This Bolger Folding Schooner was built and sailed by a local man who eventually got too old to handle it any more. He donated it to the Charlotte Harbor Community Sailing Center, a non-profit organization that supports youth sailing, disabled sailing, and small boat sailing in general in our area. Using it as a lawn decoration was considered and rejected and no one wanted to try to restore it, so it landed on this rack in my driveway several years ago. And there it sits.

If no one wants it, it will wind up in a landfill when it becomes too painful for me to watch it slowly deteriorate any longer.

Is it worth saving? If you want a Bolger Folding Schooner, maybe. I guess it would be less work than building a whole new one.

I'm posting this to share around and see if anyone wants to take on the project. It's not really mine to sell or give away but I'm certain the good people at the Sailing Center would like to see it have a good home and would appreciate any donation made to support their mission.

A view of the two ends of the boat. The varnish on the foredeck somehow survives but you can see some rot in the bottom of the aft section.

More rot is visible in this shot of the hinge area. The aft section seems more affected than the forward section, which is remarkably well preserved considering the circumstances.

The same hinge area, but with the camera pointed down to show the bottom of the forward hull section.

Turning the camera toward the bow a bit shows the end of the tiller, part of the daggerboard, and some more of the forward hull section.

There's some discoloration from rot underneath the hinge on the starboard side. Amazingly, the varnish on the rub rail is still more or less intact.

Another shot showing the bow section sole, side, and the rudder and board.

More of the hinge area showing some of the sailing hardware, handheld compass, and the rot in the bow section sole.

The steel straps used to pin the boat together when unfolded are both pretty rusty.

The tanbark sails and spars are in OK shape. They spent some years sitting on the rack under the boat and were moved under my shipping container for better protection from the elements in 2018.

Another shot of the sails and spars.

And one more. These parts are keepers to me even if the boat winds up in a landfill but I would much prefer to see someone use them on this boat.

UPDATE: I just ran across this picture from July of 2014, when the boat was put on the steel rack.

Bolger Folding Schooner Sailing

I think this picture was taken by me in about 2010 out on Charlotte Harbor. It's this very boat, though I did not know anything about it at the time and just took the pic because it looked neat and I wondered what it was.

The post Bolger Folding Schooner Needs Rescue first appeared on Tropical Boating.

AKA The Cowmaran

Twin Engine Cowmaran

The highest speed I saw with the single engine was 12 knots at full throttle in calm water, but our speed at cruise power fell to an average of about 9 knots in harbor chop. That did not quite satisfy, especially considering that wind drag will increase when the boat gets some much-needed shade. The solution was to put a second Tohatsu 9.8 hp engine on the boat.

The new engine is a model I did not know was available from Tohatsu, despite my previous employment in a Tohatsu dealership. It is a 9.8 hp with electric start and power tilt/trim, and it is a remote-control ready engine. The other engine is a tiller engine that has remote controls cobbled onto it, but because it is not a remote-control-ready engine, it does not have the tube for the steering rod to pass through the engine bracket. For that reason, the single engine steering setup involved a bracket to secure the cable end near the engine.

9.8 Tohatsu Remote Control

As the picture at left shows, the new engine has the steering tube built into the bracket. Passing the steering cable through the tube is impossible in this application because the engine is too close to the edge of the boat. The steering cable would be hanging out over the side of the boat.

The center of the transom has a reinforcing box under the deck to help distribute engine loads from the single engine. The two ama transoms are reinforced inside, but needed a bit more surface structure to avoid cracking the skin of the boat. A small piece of marine plywood with a bit of fiberglass cloth epoxied over it was installed on each side prior to clamping on the engines. The prototype-in-development look was partially offset by the nice curve Don's friend Paul gave the transom when trimming it down a bit. The port side is a bit more rugged in appearance.

Different Twin Engines

I stuck these two pictures together to show the different engine brackets used on the tiller vs remote control versions of the Tohatsu 9.8. The bracket for the starboard (remote control version) engine is much larger and heavier and has the power tilt hydraulic cylinder sticking down from the bottom. That engine also came with a four-bladed "eggbeater" high-thrust propeller. The prop on the port engine is a standard prop that would be used in a dinghy application and another one was put on the starboard engine, but it turns out that those propellers are not right. More on that to follow.

Update 2/20/13: The not-quite-twin engines are becoming actual twins. A new engine with power tilt for the port side has arrived and will be installed soon!

Cowmaran Trailer Loading

The process of bringing the boat here with the twin engines was not without lessons. One was: snowmobile trailers float. Don had to walk out onto the floating trailer to get it to sink far enough to load the boat well forward on the trailer. They wanted to load it forward to ensure adequate tongue weight for towing. Adding a hundred pound engine and related equipment to the stern of such a light boat will move the center of gravity noticeably.

The problem with this loading arrangement became apparent during the first hard right turn. If you click to enlarge the picture, you can see the small dent that the starboard bow of the Cowmaran put in the rear quarter panel of the tow vehicle. Oops. Maybe not quite that far forward next time.

Bow Damage

The results of the car vs boat conflict can be seen in the picture at right. Although Detroit's finest suffered a sizable dent, the result was only a little bite taken out of the bow of the Cowmaran. Don skipped that area when coating the bottom with some antifouling bottom paint in anticipation of some upcoming cruising activities. After cleaning it out a bit, he filled the area with West System epoxy thickened with microballoon fillers and then pinched it smooth using a piece of wax paper.

Small Patch

The resulting patch came out pretty smooth after the patch cured and the wax paper was peeled away.

Steering Tiebar

Don had a local welding shop make up a steering tiebar that would connect the two engines together and allow both to be steered using the existing cable and bracket from the single engine installation. The starboard engine has a standard remote steering "tiller" piece on the front of the engine, so connection at that end was pretty straightforward. The port engine has a bit of a jury rig, but it works.

Tiebar Fitting

This picture shows the connection between the tie rod and the steering cable end. They welded a piece of threaded tubing to a post on the rod, allowing a flexible ball and socket joint to be screwed into it. That joint is bolted to the steering push/pull rod. The cable and the sleeve holding the steering rod are held by the transom bracket used for the single engine steering setup.

Steering Adjustment

The steering cable bracket was removed from its mounting in order to free up the tie bar for adjustment. There are threaded swiveling connectors at both ends. In the picture at right, Don is adjusting the port engine swivel connector to make both engines line up properly when set to go straight.

Steering Adjusted

It took a couple of tries, but in the end both engines turned through the proper range and lined up straight in the middle. A few washers were needed to provide spacing so that all the parts clear in hard over turns. The only remaining clearance problem is not steering related: the aluminum railing is too low to allow the engines to tilt up all the way. Until that issue is resolved, we have to be very careful with the power tilt. If the hydraulic tilt motor forces the engine cowling up into the railing, something will break.

Twin Remote Bracket

With the twin engine steering system working, Don immediately set about installing twin remote controls. These side-mount remote controls used for small engines are not really suitable for twin engine applications, so he had to invent a way for it to work. Unfortunately, he did not ask me before mounting the first remote control on the port side of the console. He did not know they are reversible, something I had learned when installing a similar control in the cockpit of our Corsair F-27 trimaran.

The existing remote control is not moving for now, so the answer was to have a metal shop make up an aluminum bracket that would hold the second control up outside of the first one.

Twin Controls

The twin engine controls as they are installed look like an inelegant solution worthy of a prototype. It works, though the power tilt switch on the starboard engine is a bit obstructed and it is impossible to shift both engines at once with one hand. The real answer to these problems is a proper twin engine remote control, but right now the question is more whether the engines are right for the boat than whether the remote controls are ergonomic and attractive. They are not, but it does not matter for now.

Twin Engine Cowmaran Pickup

Once the replacement for the eggbeater prop arrived, the Cowmaran was ready for a test run. While working on the computer last Wednesday, I got a call from Don asking whether I wanted to go for a Cowmaran ride up the Peace River. I knew I should really work instead, but you only live once and there are some questions to which I just can't say no. "Do you want to go boating?" tops the list of those questions. Soon Don and Fred appeared off my neighbor's dock in Shell Creek.

Twins at Slow Speed

I took a picture of the twin engines as soon as we left the dock, while still traveling at slow speed. The wake is different from the single engine wake. The big difference is most visible at the left side of this picture: large, rolling waves extending out almost perpendicular to the boat. The normal hull wakes are quite small, but these big waves are out there and it takes power to create those. Examination of the video I shot led me to believe that there might be a trim problem, with the bows a bit too high.

Twins at Cruise Speed

As we picked up to cruise speed, the strange rolling wake disappeared. In this photo we were going over 10 knots and barely creating a ripple, but later on in the day we were making a large, rolling wake even at this speed. It remains a Cowmaran mystery to me for now.

High Cruise at 13 kts

Out in the Peace River, we did a bit of performance testing on the way up river. We were running against wind and tide and determined that turning around added a full knot to our speed, so the wind and current were costing us about half a knot upwind/upstream and adding as much going down. The boat cruised at about 13 knots with the engines running at 5,200 RPM. In calm wind and water, it would have averaged 13.5 knots.

Top Speed

At the max rated 6,000 RPM on each engine, the boat went 14.5 knots, so a calm water speed of 15 knots. It was outrunning the propellers badly at this point. There was some room left to throttle up more, but not without over-revving the new engines. The last few hundred RPM made a difference mostly in noise, not speed, another sure sign that the boat has overrun the propellers and needs higher pitch props. As I write this, new props with half an inch more pitch have been added to the boat, but even those only brought the max RPM down to the mid-5,000 range. That is right in the middle of the manufacturer specification, but props with yet another half an inch of pitch are on order.

Human Jackplate

We are running out of sources of drag that can be eliminated on this boat and were discussing what else could be done to improve performance. Looking at the engines on dry land, I had noticed that the cavitation plate is a couple of inches below the extended plane of the hull, meaning the engines could be mounted at least that much higher on the transoms. Don decided that the middle of the Peace River was as good a place as any to adjust motor height. That's a good way to send an engine for a swim, but he pulled it off.
Moving the engines up an inch or so did not make a noticeable performance difference. To the extent that things changed, the boat actually got slower. That seems strange, but that's what happened.

Nav-A-Gator Lunch

We stopped in at the Nav-A-Gator Grille for lunch and slung the boat across two slips, partially blocking access to a third. This would not have been popular on a weekend, but there were plenty of open slips.

Cowmaran Upriver

After lunch, we headed on up the Peace River. Don asked how far we could go and my answer was that the river goes a lot further than we have time to go. Parts of it are shallow at this time of year, but if you are careful and willing to drag the boat over the occasional sand bar, it should be possible to make it to Arcadia and beyond.

Old Ft Ogden Bridge

Just past the County Rd 761 bridge is this broken down old wooden bridge at the end of River Street in Fort Ogden, FL. We went a mile or two past this bridge before shallow water and lack of time made us turn around.

Peace River Bottom

The water in this part of the world is generally stained brown by tannins and if it is stirred up at all, visibility approaches zero. We found the river water relatively clear and could see the bottom in about two to three feet of water. Being able to see the bottom is kind of unusual and makes me a bit nervous in this area. It almost always means it is waist deep or less, and sometimes it means you just hit.

I attempted one detour in a side branch of the river, but it was too shallow. We bounced off a couple of submerged logs and had to spin the boat in marginal water to escape. Because of a strong wind blowing us further down the shallow branch, it would have been a bad spot with the single engine. The only way out would have been to get out of the boat and grab the bow to let the wind swing it around.

Wake Over Bar

This section of the Peace River is scenic and shallow. Once again, that large, rolling wake showed up some of the time. It was particularly visible in the shallows and where it would break over sand bars by the shore. It might be associated with acceleration/deceleration because it is not always present.

Cowmaran Wake

Another shot of the rolling Cowmaran wake. It does not act like a normal boat wake, making an increasingly sharp V as speed increases. It just goes more or less straight out.

Under Hull

I stuck the camera down under the bow and took a shot looking back between the hulls, hoping it would reveal something about why those large, rolling waves are appearing in the wake. It did not answer any questions, but is kind of an interesting photo anyway.

Cowmaran on Shell Creek

We cruised back down the river and they dropped me off at my neighbor's dock on Shell Creek. I had them run back and forth for a quick photo shoot before heading back to Punta Gorda. Here the Cowmaran is approaching the dock at a fairly high speed. No big, rolling wake at all. Where did it go?

Cowmaran Stern Cruising

The view from astern as she went by also does not show the strange, rolling wake. It shows just what I would expect, and what we see most of the time: two tiny little wakes coming off each hull and nothing else.

Cowmaran Flyby

The close passes at speed were pretty fun to watch. The boat and engines are very quiet and do not throw around a lot of white water, so it appears to be approaching more slowly than it actually is going. It then suddenly arrives and zips by with surprising speed. Check out the video below for some footage of the Cowmaran in Shell Creek.

Today (April 14, 2012) we went to watch the Dragon Boat races off downtown Punta Gorda and I got my first ride with the new props. With a 15-20 knot headwind and harbor chop tall enough to smack into the crossbeams under the deck, the engines wound up to about 5,200 RPM and the boat went 15 knots. The wind and chop were taking at least a knot off of our speed, so it looks like the new props make it a knot or two faster throughout the speed range. These props have a 9" pitch and feel right for the boat. A pair of 9.5" props are on the way, but I suspect those will only be useful in ideal conditions.

Some Video of the Cowmaran in Action:

The post Powering Up the Cowmaran first appeared on Tropical Boating.

Expletive Little Boat

(You get the idea...)

Multihull Dreams

The ELB (Extremely Light Boat) project began as many great ideas do: with a couple of guys messing about with a boat. In this case, my friend Don and his buddy Fred were chatting about how it should be possible to make a very efficient powerboat by using some of the technology that makes a sailboat go fast.

Don and another friend, Mike, decided to quit chatting and take action, and in a couple of hours they had removed the amas from Don's Multi 23 trimaran, built a deck to span them, and created a brand new boat: the design prototype for the ELB. Don's comment on the design at the time was, "With a 2 hp Honda we made 7.7 mph speed and about 70 mpg. Next prototype should be less crude."

The boat is obviously squatting badly and the bows are in the air, sacrificing waterline length. A sailboat does not need a lot of buoyancy aft like a powerboat does, especially one with outboard power. Luckily, Don's son got hold of him at this point and explained that if he really wanted powerboat hulls, borrowing them from any sailboat was not going to work well, and he should have a proper design done. Don's buddy Fred used AutoCAD 3D to loft the hull sections. It is his rendering in Don's imagination in the picture at the top right.

Corecell on Strongback

They had a hull shape drawn and created the form over which the hulls would be created and before too long Mike's cow barn was filled with corecell foam dust as they made and glued up strips of structural foam core. This core will have carbon fiber cloth laid over it and then epoxy infused through vacuum bagging to create strong, lightweight hulls. Because it was born in a cow barn, the ELB is sometimes called by the nickname Cowmaran.

Building Transom

The foam strips cover almost the entire form near the bow but steps down to the much lower transom height in stages along the form. Eventually it will be trimmed to a graceful line. The transoms require a bit of extra structure to accommodate twin engines.

Cowmaran Hull

After the corecell strips were glued together the seams were faired to create one smooth foam core, ready for carbon fiber cloth and epoxy. The bow is another area that, like the transom, can not be built like the rest of the boat. Although the carbon fiber/foam core construction of the boat is strong, it is also brittle and vulnerable to impact damage, making it an inappropriate choice in the bow.

Vacuum Bagging Carbon Fiber

This is probably the first time this procedure has been done in a cow barn. The hull is completely taped inside the vacuum bag and they are infusing the carbon fiber with epoxy and sucking away any excess. To get the right temperature for the epoxy to cure, they had to construct a little room around large pieces like this one and then heat it with a propane heater. This curing room/oven was made with styrofoam panels and poly tarps.

Vacuum Bags Removed From Cowmaran Hull

With the vacuum bag removed, the hull is starting to take shape and look a bit like a race boat in carbon fiber black.

Foamed Bulkheads

After the exterior surface was vacuum bagged with carbon fiber and the hulls were removed from the form, the insides got the same treatment to form a carbon fiber and foam sandwich structure. Next they constructed carbon fiber and foam bulkheads to support the hulls. As the one in the picture at right shows, each of these was lined with a rim of flexible foam (the yellow stuff). The purpose is to make the joint a bit flexible so as to prevent the stiff bulkheads from "printing" a visible bump through the hulls.

Carbon Fiber Beams

To connect the two halves together, a carbon fiber and corecell foam sandwich deck will ride on four of these 6 inch carbon fiber and epoxy beams. Structural elements like these can really add up in weight and if this boat weighs too much it will either be very slow or it will require a lot of power. These carbon fiber beams each weigh 16 lbs.

Beams In Place

The carbon fiber beams tie the hulls together and support the span of the deck set in place. The deck section is one inch thick and weighs only about 100 pounds. Creating a deck and connecting structure weighing only 160 pounds for two 27 foot catamaran hulls is pretty impressive!

ELB Parts Dryfit

Pictured at left is one of the early attempts to fit all of the major structural pieces of the ELB together prior to gluing it all up with epoxy. The rounded spray shield across the front is starting to make it look like a finished boat.

Glued Up From Astern

The stern of the ELB after the deck has been glued down onto the structural carbon fiber beams. The transoms are still showing some wrapping from being reinforced.

Glued Up ELB Bows

The splash shield has been covered in carbon fiber in the picture at left. It's all coming together at this point.

Finishing On Side

One of the nice things about an extremely light boat is that you can stand it on its side to work on it. With pulleys, straps, ropes and comealongs, they were able to easily put the boat in any position desired. The styrofoam that was used to make curing rooms around the pieces came in handy for padding and blocking the boat in place.

Painting Inverted ELB

Once the structural assembly was done, it was time to turn the boat upside down for painting. Here it is resting on stacks of styrofoam near the beginning of the painting process.

Painting On Side

The boat was set back up on its side for some of the painting. I guess doing it from a ladder was easier than trying to avoid walking in wet paint with the boat upside down.

Rolling ELB Over

A close look at the picture at left (click to enlarge) shows the various straps and tackle used to lower the boat back down onto a waiting collection of styrofoam pads. The whole boat weighs about 500 lbs at this point, with the beams and deck adding up to around 160 and each hull weighing about the same amount.

Configuring Seating

Although the structure is not quite finished, the completion of the underside had them thinking about putting it in the water for a test run. Other practical thoughts started to come up, such as exactly where the seats and console should go. At right is an early attempt at modeling solutions to this problem.

First Test

The lack of a console or seats was not enough to stop a test run. In this stripped-down configuration, the ELB with 9.8 hp Tohatsu weighs around 600 pounds and was able to achieve about 16 knots.

Console with Bench

Meanwhile, the console was being fabricated back in the cow barn using the same structure as the boat: corecell foam core with vacuum bagged carbon fiber infused with epoxy. At right is a front view with the forward bench seat in place and the front side covered in carbon fiber. The front side is angled to reduce wind resistance and provides a comfortable back rest angle.

Console And Bench Seat

As the console core was being assembled and encapsulated in carbon fiber, work on the helmsman's bench was begun. The console helm station and bench are very tall, making for great visibility when driving the boat or riding on the bench as a passenger.

Boat With Console

After two summers in the making the Cowmaran finally emerged from the cow barn in nearly completed form, complete with console and helm bench. It is on the way down to Florida for final assembly and testing over the winter.

Clean Boat

The hulls look nice with a very fine entry and plenty of bridgedeck clearance. It is sitting on a used snowmobile trailer that was bought for the purpose of transporting it to Florida. I still had never seen the boat in person, but had been following the build in Facebook. I was excited to hear that Don planned to bring it out to my yard to do a little work on it before putting it on his lift over in Punta Gorda.

Cowmaran with Sun Cats

Snowbirds were not the only ones heading South to Punta Gorda in early November. Racers in the Sun Cat National Championship Regatta were also converging on our place for our annual race. The one participant in the concurrent Horizon Cat Nationals said that he saw this strange white catamaran being towed by a small white passenger car several times during his trip down from South Carolina, and he was somehow not surprised when he arrived at my place to find the strange boat here!

In the picture at right, the Cowmaran has a new Com Pac Sun Cat owned by soon-to-be-National Champion Scott to the left and an old Sun Cat of the original production from the 1960s on the right. Any Sun Cat will do. As Head Jib Trimmer In Charge of the Sun Cat Class, I have decided that the class rule is: you must sail a hull that is arguably a Sun Cat hull. Anything else goes.

Cowmaran with Motorcycle

Sun Cat racer Don came to our regatta welcoming party on his motorcycle and parked it over by the Cowmaran. The two make quite a picture!

Remote Control Installation

While I was distracted by the ongoing Whale Swimming Boat Rebuild, I came over when I saw activity on the ELB to take a picture now and then. They had a nice, high aluminum railing made to wrap all the way around the boat. The fat part of the gunwale is composed of a three layer sandwich of carbon fiber and foam and Don devised clamps to secure the stanchion bases to that part of the boat without causing cracks. In the picture at right, Mike is installing the engine remote control box and the steering wheel in the console.

Connecting Engine Cables

Because the 9.8 hp is an engine that is used almost exclusively in tiller steering applications, it does not have the tube built into the mounting bracket for a standard remote steering cable. Instead, the engine end of the cable had to be secured in the old fashioned way, with a bracket attached to the transom. In the photo at left, Don and Mike are working on connecting the end of the steering cable and getting everything positioned so that the engine turns all the way in both directions and there is clearance when tilting it.

The Cowmaran

My First ELB Ride

Disabled Sailing World Championships

Charlotte Harbor, FL 1/12/12

My first chance to take a ride on the Extremely Light Boat came on January 12th when we went out to watch the IFDS Disabled Sailing World Championships on Charlotte Harbor. Disabled sailors were competing in 2.4 mR, Sonar, and SKUD sailboats that are specially equipped to accommodate the physical limitations of the sailors. Light winds caused them to delay the start of racing in the small boats in the upper harbor, but it picked up as the day went on and there was a nice breeze by the time we were down in the central harbor watching the Sonar fleet around midday.

The Cowmaran was already floating when I arrived and I took a few pictures as Don and I waited for a couple of sailors to join us.

Bows Off Lift

It is a bit hard to tell, but yes, it really is floating. I guess it draws about two inches at the bows. It is easily beachable in that respect, but the hulls are too fragile up there to take much punishment from a beach. We are seeking solutions to that problem that do not add too much weight.

The bows are covered with a plywood and carbon fiber deck that is not yet finished in this picture. Also in the "unfinished" category is the square thing on the port bow deck. That is part of one of the structural beams that tie the amas together and support the deck, and there is a matching one mounted in the port ama at the stern. It's a solid point, but too ugly to stay in my opinion.

Stern Floating

The hull draft at the transoms is about the same as at the bows - only a couple of inches. Don estimates the weight at this point at around 1,000 lbs, including engine, battery, fuel, remote controls, and basic safety gear.

The high bridgedeck clearance makes an extra long shaft (25") necessary in this configuration. The addition of the planing fin on the cavitation plate all but eliminated early cavitation problems. Now the propeller will swallow a little air now and then if running at high power in a lot of chop, but otherwise it performs fine. The engine is submerged just beyond the little fin above the cavitation plate, or about 13 inches. This is where the ELB has impressive shallow draft: at rest. High tech flats boats can run in very little water using jack plates, low water pickups, and surface piercing propellers, as long as they are planing. The point of a flats boat is to stop in the shallow water and fish, and most have to find a hole to get on and off plane, after which they are down to trolling motors.

By way of comparison, if my 90 hp Yamaha is submerged to the same point, it draws about 19 inches, six more than the engine on the ELB. The difference is mostly in the propeller. The ELB has a prop that measures 8 inches or less, while the prop on the bigger Yamaha is about 14" in diameter. The ELB can go places with the engine fully down that my 15' Boston Whaler can barely go with the engine tilted just because there is a lot more propeller and lower unit to keep in the water.

ELB Ready To Go

The moment I have been waiting for all these months as I watched the build from afar! The Extremely Light Boat all rigged and ready for a day on the water. Granted, the rigging and some other aspects are a bit crude at this point, but the boat is still in development. The final plan does not call for throttle and shift cables that cut off access to the helm from one side, but it does work. All of those cords and cables should be concealed in the end, but the boat will go through changes.

A second Tohatsu 9.8 has been ordered, so twin engine controls are going to be needed anyway. The second engine happens to have power tilt, since that was what the dealership had in stock. Power tilt will be incredibly useful for shallow water maneuvering, so I guess the original engine may be upgraded or replaced. One of the nice things about the ELB is that the engines are just not all that expensive by powerboat engine standards, so replacing one is not that big of a deal. Many power catamarans this size have the equivalent of a couple of new cars hanging on the transoms, so you do not just replace one lightly. Depending on the performance with the twin 9.8 hp engines, the boat may wind up with a pair of 15's or 20's. Those engines weigh about 20 pounds more and cost around a thousand dollars more apiece than 9.8's, but still the price for a pair of them could be less than some repair bills on a single V6 outboard.

Peel Ply Layer

While we were waiting for a couple of friends to join us, Don showed me a piece they had cut out of the boat during construction. The layer he is peeling off is called peel ply. It's special stuff that will not stick on one side and will allow air to pass on the other side. After the piece is vacuum bagged and cured, it can be peeled off.

ELB Core Sample

The ELB carbon fiber over foam core sample after the peel ply is off, showing the weave of the cloth in the sun. Vacuum bagging helps ensure that the strands of the cloth are soaked but no extra epoxy is left behind.

ELB Open Bow

The ELB has a beam of 8' 6" and it is carried almost the entire length of the boat. The deck spans nearly the entire beam, so it looks like it is almost big enough for a volleyball court. All this space had me really envious. We sometimes set racing marks for sailing races in our 15' Boston Whaler, and a 5' tetrahedron mark in a boat with 5' 3" beam is quite a visual obstacle. We could put three of those marks in the front deck of the Cowmaran and still have room to move around.

ELB Open Stern

Of course, if you have three big marks aboard a boat like this one, at least one or two of them can go on the equally spacious aft deck. I could get a pretty good game of fetch going with our dog on this boat if we just put a net around the railing to catch stray balls.

Port Ama Locker

Don tried to show me the inside of the port ama through this large access hatch, but looking into a black hole in a white deck in the sun is impossible. I learned that if you build a boat in carbon fiber black, painting the insides white would be a good idea. That battery needs to go down in that hole, but there will likely be another battery when there is another engine and their final location is yet to be determined.

ELB Under Console

The console is very tall and wide, so has a lot of storage space underneath.

ELB Visits 2.4 mR Racers

When we got out on the harbor, the first stop was the race course being used by the 2.4 mR class in upper Charlotte Harbor near the US 41 bridge. The boats had been floating around becalmed all morning and racing was delayed. When we got there, enough wind was starting to come up that the boats were starting to move around. We decided to head on down to the area off the point of Punta Gorda where the SKUD class was already racing. There was a bit more wind out in that less protected area of the harbor.

ELB Cruising Down Harbor

As we cruised down the harbor at a little over ten knots with 4 people aboard, the tiny wakes created by the ELB essentially disappeared in the small chop that was developing. This was something new and exciting to me. A powerboat that could go a reasonable speed on very little power, making very little wake. All the powerboats I know make a terrible wake at speeds around ten knots. This one likes to go that speed. We did not even feel the little waves as the bows sliced through them.

ELB Outruns Coach Boat Fleet

We shadowed the SKUD fleet through a couple of races and it seemed to me that the Cowmaran was much better suited to the job than any of the coach boats being used. Almost all of the disabled sailors had a coach boat following along, but the picture at right shows how we saw them from onboard the ELB. If they went fast enough to keep up with the racing sailboats, they would throw a tremendous wake. They were forced to either lag behind or run at high speed well outside the fleet, either of which kind of defeats the purpose of having the coach nearby to watch the race. We could easily outrun the fleet in the Cowmaran, watching the whole fleet round each mark and then running to the next one to beat the first arrival, and we could do it without creating a disruptive wake too near to the fleet.

ELB and Sonar Fleet

The same scene played out down in the central part of the harbor when we went down to the Sonar class race course. Coaches in RIBs were either putting along too slowly to keep up with the fleet or fast enough to throw up a wall of water while the ELB was able to shadow the fleet up and down the course. It was a bit choppy out in that part of the harbor by the time we got there, but the ELB is barely affected by waves, especially if taken head-on. Beam seas will rock the boat a bit, of course, but even that motion is fairly muted for such a light boat.

ELB Starboard Ama Wake

I took a couple of pictures over the stern as we cruised around. The one at right was taken in the canal at a speed of around 5-6 knots.

ELB Port Ama Wake

The picture at left was taken in the harbor at a bit higher speed. I do not think we were going at cruising speed for this one, but probably around 8 knots.

ELB Enters Shell Creek

Another Cowmaran Ride

To Nav-A-Gator on the Peace River

In February Don and his wife invited my wife and me to go for another Cowmaran ride, this time up the Peace River to a place called Nav-A-Gator Bar and Grille, where they have a Super Grouper sandwich that is a local favorite. I have never been to the Nav-A-Gator in a car and will never go that way, but am always happy to go there again by boat. It's a necessary part of the Nav-A-Gator experience.

We left from Punta Gorda in mid-morning to allow a little exploration time before lunch. We live on Shell Creek and Don wanted the guided tour of the few ways in and out of Shell Creek and the associated shallow spots. Having hit them all, I'm well qualified to point them out.

Speed Run

In the bottom of Shell Creek we did a little run at full throttle. I'm not sure this was 100% legal. The sign says, "Slow speed, minimum wake." Well, the Cowmaran is slow compared to many powerboats and even its maximum wake is a minimal wake. Anyway, it was a nice, smooth, deserted patch of water, so we opened her up. 12 knots. That's relatively slow, right?

We went on up Shell Creek past the railroad bridge and US 17 bridge and up to the dam. At each intersection along the way, I explained where the various branches led and how they interconnect with one another. They all look pretty much the same at first, and I'm sure much of my explanation did not sink in, but at least now they have seen a couple of the right ways to go and been warned about the worst wrong ones.

Cowmaran on Hunter Creek

When we got back out into the Peace River from Shell Creek, we took the eastern branch of the river, called Hunter Creek. This is a really beautiful waterway that is seldom used. Most people go up and down the main channel, where the speed limit is 25 mph. In Hunter Creek, it is a slow speed, minimum wake zone, which is perfect for the Cowmaran, as discussed above.

ELB and Airboat at Dock

We docked at the seawall end, next to the airboat tour operation. There is no place quite like the Nav-A-Gator. It is not just a restaurant. They have a funky little museum, they sell gasoline (ethanol free only), rent slips, give river tours, and have a seaplane dock, just in case you want to visit in your seaplane. They have indoor and outdoor seating and often have live music. It's just a generally fun place, but I would probably seldom come so far up the river if they did not have such a good Super Grouper sandwich.

Disembarking at Nav A Gator

Another view of our group disembarking at the Nav A Gator lunch dock. They have several docks for use by boaters stopping in for lunch, but only one that is really easy for the Cowmaran to use before the second engine gets here. Making the 90 degree turn into those other docks in the narrow waterway can be a challenge with the single engine.

NavAGator Afternoon

Sonja and Don chatting at our lunch table on the Nav-A-Gator back porch. It's a NavAGator Afternoon, sit back and enjoy the show, as the Jim Morris song goes...

Stern At Nav A Gator Dock

The side view shows that the lunch docks at Nav-A-Gator generally anticipate that the customers will arrive in boats a bit smaller than 27 feet. This is far from the first big boat I have seen wedged into a little dock here, but it is not all that common.

ELB On Lift From Astern

After lunch we came back down to Punta Gorda Isles via the Peace River and we got as far as the mooring field near the US 41 bridge when we ran out of fuel. We had been running all day on the 3 gallon tank, which started out with only about 2 gallons in it. Don was curious just how long we could go on those two gallons, so we found out. We had plenty of fuel to get home in the 6 gallon tank. I do not know exactly how far we went on those two gallons, but it was a long way. About 8 nautical miles from Don's place to the dam on Shell Creek, at least another 8 up to the Nav A Gator, and about 12 back down to where we ran out of fuel. With a little messing around along the way, we probably went 30 nautical miles on two gallons of fuel.

I will update this page when Don puts another engine on the boat.

Update: The Twin Engine Cowmaran

Some video taken aboard the ELB:

The post Creating The Extremely Light Boat first appeared on Tropical Boating.

FISH Boatworks and Florida Maritime Museum at Cortez, FL

Cortez Traditional Small Craft Festival Fleet At Docks

The historic fishing village of Cortez, FL is clinging tenaciously to its past even as other traditional Florida waterfront communities are irrevocably changed by modern development. Fishermen established the settlement in the 1880s and commercial fishing, particularly for mullet, has been a way of life ever since. Retiring the last of the fishing fleet and bulldozing the fish packing houses to create condominiums and dockominiums for retiring midwesterners and tourists might make more economic sense, but the old fishing families in Cortez might argue that their self-sufficient lifestyle and connection to the local environment have a unique value that is worth preserving.

Every April, the town is the site of a boatbuilders' gathering organized by the FL Gulf Coast Chapter of the Traditional Small Craft Association, at which a large and eclectic fleet of handmade craft and the people who make them gather to mess about in boats. Traditional boatbuilders are a bit like old Florida fishing villages: endangered by the modern world in which they have largely been replaced, yet persevering anyway. I decided to go up to check out the 2011 Great Florida Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival to see what it had to teach an aspiring boatbuilder like myself.

The Florida Gulf Coast Chapter of the Traditional Small Craft Association Festival was held at the site of the Florida Maritime Museum and the Florida Institute of Saltwater Heritage (F.I.S.H.) boatworks. The museum building is the old schoolhouse, restored and filled with model boats and ships and maritime memorabilia. They have also acquired the historic Burton Store, which survived the 1921 hurricane that devastated the rest of Cortez. It is sitting in the FISH Boatworks yard awaiting restoration.

I first stopped in the Maritime Museum to take a look at their exhibits. Out front, they have a traditional Cuban fishing vessel that was used by some Cubans to escape the Castro regime. Inside are pieces of other old boats, diorama models depicting traditional fishing life, and a number of nice wooden model boats. I was taking pictures of the models, including the catboat at left, and talking with one of the museum volunteers when one of my fellow catboat sailors, Paul, walked into the room. Paul signed the registration for the dinner that night, then we decided to walk on down to the docks and check out the boats.

On the way down the dock, we came across these people in the process of extracting their large dog from the cabin of their small sailboat. With the teenager lifting from behind and dad tugging from above, the dog managed to get out the companionway opening, but it was not pretty! Beautiful dog once on deck, but a good reminder for sailors to try to fall in love with smaller breeds.

The dock opposite the one we were on is an active commercial fishing dock with a packing house. The picture at left shows the current state of fishing technology: fast, shoal-draft boats that are capable of netting fish and setting crab traps in the shallow bays and backwaters. Commercial fishermen have come a long way from the days when net spreads for drying cotton nets and much more primitive boats dominated the shoreline.

When we got out to the floating docks where all the little boats were located, the first things we came across were some very nice paddling craft. This one has what appears to be a carbon fiber wishbone boom for the sailing rig. It is hard to see in the photo, but that leeboard on the other side of the boat is a real work of art. I think dragging it on the bottom would give me a heart attack.

The lapstrake rowboat with the flat bottom in the background of this picture was a really neat boat, but this strip built open kayak made me scarcely notice it! A boat like this seems far too attractive to risk using it around salt and sand.

A bit further out the dock were these two junk kayaks, and I'm not saying that to be mean! They were built as part of a competition to build kayaks out of waste building materials, if I understood correctly. They seem to have been made in skin and frame fashion, using whatever wood was around for the frame and Tyvec or groundcloth or something for the skin. That's boating on a budget! The black one looks pretty fast, too!

Catboat Willy and Paul

As we were examining the junk boats and the funny little boat beyond them, our fellow catboat sailor, Catboat Willy, came over from his boat to greet us, so I took a picture of Willy and Paul under the dock shelter.

The funny little boat at the end of the line was drawing a lot of attention, and someone asked whose boat it was.

"Moses," Paul volunteered.

That got a few chuckles, but the actual owner chimed in to explain that it is constructed with a ballistic nylon fabric skin, and the flat part is actually the bow of the boat. The number 13 is in the stern. That pretty much stopped the conversation, as no one really knew how to react to this boat.

A while later, I saw someone attempting to recreate Moses' journey. He appeared to by trying to scull in the direction we had been told was "forward," but was not having much success and the wind and tide were taking him sideways toward that narrow creek opening.

The largest boat to attend the Traditional Small Craft Festival was this gaff-rigged cutter named Surprise, which appears to be built on an old fishing boat design. I guess they stripped the sails off for show, but I do wonder about that monster outboard motor bracket. It looks sturdy enough to take an engine in the 20-30 hp range, big enough to drive the boat. Does that boat really have no inboard power? It looks like a shoal draft design, so I guess they might just put a 25 hp on there to drive the boat. It would not be fun wrestling such a heavy engine on and off the bracket by hand, but it looks like the mainsheet could easily be used for that purpose.

The other "big boat" at the small boat gathering was the catboat Nadine, which is not exactly a traditional catboat, but is a very nice looking cruiser all the same. She has a LOT of cabin and not all that much sail area for a catboat. Aft of Nadine is an old fashioned power launch with glossy black topsides.

Here is a shot of the black launch a bit later, when they were departing. If you're going to have a powerboat at a traditional craft festival, this is certainly a good choice! What may appear at first glance to be a death grip on both rails by the passenger was really more of a relaxed sprawl. The boat is just narrow enough to comfortably reach both sides.

Up in the parking lot, we encountered another powerboat entrant: this outboard powered traditional strip built skiff. I'm not sure what to think of that. I like outboards on small boats and dislike tiny little inboards in tiny little spaces, but that just looks wrong. It kind of looks like someone took a chainsaw to a really nice rowboat and stuck in an outboard.

I suppose if you are driving it, you do not see the outboard and you do not have to row. It does have a certain charm, but I can't get over how ridiculous the engine looks.

Back out on the dock, Willy's catboat Sea Bird is tied up next to another small power launch. This one has a little air-cooled engine in that box, which sounds like a bad enough idea to send me running for a chainsaw and an outboard. Now I think I understand how the boat above came to be outboard powered...

I caught a picture of the little launch as it was leaving with a very nice wooden decked kayak in tow. It sounded like an old VW Bug engine as it went putt putting away.

I walked out onto the sand bar to take a closer look at some of the boats scattered around in the knee-deep water. Being a multihull enthusiast, one that caught my eye right away was Shark Bait, a kayak trimaran with a ketch rig. It looks very light and can obviously carry quite a bit of sail for such a little boat. I was hoping to get the opportunity to see it sail, and after a while, I did, but only from a distance.

I do not know how it got away without my noticing, but here is a picture of Shark Bait under sail. It looks like the sail has zippered panels to reduce sail area and the mainsail is missing one. The jib is completely furled. The wind was not all that strong, so the reduced sail area suggests a light air flyer to me. I would love to take it for a ride! That's a big flag hanging off that sail, though. I think a smaller one would be just as patriotic and much better looking.

One of my favorites as I wandered the flat was this gaff-rigged schooner strip built canoe. It straddles the line between cute toy and real boat nicely, and the workmanship was excellent. I would rather sail Shark Bait, but this one is nice to look at!

There were many wooden boats finished bright, which is always a more attractive look to me than a painted boat, but this one really stood out. I think that is a mahogany deck on this Melonseed, and the rich, red color goes nicely with the tanbark sail. By far the nicest finish job I saw at the festival. If I owned such a beautiful boat, I would lock it in a nitrogen-filled storage room. It's just too pretty to expose to the Florida environment. Or maybe I would just paint it and use it, but I don't think I could use it if it looked like that. What if I scuffed it or something??

I met the proud owner of this little lapstrake skiff called Rascal when I was standing out by the boats. I commented that his engine seemed a bit big for the boat, and he told me that she sails and rows nicely, and that 5 hp two stroke engine will actually make the boat plane with a light load! OK, so maybe it's worth it to carry the larger engine around, if you're going to have one aboard at all. It is not traditional, but significantly changes the capabilities of the boat. Places that are out of range at slow speed are suddenly not so far if you are in a planing skiff.

In the background of this picture, you can see the beautiful Melonseed from the above photo attempting to leave under sail. They kind of got blown into the pilings over there, and were having a bit of trouble getting out. You can also see a little green catboat sailing in the channel.

The little green catboat is named Mar, and aboard were an old salt who seemed to know how to handle a dinghy and a young girl who seemed a bit terrified by the whole thing. They were moving right along downwind, then picked up some speed turning up toward the flat where I was standing. The young girl yelled, "We're going to crash!" About that time, the skipper turned the rest of the way into the wind to stop the boat and I grabbed the bow, though it was not really necessary. An expert landing, I was just being polite. The girl seemed astonished and pleased that the boat and dock were not a joined mass of splinters.

I was walking around in the water when this lady paddled by in this really gorgeous wood kayak. That light wood used for the deck really had a nice glow to it that does not come through in the picture. This is the same little kayak that was being towed by the black motor launch in a photo above.

I believe the moored boat is a Core Sound 17, and since I am very interested in that boat's big sister, the Everglades Challenge 22, I wanted to take a closer look, but it was out kind of far in deeper water. I did not want to that badly, I guess! I got close enough to take this picture as a Melonseed sailor went by, then turned back toward the dock.

The Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP) Boatworks is a traditional wooden boatbuilding program up in St. Augustine, FL, and the LAMP volunteers brought their skiff down to the festival this year.

Though a bit plain to the eye, this was one of my favorite boats at the festival. It just looks very practical, capacious, and well thought-out for a boat of this size. It also looks like it would not require a nitrogen filled storage facility.

I would not mind a bit using it and scratching it up. It looks easy to fix, and a fix on one of these is a lot easier to hide than on one of the gorgeous wooden boats.

I found a short video of this boat, or one just like it, under sail:

Next to the boat from LAMP Boatworks was this little catboat. I like the cockpit grate and the wide side decks, but it needs oarlocks and a place to use them. It is about the size of the LAMP boat, but looking at the two of them, I would rather sail the LAMP boat with a couple of friends, the catboat by myself. That's a big mast, and while I never saw the whole sail, it must be pretty large judging by the boom and sprit laying in the cockpit.

Sallie Adams was the biggest boat out on the flat. She's a Cortez boat, so the ability to get around on these shallows is important. Out beyond Sallie Adams is a kind of boxy looking microcruiser. I think that one is even smaller than the SCAMP, which is my favorite entrant in the "smallest is best" cruiser department.

Displaying her own shoal draft capability, this Americraft catboat has a businesslike appearance. I like the tanbark sail and simple Marconi rig, but the sail looks a bit small to my eye for a catboat. Many carry a gaff sail that overhangs the transom, with quite a bit more sail area. It looks fun and easy to sail, though, and if it is not too heavy should perform OK in all but the lightest winds.

Some fellow multihull sailors brought a couple of ultralight trimarans. One of these has a Marconi cat rig with a roller furling mast, while the other has a fractional sloop rig with roller furling jib. It is hard to tell, but it looks to me like that mainsail rolls around the boom when not in use on the sloop rig, which looks considerably more powerful. The boats are not very different in size, almost twins it seems, but the rigs are very different.

As I was getting ready to leave later on, I saw the trimarans disassembled and loaded on their custom trailer. Lots of parts and pieces!

We decided to walk up to the parking lot restaurant to get some food, and along the way I saw these fishing boats jockeying for dock space across the canal. The skiff in the foreground has trim tabs, and I was wondering...

...ummm...guys? The fishing skiff? In the foreground? There are fishing boats in that picture. And an S2 sailboat... Nevermind. Moving along...

OK, in this picture that contains no distractions, you can see that the fishing skiff has trim tabs on the transom. I was wondering where the controls are? Usually, trim tab controls are on the console near the throttle and steering wheel, but that is a tiller steered boat with no visible console. I guess they just hang them on the side of the seat or something.

Up in the parking lot, they had this replica of a Spanish scout/raider ship of the type that people like DeSoto would have used in the exploration and colonization of Florida. The shallow waters and strong currents in inlets along the west coast of Florida would have been hazardous for an old square-rigger, so the solution to approach a new shore was a small boat with six rowing stations. The cannon had to do with what to do when you get there...

I guess a scout/raider should have a gun, but I have to wonder whether something like this could really present a danger to anyone besides those aboard? It does not look powerful enough to damage a ship, nor accurate enough to hit a small boat. I guess it would make a heck of an impressive BANG!

One last shot in the water- this one of a classic rumrunner style runabout, but a bit modernized and with four stroke outboard power instead of the conventional inboard. The finish on this boat was outstanding. I thought the matching shirts made the whole thing a bit too attractive to be in the water, but I seem to have that opinion about a lot of good looking boats.

At the other end of the boat appearance and condition spectrum, this neglected ketch sat in the parking lot with a condemnation sticker on the side, or what was left of the side. You can see a crack that is several feet long on this side, and the rest of the boat was not in much better condition. It appears destined for a date with a chainsaw. Boats in this condition always make me wonder: on the day they launched this boat, did anyone imagine it would come to this end?

The sign pointing the way from the museum parking lot out to the FISH Boatworks area is an old boat, very appropriate. This one looks too far gone to ever make the restoration list, but it makes a great sign. On the way back to the boat building area, I saw the old Burton Store sitting in the field awaiting restoration. It looks like a pretty ordinary Florida Cracker Shack, but a bit larger and older than most.

There were several project boats in various states of ruin and restoration around the yard, but the showpiece at the moment was clearly this wooden Bahamas cruiser that is being restored under a tarp in the yard. I recall someone saying it is 28 feet long. It has quite a large pilothouse for a boat this size and a good sized cockpit. I wanted to get up and look inside, but no one was around.

Also under restoration at FISH was this long canoe, or possibly it is a kayak. The hull shape looks a lot like the native dugout canoes on display in the museum, but it is not a dugout. Whatever it may be, any boat that long and skinny is going to be fast to paddle!

I do not know what this boat is, but my first reaction to it was "Incredible Hulk." The bilge underneath the engine compartment was rotting out, among other things, but I guess someone has in mind restoring the boat.

I left the Traditional Small Craft Festival feeling a bit overwhelmed. I wanted to see a slice of what people out there are building to get some ideas and came away with more than I expected. Subsequent research about the boats I saw has led to many more boats, and at this point they all seem to highlight something else about boat building that I do not know. I'm guessing another year or so of this might be enough to teach me all of the things I do not know, at which point I can start learning some of them! Maybe it will not take so long...

The post Cortez Florida Small Craft Festival first appeared on Tropical Boating.

Building a boat is a major commitment of time and money, and I have always been surprised that amateurs are willing to take on the task. My attitude has always been: there are plenty of boats already built, and I would rather go play with one of those than create a whole new one! These people do not build their own bicycles or cars from scratch, changing the design along the way. They leave that sort of thing to engineers and manufacturing firms. Why are boats special? What makes every boater certain that he could actually build it just a bit better than the professionals?

Perhaps it is a sad commentary on the state of the marine industry, which I have often said does not exist to make a profit like normal industries do. Its sole purpose is so that boaters can boat at wholesale cost. Perhaps it is because designers do not cater to our particular pet peeves when creating a boat. In my case, it is drainage. Water, whether on deck or in the interior, should go away. ALL of it! I have frequently been known to grumble that designers should have to personally clean any new boat, inside and out, and leave it completely dry before introducing it to market. We would see better drainage!

In addition to the beautiful small sailing boats, I have always been attracted to small paddling boats that people build, and have taken an interest in recent years in some of the extreme adventures that they undertake with purpose-built small boats. The spirit and resourcefulness of the Puddle Duck Racer group at the Texas 200 and the incredible sailing performances turned in by Randy Smyth in his Sizzor trimaran at the Everglades Challenge really caught my attention, but there were many others. I decided to attend the launch of the 2011 Everglades Challenge, and while there I seem to have been infected with the boat building disease.

I can't really explain the change in attitude, but suddenly I think it would be a cool challenge to create a boat and participate in an event like that one. I think part of the reason is that the Everglades Challenge is a small boat event that takes place right in my back yard. It's my kind of boating, in my location where I possess the advantage of local knowledge for at least part of the route, and a general area knowledge for the entire route. I have been messing about in little boats in tropical Florida waters my whole life, and yet I am not really sure I can complete the Everglades Challenge. I know the difficulties of the course, some a bit too well, and it would not surprise me if at least one attempt ends in withdrawal from the race.

SCAMP Microcruiser

Another aspect of the EC that I enjoy is the profusion of different boats that participate in the event, many of them designed just for the purpose. In addition to the Sizzor trimaran, which I barely saw as it departed, the ones that really caught my eye were the SCAMP, pictured at left, and the Core Sound 20. The SCAMP is impressive to me because they actually managed to create a capable two-person cruiser that is only 12 feet long! It did well in the EC, and would have finished with a respectable time had they not run aground on a mud flat just as the wind blew all of the water out of Florida Bay. The Core Sound looked to me like the only boat in the fleet I would really like to take down the course.

The idea of boat building having grabbed my attention, I did a little research and planning to figure out what I might like to build. I decided to start with a nesting Spindrift dinghy, just because I have always wanted one of those and it seems like a good beginner boat. Next, I want to recreate Kinetic Energy, mostly because I can not seem to find one like it to buy. After that, I want to build an Everglades Challenge 22 and enter it into the race. This might take a while...

The post How I became infected with Boatbuilding Disease first appeared on Tropical Boating.