Narrowing Beam on XF20
Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2016 11:12 pm
I've been researching a lot of options for a boat for my lake house in Arkansas. I'm near the White River which is an excellent trout river. It is very shallow when generation is low so I'm looking for a shallow draft boat to build. Pretty much everyone down there has a Shawnee or Supreme river boat which is a 20' fiberglass Jon boat.
I'm going to build a Barrelback 19 Chris Craft copy for my retirement boat for Bull Shoals lake so this is my practice wood and epoxy boat to work on technique.
As I want to build a tunnel hull boat with a jet outboard the XF20 seems the logical choice but it's just huge at 8' beam. I've considered the Sabine from Spira which is 19' with a 6'4" beam but it is a flat bottom and is very heavy. He designs more for construction lumber boats so it's 2x4's and ACX plywood and glassed on the outside only.
I want a minimalist boat and even with the large size of the XF20 it's coming in at under 500 lbs. The Sabine is 750. Spira also has the Bayou Jubilee which is 18' and 4'6" beam which is closer to the boats they normally run here and it's about 450 lbs but I want the extra 2' of length for fishing three people.
I'm planning on a small jet outboad - 25-40hp depending on what I can find in a two stroke. Seems all now are 4 stroke and too heavy for me. I'm not looking for speed. I want shallow draft running up river to get back to the boat ramp.
So the long road to a short question is, what's the best way to narrow an XF20 to a max 7' beam? Take a foot out of all frame measurements? take a foot out of the wide section and smooth it fore and aft and maybe 6" out of the rest of the boat?
I'm going to build a Barrelback 19 Chris Craft copy for my retirement boat for Bull Shoals lake so this is my practice wood and epoxy boat to work on technique.
As I want to build a tunnel hull boat with a jet outboard the XF20 seems the logical choice but it's just huge at 8' beam. I've considered the Sabine from Spira which is 19' with a 6'4" beam but it is a flat bottom and is very heavy. He designs more for construction lumber boats so it's 2x4's and ACX plywood and glassed on the outside only.
I want a minimalist boat and even with the large size of the XF20 it's coming in at under 500 lbs. The Sabine is 750. Spira also has the Bayou Jubilee which is 18' and 4'6" beam which is closer to the boats they normally run here and it's about 450 lbs but I want the extra 2' of length for fishing three people.
I'm planning on a small jet outboad - 25-40hp depending on what I can find in a two stroke. Seems all now are 4 stroke and too heavy for me. I'm not looking for speed. I want shallow draft running up river to get back to the boat ramp.
So the long road to a short question is, what's the best way to narrow an XF20 to a max 7' beam? Take a foot out of all frame measurements? take a foot out of the wide section and smooth it fore and aft and maybe 6" out of the rest of the boat?