Its a lovely little boat Jan. Probably not suitable as a "JRA Dinghy" because of the cost of a professionally made one or perhaps the challenge of building one - I guess plywood chine models will be a more likely choice these days.  Agreed there is nothing new under the sun - yet there still seems to be an almost infinite number of combinations and permutations of the old ideas.

I think your description sets a very good benchmark for what seems to be fading as a competition. But still, it remains a good initiative, I think - an endlessly interesting topic of conversation, which has sparked some potentially valuable design progress from David and Arne.

"This pram has it all; bouyancy, two rowing positions, sculling oar socket (which works), simple rig, can carry four adults plus picnic, easily carried by two people, I can hoik it over my shoulder and carry it down the beach, tows beautifully, you can prop it up on the oars to make a rain shelter on the beach. Just wonderful".

That, and your two lovely photos, have said it all.

Yes, the wheel idea was tongue in cheek, though if I ever have the good fortune to find myself in possession of a dinghy with a Halibut case in the bow, I will seriously consider to make good use of it by installing a wheel there. Protruding oars from the transom as barrow handles is much better than "two stout handles" in the bow, by the way - for wheeling, that is - you can stand between them, face forward and straighten your back. That's why wheelbarrows work so well. And a trolley is only good for use adjacent to your home base (such as a marina) - otherwise you have to walk all the way back "half a kilometre through the village" to return it, before going for a sail. That's 1.5 km walked through the village. Little wheels in the skegs should work OK on smooth concrete, such as a proper launching ramp.

Also, I nearly forgot the obvious. For wheels on the transom, these "dinghy wheels" are not horrendously expensive, and often for sale second hand as they sometimes come off clapped out inflatables. Permanently mounted, flip up when not in use. I've used these on a dinghy before and they are tough, and work well on all surfaces.

These would be ideal on Halibut's transom.

Fenders and rollers

I think Arne and both Davids (T and D) are right, the most practical method for casual beaching is probably inflatable fenders as rollers. They are a bit expensive. I'm looking out for second-hand ones of the right size. I won't be having side seats like a Wayfarer, but was considering carrying them clip-secured to the boat as flotation when under way - either near the gunnel - or in the aft quarters of the Golden Bay for sitting on when sailing. 

Speaking of which: sausage fenders. I meant to thank David T for his suggestion "...I once made some from closed cell pipe insulation inside a canvas cover...". Closed cell pipe insulation seems to be expensive here too.  Polyurethane rubber would be ideal as it is light and very resilient, but it too is expensive enough to be not worth the trouble of rolling it up and sewing a cover.

These things here looked promising:

They are called "pool sticks" - for swimming pools? I don't know what they are made of, but very light and evidently meant to be immersed. Already covered, 2.4m in length and about 100mm diameter - $59 each - might be a proposition as fender sausages for the gunwale?

All things considered, three or four decent inflatable fenders might be the best all-round investment, to serve as temporary seats, floatation and rollers - as well as serving as conventional fenders.

While on the subject of fenders...

Most of the old fishing boats here used to use car tires as fenders - rafting up in the viaduct basin, (not sheltered in a NE) sometimes 6 boats wide, they were used all the time. No covers either. They don't ride up like those fancy yachtie ones.

No good for us yachties though. Rafting up seems to be frowned on these days, in these parts. I can tell you, though, from much rafting up experience (and the joys of a good yarn and a cup of tea while rafted, baiting up for the morning set) - by far the best fender for two boats rafted up in a bay is a couple of decent size windy buoys.

They are tough enough to keep a couple of five-tonners apart even in a slight chop. You just throw them in the water between boats (on a rope of course) and let them float. They never ride up and never need adjusting.

Graeme keeps pushing me :-).

Frankly, I see little reason for me to ‘design’ a wheel set for Halibut. What is best for it will vary so much, depending on location, ground surface and distance. Therefore, I only sketch up the two versions below. The one with small wheels, cut out from 10mm aluminium, would be my choice for short transport on the hard surfaces of my harbour. For someone who has to drag the tender over a soft, wide beech, I think a fender-roller  or similar would be better. The small wheels should sit on permanently, while the big roller must of course be removed between use.

If one is to walk the tender  half a kilometre through the village to reach water, I think it is better to make a real trolley, which takes most of the tender’s weight.

Anyway, two stout handles at the bow transom will do away with the need for oar handles.

Arne

On David’s SIBLIM 3.5 thread the subject of rollers came up, in relation to dragging a dinghy or moving it up the beach for camping.

My Golden Bay was built with two holes in the transom which allowed the oars to be stowed with the looms protruding through the transom and I couldn’t figure out why, unless it was to provide lifting handles. It made me think of a wheelbarrow and called to mind the old wheelbarrow boat idea, which I always thought was a joke. I did actually wonder if it might be possible to insert a temporary wheel into the centreboard slot, but you’d have to roll the boat over to insert and remove it, and it would have to be too thin to use on sand, anyway.

Evidently R.D. Culler took the idea seriously and designed a wheelbarrow skiff – maybe this was actually the original wheelbarrow boat. 

With its midship placement, it is very much a Chinese wheelbarrow. I like that it can be adjusted for draft! I do recall reading somewhere that for beaching the dinghy, it is sufficient to sail full speed at the beach and just keep going until she comes to a halt!

Out of idle curiosity I googled “wheelbarrow boat” and came up with this gem: https://www.offcenterharbor.com/videos/ladybug-wheelbarrow-boat/

Now, this is starting to look like a conventional Western wheelbarrow, with forward mounted wheel – and a nice fat wheel suitable for sand too. Pretty useless for sailing, though, unless it could be made removeable – which would require turning the dinghy upside down.  Still in the joke category, really.

Here’s the application for Arne’s forward-mounted centreboard case. The wheel could be permanently mounted. A flat wooden wheel mounted there could even be a little foil-shaped and it would go OK on Arne’s concrete ramp. It doesn’t need to raise, or swing – no worries running aground with this baby!

And being external, with the wheel bearing above the waterline, it would be easy to make it retractable or removeable too!

There you go Arne, don’t pull out of the dinghy design contest!  You’ve got a winner here! (Cheated about 25% of extra waterline length, too.)

Anonymous wrote:

“Halibut Special”

Now I got the idea to try a fully fanned 3-panel JR for Halibut, essentially the top-section of the sails I usually draw. I have found that the top section of my sails are so efficient that they deserve to be tried alone on such a little nutshell. This will give a sail of half-decent sail area, which will reef well in two stages. The running lines will just be the sheet, halyard and lazyjacks.

The boom has been shortened to avoid sheet tangles, and the sheet goes to a boomkin long enough to sheet the reefed sail or bundle to the centreline.

The procedure of stowing the sail should sound like this:

• 1.      Let go the halyard to dump the sail into its lazyjacks.
• 2.      Haul on the running lazyjacks to raise the sail bundle and pin it to the mast. Longish batten parrels make this possible. Cleat the tail of the lazy j. at the mast.
• 3.      Bring the sheet inboard,  reeve it around the sail bundle and cleat it off on the mast.
• 4.      Unstep and lower the mast.
• 5.      The boomkin may be taken in at leisure.

With a little practice, this should be doable within 60 seconds, which is the maximum I would tolerate.
One may well row the boat with the mast erected and the sheet in place. When clear of the beech, the lazyjacks are cast off, the sail hoisted and then one is under way (.depending a bit of wind direction and choice of leeboard and rudder/steering oar...).

I kind of like this rig.

Arne

Hello, Arne.

I've been enthusiastically following this thread because it satisfies most of my more important requirements for a potential sailboat. I have a few questions, though, and a possible suggestion.

Bear with me; I've never sailed anything, and sailing craft are still a bit mysterious to me, so my thinking may be way off. Anyway ...

Regarding your point #2 above, it seems to me that the batten parrels would have to be absurdly long if the objective is to have them folded up parallel with the mast. My first inclination was to have one end of them detachable (an extra bit of work), but maybe you're not thinking of the whole package being a cylindrical roll (which would be nice). A narrow fan-fold, maybe? Also, would excessively long batten parrels give the sail assembly too much freedom of movement?

Then it seems to me that if you could arrange for the mast to fold over, at some point above the shear line, all the other rigging could be just tidied up a bit but otherwise left in place. This would be the ultimate selling point for me: at the end of an excursion, I could reef and fold up the sail, fold the mast down, hang a flag on the end of it and load it into the bed of my pickup and drive off; no separate parts to handle. This is why I use a plastic kayak: shove it in the truck, strap it down, and go. If it becomes too much work, I wouldn't do it, which is partly why I haven't yet built a sailboat or considered buying one.

Finally, in this particular configuration it makes me wonder if the boat would be underpowered. Its sail area is only 25+ square feet, and I know that PDRs typically carry over twice that. Maybe Halibut's hull shape makes up for that somewhat? I can't envision a way to substantially increase the sail area without doing something drastic, but I'd like to hear some thoughts on using a biplane rig.