Boat Design Quarterly No.42

Boat Design Quarterly No. 422

Boat Design Quarterly No.42

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From the Drawing Table

Editor and PublisherMike O’Brien

Art DirectorLindy Gifford

ProofreaderJane Crosen

CirculationCynthia Curtis

Boat Design Quarterly is published as often as possible by BDQ Publications, P.O. Box 98, Brooklin, Maine 04616, U.S.A. Subscriptions are $24 for four issues in the United States. Foreign subscriptions cost $29 per four issues (surface delivery).

You can receive copies of BDQ Nos. 1 through 42 by sending $7.00 for each issue (plus $1.00 shipping) to the address above. See back-issue contents at www.boatdesignquarterly.com.

Copyright 2013 by BDQ Publications. All rights reserved. No part of Boat Design Quarterly may be reproduced without permission from the publisher.

Printed in the U.S.A. by Penmor Lithographers, Lewiston, Maine.

In this issue —

May 2013

On the cover: Coastal Cruiser by John C. Harris

In this issue we talk about the Chesapeake deadrise. This shallow, and relatively narrow, V-bottomed boat has evolved to live in the Bay’s punishing chop. A typical builder on the shores of that fine estuary cross-planks the bottom of his deadrise hull. Up forward, he “staves” the bottom: short planks, which approach vertical near the stem, get worked to shape. Almost fifty years ago, as a young apprentice in a Chesapeake yard, I scraped and painted many a deadrise hull…tough work, always given to the new guy. Then one day, my teacher asked me to replace a stave at the forefoot of an exhausted 36' deadrise, which rested on the railway. My big chance! It soon became apparent that I was to go it alone, as Roy moved to the other end of the boat to fuss with something. Roughing out the stave proved easy because its decayed predecessor offered a handy pattern. I pushed the new stave into place. It fit well enough, yet stood significantly proud of its neighbors. Time for fairing. What to use? Well, an old adze resided behind a bench up in the shop. It resembled an axe, but with a slightly arched cutting edge turned at 90° to the handle. Although I had read about these tools, I’d never actually used one. Grabbing the dusty thing, I jumped back down into the trench beside the railway. After taking a few tentative swipes at the stave, I swung hard at it. Bad idea. The heavy adze glanced off the hull, and nearly took out my left knee on its way to the ground. Its working edge was dull, and aren’t we most often cut by dull tools? In any case, I had little idea how to handle this antique. My teacher, who had taken notice, came forward carrying his elec-tric sander loaded with a 36-grit disc. Within three minutes, through a thick cloud of coarse dust, a perfectly faired stave appeared. The man could work quick miracles with that machine. Some time later, when I knew enough to let the mass of the adze do much of the work and had sharpened it, the old tool became one of my favorites. No matter that Roy might accomplish the job at hand faster with his Black & Decker. Lessons learned: (1) We can be artists with power tools as well as hand tools. (2) Just because I’ve read about a tool in a book doesn’t mean I know how to use it.

3 Point Comfort 18 Chesapeake Bay outboard skiff by Doug Hylan

6 Sea Gull Traditional 15' Cape Cod catboat from Fred Goeller

12 Coastal Cruiser Striking 22' faering for sail and oar by John C. Harris

17 Outer Banks 20 Comfortable outboard cruiser by Graham Byrnes

20 Trailer Sailer 24 Shoal-draft leeboard cruising yawl from Karl Stambaugh

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A faering for sail and oarCOASTAL CRUISER

Particulars LOA 22'6" LWL 21'1" Beam 4'10" Draft (cb up) 8" (cb down) 3' Trailer weight 530 lbs Max displacement 1,260 lbs Sail area (sloop) 143 sq ft (lug) 125 sq ft

Here’s a striking new coastal cruiser that will take us along-shore and up an inviting estuary

to its headwaters. While drawing this boat, John C. Harris kept the Norwe-gian faerings firmly in mind…yet many aspects of this design break new ground. Along with most of us, the young designer-builder holds deep respect for traditional faerings…small, open lap-strake double-enders: “I find faerings absolutely intoxicating. There is an elemental simplicity, with not a single extraneous piece of wood. You can’t show me a shape better suited to the

sea and the oar and the wind. Those clever Vikings figured out how to fasten together a couple of wide planks in a way

that combines a fine underbody with plenty of reserve stability….” For all their spare elegance, faer-ings can prove extraordinarily difficult to build in the traditional manner. Might a contemporary construction technique be appropriate here? Harris owns and runs Chesapeake Light Craft, an Annapolis firm that produces kits for stitch-and-glue kayaks and other boats. He recalls

that the thought of a stitch-and-glue faering proved tempting: “In a faering, prefabricated planks are given a sculptural shape that folds into a boat when riveted together. The framing is dropped in later. In a stitch-and-glue boat, flat plywood planks are given a sculptural shape that folds into a boat when stitched together, with frames added later. We can make this work, right?” Well, yes, and in fact he went on to design two faerings for LapStitch construction, a CLC variant of stitch-and-glue. Along the way, Harris came upon a surprise or two: “…the sheer plank on

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a faering is wide amidships and pinched at the bow. This was counterintuitive to me as an American designer, until my software ‘unpeeled the banana’ and I eyeballed the flat planks. Those Vikings!” He figures that shaping the sheer planks in this way “saves a lot of material.” The designer’s first successful efforts at drawing a faering resulted in a 19'8" open beach cruiser (page 16). Three hulls have gone together to his preliminary drawings. These include one assembled

by a “courageous and patient beta builder” in upstate New York who plans to launch his boat this spring. Production plans for a CLC 19'8" faering kit remain on hold. According to Harris: “Only basic plans exist, and even then nothing that the folks at home could work from, alas. It would certainly be an expensive kit, mitigated only by the fact that it’s the only relatively easy-to-build faering in the world.” As good fortune would have it, while the open-faering project sat on

the shelf, a client stopped by at CLC in search of a custom design for nearshore cruising and island hopping. The 22'6" Coastal Cruiser shown here resulted from that visit. This customer presented three firm requirements: his boat must sail, auxiliary power should be provided by a sliding-seat rowing rig, and the sleeping accommodations must reside below a hard deck. Harris didn’t entirely buy the con-cept. His first reaction: “Pick any two of those, but not all three.” He went on

Based upon the Norwegian faering, the Coastal Cruiser’s lines show an easily driven hull that will behave well in rough water.

These patterns show the shapes of the expanded or “flattened-out” planks. Stitch two sets of them together to form the hull.

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COASTAL CRUISER

to explain that Phil Bolger’s Dovekie, a production boat (BDQ No. 40), comes close to satisfying the criteria: “…but that’s a design you either like or you don’t, and [the customer] didn’t.” Eventually the young designer took on the challenge, and after a dozen “unin-spiring” sketches, he lengthened his 19'8" LapStitch faering to 22'6" LOA. It then

proved feasible to “cram in a small enclo-sure aft, a sliding seat amidships, and a decent layout for sailing.” In drawing this good-looking new boat, Harris borrowed an idea from the faering’s longer cousins, the Norwegian fembørings. These sometimes carry an after cabin. So he raised the faering’s

deck back aft to create sufficient room (and flotation) below. Then he added a raised foredeck, which gives plenty of stowage (and flotation) at that end of the boat. Although these decks lack extreme crown, their effect still reminds me of the highly arched whalebacks seen on some 19th-century English surfboats and many U.S. Coast Guard

A comfortable cockpit, cozy cabin, and lots of buoyancy at the ends of the hull.

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quickly burst back up through the sur-face shedding water like…well, like the back of a whale. Although the Coastal Cruiser will not right herself, we should be able to right her easily enough and sail away from a capsize…if we have the foresight, or good luck, to secure the hatch covers before we go over. The cockpit is self-bailing, and look at all that enclosed volume at the ends of the hull. Harris first drew a sloop rig, with full-batten mainsail, for the Cruiser.

double-enders of the 20th century. During the closing days of World War II, I’d stand for hours by the bridge over Shark River Inlet, New Jersey, and watch the coastguardsmen play their able double-ender through the breakers blasting out through the surf, circling around, backing down below the bridge, and then holding station there. At least it seemed like play from a young boy’s perspective. Wonderful, exciting play. When, on occasion, a steep breaker would bury the tough little boat, it

He predicts this arrangement would prove “sporty.” Owner and designer finally settled on a balanced lugsail. This should provide a healthy combination of good performance and easy handling. This hull shows fine waterlines, a hollow entry, and a gentle turn to the bilge. Harris explains: “In order to have even a modicum of performance with a solo oarsman, I had to retain the slack underwater lines of the faering. This will make for spirited sailing when the wind is up.” Water ballast, 270 lbs of it, will help the boat stay on her feet. As I write this in April 2013, the prototype Coastal Cruiser takes shape at the CLC shop. At first glance it appears to be a standard glued-lapstrake affair,

Designer John C. Harris describes this sloop- rigged variant as “sporty.”

Traditional and contemporary elements blend to form an elegant new boat.

The LapStitch joint: Wire together precut plywood planks, and fill the gaps with an epoxy mix.

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COASTAL CRUISER

but there is a difference in assembly… a big difference. The CNC machine at CLC not only cuts the expanded planks to shape, but it works a constant 90° rab-bet into the lower inboard edge of each plank. The square upper outboard edge

of the adjoining plank fits into the rab-bet, and all is held together by wire ties in stitch-and-glue fashion. Ah, but you say there is no rolling bevel; therefore, the planks cannot mate perfectly. Yes,

but plywood and epoxy prevent any problems. We’ll fill the voids with silica-filled epoxy. Working on the stitched-together hull, we’ll inject the goop along the length of each lap. Gravity will help us. As do all glued-lapstrake hulls, this one absolutely depends upon the gap- filling adhesive strength of epoxy and the cross-grain strength of high-quality plywood. If we plank this sparsely framed hull with cedar (or any solid lumber) it will split along the laps…perhaps not today or tomorrow, but soon and catastrophically. How does LapStitch compare to common stitch-and-glue construction? The LapStitch hulls, in kit form, require less time to build…at least if we’re after a yacht finish. Much less fairing and sanding are needed. And many of us prefer the appearance of a LapStitch (lapstrake) boat as shadows cast at the laps define the sweet lines of a good hull. Is a LapStitch hull ultimately as strong as a multichine stitch-and-glue hull? After all, we’re comparing simple glue joints to well-radiused epoxy fillets covered with fiberglass. Harris tells us: “LapStitch boats now number about 6,000, and I’ve yet to have one ‘unzip.’ We’ve had some demo models destroyed in auto accidents (alas), and the planking tore laterally instead of ripping apart the seams. There’s actually more gluing sur-face than in glued-lapstrake planking.” So, here we have an exciting new design, but at present Harris seems disin-clined to produce it as a stock kit: “The costly and thankless task of documenta-tion for plans and instructions gives us pause.” Perhaps if several of us let him know of our enthusiasm, he might be convinced to proceed. He does seem to have pleasant thoughts about sailing and holing up aboard the Coastal Cruiser: “The cabin is roomy enough for a solo sailor to wait out a gale at anchor, enjoy-ing a good book, the view through the ports, and the sound of rain on deck.” — M.O’B.

Contact designer John C. Harris, Chesapeake Light Craft, 1805 George Ave., Annapolis, MD 21401; 410 –267– 0137; john@clcboats.com; www.clcboats.com.

The 19’8” CLC Faering, predecessor to the Coastal Cruiser, weighs just 300 lbs.