Though Strange's Cherub II
had a hinged and sliding cabin top with side curtains,
a sort of pop top, I've never to this day figured a
good way to make a door work in one of these. The only
one I ever designed that I liked was fitted as an
overgrown hatch, separate from the companionway, and
it was replaced by a solid house after two seasons.
Also, I wanted this boat to be seaworthy, which I
define as "able to keep the sea in a gale with
reasonable safety."
The trunk shown is high, to allow sitting up
straight on top of the ballast tank and centerboard
trunk, but it has a low coaming in keeping with her
style. It's a simple shape to build, yet strong and
stiff without great weight. Wind resistance is small
(it's not that important compared with the wind
resistance in her rig), it will shed water well, and
the grab rail is ideally placed. To keep the trunk
light, and incidentally to make it less obtrusive, no
hatch is shown.
The cuddy is entered through a 2-foot-square
opening in the bulkhead. You slide your legs in first,
then lower your butt to the sole with hands on the lip
of the trunk. Hands and knees will work best to get
out. The reward of being limber enough to do this is
that there's a good chance that the cuddy will stay
dry.
The cockpit is self-draining with the hatch closed,
but the space below is sealed off watertight from the
rest of the hull with bulkheads. Shipping a green sea
with the hatch open wouldn't be disastrous. The
advantage of a footwell of this type is that it can be
made fully self-draining if, for instance, you left
her out in the rain or were about to run a breaking
inlet. But it allows you to put your feet down most of
the time without having to sit clear up on top of the
boat. The stowage space at the sides and ends is much
handier than with a tight, built-down footwell.
You can stand up to row, as diagrammed. The
rowlocks are misplaced on the sailplan; they should be
about a foot farther aft. With one foot up against the
after bulkhead, an oarsman should be able to pull
strongly and see well.
I first tried a jib-headed cat-yawl rig, that being
a favorite of mine, but the mainmast came too far
forward for a boat with no forefoot, and was too long
and too difficult to unstep for a real trailer
boat.
Next I looked at a balanced lug like Cherub
II. I once designed a canoe yawl, Windfola,
with this rig, and her owner likes her, but this rig
has some bad habits for a seagoing boat. The long yard
slung on a single halyard can be something of a menace
in a crisis. I notice that Strange never repeated this
rig in his later designs.
Then I sketched a gaff-cat rig, much like the
mainsail shown here, with the mast unstayed and jib
and mizzen eliminated. This is a good rig for ocean
passages if the boat is long enough to have the mast
well back from the bow and the boom inboard of the
stem. But it's not so good for control in tight places
or steady riding to an anchor. The unstayed mast is
hard to unstep and, in any case, I doubted that you'd
like the look of it.
I settled on the classical yawl, except for a more
practical mizzen than used to be customary. The mast
is stepped on deck. It's short and light enough to
pick up horizontally, slide the heel slit onto its
pin, and walk upright even with the boat afloat and
the water not smooth. To get an effective spread, the
shrouds can't go higher on the mast. This locates the
height of the throat. Not wanting to clutter the mast
with upper shrouds and spreaders, I put the jibstay
not far above the shrouds. This made the jib a handy
size to sheet with a single part. To give her a boomed
jib would call for a bigger head angle, a longer base
to the foretriangle, a longer bowsprit and a bigger
mizzen to balance it, and poorer aerodynamics not
worth it to save shifting one light line in tacking.
Besides, a boomless jib with two sheets is better for
heaving to and maneuvering.
I made the gaff just shorter than the boom here,
but my afterthought is that she looks oversparred,
even with the good reefing properties of this rig. If
I went on to working drawings, I think I would take a
foot or more off the gaff, which would allow
shortening the mast by half that. I've had two
embarrassments in the past few years from making rigs
too big and tall; consequently, I'm slightly
gun-shy.
I take it the bowsprit and boomkin have to be
removable to meet the length restriction. I've thought
about how to do this quickly, but haven't decided just
how to handle it, hence the vagueness of this
drawing.
I see plenty of ways to make her faster, roomier,
and cheaper, but they all result in a less striking
ornament at an anchorage. As a bonus, she looks more
expensive than she is, and while she won't be a very
fast boat, I'll warrant she'll have good and spirited
manners.
°°°
from Small Boat Journal May 1986; this
never seems to have been developed into a finished set
of plans.
