fishing under sail
Posted: February 28th, 2007, 5:52 pm
I'm probably one of the least skillful fishermen you'll ever run across, but I've always enjoyed fishing, even when there was no catching involved.
I'm hoping for a little help with a project I'm working on. It's a 16 foot sail-powered catamaran that I designed for beach cruising and camping, and because I really like to fish, the design reflects that.
A little background info: I used to sail a 27' cruising sailboat out of Fort Walton Beach. One of my favorite things to do, during the appropriate time of year, was to go out Destin's East Pass and troll a jig down the beach, or go offshore and anchor over some likely bottom and soak some bait. I had a fishfinder in the cockpit instead of a depth sounder, and rod holders installed at the back of the cockpit. We had pretty good luck, and on a number of occasions we caught some good kings, Spanish, and chicken dolphin. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. There was some odd sense of satisfaction in doing it the way people did it before there were motors.
So, a couple years back, I decided I wanted to design and build a boat that was a little different from anything I'd ever seen. I decided a small cat would be nice, what with all the shallow water to the east, where I'd spent a fair amount of happy time-- my favorite anchorage was behind Dog Island. But beach cats like the Hobie 16 aren't very suitable for camping, because they can't carry much weight and their sails are so big that capsize is a constant worry. I sketched out a cat with smaller sails, and partially open hulls, that could carry two people and enough gear for luxurious camping, either ashore or on the central deck in a tent. The open part of the hulls can hold a couple of comfortable seats down inside the hulls, which would make fishing (and sailing) a lot more comfortable than squatting on a trampoline.
The design calls for a short unstayed mast, because one of the problems of fishing from the big boat was all the wires that held up the mast, and seemed perfectly designed to tangle lines. A sailboat isn't very maneuverable, so if we got a big fish on, all we could do was heave to and hope the fish didn't tangle us up, or strip all the line before it got tired, or wrap the line around the keel or rudder.
The lack of wires is one adaptation to make fishing easier. What I'm hoping here is that the folks who know more about fishing than I do (just about everyone, I'd guess) can make some suggestions that I can work into the design. The first hull is framed up on the strongback, but it's the details that will make or break the boat, I think.
This might be a completely goofy idea, but that's never stopped me before. And remember that it wasn't so many years ago that fishing from a kayak probably sounded like a goofy idea to a lot of saltwater fishermen.
Here's to future sailboat fishing!
Ray
I'm hoping for a little help with a project I'm working on. It's a 16 foot sail-powered catamaran that I designed for beach cruising and camping, and because I really like to fish, the design reflects that.
A little background info: I used to sail a 27' cruising sailboat out of Fort Walton Beach. One of my favorite things to do, during the appropriate time of year, was to go out Destin's East Pass and troll a jig down the beach, or go offshore and anchor over some likely bottom and soak some bait. I had a fishfinder in the cockpit instead of a depth sounder, and rod holders installed at the back of the cockpit. We had pretty good luck, and on a number of occasions we caught some good kings, Spanish, and chicken dolphin. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. There was some odd sense of satisfaction in doing it the way people did it before there were motors.
So, a couple years back, I decided I wanted to design and build a boat that was a little different from anything I'd ever seen. I decided a small cat would be nice, what with all the shallow water to the east, where I'd spent a fair amount of happy time-- my favorite anchorage was behind Dog Island. But beach cats like the Hobie 16 aren't very suitable for camping, because they can't carry much weight and their sails are so big that capsize is a constant worry. I sketched out a cat with smaller sails, and partially open hulls, that could carry two people and enough gear for luxurious camping, either ashore or on the central deck in a tent. The open part of the hulls can hold a couple of comfortable seats down inside the hulls, which would make fishing (and sailing) a lot more comfortable than squatting on a trampoline.
The design calls for a short unstayed mast, because one of the problems of fishing from the big boat was all the wires that held up the mast, and seemed perfectly designed to tangle lines. A sailboat isn't very maneuverable, so if we got a big fish on, all we could do was heave to and hope the fish didn't tangle us up, or strip all the line before it got tired, or wrap the line around the keel or rudder.
The lack of wires is one adaptation to make fishing easier. What I'm hoping here is that the folks who know more about fishing than I do (just about everyone, I'd guess) can make some suggestions that I can work into the design. The first hull is framed up on the strongback, but it's the details that will make or break the boat, I think.
This might be a completely goofy idea, but that's never stopped me before. And remember that it wasn't so many years ago that fishing from a kayak probably sounded like a goofy idea to a lot of saltwater fishermen.
Here's to future sailboat fishing!
Ray
You sure started off with a blast there. I cain't hep ya with the sailing part, and my fishing is on a novice level at best, so not much help there, either. But, we do have all kinds of expert fishermen and probably a couple of redneck engineers here at Big Bend Fishin dot net. Someone is bound to have some ideas for ya.
