Design Contest #6 - Entry 3

O-Solo-Mio

Drawings - Statistics - Description - Budget - Bio

Drawings:

(click images for larger views)

Statistics:

LOA - 16 Ft 6 In
Beam - 5 Ft 6 In
Sail Area - 65.5 ft sq
Est Weight - 350 Lbs Empty
Draft at 500 Lbs - Approximately 5.6 Inventilation

Description:

It's kind of a multi-chine mutt. I was pretty heavily influenced by an experience that my wife and I had in a rented 14 ft skiff designed for lake fishing. We went trolling for trout around Hope island. The trip there was nice but on the way back the tide changed and the wind whipped up in different directions so we wound up with a lovely 2ft chop while trying to cross the bay at it's mouth. We were pretty nervous until we got out of it and stepped off onto the East Bay Marina dock. The second time the chop was about as bad but we had a 15ft Smoker Craft with better freeboard. Not quite as hairy.

Along those lines the first priority in the budget is a nice brand new (reliable) 4-stroke motor. The second priority is a multi-chine hull because you WILL experience chop and rough water. Thirdly I made sure to leave enough money for a decent anchor because I'm rather fond of sleeping well. Other than that I wanted a hard cabin to sleep in, outside of the sun as well as the rain, because a trip like this isn't as much fun if you're uncomfortable all of the time.

The pointy low flare bow is to push through the chop. Then there's a flare in the middle for some backup bouyancy. The standing lug rig (off-center for moving from fore to aft and vice-versa) is designed to make life easy when sailing and to keep the sail short to reduce heeling and keep the spars and rigging nice and simple. It also has the added plus of keeping the bow wide-open as a photography deck.

Speaking of which, the boat could be anchored from either the bow or the stern so that when sitting in the bow your field of view is wide-open. If you got really fancy you could run steering and sheeting controls to the bow if you wanted to sit up front while under way with a camera. I'd also mount a tripod right up there and put down plastic covered foam to protect my knees.

Budget:

Budget Notes

I spent a majority of money on a new motor since it might mean the difference between a safe crossing and an unsafe crossing. I decided on a diet that consists only of canned chili, pancakes and malox. The plywood assumes needing 5 sheets of 1/4 and 2 sheets of 1/2 along with lots of 2x4's for framing, chines and other stuff. The tarp would be rather large and a couple of sails could be cut from it but it'd be good to have a spare in case somthing happens. I spent a bit on the anchor too so that I could sleep well on nights where the boat couldn't be pulled up the beach. Sources for the budget dollars included duckworks, a local lumber yard, a tarp wholesaler and boaters world (anchor and engine).

Bio:

I'm Bill. I live in Olympia WA with my wife, two daughters and an extremely gassy dog named Henry. You can see more at https://fourjacksons.us . The only boat I've built is a narrowed down PDRacer named the Crab Whisperer that I use for crabbing in puget sound. I may write an article about that for Duckworks some day.

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