Hogfish life, a look back

Today finds Rachel going through old photos in our attempt to consolidate our stuff for our upcoming Pacfic cruise. We need to simplify our life. She came across these pictures.

Rachel and I on our first cruise together. We are in George Town In the Exumas for the Out Island Regatta. Back then we had no kids so no lifelines. 

I added the bowsprit a year after launching to get more sail area. We were a couple then, but when you find a girl that wants to travel the world and does not need or want what society is selling then well you hang on to her. So far so good at 27 years plus on of upping anchors and sailing on.

Our daughter Kalessin at 3 years old. Notice the lifelines now.

Kalessin getting her bottom redone while at anchor

The Hogfish getting hers redone in Caneel Bay boatyard USVI. I got a job there running the fiberglass and wood shop. Part of the perks were you could get your boat hauled for free.

Rachel, Kalessin and I onboard a fellow cruisers sailboat having a glass of wine in the Exumas. We had just sailed up from the Leeward Islands with Kalessin being 2-1/2 years old here. The Hogfish is at anchor behind with her mizzen up. Kalessins hair is naturally black now and she's in France working on a 94 meter mega yacht today.

Now we have Lillian Exuma with us. Or as I call her #2. We are off sailing south with some friends in a powerboat chasing us for pictures. Lillian at this age could kind of float but would soon be swimming like a fish. She's 6 months old here looking grumpy because she wants to throw something overboard.

Getting the whisker pole out. Look at that Hasler wind vane. I bought it for $150.00 and traded it for the new Mast on HFM when we built her. It steered flawlessly but was a big awkward contraption on the stern.

Now we'er moving along.

Saying see you later is a part of our lifestyle. I never say goodby.

Three days later another anchorage with lunch speared and #2 ready for her nap. That's Otis our Skipperkee. He was the best dog ever.

Sailing off of Puerto Rico on a nonstop 5 day passage to Great Inagua in the Bahamas.

Hogfish could sail like this for quite awhile.

Putting some supplies aboard in Florida before we sail the 400 miles back to our home base in Spanish Wells Bahamas. All that stuff is going in the Starboard cockpit locker. Our daughter Kalessin was just 4 weeks old when we took off on this passage.

Making some half models at anchor for extra cash.

On the beach waiting for the tide to rise so we can sail off to our next adventure.

With such a family why would you want to ever live a normal life? We never have and have enjoyed raising our daughters in this vagabond lifestyle.

Lillian is on her last year of collage in UF Florida and Kalessin is getting married in March.

The best part is we are still their best friends.

New skiff ideas

  I have been happily busy designing some new skiffs lately alongside working on 4 new design commissions. I like to jump around during the day going from one idea and project to the next to keep my mind fresh. I find that if I stay on one thing too long I get stale. I like to go to another idea, ruminate and the go back with open eyes. Lots of eraser dust around my desk.

Today I'am sharing ideas of 3 different skiffs doing pretty much the same thing. Getting into shallow water with little HP while being as dry as can be running in a small skiff across a choppy bay. And then being as quiet to pole, row, bird or fish from.

This is my Everglades "Grute" 20.9 concept. I always draw everything out like this before I make my half models.

Here's another version but designed to be very simple to build in plywood.

Two more ideas for a later day.

The bottom hull is the " Grute" 20.9 . The idea for this craft came about 32 years ago when my ex wife LaWanda and I had just finished a 10 day trip paddling the length of The Everglades National Park in an 18' aluminum Grumman canoe. We camped out every night on a small patch of dry land or on little docks that the park service provided. We used nails to pitch our tent on these. We had to stick to a daily time skedgual as we had to have permits to use these camp sites. The canoe we rented from an outfitter that would drive us to the start of the passage and pick us up at the end and bring us back to our car. When laying out the trip he was showing us the well traveled route and camp sites. We kept asking " why can't we go through this creek and see this bay"? "Well .... It's very hard to get in there because of the overhang limbs covering the creeks and you will get lost."

We explained that we were seasoned offshore sailors and navigators having used sextents and DR our entire lives. No GPS back then. 

"Oh, then let me show you some secrets. Don't tell the park service though. "

We ended up paddling ten miles a day then camping by noon. From there we would take off and fish all the creeks and explore. No one was around. We only saw one other craft in the ten days.

Getting into some of the creeks and bays was a fun challange of sitting in the bottom of the canoe pulling the craft along through the swamp by the overhanging tree limbs. Lots of spider webs and spiders over us but when we emerged into the bay it felt like we had been the first to experience it.Lots of Aligators floating about, the first cast of the fishing rod fought a nice big fresh water Bass, the next a Snook, and then a Tarpon. All in minutes. 

The thing that made the outfitter reluctant to show us these gems is that all the shoreline looks the same. When you have to paddle 1-1/2 miles across a bay and find an opening thats hidden by brush 

You could spend all day looking if not good at navigation. The charts we had were very accurate so all was needed was to take a bearing, get a heading on the compass and be able to know your cross track error when paddling across in the wind and current.For us it was no big deal. We soon found out that as we approached our hidden opening you could see A very slight water movement which was being caused by numerous large sharks tailing into the current coming out the opening of the new creek. They were looking for unwary fish coming through on the current.Bumbling and paddling over and across these big guys was always exiting.

After this trip I have always dreamed of going back with a craft that  I could sleep in instead of camping ashore. This would end the need for permits and rules. We could then stay in a favorite bay for days.

With the right craft we could slip under all the branches with ease. Using a small gas outboard of 5 hp we could cover miles very quickly and have all day to fish and explore. 

This craft would also be great for any shallow explorations and if designed right could cross some very open water to get to these places. It would then be very shallow running to get further and farther away from the pack.

When fishing we would use oars as the beam would be too wide for paddles.

The motor is in a well inside the hull and all weight is centralized. Fully loaded with ten days food she will float in 5" of water.

Grute will have a canvas hood dodger to keep out the rain and bugs at night.

This skiff is to be built in wood or core strips in two halves like when building a multihull. Just glue and glass the two halves together. 

I will be posting it's very simple well- tunnel design on my sister site hogfishdesign.wordpress later for clarity.

The flat sided and bottomed craft is designed for similar use but being very easy to build in plywood, scrimed core panels or core strips.

Bottoms shown here.

I feel that the current trend of shallow Glades skiffs is to always have the engine on the stern. To me it upsets the hull weight ballance on an already unbalanced long lean hull.

That's why on two of these designs I have drawn in inboard wells and tunnels. This keeps all the weight towards the middle of the hull. The idea in these designs is that they will- can run very level and that stops the pounding in chop and directs the spray to were it belongs. That is not on you.

Yes two of the bows look crazy but there are several bow options and reasons for each. 

I will explain in a post soon.

The middle hull is my most recent design for a home built easy to plank up Glades type of skiff. From my past experience I feel I now know how to draw up a very dry running skiff that is shallow draft and very quiet. In this skiff the idea was to have a hull that was easy to build in wood or core. And that looked kinda traditional.

All these skiffs can be seen better at Hogfishdesign.wordpress.

All plans will be available by end of October.

The pictures here make the hulls look slightly distorted, like my brain.

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 ?