Canoeing, Sailing and Motor Boating by Warren Hastings Miller

Author:Warren Hastings Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: George H. Doran company
Published: 1919-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

CHOOSING YOUR MOTOR BOAT 1»8

the way of weeds to a harbor. We nosed along at half speed through the darkness, feeling our way down channel, and every now and then getting into weeds again,—when me for over the side with chattering teeth and hacking knife I Finally we put into the harbor of Lavalette and we all camped out in the cockpit of a sloop, anchored the farthest out; the hardest sleeping I ever experienced, for that sloop was a racer and her cockpit floor was ribbed with hard oak foot-braces for the helmsman!

Next morning, after a long search, we found a beach where we could get in, but it wasn't just where we would liked to have camped, and it In-volved a long pack trip over the dunes. We had several days of snipe shooting and surf and bay fishing, but we never took the motor boat down there again.

So, if you have weeds or shallow water you must allow for a tunnel stern boat and put a square small-mesh chicken wire screen over the propeller well to keep the weeds out of the propeller. Eeversing the engine helps somewhat in clearing weeds, but not much, particularly if they are thick.

This brings us to the question of sterns in general. The old type of fan-tail stern used in sail

boats was designed to give an overhang which could make a foundation for the main sheet traveller, main cleat, etc., and it was in no danger of being submerged by following waves because the lift of the sail pulled upon it strongly, so she had no tendency to squat. But, with a propeller underneath, sucking out all the water under the stem and driving it aft, the fan-tail stern squatted down flat to the water until it got a bearing surface, and that put it so low that a following sea would climb right over the stern and swamp the boat. And so grew the box-end, stubby, motor-boat stern, made in a number of ways, but all with the idea of providing a buoyant, lifting stern that would slide right over the water and that a following sea would simply lift up, not swamp. These motor-boat sterns are classed as flat transom, Norman V, sloping transom, sloping V, compromise, and canoe sterns. Of these the flat vertical transom is the easiest to build, but requires an outboard rudder, hung on gudgeons; the Norman V is good to look at, and not hard to build, in fact it is easier in some ways than the flat transom, for one large, wide oak board is not required, two smaller ones doing the service just as well, jointed at the point of the V. The forward-sloping flat transom or V both look well, and

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give a maximum of lifting power to the stern, and both require under-hung rudders. The compromise and canoe sterns are both hard to build for amateur carpenters, as the planks have so much strain on them that,

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