fishing offshore in a rowboat.

Discussion in 'Boat Design' started by coopscraft, Dec 6, 2013.

  1. coopscraft
    Joined: Dec 2013
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    Location: oregon

    coopscraft Junior Member

    the 8 foot seas I'm coming to find is in two parts. One I seem to have underestemated the forcasting ability of noa. Also, in my neighborhood I don't think I have ever seen a surf smaller than 4 feet looking out accross the beach-even when the swell is glassy. Iv also seen the surf so high as to make the jetty irrelevent. Not that I would be near it. It looks like I can pick the weather and the tide so this is now less an issue. I am new to fishing. So a I have a lot to learn. Will be reading books on boat design and seamanship.
     
  2. coopscraft
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    coopscraft Junior Member

    Mixed feelings about moters. They are expensive to buy and install, loud dirty guzzle like an suv and when they breakdown u realize u might need 2 or to row etc. Just rebuilt the moter on my car am a little burnt out on motors. No question that when they work and payed for they ar nice to have.
     
  3. coopscraft
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    coopscraft Junior Member

    Ok having perused the above commentary, I have concluded I will have to have more than one boat. The first will be a smaller one for 1 or 2 rowers with a small stowable sail for returning down wind. A centerboard and kickup rudder for steering and modest windword ability. I'm leaning towards glued lap construction with frames and lots of buyancy in foam. Use will be only on very calm days at the right tide to be able to row back in. I will make some numbers soon for yall to look at. Surf and storm will be avoided. As per sugestion the peapod is on the shortlist. The other boat will be a whole nother thing.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2013
  4. MoePorter
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    MoePorter Junior Member

    Here's the best collection of "historical ash breezers for fishing along the Oregon coast" I've found - http://www.pacificcity.org/photos/main-dories.html they are mostly dory types with 3-4person crews.

    It's no coincidence Cape Kiwanda is the center of early coastal Oregon beach launched fishing - you need a Cape, jetty or the rare flat calm to safely launch small boats off the Oregon coast...google "roaring 40's..." Also the money fish of the day - Salmon - were more easily caught on their return to the rivers....

    Beach launching should be strongly considered as it opens up vast areas of the coast difficult to reach with outboard skiffs because of the distance from protected jetty boat ramps. That means lots of unmolested fish populations & easy catching. It will involve design compromises mostly around the boats size, weight and no keel - it's not an easy problem to solve but doable. Most experienced folk would say - just get a kayak - and it's good advice...but a two person (3? in calm conditions...) beach launch-able skiff with real oars & sit up/move around "comfort" well that's a pretty good idea too...

    In the bigger picture, the peapods, wherrys, seabright skiffs, whitehalls, St. Lawrence skiffs, Newfoundland sealing skiffs, dories, (what types am I missing...?) that would be possible candidates were all developed on the East Coast of North America which is ultimately a vast lee shore protected from the prevailing westerlies - small boat heaven! I suspect the suitable Scandinavian types also operated in generally protected waters.
    The Oregon coast on the other hand is pretty much small boat hell...although they didn't get down that far - except when enslaved by Russian otter hunters - the Eskimo kayak is the only indigenous small boat that worked out - and in it's modern form still does.

    The single best book to educate yourself on these small boat types is John Gardner's Building Classic Small Craft. My edition doesn't cover epoxy heavy build methods very well but for comparison's & introductions to small boat types it's invaluable...
    http://www.amazon.com/Building-Classic-Small-Craft-Instructions/dp/007142797X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386697053&sr=8-1&keywords=john+gardner+building+classic

    Moe
     
  5. coopscraft
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    coopscraft Junior Member

    We do actually have an indiginous boat for beach launching. It is a semi-dory about 22 feet long, and carries a 60horse outboard in a well. As far as I know the only beach with pu/trailer access for this purpose is pacific city. So beach launching anywhere else for a rowboat or small outboard will have to be a very light boat--in 4 foot surf in the best of days. Kayak? I have read john gardners book and sequal. Great boats but seem to be all for that lee shore you mentioned. I've only been out 3 times in a charter. In two of the three cases the swell was glassy. The crew said it was the calmest sea they had ever seen. But I could not have rowed a swampscott dory through the corresponding surf. Perhaps I'm a bit of a shrimp.
     
  6. Mr Efficiency
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    Mr Efficiency Senior Member

    The obvious problem with any rowed boat, through any kind of surf, even relatively innocuous stuff, is coming back in, not in the going out through it so much. Your boat will broach in all likelihood, and a big chance of going over, for the simple reason that unlike the powered vessel, you can't stay on the back of the wave. If you really have the idea of going fishing in a rowed craft and surf beach launching it, I'd advise you to shelve the idea forthwith.
     
  7. coopscraft
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    coopscraft Junior Member

    I highly suspect mr efficiency is correct on returning in surf. There's got to be a reason why there are no ash breeze surf boats indigineous to oregon.
     
  8. fredrosse
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    fredrosse USACE Steam

    Proper Boat

    The small boat given to Cap. Bligh in the South Pacific:

    Perhaps this type of boat might be ideal???:D

    In an extraordinary feat of seamanship, Bligh navigated the 23-foot (7 m) open launch on a 47-day voyage to Timor in the Dutch East Indies, equipped with a quadrant and pocket watch and without charts or compass. He recorded the distance as 3,618 nautical miles (6,701 km; 4,164 mi). He then returned to Britain and reported the mutiny to the Admiralty on 15 March 1790, 2 years and 11 weeks after his original departure.
     

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    Last edited: Dec 11, 2013
  9. PAR
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    PAR Yacht Designer/Builder

    This is the only reason this particular boat (likely a jolly) performed so well, which had nothing to do with the hull's actual attributes.
     
  10. Milehog
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    Milehog Clever Quip

  11. MoePorter
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    MoePorter Junior Member

    Once again...

    "Here's the best collection of "historical ash breezers for fishing along the Oregon coast" I've found -http://www.pacificcity.org/photos/main-dories.html they are mostly dory types with 3-4person crews."]

    You do have to look at the pictures to see them...

    My goodness...it is a skill & there are risks but it was done throughout the world for thousands of years in a variety of craft. Moe
     
  12. coopscraft
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    coopscraft Junior Member

    I notice the pacific dory has a lot of rocker forward. I wonder if this has to do with broaching. Staying high on the ends might give one the ability to direct the boat in complex current. West coast river dories have radical rocker fore and aft. My only experience with lots of rocker was a bolger designed 'elegant punt'. It had the tracking of a rabbit. I als built and own a 12ft rescale of a dorybook 14fter. It is very nice on lakes if u have good ballance. I had two young adults trying to throw each other into the willamette once. I was able to counterACT and keep the rail above the drink.
     
  13. coopscraft
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    coopscraft Junior Member

    I think the idea here is that it is a risky skill to obtain by an unguided novice on a windword unprotected shore.--especially if said novice is a tubalard. That is the warning. In ancent times people dealt with a higher mortality rate too. Also moe, I don't know where your travels have taken you, but surf on a good day in socal compared to surf on a good day in oregon is like the difference between a charging lamb and a charging bull. I have walked through breakers in cal with my son on my hip. In oregon, a horse would be tossed on its head.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2013
  14. coopscraft
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    Location: oregon

    coopscraft Junior Member


  15. bregalad
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    bregalad Senior Member

    If negotiating the surf is the controlling factor you should look at boats designed with that function foremost in the SOR.
    Here is one:
    http://store.gartsideboats.com/coll...pedal-boat/products/20ft-surf-dory-design-154

    I was a lifeguard in Cape May, NJ during college (when the oceans were young .... circa late 60's). We had to practice launching and landing the lifeboats through the surf, although never anything approaching 8 feet. Three foot surf more or less was about it. It has a lower 'fun factor' than you might think. One oarsman loses control of an oar and another receives a pretty good whack.

    My recollection is that the boats we had were very much like the Gartside boat except ours had a round bottom instead of what is mostly a vestigial flat bottom in the Gartside boat. I believe ours were 19'.
     
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