Boat Plans Wood | Haul outs today

Boat Plans Wood

A few weeks ago my daughter Lillian and I sailed up to Abaco to haul out and paint the bottom of Hogfish Maximus. I really like going to Green Turtle Cays boat yard Abaco Yacht Sevices because it is run by the Roberts family and is the cleanest yard in the Carribean Sea and the south east. HFM had not been hauled in 5 years time. Because I do not belive in insurance for my boat I cannot haul in the states so have been hauling out in Cariacou in the Grenadines and Green Turtle where the first world lawyers have not gotten involved. Since launching the HFMs I would have spent at least $ 12,500.00 US on insurance so far. We have gone through 5 hurricanes in her during this time watching over her our shelfs using the 8 anchors and all the anchor roads to go with them. Being on board full time means you are continually watching after your home so the main risk is being around other boaters. Liability insurance I can see using if you are doing a lot of marina hopping as in Europe. With our shoal draft we try to anchor away from the crowd which is an advantage. By anchoring in shallow water boats cant drag down on us as they run aground first. We also lure a lot of boats to try and anchor next to us this way as we look like a deep draft vessel.

Buying bottom paint for an affordable price has gotten to be a challenge. We need 5 gallons for 2 coats and at the current retail prices of $450.00 a gallon its getting to be a major cost.

But being a scrapper I am always thinking years down the road so when I come across a deal I invest. The paint we have been using for quite awhile is International commercial brand that I bought 3 five gallon buckets of for $500.00 4 years ago at a junk shop. We put HFM on the beach now and again and paint about 75% of her this way on the tide. The bottom we have to dive to keep clean. I feel the oceans around all the small islands have gotten very nutrient rich over the years as growth now takes no time to grow. Hence the latest full bottom job. We have one 5 gallon bucket left so I hope the continually sailing about will keep it mixed up till we need it.

Here you can see the little chine wings that I put on these flat bottom designs. They are adaptions of

Henry Scheels keel design. It really works well with the dagger board up and the rudder full up we can still tack and sail to weather in about 31/2-4 of water with minimal slippage . Of course we now have a motor so we can cheat if we want.

The rudder draws 49" when fully down and has to be pulled into place. The tackle will break if we hit a whale or a coral head going full speed. So just like a big dinghys. We have not hit a whale yet but hitting the bottom in our quest to go where no other sail boats have gone before is a regular accourance.

 

Hogfish Maximus 38x 11x 27"

Jubalee 40x 11x 28"

Hogfish 32x 9x 20"

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Boat Plans And Patterns | Shallow minded sailing

Boat Plans And Patterns

The past few days Lillian my daughter and I went out for a few days exploring with our sea dog Bequia on the Hogfish Maximus . The island that we live on is one of 18 in a small bay on the north coast of Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas. From our house we can see about half of these with the farthest one away being 7 miles. All have good anchorages in their lees depending on the wind direction. The best all weather anchorage being the landlocked harbor on Royal Island. The entrance to Royal Island has a small rock island almost in the third middle of the channel. The entrance for deep draft is to the west side of this rock. But when entering the east third looks so logical that lots of competent and lesser seaman think this is the way to go forgoing the pilot books and guides. Unfortunately just under the water in this part is a nice big shoal that has enough keel grooves in that the guest book it must have is in volumes. I love sailing in and out of here when the harbor is full of newbies at anchor on Hogfish Maximus she looks to have a deep draft which most times is drawing a bit over 7 with her board down. We know the bottom by heart so always go in and out the wrong way with all the crowd giving good advice as to the danger ahead via VHF radio . Reading old sailing yarns like Peter Pyes Moonrakers cruises , it is neat to know that he made the mistake and ran Moonraker up on this ledge too. I like diving along its length feeling the limestone ledge, with its multiple colored scrapes along it and think of old Moonraker here in the 40s stuck with no one to see her embarrassment.

I being a very cautious navigator have never run aground, but there has been multiple times when there has not been enough water to go where I am headed. This is only a temporary setback which we are used to being in the mode of calling out water depths in inches . An inch under our bottom is plenty but it can be slow going as the mass of displacement sucks the water away and we kind of inch worm along stopping and filling back in and going and sucking and stopping with a messing dusty underwater wake. This is not running aground its just not having enough water. When we do run out of water its really no big deal as the HFM just sits upright as solid as a concreat parking lot. With a 9 wide bottom you dont  lean her over you just climb down aft into the water hopefully with a Sandy bottom with only your shorts gettin wet. If in mud then its a bit deeper . My usual thing is to wade to the bow squatting  down with my back to the boat grabbing the chine with both hands behind me and lifting a bit. By lifting up just a couple of inches the boat rocks aft and with the added displacement of the stern sections an inch of draft is gotten and so with the 32,000 lb boat now floating I spin her around and push her back into deeper water, something like 28". This is why I say we never run aground. The times we are being inconvenienced by not having enough water to go when and where we want I just blame on the moon as not keeping in sync with us.

Dont ever follow us as we take a lot of short cuts . We have found that in a simple breeze pif the seas are not breaking a bit or the swell is not giving a slight hump then there is enough water for us to go. So on we press but only in daylight and not over coral reefs or steel ship wrecks.

When we are sailing with the daggerboard down fully the HFMs draws 710"s. We have hit many unmarked sunken boats in far off harbors when tacking into them. This usually stops us dead in our tack- tracks... But only for a moment as we quickly let go the floating daggerboard down line and up pops the board and away we go with one of us quickly cranking the board back down. Most times nobody notices us in our impromptu bottom surveying of this new harbor. 

When racing and cutting corners on shoals , cruising and thinking we can make it over some shoal the same drill happens with only a little less glass on the tip of the board, a shagrinned skipper and off we go. That is another reason why we never run aground.

Anchored off of Egg Island in 7 

Looks shallow but at least 7 here

Nothing like clear water

This is actually 4 of water.

Our friends the Underwoods summer camp house on Egg Island

When the tide goes out we would be on the bottom. No big deal if the wind stays this way. If not when the water comes back we would have about a half an hour of bumping before lift off. This we have done with both Hogfishes at least a thousand times. These boats were designed and built for this.

One of many small islands in our bay. Water is 3 deep here now . As they say in the Bahamas  

  " We have lots of water here, its just spread out very thin."

Beach coaming treasure ! A free cleat from a wreck.

It sure is nice having a shoal draft vessel but if your draws a bit more then you will be anchored out a bit farther than us. The fun difference between keel and non keel boats is that when you run aground you are aground, no lifting your skirts and moving on. Sorry

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Small Boat Plans And Kits | Guest cabin updated 3 Storage

Small Boat Plans And Kits

For the cabinetry Ive built on the boat prior to building the guest cabin, Ive used frame and panel construction. The cabinets Ive built in the guest cabin are what I would call frame less construction.

There are four bunks in the guest cabin. Each bunk is 6 6" long with a minimum width of 24". The overall average ceiling height in the cabin is 6 8". Underneath the lower bunks are two cubby hole frame less storage spaces. Underneath the port side bunk Ive added a large drawer, and one more not so large cubby. The 45 gallon gray water holding tank is underneath the starboard lower bunk so no cabinets were able to be built in that space. Between the port and starboard bunks is another cubby on the same elevation as the other lower cubbies. Each set of bunks has a bulkhead. Because of the the standard bunk length and the left over space I had after laying out the bunks, I created a large blanket chest forward of the two lower bunks. The blanket chest is a huge storage space, and all the linens for the cabin will easily fit in this space. All the linens for the rest of the boat could also go in this space. The lid of the blanket chest serves as a step to gain access to the anchor chain locker when one needs to get in to that area. Since Im using a deck winch, I see the anchor chain locker becoming storage for one thing or another. To both port and starboard of the anchor chain locker, I created four more cubbies that are behind the bulkhead of each of the upper bunks.

For the drawer and not so large cubby, I stuck with the frame construction method. I could have probably made a frame less unit, but the framed method seems to work best for drawers. Ive not yet built the drawer, and this will probably be the last major wood working project I will do in the guest cabin.

It seems like a battle is being waged to gain every inch of storage space on the boat. In all honesty, there is a tremendous amount of storage space, and it is kind of fun to develop it. Once I get finished with the cabinetry in the engine room, the salon, the wheel house, the companion way from above , and the lazzerette, I see us having to develop a chart or map to inventory where we store all the "stuff" we are going to stash on board.

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Wood Boat Plans And Kits | Its not green

Wood Boat Plans And Kits

For anyone who thinks this ceiling is green, I have news for you. The manufacturer calls this color " Early Morning Forest Glenn". Once I figure out what a Glenn is Ill probably have a better clue as to why this is not called green. But in case anyone cares, from this day forward, Im going to say that I have a green ceiling in the kids cabin.

I decided to use bead board for the ceiling in the kids cabin. I chose bead board because it is relatively inexpensive, has a traditional yacht look, is light weight and easily installed. White is probably a more traditional color, but I like the green, and I think it works.

The work in this room is winding down and after a few more evenings of work, this room will be finished. I still have a two more weeks until Spring is officially over, and I think Im going to make my deadline of getting this room done before Summer. I hate to have a schedule on the boat build, but I want to get her finished and out of the barn, so Im pushing a little harder and placing some deadlines upon myself.

The way the boat is framed, has caused me to build access panels along the port and starboard side where the ceiling meets the hull sides. On both sides of the boat, I now have an easily accessed chase from the bow to the engine room. Once inside the engine room, Im good with screwing conduit and other mechanical parts to the walls and ceilings where I can get my hands and eyes on them, so I dont need decorative chase ways.

The port side of the hull chase way houses the water lines feeding the cabins. The starboard side has the spare forced main from the head if I ever decide to go with a toilet other than the composting unit. The four inch duct for the heat and AC that feeds the kids cabin and dressing room will also be in this chase. I think I have room to get the hydraulic lines for the anchor winch in this chase also, but that has yet to be decided. I really think the hydraulic lines will work well here, so maybe Ill just have to make that work.

I had welded a chase way in the frames along the center line of the hull so I built a removable panel for the bead ceiling to access that area. Other than a few visible screws that I painted over, the chase is almost impossible to see, and is quick and easy to remove. This center chase was my original choice for the anchor winch hydraulic lines, but Im not so sure now. Im leaving the small ceiling out of the area above the blanket chest until I decide on the hydraulic line route.

I installed the two port light trim rings, and also started to fit the battens that will cover the hull liner joints. Ive yet to install the hatch, but I was able to trim 80% of the hatch as the top trim piece needs to be removed to access the hatch mounting bolts.

The guest cabin has three flush mounted 12 volt LED ceiling lights controlled by one switch. Each of the four bunks also has a LED bulkhead mounted reading light on their own switch. There are also two 12v fans in each corner with their own switch. I also have a duplex 120 volt AC receptacle for a TV along with a coax box. The blue water line you see in ceiling headed towards the bow is for the anchor wash down.

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