Up Close and Personal



On the drafting table



  I sat down tonight to sketch out the interior of our boat thanks to a Multi Product brochure I found on the capedory.org site. Now we can start figuring out what changes we want to make to the galley and cabin! With spring right around the corner things are starting to get more exciting and should start evolving rather quickly now with set plans to move up to Maine in May!



Up close and personal with our 30' Cape Dory Ketch interior



Dinghy Rebuild

This is a project I wish I could have done over the Winter but just didn't have the inside workspace available. With all projects this one had some serious restrictions as well as compromises. Ideally I would like a sturdy dinghy that is sailable, rows well, is light weight and low cost. Doesn't take much time to figure out that isn't possible. Size is a major restriction with our boats beam being 8'11" we want the dingy to be smaller so it can go on the transom if needed so 8'6" was our size. Can't afford an outboard so rowable is mandatory and sailable would be nice, as of now the sailing part doesn't seem feasible but you never know. Light weight is critical for us to be able to move it comfortably without it becoming a major hassle when storing it on deck. Cost is always a issue so we set a budget of $400. Yes you could get a lot nicer and better boat but I doubt you could in our price range.

The plan was to build a simple Portuguese style boat but after pricing out wood this was not even feasible. After some sweating and being nervous we would have no boat I found a 13' Dory in need of repair on craigslist and swooped it up. The gunwales need replacing, parts of the ply wood sides are deteriorated and it is missing breast hooks also it is 13' not 8'6" but after checking it out seemed I could work with it and talked the owner down to $275.

Keep in mind this is a work in progress and I tend to change plans on the go as I run into problems.

Boat Heater 1

I was going to wait until this was all done to post but decided following along would be more interesting.

We decided that the boat needs some sort of heat. Since electric, propane and hot water is out of the question it leaves a solid fuel heater as the best bet. I grew up with a house heated by wood and then spent many years building fireplaces so solid fuel heat is very appealing to me.

With that decision made the design process took awhile. We have a bunch of restrictions: cost, size, safety, efficiency and space. Cost is important in all our decisions and for this I wanted to keep it under $50.00. This was actually a hard restriction since it would be easy to design something and weld it but metal costs are quite high.

Next is size. Since the boat is small the heater can't take up much space but it also doesn't need to be huge and provide too much heat. I picked the dimensions of 15" high by 6" wide maximum. Safety is paramount on a boat when dealing with fire so all parts near the flame must be extremely well insulated. Efficiency was another tougher design area that I had to compromise a little on. The old school type of potbelly stove produces a poor amount of heat for the amount of fuel used. Finally space on the boat limits where the heater could go which was important for limiting what sort of shape and mounting the heater had to be.