Thread: Sea going rowboat design considerations

The Flashboat would be 90.2 pounds with 4mm Brunzeel....wouldn't it be lighter with Okoume? This boat is almost cartoppable with one person!

The Finnish boaters also have a class of boats where there is a forward rower and a paddler aft! That looks like a lot of fun, too.

My interest after the next couple projects, is to build the fastest sea going, fixed seat rowboat possible. With the right oars, a special rowing thwart (not sliding, but one that can tilt a bit), and an ultralight boat, and a strong rower, it'd be fun to see how fast one can go.

The original post, of course isn't about speed, it is about a versatile boat for launching and using with friends. I maintain that a dory is the best design. You get the flat bottom for beaching, great capacity for taking folks out (without losing rowing ability), and dories are so practical to build.

I have a customer building my most recent boat, I call it the Deblois Street Dory, and his 'design brief' looked nearly identical to Daddles.

Cheers,
CLint

Originally Posted by Compass Project

The Flashboat would be 90.2 pounds with 4mm Brunzeel....wouldn't it be lighter with Okoume? This boat is almost cartoppable with one person! CLint

The Bryunzeel is Okoume / Gaboon - same thing I think.

Flashboat is far too big in length and especially beam to ever car top.

Just had a reply about the very sleek Finnish boat, and here are the dimensions

"The boat is 6,5 meters long and appr. 1.28 wide and it's 6 mm oukume
epoxy clinker. (total weight about 40 kg)."

Plans will not be available - they are working on supplying kits!

Brian

Originally Posted by keyhavenpotter

Plans will not be available - they are working on supplying kits!

Brian

The home boat builder is going to be killed by the home kit buyer. The same thing's happened to radio control model aeroplanes to the point where I've been sneered at for not only building my own models but designing them as well (yes, the term 'tosser' did form in my mind at the time )

Richard

I reckon it's the boat builders who sneer at the kit buyers!! Not real men!!

Brian

Originally Posted by keyhavenpotter

I reckon it's the boat builders who sneer at the kit buyers!! Not real men!!

Brian

You're missing the point Brian. I have no problem with kit builders though I do have problems with some of the claims made for kits. You build how you want, so why should someone who's only ever bought something made in a factory sneer at someone who's gone to the effort to design and then build a model from scratch?

Taking it back to boat building, there've been a couple of boats over the years that I've been interested in building, but could only get them in kit form, and so dropped them from the list. Their loss, not mine, because there will always be boats to build. My gripe is not that kits are available and that some choose to use them, but that we be slowly reduced to only building from kits. Maybe we should give up on wood altogether and just buy fibreglass boats, something that I have also had suggested quite seriously by the dinghy racing crowd (once while sticking his plastic boat together with duct tape so it wouldn't leak).

Richard

Here's another one for consideration

Witt Design Wooden Boats - boating finesse from Witt Design Pty Ltd

The same designer has a new one out ( not yet on the web but I saw it on the weekend at a boat show) called the Derwent Raider which may suit. Lightweight, clinker ply, built in buoyancy etc.

Might be kits only though..............

AD

Perhaps this rowing on the sea is not that great an idea?

amusing video from The invisible Workshop,

The Invisible Workshop: Absolutely Knackered

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECXhSCcLj8o&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - Absolutely Knackered[/ame]


Thanks for heads up from Chris Partridge at Rowing for Pleasure.

ROWING FOR PLEASURE

Brian

That video is funny!

I like the Witt boats....not love at first site, but they look like good boats.

About kits. Okay, this is an issue I've wrestled with as a buyer, builder and a designer. What people don't realize is how difficult it is to get a design out there such that it will go together by an amateur and look right. I am wrestling with this now with two of my designs that I am kitting out and producing plans for a client and others. The designer works very, very hard to make the lines look exceptional. It is too easy for a new builder to really screw it up, to be honest. Kits are a bit of insurance against that. The resulting boat, if it has been kitted and cut properly, is a boat that has great, FAIR lines and will perform how it should. So, that is the reason for producing kits. And it saves a great deal of building time, time many do not have or think they have because they are new builders and don't realize just how much work it is to build a boat right. On the other hand, if the builder has experience and they ask the designer questions when in doubt, I am fine with supplying plans to a customer. Iain Oughtred is a brave soul. I have seen many of his boats poorly built. He has a huge rep. But if someone saw my boat built with a droopy sheer because of the builder's poor eye or lack of skill or whatever, then someone see my design as the flaw, not the builder's error. A kit feels better to me, but they are an enormous amount of work to make. People are sometimes offended when I suggest getting a kit. Usually, I can tell they are new to boatbuilding because they think I think they don't have the skill. It is not that at all. It comes time to saving lots of time lofting and lining off and make things fit right, and means a better looking boat because they then have more time to put into finishing and dealing with the rest of their life, kids, job, etc.

Cheers,
Clint

Originally Posted by Daddles

Hey Clint, how long would it take you to row 20km in open water? Assume that the wind and tide aren't picking on you.

Richard

Richard, If I use my cruising speed figure of 4.5kts then it'd be a 2 hour row, plus 10 minutes to launch and 10 to retrieve the boat.

Cheers,
Clint

Originally Posted by Compass Project

Richard, If I use my cruising speed figure of 4.5kts then it'd be a 2 hour row, plus 10 minutes to launch and 10 to retrieve the boat.

Cheers,
Clint

Right, now move that to coastal water where, thanks to the winds and tides, the small sailing fleet that does this every second year usually takes twice that long.
Can a rowboat make better speed into a headwind that your average sailing boat? (note, I don't say racing dinghy)

As someone who puts that sort of time into a pushbike ride rather easily (it's the 6 horu rides that make me feel tired), I reckon a bit of training would make this trip quite doable.

Richard

Originally Posted by Compass Project

That video is funny!

I like the Witt boats....not love at first site, but they look like good boats.

About kits. Okay, this is an issue I've wrestled with as a buyer, builder and a designer. What people don't realize is how difficult it is to get a design out there such that it will go together by an amateur and look right. I am wrestling with this now with two of my designs that I am kitting out and producing plans for a client and others. The designer works very, very hard to make the lines look exceptional. It is too easy for a new builder to really screw it up, to be honest. Kits are a bit of insurance against that. The resulting boat, if it has been kitted and cut properly, is a boat that has great, FAIR lines and will perform how it should. So, that is the reason for producing kits. And it saves a great deal of building time, time many do not have or think they have because they are new builders and don't realize just how much work it is to build a boat right. It comes time to saving lots of time lofting and lining off and make things fit right, and means a better looking boat because they then have more time to put into finishing and dealing with the rest of their life, kids, job, etc.

Cheers,
Clint

Never a truer word spoken Clint!

Kit development takes enormous amounts of time and money that could most certainly be spent elsewhaere in a commercial workshop - but get it right and you have something that can be repeated accurately time and time again by people with little or no skill (or those with skill looking to save some time). The aim of the developer is to give the end user something that goes together accurately, looks as it was designed and the builder should be able to say "wow, that went together quickly".

From a commercial point of view, kits save time. For example, we are working with a Naval Architect at the moment in developing power boat kits that are really simple and quick to put together. We assembled a protoype 14 footer this week in around 6 hours hours which included cutting all components for the boat ( just the tabs in the sheets of ply as they were all CNC'd), setting up the strongback ( 10 minutes for this as it too was CNC'd), joining the hull panels and stitching together ready for fillet/taping. We will get the time down even further with a couple of small refinements which benefit the end user enormously.

Many people have built boats previously and they know they can loft and they know they can cut out so a kit can get them to where they want to be (putting it all together) more quickly.

As you say, a lot of builders run out of puff and by the time fairing and painting comes around, the projects seem to slow to a crawl for many. I reckon if you can make the early part of the build go quickly by using a kit, there is more energy left over for the boring stuff.

Good luck with your kit development.

regards,

AD

Sorry, cannot compute. 4.5 knots for two hours is 9 nautical miles. That's not 20 km surely?

just checking - ok closer than I thought.

1 nautical miles = 1.85200 kilometres

20km = 10.79

Brian

Originally Posted by keyhavenpotter

Sorry, cannot compute. 4.5 knots for two hours is 9 nautical miles. That's not 20 km surely?

just checking - ok closer than I thought.

1 nautical miles = 1.85200 kilometres

20km = 10.79

Brian

Okay, so it's three hours ... then allowing for the fat wombat factor, four hours, then allowing of a few *&^%$# moments, it's 5 hours, the considering I'll give up, head for the nearest beach, call someone, discover I'm out of mobile range so have to walk 5kms to get a signal, wait for rescue to come, then drive to the end ... 24 hours
Still doable

Richard
but yeah, it didn't even occur to me to question the maths, good pick up

What surprised me when I checked as I was writing the post was how close it was.

First reaction being, surely that's not correct.

To me, 4.5 knots average also sounds a bit high!!! Can rowing really be so much quicker than sailing?

Clint, have you actually achieved regularly that sort of speed with no tidal effect? It's pretty impressive to me as a sailor.

Brian