Kinston lobster boats

I have a book, American Small Sailing Craft, by Howard Chapelle. It is basically a history of american sailing craft. There are lots of interesting old boats in this book, but one intrigued me more than any other: a Kingston Lobster boat by Ransom. Kingston lobster boats were fast sailers. This led to racing, which then influenced their developement. The Ransom boat was a later design and considered one of the fastest. An easily driven hull with a long run aft. I alwasy thought that this design could be modified to make an excellent little cruiser. The original work boats were open boats with no balast, except maybe a few rocks. I'm thinking a slightly deeper ballasted keel and a small cabin and you'd have a great little over-nighter. This job would be far beyond my abilities, but I'm certain a good naval architect could pull it off.

 

That idea has been discussed a lot. However, when you modify the boat to make it deeper and taller, it often looses the good characteristics that first attracted you to the design.

 

I realize that conversions like this seldom come out well. This is exactly my objection to the Mckenzie river dory. A boat meant for comercial fishing on the Atlantic and rowed in the direction of the bow (the Banks dory), is converted, for river fishing and rowed in the direction of the stern. The miracle is that it works as well as it does, but a conversion seldom works as well as a boat designed from scratch for the purpose.

 

30 years ago a friend built a Kingston Lobster boat from the Chapelle lines and rigged it as a schooner and sailed it from San Francisco to the PNW, where it still resides, last seen in Nanaimo BC. When queried how it turned out he said fine, just needed another 40 feet of boat in the middle!

 

Somewhat off track for this thread but the McKenzie river dory was not a direct derivation of the bank dory. Rather it was derived from flat bottom skiffs. Over time the rocker was increased and the transom was narrowed which wound up somewhat resembling a bank dory, but with wider beam and much more rocker. Roger Fletcher's book has a good, documented history. http://www.riverstouch.com/Book.htm

Whether the current boats are the best boats for their use is a different question.

 

A bit more freeboard would be reasonable. If you keep the boat at no more displacement than a boat loaded with traps and lobster, it will do fine too.