Continued from Small Boats Home
When pressed, Tom shared more photos of Liz, whetting our appetite for the design. I was particularly interested in how she acted as she got up on a plane. While the aforementioned boats don't plane at all unless given tremendous amounts of fuel-wasting power, I have always been bothered with the bow-up, look-at-the-sky attitude of boats that do plane as they accelerate. Tom's hull design incorporated elements to meet his design requirements ... including a weight light enough to be powered by a relatively small 50 hp outboard ... and found he had indeed designed a boat which would get up on plane without thrusting its bow up in the air. You can see the smooth transition between 8, 16 and Liz's top speed of 23 mph in the photos below. Tom describes the Bluejacket 24 as a "lightweight, trailerable, pilothouse power-cruiser designed for cruising with a crew of two in inshore or protected water such as the Intra Coastal Waterway, rivers and inland lakes." As far as that smooth transition from idle to fully planing at her top speed, Tom says simply "the Bluejacket 24 hull design is optimized for economical cruising in the planing mode at much lower speed than normally possible with other similar sized craft."
Liz, the progenitor of the Bluejacket 24, shows her "bow down" handling
characteristics at 8, 16 and 23 mph
So, will the Bluejacket 24 be inadequate for coastal crusing in the waters off Southern California or the New England Coast? Its probably unfair to ask Tom, as he built Liz for his home waters. But there are plenty of flat bottomed fishing boats like the C-Dory that enjoy fair weather cruising off-shore. The C-Dory is noted for pounding a bit in a chop, and it can be expected that the Bluejacket 24 would behave similarly. As always, the builder is treading new ground when adapting a boat for other than its intended purpose. But then, who said amateur boat builders were shy about trying out new things? (That's not an endorsement, mind you, but if any builder out there has experience with the Bluejacket 24 in other conditions, please let us know.)
Tom started his design process with some objectives:
Tom used premium materials throughout including marine okoume plywood, 17 ounce fiberglass cloth and RAKA epoxy. While there may be some things missing from his list of expenses (remember he wasn't planning to sell plans in the beginning), I suspect he captured the vast majority of costs, including building a fuel tank, window channel, steering mechanism, etc. His expenses, before adding the Yamaha T50 50 hp four stroke outboard and a trailer, was $5,800. Four stroke outboards in the 50 HP range run about $6,500 installed, and a trailer can cost up to $3,000 if you opt for a lifetime aluminum trailer (the cheapskates among us will find less expensive alternatives, I'm sure, but the lifetime cost is often higher that way).
So does Tom have any regrets? He mentions that he probably wouldn't spend the time to build a built-in fuel tank, as space for off-the-shelf poly tanks would be easy to incorporate. But other than that, you would be hard pressed to find anything negative about the Bluejacket 24 that Tom ... or anyone else, for that matter ... could cite.
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When pressed, Tom shared more photos of Liz, whetting our appetite for the design. I was particularly interested in how she acted as she got up on a plane. While the aforementioned boats don't plane at all unless given tremendous amounts of fuel-wasting power, I have always been bothered with the bow-up, look-at-the-sky attitude of boats that do plane as they accelerate. Tom's hull design incorporated elements to meet his design requirements ... including a weight light enough to be powered by a relatively small 50 hp outboard ... and found he had indeed designed a boat which would get up on plane without thrusting its bow up in the air. You can see the smooth transition between 8, 16 and Liz's top speed of 23 mph in the photos below. Tom describes the Bluejacket 24 as a "lightweight, trailerable, pilothouse power-cruiser designed for cruising with a crew of two in inshore or protected water such as the Intra Coastal Waterway, rivers and inland lakes." As far as that smooth transition from idle to fully planing at her top speed, Tom says simply "the Bluejacket 24 hull design is optimized for economical cruising in the planing mode at much lower speed than normally possible with other similar sized craft."
So, will the Bluejacket 24 be inadequate for coastal crusing in the waters off Southern California or the New England Coast? Its probably unfair to ask Tom, as he built Liz for his home waters. But there are plenty of flat bottomed fishing boats like the C-Dory that enjoy fair weather cruising off-shore. The C-Dory is noted for pounding a bit in a chop, and it can be expected that the Bluejacket 24 would behave similarly. As always, the builder is treading new ground when adapting a boat for other than its intended purpose. But then, who said amateur boat builders were shy about trying out new things? (That's not an endorsement, mind you, but if any builder out there has experience with the Bluejacket 24 in other conditions, please let us know.)
Tom started his design process with some objectives:
- Small and light enough to be readily trailerable
- Capable of economical cruising at 12 - 14 mph with a top speed at least 50% higher
- Seaworthy in inshore conditions
- Economical operation
- Sitting headroom in the sleeping cabin
- Good, classic looks
- Reasonably easy to build in plywood and epoxy
Tom used premium materials throughout including marine okoume plywood, 17 ounce fiberglass cloth and RAKA epoxy. While there may be some things missing from his list of expenses (remember he wasn't planning to sell plans in the beginning), I suspect he captured the vast majority of costs, including building a fuel tank, window channel, steering mechanism, etc. His expenses, before adding the Yamaha T50 50 hp four stroke outboard and a trailer, was $5,800. Four stroke outboards in the 50 HP range run about $6,500 installed, and a trailer can cost up to $3,000 if you opt for a lifetime aluminum trailer (the cheapskates among us will find less expensive alternatives, I'm sure, but the lifetime cost is often higher that way).
So does Tom have any regrets? He mentions that he probably wouldn't spend the time to build a built-in fuel tank, as space for off-the-shelf poly tanks would be easy to incorporate. But other than that, you would be hard pressed to find anything negative about the Bluejacket 24 that Tom ... or anyone else, for that matter ... could cite.
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