kobuk_design

Picking a Plan

When I first started poking around in my search for a suitable boat design I discovered Glen-L Marine, a California company that specializes in selling boat plans to home builders. They sell plans for most any kind of boat you might ever think of building, and all their plans are tailored to the limited skills and resources of the typical amateur builder. Two different boats in their catalog caught my attention and for some months I struggled to make a choice.

One was the River Rat, a 19’ runabout that it appeared could be lengthened somewhat without much additional work. It was promoted as a cruising boat, but it looked as if a cabin and bunk could be added without risk of compromising the hull.

The other was a very popular Glen-L design called the Cabin Skiff. This was a fascinating little craft—a mini-cruiser only 17’ in length with a cabin and a bunk and an intriguing method of construction called “stitch and glue.” Stitch and glue construction is revolutionary because it eliminates the need to build a framework for the boat: no keel and no ribs. The hull is planked in plywood. Ply sheets are butt joined to make a long strip that is then cut to a shape specified on a large piece of paper (much like a seamstress cutting a pattern for a dress). Fabricate another such strip cut in mirror image and—voila!—you have the two halves of the hull. To assemble, you stitch the two strips together using cheap copper wire and then slather the stitched seams with very powerful glue that holds the entire boat together. The wire has no structural importance. It simply holds the hull together while you apply the glue. The whole job can be done on the garage floor, even if it isn’t flat.

The Cabin Skiff has enormous advantages. In addition to being quick and easy to build, it is very light (because it has no heavy structural members) and can therefore be pushed at good speed with a relatively small outboard engine. This would be a very economical design for the trip I had in mind and, besides, I find innovative technologies like stitch and glue almost impossible to resist. Nevertheless, in the end I reluctantly opted for the more traditionally constructed River Rat.

The River Rat, I decided, would have just enough additional size to accommodate an inboard engine and water jet propulsion system—and I very much wanted to use this sort of power train for two reasons. The obvious one is that a jet draws no water and its impellors are almost totally protected from damage (although fouling with rope or weeds or the like is not uncommon). This struck me as a great, good thing because it would mean that nothing protrudes below the hull which can therefore be navigated in as little as a foot of water. Such a boat could even negotiate small rapids.

The second reason has nothing to do with jet drives and has a lot to do with childhood. As a youth my father had a little Penn Yan rocket with a towering, black, 90-horsepower Mercury outboard hanging heavily on the transom. At that time—in the 50’s—it was the meanest, fastest boat around, but there was a gleaming mahogany Chris Craft kept in an expensive boathouse at the other end of the lake and I secretly lusted after the deep rumble of its powerful engine. At the time I feigned disdain for this underperforming piece of affluence, but in my heart I loved to listen to its gurgling idle at the dock and its baritone roar under way. Now in these later years speed is less important to me and the sound of an inboard has been calling, calling.

It also seemed that the River Rat would be a reasonably tough and sturdy boat. It would be entirely glued together—just as with a stitch and glue project—but it also would have a keel and ribs and stringers that I could slightly oversize without adding a significant amount of weight. All boats are more or less eggshells if they strike immovable objects while afloat, but I should think that a heavier structural system would be less susceptible to the wracking and twisting and pounding that any hull must put up with in rough water. On rivers and protected waters, I thought, either design would work sufficiently well, but in rougher conditions the heavier construction of the River Rat might be an advantage. This thinking was exactly opposite that of the promotional literature, for River Rat was billed as a specialized river craft whereas the Cabin Skiff was praised for its all-purpose nature. I was able to convince myself of the contrary, however.

I had mulled over these considerations for some months when in the late summer of 1995 I found myself driving a U-Haul truck from Texas to Colorado. Alone in the cab with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company, I stopped at a gas station in the lonesome Texas panhandle and placed a call to Glen-L Marine to order the River Rat plans.