LIGHTER, STRONGER, FASTER
Article and illustrations by Paul Butler • Photography Bradley Y. Camp
The pleasures of a lightweight boat are an acquired taste, sort of like basswood Piantedosi sculls, turbocharged Mini Coopers and McManus cabernet. There are multiple advantages both obvious and eventually realized, but the use and ownership requirements of a ply/epoxy lightweight gives a fresh spin to the term pleasure boating, and it’s hard to go back to the ordinary. And although we’re talking mostly about ply/epoxy cartoppers, many weight saving techniques can be appropriate for larger boats.
The real advantages begin to show up not only in performance and payload, but in getting the boat to and from launch and retrieve. Lightweights under 100 pounds can easily be cartopped, which eliminates the complexities, legal and otherwise, of pulling a trailer. If you can lift 50 pounds by yourself you can handle a 100 pound hull because you only have to lift half the boat at a time for sliding it onto a roof rack. And even a 100 pound hull can be carried on the smallest of compact-car roof racks, further increasing the options for mobility. The ability to load and unload your boat without assistance is a real convenience. For those unable to carry, a lightweight with a slick, graphite-coated bottom can be dragged without harm across parking lots, down launch ramps, and over gravel beaches. Run a tether through a bow eyelet and just start walking.
Lightweights can be faster when speed is important, or when stability is critical they can be ballasted specifically to punch through small chop, or enhance stability in wind. Ballasting weight can be distributed fore and aft toward the ends of the hull, and as naval architects like to say, this will “dampen the moment” and reduce the hobbyhorse action of a lightweight hull. Alternatively the ballast can be centered low and midships to aid stability. Removable ballast is also a considerable safety factor if you get in trouble as it’s easy to flip removable ballast overboard, and with watertight compartments the hull will support itself even if flooded. Whether the ballasting is lead shot in bags, sandbags, water filled compartments, or just camp-cruising gear and a passenger is a choice with a lightweight boat. Twenty to 30 pound bags of sand will nestle into odd corners low in the hull where ballasting is most effective and can be moved with one hand, leaving a free hand to hold oars or motor controls.
These boats do not lend themselves to production techniques but are ideal for the amateur builder. You can build a ply/epoxy boat and use it for years then give it to the grandkids in about as good a shape as when you built it. They don’t watersoak! Maintenance is simplified and longevity is enhanced. Epoxy is a stable undercoat which adds longevity to an overcoat of paint or varnish and boats often last over 15 years with the original two coats of varnish over the epoxy finish. All this on a boat that can be taken into open water, make landings in surf, and get dragged over beaches to a campsite.
DESIGN
The design process and preparation for building should be a period of contemplation where you ask yourself how you plan to use the boat. These choices require common sense to keep the boat as simple as possible, and to start with the idea that perfection is attained when there is no longer anything superfluous to take away, then add-on wisely as you see the need. The construction of a lightweight is as much art as science and requires the use of minimal and strength-consistent scantlings throughout the boat in order not to add unnecessary weight by over building. Here’s where you can push the envelope a bit, but common sense and safety are still the prime requirements.
Two opposing options are to build the hull with a thicker skin and minimal internal framing, or to go with a very thin skin and rely more on internal framing, and it really depends on how you plan to use the boat. Camp-cruisers, river boats, and drifters dealing with rocky bottoms and beach landings obviously need more abrasion protection than a boat launched from a pier and used only in deep water. Building and installing all the fussy little parts that make for internal bracing also makes for a more labor intensive hull, but it can be the lightest way to go. All interior components should also be designed monocoque with everything fastened to everything else, which is also easy to accomplish with ply/epoxy.
Compartments are the structural furniture of these boats and can easily be made into seats, live bait wells, foam lined iceboxes, dry gear lockers, and are also handy to isolate fuel tanks, batteries, food, etc. Installing truly watertight bulkheads and decks is a piece of cake with ply/epoxy and compartments can easily be added throughout the hull and accessed with plastic screw-out ports or hinged hatches. Self-bailing capability can be arranged by diverting all water aboard to drain into a single footwell. Emergency flotation capability is perhaps the coolest byproduct of compartmentalization and makes an appealing safety feature, and if the hull is sensibly compartmentalized both fore and aft to maintain trim, the hull can fill from a sloppy wavetop and you can keep right on rowing, motoring, or sailing.
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