Why an old plastic boat makes sense...

The other day while I was comparing various "classic plastic" designs I had a bit of a eureka moment...

Most of these boats are built like frelling tanks!

In the various boats I was looking at, almost none of the interior structure was actually... well, the best word to describe it, would be, structural. Or, in other words, 97% of the interior is just furniture. Think about that for a moment.

Having worked on quite a few classic plastic boats over the years, I was actually aware of this situation on a practical level but had never really thought about it past the point of "Sure you can pull out and replace that bulkhead without worrying about the boat taking on the shape of a banana in the process".

Of course, these days folks build boats differently because it's cheaper to make boats in a monocoque structure with all of the interior parts sharing the load. Which I'm not knocking in theory and I strongly believe that a monocoque structure is the only way to go when constructing a boat but, with that being said, you can take it too far... Something you'll understand in a hurry when you go to replace a galley in a modern boat afloat and once you've removed a cabinet find the hull oil-canning inward once the support of said cabinet is no longer in place.

Now, our CAL 34 is a good example of a boat where the interior structure in the boat is doing pretty much zip in support of the hull and deck and, providing the mast/rig is not up, you can pretty much rip out the interior to your hearts content while afloat and the hull will remain the shape Bill Lapworth intended throughout the process.

But, back to that eureka moment...

When you replace the interior it makes all kinds of sense to rebuild as a monocoque structure because it won't cost anymore to speak of (a 6" roll of biaxial tape and a gallon-and-a-half of epoxy would be the added outlay), it will make an already strong structure a whole frelling lot stronger and, dare I say it, a whole helluva lot stronger than pretty much anything you'll find on the new market today.

Of course, while you're doing the monocoque presto-chango there's nothing that says you can't fine tune the interior to better suit your personal needs while you're at it.

Or, in other words...

Old boats truly rock...

Some needful reading...

Over at Comet Camper there's a must read on the subject of your 5/10/15 year plan you should check out.

Really...

a whole lot of bang for the buck...

I may have mentioned before how much I like Phil Bolger's Jessie Cooper design. If you are looking for a VolksCruising design that gives you maximum bang for minimum bucks that is buildable in a short time frame, you'd have a difficult time finding better...

That said, it's not exactly an easy boat for most people to understand being just that bit further out of the box design-wise, so there is a WTF or two for anyone checking it out.

For instance, both the mainmast and mizzen are off center, there's only one dagger board (off center as well), and the boat only draws a foot. To say those attributes drive some people batshit crazy is something of an understatement.

The fact is, we built our Jessie Cooper for a special short term purpose. We had no thoughts of keeping it long term so we built it as a temporary boat. I'll be the first to admit that I was as surprised as anyone when it turned out to sail incredibly well and, as a result, made me rethink everything I took as gospel where boat design is concerned.

Those off-center masts were non-problematic; never causing us to sail in circles as some opinionated dockwalkers said they would and, more to the point, they were actually advantageous in making a small boat's interior much bigger than it had any right to be. The lug rig (also something that made some people froth at the mouth) was powerful and although the sail on the mast on the bad tack distorted the sail shape, the difference in drive between the good/bad tack was not enough to actually measure a positive or negative difference in drive or tack angle to windward.

Pretty much the same could be said for the off-center daggerboard... While I'm sure there was a tiny difference to windward and, just possibly a kiss more leeward drift on one tack, I  never actually found it problematic enough to be able to measure said difference. I've come to believe that a dozen or so square inches of lateral resistance is well within the mind's subconscious ability to self-correct as you trim sails and steer your course to the point that it really is a no-brainer.

As far as the one foot draft goes, once you've experienced the varied joys of real shoal draft cruising you'll never want to go back to anything else.

Some more on what I'd change if I were to build a Jessie Cooper with the addition of some hindsight soonish...

All you have to do is look...

A couple of weeks ago someone wrote and told me he'd looked for a possible VolksCruiserish boat and there was just nothing around...

Fact is, everyday I scan Sailboatlistings.com, my local Craigslist, and keep my ear open to the coconut telegraph. It's not hard  and only takes a few minutes but there are always a boat are two going for cheap that only need an investment of a little money and a significant amount of sweat equity that would be up to the task of taking you wherever you cared to go.

How about a Dufour 27?

There's one on SailboatListings.com with an asking price of $999.

That's just a kiss over seventeen cents a pound!!!

A little insanity...

Looking at some boat ads this morning I found this bit of craziness...

$28,000 its a steal at this price; spent 62,000 on it

Refering to a 35 year old Hunter 37 for sale.

The thing is, I see people pouring copious amounts of money into boats in ways that don't make any kind of sense at all. Why on earth would you spend $62K on a boat that, at best, is only worth between $15-$20K?

Which, sorta/kinda, brings up the Endeavour project...

You could easily pour $60K into the boat... A new rig and sails could easily cost a third of that, so would a new engine by the time the dust settled and, as long as we're throwing money around like the proverbial drunken sailor, I'm sure someone will point out that an AwlGrip job would not go amiss...

What little that remains from the $60K might be enough to buy your nextgen anchor of choice but maybe not.

The thing is you'd still have a boat worth maybe $25K at most...

Do the math.

So, why rehab a semi-derlict boneyard Endeavour 32 anyway?

Well, on one hand it's to prove it can be done on a sane budget. On the other, it does happen to be a great teaching aid in the How-To of it, and lastly, I simply like working on boats so I find the process enjoyable.

That said, I'm still not sure it is a doable project and I'm still doing the math...

an interesting catamaran...

A lot more interesting stuff on their website...

Slow going on the Endeavour front...

I've been waiting on a quote for a forty-foot section of mast extrusion for the Endeavour but, as expected the rigging company who happens to be the purveyor of said extrusion...

Boy do I hate dealing with some marine businesses.

It's not that I can't live with slow and inept but do admit to a certain exasperation with just plain rude and nasty.

Really, how hard is it to answer two questions of whether or not they have forty-feet in stock and, if they do, what it costs per foot.

That said, the cost of mast extrusions and the needful bits to make up a mast being what they are these days the only really affordable way to go is to either find an acceptable used mast or to build your own.

Though it really would be nice to have the quote on a new mast for comparitive purposes...

I'm not going to hold my breath in the meantime.

A potential VolksCruiser project...

So, there's this dismasted Endeavour 32 with a dead engine that's sorta/kinda for sale here that would make a good candidate to turn into a VolksCruiser...

It's a Ted Irwin design which, before Endeavour bought the molds, was called the Irwin 32. All in all not a bad design.

Of course, the problem with any boat without a rig or working engine has very little value other than the sum of its parts which in this case pretty much amounts to the current street price of the 5000 pounds of lead encapsulated within its keel.

Doing a quick price check of Endeavour 32s for sale I come up with a pretty wide range of asking prices for boats in decent shape that ranges from $4.7K to $28K putting the average price somewhere in the 14K zone. Which says to me that while not a bad boat it is certainly not real popular and you should be able to find a good cheap one fairly easily... Definitely a good candidate for a couple looking for a cheap boat to go cruising on.

That said, it also means that fixing up a dismasted/engineless example would be stupid unless the boat was VERY cheap and you'd need to sort out the rig and propulsion systems on a very short shoestring budget...

As it happens you might say I have a cunning plan or two that might make that possible. But, more about that later...

Some needful reading...

Phil Bolger once told me when I asked him to design Loose Moose 2 that he was currently swamped with design work and, at best, it would take him at least a couple of years to find a hole in his schedule big enough to design it. He then added that, as I knew what I wanted, had a lot of experience with boat building, I could read, and had basic common sense, there was no reason I could not design it myself...

In hindsight he was right but at the time I took the consensus view that the design of sailboats was more akin to some arcane lore I could never really master. So I went to another designer to design the boat which I was never happy with so never built. Luckily, Phil found a hole in his schedule and designed LM2 for us... Anyway, I mention all this simply because Phil really nailed it when he pointed out that reading is a needful skill in the design of sailboats because everything you need to know is accessible in books.

Like this one...

Which is a reference book that you really should have right alongside this one...

Nestled up next to this one...

And, of course, can't forget this one...

There are lots of others but those certainly cover most of what you need for starters.

a quick observation...

Boat design and boatbuilding are not exactly rocket science...


Rocket Crash by sonicbomb

And, just maybe, that is no bad thing.

That said, it would be a very good thing to do your homework on the subject of boat design and the practicalities of putting a boat together before you embark on any major boatbuilding or boat modification/rehab. Really, there are a lot of good books on the subject and the time it costs you to read and digest them will pay off in many ways and most importantly helping you avoid having a boat that does not float right side up.

On the other hand, if you're crazy and not very bright you can do what a lot of folks do and go the internet forum route which will be counterproductive in terms of  building or fixing your boat but it will be highly entertaining to folks like me who enjoy a great clusterfuck as long as it's somebody else flailing around making a fool of themselves... Just saying.

More about those books you should be reading tomorrow...