Atkins Chatter Box

[Ed Waterman]

Does anyone have any knowledge or experience with the Atkins' Chatter Box pram design? http://www.boat-links.com/Atkinco/Dinks/Chatterbox.html

I'm thinking of building it as a tender with a small outboard for poking around Maine harbors while cruising. I have a power boat and cruise at about 20 MPH when the conditions are right. I'm hoping this design will plane while being towed around that speed.

I have developed a reaction to epoxy so want to stay away from using it. Most other designs I've found for a planing dinghy are for stitch and glue construction. I'd plan to use 5200 where glue is required and to use marine paint to seal the Okoume plywood. I have an old 7 HP Johnson so would use that, storing it on the mother ship while towing the pram.

Any thoughts or suggestions of a more suitable design?

Thanks very much.

Ed

[prestonbriggs]

I can't help with the pram,
but when messing with epoxy, use vinyl gloves.
Latex doesn't stop the problem chemicals.

Preston

[Thorne]

First, why not get modern plans for a boat designed for stitch and glue, or whatever your preferred method is? Duckworks has some designs that can be built with PL Premium instead of epoxy, but I'm not sure that I'd want to trust my life to 'em...

Second, why not get plans for something that can be rowed as well as motored?

Third, why not consider building from solid wood if your goal is to avoid epoxy? Lots of Atkin and other trad designs that will be real lookers when finished.

[holzbt]

http://www.boat-links.com/Atkinco/Dinks/images/Chatterbox-2.gif

[holzbt]

This is a reasonable boat for what you intend to do with it. It will motor better that it will row but you can still pry it along with a pair of oars. This can also be built without any glue if you choose to do so. It's basically a very small garvey. As designed it probably weighs in the 125-150 lb. range.

[rbgarr]

The flat, almost horizontal run will make towing at high speed (20 knots is pretty fast for towing) better but I'm failrly any unloaded nine footer pulled by the bow will skip around some at that speed, even if it is very calm. In waves or swells the bow transom will catch from time to time, perhaps causing some dangerous sheering off. At a yet lower speed (like ten knots) a longer garvey type (eleven feet?) would be my choice.

I had a 19' "Ocean Pointer" type hull that would move along at about 15 knots wide open. Towing a dinghy at that speed is something I wouldn't have attempted for more than a few hundred yards, but that's just me.

[frank pedersen]

In making plans a couple of years ago for the Camden to Brooklin race that precedes the ERR, I had high hopes for a 15 -18 mph South Westerly breeze that would allow planning speeds under spinnaker. In preparation, I towed a couple of dinghies behind a power boat with a fish scale attached. An Eric Dow fiberglass Pea Pod, with rock in the aft area to help tracking, had the least drag of the choices I had available. My conclusion for a project, however, was you needed something light, relatively narrow, and with enough buoyancy in the aft sections to ride up on the bow wave without squatting. I thought an Annapolis Wherry by CLC might work. P.S. In the two races in which we participated, we had drifting conditions.

[Roger Cumming]

My father-in-law, a powerboat man, borrowed our little 8-foot fiberglass dinghy on several occasions to row in to the beach. Being an impatient man, he tended to go too fast. He returned it one time without its skeg - it just disappeared. Luckily, it didn't take the screws holding it on with it or the dinghy would have sunk. His fishing boat could do 20 knots easily and he must have been doing at least that. The dinghy towed very well behind our sailboat and lasted for years with normal maintenance. We still have it. But I don't think you can tow anything at 20 knots and expect it to be in one piece when you get back to the dock.