Daysailer to Cruiser

Converting a boat to make it more suitable

Article by Geoff Heath

Back in the early ’80s I built, from a kit, a 16-foot Wayfarer sailing dinghy. I’d read Frank Dye’s book, Ocean Crossing Wayfarer and understood that his were the kind of boats and adventures that I too longed for. I sailed that boat alone for seven weeks in northern Labrador—the adventure of a lifetime. The boat was wonderful. Not only was it a sweet sailer, but people have been cruising them since 1957 and the camping-aboard logistics had proven practical and successful. There were for instance the removable seats which when placed athwartships, forward, formed a shelf for gear. The floor space was ample for sleeping; there was dry stowage, etc. I slept aboard about half the trip and thoroughly enjoyed it. Compared to the mountain tents I’d spent so much time in, the Wayfarer provided sumptuous digs.

Twenty-five years later I found myself dreaming of turquoise water, of sailing for unreachable horizons by day and lying out on the floorboards of a small boat at anchor with nothing but a flimsy blanket between me and the warm tropical winter night. And behold! The stock market broke and suddenly I was free to pursue the dream.

Committing to life aboard a not-quite 17-foot open centerboard dinghy is a step into the backpacker mindset. Obviously minimalism plays a large role in dinghy cruising. Because of weight and space limitations there is an ongoing challenge to creatively solve problems in the simplest way with the fewest tools. I find this greatly rewarding. It’s more similar to big wall climbing—capsule life—than what most people think of as “going on a cruise.”

The minimum requirements of a cruising dinghy are, for me, the following:

• Boat must be fun to sail

• Water tight integrity, strong construction, beefy fittings, well bonded

• Positive flotation (gear + crew + boat + safety factor)

• Rightable by one person in all but wildest of conditions

• Sensible rigging easily reefed by one person

• At least 24" x 6' 8" sleeping space

• Dry stowage and lashing points for gear, food, water

• Rowable

• Trailerable

• Beachable

The first order of business was to find a boat. There wasn’t time, money, or inclination to build or buy another Wayfarer. Though I had sailed very little over the intervening years, the few times I had, were aboard an O’Day Daysailer. While comparable in length and beam to the Wayfarer, the DS is heavier and possesses more inherent stiffness. My new ambitions included some passagemaking, and I thought I might draw on those qualities to work out a reliable sheet-to-tiller self steering arrangement for singlehanding. I decided that I could right the DS from a swamped condition alone (as yet an untried theory). I liked the handling qualities and the boat’s motion in a seaway. I was sure that this would make a good cruiser with some modifications. My new boat would be a DS II.

As built, the DS is not very easily cruised. The cuddy is a cavernous affair backed by a partial bulkhead. Full of water, such a space is a nightmare. Nor is the cuddy big enough to sit up in. It does provide generous dry stowage space. The seats are too narrow to sleep on, and the sole between seat front and centerboard case is also barely hip-wide. One difference between my old Wayfarer and the DS that was to cause some head scratching was that on the former the boom overhung the transom, affording both a full length boom tent and removable outboard boom crutch, while the DS boom is inboard of the transom.

There have been over 10,000 DS’s built. A quick search on the internet found boats for sale all over the country. I had the use of a shop in Bath, New York, but I was living in Bozeman, Montana. I picked a boat out in Peoria, Illinois as the nearest for sale on a straight line trajectory of a move eastward. We haggled over the price, agreeing on $1500.00, down from $1700.00 with an outboard I didn’t want. The trailer had flats, the rigging sagged from the mast which was itself precariously suspended horizontally above the hull by a slowly failing boom crutch. Sheet ropes lay rotting in the sun and rain. There was a dime-size hole punched through the starboard quarter at the waterline. Her topsides were formerly a bright but now faded and filthy yellow. Shabby. It had been years since she’d sailed much less been visited by a sailor, but I’m kind of beat up myself, so when I first saw her I took to her right away. I drove out of Peoria late on a beautiful autumn day with Gravity in tow. I hoped to sail to the Bahamas, but I knew from the outset that voyaging offshore would depend on several discoveries as yet unmade.

On November 1st I moved Gravity into a Victorian carriage house/wood shop in upstate New York. There was ample room to get around her, plus benches and tools to use. After shoring her up at a convenient height, I cut the seats out with a skill saw. My method of alteration would use 1/4" ACX plywood coated with epoxy for bulkheads, cockpit sole, and stern deck. All exposed surfaces were covered with three plies of fiberglass; mat, roving, and cloth, set in epoxy and painted with single-part, light gray urethane paint over a primer. Wherever plywood came against fiberglass or plywood I formed a one inch radius fillet of thickened epoxy. Around the interior of the cockpit this added strength and made cleaning easier. My goal was to keep things as strong and basic as possible. I tried always for good engineering and craftsmanship. The weave of cloth is just visible on most surfaces, but no attempt was made to cosmetically fill or “gelcoat.” There is no brightwork or much of anything yachty about Gravity. She conveys a sense of workboat utility and functionality. While I love traditional boats and joinery (I’ve built and owned two Friendship sloops), this boat is made of hydrocarbons and was formed in a cookie-cutter-like mold. Vintage decorations and fancy pretenses on such a boat are not wanted.

The inboard faces of the coamings were extended down to the hull and the void within was filled with sprayed foam. I copied the wayfarer with a large, flat-topped stern locker 22" wide at the centerline. The hatch in the top has a watertight seal made with camming latches. I kept the hatch and coaming around the opening as low profile as possible to make the locker accessible while underway. The floor from central bulkhead to stern locker is 24" x 6' 8" on each side of the centerboard case. I narrowed the opening in the bulkhead at the after end of the cuddy to 22" wide by creating a companionway with drop doors and rails that allow the cuddy to be locked up and watertight. Typically I sail with the doors in place to prevent flooding of the cuddy in a capsize. Immediately aft of this bulkhead I placed a seat of 2" x 10" oak with 11" between the top of the floor and its underside. It’s located near the center of gravity and is very heavily attached to the hull by four knee brackets. The whole boat could, I believe, be hoisted by this seat. The seat has many functions; it is well placed to row from, it is chart table, work bench, food prep station, major lashing point for food and water, and finally it’s a comfortable chair from which the world aft is admirably viewed at days end. It is also held on with wing nuts and large bolts and is therefore removable.

I decided to eliminate the side seats. I either sit on a cushion on the floor, or I sit on the rail, depending on conditions. I have added a hiking stick to the tiller which makes steering possible from a wide variety of places around the cockpit. Sitting on the floor affords a much greater sense of protection from the elements than sitting on seats. The coaming inner faces are sloped for back comfort. I have applied ordinary skid tape from the hardware store strategically to the floor surface. Nor is there self bailing. Water in the cockpit is managed by using a bucket, bailing scoop, and sponge. I always keep the bucket tied to the boat so that in the event of a capsize it can’t float away. Incidentally, I also tie a one gallon water bottle to the boat, and I tie myself to the end of the main sheet while single handing. These are basic precautions which support a commitment to self rescue and self reliance.

I reinforced the foredeck and placed a ten-inch galvanized mooring cleat in its center, added bow chocks, and halliard cleats on the cuddy top. I made a pair of nine-foot sweeps from a Pete Culler sketch with perfect recycled Douglas fir. These proved satisfactory for moving the boat through calms and in busy harbors. It says something about the times we live in that whenever I was rowing, and there were people about, they were usually pointing and taking my picture. I fastened oar locks to the coamings and one on the transom rail so that an oar can replace the rudder if need be or to scull with. I used hardware bonding techniques as described in the WEST system literature wherever blind screws were called for. This method is important to understand and apply, as it allows the practical doubling of strength of these fastenings. I spent considerable time cogitating on the boom-length problem, finally settling on a boom gallows bolted to the forward side of the stern locker bulkhead. As unusual as it looks, it works reasonably well and serves multiple uses. It supports the mast when on the trailer, supports the boom and boom tent at anchor; it is a strong point and can be leaned on while standing on the conn, can be lashed to, and provides a measure of safety and protection for the cockpit. The boom tent, however, stops at the gallows frame and doesn’t make it to the transom. In a hard downpour there is some tending of the sponge necessary to keep things dry. Nothing is perfect.

The DS has an efficient and practical rig. There are spreaders and two stays, and a headstay. The mast is tall, 22-feet from deck to truck. Gravity came with an overlapping jib and mainsail in pretty good condition. I sent the main to Grant Gambell and Rob Hunter, sailmakers, in Camden, Maine. They understand what dinghy cruising is about. I asked that the luff rope be replaced with sail slugs, two sets of reef points with attending tacks and clews be added, along with patches over the weak spots and some flotation sewn into the sail head. This last to prevent the boat from turtling in a big capsize. I changed the headstay by splicing on a rope end. This line runs through a block at the stemhead and back to a cleat on the cuddy top. The mast steps on a tabernacle just above the cuddy. The running headstay makes handling and controlling the mast while raising and lowering easy. It also may be that the best storm tactic at sea is to lower the mast, lash it to the boom gallows, and lie to a sea anchor. I retained the 1 x 19, 3/32" wire stays, judging them to be strong enough, and I added a topping lift. I applied all the requisite hardware to make the jiffy reefing smooth and quick. The boat came with short genoa tracks screwed to the inside forward end of the coamings. The traveling fairlead-jam cleats were pointed the wrong way and were awkward to adjust the sail with. I replaced them with blocks on rope slings rigged through holes drilled in the seat. While admittedly anachronistic this has simplicity, adaptability, and reliability in its favor. Either jib sheet is now belayed to a single cleat on top of the centerboard case. This new arrangement also lends itself to sheet-to-tiller self steering. The jib is rigged with a simple downhaul of light line. It passes through a fairlead on the foredeck and up through the jib hanks where it ties to the thimble at the sailhead. The bitter end cleats to the cuddy top. With this arrangement I can lower the jib and secure it without hazarding a trip forward.

By the middle of December I had completed most of the changes to the boat and had purchased or rounded up all the gear needed to cruise. The weather was much too cold to paint in New York, however. On January 1st I drove out of Bath headed to Florida. I painted the boat when I got there. I had always wanted to see the classic skyline of Miami Beach from the water, and so I launched at Key Biscayne and sailed Gravity for the first time. I was not disappointed.

Illustration by Stu Whitcomb

I cruised along the Florida Keys and into and out of Florida Bay. Living aboard was enjoyable and practical. I sailed as far west as the Marquesas. In February I hauled out, ending the season’s adventure. The passage across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas still awaits. I was never able to completely trust the self steering. The boat is very sensitive to weight shift and twice when under sheet-to-tiller self steering I was hit with gusts and the boat rounded up and tacked instead of falling off. This left me on the downhill side with the jib back winded. After these events I never felt safe going to sleep for long. Also, the weather often featured strong northerlies which kicked up a nasty sea in the Gulf Stream. The best solution for solving the open water passage problem in a dinghy is to find a like-minded individual to sail with. Unfortunately, none turned up in my south Florida wanderings. Still, for a mountaineer from Montana, it was wonderful and strange to experience the heart of winter aboard a dinghy in the tropics. Round one is over, but I’ll be back ! •SCA•

Geoff Heath and the love of his life have recently settled in the Finger Lakes of western NY with their cat and a dog named Ally. When not pursuing a living as a carpenter, Geoff sails, bicycles, flies airplanes, and climbs frozen waterfalls.

First appeared in issue #63