Like many people involved in sailing, I have looked into my crystal ball forward to the future and I do not like what I see. Fewer people are getting involved and our sport becoming more and more affordable by only the privileged few.
In response to this unattractive vision of the future, I posted a thread (in October 2008) in the Sailing Anarchy web forum, Dinghy Anarchy labelled “Homebuild kid's boat”. The design brief is the first post in the thread. Here's an excerpt from the original post:
Here are my initial requirements:
- Easily rightable by a 90-100 pound child - this also means it does NOT have to be keelboat stable
- Light enough to move around by a child (50-60 pounds hull weight)
- Big enough so he could take out a friend
- Simple to rig, sail and de-rig
- Fast enough to plane
- Unstayed mast
- "Cool" enough looking
- Self bailing, open transom, easy to enter from water
- Fun enough that he'll let me sail my singlehand skiff by myself!
- Winter garage project
- Generally light wind venue with little real waves
- Don't care about racing or an established class & society - he's a loner with no "pack animal" instincts (comes by it honestly)
I want to build a "kid's" boat for him to sail, but I don't want it to be a dishwasher packing crate (Opti) or some similar thing. Ideally, it would be a strip planked homebuilt O'pen Bic type "cool" boat. He's watched the O'pen Bics at the club, and thinks they are cool. Given the impending recession and Bush-league economic disaster, I think spending >$3K on an O'pen Bic is irresponsible when I expect things to get much worse financially.
To my delight, there were quite a few responses including some diverse new designs and suggestion of existing designs that might fit the brief. Respondents ranged from experienced, successful designers to people brave enough to post their first attempts at design. The quality and completeness of the efforts was surprising. The image to the left is Chris Ostlind's Cabrillo (from Lunada Design).Over time, my concerns about the cost and simplicity of the build caused me to re-consider the original design brief. Although I can financially afford to build/buy a higher-end kid's boat and I'm not afraid of epoxy and more complex building techniques I really wanted to keep the project to low-average skills and low cost
Why? Because my son is ten years old now, and he's growing fast. A boat that fits him today isn't going to fit in three years. I watch him go through clothes and have come to the conclusion that it is better to have lower cost things that fit right, than to have the highest quality fashion clothes that he'll outgrow without appreciating the difference. This fits well with the idea that more parents will build boats for their kids if it doesn't take too long or cost too much.
As a result of this re-think, I chose to proceed building a design submitted by Eric McNicholl of Velox Design that he has called his “Microskiff”. Eric's design is somewhat risky in comparison to others – he's optimized low cost and build simplicity – perhaps at the expense of longevity, strength, performance and cosmetics.
