How's one getting around designing a 10 feet sailboat that should be able to withstand the forces of nature for circumnavigation?
For an experienced sailor/designer in his right mind this would be considered as "not opportune" I guess.
The only two "examples" of boats that came close to what was "required" for the AiT rules where "Yankee Girl", from Gerry Spiess, and Serge Testa's "Acrohc Australis".
The latter being constructed from welded aluminum was simply out of reach for me, both in cost and skill required to build such a boat.
Gerry Spiess' "Yankee Girl" was build from plywood and having no experience at all in building, even a plywood sailboat this seemed like something that was "doable" for me and I like to point out that I'm talking about the plywood construction, not the Spiess design which I considered "too complex" for me.
I needed something very simple that should give a lot of space for the given volume, and should offer as much comfort as possible for such a small boat.
Lacking every knowledge about nautical architecture I started to draw some sketches which very soon ended in something like a wooden box, more or less shaped like a boat.
I opted for a flat bottom because.... it offered the simplest construction and the "bonus" was that it probably had the best roll stability.
For me the biggest challenge in this race will be the condition of the skipper (me !!) and I believe that more than anything else the mental and physical condition will determine who will win this race, rather than the most advanced boat or high tech navigation equipment. I could be dead wrong about this and the future will tell if I was right or wrong.
I kept making sketches on napkins and loose pieces of paper untill I had the "shape" I thought was the "right one" for my boat. Intuition was the decisive factor rather than knowledge but since I'm the one who's butt is going to be in this boat, I felt no problem with this.
final design sketch "Skippy"
Once I had the main lines of the design the only thing I needed to do was to transfer this to something to work with and this meant no other thing than adapting it to the available materials. The biggest sheets of outdoor grade plywood I could get was 2.44 m x 1.22 m so this would limit the width of the boat to 1.22 meters cause I wanted to have as less as possible "joints", especially in the bottom.
The lenght was set in the "Rules" of the AiT to be exactly 3.04 meters so that was it. The only thing I needed to figure out was "headroom" for the cabin and for this I simply took the height measured, when I was sitting on the floor with a straight back, to the top of my head and added a few centimeters to that.
One of the things that made the "design" a bit easier for me was that I had a small stack of 18 mm outdoor grade plywood sheets and some wood so this would be used (I considered this "free material") for the construction (bottom and bulkheads).
From my sketches I made simple 2D AutoCad drawings for each bulkhead and the shape of the bottom. These coördinates where later transfered to the plywood.
The sail rig was one of my biggest concerns because I had no experience at all and here I followed the same rule: I needed something simple both in construction and handling. By coincidence I stumbled onto something which turned out to be the "Chinese Junk rig" and I started to read about it. The more i red about it the more this rig seemed perfect for me. It was, in regard to construction, a low tech sail, could be repaired very easely, could be homemade and, once everything was sorted out, could be handled very easy and was forgiving for mishandling. Once again, I choose the rig very much using my intuition, based on the things I had been reading about it.
This is more or less how "Skippy" was "designed" and much of the shape she's in at this moment was determinated "at the spot" meaning that as the build took progress some things where changed and some things where decided "there and then".
Just recently "Skippy's" design was run through a computer program (not by me though !!) and to my relief there seemed to be no major "disasters" in the design which probably was pure luck rather than skill/knowledge. Some figures where less optimal but this had more to do with compromise than going for the ultimate......I guess !!
I have no doubt that "the yacht designer" would find hundreds of things that needed or could be changed on "Skippy" and I truly believe that most of this critisism is meant to help me, which is highly appreciated, but at the end..... I'm the one who's going to risk his life in this and maybe, just maybe, this gives me the right to do it "My Way".
