Boden Boat Plans Australia | More Argie 15 Sailing

Boden Boat Plans Australia

John Read in Cape Town built himself an Argie 15  and has been sailing it a year or two. He has made a video of him sailing it in breezy and gusty conditions on Rietvlei, in the suburbs of Cape Town. John has learned much about his boat and is now very comfortable with her characteristics. In this video she shows some of the speed that these boats manage to achieve.

John is obviously enjoying his Argie 15, which is our most popular design.

The beautiful Table Mountain stands guard over Cape Town and is visible in the background of some of the shots.

Please visit our website at http://dixdesign.com/ for more on this and out other designs.

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Plywood Boat Plans Australia | Cape Henry 21 Launched in Croatia

Plywood Boat Plans Australia

Dean Ivancic lives in Porec, Croatia. He bought plans from us a few years ago for the Cape Henry 21. He has been working steadily on his boat and reported to me today that he launched her in April. He has sent me some rather nice photos of her under sail. She is still incomplete down below but has all that is needed to sail.

She is named "Scintilla", Italian for "spark", also the meaning of "Iskra", the Croatian name of Deans youngest daughter.

We wish Dean and his family lots of fun and adventures in their Cape Henry 21.

"Scintilla" on one of her first outings.

Pretty from any angle.

Dean has done a nice job of building "Scintilla".

The Cape Henry 21 is surprisingly quick and has delightful manners. These boats prove that a boat doesnt have to be ugly to be fast.

For more on this design and others in our range, go to http://dixdesign.com/.

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Boat Plans Nz | Sound Proofing the engine room

Boat Plans Nz

The engine room received one more coating of paint on the hull and sole framing last weekend in preparation for starting the sound proofing. Well, I hope its sound proofing, as it will be a real pain in the ass to re do this once the boat is launched.

My system for sound proofing is pretty basic. I foamed the metal ( see the last post), and now Im attaching a 1" thick mineral wool board the the framing. Over this mineral wool Ill attach a perforated aluminum sheet as my finished wall material.

As best as Ive learned, the idea behind sound dampening is to decouple the structure from the sound. Sound travels in waves and the idea behind getting rid of it is to try to absorb it. My system is to provide a barrier between the living spaces and the engine room noise. My thoughts are that the sound will pass through the perforated aluminum then be absorbed by the mineral wool board and also by the foam underneath.

The mineral wool Im getting is discarded seconds that came out of a large sheet metal fabrication shop. Id love to have 3 x 5 boards, but Im only able to get 2x4 boards ( the price is right though). Because Im not able to pick my size, Im having to adjust my framing. In the areas I know Im going to have to attache lots of conduits, or other mechanical items, Im first installing plywood before installing the rock wool board. With the plywood on the hull framing ( 1/2" ply ), I dont have to worry about the rock wool laying out to hit the framing so there is almost no waste of the rock wool. I also have unlimited points of attachment for my future mechanical installations. For the ceiling though, Im going to have to add a firing strip so the rock wool waste is minimized while I keep an eye on the weight Im adding.

Ive got a little of the product up and on the walls and part of the ceiling. Im working in the corner where the generator will be installed, and Im amazed at how well the sound seems to be vanishing from just having that small area installed. Its no longer necessary to wear ear plugs while working in the hull. The only drawback is that the engine room is starting to get hot from the heat from the lights.

The perforated aluminum looks fantastic and gives me just the gear head look I want for my engine room. Once the material is screwed to the wall, it stiffens up nicely. You have to look closely to see the rock wool underneath, so I feel good about the ability of the perforations to contain the rock wool while also letting the sound waves into the dampening zone. The open area of the perforated sheathing is 34%. I picked up some advice from the good posters at Metalboatbuilding.org on how the cut the stuff. Its so nice to be able to start seeing some finishing material finally going on.

Because the rock wool is 1" thick Im going to have to fabricate some corner pieces or trim some areas out with aluminum angle. One of these areas is by the doors as you can see from this picture. Im leaning towards angle in some areas, while in other areas, Im going to try to brake ( bend a corner) the material in to an outside or inside corner.

I took a crack at bending some material into a corner, and it worked out OK. Having corner pieces makes the job look much more finished and I dont have to be as particular on the fit.














I had to add firing strips to the main area of the engine room ceiling. While I hate to loose another 3/4" of head room, Im willing to take the trade as this allows my rock wool to go up with less waste. The frames for the boat are 30" on center, and my rock wool sheets are 24" x 48". I dont have the choice of 3 x 5 sheets so I added the firing strip to make things work better and get the most bang for my buck in regard to how much rock wool I have to buy.

I started out cutting the perforated aluminum with snips, but Ive now switched over to my table saw. I added a board to the saws fence so the 16 gauge material will not slide under the fence. The table saw does an excellent job of cutting the material and it looks like it was done on a shear.

You might have noticed I have some plywood installed under the rock wool. I have plywood over the fuel tanks to protect the paint job on the tank and also to give me a way to easily attach engine room components to the tanks. I plan for some cabinetry and shelving, among other things, to be installed on top of the tanks. The forward and aft water tight bulkheads also received 1/2" plywood. I installed plywood on the aft bulkhead due to the idea that my generator will sit on the starboard side, and my fuel transfer/polish manifolds and pumps will be on the port side. I dont know the exact layout of any of these components, so I put the plywood up to make it easier to attach the various bits and pieces of each system. I went with plywood on the forward bulkhead as this is the area where my work bench will be, and I want dont want to be limited to the bulkhead framing as the only points of attachment for various things.

I cut it a little close on my measurements for my fuel tank fill points. I wanted the fill lines to be as close to the outside hull sides as possible, and as you can see I achieved that. I had to hog out a bit of the rock wool, then push the aluminum in to get the two inch nipple to thread in. The rest of the assembly will fit just fine as the hull is leaning outboard at this area of the boat.

Im pretty happy how the material bends and the fact that Im able to fabricate some of the corner pieces I need. This picture is where the ceiling jumps up to accommodate my door. This detail is the same on both the forward and aft sections of the engine room. This detail also gives me three more inches of headroom over my work bench.

The room is about 70% complete in regard to fitting out the aluminum wall and ceiling sheathing, and 100% finished regarding the sole, so I decide to drop in the generator. The engine room is now completely closed off. Im going to miss that large opening as it was easy to drop material into the space, and it also made things nice in regard to ventilation.

The engine room, for the most part, is sheathed. I still have to cover the seams with some trim, but Ive yet to find a source or figured out what the trim will look like. Im thinking I"ll go with a 1" piece with some sort of slight brake on both edges.

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Boat Trailer Plans Australia | Hull stringers aka rails

Boat Trailer Plans Australia

Photograph by John Fisher

Start at the transom with the rails and stringers. Start one side and go forward to station 9 or 10, then do the same on the other side. Then go all the way to the front with one side. Starting both sides at the same time keep the transom from twisting.

Photograph by John Whiteford

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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 | Star45 Hull Templates and shadows

Small Boat Plans And Kits

The grid shown is set to 1/4 inch squares. So if you print the templates you can check the size by making sure the grid yields a 1/4 square.

Modelers will use different building materials for the model.These are JPG drawing and print outs may require adjustments to get the widths to correct sizing. For a Star45 AMYA class you need to make adjustments to allow for planking thickness. The rules establish the maximum allowable beam dimension and hull length.

Most browsers will allow you to right click and open the jpg files. You can then save them to your machine.

This set of templates are based on drawing from John Fisher back around August 2006. John may have new and updated drawings available. Check with http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=star45 membership required.

If you want to scale to use for different model you can change the print out to give you a different grid size.

I want to thank J. Herrmann, www.graphicLanguageOnline.com, for his assistance in converting pdfs to jpg drawing, adding color to the templates and adding the grid to the final images.Rudder templates for a Star45 Class sailing model.The grid shown is set for 1/4 inch squares. So if you print the templates you can check the size by making sure the grid yields a 1/4 inch square.

This set of templates are based on drawing from John Fisher. John may have new and updated drawings available. Check with http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=star45 membership required.

I want to thank J. Herrmann, www.graphicLanguageOnline.com, for his assistance in converting pdfs to jpg drawing, adding color to the templates and adding the grid to the final images.



These are half shadow that ar eplaced between the templates to add strength to the hull.

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Boat Plans Catamaran | Sneak Peak at Cape Charles 32

Boat Plans Catamaran

I started to design the Cape Charles 32 a few years ago, commissioned by a client in Maryland. He passed away without having built the boat and it slid to the back shelf, with other designs having higher priority. There it stayed, waiting for a new client to take it on.

Word did get out about this incomplete design and I occasionally received enquiries about when it would be complete or when they could start building. Somehow there was always too much pressure from other designs on my board. Earlier this year the Cape Charles 32 found a spot on my board and is moving forward again and two will start construction when I have the necessary drawings ready.

In the process it has gone through a metamorphosis, prompted by the change of primary client who helps to steer the direction of the design. Eventually the concept of the original client, of a gaff rigged coastal cruiser with simple traditional layout, will be available alongside the version on which I am now working, as shown here.

Preliminary Marconi rig for Cape Charles 32

The square-top mainsail has been described as the modern equivalent of a gaff rig. It behaves differently from a gaff rig but has some of the same advantages and it is prettier than a leg o mutton mainsail. I think that it will work well on this cruiser. As seen here it is preliminary and it may change in some way before completion.

The new client for the Cape Charles 32 likes the interior layout of the Didi 950 and asked if something similar will work for the CC32. When I looked at this possibility I realised that the two boats are almost identical in overall dimensions. The concepts and hull shapes are very different, of course, but in some ways the Cape Charles 32 is the Didi 950 taken back a few steps in time.

Cape Charles 32 Accommodation

The layout will be very comfortable and offers good privacy for two couples or a small family. Full standing headroom extends over all standing areas of this boat because of the horizontal cabin crown. The U-shape galley is very secure at sea, with enough counter area for entertaining in harbour.

Profile and Underbody of the Cape Charles 32

Hull shape and construction is very much as for the smaller sisters in this design range. They are the Cape Cutter 19, the Cape Henry 21 and the Cape May 25. The family is growing.

With a draft of 1.2m (3 11"), the Cape Charles 32 will be a good boat for thin water cruising. If you do run her aground, you can hop over the side to push her off again. That will get you into private anchorages that are out of bounds to deep keel cruisers.

To see our full range of designs, please visit http://dixdesign.com/.

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Kayak Boat Plans | Sailing Model AMYA Star45 Class Planking bottom of hull

Kayak Boat Plans

From John Fisher:

Photograph by John Fisher

Photograph by John Fisher

Since it was requested here are a couple of photos of planking the
bottom of my two wood/glass stars. photo 01 is the bottom of the first
star about half way done. Planks are 1/16 X 3/8 balsa. These were cut
from a 48" long sheet. Weigh your balsa before buying it. I would not
use a 3 X 48 sheet that weighed in at more than 22g. It takes 3 sheets
to cover the bottom and you could add another 1 to 1.5 oz by using
heavy balsa.

I started in the middle and worked to the outside. I sprayed the
shadows with kicker, then put down a plank, then added super fast CA to
hold it down. If the kicker was not dry enough it would cure before it
wicked into the joint which would cause the next plank to not fit
correctly. I had some variation in the planks, but once they were
glassed the bottom smoothed out quite a bit.

If I were to do another one I would add the half frames. I will be
adding them to the DXF files in the next couple of days for anyone
wishing to cut a set.

Picture shows the bottom after it was completely planked. On the
second boat I got a nice pattern on the bottom since the balsa sheets
had different grain structure. I sanded the sided flush and got the
bottom relatively smooth, but not perfect. With the balsa planks they
were flexible and if sanded too much you get thin spots at the frames.
The glass smoothed out inperfections. If doing a hard wood bottom the
planks should fit better than what I did with the balsa.

John Fisher 2006 August 15

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