Time
to get back to work, on the blog at least as I’ve been very busy on other
things. I got home from Chile to find a
pile of work stacked up and waiting for my attention .The engineering work that helps finance my lifestyle has grown due
to one of the very few woodworking machinery engineers in this area no longer
being available, he was an older gent
and some of this work being heavy it had just got past him.
I
appreciate the work, the income is very
welcome as there is some financial catching up to do, but it does take me away
from important things such as boats, design, blogging and so on.
All that plus maintenance on my ship, a family
member needing support and being honest, tired after a long and busy trip away
in a country new to me meant that I’ve been a bit preoccupied.
So,
I’m close to caught up, and its back to the drawing board, literally. I’ve two major projects on right now, one is
a custom junk rigged cruiser which will stay out of the public eye until the
customer is ok with putting it out there
and the other is my own “Long Steps” project. That’s ben mentioned here before, but for those who missed it, the boat is a long
range sail and oar expedition/adventure boat intended for a 3 month voyage
which will be in mostly open waters.
My
intention is to get out there and have
“the adventure of a lifetime” before the years catch up with me. They’ve been
flickering past at a distressingly rapid rate of late and its high time I got
on with it.
The
idea is to have a boat that is about 70% sail, but which will row well enough
to cover a few miles in dead calm, or to work into a narrow space up a river or
in a harbour. It has to be able to cope with very bad conditions in open
waters, so needs to be close to being fully blue water capable in spite of
being an “open boat”, and needs to provide some shelter and comfort for my no
longer as young as it once was body.
I’ve
two designs which provided information for this design, one being SCAMP,
astonishing capable for only 11 ft 11in long, with her ballast, self draining
cockpit floor, easy righting from capsize and her little shelter. Someone recently called that shelter a
“Cuddly”, I suspect that he was using a
smartphone which translated “cuddy” into something that was in its lexicon but
what a good name!
Anyway,
SCAMP has a lot of the virtues that I wanted, but extra length gives speed
under both sail and oar, so I looked at Walkabout which has been described by a
very experienced sailor as “the fastest monohull I’ve ever sailed”.
It’s
a long slim boat, especially on the waterline and moves very well under its
modest sail area, as well as being nice to row.
She
has other virtues in that she’s easy to roll back up after a capsize, can be
sailed away without bailing, and has a particularly easy motion in a seaway.
Long
Steps is a slightly larger “Walkabout” style hull, her shape massaged to give
more form stability, ballasted with a big water tank under the self draining
cockpit floor, with an offset centerboard like SCAMPs one which frees up the
cockpit so making a nice space in which to lie down and sleep, she has the same
“cuddly” and storage/high up bouyancy locker in the forward part of what looks
like a mini cabin, and I’ve used some of the extra space at the after end to
provide space in which to stand at the helm as well as a space for my favourite
piece of small boat cruiser furniture which is a small swimming pool bean bag.
Yes
I tie it in with a lanyard.
So I
drew the first draft of the plans, did all the arithmetic, worked over the
structure, and was ok with it, mostly. I
did though think that the space under the “cuddly” was a bit tight, and we have
some interfereing beaureuocrats in local
governments who believe that dying is bad for you and have made up a rule that
when out in boats under 6 metres long ( just under 20 ft) lifejackets ( PFDs)
must be worn at all times. This nonsense
only applies in a few places but still, it can be avoided.
I promise, when I get the plans a little further along I'll get them scanned and put a pic up that will include the full sailplan and a bit more detail.
In the meantime, this will give you an idea as to what I'm up to here.
Now
I’m not about to row Long Steps up a river against the tide on a hot windless
day while wearing same, and when I built a mockup I found that that space
under the shelter was a bit tight, so I’ve redrawn it. I’d only built two components, so there is
not much to discard, and the Mk 2 version is a little longer, same beam, has a
little more freeboard, more headroom and length in the “cuddly” and a bit more
volume in the ballast tank.
I’ve
two engineering jobs on today so wont be able to do much with that, but the Tax
man is sending me a refund this week, part of which will pay for enough plywood
to get properly started on the project.
Watch this space!
