City Slicker… Even Slicker?

Chapter 1: The Rationale and the Hull

We had several requests for more information on Bill Mantis’s City Slicker design. What follows is the first in a series of articles. —Eds

City Slicker 2.0 under sail

By Bill Mantis

CS 2.0 is the third sailboat I have designed and built using the stitch-and-glue method. The first was a sailing canoe that underwent several refinements and rig changes. Her initial construction and evolution have been described in past issues of SCA.

The second boat, built in a friend’s basement in 2016, was named “City Slicker.” She measured 12’ x 5.5’ and carried a 75 square foot lug rig: a standing lug with a sprit boom, to be more specific. (See diagram: City Slicker 1.0) The sail area was almost identical to that of a Laser, a Sunfish, or the typical Puddle Duck Racer. Her first name—City—came from the fact that I expected her never to leave the St. Paul, Minnesota city limits. Her second name came from my expectation that she would work real slick. Not that she would be a real high performer, but that she would be easy to build, to set up, and to sail. And for a couple of sailing seasons, she was real slick in terms of convenience. I kept her moored on a buoy I rented from the city of St. Paul, and if I hustled, I could be out sailing on Lake Phalen some 45 minutes from the instant I got the urge.  Plus, since Lake Phalen was only three miles away from our downtown condominium, I could get to the lake by bike almost as fast as by car. And since the city provided the dinghy for getting out to the mooring buoy, the only things I needed to transport from home were cell phone and sunscreen: items that fit easily into my fanny pack or my bike’s panniers. Off season, I stored City Slicker in a friend’s garage located a mile east of the lake. Owning and operating City Slicker was mostly a joy. A joy except for two days out of the year: the day she was launched on Lake Phalen for the season, and the day she was pulled out of the water. These were stressful days for me. Partly because I’m inexperienced and inept at backing a trailer down a long, narrow boat ramp, and partly because Lake Phalen’s boat ramp was so exceptionally long and narrow. To add insult to injury, the ramp approach was interrupted by a well-traveled pedestrian/bike path. Backing my little twelve-footer down the Phalen ramp was a two-person operation, a circumstance that only added to the stressfulness of the occasion.