Graham,

frankly speaking, I don’t fancy that Selway Fisher 24  -   it looks too short, heavy and tubby to me. I guess my eyes have been calibrated to like longer and trimmer vessels (..my boats have not always been that, but I have often just bought what I could afford at the moment…).

What about scrolling down a little on that same  Selway Fisher site and have a look at the sharpie Mayfly 24?

What about giving this a decent finkeel to keep the ballast low (or a shallow fin with a cb inside it). Such log trim boats will perform a lot better, not least to windward. The length to displacement ratio makes such vessels much easier to fit with a sufficiently big JR (One or 2 sticks).

What do you think?

Low cabin, you say?

So what? This is a sailboat, not a caravan.

Another candidate could be the bigger,  28’ charpie-dory, Egret, either the Ruel B Parker or the Wooden Boat Magazine version.

 

Well, it’s late hours here, I must be sleep-writing this…

Arne

Another design for a small cruising boat in plywood that I would consider is the Selway Fisher 24, (scroll down page until you come to the Tasman design) which is already developed with a junk rig and shallow draft options.
Like many Selway Fisher boats it is designed for easy building at some cost to ultimate performance but looks to be an easily driven boat that would sail quite well if pure cruising was your objective.