Thread: New Rowing Design

What are your requirements? Some of the claims on that page seem a bit misleading, IMO. Take this:

"In June 2013, Steve Price and Colin Angus broke the nonstop speed record from Whitehorse to Dawson City in the Oxford Wherry 16. The men rowed 444 miles nonstop in 50 hours and 50 minutes".

That's an average speed of just over 8.7 mph, which is way above the speed the boat could manage even in a sprint. To average that speed over that distance, my bet is they had at least a three knot current with them.

Also, their claimed carrying capacity seems optimistic.

"Very importantly, this boat has generous freeboard - not enough to detract from the lines, but sufficient to carry three adults and a couple of kids with 4" freeboard remaining. Ample freeboard also means you can keep on playing when the wind and waves pick up. There's no point having a gorgeous fast rowing boat if you can only use it in calm conditions."

Carrying three adults and two kids, with only 4" of freeboard left, would be very dodgey except in a flat calm. One small wake and you'd be swimming. For general use, in an estuary with boat wakes and wind against tide chop possible, given the claimed 7.5" freeboard at 250 lbs displacement I'd say it's a solo boat only.

If you like the boat, and only want to use it solo or with an occasional passenger, go for it.

If you like the boat, and only want to use it solo or with an occasional passenger, go for it.[/QUOTE]
That is exactly the use I had in mind,I've looked at Ian Oughtred's Snipefish,Paul Fisher's Guideboat,JEM's SOT kayaks with custom built outriggers for rowing,and BCA Demco's Driade 444,but had various reservations about them.The Wherry looks good,though I wish she was lapstrake,is light enough to cartop readily,stable,can be paddled and rowed-I am considering a removable drop-in sliding rig like Snipefish uses;I'd want to see how she went as is first-and take a passenger,but I know what you mean and I wouldn't want to want to load it up to the sheerstrake either.I could always add a forward deck later if it proved necessary in choppier conditions.
Cheers,
Dave.

If you want it lapstrake, build it lapstrake. Easy.

ETA: I know the Hawkesbury estuary and up to Gosford quite well. My 2c, looking at the shape of the thing overall, is you could take it around Lion Island solo on an average summer day, once you knew how to handle it, but I wouldn't try it two up with a sea breeze blowing and/or stinkboats around.

Hadn't thought about taking her out that far,I was thinking of more enclosed waters,we'll see.The boat isn't built on molds,it's simple stitch and tape and glass the frames in afterwards-doesn't matter,it'll make for a quicker build.

Yeah it was more a general comment about what conditions the boat could probably handle, just to give an idea.

I know the boat is designed to be stitch and tape. However, if lapstrake is what you want there's no reason why it couldn't be done lapstrake. Your choice. Suit yourself.

The 3 clinker boats I've built have all been off plans using a strongback and molds at 500-600 station spacings showing the plank locations,each strake is fixed and the bevel shaped using the mould as a reference-how do you achieve this with plans that simply give full size patterns for the planks?

Doesn't he give stations at all? Maybe he might if you asked him. He obviously has the lines recorded.

ETA: Just looking at shots of the finished boat on Flickr, there are four permanent frames plus the transom. That would be enough stations to plank over if you used the Tom Hill method of a temporary mould that has stringers behind the plank laps. The temporary stringers would run fair, and could always have a couple extra sticks hot glued in to give them extra support if they needed it anywhere.

I'll have to see what's in the plans when they arrive and go from there.Your stringer idea is a great one,I've never built lighter than 6mm before and have never needed to look into that method,but it looks to be very useful particularly for thin planking.
I just found Ian Oughtred's even simpler method in his Clinker Manual,it looks like a foolproof way to get accurate lands.

Originally Posted by Sumbloak

What are your requirements? Some of the claims on that page seem a bit misleading, IMO. Take this:

"In June 2013, Steve Price and Colin Angus broke the nonstop speed record from Whitehorse to Dawson City in the Oxford Wherry 16. The men rowed 444 miles nonstop in 50 hours and 50 minutes".

That's an average speed of just over 8.7 mph, which is way above the speed the boat could manage even in a sprint. To average that speed over that distance, my bet is they had at least a three knot current with them.

Read this Stillwater's Steven Price takes fast trip down Canada's Yukon River | News OK

Are you inferring Colin Angus is trying to mislead people? Just a little research shows the row was down the Yukon River, an attempt to break the record.

Brian

Sure, they averaged that speed down river, which means with the current. There's no way that boat would come close to that speed, even over a 400 metre sprint, without a good currernt helping it. It would be better, IMO, to give a speed that the boat could actually achieve without a current helping it. Otherwise, some people who don't know any better would read that and think "Oh hey what a rocket! It does 8 knots!" and then wonder why they can never get it to hit 6.

Offhand I don't know what speed the Yukon river runs at, but like I said I'd be betting it's at least three knots. So over that distance the boat's speed through the water would have been closer to 5 knots, which is more realistic.

Just did some checking around. The course is shown on this page: Traveled Earth » Yukon River 2010 – Part 2

River Speed – The river flows quite quickly, with the exception of Lake Laberge where it does not flow at all. You can expect currents to carry you anywhere from 5-11km/hr.

So, take an average of 8 km/h. That equates to 4.3 knots. The 8.7 mph speed quoted for the boat equates to 7.6 knots. Subtract 4.3 from 7.6 and you get 3.3 knots for the actual boat speed relative to the water.

So, if there was no current to assist it would be fair to say the boat averaged 3.3 knots for 51 hours.

Given how heavily the boat was loaded, and that there was only one bloke rowing at a time, that's still a respectable speed to sustain for that length of time. It's a far cry from 8 knots though.