| A practical tender for
tiny keelers
Designs come about in all sorts of ways, and
this one was more unusual than most. My friend Marcus had
been “ sorting out” his 19ft long ferro cement
Donovan designed keeler and had extracted a casual promise
from me that I would design him a tender .
One Friday evening he turned up at our door
to tell me that he was “ off” on Monday and did
I have the plans ready as he wanted to build the tender over
the weekend! Of course I had forgotten all about it, so, in
order to buy a little time sent him off to buy a couple of
sheets of ply and a pot of glue.
When he returned I had the outline done and
some of the parts drafted out at 1/5 scale, Marcus took the
plan original off to the the copy shop and left the original
to me while he went and built the frames. That’s how
it went all weekend, I managed to stay one or two items ahead
of him and it was with barely set glue and paint still soft
that “Roofrack” followed “ Roc” out
down the channel on Monday morning.
A tender for such a small boat is not easy
to design, the boat will be towed a lot of the time so must
stay straight and dry at speeds higher than her hull speed,
she will have to be able to safely carry a big load when an
inebriated crew returns after a party aboard another boat.
Lifting the tender aboard cannot be only for graduate bodybuilders
and the space available for her stowage limits her size.
All of these were criteria for Marcus, and
because of the diminutive size of the parent vessel we had
even less room to play with than normal, a tight budget and
only two days of building time made it even tighter. I drew
this tiny pram with all of these in mind, and Roofrack fulfilled
all of the demands made on her really well.
Marcus disappeared off up the coast for several
months and returned with all sorts of stories about the adventures
he’d had, and told us that the little boat had turned
out to be a gem, in spite of the fun made of her by some who
saw her my friend was very fond of her and told me that she
was as near perfect for the job as one could get.
Since then the boats have been built by quite
a few, some in the shortened version which will fit into the
back of a medium sized station wagon and most at 2.18 m which
carries three plus a few stores comfortably. She is a lot
more cute than pretty but has proven much more capable than
most expect from such small and simple boats.
Note: All credit card sales
are in New Zealand Dollars. Local taxes are not included.
Economy postage is included in the prices quoted but
if priority mail or courier is preferred there will
be an additional charge. Email: jwboatdesigns@xtra.co.nz
for more information. If you pay by check, you may
use the price in your prefered currency as above. |
Note that we sell sails and are pleased to quote a
freight inclusive price to anywhere in the world, we have
tan or white, the sails come with sailbag, one reef and
are completely ready to go. Prices fluctuate slightly so
we prefer to quote each sail as the demand arises but you
can bet that we are competitive even with the freight included.
|
