Low Tide

Yacht Designer Tad Roberts' Web Log

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DRAGOON

Dragoon Dragoon, an Ocean Racing Ketch Launched 1925 Built by H.W. Embree & Son in Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia Designed by Ford, Payne, and Sweisguth Drawn by Francis Sweisguth (1882-1970) Built for Robert Bavier of City Island NY Contract price (firm) $6,795 LOA 66’6” LWL 55’0” Beam 14’6” Designed draft 8’6″ Ballast 27,000 iron outside[.....]

PRINCIPIA

Designed by L.E. “Ted” Geary, Principia is one of four identical hulls started on spec by Lake Union Drydock in 1928 just prior to the great depression. The boat was finished out for Le Roy Macomber, a Lawyer and Financier from Seattle. Macomber and his wife Marion bought Hardy Island (mouth of Jervis Inlet) in[.....]

ODAMIT (oh-dam-it)

Odamit (Later Chack-Chack), my Grandfather Harry Roberts boat, at Malaspina Galleries, Gabriola Island, 1924. The boat was about 35′ x 12′, built on the beach at Roberts Creek and launched 1923. Harry sold Chack-Chack in the ’30’s and replaced her with the slightly smaller schooner Leyo, also built on the beach at Roberts Creek and[.....]

Island Tender by Phil Bolger

Island Tender Drawn by Phil Bolger in 1958 and built by the Essex Shipyard in Essex, Massachusetts, this boat was intended to be used as an Island Tender carrying passengers and light cargo around St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Lightly built with a vee-bottom using sawn frames the hull is moderately deep and high-sided[.....]

ALEUTIAN TERN

Aleutian Tern Aleutian Tern, William Garden design #478 done in 1963 when his office was in Seattle. She was built of mostly yellow cedar in Seattle by Warren Teller for his own use. 38′ x 13′ with 4’8″ draft, her engine was to be a BMW diesel fitted backwards over the shaft log, driving the[.....]

Spirit

Yesterday I posted about the big Spencer/Kiskaddon schooner New World, here’s her forerunner, the Sparkman & Stephens sloop Spirit. Intended as the first of a new San Francisco Bay racing class, S&S design #1557 was drawn mainly by Robert Harris in the summer of 1960. The boat was to be very much a day racer,[.....]

NEW WORLD

New World New 8 JuneShow less The ocean racing schooner New World was launched in New Zealand about 1971. 69′ x 13′, of light plywood construction, with a displacement of 30,000 lbs, 11,600 lbs of ballast, flush decks and no engine, she was pretty different. Her design was a collaboration between designer/builder John Spencer, and[.....]

LITTLE GOOSE

There were actually four boats built to this mid-1950’s William Garden design. Garden has written that the first one, Little Goose for John Case, was one of his favorite boats. That might partially stem from her being built at Maritime Shipyards where Garden’s office was at the time, so he saw her every day. The[.....]

The Perfect Coastal Motorboat

In 2010 I was involved with a group that wanted to design and build “The Perfect Coastal Motorboat”. A nice idea, group design, but in my experience it doesn’t work. The pushy-argumentative people always get their way and the others follow along. But any product “designed” by a group of non-designers will end generic in[.....]

Comparing the Performance of Boats

Often it’s interesting to see just how one boat does against another. Usually this is done using weight or displacement, speed, and required power. Of course the tricky bit is comparing like with like, and getting accurate data. Don’t use the published weight, find out the real weight from an accurate scale or travell lift.[.....]

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