I’ve only found out about this class this evening - via newsletter from Wooden Boat magazine - Now we’re retiring, my wife and I want to go camper vanning, and as I don’t want to tow my full size dayboat around, I thought it’d be fun to have a tiny rc model to take instead. Footy looks fun, and I might get a bit or racing as bonus. Simple question - does the boat have to be pointy, or can I build, for example, a scow type hull if it fits into the box? lazybird
you can build whatever you want so long as it fits into the box. People have built scows, tunnelhulls, catamarans, skiffs, full keeled boats, the list goes on. Scroll through this forum for a couple of pages to get a sense of the breadth of the class… you’ll be amazed!
(also, you’ll find that one footy isn’t ever enough…) welcome to the class, now that you’re in, its gonna be hard to escape!
Check out the Dumptruck - has a blunt nose. Blunt is the new pointy :sly:
Doggone, I wanted to build a Dutch barge, but Dumptruck is even worse!
I am thinking of the old sailing barges, not the canal boats that are in use today. They were very beamy, blunt but rounded on the ends and used lee boards. I would stick to a deep keel though.
BTW, no joke, I am still seriously considering a variant and Dumptruck has only whet my appetite for the idea.
Pete
Hello Lazybird… I know someone did a footy sized Puddleduck and I have been playing around with a drawing of one myself. You can’t get any ‘blunter’ than that! Welcome to footydom, I have had quite a number of footys go to guys in RV’s.
Have fun,
Graham
Here is a scow design with the batteries in the bottom of the keel. This is strictly experimental but Da’s Boot sails reasonably well, and cost very little
Rod
I sailed Da’s Boot on my local pond (the ice was finally out!). The new slimmer keel allowed for reasonable directional stability, but ‘she’ still tips on her ear in a puff, indicating more lead shot is needed. The old keel was too bulky, and had a large amount of buoyancy all on its own.
The object of the original exercise was to keep the weight down by using the batteries a part of the weight of the keel bulb, while still remaining within the Footy rules, (i.e. ‘within the hull’). Currently ‘she’ weighs 422 gms, fully rigged with the ‘A’ rig, with a keel depth of 9.5 inches (24.1 cm.). Unfortunately, a deeper keel would increase the wetted area, while more weight would rather defeat the original purpose.
Not all design experiments work out as desired!
Rod
Rod - I like your hull. Did you carve it from foam? What kind of foam did you use? Did you use some kind of hot wire to carve it?
Actually, I glued together several pieces of pink foam that was torn out of my house when we had some new windows installed. I then drew a rough shape on the foam block with a pencil, followed by cutting with a sharp hunting knife (a sawing action gave a clean cut surface). The resulting shape was then smoothed off with a belt sander, everything handheld, followed by finer sanding with a hand held block of wood with sand paper around it. The end result was given a thin layer of fibreglass and resin. The latter is not really nescessary- latex paint and a light spray varnish would do just as good a job much quicker.
This follows my philosophy that you dont need perfection until you know that “Mark 1” works properly. THEN you put in the work to make something all polished, and primped.
Rod