23-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Beaver". Part I.
Also on the starboard side a completely equipped galley is fitted in at this part of the boat, where the heat and smoke from it can best escape out the companionway, and not heat up the cabin. The engine can be gotten at, and yet is completely out of the Way, just its flywheel protruding a few inches into the cabin to enable one to start the engine. Two cylindrical tanks, one for water and one for gasoline, are fitted in chocks and securely lashed under the cockpit sides, where they are least apt to affect the trim of the boat, as their weight decreases, and at the same time are spread apart to assist the boat in swinging with a slow, easy recovery in a sea way.
What the 23-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Beaver" will look like when completed is shown in the sketch and accompanying plan showing the deck view and appearance above the waterline. The resemblance to a roomy Cape Cod catboat is noticeable, and is intentional, as that type, when converted into a motorboat, has proven itself a most satisfactory cruiser; but with the similarity in bottom the parallel ends: Beaver is a typical motorboat from there up, yet cne that has elbow room seldom found even in motorboats much larger than 23 feet. It is queer that with the hundreds of examples before us of converted sailboats' hulls, and the speed, weatherliness and comfort thus attained, no one has attempted to design boat along these lines.
Plan of 23-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Beaver".
If you have a shop, shed or barn where you can build your boat under cover, so much the better; if not, and you have to build her out in the weather, be sure and shovel off the loose top soil and get your keel blocks firmly planted on hard ground, so they will not settle under the boat as she accumulates weight.
The keel is a straight piece of oak 22 feet 11 inches finished length, 3 inches thick by 4 inches deep. Pick out a straight, clear-grained piece, as free from large knots as possible. If you order this stock for your keel at a mill, order it dressed, as it is termed. It will only take the mill a few moments to run it through a power planer, and then you will have a good, smooth stick. If not, you will have to scrub it off with a plane, and this is considerable work. Then cut it to the shape as shown in the drawing, which as you will notice is very little work indeed, and we have purposely made it so. In fact, everything about the boat has purposely been made simple and easy for amateurs to build. The rabbet, for instance, instead of being a dug-out rabbet, as it would be with a log keel, in this boat amounts merely to a chamfering of the top edge. The angle at which this chamfer is to be cut is explained in the accompanying sketches, Figs,1 and 2, and is found by taking a piece of wood the same thickness as your planking and butting it against the too corner of the keel at the angle the molds make where they fit on the keel.
First cut notches opposite each mold; then with a batten draw connecting lines and cut the rabbet from one spot to another, continuously, but do not try to finish it where it runs into the stem and where the deadwoods lap onto the stern. Leave the rabbet uncut there until you have the deadwoods bolted on. Then, with a batten, draw the line in far across the stem and cut the rabbet. It would be well in all cases to paint the various parts of the keel as you get them out with a thin coat of lead paint, to prevent their checking as they dry out, which they are bound to do unless your wood is already perfectly seasoned.
Now, get out the stem. This also is of oak, and requires a piece of wood 6 feet 6 inches long, 3 inches thick and 10 inches wide at its widest part, tapered to 6 by 3 at the top. Smooth off the stem the same as you did your keel on both sides, but remember one point, and that is always to work all the deadwoods, stem, etc., from one side only; that is, if you are squaring up from the starboard side of the stem, keel and deadwoods, in squaring the edges, always apply your square to this face, making everything square to it. If you try your square first on one side and then on the other, you may find unevennesses of the pieces of wood that will throw the square off.
Figures 1,2 of 23-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Beaver".
Luxury motor yachts: motoryacht charter and sailboats in yachtworld: