IDENTITY? DROP KEEL 20ft(about) 2+2 BERTH OFFSET COMPANIONWAY

Bought a Fireball dinghy once upon which a trolley had been dropped.Enjoyed the woodwork, sailed it in Summer and frostbites, learned a lot about bending masts, importance of not using knackered sails, met a lot of people who were fun types!(we sewed up kit wetsuits too!)
The boat always leaked, safety officer was cheeky about us beaching the boat to bail.The official almost got a punch from the trapeze man!( I spoke calming words like "don't")
So for about £800 we bought a better one and had great success based upon the experience gleaned from the refurbishment of the first Fireball.
So experiental learning is not always time fully wasted?
Sure,you can avoid re-inventing the wheel if in industrial production.
If 'tis a hobby, who cares if you race pigeons,
or chase a small white ball,
just two examples of utter folly in others opinions?
Be careful with the gas cooker,the most dangerous part of any boat, after the boom!(no pun realised whilst writing!)
 
It depends on which part of the journey you will enjoy.
Personally I do like fettling things, but a year spent doing my Heron would have been way too much if I hadn't had another boat already on the water.

I bought a rather rough, but usable motor boat and spent 3 months fettling that, but again I still had a boat on the water.

These guys have been doing this boat for, as far as I know, about 10 years!


BoatClub.jpg



Magic2.jpg
 
Lakesailor said:
It depends on which part of the journey you will enjoy.
Personally I do like fettling things, but a year spent doing my Heron would have been way too much if I hadn't had another boat already on the water.

I bought a rather rough, but usable motor boat and spent 3 months fettling that, but again I still had a boat on the water.

These guys have been doing this boat for, as far as I know, about 10 years!


BoatClub.jpg



Magic2.jpg
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It will be like Tenerife, Nice when its finished
 
Nautical equivalent of the potting shed. Perfect for meeting up with your mates and shooting the breeze as in the first picture.
 
She looks very much like a Matilda.

My 1st boat was a Matilda - good trailer-sailor with the lifting keel. Had a lot of fun with her

Best of luck with the restoration
 
Marine surveyor

Swinranger said:
Pontsimo,
as I'm sure you know, it's not all about the money.
I've just about finished my own project and have had enormous fun doing it. The finished article has cost far in excess of its market value, but it isn't important. I now have a boat that I know very square inch of and have incorporated a lot of custom features that I could not have got on a ready built vessel.
Of course the money is a consideration, but I would probably have spent it on something else anyway and not got half the satisfaction that I got from constructing something unique.

Best of luck, I hope you keep us updated!
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A marine surveyor working on another boat came and had a gander .....turns out he'd been eyeing her up for years . He, like me , reckoned there was little if anything wrong with the hull , and probably carefully tip uppable with enough bodies to get at the keel to remove it and refurb it. It's an old one so all the glass fibre layups are incredibly thick and tough. She's short and wide so she's a very strong monocoque .....and as the surveyor said .....pretty light too..... Probably not more than 300 to 400 kgs. A trip down the dump yesterday got me enough pristine mahogany planking to make companionway hatches , sliders , hatches and a new rudder for a fiver! The Achilles heel on these is the wood runners the keel slides in ......my design brain tells me the best and cheapest way to make new ones is from HDPE food cutting boards fabricated into sandwiched U channels with either a brass sheet liner or brass U channel held captive or within /underneath the side rails. Brass is a self lubricating semi hard metal and will resist the fore and aft abrasion movement of the keel. The HDPE is good at resisting compressive loads. Ill either PU foam them in or FGR them in. Ill cut away the FGR keel siding to get access once the keel is out.....bend it out of the way and then re-FGR it back with some nicely cut sheet. That keel housing is a locating structure and a compressive box structure to take compressive mast loading . It's pretty feebly moulded in maybe 3mm lay ups with the leading and trailing edges somewhat reinforced toward the base.
She's an overgrown dinghy which'll sail in 9" water ! And properly set up can really fly with a wide planing hull. The sails ......well I might get some altered or splash out on some new ones at the right price.....or maybe some second hand Matilda ones will come along. I think these boats were always held back by marketing .....by that I mean their sedentary name........and having read up on them were misunderstood by many in the sailing community. They have all the characteristics and equipment of a fastish dinghy with their raising keel ......are immensely stable ......and have a design "rightness" about them ......that "form follows function thing" when a well working thing tends to look right. I think she has that rightness and simplicity about her.....I like her.....we were made for each other!
 
Tranona said:
Tony Tucker, son of Robert, who designed the boat is still around www.tucker-designs.com Probably worth contacting him before you start hacking the boat around.
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Great idea and just done so. He was very helpful. Well , would you believe it....these UK boats had no keel bearing runners! And the way to remove the keel is the same way they were put in .......by rolling them on their side......which were my plans. He wasn't a bit fazed by the state of it! As I thought she eminently salvageable! YEE Hah!
 
Matilda by Robert Tucker. I had one for a while. Quite a reasonable fast boat for its size and age, and still very solidly built. Bristows listing for 1975 shows her with the following specs:

Loa 19'6 LWL 16'4 Beam 7'10 Draft keel up 9 inches, keel down 4'2 Displacement 1550lbs Sail area 195 sq ft Ballast 400lbs (most of that is in the plate and bulb. Design Robert tucker Built by Clipper Craft Mouldings Ltd London.

The only problem I remember is with the keel up they behaved a bit like a flat bottomed inflatable - put the helm over and she carried on - sideways! Instantly cured by dropping the keel a few inches.

There was no cockpit well from an outboard on mine. Current value £2 -2500 in good nick with outboard and gear. You will spend at least that much on this one. Good luck anyway.
 
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Interesting thread and just come to it. I would think that the boat as a project would be worth the effort if OP has the enjoyment of doing the work. ie to get a boat not worth the effort compared to buying a going concern. However the type of boat might be a bit hard to find if it is what he wants.
I have had a lift keel trailer sailer for 32 years and still love it. It can be winched onto the trailer really easily I once did it from dry sand. However mine has a keel which like a dinghy leaves the hull completely flush when retracted. (no bulb)
I often wonder how it would fare on a drying mooring. Because it will float in about 8 inches of water it could mean a bigger window of sailing time. And it would always stand up on the mud. I do wonder if the mud might be pressed into the keel cut out even though it is a fairly neat fit around the keel.
As observed my little boat is completely unmanageable with keel and rudder up. (steering with an outboard is just doable)

The OP might consider cutting off the bulb to make keel fully retracting. Certainly with the bulb the trailer design becomes quite unique in bmaking space for the bulb under the hull. With flush bottom you can use a typical mobo trailer. My 21 fter has about 100 kgs of lead under the floor as ballast while the keel contains ballast and weighs 100kg. These together make the boat positively self righting. Tested to 30kgs force needed to hold the mast down (at the hounds) when at 90 degrees heel. In practice no concerns in a spinacker broach and lay down.
The keel is raised by a tackle from the keel to the fore and aft member above the keel the tackle comes out the roof and to a halyard winch. Later versions use a trailer winch inside the cabin. Mine has 2 wooden posts one behind and one in front of the CB casing. The forward post also doubling as mast support. Later versions of my boat now have a cast iron keel of 250kg and no internal ballast. The centre board casing now extends to the roof in GRP to support the mast and take lifting loads of keel.

The rudder will be an interesting challenge. Mine has a swing aft and up rudder. In itself very deep and well ballanced. (area forward of the pintle line) Mine has a cast Ali frame incorporating pintles. I tend to fit a bolt through the frame to clamp the frame and to keep the blade steady. No free play. This bolt would make the rudder a disaster if it hit anything. It would proably tear the pintles out of the transom sinking the boat. However I keep the keel bolted down also so this protects the rudder.
Later models of mine use a dropping rudder. This makes the rudder useable in shallow water but it does have an ability to pull back out of the frame if anything is hit.
The through the cb case bolt to hold keel down is at the aft end of the case. This means that when I hit anything at speed the cb tends to pivot back and up at the back. The bolt has been bent many times but this has minimised the damage to the GRP trailing edge. Or with a steel keel you would get damage to the cb casing. Reinforce it a the back bottom to hull joint.
A rig for the boat should be quite simple. Go with whatever you can find S/H. I would suggest a fractional rig with aft swept spreaders shrouds to about 4/5 of mast height and intermediate stays to spreaders. A back stay to a mast crane. A boat like this can go nicely with a hank on jib from a large dinghy. Perhaps a main sail from similar. A big sail area will mean good performance in light winds but then a devil when the wind comes up demanding smaller jib and reef in main. Smaller rig will be a lot nicer when it blows but slow in light winds.
Just a few thoughts on redesign and rebuild of the boat good luck and PM me if you want to discuss. olewill
http://www.yachtandboat.com.au/classifieds/ad/12831/castle-650-yacht-and-sail-boats-vic
 
I went to look at it on Friday, I assume you now know the guy who owns it has but his phone number on it? Or am I behind they times and that's yours you have now bought it? I looked a bit of a mess although to my untrained eye a lot of it looked cosmetic.
 
Matildas are lovely somebody buy her and fix her up please, the more on the water the better, dont worry about lowering the keel as they sail well with it lifted all the way up, ours takes off out of the water in medium winds scares the pants of the Mrs lol, we sail in mainly shallow waters in the Solway Firth with lots of shifting sand so keep the keel up 90% of the time unless we are heading in quickly under heavy weather, they can take a pounding and are as sturdy as a heavy old clinker built, sorry no spares but could do with some;)
Here is Sunnyside with the Mrs at the helm heading back into Dumfries under a brewing storm just of Southerness point after a weekend of sailing and drinking at Kippford

http://i1119.photobucket.com/albums/k625/Nightlife1/Matilda 20/weekendtriponhappycat010.jpg
Good thread
Phil
 
Nice boat, had one for a few years, nice manners and fun to helm. Strange layout below works well.

First job is to drop the keel and replace the lifting mechanism - ALL PARTS! We had a fixing point fail and the keel dropped 2 feet with a crash, spinning the lifting winch and handle round. If my arm had been near it it would have smashed it not just broken it.
 
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