Part 9: Building Our Trailerable Dreamboat

A Hum-Drum Episode, Maybe Salvaged By “Twenty Steps to Completion”

You might as well turn the digital page now, because this promises to be our most boring project update.

Go ahead, quit if you dare. Or keep reading if you’re a hopelessly addicted to small boats, like me.

Soldiering on…

In the last segment, we reviewed everything that’s happened since the start of work, this time last year, when we first imagined a trailerable, fuel-efficient 20-foot outboard cabin cruiser for two aging boaters who are happy at 5-6 knots; who want some comfort while they migrate from open cockpits into a pilothouse with dinette for two, a small galley, cabin heat, and spacious berth in the forward cabin. That’s all, and that’s enough.

We reluctantly set aside the project in late May, due to the irresistible draw of cruising and other summertime distractions. But shortly before adjourning we’d finished a doorskin mockup of cabin and pilothouse…a nice stopping point. The first order when resuming last month was to finish work on the bottom—a project that involved hoisting the hull overhead, adding depth to the shallow keel with tapered layers of white oak, then applying coats of bottom paint…a nasty upside-down job.