MRB Blog

2021-05-10-1403

Big Bugs -- are almost here

2021-05-08-1306

Latches

Locker lids that leak are the work of satan.

A raised lip in the deck made from Trex decking material matched with a loosely fitting lid that has an EVA closed-cell foam gasket inside works nicely. If and only if the latch pulls DOWN on the lid as it latches. To do that you can make slanted latch-mounting blocks with Miratec Fascia board and/or more Trex decking material. Wood swells with moisture over time. No matter what. Miratec and Trex never swell. No matter what.

In this photo a ten year old Dayak is in the middle of a bit of maintenance. Locker lids now. Body work and paint job next.

2021-04-22-1355

Bulkheads Roughed In

I haven't been in the shop much last two weeks. I finally got the bulkheads roughed in.

Nothing gets glued in this experimental boat. It all goes together with caulk and Torx screws so anything and everything can be replaced or remodelled. At any time.

Bulkheads help hold up the deck and in case of a puncture they limit water intrusion to one section of the boat only, so you can still row slowly home for repairs if you cave in the front end of the boat. Bulkheads aren't structural. Not mine anyway. So I'm using 3/8" rough sawn siding plywood--largely because it's light and because I had some.

The bulkheads will caulk and screw to wooden cleats on the inside sides, and to strips of Miratec fascia board glued to the (fiberglass) inside bottom. Miratec doesn't soak up moisture so it works well for non-structural cleats--that do get glued to the fiberglass boattom shoe.

2021-04-01-0424

Long and Skinny or Long and Wide?

Should a white water dory carry its passengers in the middle? Or out a the ends like a Briggs?

I want the weight in the middle of the boat rather than out at the ends. For a lot of reasons.

In a high rocker boat passengers out at the ends are high up rather than low down. That makes the boat unnecessarily tippy.
Weight in the middle is more side to side stable and easier and quicker to turn.

Traditional Oregon dory builders know this. They have always put the payload as two or even three passengers across on a front seat relatively far back from the downstream end of the boat. That's how they perform best.

Two rogue traditions changed that: fly fishing and the Grand Canyon. For fly fishing you have to separate the two passengers. The boats become less maneuverable but that's the price you have to pay. The Grand Canyon is an odd story. Martin Litton paid Keith Steele to make a decked boat big enough to take four passengers. The Susy Two. Keith wasn't into it. He chopped in 15x48 boat in half and stretched it out to 19 feet long instead of scaling it up proportionately, so it was a long skinny boat with passengers at both ends.

He didn't want to build any more so Martin Litton got Jerry Briggs to do much the same. Not many Grand Canyon runners have ever tried to change anyhing. They build long skinny boats that are annoyingly side to side tippy. If a 19' foot boat had been scaled up proportionately, from the original Keith Steele boat, it would have been 60" inches wide not 48.

If it had been scaled up proportionately it could have carried all four passengers in the middle instead of the the ends. Which is how Oregon dories are supposed to work.

 

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