Stickleback on Steroids  
By Bob Austin - Williamsburg, Virginia - USA
Photos by Booth Mitchem

March 15

Thanks for your interest. I'd be happy to see my boat in Duckworks. It's what I call a "Stickleback on Steroids." I built and have much enjoyed rowing - and sailing with a 45 sq.ft. spritsail on a windsurfer mast - the 16-foot Ian Oughtred classic, so I decided to redraw it as a pocket cruiser. To that end I stretched it 40%, to 22 feet on deck and broadened it by 60%, giving it more beef, and, presumably, more stability - beyond that which comes from simply making it bigger - than the original.

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The side decks are built up from 3/4-inch square fir to a width of about 9 inches. I worked to keep the cabin light with minimal framing, 3/8-inch okume sides and 1/4-inch fir top - I do not intend to dance any hornpipes thereupon!.

 
The centerboard holds about 50 pounds of steel to sink it. As for the rig, my present tanbark Stickleback main will be the mizzen.

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The main will be a custom tanbark balanced lug on a Doug fir mast. Total area will be about 200 sq feet. Total weight, unballasted, should be about 600 pounds.

 
As for construction, rather than try to scarph up and spile those long planks in advance, I ran longitudinal stringers from stem to stern over the three bulkheads and installed each section of strake (three to a length, three strakes to a side, for a total of 18 plank/sections) individually, joining with butt blocks.

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The bottom is 3/4-inch marine Doug fir, scarphed end to end. The rest of the planking is 3/8-inch marine Doug fir. I found that to get the rather extreme bend in the forward three feet of the garboards, some kerfing was required; I reinforced the result with two layers of glass and epoxy inside and out. The rest of the hull is glassed with one layer and the bottom and garboards are further coated in epoxy and graphite.

 
The cabin has full sitting headroom and I will either sleep on the floorboards (six feet long) or mount a bunk athwartships just inside the companionway, at the level where there's six feet of beam.

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Decks (other than the side decks), coachroof top and hatch tops are covered with unbleached muslin in epoxy, which, when painted, should look like pretty convincing canvas.

 
I have about 400 pounds of steel plate pieces that will go under the cabin floorboards to the extent needed. Not being versed in differential calculus, I'm not sure what final draft and ballasted weights will be; we'll see.

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As soon as I locate and modify the appropriate trailer I plan to take the boat to a local reservoir for some hydrostatic testing and rowing drills (with 9-foot fiberglass rowing shell oars).

June 13

I live in Williamsburg, Virginia, about halfway between Richmond and Norfolk, on the Virginia Peninsula, between the York (of Yorktown fame, to the north) and the James (of Jamestown fame, to the south) Rivers. I sail on the York, a tidal brackish river, as far down as the area where it empties into and becomes the southern Chesapeake Bay.

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I have more pictures, including these of the test launch.

 
She is commissioned and sailing on the lower York River and the lower Chesapeake.

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After two years of off-again, on-again work, I'm looking forward to using her (tentatively named Valkyrie).

Our sailing season sort of runs from April through November, but there are occasional sailable days even in the winter, although most of us, myself included, aren't in the right mindset to launch and rig in January and February. High summer is often oppresively hot and still, with impressive afternoon thunderstorms. I once had the harrowing experience of taking part of a lightning stroke - whether it was a near miss or hit my sharpie mast and spread from there - through the ring finger of my left hand.

Regards,
Bob Austin
(designer and builder of windsurfer-rigged cat-ketch sharpie Orion, which appeared earlier in Duckworks.)

SAILS

EPOXY

GEAR