Displacement, volume, curves, differences

This morning I was in the process of looking over an older skiff hull design of mine and comparing a recent design against it. I had all the latest designs half hull sections laid out so I could look around and compare the entire hull difference at a glance.

I thought you all might enjoy seeing this process so I took a few pictures.

All the hull sections laid out on top of the earlier hull design. The wood half model is a narrower design for many reasons. I won't go into that now.

Here you can see how much narrower the wood half hull will be than the previous design which was designed to carry a big load, engine, live bait and such for Guiding. 

If you slide the wood half hull just out from the center line 2 of the grid squares you can see how the hull curves differ. If knowing how the previous hull performed, as in how dry it was, at that section then you can improve on this curve. Hopefully.

One way to add displacement to a hull is to widen it down the middle. In reality you only gain a few pounds of volume doing this. For this 18' hull it would be less than 100 lbs.

You can significantly by just adding a thicker hull skin though so you have to know the surface area of the submerged hull to calculate the differences. This way the hull will stay at its beam measurement and does not get wider ie. beamier which could change the handling characteristics.

The wood half hull is glued up with 3/4" spruce planks. See the glue lines and how they line up with the numbers on the drawings. These are called waterlines. Each 3/4" plank equals 6" in the design.

The blacked in area is what I have designed to be the true waterline at load. In order to know before you build and launch you need to calculate your displacement in advance and know how much your hull and all its gear will weigh. If not you are just hoping for the best after all your work building.

Any skiff builder out there today that can not show you his original design drawings and calculations are using others' hard work by using putty and glop to come up with a facsimile of what's been done before.

My guess is that Jim Gardiner of Egret has drawings, as do Hal Chittum, the Latest HPX models, Tom Gordon and his Element, the Action craft company, and Willy Roberts.

I believe the rest have buckets of putty. 

Showing the differences in bow height and deck width.

To me this is like having cut outs of very pretty women and laying one on top of the other to see how their curves differ... compare. 

Lots of fun if you love boat shapes. 

I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours...

Sailboats of the Caribbean

Having sailed back to our home base in the Bahamas where there is a very limited amout of interesting boats about I get a bit lonely for real boats.

Here's a few that you won't see here.

ADIX to me is the most impressive schooner afloat. She really moves along. Her owner really sails her everywhere. Wish there were more crazy successful people like him and the others to keep building these magnificent vessels.

Taz.. Boy did I have fun sailing her all over in so many races.

A wooden beauty that boat for boat did well.

Antigua is where all the row boats end up. Well there is one wrecked up In Abaco.

Our dinghy on its daily run to work passing under this dolphin striker.

Just another Perini Navi giant.

This tri flew past us on Taz in the RORC 600 doing 29 knts with only one hull in the water.

Yea..... I'd like my stern to over hang the water by 35'

TP 52' with great owners aboard. They charter to crews so you can sail a million dollar boat for a regatta but you can then just walk away afterwards. To me it's a good way to go to get this into or out of your system.

Teak and varnish keeps lots of people in beer money. Or in Antigua ganja as most of the guys that varnish down island are Rastafarians. Or look alikes. But they do great work ... Even stoned.

My favorite small Herrshoff schooner.

Nice big yawl. But needs a good breeze.

Modern day metal and wood decked yacht.

Lovely 

30' Paul Johnson Venus Ketch. These little boats really sail well but they can really hobby horse in a sea so you just hook up the vane and keep to the middle of these little go anywhere boats.

A family of four sailed this 31' steel gaff cutter from England and back.

Nice Alden schooner

A just rebuilt Kettenburg Sloop from my home town of San Diego California. The winds were light so she just cleaned up in the races doing horizon jobs.

ALFA NERO on its way into the lagoon in St. Maarten. Our daughter Kalessin and her fiancé work aboard this yacht. She's responsible for the inside and he's the chief bosun. It's 90 meters long.

Squeezing through the bridge. I am next to the green umbrellas at the yacht club telling everyone that my daughter is on this traffic stopper. Kalessin did not know I was in town as I just sailed in on a delivery. She's was so surprised when I yelled up at her as ALFA NERO slid by.

Rachel, Kalessin, Pavlo, her fiancé with me on the stern deck. Yep that's a see through pool behind us. The helicopter lands on top of this. Ya gotta have all this stuff or it's no fun being stinkin' successful.

King Crab, Princess Kalessin and the Queen Conch on the bow looking out over all the mortals in the bay.

Now back to reality and a nice Dick Newick wood Tri in Bequia.

This cat sailed into the bay under full crab mainsail and a jib. We had friends aboard and I couldn't get away to get pictures as this vessel sailed in and anchored. By the time I got away they were ashore.

The next day she was gone before I could talk to them.

What a vessel!

This is not a Wahrram Cat. It's from the South Pacific and is planked up of solid planks and woven together and also pinned with wood dowls. A true masterpiece of ocean going ingenuity.

Wish there were more people out there doing this kind of stuff.

To finish this off here's a picture sent to us of the Hogfish Maximus beating to weather in some good seas. It's windy for sure.

The thing I like about boats is you can start the whole story off with the ADIX and end with that catamaran. Lots of money and very little money. But the cool thing is we all sail the same seas breathing the same air and taking the same risks. 

That's why I love boats, it's the last thing left on earth that you build on your own and take all over the world with minimal intervention from governments.

I wonder if I'll need a permit to put a helicopter on the HFM ?

Chris Morejohn Yacht Designs and Plans business

Back home in the Bahamas finds me unrolling all my past designs on my drafting table. Over the years I have received many inquiries about selling plans of my various boat designs. I've been reluctant to sell plans as I have been on the go so much seeing the world and would not have had the time to give potential clients their due. Times have changed for me with modern technology and the Internet. It's obvious now, but ten years ago it took for ever to send an email from a foreign port. As you all know in today's world I can now be reached to answer questions from just about anywhere. Well.... not when I am at sea. I won't get that high tech. 

At present this blog has had 132,000 views. On my new design blog HOGFISH DESIGN.wordpress over 8,000 so far. I get daily emails asking advice and questions about the boats I have built and my designs and thinking. With this in mind and all my past and present designs on hand in one place I've decided to open my doors to offer my design services for new boat builds and to sell my designs as full Cad drawings in PDF files.

I have teamed up with Nathan Shawl a yacht designer and CAD computer expert from Michigan. Nathan's experience comes from generations of on the water family boatbuilding and waterman knowledge. We have joined our collective knowledge and life's experiences to put forth our cutting edge shallow boat design plans. At present Nathan is converting my designs to PDF files so we can provide everything to be printed out full size or put into a computer to cut parts or used with a milling machine to make plugs. 

We will be focusing our design work providing very detailed drawings on how to build gearing towards the amateur builder in wood, composite and metal. 

My expertise in hull construction is in all forms of wood construction, composite, fiberglass, and plug and mold design.

Nathan brings his knowledge of Computer yacht design and hands on work in aluminum, steel, wood and compostite fiberglass design.

Our goal is to provide designs and plans for the home builder that wants to build a state of the art shoal draft vessel that can be built for a reasonable cost and time. Logical common sense smart boats for the average person that wants to be able to go to places that are inaccessible to the masses.

I have spent a lifetime designing, building boats and then sailing them across oceans. I am not a designer of dreams that's been sitting at a desk in an office. I draw, I build and then I am off to experience my idea first hand. In between I repair, modify, upgrade others dreams and designs. It has been a great voyage of understanding of what really works. 

Teaming up with Nathan Shawl allows the two of us to be available to clients at all times. With the Internet today Nathan and I are in constant communication. Nathan's computer skills and the information he will provide will bring our designs to a higher level of yacht design in the shallow boat market both power and sail.

I live and work in two different water related worlds. I sail about the oceans on a simple plywood built very economical, extreamly seaworthy sailboat. I also design and build some of the most sought after fishing skiffs on the water today. Two very different worlds. Our goal is to provide new designs for the emerging market of the home builder that wants what is not available in the mass market for a realistic cost and time to build.

A short summary of my 39 year old career finds me having sailed over 60,000 sea miles as Captain visiting 32 different country's by sea and 12 more by land. Personally built on my own 62 vessels from skiffs to large sailboats. Overseeing and helping my own designs being built at 384 boats and a rough estimate of boats having been built to my designs to date at around 3,000 plus. Related or copied designs, lots more. The Value of my original design ideas built to date is a conservative twenty million dollars at the very least. 

I will be based at my land home in the Bahamas till December of 2017. Rachel and I then plan on sailing our sailboat the HFM to British Columbia and set up shop on the West coast commuting back and forth to our home in the Bahamas in the winter by plane. We want to sail somewhere different but I don't want to die in the cold. 

Nathan and I will be making our designs available for sale with Nathan being able to answer questions or help with changes if I'am at sea for a few days. This way one or the other of us is always available for consultation, questions.

 I will still answer all questions that come in via email as I have been these past few years for free. I have perfect Wifi here in the Bahamas. When sailing in 2017 I will be at sea for 30 days at most at one time. Otherwise I can be reached daily. Nathan lives in Michigan and sails on his 37' sloop. He can be easily reached too. We make a great team combining our diverse skills into designs that will really work.

For any questions or inquiries email me at ; 

spankthemermaid@gmail.com

In a week everything will be seen at chrismorejohn.com

 

Light weight 15' flats skiff in foam core or cedar strip wood. Why guess when you can have us design your new skiff with all the experience we have and arrive with the real numbers before you build your plug. 

 

18' light weight flats skiff semi vee.

18' flats skiff. The above skiffs and 5 other flats skiff designs can be built in cedar strip or foam core. All plans will be in a PDF format that will allow all parts to be printed full size. We'll do the lofting. You just cut out the parts and put together. Or have everything precut out. Then it's down to assembling, fiberglassing, fairing, painting and then rigging.

The Hogfish Maximus plans in wood, aluminum or steel.

HFM 

Nathan taking my original drawings and interfacing them to his CAD drawing.

Showing how I want the stern swim step to look. No noise.

  

One of my hand drawn 3-D drawings of the Whipray. I can see any boat in 3-D in my head and just spit this out with a pencil. But Nathans Cad drawings are perfect.

My old paper designs will now be on PDF files so this will be very easy to send out. You can also order prints of everything.

My office today upstairs in our house on Russell Island in the Bahamas. My desk is made from Mahogany doors I salvaged from a Dutch canal barge that's shipwrecked across the bay from us.

Walking five steps from my drafting table I can look down on Hogfish Maximus and check the wind direction.

My goal has always been to design boats that set the standards for the markets of shoal draft ocean voyaging sailboats along with the fly fishing flats skiff world. This requires time spent on the water, in the builders shed, good common sense design work and it helps to have a bit of artistic flair thrown in.

Drop anchor out front and come ashore for a visit.

See you out there