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by Jeff Gilbert - Darby, Tasmania - Australia

Part One - Part Two

Adaptable to Personal Touches

Like most designs Scouser is adaptable only in certain areas, and its best to consult the designer for any changes in hull shape. I designed the boat with square sections which will create a fair bit of lift but shouldn't present a problem in the moderate speed ranges for which Scouser is intended. Other areas such as cabin heights are more adaptable. The small sleeping/ lounge room is designed for ample sitting headroom and wouldn't need raising for the very tall although a little more camber would have the same effect.

Some may wish to move the head forrd where a hatch or cabin extension over it would be desirable to provide more headroom. My problems with this are that you compromise the only sprawl space on deck (the six feet frm the bow to cabin) and create a ventilation problem - for mainly this latter that reason I have drawn the head only accessible from the rear cockpit and ventilated by an opening porthole. Sadly this does cut down the space in an already small, roughly 6 feet square pilothouse, but we do have 8 feet in the stern and depending on motor arrangements could steal an extra foot or two in the pilot house at risk of tending towards a houseboat look. Remember the house goes right to the sheerline and hence doubles as a thruway to the forrd lounge and mid cockpit which are great safe spaces to have a read, play your guitar, safely adjust the jib and access the forrd deck. A small family could pretty successfully keep out of each others hair on such a boat.

As a general rule pilot houses look best as low as possible provided you can actually see where you are going. This one with headroom at 6 feet between as few beams as possible can easily be raised but with the current design the boat will fit in a standard container (doorway 2.22m square) with masts unstepped. If you wish the cabin height can be raised but the boat will need the higher (2.75m) door provided by a same width and but higher container, which ships at a higher cost for the convenience of pivoting masts Clearly, there's room to share the container with something else, perhaps someone moving house, and shipping costs on a long jaunt would be largely offset by not needing accoms. If you wished to spend a summer cruising the canals of France and seeing a little of the Northern Med I cant think of a better way to go. Unless you build the flat-bottomed Sabb 10HP paddle-driven launch I drew for a friend but, massively comfortable with huge viewing windows, its not designed or powered for open water - it will appear later if people are interested.

The low aspect staysail schooner rig is yet to be fully developed, but is really designed with reaching and running in mind, with unashamed use of the motor for upwind work. In fact I have in mind a motor-sailer here. If that seems like wimping out, you are probably younger than me, and perfectly welcome to do your sums, ballast up and fly more square footage. Scouser screaming along on a reach balanced on one keel will perform exactly as a catamaran on one hull - fast and scary.

The wood-stove is balanced by the helm position, with the whole arrangement able to be swapped laterally about the centreline. The wood stove can be replaced by a more modern galley arrangement - this is largely up to climate and personal preference. There is room for a BBQ in either cockpit. I do know that in Tasmania a warm cabin would triple your cruising season, whilst without one you'd be crippled by cold in spring and fall. IMHO, the cheeriness and optimism generated by a wood stove makes it a must anywhere outside the tropics. Get the smallest you can. Shipmates and New Zealand made Masport pot bellies are wondrous items. I have two wood stoves in my house, and do all our cooking on them or in the oven beneath one, but this is only economic because of abundant standing dead gum trees. To heat such a small cabin as that of Scouser very little wood need be burned, driftwood would nearly supply it. By the same token a meths stove and body heat would do until the weather really strikes. One of the potential fuel lockers/trotter boxes in the mid cockpit could be given over to firewood, but watch your trim. You may need to fill the other with jerrycans of water or fuel.

Handy Performance

I am planning to make two versions of Scouser with exactly the same body shape and twin long keels, 51 inches apart and only extending to 18 inches draft (just enough to protect the prop and twin kick-up rudders).

Unballasted Version

Designed for sheltered water and capable of higher speeds. Using a 200HP outboard this version will be capable of lifting onto a plane, but many would be satisfied with a smaller motor providing 7-8 knots Keels of hardwood. In the sub-5000lb zone loaded Ballasted version In the 3-ton area loaded.

Designed for use in the ocean, coastal cruising or even short ocean passages. Motor-sailing is the intended mode for all but upwind work where only the motor would be used to avoid hours of barely fruitful tacking.

Preliminary sketch prior to computerising to give full hydrostatics. Maybe worth printing. The rig will be a heavy cloth (Dacron or canvas) low aspect staysail schooner with masts slightly offset from the centreline so that they may be folded down for bridges. A triangular bowsprit area with netting is planned (this could fold up for berthing) giving a sail area in the 350sf region. This would develop around 14hp in a 20knot breeze and provide 6-7 knots of boat-speed. Adding a bit of motor power would see the boat cruising at 8 knots.

Keels I have yet to calculate but they will be either built of:

  1. hardwood as above with a 20ft railway line spiked or bolted to each (about 1000lbs ballast). Railway lines come in 40ft lengths with sections at 60-100lbs per yard. The draught will be a bit greater than the unballasted, Or;
  2. poured reinforced concrete clamping the 2-layer flat ply bottom between them and a hardwood plank via set in bolts, and a layer of Sikaflex.

Once some friends were removing a winch from their trawler. We took out the bolts so it was held to the deck planks by Sikaflex only, then tried to pluck off the winch with a wharf crane. The whole 16-ton boat started lifting with it! A heatgun plus lots of bad language was required for a result, and even then we nearly set the boat afire. For the use planned, either keel option needs sufficient motive power to beat river flows and tidal races (For example, the Big Muddy flows at 1.2 mph near its source and 3 mph at "The Big Easy".)

Any 4-stroke or 2-stroke direct injection outboards planned should provide at least 1hp per 100lbs of boat mass although you'll need double this and the unballasted boat if looking for any kind of economy at planing speed. Any such outboard needs a 2.25 plus gearbox for an efficient prop pitch. A 40HP plus marine diesel or small stern drive unit would serve brilliantly. If a well kept example can be unearthed, a venerable 36HP Yanmar diesel outboard is my ideal choice, giving up to 10knots in flat water while returning at worst 4nm per US gallon. Its high time more diesel outboards were put on the market. There are a few out of China -I know nothing of their reliability, but they have scary names like "Motorboat Excellent Lucky 2". Uniqueness.

Not much to say that the preliminary sketches don't - Scouser is obviously different, in a low-slung and appealing way. You don't need to spend hours varnishing to dress her up. She isn't everyone's cup of tea, but like or hate her, few will ignore her. Many will mistake her for a converted fishing boat.

A shippy looker, Scouser can be finished workboat fashion without any loss of character. I'd probably put rope bumpers along the bow and stern, and sling a few tyres along the sides although these days one might have to get white-walls or have people complaining about black marks on their gelcoat. I say better a dirty mark than a clean ding! They will soon learn to keep clear of you, especially if you put it about that Scouser's a prototype and you aren't sure just what the hell she might do. If you combine this with a yachting cap and blazer, you will have plenty of room to manoeuvre, even in the Clubhouse bar! A diesel pumping clouds of toxic black smoke into the atmosphere will probably help the cause, if it doesn't go unnoticed amongst the tugs and pull-boats. Cheap mooring might be obtained by following such tugs to their nightly mooring and bar, but watch it - you may accidentally land a job!

Deep self-draining cockpits make Scouser safe, dry and usable in comparison to the average yacht of its price-range. For families with young children, older folks lacking a bit of mobility and even disabled sailors it offers the chance to keep the sail area very controllable, although the more adventurous may wish to use an assymetric spinnaker to pick up some speed in light air. However, this little ship motors economically enough at displacement speeds to not use the sails at all in blustery and haphazard wind conditions.

Construction and Comments on Design

While its entirely possible to alter Scousers layout plan (many boat plans offer several layouts) the thing I like about the simple plan offered is that its possible for a crew of three or even four to achieve a bit of privacy with two cabins, two cockpits and a foredeck area on offer. The plan for Scouser was to use half inch ply, with two layers on the bottom and a single layer on the sides. As decks aren't huge half-inch would do though I'd prefer 5/8 inch on sides and decks. It all depends on whether you can get a bulk price on the half-inch ply. House tops are two layers of quarter inch ply unless you wish to use foam and glass for extreme lightness up high. With the small areas involved I wouldn't bother. Frames are oblong throughout with major frames of plain Dressed-all-around 3 x 2 (gusseted with ply where full ply bulkheads aren't needed on house ends or for solid bulkheads. Again half inch will do as most of your strength comes from the 3 x 2 inch framing. Bulkheads are longitudinally linked by notched in 1.5" x 0.75" stringers. Lofting is almost non-existent as the bottom is bolted straight onto twin parallel keels 51 inches using 2 layers of half-inch ply sheets laid crossways with overlapping joins. I'd recommend 3M 5200 flexible sealant between sheets. The plan shape can be sprung directly on these via a 30ft batten, and the frames then built to fit.

I recommend jerrycans for this boat for all fuel and water. Keep them in separate lockers as mixing any amount is no fun. You can get different coloured cans for fuel and water and they only cost as much as they do to fill with fuel. Use one five times and you've had value. Unlike with a major tank, a leak isn't a major disaster. If you bed them on foam and even lock them in with flexi-straps, they are unlikely to develop a wear hole. You can top up your main feeder tank with a ruddy great funnel especially if you have the filler routed to the head where you can brace yourself all ways and the smell of a bit of spillage is less of a problem. Paint huge no smoking signs! The best part of jerrycans is you can move them about the boat as active ballast, since noone I know likes to put their back out freezing all day on the windward rail for the sake of half a knot. I'm obviously not the only person who thinks this way about fuel and water stowage - I saw a lovely 38ft Wharram cat for sale recently with just this approach to water/fuel stowage.

The forecabin - it makes up in handiness what it lacks in size. I recommend that a third cockpit forrd of this sitting headroom house be forgotten about in favour of a decent forrd deck, unless you are intending to do a lot of poling out or mucking about with asymmetric spinnakers. A table with stowage behind could go where a forrd door would be, folding down to provide a really comfortable dining space for 4. It may need mid-hinging to make it fit, but at least it can be wide enough to overlap the seats and wont run into a mast. There may be room for a drinks fridge below (bliss). Plates, glasses, cutlery, and tinned tucker go behind the table at above table level, especially if you've opted for a wood stove in the pilothouse, which effectively puts paid to a galley and leaves you washing dishes in a bucket in the midships cockpit. Note that its not impossible to create a waterproof box and lid in the cockpit to act as a dish and clothes washer as you buck along. If you throw stones in with your clothes, take them out before the dishes go in. If your dishes are all broken, pull down some sail pronto!

The berths you sit on to eat and spin yarns in the fore cabin have a choice of trotter boxes - fore and aft, starboard and port. Id use two of them (the forrd ones) if you plan to sleep 2 adults there, or three if you are sleeping an adult and two kids, who would sleep one facing ford, one aft on one side, head to head. A panel could be inserted like a mini-bulkhead if they kept banging their heads together. However, it may do them good to do without.

With the pilot berth that makes a maximum cruising crew of 3 adults or Mum and Dad and 2 kids. If you were non-stop passage making, with one permanently on watch, you could carry 4 adult crew, with a hammock corner to corner in the forrd cockpit when you make port. With a few eyelets let in at suitable places, heavy duty sails with masts down would make excellent awnings at anchor.

With this in mind it would be possible to go cruising with just 5 sails. One suit of three sails, the main laced to or draped over the boom as an awning, and the two forrd jibs on furlers. The mid cockpit could be covered by the spare jib as an awning. A 50 square foot heavy duty storm jib could stow in the mid-cockpit and be comfortably rigged from there on a chicken stay from the mainmast to the fore-cabin. This could be rigged in safety in the lee of the main jib before it is furled and stowed.

The pilothouse can be raised (as discussed earlier) for extra headroom, and could be lengthened up to a foot aft, depending on final motor arrangements. This would be handy in ensuring that the helms-person has room to either stand or sit comfortably. Such changes of position are essential for long spells at the wheel. Standing is great for the wee small hours, as hitting the deck used to wake me up every time. Hitting a cliff whilst snoring comfortably in your ergonomic heated leather seat is an over-rated activity, and may be the reason that many helm seats are excruciatingly uncomfortable. See Dave Gerr's "The Nature of Boats" before building a helm seat. In fact read the same book before installing anything. You can't borrow mine, its fallen apart from over-use.

Seats: What is comfortable for one isn't necessarily so for another. If suffering from the disease of boat-building, its a good idea to cart a tape &/or level about and have a quick measure-up on those very rare occasions you happen upon a compact seat that is extremely comfortable. Huge padded seats are not necessarily comfortable and are right out of scope for boats. Remember that a lounge seat is low to the ground and its angles won't work for a more upright working seat such as one uses at a navigation table, drawing board or helming. (At a drawing board I find the most comfortable seat is standing! But due to Murphy's Law most good design ideas occur when one is in a car 50 miles from any drawing gear - for this reason my glove-box is stuffed with pencils, rulers and rubbers and the parcel shelf speakers muffled by cartridge pads, most adorned with a muddy canine paw-print. When desperate the envelope and the back of unpaid bills come into play - its remarkable how good an envelope design can look to a designer and keen sailor who have just drunk their last 50 bucks.)

Head -I've drawn this with its own access door from the cockpit as both cabins are too small to put it in the way of food and relaxing crew. Its narrow but has ample volume for the purpose. A porthole opening outboard provides adequate ventilation. Its utterly sealed from all other accoms., and can double as a safe isolated filling point for the main fuel tank.

As mentioned, there's a fair bit of flexibility left at this preliminary stage of the design. Even when I have it nailed down and plans finalised, there will be lots of opportunity to adapt this little ship to your own tastes. Just remember balance - mucking about with the rig, keels and rudders needs all to be balanced around the original finalised design. Hope you've enjoyed this little rave, there will be more to come.

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