Life Is Far Too Important To Take Seriously

[Author's Note: This article, such as it is, was originally posted on a separate blog of mine (which is up to date...) where I post only those thing's boat related. The Peanut Gallery, as I call it, is a repository for all my prejudices and research, my hunch's and explanations of all thing's boat in their unedited glory, and, as such, is fairly phenomenally uninteresting. Hence, I haven't passed out the URL to my poor unsuspecting friends and family. Anyway, There is a genre on The Peanut Gallery of editorial comedy pieces which I sometimes write, of which this is a member. Ok, so it's really nothing more than an elaborate string of premeditated one liners held together by a dubiously cohesive theme, but still, I thought it was slightly entertaining, so here it is in it's first draft glory, just as I typed it up out of my little ol' brain. Please forgive the questionable grammar and structure, I haven't bothered to edit it. And yes I know it's really more like two articles weakly pasted together.]

Progress:

They say the march of progress is inexorable, which, given a fairly liberal interpretation of “progress”, seems to be born out of late in the boating world. I hate to be a prickly old stick in the mud- arguing over “progress” and “newfangled thinggummies” reminds me unfavorably of my great aunt Mildred- but, as a confirmed wooden boat lover and sailor, my natural instinct is to raise my hackles in indignant suspicion and outrage at anything invented since the Wizard of Bristol sailed off to his reward a century ago. I huff at GPS and practically turn up my nose in superior condescension at roller furling. The disturbing thing is, I’ve found my attitudes to be markedly more charitable when I’m twiddling futilely with dividers and a chart or sitting perched on a soaking wet bowsprit taking in the jib and feeling like the meat being dipped in the fondue every time the horrible stick goes under. My bluster is so diminished in fact that for several hours afterwards I’ll still seriously be thinking of how to fit roller furling to the boat and where in my varnished chartroom to enshrine the glowing LCD screen of the GPS. Human nature is so fallible!

I guess I just feel as if I’ve drunk enough brine soaked lore to last a life time, and now it might be time to yield to the times and bask in the sybaritic comfort silicon chips, clever engineers and Chinese sweatshops have made available to the indolent American sailor. Maybe I’ve paid my dues by mastering the mysteries of parallel rulers, discovering what exact salve to use to keep cold soars from forming under foil weather gear after a dousing on the fondue fork, and countless other bits of arcana from a bygone era, that it no longer counts as laziness to surrender to the conveniences of technology. Maybe it’s like old Capt. Nat who, after sailing a lifetime in his tough days, where men were men, the rope was heavy hemp, and the glass shards for breakfast were always razor sharp, is now sailing in a better place complete with heavenly bliss? And trust me, sometimes coming off that maniacal bowsprit, whose sole goal in life seems to be to rid itself of your miserable soaking carcass, the idea of roller furling seems heavenly. You can practically see the heroic furler, it’s drum shimmering in the light from it’s halo, descending triumphantly from heaven as trumpets blast and the sound of much rejoicing rises to meet it. That is, that’s what you see when you can shake the image of a fondue fork from your waterlogged mind…

This modernizing trend is even visible in things as simple as the anchor. In Capt. Nat’s day it used to be an evil minded and cantankerous hunk of mettle on the old “fisherman” pattern weighing about as much as your average hippo and much given to ornery stunts like fouling itself in it’s own flukes and laughing at your feeble attempts to clear the rode. Not to mention the crotchety old brute’s evil propensity for smashing any and all vulnerable body part’s it’s user might present while the undeleted expletives float lazily downwind. Like some ancient and crusty buccaneer, be-hung with prosthetic limb replacements but minus parrot, He hawks and spits all over the poor sailor unfortunate enough to try to use him to secure his boat. Ah, but now this colorful old shipmate, so full of character, has been sterilized and pressed into a suave yachting cap set at the proper jaunty angle. The barnacled old rogue has been through the engineer’s finishing school and popped out the other side as the unrecognizable prim and proper Mr. Danforth. Mr. Danforth it turns out is a new age and enlightened man who exercises regularly, can discuss French literature, has a fine taste in wine, and is adept at whipping up a quick souflee. He’s unprepossessingly efficient, but through it all, don’t you wish sometimes for the good old days? Mr. Fisherman preferred grog to wine, and, far from discussing French literature, his vocabulary consisted almost solely of four letter words, albeit strung together with dazzling vernacular skill. He exuded a sort of pugnacious charm, quite unlike the starched drawing room poise of Mr. Danforth.

Still, As much as I find myself longing occasionally for the days of wooden ships and iron men, it only takes the mere thought of hauling out Mr. Fisherman from his stowage locker deep in the fore peak to make me think much more charitably about French Literature and suave dinner conversation. Mr. Danforth is after all, so fit and convenient, stowed on the fore deck ready to go overboard at a moments notice and hold your ark safe and sound with quite efficiency and a little tip of the yachting cap. Even when I have an attack of virtue and actually make a physical effort to extract Mr. Fisherman, I find it only takes a couple of smashed fingers, usually picked up before I’ve even gotten the rusty hunk out of it’s chocks, to effectively cool my ardor, then it’s up to the fore deck again to take the easy way out.

These Modern yearnings however are usually crushed immediately upon reentering the harbor and crossing wakes with the various gleaming tubs these people call sailboats. Then all the old indigent superiority comes flooding back full force. I can only scoff at these boater’s who style themselves “sailors”. The pleasant glow of virtue warms me as I hawk and spit, muttering under my breath. It doesn’t seem to matter that these sailor’s are warm and dry, know exactly where they are, and go everywhere faster than I do. “What’ll they do when the salt air gets to their electronics, what then eh?” I scoff, echoing the words of the ancients for millenia: “What’ll they do when those planks come apart, much better to make your boat from bundles of reeds!” Ah well, the happy glow of the moral high ground is something I won’t give up, no matter how wet I get on the fondue fork, and no matter how consistently lost I am. Although, a roller furler could really look smashing on my bowsprit, sort of like a high tech figurehead, only chromed instead of gilded….

Ok, well, I’m sick as a dog and not really up to anything more than laying around in bed spacing out so I figured I might as well update the blog. I think, since I have nothing better to write about, I’ll add issue four to the continuing saga of the Black Dog and her stalwart crew. Previous issues can be found here, here and here or on our boxed set of syndicated episodes, Black Dog: The complete seasons (as seen on TV) for only $29.99 (some restrictions apply, void where prohibited). Now say that five times faster. Anyway, this issue of Life goes out to someone near and dear to my heart who is spending the day high on painkillers due to a wisdom teeth extraction. Hopefully the fading effects of the anesthesiologist’s handy work will help make this post amusing enough to keep her entertained. [author's note: reading the previous issues hotlinked above is highly suggested to appreciate the full nuanced details of the saga, the elaborate character development and...and... yeah, whatever]
Hem hem…

It was a long time ago, a time lost in the mists of folklore and shrouded by the mysteries of legend, when the crew of the Schooner Black Dog set out from Stuart Island on a journey of discovery and daring. Their quest? To attend the annual ’round island row on fabled Waldron Island.

So, after waking up their infamous engine with a few healthy squirts of starting fluid (the equivalent of a stiff shot of hooch), our heroes set off, weaving out of Reid Harbour, propelled by a newly invigorated Mr. Tomos. Once on the other side of John’s Pass we passed into uncharted waters and, cutting Mr. Tomos off (he was starting to get a little unsteady from all the rum and we figured it was indecently early to be getting smashed…), we hoisted sails and enjoyed a merry romp across to North Bay. When we landed we descovered that the natives of the island were enthralled with the technology of our vessel. It seems that they were still mired in the Dark Ages of waterborne transport and had never before seen sails, or anything more advanced than paddles and oars. We gathered that there was a legend on the island fortelling the coming out of the North West of a great black ship with white sails crewed by friendly gods who would share the secrets of their cultural advancements. We were able to capitalize on this adoration to get the cheerful pygmies to help free Black Dog from the North Bay sandbar that had caught us unawares. [Oh C'mon, at least we didn't steal all their gold and infect them with smallpox: Cortez is rolling around in his grave right now.]

The first leg of the race was straightforward enough, simply a decorous broad reach around to fishery point. This was, by the standards of the ship, entirely uneventful: Which is to say it was only punctuated by a totally reasonable number of slam jibes, jammed halyards and frantic scrambles to the weather rail. Actually, on one of our slam jibes I swear I saw the exposed topside between the water and our lee gunwale become skinnier than an anorexic Lindsey Lohan, not counting silicon implants of course. It was even smaller than a one to ten expression of Orlando Bloom’s acting talent. I could go on like that all night but all the celebrity cracks make me feel like I’m on a bad sitcom. Make that just a Sitcom in the interest of eliminating redundant words.

Anyway, after trading epithets with the helmsman our author pried his fingers loose from the weather rail and surveyed the horizon with a suitably jaundiced eye. No I was most emphatically NOT looking for a piece of dry land close enough to swim too, what a terrible suggestion! Regardless, my eyes lit on Fishery point close on our starboard bow. Unfortunately it seemed that the tide at the point was not exactly working in our favor and even though we were wooshing toward the point at a good five knots we were…gasp… going backwards. Half an hour later we were in the same place. Every time the wind would come up for a moment and we would nearly round the point it would die just in time to sweep us back to our original position. I was rapidly becoming convinced that we were unwittingly trapped in a Salvador Dali painting, complete with melting clocks. Either that or Fishery point was really an illusion tied to a stick and attached 50 long yards off our bowsprit. Well, we’ve all heard you can whistle for a wind but I’m here to say that cursing a blue streak for 45 minutes straight works too. Needless to say, we eventually rounded the point and started the long beat up the windward leg of the route. Well, lazy men that we are we decided to wake up Mr. Tomos from his stupor and get a little help. Tom was none to pleased, I imagine the engine noise was hell with his hangover, but we were able to tempt him with a few shots to the corroborator and the hair of the dog that bit him seemed to work. Off on our merry way again we made it around Pt. Disney and on to the downwind leg. There, spread out in front of us, their exhausted crews slumping over their oars, was the rest of the fleet. We had the time of our lives swooping through the fleet running wing on wing, making fragile rowboats scatter from our path. I swear I didn’t take helmsman lessons from a retired trireme captain.

I’d like to say we won the race, but that might be stretching the truth even more that I already have. The only boat to beat us was a huge umiak crewed by 12 of the largest and strongest natives. We could console ourselves however with the knowledge that though they beat us it wasn’t by much and they were dripping with sweat while we were lazing about in the cockpit eating cookies and holding our sheets with two fingers. A boatload more converts to the wisdom of sail I think. Either that or a boatload of converts to the total lack of wisdom of paddles, but it comes to the same thing in the end doesn’t it?

Ok, this is officially only suitable for boat perverts or people with an extremally high threshhold of boredom and a fantastic tolerance for dry text. You’re warned.

The lines plan. I’m going to breifly go through the basic aspects of this design and explain each.

First, this is a “double chine” design. A chine is a knuckle between two planes, for instance the side to bottom joint on a flat bottomed boat. Here we have two chines, the chine between the bottom and the diagonal bilge panel and the chine between the bilge panel and the sides. There are several advantages to the double chine hull form for small moderate speed planning boats: For low power planning a flat bottom is almost manditiry (you can get enough lift with a few other sleazy tricks, but they mostly all entail severe sacrifices in other areas such as weight, handleing, complexity, rough water ability, draft, etc.); The bilge panel helps ease the transition to plane for reeason’s I’ll go through in a minute; The bilge panels, if set to the correct angle, really help turning at speed and rough water handling; The bilge panels allow narrow lines on the waterline when the boat is lightly loaded yet pick up boyancy, and therefor load carrieing ability, very quickly as they are submerged; And lastly, and most importantly, they allow a sharp entrance so you cut the waves instead of pounding on a flat bottom forward.

A Quick note, I promiis this will be important later: Planning is when a boat exceeds it’s hull speed and starts to surf on it’s own bow wave instead of trying to climb up the back of the wave. It is officially designated as greater than 1.25 x square root of the water line length, but for our purposes what it means is the boat has lifted up out of the water substantially and it’s wake is legthening out.

For a boat to be planing it’s bottom has to generate enough lift to lift the boat out of the water. essentially what happens, assuming the bottom is big enough, or there is enough “planing surface”, is that the water hits the bottom at an angle, pushing the bottom up out of the hole behind the bow wave. for this to happen the water must strike the bottom at ~13 degrees, or, the “angle of incedence” must be ~13 degrees.

if this is not the case given the way the boat rides, the stern will continue to sink untill it is and then, and only then, will the boat begin to climb onto a plan. Of course, it takes a huge amount more power to affect this with a boat with a bad bottom shape and this phenomonon is called “squating” since the boat squats, stern down, in the hole of the its own wake.

Anyway, back to tony’s boat. Tony wanted a more comfortable ride than he had on his current boat, which was also double chined but pulled the flat bottom all the way forward so that when the boat was planing it was meeting each wave with its bottom rather thatn its pointy bow. This produced a jarring slam called “pounding” on every wave which basically was going to make tony need a rubber doughnut to sit on if he continued to use the boat. Pounding is also incredibly hard on the structure of the boat and the “diablo” was showing extreme signs of coming apart at the seams.

If you look carfully at the bow shape of my design you’ll see that there is always a v shaped section presented to the waves both below and above the waterline. this is sort of hard to pull off with plywood (or any sheet material) construction since sheet materials hate being bent in two demensions at once. basically what this means is that you can wrap plywood around a cone but not a sphere. A “developable Surface” is the easiest shape built in plywood and theoretically the most curve possible, but in reality you can torture plywood into a slight 3D bend. Of course, if it’s half inch like tony’s you’re going t have a hell of a time gettting it to bend at all, but thats where clamps come in. A developable surface is determined by conic sections, basically whether the surface has the curve of some cone, it doesn’t matter which cone. On Tony’s boat I pushed developability a little to get the shape so it was a little harder to build, but I managed it and the entrance we ended up with is far superior to a truely developable bow.

As the boat goes through the water the water is pushed outwards by the sides and downwards by the bottom. at the chines, or the intersection between the sides and bottom, the water is pushed both out and down totaling a shove diagonally down and out. now, of you cut off that corner and put a bilge panel there and if the bilge panel is perpendicular to the shove you’re giving the water you drasticly reduce resistance. also, as the water rushes back towards the transom it’s trying to fill in the hole behind the boat so the water that was pushed down is rising again and the water that was pushed out is coming back in around the transom. If you set the bilge panels at the correct angle at the transom than the water coming up and in at the chines hits the bilge panels at right angles and essentialy pushes it up and out of the sternwave hole. obviosly this dramaticly eases the transition from displacement to planning. realisticly it doesn’t matter enough to really effect speed or gas milage, but what is does effect is the attitide the boat rides at as it comes onto plane. instead of sinking the stern and rising the bow the boat will remain reativly level which is really nice for visibility, comfort and handleing.

Ok, now we come to the most controversial asect of the design, the slight amount of “rocker” in the bottom aft. Rocker is up and down curve (like the rockers on a rocking chair… duh…) in the bottom of a boat. Now, according to the 13 degree angle of incedence concept there really shouild be no rocker at all since that 2″ means the boat has to rise quite a bit to get a 13 degree attack. However, there a few other things to think about other than flat out smooth water theory. first, the slight amount of rocker lets me get away with less framing since a curved surface, even such a tiny curve, is infinitly stronger than a dead flat plane. basically this means a 50 poind weight savings, which, with the tiny engine we wanted to use (25 hp) was a really important point. Also, the bow in this boat is is stinking sharp. how does this effect the shape of the stern you ask? well, in the best of all possible worlds you’d have “balanced endes” on your boat. Balanced ends basically means that both the bow and stern have the same boyancy curves (meaning they start with the same boyancy and pick it up and loose it at the same rate) and the same resistance. clearly this means that both ends are the same, which is absurd, but you can get pretty close with in some reasonable bounds. Balanced ends are mostly important with handling, especially in rough water. The most extreme case is in a following sea and the tendency to broach. Broaching in our case basically means digging the bow into thae back of a wave as you run down the wave behind and having it stop, stuck in a wall of water, while the stern continues to be pushed forward. what happens is that the stern sloughs to the side and you end up side on to the waves with your bow submerged and out of controll. In very short order you’re upside down. this boat is about to broach.

Most power boats currently on the water are death traps in desguise because of this. next time you’re in a marina or on the water notice how sharp the bows are compared to how huge, blocky and boyant the sterns are. this is because ignorant people think that boats have to have pointy bows and huge engines. huge engines sell and huge engines require large sterns to take the weight and power. Not to mention that people want floating apartments which means they need tons of room inside, again, hence the fat sterns. luckily 99.9% of these boats never leave the marina so the safety issues are sort of moot.

anyway, by giving tony’s boat even the tiniest bit of rocker I eased the resistance of the stern to drasticly help balance the ends. It seems to have worked too since tony and I tested it in some pretty hairy stuff and there wasn’t even the tinest tendency to broach. the trade off is slightly less flat water planing efficiency but you can pretty much componsate for taht by tilting the engine to force the bow down. besides, he already makes 10 miles/gal which is totaly unheard of with a 13 year old outbaord on a 19′ boat!

Well there you have it, a short lesson in naval architecture. I hope you feel more knowledgable. If you have any questions or comments leave me a comment and I’ll be delighted to clarify/exlain/cover my butt.

Anyway, if you made it through all of that you get props…. and my condolensces. obviosly you need to get yourself a girl mate if you have that much spare time on your hands…

hay, don’t even mention the time I took writing it… shut up.

For some unknown reason the pictures in the mail boat posts are not respondng well to wordpress. please go to my blogspot blog to view the articles in all their photographic glory. enjoy.

Where were we…. Oh yeah, I’m slaving away on the cabin. Onward!

The splash well going in. The moter mounts on the transom and tilts up into the center bay of the slash well. The bottom of this is sloped so that any water which tries to sneakily creep abourd over the transom is thwarted and drains right back out. The outside two bays are decked with battery compartments under them.

Tumble Home rising strakes installed and the aft cabin started.

Motor well finished and aft cabin rear bulkhead partially installed. The hatch you can see in the main cabin is to allow removal of the fuel tank if/when Tony ever needs to in the far distant future. Blind cutting with a skillsaw into bulkhead with a gastank immediatly behind it just seems like something to be avoided if possible….

Aft cabin framing going in. The top is basically cut in quarters with the outer two quarters decked and the inner two with hatches that fold out to allow access to aft locker or fold shut to provide a roof. Who ever designed this must have been a genious I say….

Glueing up the two hatches as on lamination in place on the hatch frame.

Zillion Piece teak riser for the hatches. For the hatches to open 180 degrees they either have to be hinged like a door, i.e., the hatch is flush with the top of the deck the way a door is flush with the wall, or, the hatch has to be raised atleast the thickness of the hatch on a rail. This might seem obviouse, but it took me long enough to figure out. Witness:

That’s why I keep a large stack of scrap 2×4’s around, so I can hit myself on the head with them…. Anyway, obviously the door style means a major leak point so I designed the rail instead. the rail has a 3/4″ tall lip on the inside (visible in the picture) so that any water which makes it through the horizontal hige joint will be stopped from going into the cabin.
bloody beautiful I say! snazzy knees and hatches installed. The knees extend all the way to the seats so that any water which lands on the seat tops will be directed into the bilge instead of running the length of the boat and wetting everything that is supposed to be dry. *pat pat*, I’m awsome, what can I say.

Hinges every foot should give enough support to componsate for the cantilevered front corner of the hatchs. besides, they close together really tightly.

viola, they work~!

Ok, fast forward through all the trim work, tow rails, interior, systems (steering/fuel/throttle/trim/tilt etc. ), the motor mount and the electrical (totaling almost three weeks of work…). Here’s the boat on the trailer ready to launch.
and launching:

Look at the beam on Tony’s face!

Damn those hatches gleam! the teak handles on the hatch tops are spaced so they land on the toe rails on the side decks when the hatches are open. that way when you drop the hatches you don’t destry everything when they land.

that is what’s know in the trade as a hell of a bow…

Tony and I heading out for the afternoon mail run/ maiden voyage. wind SE 30kt gusting 38kts, seas 3′ at 5sec. No place at all for a 19′ boat, but she handled it like a trooper. Cadillac smooth ride both up and down hill (thanks to the horizontal forefoot and balanced ends). No pounding and totaly dry. the spray pattern was supperp and there was no engine noise thanks to the aft cabin. planes cleanly fully loaded (full fuel tank, two people and mail) in both rough and smooth water. all in all a smashing success.
Not to mention cute as a button….