Morning!
Sitting here in calgary with a -17 day, -23 windchill, boat projects come to mind!
I'm thinking of a small powerboat to island hop /fish with in the gulf islands in b.c. Something easy to build, doesn't need a crazy amount of power. Has anyone ever done the pocket cruiser with no sail, wheel steering and say two seats athwartships?
Paul, I was also looking at your digger 17 design which may be even better, but we get a lot of rain in the gulf islands so I was thinking maybe the cabin area of the pocket cruiser would come in handy ( even reduced in size to allow more cockpit space) although your design does have a lot of storage. I also note it's the big brother of a 15 ft model? I can't find that on your site, are the drawings still around?
Digger 17 is simply a straight stretch of Digger 15. The only difference is the station mold spacing, during construction. Without check the file, I think Digger 17 has station molds at 26", while Digger 15 has them as 22". The last station is shorter than the rest of the spacing pattern, making up the difference.
Digger 17 has a small "doghouse" style of enclosure that can be done, though not detailed in the plans, some accommodation can be made if you'd like. It's just a place that will permit you to get out of wind and spray, while steering the boat. A lot of cold weather fishing boats are setup this way. Picture a standing headroom all the way forward box, simple windscreen and side windows, where the casting deck would normally live. Behind this is all cockpit. The center console version is by far the prefered arrangement, but a cool looking reversed slope windscreen version was done a few years ago. I think it adds too much windage to a small boat, but I can see how cold weather skippers might like it. Headroom shown is in the 6' 2" - 6' 3" range. It's a tall box and would look better on the raised sheer option version of Digger (shown with dashed line), which is essentially adding an extra sheer strake (if the lap option is used) or about 4" - 5" of additional sheer height. This tends to visually lower the boxiness of the doghouse. Dry hull weight isn't correct on this, as it doesn't include the doghouse. It doesn't weigh much and is just 1/4" plywood and some 1x2 reinforcements. As with most of my older designs, this one has several options. It can be built slab sided, like a Weekender or you can add some strakes to the top sides, which pretties up a clamming skiff, but isn't necessary. It can have the raised sheer, which is good in rougher water to keep you drier and there's a heavy duty version that literally is about as tough a boat as you could ask from a 17' skiff, with a 1.5" (38 mm) thick bottom.
Thanks for the reply paul, i like the idea of the covered standing room, can it be more centered
or does that throw off balance ?
I pushed it forward so you get as much cockpit as possible. It can be wherever you'd like and balance is worked out on the water, by moving batteries and tanks. With boats of this size, a good fart will alter balance (especially after beans), so a simple thing, come launch day thing.