Category Archives: Charter Catamarans

the New Lake Chelan Ferry Hulls

Cliff got master builder Joe Kitchel to come up and do a Berlitz class on boatbuilding for Cliff and the boys. It worked. Beautiful hulls with no delamination. It took place in an abandoned fruit warehouse nearby. It was well insulated so they could run the temperature up as needed.

the mold. by Turning Point Design of Port Townsend.
a half hull, with the completed one behind. solid foam crush bow.
the completed first hull. beautiful work
as an example of how serious Cliff was, this is a heated lamination table.

48″ Day charter project

Hi! I’m starting the build of a kurt hughes design day charter cat to be completed spring 2022 in southwest florida. it will be a cylinder molded wood composite build. I’d like to communicate with anyone else who is currently building, or has built a similar boat. i’m a professional boat builder, having built and worked on several of kurts designs.

couple of questions:

  1. anybody have a suitable dagger board mold? or want to use mine when i’m done with it?
  2. any good leads for sourcing rudder shafting?
  3. if anyone needs uni or triax i have found somebody with a couple tons nearby (sarasota area). vectrix and very reasonably priced. let me know in the comments and i’ll post info.

More Lake Chelan Ferry.

I found a picture of the new Lake Chelan ferry taken during sea trials.
It was loaded down with about 8000 lbs. of sandbags, which was to simulate 32 passengers and a ton of cargo. It did the required 20 knots, but I thought it should have been able to do better. It still could.
The pair of 200 hp. outboards were still new and weren’t pushed  exceed 4000 rpm. The props had not been experimented with.
There was substantial water sloshing around in the bilges. The roll and tip bottom paint application was never tipped. The surface was like sandpaper. The owner can wet-sand the hulls. And finally, there were a few divots below the waterline that could be filled next haul-out.
#lakechelan
#multihulldesigns
#catamaran
#catamaranferry

CM Female mold

For a few decades now I have considered rapid composite hull building construction to be the holy grail of boatbuilding. I published and presented a technical paper on this topic at the 1992 Marine Applications of Composites conference. I built the hulls for my Formula 40 trimaran using the same techniques. A few other catamarans have been built using these techniques. I never have had time to properly write this up as a manual.

I’m still not sure that there is any need for rapid construction any more. I just saw a picture of a race starting line with a row of $3 million to $5 million cats racing. Maybe I really miscalculated the business. Oh well, too late now.

The only other multi designer that I know of working the problem is Kelsall with his flat bagging table KSS process. I see an armload of problems with it.  Besides, with that process, one still has to torture the laminate into shape,  cut darts into it, then add the 0 degree laminate over the darts, still. And fair it.

What if you could instead build a rapid female mold, and bag the exact and final hull in it in one step? Here we go.

Back in the late 80s when I build my trimaran, a couple of the steps were very successful, and two of them, exhausting. Those two I have improved on.

Those are; I coated the inside of the hull with epoxy. Then sanded it smooth. Way too much work. I now recommend using 545 or some other epoxy primer paint instead. The second was that I coved the hull “gutter” with bog, and then sanded it smooth. Even as a 30 something then, it was insanely hard.to do. Now I prefer to fit a piece of cardboard sonotube first. Then once it is fit properly, bog under it. It creates a rebate on the part that extra protective biaxial roving can be added to.

The first step is to create two cylinder molded reflected hull panels. These can be done with non waterproof glue to save cost. This mold will never go to windward. The insides of the panels are best filled and sanded smooth at the scarphs while the panel is flat like a table.

The two panels are wired together just like the usual CM hull, and a deck flange is added.

The difference between this and the usual CM is that the bulkheads are added to the outside of the hull instead of the inside. Once the final hull shape is achieved.

Red is the flange, purple, the bulkheads, and green the cardboard sono gutter.

36 Daycharter Transformer

One of my customers and friend was in the Keys and got this picture. He wondered if it was a KHSD design. I thought so but wasn’t sure. Pat cleared it all up. Yes, it was the late Chris Schofield’s daycharter cat. It was actually the bridge design between the original Kamanu 36 and the present BIB charter boat in a box 36 design.  Probably built in ’90, by Olympic Boat.

65 Charter Cats Front View

I got that great opportunity to see my Alii Nui side by side with a Constant Camber 65 last week. It was great to see the differences. Again, both were built by the same yard. Alii Nui is foam/glass and the CC 65 is constant camber. Except for butting all the plywood sheets instead of scarphs, and bagging the ply to a true mold, instead of itself, this boat’s hulls  were built exactly like the CM system that I have been using for 30 years and that CC has been criticizing for almost as long.  Cool.  Oriented ply sheets.  Stringers instead of mass. Thinner hull skin.  Cool.

Alii Nui is 36′ wide.  I cannot find the CC 65 data online, but I’m guessing it is 30′ or even 32′ wide. That makes a smaller playpen.  First the Alii Nui.  Both from the same distance on the dock.

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