. Too small for doubles. Could it be enlarged? In one of my last posts regarding Paul Neil I got two thoughts confused. I wasn't commenting on the length of the two boars, just that Paul had gone back to his guide boat. The second thought was about flop-roll in a general sense. We did notice it in our one time out in the 20' Nordfiord. not extreme, but still there. I can see how a really long kayak could really have some problems

 

These overlaps look so odd to me:

They appear almost like a flaw occured during building, but it was clearly done intentionaly. Don't know if I like this particular (on an otherwise beautiful boat).