Columbia
What design name? What design number? What's known?
A you-beaut, fantastic, 45ft, 15 knots cruising, charter fishing boat for up to nine anglers, built with a mind-twistingly difficult warp to the bottom, and a destroyer bow. Caught so many fish! COLUMBIA - built in the mid-60's, still going strong. In the family from father to son...
This boat turned up when searching out the Bolger/Caprio connection (that's another subject... interesting side tidbits, magazine snippets and articles, interwebbychat. Magazines/newsletters/people/boats then and now I am, surprising to me, unfamiliar with...).
Anyway, some 401 returns for a "Columbia" search, now 403, and no mix or match I've tried hints at this design being in the archive at all.
Does anyone have a copy or online subscription to "SOUNDINGS MAGAZINE" for the January 2011 edition? See the article "On Powerboats: A time-tested sports fisherman", commencing page 32, but mention of PCB on page 34. Please let us know more about the boat and... there must be a photo, eh?
http://www.flashedition.com/publication/?i=53036&p=36
----------------------------------
Straight from the google text-only view:
Soundings Magazine January 2011 : Page 34
BOATSHOP more worn out at the end of the day than the 11 other mates in the harbor. It was those extra miles they had to put in getting from one end to the other. While the cockpit is probably the biggest in exis-tence for a 43-foot charterboat, the cabin, like the pi-lothouse, is modestly proportioned. It's plenty long, but there's not a lot of room by today's standards because the bow is so fine much like that of a de-stroyer. Such a fine bow makes for the smoothest possible ride in a head sea, but it really narrows the cabin sole forward. It can also cause trouble running down-sea in big waves, since the bow has less buoy-ancy, or dynamic lift, initially as it submerges. This can create a tendency to bow-steer because of the depth of hull momentarily under water, though it isn't really a problem in a 14-to 15-knot cruise boat. The flybridge is also small by today's standards, but that, too, is for a reason: Its small size left room for a walkway all around it, which allowed Elmer to plug for fish with a spinning rod while customers were playing their own fish. He'd hook a fish and then either hand the rod down to the cockpit, or walk forward down a couple of folding steps between the windshield windows and give the rod to a customer on the bow, so he or she could bring in the fish. The boat was a pure fishing machine as a result of its design and layout. You could easily have four fish on at once in the cockpit, two or three more on at the bow, and one or two more on up on the bridge. That's the reason Columbia caught so many fish. It was built from scratch as a fishing machine, and since it was 5 or 10 feet longer than most of the other charter boats, there was much more space from which to catch fish. Type-B anglers who wanted to relax and maybe catch a few fish need not have signed on as cus-tomers aboard Columbia in those days; Elmer pushed his people as hard as he worked himself. But the people, and the business he built, made his the busiest boat in the fleet, often working as many as three trips 16 to 20 hours of fishing per day. Not just anyone can catch fish, even from a boat like Columbia. It takes someone who pays atten-tion to the signs of fish, comes to the right conclu-sions as to when the fish will be where, and who is driven to catch the most. Such a person is easily bored once they reach a certain level, which may explain why Elmer stopped chartering after 15 years and started tuna fishing commercially. Of course, the profitability of catching tuna worth many thousands of dollars each might have had a little something to do with it, too. The Phil Bolger-designed Columbia has a bow as sharp as a destroyer's, with the hull planking twisting nearly 90 degrees to a perfectly flat bottom at the transom; (facing page, from top) Columbia's disappearing chine (see arrow) can be seen clearly here; all of the ribs, floor timbers, cheek boards, butt blocks and knees at the chines from the engine room aft are new; the new aluminum tanks were placed between the stringers, and one of the two new fiberglass engine exhaust lines runs aft and through the transom just outboard of the stringer. COLUMBIA'S CONSTRUCTION Frank Taves, the Provincetown boatyard owner Elmer had joked with, agreed to build the boat in 1964, but he had a few changes of his own to sug-gest. A key one concerned the keel. The plans called for it to be built of many pieces of oak that were scarfed together, but Frank insisted on building a one-piece keel 18 inches thick from top to bottom, and a one-piece stem, the two pieces joined with a knee. All were built with seasoned white oak. Frank and Elmer rejected oak from 12 trees before they found wood they liked. Another important change involved the forward deck. The original plans called for fiberglass over plywood. Instead, Elmer opted for a planked deck forward, a beautiful presentation with the planking following the curvature of the gunwale forward. (It took one of the yard's craftsmen a month to plank and caulk that deck.) While Bolger's plans specified 34 WWW.SOUNDINGSONLINE.COM JANUARY 2011 mahogany hull planking, white cedar was used. White cedar stands up better over time and is lighter than mahogany, so it was a good choice. It did pres-ent some problems, though, as I'll explain shortly. "There's other stuff that was not in the contract that Frank did above and beyond, and it's well known he lost money on the job, but this was his baby, too. He wanted it to be perfect," says Elmer's son Marc Costa, 50, now Columbia's owner. So Columbia was built with a white oak keel and frames and white cedar planking. The hull planking is in exceptionally good shape 46 years later. As previ-ously noted, the use of white cedar meant the boat was lighter than Bolger had planned for, which caused it to float higher in the water, the chines immersed only a couple of inches aft. This caused the boat to chine-slap more when trolling or drifting than it would have had it been heavier, and that accelerated the process of the fastenings working loose over the years. Building Columbia was the boatyard's first new-construction project. The shop had spent most of its time doing repairs, seasonal maintenance and refits, yet the yard's expertise is apparent when you look closely at the results. The construction presented the Taves crew with a few interesting challenges. Bol-ger's design is unique not only for its fishing-ma-chine topsides, but also for its hull form. The term warp, or twist, is used to describe a hull with con-stantly changing deadrise, as opposed to a monohe-dron hull, which basically has the same deadrise in the aft half of the hull. The warp in Columbia's hull is extreme, which made it difficult to build. The bow has what looks to be 75 or 80 degrees of deadrise around station No. 2, transitioning to a per-fectly flat bottom at the transom. That makes the boat a displacement hull forward and a planing hull aft, so it averages out to a semidisplacement hull overall. The bow is so sharp, both in terms of dead-rise and half-angle of entry (the hull's footprint at the waterline forward), that the chine actually disap-ERIC SORENSEN
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:B14GwApfXPwJ:www.flashedition.com/publication/%3Fi%3D53036%26p%3D36+soundings+magazine+bolger&hl=en&gl=au&strip=1
Taves the builders? "built from scratch as a fishing machine..." What ports?
A you-beaut, fantastic, 45ft, 15 knots cruising, charter fishing boat for up to nine anglers, built with a mind-twistingly difficult warp to the bottom, and a destroyer bow. Caught so many fish! COLUMBIA - built in the mid-60's, still going strong. In the family from father to son...
This boat turned up when searching out the Bolger/Caprio connection (that's another subject... interesting side tidbits, magazine snippets and articles, interwebbychat. Magazines/newsletters/people/boats then and now I am, surprising to me, unfamiliar with...).
Anyway, some 401 returns for a "Columbia" search, now 403, and no mix or match I've tried hints at this design being in the archive at all.
Does anyone have a copy or online subscription to "SOUNDINGS MAGAZINE" for the January 2011 edition? See the article "On Powerboats: A time-tested sports fisherman", commencing page 32, but mention of PCB on page 34. Please let us know more about the boat and... there must be a photo, eh?
http://www.flashedition.com/publication/?i=53036&p=36
----------------------------------
Straight from the google text-only view:
Soundings Magazine January 2011 : Page 34
BOATSHOP more worn out at the end of the day than the 11 other mates in the harbor. It was those extra miles they had to put in getting from one end to the other. While the cockpit is probably the biggest in exis-tence for a 43-foot charterboat, the cabin, like the pi-lothouse, is modestly proportioned. It's plenty long, but there's not a lot of room by today's standards because the bow is so fine much like that of a de-stroyer. Such a fine bow makes for the smoothest possible ride in a head sea, but it really narrows the cabin sole forward. It can also cause trouble running down-sea in big waves, since the bow has less buoy-ancy, or dynamic lift, initially as it submerges. This can create a tendency to bow-steer because of the depth of hull momentarily under water, though it isn't really a problem in a 14-to 15-knot cruise boat. The flybridge is also small by today's standards, but that, too, is for a reason: Its small size left room for a walkway all around it, which allowed Elmer to plug for fish with a spinning rod while customers were playing their own fish. He'd hook a fish and then either hand the rod down to the cockpit, or walk forward down a couple of folding steps between the windshield windows and give the rod to a customer on the bow, so he or she could bring in the fish. The boat was a pure fishing machine as a result of its design and layout. You could easily have four fish on at once in the cockpit, two or three more on at the bow, and one or two more on up on the bridge. That's the reason Columbia caught so many fish. It was built from scratch as a fishing machine, and since it was 5 or 10 feet longer than most of the other charter boats, there was much more space from which to catch fish. Type-B anglers who wanted to relax and maybe catch a few fish need not have signed on as cus-tomers aboard Columbia in those days; Elmer pushed his people as hard as he worked himself. But the people, and the business he built, made his the busiest boat in the fleet, often working as many as three trips 16 to 20 hours of fishing per day. Not just anyone can catch fish, even from a boat like Columbia. It takes someone who pays atten-tion to the signs of fish, comes to the right conclu-sions as to when the fish will be where, and who is driven to catch the most. Such a person is easily bored once they reach a certain level, which may explain why Elmer stopped chartering after 15 years and started tuna fishing commercially. Of course, the profitability of catching tuna worth many thousands of dollars each might have had a little something to do with it, too. The Phil Bolger-designed Columbia has a bow as sharp as a destroyer's, with the hull planking twisting nearly 90 degrees to a perfectly flat bottom at the transom; (facing page, from top) Columbia's disappearing chine (see arrow) can be seen clearly here; all of the ribs, floor timbers, cheek boards, butt blocks and knees at the chines from the engine room aft are new; the new aluminum tanks were placed between the stringers, and one of the two new fiberglass engine exhaust lines runs aft and through the transom just outboard of the stringer. COLUMBIA'S CONSTRUCTION Frank Taves, the Provincetown boatyard owner Elmer had joked with, agreed to build the boat in 1964, but he had a few changes of his own to sug-gest. A key one concerned the keel. The plans called for it to be built of many pieces of oak that were scarfed together, but Frank insisted on building a one-piece keel 18 inches thick from top to bottom, and a one-piece stem, the two pieces joined with a knee. All were built with seasoned white oak. Frank and Elmer rejected oak from 12 trees before they found wood they liked. Another important change involved the forward deck. The original plans called for fiberglass over plywood. Instead, Elmer opted for a planked deck forward, a beautiful presentation with the planking following the curvature of the gunwale forward. (It took one of the yard's craftsmen a month to plank and caulk that deck.) While Bolger's plans specified 34 WWW.SOUNDINGSONLINE.COM JANUARY 2011 mahogany hull planking, white cedar was used. White cedar stands up better over time and is lighter than mahogany, so it was a good choice. It did pres-ent some problems, though, as I'll explain shortly. "There's other stuff that was not in the contract that Frank did above and beyond, and it's well known he lost money on the job, but this was his baby, too. He wanted it to be perfect," says Elmer's son Marc Costa, 50, now Columbia's owner. So Columbia was built with a white oak keel and frames and white cedar planking. The hull planking is in exceptionally good shape 46 years later. As previ-ously noted, the use of white cedar meant the boat was lighter than Bolger had planned for, which caused it to float higher in the water, the chines immersed only a couple of inches aft. This caused the boat to chine-slap more when trolling or drifting than it would have had it been heavier, and that accelerated the process of the fastenings working loose over the years. Building Columbia was the boatyard's first new-construction project. The shop had spent most of its time doing repairs, seasonal maintenance and refits, yet the yard's expertise is apparent when you look closely at the results. The construction presented the Taves crew with a few interesting challenges. Bol-ger's design is unique not only for its fishing-ma-chine topsides, but also for its hull form. The term warp, or twist, is used to describe a hull with con-stantly changing deadrise, as opposed to a monohe-dron hull, which basically has the same deadrise in the aft half of the hull. The warp in Columbia's hull is extreme, which made it difficult to build. The bow has what looks to be 75 or 80 degrees of deadrise around station No. 2, transitioning to a per-fectly flat bottom at the transom. That makes the boat a displacement hull forward and a planing hull aft, so it averages out to a semidisplacement hull overall. The bow is so sharp, both in terms of dead-rise and half-angle of entry (the hull's footprint at the waterline forward), that the chine actually disap-ERIC SORENSEN
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:B14GwApfXPwJ:www.flashedition.com/publication/%3Fi%3D53036%26p%3D36+soundings+magazine+bolger&hl=en&gl=au&strip=1
Taves the builders? "built from scratch as a fishing machine..." What ports?