I am designing one that is intended for cruising. It will have comfortable accomodations (one double, two single berths, galley with double sink and two burner stove, large cooler) and reasonable capacity for water, fuel, and stores. Power from small diesel (16 hp)
I would like comments or suggestions from anyone with thoughts on this subject.

I would like to see you keep your boat light. After all multis do what they do by staying light and packing a good sail plan, so you might want to check how much all that neet stuff is going to weigh in at. Try to avoid a 26 footer at 3300lbs. good luck on finding that perfect boat. tricat sailboat33@hrtc.net

We begin CAD drafting of my concept sketches tommorow. I will be able to make better predictions later on but am looking for a weight of about 3000 lbs. as built with no personal gear or stores on board. As always though less would be better. Remember though there are a bunch of light race boats already being built. I'm looking for something that will carry enough stuff to live on for a time (2 weeks or so). And where you can stand up to do the dishes.
Most of the boats that I have sailed and worked on have been much heavier than their advertized weight. For the last two years when ever I have gotten a chance I have weighed the boats that I have been working on at a scale near us. Very informative. Those that I could not weigh I took careful measurments of load water line and worked out weight from advertized Displacement and PPI calcs. Thanks for taking the time to comment. Dave

Dave what do you think your build cost are going to run? Larry

I do not know yet. I should be developing that information over the next few weeks. As our plans get further refined all aspects of the design are becoming more nearly ready to estimate costs. Dave

How about coming in with a basic sail-away package under $50K new?

Dave just be aware of the old 2---3 punch. Two times longer to build, and three times the cost of what you first calculate. Larry

Dave try this on for size. Head room 6ft, 4in sleeps 6 privat seprate head ,8ft 6in on the trailer,11ft 6in in a slip. Motors at 11kts with 9.8 Honda and has gobs of storage space and all the other stuff and more than you speced. Oh yea did I mention the 20+ kts? Larry

Ok, so what boat am I looking at for this range of characteristics? Is it easy to launch, like you could day sail it from a trailer? Or is "some assemblely required"? In any case I'm interested. Dave

Dave I have follwed your posts with a great deal of interest. We are both looking for pretty much the same specs for our boat. I searched high and low to no avail.Too much weight for a 26 foot water line, probable result would sail like a pig. Found what I was looking for in an Elan 35, she has all the stuff I looked for and then some. I came to the conclusion that it just needed to be a bit larger boat. I recalled a boat I saw at the 04 Annapolis show . I checked with the builder and we will most likely start my boat in May and delv in June. T his is starting to get long winded, but if you want to know any extra info give me a tx and we can shoot the breeze via cell phone on the week end so its not long distance. 765-208-0944 Larry

Dave the boat can be stored ready to go on the trailer mast up. Set up time is about one hour or less when taken down for road transport. A big plus is these guys can put your boat in a charter fleet in the off season if you like, gives you a chance to make some extra bucks with the boat.

Too big a boat for me. Too much cost and too big and dangerous to trailer. I've cleaned up after enough accidents from rigging big trailer boats to want to deal with anything that size. I personally do not need that much stuff to be happy on the boat so smaller is fine for me.
Hope you are in the young, strong, enthusiastic, and plentiful crew catagory cause thats where you will need to be. Dave

Here is the arrangement plan I am using

Where?

Sorry, I thought I had erased that. I've tried three times to post the interior arrangement drawing for my boat with no sucess. If someone is interested I would be happy to email it to them. Either that or send directions for posting. Dave

Hey Dave, i've been out of the loop for awhile. I would like to see the interior set up on the boat, very curious as to how you plan to get the head room in the cabin area. drop me an email at sailboat33@hrtc.net Go getem Larry

Hi dave, looked over the plans and it looks pretty cool. I would still have concerns over weight vs water line lenght. With the diesel in the stern can you still balance the boat ok? Larry

The engine that I am using weighs 216 lbs plus about 20 for shaft and prop. Its about 5 feet from the CG of the boat for 1200 ft lbs moment. A 9.9 Yamaha with bracket is about 140 lbs and would be 12 ft from the CG for 1680 ft.lbs. This means that if the boat was in the water without the engine and you set the engine into it it would trim 1.5 times as much by the stern from the outboard than from the diesel, though it would sink a small amount more overall with the diesel(a few hundredths of an inch)
For equivelent range under power the Yamaha would need ~1.5 times as much fuel so the weights are even closer than I've stated.

Dave

Hi Dave. Hows the boat getting along? what brand and HP are you using, was it a 16 hp? Larry