Who has the "1st blood in my rowboat"?

Who has the wooden rowboat?



and how seaworthy would you rate it?

I passed up a nice looking 18' wooden canoe on craigslist that I bet would make a great fishboat. I'm looking for something I could take a nap in

Bill / pisco sicko -  fom Washington


-mooch-

Bluekayak-

That is my Wineglass Wherry kit boat from Pygmy Boats.

http://www.pygmyboats.com/

Out in the open water, sans breakers, it is quite seaworthy. The weekend I took that picture, I was out when a front blew through, with ~20kt winds and steep wind waves/chop to 4 ft. The only water I shipped was off the oars. In calm water I can stand in it. (That's how I took that picture.) A lot of area exposed to the wind makes rowing up-wind a chore.

Surf and breakers are a different story. For that, decks fore and aft would be necessary. Here's a link to an adventure at Neah Bay on the WA coast.

http://www.norcalkayakanglers.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=907&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
 
Looks nice in the photos at Hobuck Beach, but there was a short period break of 3-5 ft. Having curlers flood my boat several times discouraged me from further attempts. I might try some canvas covers, or a giant spray skirt arrangement, for future surf encounters. I haven't built in solid decks so I can have the flexibility of taking my kids on local flat water trips.

Blue-If I ever own a SIK, it will be a Pygmy.  There shop is near Leah's dads place and I have been oggling them since our honeymoon in Port townsend.  There is a guy in Elk that commercial fishes out of a wooden dory he made and it is sweet.

You would have to build it (or at least most of the way) and then modify it.  Each piece shapes the form and fit of the next piece.  If you start messing with the layout before its formed, it would be VERY hard to get it right.  But once the shape was established, you could problably do some cutting and replacing.  The plywood is cut by a CNC lazer, so it may be possible to have them add or delete things you don't want before anything gets cut.  The fit of the kit components is downright amazing.

Blue,

Because I haven't installed all the seats (and did some modifying of the one I did put in), the boat currently weighs about 75#!!

Pygmy's Arctic Tern 14 kayak is supposed to weigh 32#.

I used to build stitch-and-glue boats for a living and Sean is right about building and locking in the shape, before modifying.

A word of caution about converting a SIK into a SOT. Pygmy's SOTs, with their 23-24" beams, are meant to have your weight (and ass) down on the bottom. Raising your bottom even a few inches, much less the 5-6" for a draining seat, is going to radically affect your CG and stability. I think I'd rather learn a bomb-proof roll, and keep the light weight and narrow beam. Would probably mean taking minimal gear and either stashing it inside for the launch, or building some special hatches for access.

Maybe if enough of us bug John Lockwood (and show him some of the kayakfishing sites) he might be interested in designing a SOT for us.

In my kayak design fantasy world I was thinking the cockpit could just be left open with the seat just as low and the h2o problem dealt with some other way than gravity drains

I've had to deal with flooded boats. It's no fun, especially since it seems to happen at the worst times. Water, at 8.3 #/gal and 7.5 gal/ cubic foot, gets real heavy, real fast.

I wonder how much faster the closed deck boats or the surfskis are? I've been trying to find that out

 Let's see how much I remember, off the top of my head, about boat design.

Boat speed (at paddling/displacement speeds) is determined by drag and wavelength.

 There are two kinds of drag that affect speed- based on the skin friction and the frontal area of the kayak. (Imagine the area you would see below the waterline, if you were looking head-on to the boat.) Of the two drags, the frontal area is most critical.

Given equal weights (and displacements) for two boats, a short wide boat will experience more drag than a long skinny boat, even if they have the same surface area (and skin friction) in the water.

Wavelength is determined by the length of the boat at the waterline. When a boat moves through the water at displacement speeds it creates a wave off the bow (and stern). The speed of the waves is determined by the distance between the crests. Exceeding the speed of the waves requires a lot of horsepower in order to climb up the back of the bow wave. (Ever been in a PB just before it jumps on plane? The bow is pointing way up until the boat gets up over it's own bow wave.)

Surfing is a whole nother story.  For that a big flat bottom is desirable to give you more surface area to slide on top of the water with.

Seems counter-intuitive at first, but I think a narrow kayak (as long as I'm well braced) is actually easier to keep upright in rough water. A wider boat actually gives the water a bigger leverage/arm to toss you. In a narrow boat, on the other hand , if you know how to brace  you can lean the kayak in to a wave much easier, and stay upright.

Got to run, for now.

Have you seen "The Dory Book" by John Gardner?  The book has a lot of good age old plans from before the days of motorized boats.  Some of the designs were intended for heavy surf launches to be used as rescue boats.  Most of the hulls are not as fast as a kayak, but since you are rear-facing when paddling you can utilize the stronger leg and back muscles which compensates for a lot. 

A few years ago I rowwed Mass shells and it was not nearly as taxing to row say 10 mile in afternoon compared to my slow Malibu two. 

Brian 3Dog

Yes, there are plenty of tie-down locations on the wherry or any boat with similar rails. They're also a pain to to install, requiring a bunch of clamps and plenty of patience to properly space them. I've been thinking for a while about making a "ghetto bar" a la P. Spark- something for an inline rod holder for trolling, the FF, the taps, etc.

The wherry was modelled after boats launched through surf on the East coast. However, the originals such as the Seabright Skiff, were a lot larger (17-19') and the surf on the Atlantic is , generally, a lot easier than our west coast surf. ( I know from growing up back East and returning regularly.)
I also found it tough to pull very strongly, when I had my head craned around to see what was going to hit me. I'd like to try it again, when I have some kind of deck or cover and don't have to worry so much about swamping it.

John Gardner actually wrote about the Seabright Skiff in one (or more) of his books. I would look for it now, except I'd probably wake my wife. (Don't want to lose any WAF!)

Here's a link to some sliding seat rowboats, meant for open water. I'm pretty sure a person could modify these to be closed deck and self-bailing.

Wayland Marine- http://www.merrywherry.com/index.html