Part 3: Building Our Trailerable Dreamboat

This Time, Finishing the Outboard Well & Supporting the New Sheer Planks

First, the Looking-Back Sidebar:

As some of you recall, we spent months studying designs for a small, fuel-efficient, trailerable cabin cruiser—the ideal small boat for an older couple who want to stay out of the rain and sun, be comfortable in a small space, and extend their cruising into winter months. Finally, a friend introduced us to an available, recently-built, glued-lapstrake sailboat hull—a John Welsford 6 Meter Whaler design, 20’ overall, minus sailing rig. With the hull at our shop, we sketched a rough-draft plan for a comfy cruiser that would include a pilothouse with dinette table for two, a helm station and small galley; a cuddy cabin forward with typical V-berth arrangement, and an outboard well to house our 9.9hp Suzuki four-stroke. We introduced the project in a November 13, 2024 SHALLOW DRAFT column, and followed with Part 2 on December 17. So here’s another installment in the series…to continue until we’ve shared our first cruises aboard TATOOSH, the boat of our dreams.

This is not naval architecture—just a doodle imagining the Welsford Whaler hull with a cabin and pilothouse, designed to cruise at maybe 6 knots. The boat will have cabin heat, since we plan to do a lot of off-season cruising in addition to longer adventures in Spring, Summer and Fall.

Exhibit A: The Outboard Well

So, the last time we wrote about TATOOSH, our double-ender project, we’d cut a big hole in the portside stern, glassing in a new well for the 9.9hp outboard. Design and execution of the outboard-well surgery was, let’s be honest, pretty scary since we don’t like small holes in our boats let alone gaping chasms open to following seas. So we proceeded slowly with the sawzall, occasionally mounting the motor to see if we’d cut away enough to allow tipping the skeg far enough up so it would be above the waterline.

The plan somehow worked, and in the process we learned through forsenic exams that the sharply bent stern planks were actually a laminated sandwich—two layers of 4mm Okoume, meaning that as an epoxied-up lamination the builder had taken virtually all spring-back out of the curvaceous stern planks. (When we cut away pieces of stern planking they would fall to the shop floor unfazed, and still holding their curved shape…so our worst fears about spring-back weren’t an issue. The outboard-well hole could be deep and the width needed, at least to a point.)

We found that point soon enough, and finally got the motor’s tilt angle to click into place, just before we cut into the original sheer plank.