Folks,
For several years I ran the sailing school at our sailing club.
When I first got involved with the school we were teaching youngsters
to sail in little dinghies.(Hobie Hawks)
We would always get a good role up at the beginning of the season but
they would drop off after a few weeks.

When my own kids started I had to practically drag them down to
the sailing club. Eventually we had a 12 ft Surfcat donated to the club
and before we knew it the kids were all trying to get to sail the Surfcat.

Then another one came up quite cheap so we bought it and I noticed my own
kids were having a great time and they were quite eager to go sailing
provided they got to sail the surfcat.

The kids on the surfcats were having so much fun we eventually replaced
the whole fleet of dinghies with Surfcats.

Every time my two son's and I went sailing I was rigging and unrigging 3 boats,
mine plus theirs as they were too small.


The Surfcat were very old and as far as I know no longer made.
So this got me thinking about a small cat for youngsters that was super easy to rig.

From my own experience this type of boat would be relatively attractive
to both parents and youngsters and may help grow the sport.

I think a simple design with very well thought out building instructions
could be built in numbers as a group project by sailing clubs that are interested.

When you look at the cost of building these boats the most expensive
part is going to be the sail. If purchased the rudders could also be
a cost but in reality rudders for a boat as small as this can be made
very easily from ply. Normally I'd keep away from ply as a rudder because
it doesn't like the rolling stresses but with a boat this small it would
be Ok provided it was covered in glass.
Many of the rudders on our surfcats were made of ply and not glassed and worked
great no problems.

The rudder boxes can be made of ply with a tiller arm of timber (maple).
They are unbelievable simple to make. The cheeks of the box are ply
held together with off the shelf pintel fittings and the tiller runs
between the top of the rudder cheeks. If you use shallow spade rudders
the pintel fittings bolt straight onto the rudders.

My first 16ft cat (a Mosquito) had rudder boxes made this way and they worked great.

As far as the sail goes, I made new sails for 6 surfacts from 4 oz dacron or different colours
and the cost of materials for the sails plus full length battens came to a total of something like
$1200 AUS for the 6 main sails.
Each around 80 sq ft.

Once again all you would need is access to sail cloth at the right price plus battens
and very good instructions.
Afterall the building group is not designing the sails just cutting and sewing.
Anyone who can drive a basic sewing machine could do it with good instructions.

BTW:-
We never had any problems with the kids running into each other in the surfcats.
If this was expected to be a problem a layer of glass would go a long way towards
keeping them in one peice and make then very durable.
Anyhow, holes in ply, if the unthinkable did happen are just so easy to fix.

Earlier in the thread Wouter said "The idea for this 12 footer came from Phill
and he wanted a very simple boat that would be very suited to children and small
adults but not look like a bycicle with training wheels."

Just thought I'd explain how I got to that point.