Pontoon Boat Plans Aluminum | Cruising from a small boat perspective

Pontoon Boat Plans Aluminum

Camp cruising

I love camp cruising, began my cruising career in a then 40 year old open 14 ft sailing dinghy with a damp kapok sleeping bag, a very old and temperamental kerosene stove, two spoons, a can opener and a bucket.  We had a tarp which got slung over the boom, and generally tried to get the boat up into the head of the harbours or estuaries where she would settle fairly upright on the mud overnight.

We had no outboard motor, no cellphones of course, and were frequently late home.  Not just an hour or two, sometimes several days!  If we could we’d find a phone box and ring one or the other set of parents knowing that whichever we’d talked to would phone the other.

I recall one trip where we were trapped about 40 miles from home by a change in the weather that brought a headwind too strong for us to handle, a headwind that  stayed for days, so we eventually caught a bus home, sitting alone at the back to spare people the smell of our unwashed selves.

A week later, bathed, laundered, rested, carrying a bag of food and praying for for a change in the weather we caught the bus back, dragged our little ship out of the mangroves and sailed her home.

My friend and I were 15 years old, parents and school seemed ok with our disappearing for a few days now and again. Great memories, but these days I prefer to be a bit more comfortable. Dry, warm, better fed, and with space to lie flat, stretch out and sleep well.

I still get to go camp cruising. I very much enjoy it.  A week in a small open boat brings me so much closer to the elements than other forms of cruising. Sometimes I’ll camp on shore, but of late the pressure of housing being built in even the far reaches of the harbours means that many of the little spaces that were so suited to pitching a tent are no longer available, so I build and play with boats that have a sleeping space built in.

I prefer to stay dry, properly dry not just less damp than usual, so a decent shelter is part of the equipage.

Its  a somewhat fraught subject, there is much debate as to what fabric, what configuration and how to do the detail work.  As my next build is to be a serious open sail and oar cruiser I watch for debate on this subject in the hope that I’ll pick up some useful ideas.

Rick Thompson built one of my Walkabout sail and oar cruisers in a rowing only version a while back, has done an exceptional job on the build and has been very active both in using the boat and in participation in internet forums.

I was very interested to see his posting over on the WoodenBoat forum on his building of a quick erect tent for his boat, he’s meticulous in both research and methodology, and his tent is one of the best I’ve seen.

I’ve borrowed a couple of his pics and posted them below, nice work Rick, thanks for posting that information.

Go and have a look at the thread for the detail on how it was done.

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?193512-A-dodger-cuddy-tent-for-a-camping-rowboat

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Wooden Boat Plans Australia | Nose to the grindstone again

Wooden Boat Plans Australia

Or at least hands to the sanding block,  I’m unexpectedly home so have a chance to get some work done on SEI.  Its cold here, but the daytime temps are ok for WEST epoxy with fast hardener, and the sun comes in through the big windows keeping the shop warm enough for me to work in without heavy clothing.

So I’m sanding off the plank landings, the fillet between the skeg and the bottom and will be running a coat of ‘poxy with microballoons over the ‘glass to fill the weave before a final sand and then primer paint.

Sandpaper time.   Again.  Powered by elbow grease, It always seems to come to this.

I’ve several part pots of Toplac white oil based marine enamel, they came with my ship and that’s what I plan to use when I repaint her in our spring, and am very tempted to use that so I can get accustomed to its peculiarities before getting into the really big job of repainting the 40 ft motor boat.

So SEI will be white, boring but practical, pale green inside to reduce the glare, maybe some darker green highlights and possibly varnish on the seat tops just to tell people that she is a wooden boat.

Its nice to be at a stage where I can see the launching day off in the distance, we’re in the depths of winter here now, traditionally the worst is still to come but the daffodil plants are poking their heads up, I saw the first lamb of this season the other day and we’ve gained over an hour of daylight since the shortest day so there is, just occasionally,  a hint that there might be spring sometime .

I’d like to be sailing SEI when the good weather comes.

On the techo side of things, Howard Rice and I are both of us fans of anything that saves time when building  boats.  Our time on earth is limited so anything that speeds the building up means that we can build more of them, plus SCAMP Camp is a real teacher in that respect.

To explain, SCAMP Camp is 10 days, plus a little work over the in between weekend if the students want.  It’s a challenge to bring beginnner students along faste enough to get those boats ready to ship out on day ten, and anything that saves time is welcome.

We’ve been using the Ryobi cordless brad nailer for a while now, and it’s a real asset, saves about the equivalent of a day on each boat which is major.

We use the Makita builders laser cross level which not only makes it much easier to get the boats straight and true, but it takes a lot less time to do it.

The latest addition to our bag of tricks is the WEST System six10 cartridge epoxy glue system.  

The two parts of the glue are housed in separate chambers within the cartridge, and extruded through the blue mixing tube on the left of the "gun".  There are spares of those available as they are not cleanable but there does not seem to be a problem keeping a part used cartridge.

We don’t use it everywhere on the boats, just for the planking where the ability to run a controlled bead along an edge is very useful, and much faster than mixing by hand, pushing that into a ziploc bag and doing the cake decorating thing.  Sure its more expensive by volume, but there is very little waste and to give you an idea, at SCAMP Camp this year we were hanging a plank every 10 minutes, just about an hour and a half to do a pair of planks on each of the four boats we were building.  I remember that at the first SCAMP Camp we took more than double that,  that’s a saving of about half a day per boat.

Howard Rice running a bead of epoxy along the edge of a SCAMP plank.  The striped shirt is not compulsory equipment for this sort of job but it sure helps ( create laughter at least).

http://www.westsystem.com/ss/new-six10-epoxy-adhesive/

Well worth the little extra cost!

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