Advice on a cruising dinghy..?

[Kaa]

Greetings,

I'm thinking about a boat and would much appreciate ideas, suggestions, and general comments. My criteria for that boat look as follows:

(1) Must be easily trailerable. Let's say under 21 feet with a reasonable beam.

(2) Must be able to fit four adults and two kids for a daysail. At the same time, it must be amenable to singlehandling.

(3) Must have shoal draft and be beachable. I like gunkholing and staying for the night in wild places.

(4) Must be seaworthy in that much of its time will be spent in coastal waters. Obviously I don't expect an offshore boat, but it must be able to handle chop and waves reasonably well.

(5) Must be pretty :-) That's pretty subjective, so I'll say that I like northern european type boats (e.g. classic scandinavian boats) -- long flowing lapstrake/clinker hulls, double-enders or wine-glass transoms, this kind of thing. I don't particularly like boxy or chubby boats.

(6) Must be able to do well in light air. Speed-wise, I don't expect it to plane, but it should be able to get to hull speed without much problems.

(7) I would much prefer a wooden boat. Glass boats are very prone to being plasticky and soulless. That's not an absolute, however. Price and maintenance are concerns.

(8) Must be quick to launch and recover. Let's say under half an hour from pulling up to the ramp to casting off.

It seems to me that these criteria lead to a few conclusions.

(1) and (2) together force an open boat, because a standard pocket cruiser has to divide its limited space between the cockpit and the cabin/cuddy. At the same time (4) would indicate a bit of deck, at least fore, and maybe narrow side decks. (3) means we're looking at a centerboard boat (possible variations are a daggerboard or leeboards).

Essentially, I think, this list calls for something like a classic British cruising dinghy of the Drascombe Lugger type. But what else is out there?

Any suggestions?

Kaa

[Dave Gray]

John Welsford'd Pathfinder sounds like it would fit the bill. It certainly is nice to look at and seems to meet all your criteria.

[Thorne]

Yeah, Welsford's Pathfinder or his 6-meter Whaler -- the latter being more Nordic and pretty.

http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/jw/index.htm

Pathfinder -
http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/jw/pathfinder/P-Pf-15.jpg

6 meter Whaler -
http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/jw/6m_whaler/6mw1.jpg

For more of the Nordic look, Ian Oughtred's designs are hard to beat -

http://www.duckflatwoodenboats.com/mainpages/gallery?KID=34

Ness Yawl -
http://www.duckflatwoodenboats.com/designers/oughtred/nessyawl1.jpg

Caledonia Yawl -
http://www.duckflatwoodenboats.com/designers/oughtred/caledonianyawl1.jpg

[kenjamin]

I'm currently building a Caledonia Yawl in my 20' 6" x 20' 6" garage and every square inch is needed for the build. I'm building the four plank per side version but there is a seven available that to some is even prettier. It will have the ability to take six adults sailing (like when your kids grow up). The Ness Yawl is faster but better with two or three adults or four at most. The Caledonia Yawl website is active and interesting http://www.mavc2002.com/caledoniayawl/# and there are several variations available for rig and decking etc. Iain Oughtred, the designer, is very kind and helpful but only accepts snail mail. The hull shape is a beautiful thing and I can't wait to flip her over and start on the inside. Xena will be set up for fishing with a large live well, a slightly oversized motor (4Hp Yamaha instead of the 2HP Honda that most guys use), and storable masts that store along the gunwales out of the way of fishing. The Caledonia yawl is a very versatile boat that is also very seaworthy with an easily driven hull. Expect to spend $8000 to $10000 for a well made, fully outfitted boat and trailer. Loaded boat and trailer weight is about 1000 lbs. A little higher for decked versions.

[Kaa]

Hmm... thanks for the info.

So I'm now looking at

Iain Oughtred's Caledonia Yawl
Swallowboats' Storm 19
John Welsford's Pathfinder
Norseboat

Anything else in the same class..?

Kaa

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

Frank Dye and the Wayfarer (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Frank+Dye%22+Wayfarer&btnG=Search&meta=)

It'd be hard to ignore the Wayfarer.

Or Romilly (http://www.burnettyachtdesign.co.uk/romillyspv.html)

The Shrimper (http://www.shrimperowners.org) would stand a close look.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

http://www.burnettyachtdesign.co.uk/images/romspv/roms14.jpg

Another vote for Romilly SPV. Much the prettiest, fastest and closest winded.

Wooden, and trailerable. 22ft rather than 21ft, but worth it, and beam is moderate (6ft 11ins) (note - will fit inside a container, too1)

The "budget" solution would indeed be a Wayfarer, but you are "pushing it" with four adults and two children in one.

I do not think much of the Shrimper, and it's plastic.

[Steve Paskey]

The lapstrake version of Phil Bolger's Chebacco. 19 feet long, 7 foot beam, cat yawl rigged. (As designed, the cockpit is bigger than the cabin. Don't know if the cabin on this one was stretched, or if it's just the perspective.)

http://www.boat-links.com/PT/PT2001/Jerome-1.jpg

[Dick Wynne]

Up to 21ft is a lot of boat to launch and recover if singlehanding. A 3/4-decked canoe yawl could be a good bit smaller than this and still offer the accommodation and seaworthiness you're after. The type was developed in the UK 120-odd years ago for quite bracing coastal conditions.

http://boatbldr.com/html/gallery/photos/photo001.jpg

Our sponsors have Wm garden's EEL (http://www.woodenboatstore.com/prodinfo.asp?number=400-090), 18'6, inspired by the Geo Homes original, it can be built without the cuddy for daysailing en famille. I recently parted with BUNNY (http://www.albertstrange.org/Bunny.PDF)- (caution - large PDF file) a 15'6" canoe yawl after the Victorian style, a good sea-boat by David Moss in the UK - unfortunately he only builds, does not supply plans, but you get the idea. Note this is not a for sale post - she has been sold.

Plans around this size and up by the English designers Albert Strange and Geo Holmes are available from, respectively, Mystic Seaport and (I believe) the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. I know of two examples of a 14ft Strange design building in the US today. Paul Fisher (http://www.selway-fisher.com/DoubleEs.htm#JIM)also has one or two, and Bill Clements (http://boatbldr.com/html/boats/koster.html)used to turn them out to Bolger designs, which may still be available. Given a clean sheet and enough time I would see if Paul Gartside (http://www.gartsideboats.com) could come up with something.

Yawl rig has a lot going for it for the singlehander, for example jib & mizzen alone offers good slow-speed control, and safe, balanced progress in strong winds without you necessarily being on your ear. Not that the one pictured has a jib, of course!

[ishmael]

Second P.I. If you really plan to beach it and haul it above the high tide mark you're going to want something smaller than Romilly. My Drascombe Lugger, 18 foot 6 inches and around 750 lbs. without gear, is just too big for two adults to easily wrestle up a beach.


Look up some of Dye's books about Wayfarer. It's one of those lovely meetings of various design considerations that still works half a century on, and here in NA you can find woodies in need of a little spit and polish for not much money. Though fitting four adults and two kids in anything light enough to really beach is going to be a challenge, and Wayfarer doesn't fit the image of Northern Euopean like some of the other boats posted.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

The beachability aspect.

I've cruised in a Firefly, a 12ft Uffa Fox racing dinghy (beaching and sleeping in a tent "without the option" - she would certainly capsize if left afloat!) and in an 18ft half decker, sleeping in the boat, with a tent over the boom.

The latter is in every way preferable. If the boat is a centreboarder, she can dry out and you can still sleep aboard her. But beaching a boat means that you have to struggle up and down a beach - assuming that there IS a beach, as opposed to mudflats or rocks, just when you are least inclined to do so, getting soaked in the process.

Very often, in sheltered areas, there is a beach at high water, with mudflats below it.

Beach the boat there and you are ashore for the next 12 hours, which seldom suits.

Beaching a dinghy on an open beach in anything other than a clock calm with no swell is a recipe for getting soaked at best, and probably much worse, whilst getting off again may be almost impossible.

It is worth going to great lengths to sleep aboard under a tent if not in a cuddy. You can still get ashore without a dinghy from a small centreboarder.

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

Oh - I've just noticed Kaa's tagline.

Wanderer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer_(sailing_dinghy)) It will not take four adults and two kids.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

There are a couple of Wanderers and the usual good supply of Wayfarers in our club. The Wanderer is a nice boat but noticeably slower (PY1132 vs 1099) Our Firefly (1170) will normally beat a Wanderer, despite the bigger PY; this may be due to sailing near the top of an estuary, where ability to windward counts more.

[ishmael]

I agree with Andrew that the ability to beach the boat is over-rated. It's better to learn how to anchor properly and sleep under a boom tent. As he said, you can always use any of these boats to go ashore when you want to.

That said, I've often thought a kayak, in reasonably skilled hands, is a pretty good boat for cruising our islands where the anchorages are often difficult. Pull the whole kip out and let the wind blow as it will. But that's a different subject.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I agree about the kayak - in skilled hands (not mine!)

But beaching and launching a cruising dinghy is a bore!

You can get (and will need!) inflatable rollers to move her up or down the beach, but these are hard to use singlehanded, take space, and get mucky.

Having got ashore and hauled the boat up you thenhave to erect a tent and thenget the kettle on - quite possibly in the rain.

Whereas, with a boom tent, you just anchor (and I've anchored just because it was raining! put the kettle on and that's that!

It's quite possible for two to sleep in a wooden Wayfarer; the mark 2 GRP version won't allow this, though. I suspect the Wayfarer is just at the crossover point between the two ways of doing things, so can do both.

[Kaa]

Re Romilly and others of her ilk -- she looks very nice, but my problem is that I don't think I need a pocket cruiser. If I'm going daysailing with a full boat (4 adults + kids), the cabin is useless and the cockpit is way too cramped. And if I'm going camp-cruising with more than two people I'll need to pitch a tent on land anyway, and even for two people I'd be perfectly happy with just a boom tent or some equivalent of it.

My background is in kayaking, so I tend to think of small light boats and sleeping in tents. I really think that you need to get to 24-26 feet at least for a cabin to make sense, huge amounts of smaller pocket cruisers nonwithstanding :-)

Sailing canoes seem a bit too small for me -- again, I need to fit 4 adults + 2 kids inside without stacking them up. Same problem with the Wayfarer. I understand that there's tension between wanting a boat that's big enough to carry that many people and a boat that's light and beachable. Still, designs like Oughtred's Caledonia Yawl give me hope -- it's supposed to weight around 200kg empty and that seems beachable to me (well, upper limit of beachable). Three people should be able just to drag her up on a sandy or gravel beach.

Alternatively, I need a small two-people dinghy and a larger two adults + 2 kids dinghy, but that's TWO boats :-) and on trips the smaller one might have problems keeping up...

Kaa

[Thorne]

You've hit the nail on the head -- anything traditionally built that is big enough to carry the specified crew and gear will be far to heavy to pull up/across beaches, even with rollers.

Your real option is to build the larger boat, and also build a small tender (or use an inflatable) for the beach/camping access. Tow the tender and awaaaaay ya go.

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

If my memory serves me well, the first of the original Roxanne (29foot big sister to Romilly) was built as an entirely open boat for sail and oar use, and the early drawings for Romilly had a much smaller cuddy - Ed might be prepared to comment.

The design brief is a HUGE ask - four adults and two kids is what - twelve hundred pounds? - but single handed (150?) and capable of being dragged up a beach.

Alternatively, I need a small two-people dinghy and a larger two adults + 2 kids dinghy, but that's TWO boats :-) and on trips the smaller one might have problems keeping up...


Not if the two person craft is a Dart 18.

[Kaa]

The design brief is a HUGE ask - four adults and two kids is what - twelve hundred pounds? - but single handed (150?) and capable of being dragged up a beach.
Twelve hundred pounds? Hopefully not, or I need a diet and not a boat :-) The four adults and two kids I have in mind should weight easily under 350kg, which is 770 lbs. Let's throw in another 80 lbs for water/food/gear for a daysail and we have 850 lbs carrying capacity needed. For camp cruising, take off a couple of people and add more gear, get more or less the same capacity.

It seems you think beachability is the sticking point -- I've thrown it in because I want to camp-cruise with four people on board. A boat that can sleep four reasonably comfortably would be too big, and I am not sure that sleeping on land while leaving the boat anchored in an unknown place is a wise idea.

But let's say we relax the need to be beachable -- would it change things in a major way? I still want a trailerable, shoal draft open boat...

Kaa

[TomF]

Then I think we're still back at things like Welseford's Whaler, or Oughtred's Caledonia Yawl. Big open glued-ply boats, lighter than if built with traditional techniques, with good track records both on the boats and the designers.

6 folks is a pretty tall order for most boats under 20 feet if you want them to perform while carrying all that weight.

[Thorne]

Now that you've scrapped the 'beachable' requirement, we are back to the list of designs as earlier.

Why worry about beach camping with the boat anchored out? The boats you have been considering can either be anchored out, tied to a mooring, or let take the ground with the tides -- just run a loooong line ashore and stern anchor out.

[John B]

You may not know about this site re the JW boats.
http://openboat.co.nz/

Paul G who comes here, built and used to extensively cruise a Pathfinder.( he's sold it now)
You could PM him for some first hand info.

[ishmael]

Where are you located, Kaa? Local conditions. In most conditions, with these sort of boats, a seperate dinghy isn't necessary. This Drascombe only draws ten inches, twelve if loaded. It can nudge up into most shallows if you want to go ashore.

Intended use, honest looks at that, are so important. As alluded to, we're talking about a wide range of intended usage, and you haven't defined it all that well. Look at where and how you intend to use the boat, and go from there to the best compromises available. With a need to carry that size crew it's not going to be light enough to beach, but how often are you actually going to carry that size crew? Hiow often are you going to want to beach it? Questions like that.

[Kaa]

Where are you located, Kaa? Local conditions. North-East US. Given trailerability, I consider within my range the coasts of Maine, Massachussetts, New York, New Jersey, Delaware. Plus smallish and medium lakes. Plus Lake Ontario, maybe. So, quite a variety of local conditions :-) from Maine's rocky mazes to Delaware's mud flats to New Jersey's sand bars. And it's possible I'll take a long drive down to Florida and go explore the Keys for a week or so...Intended use, honest looks at that, are so important. As alluded to, we're talking about a wide range of intended usage, and you haven't defined it all that well. Well, intended use is fairly well defined in my mind -- three main scenarios, in order of frequency:

(1) Some adults and some kids drive to the water in the morning, go for a leisurly and relaxed daysail, return to the launch point in the afternoon and drive home. Or, return to a motel, repeat next day, then drive home.

(2) One-two adults drive to the water in noticeable wind, sail for a while, maybe pushing the boat a little, return, and drive home.

(3) Up to four people go camp-cruising, for example, in Penobscot Bay area. Daily hops from place to place, sleeping mostly on the shore in tent(s).

That's basically it, I think.

Kaa

[ebent05]

Hi Kaa

Quote:

"I still want a trailerable, shoal draft open boat..."

What about Robert Osleeb's Big Jenny 24 or his new Big Jenny 21, in lapstrake plywood? Big Jenny 24 was written up in WB #174 "Close to the Water: Two Small Expedition Boats,".

Home page of Big Jenny Expedition boats:
http://www.bigjennyexpeditionboats.com/BigJennyExpeditionBoats.htm

Ed

[martinwellby]

I have a John Welsford Navigator, which is Pathfinders little sister. We have been out daysailing in her with 4 adults and 4 kids from 3-9yrs old, and we didnt feel squashed. The Welsford designs are big volume boats, and very seaworthy. The Yawl rig also means that she is very adaptable, which is great when you are singlehanded, or have young children on board. I think that a Pathfinder sized boat would be ample for the use that you describe. John is a very approachable sort of guy if you want further info.

[sv Lorelei]

How about this one? Atkin's Greenshank 18' 1"

http://www.boat-links.com/Atkinco/Sail/Greenshank.html

http://www.boat-links.com/Atkinco/Sail/images/Greenshank-3.gif

[Steve Paskey]

Paul Fisher at Selway-Fisher has a good assortment of dayboat designs that might be suitable. Have a look at the "Highlander 18" (under Highlanders) as well as "Kane" and "Able" (under other dayboats).

www.selway-fisher.com/Dayboat.htm (http://www.selway-fisher.com/Dayboat.htm)

[J P]

Have you looked at the Norseboat? Seems to fit much of your criteria. Available in FG or wood.

http://www.norseboat.com/index.htm

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

Enter, stage left, messenger bearing glad tidings;

Look - Pointy ends, gaff rigged and exactly 21 feet long with just the right carrying capacity (http://www.yachtworks.info/tiki.htm)

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Actually, they arerather nice.

There's a couple on our river.

But sadly un-trailer-able!

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

Oh, why is that? -

I thought that with the beams lashed in place they would "un-lash" (is that a word?) and the individual hull beam is about 3' 1" - its bound to be a faff....

[htom]

Untrailerable? No, designed to be trailerable. It comes apart, so it's a bit more complicated and takes a bit longer, because you have to lash the bridge deck to the hulls.

http://www.wharram.com/1982winner.html

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I stand corrected.

But I bet it's a faff.

[Wild Wassa]

"Let's say under half an hour from pulling up to the ramp to casting off."

Don't you mean 4-5 minutes at tops? Even then that extended amount time can be extremely rude. Displaying good launching etiquette is mandatory and the mark of a considerate boat persom. Rig the boat well away from the ramp, check your gear a day or two before you intend going out and run your motor up, before you even leave home ... and I only suggested the 4-5 minutes because of the need to park the car and trailer and then get back to the boat.

You are not the only bateau boy at a ramp. If you are an Aussie Mate, go to your local marine authority office and get the free booklets and/or DVDs. They discribe ramp etiquette in detail.

Also, if you find yourself more than two nautical miles off the shore, what are the legal requirements for your cruising dinghy ... marine radio and all the safety gear. And a minimum of 2 lts of water per day per person?

Chose the hull type that will be safe and best suit the conditions of the waterways you intend to sail on.

Personally, I like the old English bay boat style of boats, with a large cuddy (and with a British Channel rating). I have a Seafly. The boat's capacity rating is nine persons and she will sleep four at a pinch, if the bilge is dry. Their performance can get you to where you are going, somewhat pronto ... and they carry 256 sqft of sail all up.

An old English bay boat, style of boat. You don't have to have an ugly aluminium mast or spars ... carbon is now the go.


http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid202/p6678d91378b6ae8341cb7a483cca7525/efe46639.jpg

Warren.

[py]

I have 4 kids, and thinking along similar lines. The cabins on most trailer sailors are just a waste of space. Been thinking about a Hartley 16 or 18, both of which are pretty beamy double chine ply trailer boats, which can be had pretty cheaply 2nd hand. (AUD$2,000 to $3000) Take a saw to the aft 3/4 of the cabin, extend the side deck/cockpit seats, and she fits the bill almost perfectly. Also quite stable and safe, with a steel centreplate, but reasonable performance, still many actively raced in Oz. OR an Oughtred wee seal, but built with more cockpit, less cabin, could be really nice as a day sailer/camp cruiser.