Jim Michalak's Boat Designs
1024 Merrill St, Lebanon, IL 62254
A page of boat designs and essays.
(1 November 2019) We continue OliveOyling in Canada with Herb McLeod with a short essay on a boarding ladder. The 15 November issue will finish the OliveOyling with some details about sailing the junk rig.
THE BOOK IS OUT!
BOATBUILDING FOR BEGINNERS (AND BEYOND)
is out now, written by me and edited by Garth Battista of Breakaway Books. You might find it at your bookstore. If not check it out at the.... ON LINE CATALOG OF MY PLANS......which can now be found at Duckworks Magazine. You order with a shopping cart set up and pay with credit cards or by Paypal. Then Duckworks sends me an email about the order and then I send the plans right from me to you.
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Herb McLeod reboards OliveOyl the old way, with the toe slot cut into the rudder. |
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Herb's OliveOyl 3
HERB MCLEOD WROTE...
..."I sometimed keep OliveOyl on a mooring ring in water 3 to 4 feet deep rather than on the dock. When I do this I usually store the boat with the rudder in the cuddy. The other day rather than using another boat to get to her I waded out to OliveOyl only to realize that I could not easily clamber on board without the rudder in place. Time for a boarding step. I made one from 1 1/4 inch square tube and 1 1/2 inch channel aluminum (cost on materials about $25 USD). The step also makes reboarding after capsize recovery much easier."
THOUGHTS...
...Almost no one could reboard a wall sided boat without some helping device. A rope might do it. The toe slot you see in Herb's photos was my early and cheap effort. But the toe slot can come with a few warnings. First the rudder and its fittings need to be strong enough to support the weight of a waterlogged and scared boater. Then when he gets a leg up, he has to climb over things like the tiller and assorted fittings.
Now Herb's ladder is much much better and about mandatory if you are boating with folks who aren't strong and nimble. I have never found a rope ladder to work at all - my legs swing under the shallow bottomed boat and you are stuck there. Perhaps with practice and getting things set just right. You might review Richard Woods' demo of this problem. He used a simple boarding stirrup but took pains to adjust it just right with a few trials. Plus he is strong and nimble.
I think to be successful the ladder has to store flipped up and out of the way of ropes that can snag it and ruin your day (as they can snagged an outboard motor). You need to be able to unfold it while swimming. It has to be strong enough for the waterlogged and scared boater. It can't have any sharp edges to gouge him either.
NEXT TIME...
...we'll take a look at Herb's junk rig sailing.
Shanteuse
SHANTEUSE, SHANTYBOAT, 16' X 6', 700 POUNDS EMPTY
Shanteuse is a slight enlargment of the mini shanty Harmonica. Shanteuse is 1' wider than Harmonica and has a 3' extension on the stern to allow a small back porch and a motor mount that is totally out of the living area.
There was a Shanteuse built in Florida by Vince SantaMaria a couple of years back but he stretched his to 24' so I couldn't really call that one a Shanteuse. But here is one by Douglas Snelson in Tennessee that looks to be right to the plans so I will call this one the prototype. He sent a bunch of photos:
I've also made Shanteuse a little heftier. I'm thinking this one will weigh about 700 pounds empty where Harmonica comes in at around 400 pounds. I'm not sure if the extra beef is needed because Harmonica seemed totally adequate to me as far as strenght and stiffness go. But the extra size of Shanteuse is probably going to take it out of the compact car tow class. The plywood bill for Shanteuse looks like six sheets of 1/2" plywood and eight sheets of 1/4" plywood. I would not use fancy materials on a boat like this and am reminded of Phil Bolger's warning to never spend a lot of money building a design that was intended to look cheap. I see pine exterior plywood at my local lumberyard selling for $11 or a 3/8" sheet and this entire boat could be built of it. So the plywood bill would be less than $200 and I'm thinking the entire bill less than $500. The pine plywood looks quite good to me, its main drawback being that it doesn't lay very flat.
These boats can be very comfortable to camp in. The interior volume and shape are not unlike the typical pickup camper or the volume in a full sized van. It's not huge, it's cozy. The top has an open slot 28" wide from front to back on centerline. You can close it over with a simple tarp, leave it open in good weather, or rig up a full headroom tarp that covers the entire boat. I've shown lots of windows but the window treatment can be anything you like. You do need to see out. I would be tempted to cover the openings with screen and use clear vynal covers in the rain or cold. For hard windows I think the best material might be the Lucite storm window replacements sold at the lumberyard. Easily worked, strong, and not expensive.
As for operation, these are smooth water boats. So it is best to stay on small waters that never get too rough. On bigger waters you need to watch the weather very carefully. For power I would stick to 5 or 10 hp but I'm very much a chicken about these things.
Plans for Shanteuse are $35.
Prototype News
Some of you may know that in addition to the one buck catalog which now contains 20 "done" boats, I offer another catalog of 20 unbuilt prototypes. The buck catalog has on its last page a list and brief description of the boats currently in the Catalog of Prototypes. That catalog also contains some articles that I wrote for Messing About In Boats and Boatbuilder magazines. The Catalog of Prototypes costs $3. The both together amount to 50 pages for $4, an offer you may have seen in Woodenboat ads. Payment must be in US funds. The banks here won't accept anything else. (I've got a little stash of foreign currency that I can admire but not spend.) I'm way too small for credit cards.
We have a Picara finished by Ken Giles, past Mayfly16 master, and into its trials. The hull was built by Vincent Lavender in Massachusetts. There have been other Picaras finished in the past but I never got a sailing report for them...
And the Vole in New York is Garth Battista's of www.breakawaybooks.com, printer of my book and Max's old outboard book and many other fine sports books. Beautiful job! Garth is using a small lug rig for sail, not the sharpie sprit sail shown on the plans, so I will continue to carry the design as a prototype boat. But he has used it extensively on his Bahamas trip towed behind his Cormorant. Sort of like having a compact car towed behind an RV.
And a Deansbox seen in Texas:
Another prototype Twister is well along:
A brave soul has started a Robbsboat. He has a builder's blog at http://tomsrobbsboat.blogspot.com. (OOPS! He found a mistake in the side bevels of bulkhead5, says 20 degrees but should be 10 degrees.) This boat has been sailed and is being tested. He has found the sail area a bit much for his area and is putting in serious reef points.
AN INDEX OF PAST ISSUES
THE WAY BACK ISSUES RETURN!
MANY THANKS TO CANADIAN READER GAETAN JETTE WHO NOT ONLY SAVED THEM FROM THE 1997 BEGINNING BUT ALSO PUT TOGETHER AN EXCELLENT INDEX PAGE TO SORT THEM OUT....
THE WAY BACK ISSUES
15nov18, Piccup Spinoffs, Piccup Pram
1dec18, Electric Boats 1, Ladybug
15dec18, Electric Boats 2, Sportdory
1jan19, Sail Area Math, Normsboat
15jan19, AF3Capsize, Robote
1feb19, Bulkhead Bevels, Toto
15feb19, Leeboard Issues, IMB
1mar19, Hollow Spars, AF4 Breve
15mar19, Underwater Board Shape, Harmonica
1apr19, Polytarp Sails 1, River Runner
15apr19, Polytarp Sails 2, Mayfly16
1may19, Sail Shaping, Blobster
15may19, Sail Shaping 2, Laguna
1jun19, Capsize Lessons, QT Skiff
15jun19, Rend Lake 2019, Mixer
1jul19, Scarfing Lumber, Vireo14
15jul19, Rigging Lugsails, Vamp
1aug19, Rigging Sharpie Spritsails, Oracle
15aug19, Rowing1, Cormorant
1sep19, Rowing2, OliveOyl
15sep19, BC Scram Pram, Philsboat
Table of Contents
