At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

[cracked_ribs]

I've never had a build thread here, or not really. I started one on a scale model of the C19 but then suddenly had to move, which ate up a ton of time as I relocated to a different part of the province. I tossed the model in the process of moving; I had really just started it because I was bored not having anything to build but didn't have space to do anything at my old place in Vancouver. I built an 8' dinghy in my apartment living room in 2018, but now I have a kid and wouldn't do that again or he'd end up stuck to it somehow. Anyway, now I have space and I'm back to work.

I do build the occasional boat but I have never done a Bateau design and as a result I've never wanted to put up a build thread: I don't think it's quite right to showcase a competing designer's work. My last boat was a little dinghy similar to the D5 to use at my cabin but it's similar enough to the D5 that I didn't want to influence anyone away from the Bateau dinghy options.

Once again I've opted for a non-Bateau design but this time I think there's no chance that it will drive anyone away from the plans offered here: I designed it myself and it's not for sale anywhere, nor can I imagine it ever being.

What we have here is a 16' skiff, a little on the narrow side, to run with low power. Honestly the bottom is probably not that much different than a scaled down FS17, although the keel is pulled forward further and the bow is fairly plumb just to maximize LWL. I know this'll make it a bit more prone to bow steering but it'll be used in relatively sheltered waters and I don't expect to run from big waves so I don't see it being a big problem. I may have to cold mould the forward part of the bottom; we'll see when we get there.

At any rate I'm still prepping but the epoxy is on the way from BoatBuilderCentral - this was another condition I had mentally for posting a thread here. I can't remember when I signed up here but I have been reading this forum since I think around 2001 and learned a lot by being here, so I like to spend my money here if I can. MarinEpoxy has worked well every time I've used it, so 12 gallons of that ought to leave me pretty well situated. I don't foresee this boat taking 12 gallons but I also don't want to order twice. International shipping is annoying these days.

The slightly odd constraints of this boat are that it has to run with a 1979 20hp Johnson, with about a 17.5" shaft. Long story but I was given the motor; it was mounted on a 14' Mirrorcraft aluminum skiff we used to fish off the west coast of Vancouver Island when I was about eight years old. It hasn't run in 20+ years but they're simple machines and I'm confident I can get it running. It hasn't got many hours and was well maintained before being abandoned.

Anyway here we go: the Cracked Ribs 16.



This isn't the completed design or anything, it's just a screen cap I have on my goofing-off laptop. The completed stuff is on my big work machine and I don't want to switch that on or it'll load Outlook and I'll see all the emails I don't want to think about until tomorrow morning.

[TomW1]

Nice looking boat for a home design. Keep the strength of the bottom in mind with plywood and Fg and the frames in the interior. If you have not bought one of Jacques plans of about the same size I would suggest you do. Other wise looks like your well on your way. Good luck and keep us up to dat with pictures.

Tom

[cracked_ribs]

Thanks - yeah, should be all right; I don't think I have one of Jacques' designs for this size, but honestly it's a low power skiff built in a garage; it's going to end up overbuilt because that's what always happens. There's not too much span between stringers or bulkheads and it'll get 12oz biax over the seams and hull anyway. I ran across a semi-local outfit that had 37 yards of 12oz biax on a roll that they couldn't interest anyone in - apparently they sell to a different market than us - so I bought the remainder cheap, and now I'm overstocked on hull fabric so the enemy will be weight, I think. I also stumbled across some 7725 that the suppliers were a bit unsure about the provenance of and so they wouldn't certify it for aerospace use. I bought a bunch at $4 CAD/yd so I'm drowning in fabrics now. Or rather, I will be, once the UPS trucks start arriving.

A lot of the design choices here were pointless nods to the workboats of the BC coast which I love so there are valid criticisms of basically every aspect of this design. My own aesthetic preferences took over and I just drew something I wanted to look at, and put a pretty run of the mill skiff bottom on it.

Up until I got given that motor I was going to see if I could design something to plane off well for a 9.9 I had but never used - it would have been much narrower and more restrictive and was an interesting design challenge, but then two things happened in the space of one week:

1) I was given the old 20 hp Johnson
2) The ignition on my big boat started acting up and despite thinking I'd fixed it three times, three times in a week I needed the 9.9 to motor 15km back in from the fishing grounds. Now I'm never going to take the kicker off the big boat no matter how fixed I think it is, so no point in a skinny skiff to run on that thing.

Anyway a simple boat like this will be nice to fish out of and I think not too demanding to build, plus easier to trailer. Right now if I catch a fish and try to bring it home, I think I'm over the tow limit for my truck. Or if the boat gets rained on too heavily.

The main downsides are: much less efficient use of plywood than one of Jacques' designs; much worse support from the designer who I know from experience is unhelpful, occasionally hostile and frequently drunk, and more problem-solving as I go because there's no manual. On the other hand, I typically have only used plans to get the dimensions and lamination schedules in the past. Once I get rolling they usually get abandoned in a corner and I just work by instinct, changing things as I go, so this probably won't be too much different than usual.

[Fuzz]

This is going to be fun to watch. Many years ago I built an 18 foot skiff of my own design. It worked for what I needed but man it was butt ugly Yours will not have that problem

[cracked_ribs]

This is going to be fun to watch. Many years ago I built an 18 foot skiff of my own design. It worked for what I needed but man it was butt ugly Yours will not have that problem

That sounds like a challenge!

[cracked_ribs]

Preliminary steps


I wired up the garage with a couple of outlets today; there was no power in it at all before. Now there's rudimentary power out there. Good enough for now and even if the motor is junk and the project gets scrapped, it’s still worth doing. As is getting that wood stove going.



With the wiring in place, the infrared quartz heater is up and running. I then spent some time on the stove, taking it apart a bit and replacing a couple of those fiberglass rope gaskets. Now I have it back together, the gasket adhesive drying. Tomorrow I might have a little fire in it just to see if it's sealed up properly. I guess I'll have to get a section of 6" stovepipe just to test it out. I probably should have bought that today but I didn't know if I'd get this far. If it seems reasonable, I'll pump more furnace cement in all the seams and build some kind of simple chimney, and cut some flashing into the garage roof.



The old Johnson is in pretty decent shape, all things considered. It turns over and there’s spark, so probably a carb refresh and an impeller will make it run. I fed in some seafoam to the throttle body just to get the thing lubed up a bit, and pulled her over a few times. Doesn’t feel bad. A spritz of seafoam, a pull, a spritz, a pull, repeat for a while. I gave it a hard yank after about 20 minutes and she fired up, running briefly on the naptha in the seafoam, I guess. Okay, pretty encouraging. But no love off the gas tank, so I think the carb rebuild is unavoidable. New kit, plus new water pump with all the bits, and a Johnson gas tank fitting so I don’t have to use the ancient metal tank it came with, all in for a little under a hundred bucks from Amazon. Should be here in a few days.

In the meantime, I’m rendering the skiff design, or at least the panels, in Delftship. The software is a bit glitchy but should be sufficient for this design. It’ll get built in glass-ply-glass composite sandwich, with epoxy resin. Should be very light and strong, although it’ll eat a lot of resin. The hull will be ¼” ply with 12oz biaxial fabric on either side. I’ll try to squeeze it into 10 sheets of ply, and will probably burn 10-12 gallons of epoxy glurping it together. That’d put the weight at about 300 pounds.

I think a 16’ skiff around 300lbs should motor along okay with a 20hp two stroke. Of course, I suspect the only difference between the 20, which was a down-regulated Canadian-only motor, and the 35, was the carb. Maybe the intake. And the same skiff with 35 hp will really move.


And so the project begins.

[Fuzz]

This is going to be fun to watch. Many years ago I built an 18 foot skiff of my own design. It worked for what I needed but man it was butt ugly Yours will not have that problem

That sounds like a challenge!

No challenge. I see way too much planning and talent for it to end up ugly

[cracked_ribs]

This is going to be fun to watch. Many years ago I built an 18 foot skiff of my own design. It worked for what I needed but man it was butt ugly Yours will not have that problem

That sounds like a challenge!

No challenge. I see way too much planning and talent for it to end up ugly

Oh ye of little faith.

I didn't get as much done today as I was hoping. I do work a regular job and when I'm not working I really like to hang out with my kid so sometimes I'm not that productive but then I really like hanging out with my kid so I think that's a fair trade-off.

The stove is pretty much ready to go; I have tried a couple of fires in it and there aren't obvious leaks although for sure once in install it I'll need a CO alarm just in case.



The only other thing I got to was starting on the strongbacks, for which I used 2x8s.

Naturally I got a quarter of the way into putting the strongbacks together when my drill began to die. I had thought I’d felt the gears skip a bit previously but now they’re starting to strip. That drill has had a lot of use but it’s an annoying development, regardless. So now I have to get a new cordless drill. I finished up the stuff I was doing with a plug wrench and a ⅜ robertson bit but I’m not doing that for another 48 screws, so I have to see if I can locate a drill that’ll fit my Hitachi batteries so they don’t just go to waste.



Tomorrow parts should start arriving for the Johnson, so I can get back to that for a bit.

[cracked_ribs]

Back to work on the little outboard.


The carbs on these things are almost absurdly simple. There’s a low speed circuit on the top, which is controlled with a needle valve that screws in through the air cleaner. It’s a single passage with a couple of holes in the top of the throttle body that drip fuel down under vacuum. There’s no adjustable brass jet, you just screw the needle in or out. Factory setting was something like 1.25 turns out, maybe 1.5. There’s a high speed jet that’s a single passage off the carb bowl. Single brass jet. Dead simple. A rebuild kit was around $25 and took me an hour or so to install, and was probably completely unnecessary: after I took the float bowl off, I discovered that the passage to the filler tower in the float bowl was totally blocked, so the main fuel nozzle was probably bone dry. I let some acetone sit in the bowl for a bit, then poked a super tiny drill bit through the passage and gently cleaned it all out. Off to the races!


When I put the carb back on, which is a two minute job, I was feeling pretty confident. I pumped up the primer bulb on the fuel line and gave it a rip. The starter pawl skipped and the motor did nothing. I fed the rope back in and gave it a gentle pull. No, the pawl was jumping over the teeth on the flywheel. Annoyed, I went inside to find out where I could get a new starter pawl. I found lots, in the US, for around $5 a pop. Shipping was $30 for the cheapest option. Very aggravating. I kept searching and ultimately found a two-pack for $12, with $14 shipping. Okay, good enough.


Back to the motor: rather than continue to use the old metal tank, I popped an OMC fitting into one of my 25l Sceptre tanks. I have two because while I occasionally use one for the kicker, mostly I just wanted the ability to get 50l of fuel at a time from the gas station without pulling my boat out of the water all summer last year. But now I don’t really need that ability since I’m not commuting by water every day, so one of the tanks was demercurized and enjohnsonated. Now I really felt confident it would run.


Like most small outboards I’ve known, the old Johnson has an emergency backup rope start ability, you just have to wind the rope on with every pull. I have a ton of rope lying around, so I wrapped a couple of turns on and gave it a good hard pull, and it coughed a bit and died. Very close. So I primed up the bulb again and wound on the rope and pulled, and nothing. I did it again, and nothing. I stood there for a solid half hour just winding on rope and pulling it and trying to figure out why it wasn’t even trying now. I pulled the plugs to see if they were really fouled from all the starting attempts but they were sparking fine. I sprayed more Seafoam into the carb and tried it again and it ran, but quickly started to die as it used up the burnable fuel in the cleaner. I cracked the throttle open on the carb and it roared, but stalled as soon as I backed off. At least that gave me the idea that the high speed was getting fuel, but the low speed might not be, so I quickly pulled the carb again and hit the low speed circuit with compressed air from every direction. The carb went back on, I wound the backup rope around the flywheel and hauled off. Instant start! It was a bit sensitive to choke but the air cleaner wasn’t on; that might calm it down some as it smooths out the airflow into the carb. Lots of two-strokes are a bit sensitive about the shape and volume of the air box.. I put elastics on the butterfly valve linkages to hold the choke closed and let it run for a bit. There’s nothing like old two-stroke ring-ding sound...except WOT two-stroke powerband sound!

[youtube]https://youtu.be/uBnSq7CT040[/youtube]

[gstanfield]

Congrats on the win! I have a 1959 Evinrude 10 horse that I need to restore and then of course I'll have to build a boat to stick it on. I love the old outboards, at least for recreational use where a fouled plug or dead coil won't leave you stranded somewhere deadly.