Spy photos

Boatshed:
Slightly complex here.
I wanted an unstayed car toppable hiking singlehander and felt that I wasn't catered for by any boats in the marketplace unless I wanted something that was early 70's vintage technology.
I made the boat for my own satisfaction, I wanted to design it with love rather than with any commercial justification, just make the coolest boat I could, with as much imagination as possible and current technology to bring the purest form of dinghy sailing up to date.
My requirements were:
Car toppable
Quick to rig
Space for a passenger
Sufficiently robust for off the beach recreational use
Offer rewarding sailing from 3 to 30kts
Maximum performance given the above requirements

The elephant in the room is that I did this all with the the caveat that it had to be as simple and "buildable" as possible. An exercise in what could be possible with a blank sheet, in the manner of the aquatic equivalent of a concept car, or a tech demonstrator. So now I have the moulds and design for a boat which has a relevance to a potentially large number of dinghy sailors, and has been proven to be straightforward to build. I'd like to think that there could be commercial potential, assuming that my ideas of what reprasents a cool boat alligns with any one elses.

Medway Maniac, thanks. I definately wouldn't advise making plugs then moulds especially for the first time unless you're happy to write off weekends/evenings for a couple of years. A labour of love for sure, especially when doing it for the first time, learning on the job Its a necessary evil to get the shapes that wouldn't be possible by any other building method.
I'd done a fair bit of investigation into the sensitivity of various parameters on performance, and I reckon it'll sail off something like 1050.
Whilst adding racks and kites would add some more performance, I wanted to keep this as pure as possible, possibly at the expense of a couple of minutes an hour in outright peformance.

Dan

Its about 8.2 or 8.3 m2 I believe. Not small, but the luff and foot dimensions are smaller than those for a conventional "triangular" sail, and the c of e is a bit lower. More "compact." It is designed around an ideal  75-80kg weight.

There are a couple of features that make larger / smaller rigs feasible without affecting helm balance. (Mast is chocked in a long mast box, with a seperate mini moulding at the deck for the partners allowing the rig to be moved f/a fairly easily. I'm getting an off the shelf boom which will be adjustable for different foot lengths). It is fairly long (4.2m) on the waterline which means that it should carry weigh fairly well.

Dan

Cheers mate.

Yeah its a nice feeling. I guess dulled a little by having seen it along every incremental step of the way so its only the big steps i.e taking moulds off plugs, pulling boat out of mould, building sail that gave the full Usain Bolt 100m feeling. Prob one of the nicest things is the reaction it gets from people who see it, esp some of my mates who thought on hearing that I was making a boat, that it'd have nails sticking out of it ect ect.

The boat itself is called "Cuckoo's Nest," after my late uncle's boats.  He bought me my first laser as a 13th birthday present and as such is responsible for my sailing habit. He sadly passed away last year so it felt fitting. f**king good film too of course.

Design name as such is up in the air at the mo, since there is only one boat. Very tempted to use the project name of: "the punk boat." Again, a bit of a story here, I've always incessantly doodled boats since I was a nipper. At university we had all seen some scorcese film and were referring to each other as "punk," so whatever boat I was doodling instead of paying attention to thermodynamics became referred to as the punk boat. Also it seems to fit in with the slightly anarchic backyard sensibility of it, taking it back to the bloated indulgent stadium prog rock. 3 chords and a message and all that.

Dan

RodB

I've been launching from Millbrook Lake thus far, tide allowing so just round the corner from SJL. Even ventured out into the sound last weekend.

Will be a bit more mobile now the cover/road trailer program is catching up with the boat program.

Hopefully make it out for some of the winter series stuff in the sound depending on how much travelling to the big winter handicap races I end up doing. Nice work on sorting that btw, Port of Plymouth is an enormous catchment area and the RWYC laser series is proof that there is no reason why we can't have really good high attendances for some racing.

Dan

Cheers. Fame and notoriety at last. Tom (picture editor) had emailed to say he'd seen the pics and wanted to include the boat in the new dinghy section. All a good space filler I guess! Seems I preserved my anonymity outside this forum though, phew.

I'll aim to be out and about a fair bit over christmas and new year.

Dan