modifying the dory...making it mine :-)

A note about getting Hulls to run on a modern machine.

I've been playing with Hulls for about ten years used it to design another small boat, and as a recreation even during my time in Iraq because it ran on my netbook. I'm running 64bit Windows 7 Home Premium doesn't have a built in emulator. I think Hulls is a 16 bit program so there was no easy way to get it to run. To make a long story short, I installed a free program called VMWare Player, which is a virtual machine program, dug through my closet for and old copy of XP professional and loaded it up. Windows XP and Hulls work really well.  Here's the web page for more about VMWare Player, http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

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As much as I like the dory, it was really too heavy and more boat than I needed. 

Every boat is a compromise. What I wanted to do is nudge this excellent design towards features I wanted while decreasing some features that I didn't need.

My first priority was to lighten the boat, I narrowed the hull by two inches and reduced the bow freeboard by four inches. That's a lot and risk ruining the shear line, so I'll need to be careful.

I wanted better initial stability so widened the bottom by about 4 inches. Hulls makes it easy to rescale the entire table of offsets based on changing length, height, or beam.  

A few aesthetic concerns. To make the boat look even more like a swampscott dory, and dispel the plywood slab sided look, I added another chine. To do this I just took the mid height between the existing 2nd chine and the shear line. I also added slit round.  

As much as I like dories, I'm not a big fan of wedge shaped dory tombstone transoms. Using the added chines, I rounded the transom sides. 

To compare the two boats: 

FSK Dory

LOA: 12' 3”

BOA: 3' 6”

LWL 2'
BWL 2' at 300 pounds which is boat plus one person

Height of the bow: 24 3/4”

Height of stern: 17 3/4”

Height of mid shear: 14 1/2”

Weight: 120-150# (estimate from traditional construction)

Lynx Dory

LOA: 13' 6”

BOA: 3' 4”

LWL: 11' 7”

BWL: 2' 10”

Height of the bow: ~21”

Height of stern: ~17”

Height of mid shear: ~15”

For the next blog post I'll convert into freeship.