Dutch Barge long distance cruisers

How long is a piece of string?

Thickness is specified by the designer and is what he considers appropriate.

Rule of thumb is 3mm is minimal thickness due to welding distortion more than actual strength. This is one reason why there's a practical minimum size with steel, under which you're better off using something else.

Increase thickness in line with displacement as per designer's scantlings.....

PDW

 

Folks that like metal boats seem to forget that for a long time boats were riveted together.

It is a few min to learn to rivet , and a long process to learn to weld well enough to go to sea with the results.

Might be a great pre cut kit , delivered with a pre cut interior in a sea land box that would be fine temp storage and workshop.

 

Sorry to dig up such an old thread on the Dutch Sailing Barge (Tjalk) issue, but I just registered with the forum a few minutes ago.

I fell in love with the aforementioned "Neeltje" when I first saw her on the hard in Baltimore back in 1997, and when I saw her listed for sale again last January, I bought her, and brought her up from Fort Lauderdale to Saint Augustine in April with the help of a brandy-new keel-mounted bow thruster, and a couple of friends who knew the ICW well enough to keep us in beer and out of trouble along the way.

Before leaving Fort Lauderdale, I unloaded about 4 tons of iron bilge ballast bars to compensate for her new 1/4'' hull plating.

She now has a new stern thruster, and I'll be the first to congratulate those of you who think you can dock a 40-ton 62' flat-bottom barge sideways in a 5 knot current the old fashioned way.






Hull design? She doesn't slice through the chop, she plows through it.

 

Did you have any trouble with shallow water on the ICW? I don't think it's been dredged here for a few decades.

 

Only once, when we tried to tie-up to an abandonned pier off the channel in Palm Coast.

Our primary concern was to avoid getting healed over by the wake of passing mega-yatchs in the Palm Beach area who were apparently going too fast to be able to read the "No Wake" signs in time.

 

So are you in St Augustine now? I have a friend who lives there that I sometimes visit.

Got some photos of your new boat??

There are not a lot of any types of vessels that you want to try to dock with that sort of broadside CURRENT.

I brought a 60' Chris Craft motor yacht into a dock that set broadside to the sizable current down near the south inlet at Daytona Beach long ago, and had an older dock swaying a bit. Of course I was trying to place myself upstream of the dock (current carrying us into the dock) so we would not be pinned against the dock early in the morning in prep for a trip out the inlet.

All the folks waiting for restaurant seating came out on the dock to see this 'big yacht',....should have seen them scatter when that old dock started swaying....ha...ha

 

Yes, we're in Saint Augustine. Neeltje's on the hard at the Marine Center, waiting for a new prop shaft coupling and a paint job.

The only decent picture I've got of her came from the sales listing and was taken about 5 years ago. I'll try to insert it below. Wish me luck...

 

Maybe take a few photos of here out of the water?

Was the steel hull 'renewed'? I think I remember hearing that she needed that.

Hope you got a good protective coating in the bilges now. Look thru the forms with a search for 'steel hull' and you will likely find some good advice. I'm just now learning more about the subject as I consider a steel hull for this coastal trawler I'm looking into
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-building/steel-hulls-composite-superstructure-topsides-47349.html

 

Very nice. Where will it be 'kept'?
I mistakenly thought you had taken it back to Baltimore and that's why I wondered how the ICW trip was. There has been no dredging for a few decades here and portions get to 2' shallow at low tide. We have a about a 7' tide.

 

The hull's just been over-plated up to above the waterline with 1/4'' button-and-seam welded steel. Most of the bilge was treated by the P/O, but I still have the fore cabin & anchor room to do this fall, along with all the bright work.

I'm keeping her here (in Saint Augustine) where I have easy access to everything until she's up to snuff. Then, I plan to take her to the Saint Johns River, near Palatka. At that level, the Saint Johns is practically 100% fresh water (which I'm sure she'll appreciate) and wide enough to sail on.

Before I can post any pictures of her on the hard, I'll have to figure out how to get them out of my smartass phone and onto the computer...

 

That involves hooking them together with an IUD cord. The transfer is extremely easy and should only take you a few days.

 

Thanks SamSam,

I was able to download a whole bunch of pictures from my Droid to my Windows 8 using precisely that method. Only problem was, once the download was purportedly complete, I was never able to find them again...

I just tried to e-mail them to myself, but that doesn't seem to be panning out either. Guess I'll have to go back to my local Verizon Boutique. They're very nice to me there. Every time I walk in, they greet me with a big smile and a "Hi, Dinosaur!".

In the mean time, I'm trying to get this boat ready for the "Loop", but with a 90 HP Lyman pushing a 40-ton blunt-nosed barge to a maximum speed of 5 knots at 2400 RPMs in dead water on a good day, I fear that I might be slightly under-powered to handle the Mississippi on the way back home.

I'm all for powering up, but I'm limited by her 27'' 3-blade prop, and from what I've heard, going to a 4-blade prop in this particular configuration would be useless, if not downright detrimental.

In short, I'm screwed by my screw, but hey, this baby was built like the Titanic, so what could possibly go wrong?

 

Yes, that's how all that stuff works, that's completely normal. It's usually accompanied by a large drop in computational speed or a total lockup.

I noticed in the photo you posted that your boat has a mast. Will you be able to lower that for bridges?

 

Yes, the mast folds, but if you want to go under really LOW bridges (10' or less), you have to detach the boom and lay it aside first, and that's a two-man operation.

Most traditional Tjalks have a counterweight at the bottom of the mast, which allows one person to simply lower it and raise it like a gate. The down side is that this counterweight swings down to the bilge, and the cabin usually stops aft of the mast, leaving only a crawl space from there to the bow.

In Neeltje's case, the counterweight's been chopped-off, and the anchor winch serves to mechanically raise and lower the mast using the forestay. It's a much slower process, but this has allowed the cabin to be extended forward all the way to the anchor room in order to add an extra 10' x 10' berth with normal head room.

Since the anchor winch also takes two to operate, I'm mounting a remote-controlled electric winch that will allow me to do the job solo from the stern while keeping the rigging out of the water as it slacks.

I also hope to use the same winch to raise and lower the mother-of-all-mainsails' gaff. The jib is relatively light and auto-tacking, so that can stay as is.

 

That's a lot of extra room added, well worth the modification.

I would guess you use some kind of brace to keep a decent amount of triangulation in the forestay, especially when the mast nears horizontal.?

Can you just leave the mast down without it being in the way too much?

How well does the boat sail?

What are the dimensions and the draft?