Let me tell you about my homebuilt Titmouse. This design is the
biggest 15' option for a novice to homebuild and the prettiest (see above). I built it
in the living room/dining room area (after tearing out a wall)
when the wife and I lived in a tiny little rent house, the last
house on a dead end street in the Clarksville section of
Austin Texas.
Houston, surely you remember this scene - the boat in the house
on 9th street - as you lived a block away then and were
among those who helped me get it out of the house through the
opening which I made by temporarily removing the 2 windows
just visible in the background (plus 2 2x4 studs, 8 sash weights
and some trim). After nailing back the windows that afternoon,
I never did get around to reinstalling the rusty iron sash
weights which lay piled on the stoop in silent reproach until
we moved away.
in frame circa 1980 (c) Hans-Peter Otto
Commenced in 1976, it hit the water in
1982 and I sailed it for some years on Lake Travis (22 miles
from town) from a marina in Volente. I sailed it single-handed
(although it could have been sailed much harder and faster
with a crew of 2) and my most pleasurable outing was
watching the July 4 race on Lake Travis one time. Wind was
gusting around 20 mph and I sailed reefed with working jib as the
fleet did 2 turns around Starnes (Rattlesnake) Island. I will never
forget the crewman who looked down at me as his boat raced past
and said "Good lard, a Titmouse and sailing reefed!" The social
politics of this event (the annual July 4th weekend Texas Governor's
Cup) are amusing. Far and away the sexiest sport event in the Austin
area, it is downplayed by the press which focus on ethnic picnickers
in the park as America celebrates her top secular holiday. At best
you might see an otherwise unidentified distance shot of the fleet
on local TV news at the end of the broadcast. Seeing the boats heel
as they rounded a turnpoint from closeup and from a vantage point
close to waterlevel was eyeball candy of the highest degree.
Later on I lucked into a cheap co-op woodworking space and
took the boat there with the idea that I should sand down
(inside the boat) the ridges where the
shaper-coved strip planking overrode one another as they formed the
curve of the bilge. It was really quite ugly and something to
nitpick over while sailing about alone and eating peanut butter,
tomato and pickle sandwiches on upscale designer bread. This
turned out to be a relatively easy job so I started considering
the hull's real (outside) shape. As I had been a novice boat
builder, the hull had hollows and dips, even with considerable
sanding of it after turning it upside down in the driveway, and
was not fair in the technical sense. So I committed myself to
a truly fair hull. Now that was a job of work and
retrospectively a great waste of time. Still, fairing the hull
which stayed rightside up and was winched up and down from the
ceiling to different working heights and thus viewing it from
various prospectives was aesthetically so compelling that I was
unable to stop till it was done. Like sailing it for the first
time (or getting it out the window or framing in the cockpit
or installing the deck), the spray painting of it too was a great
culmination.*
*We often read that paint is not filler but I was surprised
to discover that the spray painting actually disposed of virtually
all the tiny unfairnesses still left when I called a halt to the
fairing process. Now, when I check out a boat, homebuilt or
storebought, the fingers of my left hand stray over its surface
(I am right handed) and I can gauge the extent of the longboarding
that was done to the plug by feeling the unfairnesses which are
otherwise visually imperceptable.
Alas, I did not photograph it after spray painting whilst it was
still hanging from the ceiling. Too bad! Remember, though, that
the hull's painfully acquired fairness is perceptible only by touch!
Boat in the water at Walsh Landing at Lake Austin.
Wife Madelon securing the boat. Smudge in photo shows smoke
from somewhere in West Lake Hills.
This shows an early stage of the fairing process. The centerboard
you see is quite primitive: brass capped 3/4" plywood board
with lead inserts for negative buoyancy. It and especially the
rudder as designed, also 3/4" plywood, are inadequate. Phil
Bolger designed an end plate for the rudder of my unnamed
Titmouse which improved steering considerably. He billed
me $25.
Afterwards, I didn't campaign the boat because in terms of the
effort required, single-handing is not that much fun.
So I sold it, raking varnished Honduras mahogany transom and
all, to a guy from Fredericksburg (about 100 miles W of here) in
1994.
Imagine my surprise when I was told a year later that the boat was
still in Austin in someone's backyard and had never hit the water.
Before selling, I had thought to install a salvaged Geo Metro 1
liter Suzuki-made engine as an inboard, but with the configuration
as designed (see Sam Rabl's Building a Boat in Your Own
Backyard at your local public library and still in print),
there is no room. Only six months after this stunning news, it
struck me that there would be plenty of room in a 9 foot cockpit
if I ripped out the 4 foot long centerboard case.
Then the boat could be a motorboat (as its lines permit*) and,
perhaps, somewhere down the pike a new keel could be retrofitted
below the hull so as to regain the sailing option.
*Regarding its suitability for a stable planing mode, see
the drawing of the sections above. The deadrise is ~12 degrees.
As the smallest auto engine in the American market, the Geo Metro
1 liter aluminum three-banger is an obvious candidate for
conversion. (This engine is used in homebuilt experimental
category airplanes). Although its 2-barrel Hitachi carburetor
is now CPU controlled with a throttle-body mixture control setup,
earlier on it was fitted with a purely mechanical carburetor.
This engine and its stock clutch, manual transmission and one
of the 2 CV drive shafts in line with the propeller shaft is
the plan. Interestingly, the February 1997 issue of
WoodenBoat had an article by Ray Sargent on using a
Subaru EA-82 1.8 liter (with a Hurth marine transmission
weighing 28 lbs) to power his 15' runabout. I haven't
weighed the Metro's manual transmission but I have hefted
it and it was lighter than anticipated. In a letter to me,
Sargent criticizes the use of an automotive transmission
because it takes dangerously longer to go into reverse
than the "built-in thrust bearings of a marine
transmission." That could only be verified in
trials; worst case, installing a shaft brake would be a fix.
Before putting this document on line in December 1995,
I tracked down the owner way out on Burleson Road where
he was milling a huge number of American walnut logs down
here from a Tennessee woodlot and he agreed to sell the
boat back.
I should also explain that the impulse to compose and put
this Web page on line was elicited by a computer program
which I was playing with then: the demo version of
MultiSurf from John Letcher & Co. at
Aerohydro.
It is insanely great, and you can save files.
Whoa! Boat design lovers,
you have got to check this out!
The boat is gone from Austin. Dave Larrimore its present owner
is building a log cabin somewhere in south Texas. I hope he
gets it in the ocean or in a lake and sails it. He comes
through Austin frequently though or so I have been told and
I have asked the guy he stays with to ask him to call me if
he still wants to sell it. At age 64 (in 1999) in a subtropical
climate albeit in robust good health, I can't help wondering
whether I shouldn't blow it off and leave the project stranded
in cyberspace where I can look at it. And yet from time to time
I walk over to Red River Motors to stare in wild surmise at
the engine in one or another of the wrecked Geo Metros
which fill their yard: why not use the A/C compressor to
run a tiny reefer for a six-pack? (Red River Motors became The Garage Mahal restaurant. The restaurant moved. Haven't recently checked to see what's there now. Unlike Red River Motors, I am still here on the cusp of 2017. As for robust good health, as I said I'm still here. When I go to the gym [a pair of 8 lb.weights in a corner of the great room of our 1 bedroom condo], I do 12 lateral lifts). Is it now unrealistic to
imagine that I will some day repaint the boat high gloss
Highway Dept. yellow?* This after converting and installing
the Chevy Sprint mill, modifying the skeg and sizing the
prop and new rudder. Don't forget the instrumentation dials!
Vroom, vroom...boat dreams!
*Although I initiallly fell in love with many of the
color chips on the Interlux brochure, I settled for white on
the grounds of practicality under the Texas sun and the desire
not to seem to be putting on airs by painting a 15' boat
burgundy, champagne or silver. A combination of ISO-9000
security yellow for the hull and the red varnished Honduras
mahogany transom, the former for the sake of increased
visibility on the water, the latter already in place, is a
pleasant prospect.
Five summers ago (1998) I stayed in Palacios on Matagorda Bay on
the Texas coast for 2 days. Sulphurated water right out
of the shower and croaker fish jumping out of the water in
the bay! Wading about and standing in the shallow bay I
occasionally scooped up the black silt which smelled
somewhere between funky and healthily organic but the
different direction of the next croaker to jump from the
direction I was looking in was of course unpredictable and
never sufficiently close. The wild kingdom! The air
temperature was about 10 degrees cooler than Austin and you
could see the bay from the old-timey, high ceiling
non-airconditioned 2nd floor multi-windowed garage apartment
where I stayed with Paul* and Roberta who own the Black Cat
Lounge on Austin's East Sixth Street. Wouldn't the project
described here have been a hoot for futzing around the bay!
Palacios currently has the largest shrimping fleet on the
Texas coast; its tiny population is 30% Anglo, 40% Chicano,
25% Vietnamese, 5% black and it is graced with a beautiful
waterfront park and covered rec area at the end of a long
pier. I heard gossip to the effect that local fishermen had
overcome their resentment of the Vietnamese (20 years is a
long time) and now say they wish that they themselves worked
that hard but my informant may have been pouring chicken soup
on their true feelings. Fleet consists of small bay and big
go out in the Gulf trawlers. This is not Cape Cod but then
again what is?
Since this outing I have crossed the Atlantic 6 times and
dipped my fingers once in the Mediterranean near Montpellier
France in a setting almost exactly as tacky as Myrtle Beach.
*Alas, Paul Sessum, 57, was killed
August 17, 1998, when he wrecked his van on Route 71 en route
between Austin and Palacios. We will not soon see his like.
Whatever Dave Larrimore is doing with the boat at the moment,
if anything, I imagine it is still in real good condition,
probably in better condition than when I left it out at
Nigel's house in Leander where it was frequently full of
water for 18 months and suffered a delamination propagating
back from the bottom of the stem (thankfully on one side
only) of a few square feet. In light of the differential
expansion and contraction of thickened epoxy and the underlying
planking as the weather cycles, the excessively thick fairing
required to fill in the hollow of the original construction in
that area may have been the cause as there was no delamination
elsewhere. In an eleemosynary spirit, Houston let me put it
in his yard a few months later where the outdoor repair turned
out to be fairly easy. I removed the delaminated epoxy,
laminated in strips of wood thin enough to conform to the
curved surface of the underlying wood until it was
sufficiently bulked out and refaired it.
Construction details:
frame, recycled long-leaf pine; planking, luan;
deck, #12 canvas over 3/8" marine plywood; transom, Honduras mahoghany;
spars, spruce; 3.8 oz. sails by Thurston, 740 lbs
I coded this page in 1995. I imagine if I were doing it over, I'd put
in a Wiki for your comments. The rhetoric of a true shaggy dog
story now seems to me sort of lame, but I have left the text and its
page's primitive design the same out of respect for one's past.
Fast forward to 2017. I reflect on the pleasures
and regrets about building and sailing the unnamed Titmouse.
The bottom line is driving a shapely hull through the water under
sail. I guesstimate that I took the boat out 25+ times after building
her. So the project was like living in Paris: been there, done that.
Check out my latest project
here.
Let me tell you about my homebuilt Titmouse. This design is the
biggest 15' option for a novice to homebuild and the prettiest (see above). I built it
in the living room/dining room area (after tearing out a wall)
when the wife and I lived in a tiny little rent house, the last
house on a dead end street in the Clarksville section of
Austin Texas.
Houston, surely you remember this scene - the boat in the house
on 9th street - as you lived a block away then and were
among those who helped me get it out of the house through the
opening which I made by temporarily removing the 2 windows
just visible in the background (plus 2 2x4 studs, 8 sash weights
and some trim). After nailing back the windows that afternoon,
I never did get around to reinstalling the rusty iron sash
weights which lay piled on the stoop in silent reproach until
we moved away.
Commenced in 1976, it hit the water in
1982 and I sailed it for some years on Lake Travis (22 miles
from town) from a marina in Volente. I sailed it single-handed
(although it could have been sailed much harder and faster
with a crew of 2) and my most pleasurable outing was
watching the July 4 race on Lake Travis one time. Wind was
gusting around 20 mph and I sailed reefed with working jib as the
fleet did 2 turns around Starnes (Rattlesnake) Island. I will never
forget the crewman who looked down at me as his boat raced past
and said "Good lard, a Titmouse and sailing reefed!" The social
politics of this event (the annual July 4th weekend Texas Governor's
Cup) are amusing. Far and away the sexiest sport event in the Austin
area, it is downplayed by the press which focus on ethnic picnickers
in the park as America celebrates her top secular holiday. At best
you might see an otherwise unidentified distance shot of the fleet
on local TV news at the end of the broadcast. Seeing the boats heel
as they rounded a turnpoint from closeup and from a vantage point
close to waterlevel was eyeball candy of the highest degree.
Later on I lucked into a cheap co-op woodworking space and
took the boat there with the idea that I should sand down
(inside the boat) the ridges where the
shaper-coved strip planking overrode one another as they formed the
curve of the bilge. It was really quite ugly and something to
nitpick over while sailing about alone and eating peanut butter,
tomato and pickle sandwiches on upscale designer bread. This
turned out to be a relatively easy job so I started considering
the hull's real (outside) shape. As I had been a novice boat
builder, the hull had hollows and dips, even with considerable
sanding of it after turning it upside down in the driveway, and
was not fair in the technical sense. So I committed myself to
a truly fair hull. Now that was a job of work and
retrospectively a great waste of time. Still, fairing the hull
which stayed rightside up and was winched up and down from the
ceiling to different working heights and thus viewing it from
various prospectives was aesthetically so compelling that I was
unable to stop till it was done. Like sailing it for the first
time (or getting it out the window or framing in the cockpit
or installing the deck), the spray painting of it too was a great
culmination.*
Alas, I did not photograph it after spray painting whilst it was
still hanging from the ceiling. Too bad! Remember, though, that
the hull's painfully acquired fairness is perceptible only by touch!
This shows an early stage of the fairing process. The centerboard
you see is quite primitive: brass capped 3/4" plywood board
with lead inserts for negative buoyancy. It and especially the
rudder as designed, also 3/4" plywood, are inadequate. Phil
Bolger designed an end plate for the rudder of my unnamed
Titmouse which improved steering considerably. He billed
me $25.
Imagine my surprise when I was told a year later that the boat was
still in Austin in someone's backyard and had never hit the water.
Before selling, I had thought to install a salvaged Geo Metro 1
liter Suzuki-made engine as an inboard, but with the configuration
as designed (see Sam Rabl's Building a Boat in Your Own
Backyard at your local public library and still in print),
there is no room. Only six months after this stunning news, it
struck me that there would be plenty of room in a 9 foot cockpit
if I ripped out the 4 foot long centerboard case.
Then the boat could be a motorboat (as its lines permit*) and,
perhaps, somewhere down the pike a new keel could be retrofitted
below the hull so as to regain the sailing option.
The boat is gone from Austin. Dave Larrimore its present owner
is building a log cabin somewhere in south Texas. I hope he
gets it in the ocean or in a lake and sails it. He comes
through Austin frequently though or so I have been told and
I have asked the guy he stays with to ask him to call me if
he still wants to sell it. At age 64 (in 1999) in a subtropical
climate albeit in robust good health, I can't help wondering
whether I shouldn't blow it off and leave the project stranded
in cyberspace where I can look at it. And yet from time to time
I walk over to Red River Motors to stare in wild surmise at
the engine in one or another of the wrecked Geo Metros
which fill their yard: why not use the A/C compressor to
run a tiny reefer for a six-pack? (Red River Motors became The Garage Mahal restaurant. The restaurant moved. Haven't recently checked to see what's there now. Unlike Red River Motors, I am still here on the cusp of 2017. As for robust good health, as I said I'm still here. When I go to the gym [a pair of 8 lb.weights in a corner of the great room of our 1 bedroom condo], I do 12 lateral lifts). Is it now unrealistic to
imagine that I will some day repaint the boat high gloss
Highway Dept. yellow?* This after converting and installing
the Chevy Sprint mill, modifying the skeg and sizing the
prop and new rudder. Don't forget the instrumentation dials!
Vroom, vroom...boat dreams!