Sea Sled Madness: It's Incurable

Indeed.
What is required now, is to draw a hull, any hull matters little at this stage, that is a basic monohull that fits your dimensions.
Then place everything you want onto that hull which starts to be come your General Arrangement.
This must be done all at the same scale...ie 1:1

Once you have drawn that up with all that is required, then we can look at the second spiral.

Doing anything other than the above, is just wasting time and gets you no where fast.

 

Except the Sea Sled love affair part!

 

I do like sea sleds. I like thinking about them. I like making them. I like talking to random strangers at Walmart about sea sleds while they try to get the security guard's attention.
"Do you have a minute to talk about our lord and saviour, Albert Hickman?"

 

That's my boy.
Never lose the faith ...

Otherwise, we'd all be homogeneous!

 

I see a possibly lucrative new business opportunity here for you - set up a new church (it could be called the First National Church of the Sea Sled Inc) with yourself as the Chief Minister to preach the good seakeeping word of the Sea Sled community and the genius of Apostle Hickman..... sea sleds will really take off in popularity then!

 

I'm Concerned, Very Concerned

I try not to react when you tell me about Serenity's leaks
and finding gallons of standing water in some compartments.
You're getting water infiltration into your plywood and strip planking.
Your hull will become soggy and eventually fail, at a time of high load...
You have no limber holes and no bilge pump...
I wonder how many other compartments have standing water in them...

I think you should get Serenity sorted and then sell Lime.
I don't think you should build another boat.
Fix (and finish) Serenity and use it, every day.
It would be way cheaper than the trajectory you're on now.

I would drill inspection holes in all your compartments and go from there.
A haulout is likely in order, fence posts and a come-along at the next high tide.
Fog your engine.
You may want to consider building a weather structure over it.
Can you wire a thermostat to that overpowered Herman-Nelson you've got?

Just my humble opinion, take it for what it's worth.

 

Serenity is coated inside and out, so standing water poses no particular risks. It's a PITA that a compartment (port side between the transom and B6) had water in it. It was fresh water, and appeared very recently, so snow saturated with rain.

Serenity can't use our slip at the marina so that's a non-starter.

We will probably sell or scrap Lime when the next commuter comes into service, but Lime is coming to the end of her days. Hull leaks badly. Some inside sole structure is rotting. Steering is rusted and suspect. Ancient outboard is getting unreliable. Like that. So we need a new commuter in the same size range, and spending time in boats every day makes me like Serenity more every day, not less. The next boat will also be a sea sled.

 

Compare these front decks.
The guy who owns the first boat would only go out on the bow if he had no choice. The second boat is at least safe-ish, but otherwise useless. The third, that's just fantastically useful.

 

The second picture, with the bumper tied on to the front eye, For what purpose? If you used it to push into a very low dock, it would merely move to the side
??

 

@DogCavalry I appreciate the point you make re the photos above, but there was probably never any requirement in their SORs (if they ever had one to begin with) for the pointy nosy boats to load either people or stores over their bows.

Serenity is light years better than the pointy noses in this respect, but only really for working with a dock - not so easy for beaching.
One requirement in the original SOR for the aluminium cat in my avatar was for good access for passengers to board and disembark at a beach quickly and easily - they wanted a large ramp like a landing craft, but with cat hulls.
The first photo below shows the ramp she had in her previous life - later on they had no requirement for beach landing, so they modified the area between the bows to have a very ergonomic swimming ladder instead.

 

"The hallmark of an open mind:
Not letting your ideas become your identity.

If you define yourself by your opinions,
questioning them is a threat to your integrity.

If you see yourself as a curious person or a lifelong learner,
changing your mind is a moment of growth."

 

Good question. I'm really not sure what they have in mind. It definitely seems to be an afterthought.

 

@bajansailor , that's a very nice design feature.

 

My guess is the bow eye is nearly impossible to reach and so the fender is used. As we all know, fenders have two holes, so the captain reaches down and grabs the fender to hook mooring or dockline I'd say (for trailering)..?