Yacht Boat Plans | Searching for nautical humility

Yacht Boat Plans

STIRRING TIMES. Strange things happening. A Pope rides around America in a Fiat 500. Somehow I never imagined I’d ever see a Spanish-speaking Argentinean man in a funny hat and a long dress parading his religious wares in an Italian mini-car in the USA. Some people wondered why he didn’t appear in a bullet-proof limousine like everybody else does, but it was explained that this Pope was a very humble man and this was his way of connecting with the humbler and poorer masses who, his staffers assured him, have to be content with tiny Fiats.

There were, inevitably, the voices of skeptics who wondered why — if he was so humble — why he didn’t fly around in a modest Cessna instead of a palatial Alitalia Boeing, but they were quickly dismissed. Others surmised that lagging sales of Fiat 500s called for some helpful Papal advertising. Some suggested that if he really wanted to be ultra-humble he could have searched the junkyards for a used Yugo instead of a brand-new Fiat 500, but it was generally acknowledged that the man certainly has guts. Not everybody is willing to take the chance that a Fiat 500 will get you where you want to go. And if you think this is too harsh a criticism, I plead in mitigation that a girl friend of mine had a Fiat 500 that broke down in an isolated spot in Africa and left us stranded in the midst of black tribesmen who weren’t behaving very humbly. We survived, but this has affected my thinking about Fiat 500s ever since.

No matter. What I really wanted to ask was this: If the Pope were a boating man, what kind of boat would he choose to be humble in?

What about a Catalina 27? It’s one of a bunch of Belly-Button Boats (everybody has one) but it’s probably the best-selling 27-foot sailboat ever made.  And yet, while it’s modest, and largely non-polluting, it rather lacks a certain humility. This is not its own fault. The problem is that, as soon as you acquire what the hoi polloi perceives to be a “yacht,” you move into a different, less-humble social category.

Okay, how about a MacGregor26, then? It’s a boat for sailing newbies. But no, wait a minute. That 80 hp outboard motor doesn’t look too humble, does it? What you need for true humility is a 2 hp aircooled Honda. Ah, but then the nautical Pope would be even slower than a Fiat 500, so that wouldn’t do.

A Laser, maybe? Nah, he’d probably lose all his security men in one of those famous weather rolls while running dead downwind. And definitely no Hinckleys, of course. They’re modest-looking and understated, admittedly, but you could buy half-a-dozen Fiat 500s for the price of one decent Hinckley. Well, what about a Sunfish, then? Now there’s a real BBB for you. It has a nice old-fashioned rig, just like the Pope has. But wait, isn’t that a lateen sail? Wasn’t that rig introduced by ancient Muslim sailors? Good grief, they might have been Al Qaeda or ISIS. Whoa! Can’t go there. Not with a Pope in tow, anyway.  

Now I’m thinking Wharram Tiki 21. But there’s always the danger that a 79-year-old Pope could miss his step and fall into the drink between the two hulls. Did somebody say West Wight Potter 15? I’m afraid the sight of His Eminence perched in that tiny cockpit with a West Marine inflatable life preserver covering the papal robes is not one I care to imagine.

So I guess the answer is a gondola. I should have thought of that before. After all, it’s the Fiat 500 of the Venetian waterways. Small and slow and strangely shaped, but not so bad if your gondolier is trained to sing your kind of hymns and vespers and matins and things. Nothing makes you humbler than a gondolier who doesn’t know how or when to shut up. If you can manage not to strangle him, you must know the true meaning of humility.

Today’s Thought

Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.

— Frank Lloyd Wright (Recalled on his death, 8 Apr 59)

Tailpiece

“I hear you’re related to European royalty.”

“Not quite, but I had a British uncle who was a Peer.”

“Really? I had an uncle with bladder trouble, too.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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Kayak Boat Plans | Small voyage big accomplishment

Kayak Boat Plans

I WAS ONCE introduced to a man who sailed a Wayfarer 16-foot dinghy among the islands of the Salish Sea, here in the Pacific Northwest. He was very modest when he learned I’d crossed oceans. “I only take little voyages, and never out of sight of land,” he said.

I assured him that small, gentle voyages can generate as much joy and satisfaction as long adventurous ones.

The man or woman who gingerly sails a dinghy along a friendly shore is no less worthy of our respect than the sailor who braves the open ocean. 

We all have our own areas of anxiety and doubt in our own abilities, and when we conquer our fears it is just as much a triumph to cross the bay as it is for someone of sterner nature to cross an ocean.

And yet, human nature being what it is, we tend to judge other sailors by the size of their boats and how far they’ve traveled: their most distant ports, and the length of their voyages.

Now it is true that sailors who cross oceans in small boats perform impressive feats of seamanship because they sail the same seas as big commercial ships that have large crews specializing in the various skills needed to move people and cargoes across oceans. Sailboat sailors are their own cooks and navigators. They are their own engineers and riggers. They handle the sails and anchors and electrical circuits. And they face exactly the same hazards as large ships, including the storms, the rocks, and even pirates.

Yet, at the same time, to take a small boat across a body of water of any size is no small feat. To each his own goals and ambitions. We all set our own limits, and who can gainsay our individual achievements? What we all seek deep down is a feeling of ability, of achievement, of confidence. And sailing a small boat on a small voyage often does generate the confidence we need to deal with the greater troubles the world constantly throws at us.

Seamanship is as much a set of the mind as anything else. And small, simple boats can afford pleasure and gratification out of all proportion to their cost. We are the only ones fit to judge our seamanship. We challenge ourselves, we feel fear, and sometimes we get more fear than we bargained for, but we learn and we gain confidence, and are not as frightened quite as much the next time. And there always is a next time for those who challenge themselves.

Today’s Thought

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage.

— R. L. Stevenson

Tailpiece

The greatest area of unemployment in the world today is the region just north of the ear.

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Pontoon Boat Plans | Watch out for the crest

Pontoon Boat Plans

I SUPPOSE it’s pretty natural for sailors to ask themselves just how seaworthy their boats are, compared with others. One thing they worry about in this connection is stability, but I wonder how many of them know the difference between static and dynamic stability.

In other words, I wonder if they know the difference between how stable their boats might be (that is, how resistant to capsize) in calm water (static) and how unstable they might be at sea in big waves (dynamic).

It’s an established fact that no amount of static testing will reveal how much more vulnerable a boat is to capsize when it is weaving its way through heavy swells.

This phenomenon was investigated in the late 1800s by William Froude, an eminent British naval engineer who was well versed in fluid dynamics. Froude did many experiments for the British navy, including his most famous, which determined the amount of force that water exerts on a body passing through it. But the experiment that should concern all small-boat sailors dealt with the tendency of a sailboat to capsize on the crest of a wave.

As you have probably noticed, you get a strange feeling in the pit of your stomach when your boat heaves upward suddenly on the face of a steep wave and then drops off suddenly. Froude discovered that at the top of the heave your boat experiences a degree of weightlessness.

At that stage, the boat is virtually in free fall. And thus, Froude found, a boat’s stability momentarily vanishes completely as she floats over the crest. At that moment there is no resistance from the water to stop her from being blown over by the wind.

This rather scary theory is well borne out in practice. The phenomenon of ocean-going sailboats and small racing dinghies capsizing on the crests of waves, even non-breaking waves, is well documented. The degree of danger depends, among other things, on the height and steepness of the swells as well as the design of your boat.

Froude also found that the presence of a wave crest near amidships resulted in a decreased righting moment. On the other hand, a wave trough amidships increased the righting moment, compared with the static stability.

If this all seems highly scientific to you, be aware that good sailors know intuitively that when they’re running in heavy seas in a displacement hull they shouldn’t spend too much time on the crest of a wave. That’s why they try to slow the boat with a drogue, to let the wave crest pass underneath quickly. Alternatively, they try to aim the boat off 20 degrees or so to one side or the other, to avoid surfing dead downwind, and to get the rudder out of the foam, where it can’t work properly. Sitting on top of a wave, especially a breaking wave, is never where you want to be.

Today’s Thought

The sea thinks for me as I listen and ponder; the sea thinks, and every boom of the wave repeats my prayer.

— Richard Jefferies, The Story of My Heart

Tailpiece

“I see that restaurant on Main Street is hiring a gypsy band from Romania, and waiters dressed as bandits.”

“That’ll make a nice change. Last time I was there they had bandits dressed as waiters.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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Plywood Boat Plans | When boatyards built engines

Plywood Boat Plans

IT’S ALMOST EXACTLY 100 years since one of the most famous American small-boat architects designed and built a wooden boat called  Cabrilla. William Atkin and his boyhood friend Cottrell Wheeler were the owners of a small boatyard on Long Island, New York, and Cabrilla was the largest boat they built there. She was a high-speed express cruiser, 115 feet in overall length.

But one of the most interesting things about her was the fact that young Atkin and Wheeler themselves designed the twin V-8 gasoline engines that powered her. Not only that: they built the engines, too, and installed them of course.

Atkin said later in his book Of Yachts and Men:  “Reviewing those days . . . I am astonished at the work we undertook and produced. The design work on Cabrilla was no small item.” This, naturally, was long before the days of computers, or even calculators, and all the work was done with pencil, paper, drafting ink, and the human brain.

Atkin described those engines as “big fellows of more than usual interest.” Each was of V-type with eight cylinders. The cylinder bore was 8 inches and the stroke 14 inches. Each bank of four cylinders was cast en bloc and, to insure perfectly even cylinder walls, was cast without the water-cooling jackets; the jackets were fitted to the cylinder blocks after all the machine work was completed.

In his book Atkin says: “The crankshaft was a steel casting and turned on Hess-Bright ball bearings, three bearings to each engine. To give some idea of the size of the crankshaft: the races of the bearings ran on balls having a diameter of 2 3/4 inches. The inlet and exhaust valve sets were made of heat-treated steel and were removable. The exhaust-valve stems were cooled with sodium. All the reciprocating valves were closed by positive cams rather than by compression springs. The crankcase was of skeleton form, cast of vanadium bronze and had 1/16th-inch-thick Tobin bronze plates to cover the openings.”

Atkin used outside contractors to manufacture several parts of the engine to his designs, but hundreds of other parts were made and assembled in his own boatyard basement.

“Yes, shipmates, Cabrilla’s engines were big fellows,” Atkin reflects, “and when, in these later years, Cottrell and I contemplate the fading past, we marvel at our youthful courage in tackling this job, which then seemed very simple, but which if attempted now would embarrass the engineering department of a large corporation.

“Cottrell designed all the mechanical and electric fittings for the hull, the disk clutches and reverse gears, and supervised their construction. The design of the engines was my contribution to the work then in hand. All this we accomplished within nine months and without the assistance of draftsmen or additional help.

“Fortunately, Cabrilla was designed before the days of expeditors, industrial efficiency, inspectors, personnel managers, safety engineers and all the other complicated and expensive claptrap of present-day production confusion. If we had had the fellowship of today’s industrial top-heaviness and discord, the yacht might never have been launched at all.”

Today’s Thought

Often ornateness goes with greatness;

Oftener felicity comes of simplicity.

William Watson, Art Maxims

Tailpiece

“Man, I never realized how short of living space the world has become.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, I came home early last evening and found a strange man living in my wife’s wardrobe.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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