Some years ago I inherited a Boxboat, Yellowhammer, built by the late Bill Hatch of Parkstone, glider pilot, engineer, draughtsman and boat builder who entered boats for the speed trials at Weymouth.

His Boxboat was designed to be a cheap, easily built dinghy with very good performance. Half a dozen were built and a dozen kits. Its length is 12 feet from flat stem to flat stern, before altering to scow as in drawing. Imagine a shoe-box with part of the lid cut out for a cockpit and you get the picture, except there is rocker. Its sections all through are rectangular with the bow actually deeper than the stern. This does sometimes slap a wave but no more so than a Mirror. At first its stability relied solely on the gymnastics of weight shifting. The beam is only 3 feet and its first mast was 20 feet of aluminium tube, 2½ inches diameter its full length. Raising it to vertical without a car wheel to push its foot against was impossible; the leverage of its weight heeled the boat until water cascaded over its gunwales. The sealed mast floated though so righting was easy. I made another mast, tapering, of joined sailboard sections. It is unstayed so that reefing is simply a matter of rotating the 70 square feet uni-rig sail on it. I fitted side decks which gave comfort and stopped her filling when heeling, except when a gust caught the large flat area under the boat.

The boat has no centreboard but skegs attached to each flat side protrude 6 inches deep by 2 feet long. This gives ample resistance to leeway but perhaps a centreboard would make a chance of a sudden roll much less. I am considering a radical compromise which would make any unstable dinghy far excel the recommendation that the crew sitting on the gunwale should be unable to push it under. I refer to outriggers. I thought I would make these using stitch and tape like the boat and to a similar flat bottomed scow shape 5 inches deep by 10 inches wide section at centre by 8 feet long. These would give considerable buoyancy at rest and an added resistance to heel due to dynamic lift from the nearly flat underside, just as with a sailboard.

To hold them aluminium tube would probably be used. They could be 2½ inch diameter slid half way into larger diameter 3 feet 6 inch lengths athwart the fore and aft decks. These will be held down to a varnished wooden platform screwed to the decks by the joining pins and washers outside the gunwales, as shown on my diagram. The longitudinal tubes provide a rectangle to which net or canvas trampoline decking could be secured. This layout could be applied to almost any dinghy with blocks under each end of the platform on a curved deck. It also allows the boat to be proa or trimaran at will. The lesser stability of a proa when the outrigger is on the windward side would be offset by the increased righting moment of the crew sitting out on the float.

This compromise giving lesser total width and easier assembly would not be a true proa which was designed always to sail on one tack.

The outrigger on the windward side of the Micronesian boat is little more than a floating log. This confirms the easily understood rule that out of water weight to windward is preferable to buoyancy to leeward, which causes more drag. I wonder how many readers saw Crossbow exemplifying this at the Weymouth Speed Trials. The weight to windward was supplied by the crew in a pod, movable up a track on an arm at right angles to the hull.

Cheers the transatlantic proa was designed I believe to have an outrigger providing buoyancy to leeward but in case of an upset from the other side, it had a buoyancy bubble built along the hull well above the water line. A buoyancy of rubber along the gunwale or edge of side decks would seem a desirable addition to cruising dinghies or catamarans on two counts. It would give an increased righting moment and secondly, the increased freeboard would give further protection from spray and wind and even comfort to sit against.

The aluminium Commando canoe fitted with outriggers, obviously made it a very stable paddling trimaran. It looked about 3 feet beam by 18 feet long, somewhat smaller than the canoe which Uffa Fox sailed to the French coast and islands. Called Brynhhild, it was 20 feet long by 4 feet beam with a draught of 5 feet, centreboard down, described in his book Sail & Power.

The rig as designed and tested was an amazingly similar forerunner to the carbon fibre one that appeared at the Southampton Boat Show recently, in that the boom was carried forward of the mast to take the tack of the jib. This meant that the luff of the jib kept the main boom tensioned downwards and acted in the same way as a kicking strap or boom yang. As the jib sheet was cleated to the boom, the idea was that as the main sheet was eased the jib was too. This was satisfactory in a steady wind but the rig was changed to a conventional one when it was found in puffy weather easing the sheet dumped all the power at once as both sails swung out like doors and it was either both sails drawing or none at all.

Whilst still on canoes, sea kayaks could have short masts and also carry a pair of leeboards. The outriggers could be retracted close to the sides allowing the double bladed paddle to be used normally. With the floats extended a single bladed paddle can be used. Simple plastic tube outriggers with sloping sealed ends of 4 inches diameter by 4 feet long would give buoyancy of 36 lbs or at 2 feet six inches from the centre line, a righting moment of 90 foot pounds. The mast could carry a simple soft footed dipping lug similar to one I designed for a canoe I built just before the last war which was never launched.

An experimental venture on the Boxboat using 8 inch diameter plastic tubes became unnecessary by the chance acquisition in August of a 15 foot Supernova trimaran. I would like to hear from anyone who has seen or owned one of these wonderful craft. Designed by Ib Pors Nielsen with one piece crossbeams giving a width of 10 feet 6 inches, she weighs 203 lbs with only the 15 foot centre hull too heavy for one person to carry. 22 foot mast, 6 foot boom with mainsail of 86 square feet, reefable to 65 square feet. She has a 45 square foot jib. Separate trampoline decks allow comfortable seating into the centre hull which has drain holes. There was a mast-head float in the brochure but unreefed with two up in force 5 there is no sense of a capsize being imminent even with the lee outrigger pushed completely under the water. The slender hulls of the Supernova pierce ‘needle‑like through the waves’ just as the designer states. Obviously a capsize in a trimaran is much easier to prevent than in a dinghy without ballast or weighted keel. This trimaran ‘can easily be righted from a capsize by a seven stone junior’.

This is somewhat less than that required for a catamaran. Although my sons and I raced Shearwaters in all weathers with never a reef, my own capsize was the only one I ever saw and the mast was hammered down into the Pool Harbour mud. Later I acquired a vintage Shearwater which I intended to convert for cruising. Lack of a crew has delayed this indefinitely so it is available to anyone who would give it a good home. Deep Shearwater hulls already have 14 inches square hatches and room for outboard and any amount of stores. In addition I cut a footwell into each hull at the after end of the bridge deck. Each of these, which considerably increases the sitting comfort, has a green canvas ‘bucket’ screwed in, 30 by 18 inches by 18 inches deep to prevent water entering the hulls. The plywood floor of each can be lifted to deck level to empty them of water. Alternatively any water left in provides additional ballast. A boom tent over the 6 feet square bridge deck would be easy and another concession to comfort even while sailing would be a canvas dodger only a foot high from round the front of the mast to each of the shrouds or even extended rearwards.

A masthead float, less noticeable than standard was evolved by W B Keeble, Director of the National Sailing Centre in 1977. This was bubble wrap sewn into the head of the main. About 1/3 of a cubic foot or a triangle roughly 32 inches by 18 inches gave 20 lbs of buoyancy which allowed a man to walk 4 feet up a Wayfarer’s mast before any tendency to invert. Tougher new materials could be tapered to the luff and larger sizes would give greater buoyancy with minimal loss of efficiency if flexible. Another catamaran righting aid is a ‘dolphin striker’ made from a stayed aluminium tube hinged under the bridge deck towards the front and held horizontally at the rear by shockcord. This can be extended down as a continuation of the mast to provide leverage for righting. The Catapult catamaran has a mast held to the deck by universal joint and shrouds joined through pulleys across the deck which, uncleated, allow the mast to cant 45 degrees from vertical on either side. This means that if the mast is flat on the water, the upper hull can be flopped past vertical until very little extra weight will right the boat. An added advantage in canting the mast towards the wind is the increased lift given to the boat when sailing. Uffa Fox cited this same lifting advantage with the dipping lug where the sail slopes away from the wind at its foot and showed the deflected wind clearly on the surface of the water in the lee of his boat.

Finally on this subject, detuning from the usual racing rigs to much lower aspect ratios and shorter masts on any of the boats I’ve mentioned with gunter, lug, lateen or the crab-claw Polynesian rig described by Bernard Stocks in the last issue, must surely be the best bet of them all. Slight loss of performance is amply offset by greater stability and ease of control. Perhaps the gap between the spars at the pointed end of Bernard Stock’s sail will be useful to allow reefing when he makes a larger one but when reefed to the point where the spars touch, where do you go from here?

Now what has this to do with dinghy cruising? As always it depends on which definition you choose. My own, rapidly nearing realisation, lies between the graphic picture on the cover of the Bulletin, though perhaps with a warmer wind from another quarter and the ghosting, gliding progress on the mirror like, heron haunted waters of Japanese prints.

It may seem a paradox then but to my mind the advantage of a multihull, apart from stability is speed. The relatively light weight of a trimaran compared with a dinghy, means that it will glide effortlessly in light winds with all the pleasures I’ve just hinted at and move when conventional dinghies are at a standstill. In a brisker wind she will sail at nearly twice the speed of a dinghy which gives the advantage of a far greater range in the time available.

Here I think lies the answer to our president’s question in his ‘final words’, (I hope they’re not) in no. 136, “Why do we cram on sail in order to get to our destination in the shortest possible time?” Might it be that we then arrive at a landfall earlier and spend more time there when we do or we realise that quiet spells will surely arise so we will then have more time in hand to contemplate our surroundings.

A disadvantage though of multihulls in very quiet spells is the impossibility of rowing. Sculling over the stern might be practical and single paddles can definitely be used. Then there is always the outboard — if you must.

Sleeping on the trampoline of a beached trimaran requires only the logistics of camping with less restrictions than backpacking. So, with the exception of not reaching the narrowest reedbound inlets, the multihulls I have mentioned should be suitable for cruising in any conditions that can safely be met in monohulls.

Finally, I think I’ll look at small boat design in a new, warm water, Polynesian way, not as the boat supporting the rig, but rather the deck, mast stays and even stowage being a detachable unit with hulls and flotation merely attached below it.