Conference wahoo::fishing

1414.0. "High Speed and Small Boats" by SOFBA1::SULLIVAN () Thu May 17 1990 18:32

    
           HIGH-SPEED PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS OF SMALL BOATS

                               by D.T. Sullivan
                        (reprinted without permission)

                               I. INTRODUCTION

     I'm  an  experienced  boater.  I was driving my boat
     the other Saturday night after having, as I made very clear to the
     police, hardly anything to drink and going "honest, officer"  about
     30  miles an hour when, I swear, a Bass jumped into the boat and I
     was forced to pull off the waterway with  such  abruptness  that  it
     took  the  wrecker crew six and a half hours to get my boat out of
     the water.

     An  experienced  boater is a person who's wrecked one.
     An inexperienced  boater  is a  person  who's  about  to
     wreck  one.  A  VERY inexperienced  boater doesn't even
     own a boat but will probably be mistaken for a pronghorn antelope
     by people poaching from somebody else's  boat.  The foremost
     high-speed  handling  characteristic  of small boats   is   the
     remarkably  high  speed  at  which they head from wherever you are,
     directly into trouble.  This has to do with beer.  The  minute  you
     get into a boat, you want a beer.  I'm not exactly sure why
     this is, but personally I blame it on Billy Carter.

     You  see,  everyone  in  America has always wanted to be a small boat
     owner. That's why  all  those  wig-and-knickers  colonial  guys moved to
     Kentucky  with  Davy  Crockett even before he got his TV show.  And
     witness the aristocratic young Theodore Roosevelt's attempt to be a
     "rough rider." Even Henry James used the  same  last  name  as  his
     peckerwood  cousin  Jesse.  And  as  Henry James would tell you, if
     anyone read him anymore and also if he were alive, the single  most
     prominent distinguishing feature of the small boat owner is that he
     drives a little boat.  This  explains  why  all  of  us are muscling these
     things around local rivers and lakes.

     You  may  be  wondering  where  Billy Carter comes in.  Well, Billy
     Carter was a small boat owner just like we're all trying to be, but
     he was a sober boater.  Most of us had never seen a sober boater before,
     and  we  have  the Reagan landslide to testify that none of us ever
     wants to see one again.  It was a horrifying apparition.  And  ever
     since  Billy Carter, all of us boaters have had to be very careful
     to stay drunk lest we turn into some kind of awful  creature
     with  big  buck  teeth  and a State Department full of human-rights
     yahoos.

     Thus the  boat has become the world's only beer-guided motor
     vessle.  Let's  examine  one  unit of this guidance system.  Let's
     examine another.  Let's  examine  the  whole  six-pack.  Now  let's
     boat over and see if any ducks have come in on Hodge Pond.  Woops!
     Crash!  Forgot there's a dam between the lake and the pond..

                    II. THE SMALL BOAT: DESIGN AND ENGINEERING

     A  boat is basically a big deck with an engine attached.
     Both a boat and a big deck  are  good  places  to  drink  beer,
     because  you  can  take a leak from either one standing up. Small
     boats are generally a little faster downwind  than  upwind,
     with  the  exception  of  certain  California small boats during
     mud-slide season.  But small boats get better gas mileage.

     Another important difference between big decks and  boats
     is  their  suspension  systems.  Big decks are most often seated
     firmly on the hull by means of cement block foundations.  Nothing
     so sophisticated is used on small boats.  The planning hull of
     a  modern  boat  is  fully  independent:  each  wave   is
     independently  pushed right or left.  The transom is a key part
     of the boat. It is used primarily for disgarding old beer cans
     and bodily waste. 
    
     This  hull  design  is  ideal for use in conjunction with the
     small boat's  100/0  front/rear  weight   distribution.   This   weight
     distribution  is  achieved through engine placement.  The engine is
     placed just where you'd place it on a back porch--hanging  off  one
     end  so  you can get under it and look at the giant dent you got in
     the skeg when you drove over the dam last night.

     Theoretically,   such   forward  weight  balast  should  cause  gross
     understeer, but everyone involved with small boats is whooping it
     up too much to have any grasp of theory, so the forward weight bias
     causes gross oversteering instead.  What  happens  to  an  unloaded
     boat in a turn is that the rear end has nothing to do, is
     unemployed, metaphorically speaking, so it comes around to ask  you
     for  work,  up there in the front of the boat where all the weight
     is.  And  the  result  is  exactly  like  one  of  those  revolving
     restaurants  that they have on hotels except it's so underpowered
     it can't get out of it's own way    

     In order to correct this handling problem, the boat's hull is
     filled  with  leaf  mulch,  garden  loam, hundred pound bags of dog
     food, two snowmobiles, half a cord of birch logs,  your  son's  Cub
     Scout  pack  and a used refrigerator to put beer in out on the back
     deck.  The result is an adjusted weight bias of  0/100  front/rear
     that  causes a handling problem different from either understeer or
     oversteer....  no steering at all because the transom is out of the
     water.  Therefore it is clearly important to achieve equal weight
     distribution in  a   boat.  This  is  done  by placing the boat
     in enough water to float it properly.

     The  same  kind  of  thinking  that  went  into  the  boat
     design has been applied to the boat  engines.  This  is
     basically  the  same device that Jim Watt used for pumping water out
     of coal mines in 1810 except that, in accordance  with  recent  EPA
     rulings,  a  hanky  soaked with Pine-Sol has been stuffed into each
     cylinder to cut down on exhaust emissions

     There  are  three  types of boat engines:  the six-cylinder
     engine, which does not have enough  cylinders;  the  eight-cylinder
     engine,  which has too many; and the four-cylinder engine, which is
     found in "mini-hot rod Bass boats" which are driven by people who  think
     John Denver is the right kind of boater to be and believe they can talk
     to  the whales.  The less that is said about four-cylinder engines,
     the better.

     All  these engines have a common fault in that they continue to run
     after the ignition has been switched off,  a  phenomenon  known  as
     "dieseling."   Engines   that  actually  *are*  diesels  have  been
     introduced for boats,  and  they  rectify  this  problem  by  not
     starting  in  the  first place.  But it doesn't really matter.  The
     real power for boats is generated inside the lower-end, or at
     least its seems to be because it's so noisy in  there.  And  if  it
     isn't,  it  soon  will be after you get blotto'd and start trying
     to find out what's really inside the lower unit.

     There  are  usually  five throttle settings in a boat.  One is a mystery
     position that is illustrated on the throttle knob but  cannot  be  found.
     I believe it's called idle. The next one is slow this is not very fast
     but will get you there eventually. The next setting  has a slightly
     higher top speed, but you can't get your hat blown off. And finally
     full-out. This is the speed achived when the throttle is place all
     the way in the forward position usually hitting the floor. This is
     considered fast but, in a small boat with a 30hp Fast really isn't
     that fast.
   
     
     Because boats get stuck in the shallow's so often, multi-engined
     boats have become a very popular option.  The Multi-engine feature is
     operated by a lever that fails to put the boat into forward, or  by  a
     lever  that  fails  to go in reverse.  Multi-engine drive  does allow
     you to burn much more gas than actually needed.

     
     There  are  a  number  of methods for  bringing a small
     boat to a stop.  Most of them involve trees in  the water  but
     sometimes  the trolling motor which hangs down in the front
     will fall partly out of its mounting and produce a drag  force.
     And  very often a small boat will simply run out of gas and coast
     to a stop.  And right in front of a bar, too... as  many wives  can
     attest.

     Which  just  goes  to  show  how  thorough going the relationship is
     between boats and drinking.  First, it sure  looks  as  if  these
     things  were designed by people who'd been drinking.  And the level
     of finish indicates they were built by those who'd  been  drinking.
     It  only  stands  to reason they should be driven by people like us
     who are half in the bag.  As a  result,  the  most  popular  small
     boat performance modifications... you guessed it... having a drink.
     For instance, take a tight turn at 20 miles  per  hour  and  you'll
     notice  that if you *hadn't* been tight, you never would have taken
     that turn in the first place.  Now you call a crane to winch your
     flipped over boat from the depths and I'll get some more tall ones.


  IV. PURCHASE, REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE OF THE HIGH PERFORMANCE BOAT

     If you haven't wrecked a small boat and your'e weighing the obvious
     delights   of   having   an  opportunity  to  do  so  against  such
     considerations as wanting to be a idiot but  only  having  enough
     money  to  be   lower middle-class, or maybe you have a wife who thought
     she was marrying a college educated account  executive,  there  are
     some  points  for  you  to consider.  First, how much will a small
     boat cost?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
        Small boat                                    $1,800.00

        Beer                                          $   24.00

        Another boat to replace
        the first one you wrecked                     $1,200.00

        Small 30 hp motor /used                       $  850.00
                                                      _________
        TOTAL                                         $3,874.00
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     That's  a  fair  piece  of  change.  But  on the other hand, small
     boats are  virtually  maintenance-free.  In  fact,  all  necessary
     boat  repairs  can be accomplished with a long rope.  Attach one
     end of the rope to the  boat, drop the  other  end  of  the 
     rope in the water and wait for a real boat to go by and tow you in.
     You  may  also want to know if a small boat is truly useful.  I'm
     afraid  the  answer  is  NO--   not too   useful.   Consider   this
     comparison:

                              UTILITY COMPARISON


                         Small boat                 Real boat
                         __________                 _________
   Speed                   Lack of                  Goes just fine
   Handling                Sluggish                 corners on plane
   Fuel Capacity           Minimal                  Could rival xtra-mart
   Transducer drag factor  Extremely high           What transducers?
      
     Still, when all is said and done, it would have really looked silly
     at  the  end  of  "Easy Rider" if Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper had
     been shot by a couple of Small boat owners.  And what's  life  for
     if  you  never  get  a chance to shoot the likes of Peter Fonda and
     Dennis  Hopper?  Besides,  you'll  never  really   appreciate   the
     profound  and astonishing beauties of nature if you don't get stuck
     on a sand-bar now and then.  And you won't appreciate them as much as
     you could if you don't have a lot of beer along.

   Um, this is an _exact_ copy of a joke that went around about 2 weeks ago
   where the subject was pickup trucks.  It looks like somebody went through
   it and changed all the "truck" references to "boat".  Some of them don't
   even make any sense.  It was cute as a truck joke, though.

   -- Sam (also a truck owner  :-))