Trimaran - Especially Searunner - Owners

[stevelf]

SO, I can't wait to hear:
What is it...??
And BTW it's an '8i...

[Cavalier MK2]

Modified Piver, Nimble if it is 30 feet, you might want to measure it. The cabin treatment is a little like a Cross and actually better looking than the stock one though you can see a bit of the old window arch in the picture from the head looking aft. My guess any way.... Jack be Nimble. Jack be quick. Do you like this this boat enough to stick? Cause these Searunner guys will laugh themselves sick!
You could do far worse for a freebie as far as the basic concept goes, proven hulls, more steamlined cabin. How solid is determined by you the man on the scene. The paint will take a fair amount of serious sanding. I've had to go through years of old paint on boats up to 60', you'll need electricity power tools and stamina. Or camouflage paint and count the texture as part of the finish. I'll check back tomorrow after the carnage.....remember the important thing is what you think you can do. A 30 tri is lots of exercise to get in shape, 90 feet of waterline etc....You can aways say the boat was an extra in Waterworld and go sailing.

[rossad]

Hate to say it but this Tri is a finished commodity
Only a fool would take it on ......
Unless it was a fathers or families once pride and joy.
Sentimental reasons and that would be the only good enough reason to take her on.
Its a bygone era. And in New Zealand they are in every creek. Like so many rotting past their used by date. Sorry Arthur Piver but that is why museums are part of our society.

[stevelf]

WOW, and I didn't even show you any of the more challenging photos of the inside of the starboard ama...... and the last being inside starboard birth....

[Mark Johnson]

Stevelf,
Rossad said it well. Listen to him!

Even in perfect shape this stretched stern Piver is obsolete, but in THIS condition... WOW! What a time & money pit!

Its not that you "can't" bring it back, its that by comparison... if you were to set yourself up properly with a boat building structure, then live on site in a tent or camper and work EVERY day, (using the quicker mass production techniques I have explained)... you could build a nice Marples CC 30 "from scratch", in less time and possibly even less money! Then you would have a better designed WEST system & LP painted boat, that has a fraction of the maintenance, many times the lifespan, and 10X the resale value.

Old pre WEST/LP ply "one offs" can in fact last for decades too, but seldom do, because they only survive over 30 years with frequent MAINTENANCE. Very few boats got this! IT BECOMES HEARTBREAKING. Tris have a surface area that's about the same as a monohull 3X as long!

If the paint peels, the glass job gets brittle and weak. (Production boat's gel coat prevents this). On the one off, when the VERY thin glass job gets sun rot, it gets hundreds of little micro pores, that let in water. Then the wood swells, and the micro pores become large zippers all over. It is very hard to re-glass a boat without stripping ALL of the hardware off first. Building a hull is just a small fraction of building a boat. The VAST majority of the money and work is in the rig, hardware, sails, and interior with its systems.

Boats like this Piver you've found, are the very ones I referred to in the past, that litter the beaches and lagoons, all over the world. From a practical point of view... It is a dead boat!

I have helped clients find older but still cruisable boats in the past. There are hundreds of real bargains in tris out there, that just need a 6 month spiff up. In the 30' range, like this Piver, you're talking as little as $18,000 to as much as $30,000! U.S.

(Remember... a production multihull this size is WELL over $100,000). These "good buys" are out there, but the WEST/LP versions are at 2 or 3X the price. The better 10% of earlier boats can still be fine cruisers too, IF they had just one or two owners, that were DEDICATED to constant maintenance.

Best of luck...

M.

[Boatguy30]

Probably best to leave it as "not a Searunner" and move on from that particular boat on this thread........

[capta]

I'm sorry, but even I have to agree with the general consensus.
Had it been a Searunner 31, then maybe it might have been worth the effort, but this is a first generation tri and really not worth the time and money to even get her in sailing condition.
You should be able to find a Searunner in the Bay Area or PNW fairly cheaply, if you are patient and industrious.
I do know what it's like to get a desire for an impractical boat; there's a 65'ish tri down here in Martinique that should go for a song, but it would be such an impractical cruising boat that the thought of buying and outfitting it for our needs is just plain stupid. But she is SO beautiful, and it would be cool to cruise around at 10 to 15 knots, everyday. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to stick to our old comfortable monohull.

[stevelf]

THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH-- I am letting this boat go... I mistakenly thought I could get her sailing quickly and I was wrong. Seeing a foot and a half of water in that starboard ama yesterday was the last straw. It has probably been entering deckside for years. The boat is in the Napa marina.
So my quest continues... again, thanks-- at least I am going in the right direction!!
Steve

[Cavalier MK2]

Here are Norm Cross' thoughts on Constant Camber which might help people evaluate what they are promoting. From Dec 14, 1982 Norm's comments are in parentheses, I put in a few using brackets.

Subject: Constant Camber cold molding construction.

This is in reply to the number of inquiries I have had wanting to know why I do not use this method of construction.

I will try to explain my reasons.

When I designed my first round bottom double-diagonal plywood hull in 1966 I wanted to design a hull that would be simple to plank. The radiused section seemed ideal. I designed a variable radiused hull having a very large radius at the bow section. From the bow aft the radiuses became progressively smaller so that the smallest section was at the transom.

This early design was a better shape than the present constant camber section. It had a lot more room because of the more ideal radius midship.

This was a nice hull shape but it was not a round bottom hull shape below the waterline, it was only a radiused version of the early AYRS/Piver 90 degree bottom hull ( but did not have the reserve buoyancy aft at the transom that I now felt was required).

I then modified the hull shape from the midsection to the transom to provide more reserve buoyancy aft.

This was a improvement over the variable radiused hull but still not the ideal hull shape.

I finally decided that the ideal hull shape should be close to an elliptical section with a veed shape at the keel profile.

I have used this hull shape, with slight modifications for the last 10 - 12 years. It is a good compromise; good hull shape, good accommodation and still easy to plank. Hundreds of my trimarans have been built using this hull design.

My personal feeling is that if I used the constant camber hull design I would be going backward over 16 years in hull design. It is just too big a compromise I would have to make.

My main objections to the constant camber design are:

1) Limited accommodation, narrow width of the main hull. You have to build a longer boat to get the same accommodations as you would in a more ideal designed hull. a bigger boat means more cost for berthing and haul outs.

2) More wetted surface as it is a radiused version of the 90 degree hull. [hurts light air performance- Cav]

3) Too much rocker on the keel profile. [Hurts top speed performance -Cav]

4) Low buoyancy aft ( you could almost all it a double ender) will have a tendency to hobby horse if weight is not kept midship. [ Hurts all performance.]

5) Deeper main hull draft.

6) Center of buoyancy is very close to 50% of wateriline length, placement of weight is very critical.

7) Lower carrying capacity for a given length.

This is too much of a compromise when you consider that building the hulls mount to about 20% of the total construction time.

If you desire to build a trimaran with no wing deck accommodation (which incidentally could be a wet boat) I feel that it would be better to spend the small amount of extra time it takes to build the ideal hulls (modified ellipse) and end up with a better boat.

For an easier and less expensive way to build I suggest sheet plywood. I'm in the process of designing several sheet plywood, open wingdeck designs with hull shapes similar to my Cross 10,5 trimaran. [Cross 12M-Cav]

The reasons for using sheet plywood are:

1) It is an easy and fast material to work with.

2) It does not require a great deal of fairing or finishing.

3) Cost of marine plywood per sq. ft. is much less than 3-4 layers of veneer plus glue and fastenings.

4) No molds to make.

Compare the accommodations and hull design of the different designs and decide if you want to make that compromise.


Norm sent this out with his plans portfolio and it is as valid today as it was 30 years ago. CC boats require an organized team to make the panels and must have the bulkheads shaped to the skin meaning no patterns. They aren't that much different in the water than those old Pivers. The Searunner has sections that allow it to approach the ideal hull shape and being sheet plywood construction has the advantages posted above. We have noticed that Searunners tend to perform better than CC boats out in the real world as does our Nicol. Being able to precut all those parts make for a faster overall build. ike a cylinder mold boat once the CC skin is completed things start slowing down fast- Check out the unfinished boats that have been appearing on the market. Those Cross, Searunners, Horstmans etc... got old because their builders finished and went sailing. I do think many of the CC boats are atractive and wouldn't reject a good one but I would certainly build something else if starting fresh.

[Boatguy30]

I agree the CC idea has always seemed a bit strange to me and it seems all the projects done with this method seem take much longer than other construction methods despite the various claims.

I was hoping to get the comments of those cruising in temperate climes with stringers on edge. the Searunner I owned was originally built as a bare hull in 1978 and not launched until 2001 in Christchurch, NZ. Despite the weather there, there seemed to be no problems with moisture along the stringers. Perhaps the boats that have experienced problems were cause by heating the inside of the boat to a much higher temp than outside?

I mainly plan to keep my boat in the tropics and have pretty good glues lines in the stringers. It seems to me most water trapped in the stringers comes from leaks or open hatches and with a little ventilation is not a real problem?

Cheers,
Jeff

[Cavalier MK2]

We don't really get the stringer condensation either in the PNW but aren't heating. Good ventilation seems to be the key. I noticed some under deck condenstion in a area with the vents closed that went away with things opened up.

I have some Newick plans where he used CC for amas on a race boat which seems to suit it best because of the long thin shapes it achieves and the rocker there is sometimes wanted. The main hull for speed he designed conventionally.

[Cavalier MK2]

Here is a site that covers condensation for boats and RVs. 3 Simple steps you can take to reduce moisture in your boat or RV.

[Roy M]

Now, for a change of pace, my latest project: the changing of the floorboards. As I'm building the refrigerator, I am constantly reminded of the additional weight of the compressor, coolers, box, cold plate, etc. So, to compensate, I'm replacing the floorboards with much lighter composite Canacore, a hexcell core material that weighs almost nothing. In this first phase, I'm cutting two of the floorboards for the galley sole which will sit atop some 1" X 2" rectangular aluminum tubing (with lightening, not lightning, holes). The cases of Stone IPA and Ballast Point Brewery in the background are industrial solvents much used locally for this work. First pic is cutting the panels from stock Canacore. The second is the first coat of West System to saturate the scrim. Then a pic of the first replacement floorboards, made of 1/2" Baltic birch ply. Then an edge view of a piece of scrap that I'm going to use for destruction testing. Finally, a view of one of the stringers. More pics coming as this evolves. I've got to have the floorboards ready as I approach completion of the reefer. Lots of excitement right now.

[rossad]

gosh i like that material Roy M
Your boat is one of the ones to buy!
Impressed.

Going back to saying it again again and again the Searunner is a genious design.

[Roy M]

Thanks, Rossad, but it's not going to be available for many years (I hope). Bob Dixon, one of the best multihull builders in the world, and one of my oldest friends (along with Jeff Allen, who introduced me to Searunners), turned me on to this stuff. I purchased it at FiberLay, in San Diego. I am considering this stuff for my galley cabinet facings and other work, faced with plastic laminate. Since my boat is getting a complete overhaul, I'm trying to use materials that, had they been available in the 70's, I would have used them then. At least mine was the first West System Searunner 40. That decision, made during the first Middle East Oil Crisis, was very costly, and prescient. The quality of my boat, today, is because of the advice of Jeff Allen, then. I'm of the mind that this same decision making, though expensive, will lead to a vessel that will be performing well for many decades to come. My next exterior project, rebuilding the float hatches, will use this stuff. I'll make a compound curve in the now-flat hatch cover to reduce weight and make them stronger than they already are. After thirty-five years, though, the underside is beginning to show some checking, from the Douglas Fir plywood we had available then. I may even replace all my wet locker hatches with it, as well. But that's down the road. I need to finish some stuff first, and do a haulout in the coming months.