Calendar Islands Yawl

The Calendar Islands Yawl (CIY) has been built. Hull #1 was built in Minnesota and is a success. Launched late in the year after only about 6 months of part time building on weekends, the owner is really happy with the project and the boat. See his Google + site for pictures of the build.

CIY hull #1 on sea trials, September 2014.

Now, the work is on my plate. The next steps are to take the information from build #1 and make some revisions to the computer model, draw up plans, and set up the kit for retail sale. I hope to do this early in 2015.

The CIY is a sail-and-oar dinghy designed for single- or double-handling in conditions that can be found on the Maine Coast. We wanted a boat that handled well going to windward in choppy water, easy to roll up a beach on the Maine Islands Trail, and could still go fast. Moreover, when the wind goes, we wanted to enjoy the row back to land, rather than dread the row. The CIY is available with a centerboard or a daggerboard.

Hull #1 under construction: after the turnover, May 7th, only 6 weeks after kit delivery!

A Real Hull Model

The Calendar Iands Yawl

Hull Modeling in the flesh: part 1

CNC cutting parts for a quarter scale model

The 3D computer model is sliced up into sections that become molds for defining the hull shape.

You can see the molds formed now, trimmed to the hull surface,  and one more to go!

The hull is planked and ready to be broken up into the "flat" 2D geometry.

A neat screenshot that shows the 3D and 2D nature of the work: in the foreground is the 3D hull model. In the background is the geometry flattened onto the "construction plane".

This is the file with the 2D geometry as received by the CNC cutter, CNC Routing & Design in Camden, Maine. Tim will load the file into his Shopbot software, make toolpaths, and cut the parts.

The ShopBot machine cuts to my lines with a couple thousands of an inch accuracy. These are the planks of the boat, the bottom keel plank in the center and the sheer strake to the far right and left.

The molds of my quarter scale kit around which the planks will be wrapped and checked for fairness and for fit.

How to Sail the Lug Yawl: REPOSTED

My friend and fellow boatbuilder in the Northwest, James McMullen, created a very useful set of drawings to help people learn how to use our favorite sailing rig, the Lug-Yawl. For sail & oar boats you cannot have a more versatile and fun rig for your boat. Clint draws these rigs into most of his designs, such as the

Calendar Islands Yawl

or the

Goat Island Skiff with a mizzen

. Please look at these drawings and imagine how this rig could fit into your own sailing.

Now that you have seen these diagrams you can also see how useful the mizzen would be for switching from sailing to rowing and vice versa. While the mizzen is hauled in, the boat will keep herself pointing into the wind so the sail can be raised and lowered without filling and causing the boat to fall off one way or the other. I have found the mizzen useful for stopping and taking a break or for restowing gear or for dealing with safety matters. In these cases, it is best to learn to "heave-to" so that your boat doesn't lose too much ground. That is one drawback of lying head-to-wind under mizzen: you need to have plenty of leeway...no boats, rocks or land to get blown down upon. The advantage of heaving-to is that you don't lose too much ground at all. We make light, strong

Birdsmouth masts and spars

and have intimate knowledge of the Lug-Yawl.

Economics of Kit Building

I receive a lot of questions and comments regarding the true cost of building a boat from scratch, full size patterns, and kits. Since I track time and materials closely, I have found that building from kits makes a lot of sense from an economic stand point. I took some discussions with customers/potential customers and put together this PDF on the 'economics of kits'.

In a nutshell, the cost of building from a kit is not as much more than building a boat from scratch as people think because of the extra plywood required to build from scratch not to mention the time savings.

In the meantime, we are making progress on the first professionally built Goat Island Skiff (yawl version) which will be at the Maine Boatbuilder's Show in Portland on March 18-20th. Please stop by. We'll be in building 2 near the stairs up to food court.

When I post next, I'll have a PDF link that goes into more detail about how the designs/kits are produced in CAD and CNC cutting.

Yawl should know the conundrum of getting a tiller 'round the mizzen mast

The details of how to design a yawl so that the tiller gets around the mizzen is an interesting topic. There are a number of tricks:

Using a line steering system: Here you can see Michael Storer's Beth Sailing Canoe with the tiller forward of the mizzen and the lines connecting to the rudder, which is out of the picture.


I'll add that there are a number of ways to do line steering. My Deblois Street Dory has line steering coming into the boat from a rudder yoke but there is not a remote tiller as in Beth. The Coquina is another example of line steering in which lines are attached directly to the rudder and pass through the transom, via a pulley system, and the steering line goes around the perimeter of the boat.

Using a long push-pull tiller: Here you can see James McMullen's Oughtred's double ender.


Using a curved, laminated tiller or split tiller


Using a normal tiller with an offset mizzen




For the Goat Island Skiff, we go with an offset tiller as in this model by a customer:




The other methods I mentioned just won't fit the situation we have in the Goat Island Skiff, mainly because there is not room for a split tiller and we want to keep the solution simple. We are deciding about just how much to offset the tiller. You can see above that the tiller will hit the mizzen before 45-degrees. The big question is how much room do we want to give the tiller to swing. In the pictures, we decided to test a 45-degree swing. That puts the mizzen a little further off the centerline than I'd like. This boat is very light and pushing a tiller than hard over makes the rudder act like a brake and the risk of losing so much speed that you can't get through the tack is something to consider. Then again, we don't need it so close that things feel claustrophobic. In the picture above of the offset mizzen, notice how little offset the mast is...the tiller must touch the mizzen pretty early. Does that give enough steerage for the helmsman when the push the tiller in the mizzen direction?

We'll have a solution soon after a full-scale mock up. The way we are doing this, collaboratively, is something I do on many projects. It always gets a better result because many thoughts and ideas can be sifted through. The more the merrier. Whatever the solution I draw up, the mizzen can always be moved a little more or less off the centerline according to the skippers preference. The important thing is to maintain the rake of the mizzen, which has been determined. My point is, that collaboration with designers, customers, and other folks with experience through the forums and boat shows can be an advantage in getting many thoughts onto the table and generating the best solution.