What was in the designers mind?

[DMCI]

Getting a boat to run fast in the open ocean without beating the crew half to death with relatively little horsepower was not an easy problem for a marine engineer in the late 1930s.

Faced with a similar problem and new and untried materials the folks at Skagit plastics et al (a little legal jargon) were quick to follow existing solutions at least according to my Dad in the mid fifties.



Notice the relatively deep entry at the bow and flat stern. You might even see a line of the cabin in some of the special 19 footers. The marine engineers coming out of the forties loved these boats!! Here on the PT65 the length to beam ratio is considerable longer to allow fitting of the US Mark VIII shell.



Any body see any logic is this?

[Lootas1]

I'm not good at logic (or I wouldn't own a classic boat, I guess) but I do see Bainbridge fitted out with a couple of torpedos. How about that Chuck?

[Skagitguy]

Logic ? So...so what ?? Half of the boats had that same kind of hull in the 50's. Sometimes they would pound you to death , but they did get you home.

[Helmar]

Well, if you put weight in the bow and keep that down, the Skagits, Bell Boys, Uniflites all were ok in rough water.
Getting thing them up on plain, another story.

If you remember back then, we had to run twin engines (35's) to go faster.

Now with these new engines the boats get up and go faster than they hull was designed for and its like riding on a barn door with a big motor on the back.

Explain this one to me. This may have been a timing thing, but look at what was designed up here in the Sound and Straights, rides like barn doors and then look at the Dorsett Catalina hull design.

Your talking about a World if difference here on how these boats ride.

All my Skagits, the Bell Boy, my Uniflite will beat me me damn near to death were the Catalina just Slices though the water......

:BigWink1:

[Guest]

Boaters and boat designers and boat builders are amazingly cautious. Speaking as an engineer- part of it is that there's rarely budget to do the testing to qualify something that breaks with tradition. Many of the boat designs we use today can be traced, step by step, back to 18th or 19th century sailing work or fishing boats.

From what I remember and my reading, if you're interesting in planing hulls there really are two big steps. The rum runners, where they went fast with fairly heavy loads by using a narrow, flat hull with sharp entry, and stuffing as much power as they could get from automobile engines of the day. If you look at the underbody of a rum runner and a PT boat you'll see a lot of similarity. And Ray Hunt and the other designers who realized back in the late sixties that the much more powerful engines of his day would push a sharp v-hull so fast it only rode on a little bit of bottom. That meant you could safely go real fast in rough water. Hunt was a radical, and he's of course also responsible for cathedral hulls.

Personally I'm not in enough of a hurry to want a deep-V hull. I want range. My last boat was a 21 foot Starcraft shallow v aluminum hull. At 20 knots on a normal afternoon outside Long Beach harbor it would pound to hard I sometimes couldn't read the GPS. I grew to hate that boat. I don't know how bad my Bellboy is going to pound- expect a lot- but I learned in Oregon dories up in Alaska. Can't get much flatter than that.

[DMCI]

Boaters and boat designers and boat builders are amazingly cautious. Speaking as an engineer- .

Budget, yes always a problem. But with no money, there is plenty of time to do the analysis. Here is my dream:



This is basically a miniature version of my previous boats. The current 300 Verado is the perfect answer when compared to my last boat a 27 foot deep vee with twin 454 Bravos. (Go like blazes in 6 foot swells (Hein Bank/Port Angeles) at a cruising speed of 30 knots/6o wide open)

1500 dry weight with 600lb engine, vs. 5000lb for twin drive 27'.

With the smart gauge system and Garmin gps stuff, the glass cockpit and optimized operation and management of fuel optimization is so cool, I want it bad. With relatively conservative philosophy you get wave hopping race power, with a fairly economic operation at 30 to 40 knots with a top pushing 70. That big Verado would run 60 all day long, but you couldn't find anybody to boat with!!



Objections? That's why I'm also looking for a 19 Skagit, etc.

[McSkagit Tim Jones]

WWII PT boat designs

World War II American PT boat designs came from WWI British Designs, notably Thornycroft designs. Huckins built the first US WWII PT boats and later Elco (Electric Boat Company) built the Elco 80's. The Elco 80 was hard riding in ocean conditions and many suffered broken longitudinals and broken frames.

Still later in the war, Higgins developed the Higgins 78, built heavier and with greater deadrise forward. They were a couple knots slower (42 knots), but much better riding.

[Sammamish1]

just what you're looking for

DMCI

I can set you up in this nice 31 ft Jupiter for only $55,000 cash.

[DMCI]

I hear ya.

That frankly is a beautiful boat, but it has two engines. I believe that configuration is becoming less and less atractive as time goes by and fuel gets more and more.

A practical deep vee hull with a very large outboard seems to be the obvious solution.

Rules are getting tighter and tighter (don't you dare exceed the horsepower plate, for example. Then they discontinue the 275 which is perfect for a 24 deep vee. Maybe you could sneak a 300 on it. Engine only generates that with premium 92 fuel or talk to builder about fudging the numbers some?

Good sea keeping with room for a crawl under bunk.