More Skiff Design Spit Balling

[jrodda]

Delivered the Mosquito and outboard to a fried live-aboard dude in Newport today. Spacey, did an on-the-water trial run with the outboard on his tender, checked the lower unit lube for water in the dark after running it, took 15 minutes to get PayPal to work, never let go of his vape in the hour I was with him. I would have done another 3 hours at Denny's with him if it meant I finally sealed a buyer for the outboard!

It is possible that I get a Livingston as early as February...I wouldn't mind putting it off til June, but my wallet will pretty much put me in the market by then.

I posted some pics of boat designs last year and I got some interesting critique from it (Koga said I needed to court Bill Gates' daughter to make it work). I've drawn many floor plans since, trying to simplify and cut down on costs but still have something that has important features while staying really light. I have the idea to start guiding in a couple years so I hope to accommodate my first clients on this boat.

Basically these features are still key to me:

- Raised floor (currently think divinycell for core material) to meet the height of the tunnel on at least the front half (storage under for rods on one side, hopefully some storage on the other side)
- 10mpg goal
- Swivel captain's chair with a chair gimbal, 18" cube under the seat for some storage
- live well, passenger seating for 2 with some storage under seat
- lean rail on the bow for passengers to have secure footing while standing and casting
- some stern railing and attached rod holders
- Float pods on the stern to offset the stern heaviness of a larger outboard and aft helm, +250lbs or so of flotation.

- spot lock in the future but not necessary any time soon

I'm actually starting to think that maybe it would be worth getting a tiller 40hp Honda to open up the floor a good bit more. Getting a little inspiration from both Great Lakes guides as well as pangas for the idea. Less wiring, less things to go wrong. However it would be nice to have a steering wheel, assuming it makes my shoulder feel better than I would from a day holding onto the tiller.

I would love the Livingston 155, 15'6 x 7'6" (would be way better for guiding certainly) , but they are f@cking rare. So I'm planning for a 14, which is 13'11 x 5'8". The catamaran is still essential to me for stability, fuel efficiency, and good ride through chop, can't be convinced out of it at this point.

Here's a tiller floor plan, 6" per square:



And a center console design:




My immediate plans for the boat are to fish it as I buy it for a season, fish offshore through Q3, swordfish and inshore through Q4, then maybe add the floor and float pods next winter.

Any thoughts on these?

[Latimeria]

This is awesome!  I've totally done this for a bunch of my boats over the years, and especially the Square Boma since I built that up from just a hull.

Great story and looking forward to seeing this project unfold.  It'll change a lot of the way you fish from a solid hull.

[Tim524]

When I bought my boat , it was a custom build as far as the finish was concerned. Sea Deck, portable toilet or built in toilet, motor size with or without electric steering, boulsters or no boulsters, thru hull transducer,Gel Coat and color schemes, T-top layout, and a few others I probably forgot. It was fun but overwhelming as well. It was hard to wait after checking the appropriate boxes, 6 months actually went by fast and the test drive was pretty cool being a new boat owner.

Good luck on the design/layout, it will be worth the wait