My offer for the property was accepted yesterday, so looks like this is going to be a real thing.
I am going to try to find just a plain jon boat or something (Craigslist, etc) as an interim solution to begin with, while I figure out what the final boat needs to be. When my father in law visited (retired shipwright, lived aboard his boat for many years in southeast AK), he pointed out that having a covered boat would probably be a good idea for bad weather, since 15 miles across a couple of large lakes (which are joined by a channel) can be a long time to be pelted by rain. Lots to think about. I also heard there is a guy with a small barge on the lake, who can be hired to haul stuff across, so that's also a good option to keep in reserve.
A used Shugart barge could be pushed with any or the 16-20' house boats with enough power on the back . But if you are at the point that you have the property then pre planning for a boat is past . I think your best option would be to try and find a used boat to buy with a cabin , no motor , large enough to haul 16' lumber , and plan on running it with a small motor at displacement speed if that is practical , it would be your cheapest option .
Netpackrat wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2024 3:44 pm
My offer for the property was accepted yesterday, so looks like this is going to be a real thing.
Congrats!!!!
Netpackrat wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2024 3:44 pm
I also heard there is a guy with a small barge on the lake, who can be hired to haul stuff across, so that's also a good option to keep in reserve.
If this is an option. It's a better option in my opinion, then you can have the best of both worlds. A barge purpose built for building supplies and equipment, and a boat that you and your family will enjoy for daily use.
Thanks. Lots to think about. I have to get on an airplane to Hawaii tomorrow afternoon (being dragged by the wife and kids, not really looking forward to it but at least now I have something to be excited about even if it isn't the trip), will hopefully close soon after we get back. After that the first thing I'll probably do is pull our old 15hp Johnson kicker out of storage in my brother's hangar and see if it is still any good. We ran that with a 12' Achilles inflatable for many years in Cordova as our river skiff, and the boat was worn out and got thrown away, but before I moved up here I had the local outboard shop give it a service and pickle it, before I packed it in a crate. It may still be good, may not, since it's been a couple of decades plus. As far as that goes, if I end up hiring the barge guy to haul materials, another inflatable might be a good option while I am figuring things out, since it can be rolled up for storage in the off season. Looking over what's for sale locally boat wise, I may end up with a spare motor either way whether I need one or not.
When I originally posted this thread, I didn't know about the barge guy. There's a video on YouTube where a family builds a cabin on the same lake, and they used him to haul in their materials. That was posted 3-4 years ago, so hopefully he is still in the barge business and I can get his contact info.
Anyway, I am pretty stoked. When we sold our previous cabin in 2020, I made one last trip in with the family, and I managed to haul out nearly all of the tools and gear we had out there, including the stuff that had been left by the previous owner when we bought it. I have had all of that stuff sitting in my shed waiting for the day when I would do another cabin (didn't want to sell the old one, but my brother wanted out, and I didn't want to keep it bad enough to buy him out of his half). I think the new location is going to end up being a lot better in the long run. There wasn't really any good fishing near the old place, and it looks like the hunting situation will also be better. This lake appears to be full of big lake trout, and supposedly there are grayling too. I am not much of a fish eater, but grayling on a dry fly is loads of fun.
I looked at your craigslist , plenty of Bay Liners with I/O ,s , didn't see anything cheap enough I would beat up hauling material . On your Facebook marketplace there was a 24' Carolina Skiff 6k within 250 mi . We used mostly 24' Carolina Skiffs for work and crew boats , they will haul the world , no weather protection and will beat you up in a chop . But depending on the price of paying the barge to haul material -v- the boat cost and future use , or sale it after the build , it might be worth it .
Yeah I have seen some of the Bayliner type stuff on there and given that some thought too. One of the constraints I will be working with, is the property isn't actually on the same lake as the boat launch that the road goes to. It's on a second lake, with a relatively narrow and shallow channel between them. There's actually a third lake farther out that is also connected as far as that goes. Anyway, that's one of the things I need to get out there and see- what sort of boats people are actually able to take through the channel, before I get too carried away with plans for a bigger boat.
Something like a C-Dory (or HM19) is tempting, because then I would also have a boat capable of being used on the ocean out in Prince William Sound. For its own sake, I wouldn't buy a boat like that, because I would only use it maybe once or twice a year to get out to Montague Island to hunt blacktail deer. So it wouldn't really be worth buying and maintaining a boat for just that purpose. But if I could make it do double duty, and also use it to access the lake property, then that would be pretty useful. IF it can still reliably navigate the channel to the other lake with varying water levels, etc.
So, for shits and grins, I paid Devlin the $2 he charges for study plans (I mean really, why even bother charging for two single page pdf's and a bitmap image?) for the Mud Dauber 23 landing craft. It still looks like much more boat than I would need even if doing all my own hauling, the draft of 1' seems like a lot for the size/type of boat, even assuming they measure it at a full load. Or more likely, calculate it since I haven't found any pictures of any that have been built. Per their own specs, they made it with a beam of 1" over the legal width for trailering without an oversize permit (why would you do that?), and they don't list a hull/empty weight, which is one of the things I wanted to know. Pretty sure I know why, because the kicker is, the main thing I was after was the BOM for plywood usage... And the whole boat is constructed of 3/4" (18mm) plywood. 33 sheets of it, all told.
Looking over the closest comparable design from BBC, the GT23, its (free) study plans show much less and thinner plywood used. Of course it has no additional structure for a landing craft bow, but it does include a cabin. And really, the Devlin boat doesn't have any ramp structure either. Just an open bow, into which you slot 3 boards as you would the companionway boards in a sailboat, made from 2x12 lumber. Now I know there are differences between the BBC boats and Devlin's in general, where his are more of a plywood boat covered with glass, and the stuff here trends more towards being a plywood cored composite boat, but still. I feel like I paid to "see the egress" but at least it was only $2.
A lot of small power cats can be beached , Wood,s , K-design and various others . If you not looking to haul a lot of heavy material I would think a small cat might fit your needs .
Glen-L has a lot of designs in their catalog. I remember my Dad getting me one of their catalogs as a kid. The designs are largely old style construction but can give you some ideas.
I took a trip down memory lane this morning looking at their designs. I can can save you a lot of time. If you seek modern construction methods to achieve the same design, all roads lead back to a GP21, GT23, GT27, or PC2x. The GT Cruisers, relieved of the bulky cabin, could be quite a hauler. And it would save a lot of construction time. The Pontoon Cats could be an option but all of the weight will be at deck level and may be tippy. You would have a big flat deck to work with.
3000 lbs of building material is not as much as you think. Go big if you want your project done in the limited building time you have.
Our lake cabin has a floating dock, about 15' x 8', tied to shore and accessed via a simple plank. The dock is foam blocks encased in a wood frame and planked on both sides. There are runners on the bottom side so it can be hauled up on the beach. Wood is white cedar, fasteners are stainless. When we need to move large materials or a quad we put them on the floating dock and push it with a conventional outboard boat tied alongside. It's not super fast, but we've gotta have a dock anyway and it gets the job done. The outboard boat serves well for schlepping people and luggage, fishing, and otherwise zipping around the lake.
