Filling the Bilges of the Sportfisherman

Kevin Agee is building his 26ft sportfisherman in a rented industrial unit in Seaford, Virginia. He plans to complete her and launch in time to go fishing in summer 2019. Each week of evening and weekend work takes him another step closer to that goal.

Having built three big boats myself, of 36ft, 34ft then 38ft, I know very well the commitment needed for a project like this one that Kevin has taken on. It takes drive and determination to do it. The skills develop along the way, to produce a high quality boat of which he can be proud. The standard of work that is seen on the hull shows his dedication to creating that quality boat.

Work that is going on now is all below deck level and on the deck panels themselves.

The bilge is broken up into compartments by the bulkheads and girders.The large ones on centreline are for tanks, batteries and pumps, accessed via hatches and access panels and draining to bilge pumps at the transom. Most of the others will be foam-filled and totally sealed.

Looking aft into the cockpit from the cuddy cabin.

Looking into the cuddy cabin from the cockpit.

Meanwhile, alongside the boat the deck panels are being glassed, with heavy glass on the top and a light layer and peelply on the bottom.

Deck panels, with curing epoxy.

Deck of the engine bracket. The wings have been thickened up with two layers of Coosa Board, which will be glassed over and bonded to the transom and bracket with glass tabbing.

This design is not yet on our website. To see our other designs, go to our main website or our mobile website.

Bilge Finishing in the 26ft Sportfisherman

I haven't posted about Kevin Agee's 26ft sportfisherman project for awhile. Since we turned the hull over, he and Michelle have been doing the rather awkward work of cleaning up then glassing all of the compartments inside the hull, below wet deck level. With a skin condition that does not get along well with lots of laminating and sanding epoxy/glass, I have stayed away from this work.

Sportfisherman 26 hull in its cradle. All the work is going on inside it now.

All of these bottom compartments have been sanded, glassed and sanded again. The inner hull sides have also been sanded smooth, ready for glassing.

The wide compartments on centreline will serve as the bilge, also housing the tanks, batteries and pumps, so will be finished smooth. The outer compartments will contain foam flotation sealed in, so will be left rough.

Inside the engine bracket has also been glassed.

This photo shows the detail used at the break in the sheer. The two laminated sheer clamps overlap and intersect as they do to give proper control over the shaping of the hull side surfaces and tying in of the sheer clamps with the frames.

The pain of glassing the bilge compartments could have been reduced by glassing both sides of the bulkheads and girders below wet deck level before installing those items into the structure, likely cutting the awkward work in half. But that is the value of hindsight and we know for future builds of this and other power designs that will follow.

This design is not yet on our website. To see our other designs, go to our main website or our mobile website.

26ft Sportfisherman - Working Both Ends

The longboard sanding of Kevin Agee's boat is done. The hull is as near to fair as it needs to be at this stage. Still to come is the glassing, followed by sprayed fairing compound and final fairing.

I completed the shaping of the stem capping. This involved planing and sanding it flush with the hull skin then rounding off the tip to a radius suitable for the fibreglass cloth to wrap around. Also fairing it smoothly into the front end of the keel runner.

The hull is looking very nice, with fair curves to the profile and chine edges. Any bumps and dips in those edges will catch the eye, so it is worthwhile to take care with smoothing them out before any glassing is done.

Stem capping shaped flush with the hull skin and rounded off to a neat radius.

Fair curves

Fairing of stem capping into keel runner completed.

The other work going on is building the bracket that will support the outboard engine/s. Previous posts have shown how the fore/aft gussets pass through the transom and bond onto the girders inside the hull. Now the laminated plywood engine board has been built and glued onto those gussets. Before doing this the gussets were checked for alignment relative to each other and the transom, with some minor trimming to true them up.

Completed engine board. This is the aft face. The stepped bottom edge matches the angle on the boat and will be planed smooth before the bottom skin is glued on.

Front face of the engine board, slotted for the gussets that will connect it to the transom.

Engine board glued onto the gussets.

Test-fitting the bottom plywood onto the engine bracket.

Glassing the hull will be starting soon and in a few weeks the hull will be ready to be turned over. Follow progress in future posts.

This design has not been completed yet, so is not on our website. I hope to have it available in a few months.

See our range of designs on our main website or our mobile website.

Framing the 26ft Sportfisherman

The 26ft sportfisherman project now has its building stocks and is ready for framing to begin. The frames have been built, most of them permanent and a few temporary. A boat in construction often needs framing to be more closely spaced than it needs in use on the water. Temporary frames fill in the gaps where needed to add rigidity or to help shape parts of the hull where wood won't naturally take on the form needed.

Before setting up that first frame we needed to know how level the rails were that are going to support the frames until the hull is ready to be turned over. There is no point setting up the first frame sitting hard against the rails then finding as you progress that it is the lowest point on the rails. Using a laser level and a long batten we compared heights all over both rails to find the high points. Plywood spacers were added to the rails at the first frame position to get it above the highest point on the rails. All other frames are lifted as needed on plywood spacers and/or wedges to get them to the correct level.

Spacers under frames to get them level. The legs are screwed to rails and frames are screwed to the legs.

For this design I aligned Station 1, a temporary frame, with the forward transverse frame of the building stocks. For simplicity this frame is set up accurately in that position, then all others are referenced from that same location. It is good to measure all from that one position to reduce the chances of longitudinal errors. If you set up each frame measured from the previous one, the incremental errors can easily add up to 1/2" or more of cumulative error over the length of the boat. If you make one big error, that error would carry through the rest of the boat. You would discover it eventually when you attempt o lower the girders into place and find that they don't fit. At that stage you would have to reset all frames to their correct positions, wasted time and energy that is saved by doing it correctly from the start.

Station 1 (temporary) is on the left, set up first, secured and braced. The one on the right is a permanent bulkhead, supported by a temporary base and with light battens holding it stable. The deep slots in the upper edge are for permanent plywood girders that will be dropped in later to stiffen both hull and deck. The girders have matching slots and will accurately space and align the tops of the frames. Legs secure the frames to the rails. 

The frames are set up vertical and level by using a plumb line hanging from a line above the centreline of the boat and a laser level. The laser should be self-levelling for accuracy and should be set up so that it can shine onto all frames at the same time. Now is the time that you will discover whether or not your accurately-drawn waterline and centreline are really at 90 degrees to each other, as they need to be. The waterlines on one side are set up level for all frames while setting up the frames, then checked on the other side. There will likely be some minor errors on the second side to correct. Lift or lower that side of each frame where needed, bearing in mind that the frame will rotate around the contact point on the other rail, so the centreline of the frame will also move a small amount. So, correct the waterline to suit the laser and the centreline to suit the plumb line simultaneously. After all frames have been adjusted, move the laser back to the first side and check that, then adjust if needed.

All of the frames have been set up, accurately positioned fore/aft by measurement along the stocks and set up vertically with the aid of the plumb line that hangs from the centreline above the boat and level with the aid of a laser level. The light-coloured plywood is temporary, the darker pieces are permanent.

In this photo the frames have all been set up, checked and checked again. The laser level is at left, clamped to a post on the router table. The light is shining on all frames onto the waterlines that were drawn accurately from the drawings.

The forward two frames don't extend to waterline, so the laser won't shine onto them. To set the levels for these two you can attach a batten to the plywood with the waterline marked on it, or you can set the spacers to the correct level before setting up the frames.

Here one of the girders has been lowered into its slots in the frames to check accuracy. Other girders are lying against the frames. They are scarphed into long lengths from plywood. 

The next post in this series will cover laminating the keel and stem.

This design is not yet complete, so is not on our pricelist. See our full range of designs on our main website or our mobile website.

26ft Sportfisherman Design

I wrote last week about the aluminium adventure boat that is being built in Gibsons, British Columbia. Here is another design on which I am currently working, very different in all respects.

This one is for Kevin Agee, who also commissioned and built the prototype of the Inlet Runner 16 garvey powerboat. The previous design was for inshore fishing to catch bait for more serious business on his bigger boat out on the bay. He recently sold that bigger boat and commissioned me to draw the replacement, a 26ft centre-console sportfisherman with Carolina-style hull, with heavily-flared bow and break in the sheer.

Kevin started building the new boat a few weeks ago, while I am still drawing it. My task is to stay ahead of his build progress with my design work.

Profile view of the Sportfisherman 26

This is a fisherman's fishing boat but it does give a nod to the ladies. Michelle (Kevin's wife and my daughter) specified that his next boat must have a toilet. So this boat has a small cabin under the covered foredeck, with toilet and seats for two people to shelter from bad weather if needed.

I haven't designed the centre console yet, so this post is to introduce the project and to show the hull and concept. Over the next 18 months or so I will write about the progress and show details of the boat and construction, from start through to launch.

Flared bow of the Carolina-style sportfisherman

The Carolina-style hull makes for a very pretty boat. There are many variations, from moderate flair through to extreme. All around the world, popular boat shapes have developed in answer to the particular sea conditions that pertain to their own locations, sometimes with different regions developing somewhat different boats from those developed in other places with similar conditions.

Underbody of the new design

These boats developed due to the short and steep breaking wave conditions encountered in and offshore from the Carolinas. This includes the wind against current and swell against current situations that are found in Oregon Inlet and the other inlets through which the Carolina Sounds and the Atlantic Ocean exchange water at impressive speeds twice daily. Cape Hatteras is a few miles north of  Hatteras Inlet and has justifiably earned its reputation of being a dangerous place for the unwary. Projecting out into the Atlantic Ocean, it is the closest point that the north-bound Gulf Stream runs past the USA, creating large short and sharp breaking seas in NE wind conditions. Every year I visit Cape Hatteras for a few days with my buddies of the Iguana Surf Club, to take advantage of the biggest and best surf on the US East Coast. The close proximity of the continental shelf to Cape Hatteras is the reason why the Gulf Stream is so close and the swells are so large.

Back to the boat. The flared bow gradually transitions to a conventional hull section at the break in the sheer, then reverses to become a moderate tumblehome stern. The moderate-V underbody has 15 degree dihedral at the stern, with chine flat and planing strakes.

Bow flare gradually transitions through to a tumblehome stern.

Aside from the raised foredeck and centre console, it has a wet deck with open spaces for working the fish. The motor/s are mounted on a bracket that is integral to the structural girder system of the hull, not bolted to the outside. It has a full radiused transom, safer against the dangers of boarding seas than a cut-down transom with outboard motor well, if caught stern-to while working a catch.

The stern bracket has space for a single or pair of outboards. Kevin has still to decide what to use on his boat but aims to have total 300hp. Fuel supply is from an under-deck tank below the centre console.

Construction is all wood, fibreglassed on the outside and also all hull surfaces below the wet deck. The hull bottom is plywood and the sides are strip cedar using bead-and-cove strips. These are applied over laminated keel, stem and chine step, plywood girders and frames that slot together egg-crate fashion and laminated plywood transom.

Watch this space for more about this boat. Until then, for more info on our many designs, go to our main website or our mobile website.