Slider

Slider’s first sistership hit the water for the first time on Saturday, February 20th, 2010. Dean Pacetti built Honu (Polynesian for turtle) at his home in Florida. I should mention that Dean was the second person to buy plans for Slider. At the time Dean bought his plans, I’d only completed half of the plan sheets, and only a little of the manual. But Dean was okay with that, and I tried to get the rest of the plans to him in a timely manner. It didn’t seem to slow him down much, and he did a very good-looking job with the boat.

I met Dean last spring at the Cedar Key get-together for small boats, and we took a short ride together on Slider. I hope it didn’t discourage him too much that there was hardly a breath of wind. But Slider sailed across the sound and back, ghosting along in glassy conditions. By an odd coincidence, there was very light air the day Honu was launched, and Dean ghosted out and back across the lake on which he lives.

Dean looks surprisingly happy for a guy who would probably be completely becalmed in many other boats.

Here’s what he had to say about that first sail:

Well I went for a sail yesterday. The wind was super light to nothing. Made it half way across the lake and the wind just died, but the boat never stopped. All the telltails were hanging straight down but the boat still had steerage way. The tacks were like you said in your blog, just put the tiller over and the boat goes. Had a very relaxing sail for about 4 hours. But how do you get a picture of the boat sailing when you are on the boat and can’t get back to take a picture. Need to learn to walk on water for that one I guess. But did get one pic. with the cell phone and you can see that the lake is super smooth and no ripples. Shows a happy builder turned sailor. Was going to go out again today but there is not a breath of breeze in the air. Shoulda finished last week when the wind was really blowing all day. It’s really fantastic to sail a boat that you built yourself, so thanks Ray for an absolutely great design.

Now if the wind would just blow a little

Above is a snapshot of Honu nestled into the reeds in front of Dean’s house.  Honu has turquoise hulls and tanbark sails– a pretty combination, I think.  Later that day, Dean sent me another email, after it turned out to be breezier.

Well I had a bit of wind today and went out for a sail. Wind was blowing from my house across the lake towards the boat ramp. Launched Honu and paddled out of the slip and tied up to the pier on the outside of slip. Raised the sails and got all my lines straightened out. Shoved off and sheeted in the main and away we went. Tacked across the lake towards my house and ran Honu up on the bank and tied up to a tree stump and went in and got my granddaughter, Valan, as she wanted to go sailing with me. Pushed off from the bank and we sailed the lake for about 3 hours and then sailed into the boat ramp slip and picked up Honu. Spent a little time tightening up the rigging as it stretched out a little and then came home. Had a fantastic time and Honu handled like a dream. Let loose of the steering rope and she would round up into the wind and sit there. Move the steering rope and she would start to sail again and off we would go. Had a really good time and my granddaughter is now a sailor and wanted to know when we were going back out. So she is getting hooked on sailing too.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about Slider is taking novice sailors out.  There’s no tipping, little chance of capsize, and Slider just rumbles along in her well-behaved way, like a handy magic carpet.  I especially like to take out folks who’ve had bad experiences previously with small boats– just to see the look on their faces when they realize that they’re going to be sitting down, comfortable and dry, and not getting seasick.

Dean told me he hadn’t been sailing since the late 80s, but looking at these pictures, he must have a very good memory, because everything looks well-thought-out and shipshape.  For example, this picture shows how running downwind in Honu does not require a pole for wing-and-wing– you just hook the jibsheet around the cleat on the crossbeam.

Dean’s sails look great.  I believe they were built by Dabbler, a loft with a good reputation for small craft sails.  Here’s a shot looking up at Honu’s mainsail:

In my opinion, Dean did an outstanding job on his build, and judging from the pictures, Honu’s fit and finish are better than the prototype’s.  He’s added useful details, like the toerails you can see, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’s improved the original design in other ways.

Anyway, I can’t adequately express how grateful I am to Dean for taking a chance on the design, and spending the time and money to bring it to reality.  I expect there will soon be more sisterships, as other builds are fairly well along, but it feels great to know that another sailor shares my goals and my happiness with the design.

When I asked Dean for permission to use his remarks here, this is what he said:

I  can’t tell you how happy I am with Honu. But as you said the enjoyment that my granddaughter got out of today’s sail made it all worth while. You really hit all the right points in this design and I really am enjoying my boat. And I already have friends that want to go for a sail with me also. This morning when I nosed Honu up to the bank in front of my house, I went inside to get my granddaughter and get a thermos of coffee to take with me. When I came back out side there was traffic backed up from people slowing down to get a better look at Honu and I got a few thumbs up from some of the people passing by.   And as always you can use my pics that I send to you and my comments as well.  Now I think I need to start planning a camping trip on Tampa Bay or around Cape Canaveral.

Dean

That sounds like a great idea to me.

Slipper proceeds toward completion in fits and starts. I must admit that my second attempt to design an original kind of boat has been a bumpier road than the design of Slider.  With Slider, everything was very conventional, except for the in-hull seating on a boat that small.  Even the unusual sprit-sloop rig was not new– James Wharram used the rig for his classic design, Hinemoa, many years ago.  Everything else was as optimized as possible… big high-aspect NACA section rudders and daggerboard, slender slippery hulls, lots of sail shape controls, and so forth.

Slipper, on the other hand, is a kind of Slider boiled down to the bare essentials, so that it could be light enough to cartop, and most important of all, irreducibly simple to sail.  The hulls are still under 50 lbs. each, the center deck is about 35 pounds, the rig and rudders add a little more, but each piece is light enough for one reasonably strong adult to handle.  The rudders are fixed, barndoor rudders, attached to skegs for strength and tracking.

The mast is stayed, because of the difficulty of using an unstayed mast on the crossbeam of an open deck cat, but I’m going to see if I can go boomless on the spritsail, so that the rig can be brailed up by freeing the sheet and hauling in the brailing line.  That would make setting up the rig very simple, since there would be no jib, and no halyards.

The most irritating aspect of the build has been figuring out a good strong simple way to attach the crossbeams to the hulls.  I was obsessed with using line to secure the beams, since I admire the kind of lashings used on certain Wharram designs.  But I was too proud to simply borrow Wharram’s idea of exterior lashing points, and besides, I wanted these hulls to look as graceful as possible, with nothing to break the sweep of the sheer.  There’s a feeling among some admirers of traditional boats that multihulls must be ugly.  Needless to say, I don’t buy it.  I don’t want to contribute to that perception, either.

But unfortunately, my first couple of ideas, while they seemed clever to me, turned out to be completely inadequate.  The first lashings could not be effectively tightened.  The second scheme allowed me to really crank the lashings tight, but unfortunately, the leverage of the mast was enough to pop the beam out of its position atop the bulkhead.  I’m still a little dubious about the current solution, but it is strong, very slightly flexible, and I can’t see how I can break it.  Each connection now requires the use of a 3/8″ stainless bolt.

As I say, I’m not completely happy with it, but there are other things I can’t wait to experiment with, so it will have to do for this iteration of the design.  There’s some extraneous blocking on the beams that can eventually go, but it’s only a pound or two, so for now it can stay.

First and foremost among those other things I want to see about is whether or not a dory-hulled cat can get to windward adequately without foils.  Slider is able to do fairly well with her board up, but her good deep rudders may have something to do with that.  So I’m going to try Slipper without any foils first, and then try the kind of horizontal foils popularized by such designers as Matt Layden and Bernd Kohler.  If either of those approaches proves adequate, Slipper will be a boat that can get to windward in less than a foot of water.

Currently I’m only short some rigging and finish.

So Slipper is going sailing.  Real Soon Now.

Dean Pacetti has sent me some more pictures of his build, which is nearing completion.

One excellent change he made in the plans was to add toerails to the fore and aft decks. I thought about doing this, but eventually decided I was too lazy. But I think it increases safety at very little cost, and I highly recommend the idea. Here’s a picture of one of Dean’s foredecks:

Dean is doing a beautiful job on his boat.  Here’s a picture of the boat shown with a great-looking set of tanbark sails.

Novice designers like me usually have to sell a lot of plans before they see an actual build completed, and in fact, most plans sold do not result in actual boats being built.  But I knew Dean was serious when he clarified some of the sail plan details with me shortly after he ordered the plans, so he could tell his sailmaker exactly what he wanted.

Dean’s decided on a highly appropriate name for his new boat, “Honu,” which is Polynesian for “turtle.”  I like that a lot, since it’s not only a tip of the hat to the prototype boat, but also to the originators of the whole multihull concept, and to the inspiration that came down from them to James Wharram and Thomas Firth Jones and then to me.  Dean lives on the west coast of Florida, which is a paradise for small shallow draft boats, so I expect he’ll be out there having fun soon.

Many thanks to Mike Wick, who contributed this information, and the story that follows.  Looking at the chart, this appears to be a paradise for small shallow draft boats.

Beach at Assateague , 1/4 mile walk from Green Run Campground.

There were three of us in three boats, three cars, three trailers. We had decided that we would sail the length of Assateague Island, campcruising along the way.The latest weather report showed that the wind would be mostly out of the North for the next few days, so we decided that we would sail South from Assateague Federal Seashore toward Chincoteague Island. I arrived at Old Ferry Landing and launched my Bolger Gypsy, dropped off my trailer near the Ranger Station and drove South to Chincoteague. I found a quiet parking place and cell phoned Phil, who drove straight to Chincoteague and picked me up. He and I drove north in his pickup truck, launched his melonseed and launched John’s melonseed. We left their cars and trailers at the Ranger Station.Thus, we had two cars at the North end of the Passage and one at the south end.

Convoy, Phil in his melonseed and Mike in his balance-lug rigged Bolger Gypsy.

It was about 11 A.M. when we set sail in convoy from Old Ferry Landing in a light northeasterly breeze. We passed the Tingles and the Pine Tree campsites in smooth water with a lee from Assateague Island keeping down the waves. Seldom is the water much more than knee deep if you are outside the Intracoastal Waterway, so there is no anxiety about swamping or capsizing, you can just walk ashore. We rounded the point of the island in the channel between Green Run and the Pirate Islands.At this point, the wind had picked up enough to warrant a reef, but there was less than a mile of windward work to our destination, so we just luffed along toward our destination. By six we had reached our remote campsite at Green Run, ten miles south of the large campground at the Federal Seashore.

Green Run is a nice shady campground with picnic tables, fireplaces for each group, and a portapotty. but there is no potable water, so we had each brought three gallons with us for drinking and cooking. A quick meal and bed in our tents; we were too tired for a campfire.It is a short walk to the ocean with a beautiful beach, and we had a quick swim before bed.

The next day was sunny and light air, just enough wind to ghost along. That section of the passage is an intricate maze of quite shallow channels inside swampy islands. We beat up a river to the most distant campsite on the Island, Pope Bay wehre wwe stopped for lunch and walked over to the ocean beach. Here we realized that, if we kept sailing, we could finish our passage that night, so we rushed out to Chincoteague Bay and sailed across the Maryland/Virginia border. It was a lovely plain sail beat in a brisk Southeast breeze of maybe 12 miles an hour wind. We passed to the East of Wildcat Marsh, on the northern tip of Chincoteague, tacking in close company to the haulout at Quip Hole Road, just inside Morris Island.

John's sprit-rigged melonseed with Home Depot's high-tech daggerboard clamp to adjust for shallow water sailing.

Then came the strenuous part. I walked into Chincoteague to retrieve my car, then I drove the others to Assateague for their cars. It was dark by the time we got our cars and trailers back to the ramp, but we were practiced at packing boats on trailers, so it went smoothly even in the dark. What could have been a problem, we decide to drive straight home. We probably should have stopped at a nearby motel, but we made it safe home about eleven, even though we were tired and bug bit. We had made a nice thirty mile, two day passage in company and had seen parts of the refuge that were new territory for us.

This year, I hope to see several of Slider’s sisterships on the water.  Among those who seem to be closest to finishing are Dean Pacetti from the west coast of Florida and Melvin Grange from the ancient island of Malta.  Dean sent me pictures of one completed hull and another near-completed.  He seems to have a lot of the smaller bits ready to go, so he may be sailing soon.

He’s done a nice job.

His second hull, showing some of the details of decks and daggerboard case:

He tells me he’s laminating his tillers into curves that duplicate the Ackerman linkage I used small triangles of ply to get, and I think his approach will probably work very well and be better-looking and stronger than the original.

Melvin Grange from Malta started not long ago, but has already made amazing progress.

Another view:

I have to admit that I find the idea of the little cat sailing those ancient waters to be pretty exciting.  I think of the thousands of years that sailors have visited Malta from ports all over the Med, the layers of history that lie on the sea bottom there, and I wish I could see it with my own eyes.  But I hope Melvin will send me pictures.

Renato Scolaro, who is one of my Italian builders, is moving along with his build.  He sent me this picture of his first hull:

Renato is planning a folding beam structure, and has added the ply gussets to strengthen the folding mechanism that he envisions.  It will be very interesting see how that turns out, since with increased overall beam comes the ability to carry more sail.  My next design project involves folding hulls for a somewhat larger trailerable cruising cat, so I’ll be looking forward to hearing how well Renato’s modifications work.

Slider and I hope to take a small cruise some time this spring, though the destination is still up for debate.

This hasn’t been the best summer for sailing, though it’s mostly my fault. I’ve been a little under the weather for much of the season, and then there have been various other modest catastrophes that have kept me off the water.

But last week I decided I was going, come hell or high water. I had a couple of days with a fairly good weather window– no more than a 40% chance of rain, and moderate winds. I set off down the road to Pensacola on Wednesday morning, and a couple hours later put in the boat at the nice Big Lagoon State Park ramp. One side of the ramp is silted in, but the right side is deep and steep. Slider came off her new trailer effortlessly. I tied her up, raised the mainsail, and was short-tacking up the narrow channel that leads east to the lagoon 15 minutes after we arrived. The winds were about 10-15 knots out of the SE and our course was pretty much SE too, so I didn’t even put the jib up.  Slider tacks easily without a jib, and I was feeling lazy.

I can’t overemphasize how pleasant it is to have a boat that eats up big chunks to windward with each tack.  I’ve sailed many boats that didn’t do very well on a beat and it’s painful.  Slider makes haste to windward most effectively with the sheets a little free, but she loses very little ground to leeway. With her daggerboard down, the helm is light, even without a jib.

At each tack,  I’d look back and see that the channel marker I’d tacked beside on the last tack was now well behind us.  Chop doesn’t make much difference.  Slider’s skinny hulls seem to slice easily through the chop without being slowed, as some small boats are.

Once into Big Lagoon, we could sail east and lay the course to the far end of the lagoon, where the remnants of old Fort McRee cap the end of Perdido Key.  I camped there last fall as well, but this time I decided to take a different approach.  On last year’s trip I was sailing every day, all day long.  This time I decided to just anchor in a pretty spot and spend a couple days enjoying the place.  I was in no great hurry, so I didn’t even bother to put up the jib.  We still averaged 4.5 knots, and that was fine.  I hadn’t been out for a while, and the 10 miles over to the end of Perdido were a great pleasure, despite our somewhat poky speed.

When I reached the end of Big Lagoon, I sailed across the buoy line into the no-engines-allowed marine reserve behind the remnants of the old fort.  As I sailed across the flat, a big Coast Guard vessel came through the cut to the north and turned to parallel my course.   I was a little concerned that they might be intending to launch a Zodiac and come for a visit, but apparently they were doing some kind of exercise, because they eventually anchored and spent the night a few hundred yards from my beachorage.

There’s a lagoon within a lagoon down near the end of Perdido Key, with perfect all-around protection, but when I went in there, I found that I couldn’t sail very close to the beach.  I wanted to be able to step off the boat and be ashore.  So I sailed back out to the west until I came to the first charted anchorage.  Two big monohulls were already anchored a half mile off the beach, but I sailed right up onto the sand.  Perdido Key was deserted.  The Labor Day weekend just past marked the end of the tourist season, and I didn’t see a soul on the beach for the three days I was there.

I put up my deck tent, set up my cot, and heated up one of the frozen casseroles I’d packed in the big ice chest.

My new combination cockpit table and one-burner stove worked very well.  I had a canvas folding chair and enough LED lanterns to read by.  I set out a couple of citronella candles on the foredecks, and was not bothered by any bugs.  Last fall, I’d had to deal with a zillion little black biting flies, inside the marine reserve, but this year they didn’t show.

A couple days went by, and I did pretty much nothing at all, but it was a good time all the same.  I spent a lot of time watching the abundant sea life.  I saw a manta ray jump out in the lagoon, saw a lot of tailing redfish, and mullet jumped around the boat continuously.    I read, listened to music, wrote, played Go on my little netbook computer, watched a couple of movies.  My deep cycle battery and inverter worked well, and would have lasted a number of days longer.  This semed like pretty luxurious camping for a 16 foot open boat.  I had standing headroom under the deck tent, and plenty of room to move around.

At night, I had to move off the beach a little, because each night we got strong winds from the NE, and there was about a mile or so of fetch– enough of a chop developed to bounce us up and down on the sand.  The last night, the winds were very strong and gusty, and the deck tent rattled loudly.  But it stood up fine, although it did give the boat enough windage that she wanted to sail back and forth on her anchor. Each night, the Coasties anchored south of the Intracoastal, and their lights were a bit of an annoyance.  On the other hand, I didn’t worry about pirates.

Thursday night when I called home on the cell phone, my wife Nancy told me there was bad weather forecast for Saturday, so I decided to go home the next day.

On Friday, I slept late– a cot is a wonderfully comfortable bed, compared to a pad or an air mattress.  I ate a leisurely breakfast, took one last walk down the beach, packed up, and headed back to Big Lagoon State Park.  The wind was blowing 20 knots out of the east, so we scudded along before it at a pretty good speed.  The shoreline seemed to whip past, and when we turned up into the approaches to the Big Lagoon ramp, I was a little sad that the trip had to end.

One half of the ramp is badly silted in, so I just sailed right in between the wing docks and up onto the sand.  I fetched the car and trailer, hauled the boat out, dropped the mast, and was on my way home 15 minutes after we pulled in.

I’m going to try to get in a couple more little trips like that one before winter gets here.  I think one of the best arguments for a small beach cruising catamaran is that it can have fixed beams, and so is only a little more complicated to launch than a john boat.  That ease of getting under way encourages small spur-of-the-moment trips like mine.

For busy folks, that might be the only way we’re going to get to do much cruising.