Marsh Cat Plans

[celiloman]

Having never seen the plans for Joel White's Marsh Cat 15 design, could someone tell me if building this boat using glued plywood lapstrake construction is possible using the plans? Thanks!

[Keith Wilson]

Not only is it possible, it's been done. Great Lakes Boatbuilding (http://www.greatwoodboats.com/index2.htm) has made at least two which look like they turned out very well. Look under Custom Boats, and then Sailboats. I like this boat a lot.

http://www.greatwoodboats.com/csb02.jpg

http://www.greatwoodboats.com/csb13.jpg

The plans don't show lapstrake construction, however, so you'd have to work out a fair number of details yourself. I don't think it would be difficult, but I've built a couple of glued-ply lapstrake boats already.

[ 04-27-2004, 03:27 PM: Message edited by: Keith Wilson ]

[Buddy]

Celioman, these are the two I mentioned replying to your Catboat site query. As drawn, like a Beetlecat, it's intended you sit on the cockpit sole. I've done a rather elaborate collaspable set of seats for mine so I can clear awy and camp out overnight on the floorboards. I think the white boat( look in comparison to the yello boat) has actually raised the freeboard a strake co there's room for those low seats and still have the coaming at backrest height. He has probaly raised the boom, if not the whole rig a bit too. Haven't asked him.

[Frank E. Price]

Or one could just toss in a couple of folding lawn chairs. VERY nice boats. I've always thought the Marsh Cat was an underreported design. Think WB will ever do a building article?

Frank

P.S. They've done a Wenda article, yet a Marsh Cat would be a lot more practical and still classy.

[ 05-01-2004, 06:25 PM: Message edited by: Frank E. Price ]

[Buddy]

Frank, it's interesting you should mention folding chairs and classy in the same post. But my wife has just bought a pair of low (8") camping cots that struck me as awfully clever as long as I can pad the wire "legs" so they don't tear up the floorboards. Stow away to almost nothing.

I'm with you, if there are hundreds of Joel White's Havens built, why not more than 10 or 12 reports I've read of MarshCats? He did this design first by the way. I think it has the tremendous advantage of gear capacity and open cockpit which are handy for many uses, overnighting is just one of them. Closing in the cuddy with doors or panels, even a canvas curtain goes a long way to provide out of sight but convenient carrying space for a bunch of mostly light, but bulky gear- and the outboard.

I LOVE this boat- it's a wonderful sailer as long as you can live with displacement speed performance on a 14 foot waterline. Won't plane like a Thistle. Very comfortable motion- one small boat my wife enjoys sailing with me. Not tippy, not squirrelly. Stately enough for her, responsive enough for me to enjoy taking her out instead of my 22 foot daggerboard racer/crusier "sportboat" of 1977. vintage.

I enjoy just looking at this boat. Get a lot of comments suggesting other people do to. Joel got a Herreshoff 12 1/2 as a kid, and it's still in the family. He maintained a mess of Beetlecats in his business. I think he's captured the best of both those boats, and his own design artistry and engineering in the Marsh Cat.

[celiloman]

Thanks guys for the great info and pictures! I have checked out the Great Lakes Boatbuilding site and have seen some awesome coldmold Marsh Cat pictures. Buddy, I would be most interested in seeing your collapsable seating arrangement, as I too would be using this boat for camping and the like. Have read Oughtred's lapstrake book cover-to-cover many times now. Hope it won't be too difficult to line out the strakes. Will contact the Great Lakes Boatbuilding people to see what help they may have with that or what it might cost if I get too sideways on it!! :eek:

[Frank E. Price]

Being a 30 year SE Alaskan and having been raised in the Pacific Northwest in a mostly none-boating family, I had always wondered what the deal was with catboats. Then I rented a Beetle Cat at the Center for Wooden Boats on Lake Union some years ago. It's just a little 12 foot boat, but when you get aboard, it's big! I just had to see if it would go to windward at all. I sailed it to the other end of the lake and into a marina, successfully tacking up the spaces between several floats dead to windward and back out again (steady light breeze). I was pleasantly suprised. Guess those old Yankees do know a thing or two.

After that experience I figured an 18 foot catboat would be damned big, but a 15 footer would be real close to perfect.

As for the folding chairs, seems to me that not building in the seats, as in the Beetle Cat, leaves the cockpit wide open for anything, while the folding chairs can reside in the cuddy and come out to be used at anchor, or on the beach. Sweet setup.

Frank

[rbgarr]

I grew up sailing Beetle cats in Osterville, Cape Cod and they were wonderful boats for a kid to learn to sail in. We sailed all over Nantucket Sound and often camped out aboard.

I was always amused to see adults sailing them. They just seemed too big for the boats, but I've changed my view on that now that I'm older myself.

One time my parents went out together sailing in our Beetle and when they came back to pick up the mooring, my mother got swept off the foredeck by the boom. My father went forward to grab her and the mooring pendant and got swept off also. Funniest thing I ever saw and I almost wet my pants laughing as I watched from the beach. The water was only a few feet deep at the mooring so I waded out, climbed aboard (they couldn't) and put the boat away while they waded ashore and went home to have a couple of drinks.

The Beetle was named Pequod, our Boston Whaler was named Scrimshaw (still in the family) and the Rozinante moored in the harbor was named Queequeg.

Melville-mad, ya think?

[Buddy]

Celioman, here are some pictures of the seats and other removable/interchangiable bits of kit for my Marsh Cat. www.icommservices.com/buddy/marshcat1.jpg www.icommservices.com/buddy/marshcat2.jpg www.icommservices.com/buddy/marshcat3.jpg www.icommservices.com/buddy/marshcat4.jpg

[Buddy]

Anyone have the magic to make these jpg pictures show up? Seems to be beyond me to post pictures of boats here.

[John Bell]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Buddy:
[qb]Celioman, here are some pictures of the seats and other removable/interchangiable bits of kit for my Marsh Cat.
[IMG]

[ 05-05-2004, 03:42 PM: Message edited by: John Bell ]

[John Bell]

Originally posted by Buddy:
Anyone have the magic to make these jpg pictures show up? Seems to be beyond me to post pictures of boats here.I got 'em up but oh my! They were all 2491 x 3285 pixels, so I took the liberty of resizing them and posting them here.

http://mistermoon.home.mindspring.com/small_marshcat1.jpg
http://mistermoon.home.mindspring.com/small_marshcat2.jpg
http://mistermoon.home.mindspring.com/small_marshcat3.jpg
http://mistermoon.home.mindspring.com/small_marshcat4.jpg

You forgot put http:// after the IMG tag. Don't fix it however, they are too big for this format.

[ 05-05-2004, 03:47 PM: Message edited by: John Bell ]

[celiloman]

Buddy and John, Thanks so much for posting and visibility of these snaps! Sure has my blood flowing! Hope I can get to sleep tonight!! The details on your boat are awesome and it looks like you thoroughly enjoy yourselves on the water! The way it should be. Thanks so much for sharing these with everyone. Think I'll go to the shop for a few minutes here before turning in! ha!

[Buddy]

Thanks John for the assist. I'll try your instructions next time.I'm just not into computers enough.

[John Bell]

Just in case anyone wants to see the full size pics, click on the following links. There really are number of very nice details that you'll see on the full sized pics that you won't see above. But be warned, they are big files.

Marsh Cat 1 (3.24 MB) (http://www.icommservices.com/buddy/marshcat1.jpg)
Marsh Cat 2 (1.91 MB) (http://www.icommservices.com/buddy/marshcat2.jpg)

Marsh Cat 3 (1.94 MB) (http://www.icommservices.com/buddy/marshcat3.jpg)

Marsh Cat 4 (2.03 MB) (http://www.icommservices.com/buddy/marshcat4.jpg)

[Garrett Lowell]

Wonderful! Is that hinge on the mast detailed in the plans, or was that of your own devising? And give up some details on the swans and name plate: carved and painted?

[Buddy]

The hinged mast is of my design. The trick is that the break in the mast does NOT have to be rigidly reinforce. Because of the three stays, it works out be the same a mast stepped on the deck of a cabin top, just consider my lower mast section a tall, cylindrical, very strong cabin. The covering tube just holds the rig up while I attach the headstay, and smooths the travel of the mast hoops.

I have always loved pubs and pub signs, particularly the carved ones's. In fact I got the idea for the arched and paneled cuddy bulkhead and doors from the mahogany bar of one of favorite hangouts in Charleston. So I took the mahogany transom as my shaped signboard and elaborated from there. Most of our boats have a name of a color in them. I'm a graphic designer. So WHITE SWAN. Sits like a fat, but graceful swan on the water. Sounds like a pub's name. The swans ( grown up Louis on the outside, baby cynget Louis on the inside) are from E. B.White's Trumpet of the Swan children's book. These and the nameboard I carved from basswood and then thoroughly coated with epoxy, epoxy primer, finally Brightside paint. It might be hard to see in the picture but the nameboard is painted in a Blackwatch tartan, one of my favorite textiles. The letters and Louis' trumpet, the stars on the genoa cars, and the stylized "W" swoosh in the rudder cheeks are gold leaf. All mount with bronze flathead screws, stand off from the transom on 3/32" nylon washers. Painted the screws to match whatever sourrounded them, but these items are easily removable come revarnishing time.

[Garrett Lowell]

That's impressive. She's definitely easy on the eyes! With the hinged mast, how long does it take you to get from the trailer to the water?

[Buddy]

About 10 minutes to remove the full boat cover, put on the rudder and tiller, put in the two drain plugs, plug in the trolling motor, and raise the mast. Another 10 minutes to launch and put away the trailer. About the same to put away, but sometimes the boat is ornery about setting in the keel rollers. If there's two of us you can manhandle it the parking lot, but by myself its easier to ease back down the ramp and try again. I've rigged some hinged side guides and bungee cords now which get me up to a 3 out of 4 success rate.
It's very easy to set up the mast single handed. The only "hang up" is ,unless my wife's with me or somebody is in the parking lot, almost always on the first try, a lazy jack , a halyard, a reefing line hooks over the tiller or something in the cockpit and I have to lay the mast down back down and clear the line.
But this hinged mast is light years faster than untangling the halyards, stringing mast hoops , then doing the vertical mast balancing ballet on the foredeck setting the mast. Then attaching three stays with there clevis pins and cotterpins. Then tightening. Then attach boom. Hook up mast hoops. Run main sheet, outhauls...... used to take at least 45 minutes to set it up before.

The boat sits 100 feet from the water at the sailing club where I keep my 22' sloop in a slip. The hinged mast has made it three times more likely from me to take the catboat, and not my "big" boat out for an afternoon sail. Before the changeover, the Marshcat was almost exclusively used as my "road boat", as it was much more easy to rig and tow than a 4000 pound trailer load of sloop. Lot's of times now we weekend on the big boat at the dock, and sail the Marshcat.

[John E Hardiman]

index recovery