Palomino, the Camp Cruising Proa
Palomino is the proa fanboy version of Richard Newick’s venerable Tremolino trimaran. Tremolino used donor parts and pieces from a Hobie 16 in order to jump start the goal of getting a cool little cruising multihull for as little cash and effort as possible, most especially the rig. The rig, being the engine of a sailboat, is an extremely important component, and even more so if the sailboat is intended for high performance. Much like hot rodding, the idea is to take a stock factory engine and plop it into a new and custom body. Let Ford, or Hobie Cat, spend the time and money on research and development, we’ve got better things to do!
Palomino employs any F16 catamaran class rig as her engine. It is 2013, after all. But aside from that it’s pure plywood hot rod. The hull is 23’-6”, or just three sheets of plywood, long. The flat-bottomed dory hull section is inspired by Tremolino and also Skip Johnson’s P-52 and Nomad.
Flat bottom girls you make the boatbuilding world go ‘round.
Accommodations are decidedly spartan. There is a 6’-6” berth flat fore and aft of the 6’ center cockpit. No toilet, no coffee maker. Pack lightly. However, it’s still far more luxurious than a kayak. The cockpit seating is stolen straight off the Tremolino, this may be my favorite part of the design. I extended the laminated cross beams out to leeward so that they could support an additional “hammock”, which can double as useful dry bag storage. Though not drawn, I envision the possibility of an optional “safety ama” at the leeward ends of the beam. Steering and CLR adjustment is via Newick/Brown dagger rudders.
As any proaphile will tell you, it’s not so simple to adjust a beach cat rig to a proa. The demands of shunting and bilateral asymmetry pose some unique challenges for the proa hot rodder. Thankfully, Russell Brown has done a lot of work in this area and I’m more than happy to take his lead. The only real innovation is that the mast step is mounted over a sliding traveler car which permits shifting the mast step fore and aft by up to three feet, either direction.
This allows adjustment of the CLR forward of center, which helps align the forces of the rig to the hull and foils. It also adjusts the mast angle to cant aft, more like the modern racing cats. It also permits sailing balance to be enjoyed without the jib, since shunting the jib is really the Achilles heel of the entire “beach cat rig for proa” program.
So why are the drawings labeled Trigger when the design is named Palomino? All I can say is, blame Roy Rogers.
This is great, Ive been trying to design a similar proa to suit my Hobie 16s rig, I can build very well, but alas, my designing skills are not so good !
Any plans to actually build this, or is it just a design project? I would be happy to build the prototype 😉
Cheers, Dave
Mies van der Rohe would be very proud.
cheers,
Skip
Beautiful and simple. I love it.
Would you raise the floor so that the whole thing is self draining the way Gary Dierking has been doing? It eats some headroom in the cabin, but makes everything else so simple.
I know that it’s a boat for the rig, but I can’t help wondering what a couple of unstayed masts popping out of the cabin tops would be like. They’d be shifted to windward as far as they can go, and still be stepped on the flat bottom.
Its interesting to think about what a safety ama should be shaped like. What does the minimal safety ama, that still puts her back on her feet like a pod, look like?
nicely done,
chris
Beautiful and simple. I love it.
Would you raise the floor so that the whole thing is self draining the way Gary Dierking has been doing? It eats some headroom in the cabin, but makes everything else so simple.
I know that it’s a boat for the rig, but I can’t help wondering what a couple of unstayed masts popping out of the cabin tops would be like. They’d be shifted to windward as far as they can go, and still be stepped on the flat bottom.
Its interesting to think about what a safety ama should be shaped like. What does the minimal safety ama, that still puts her back on her feet like a pod, look like?
nicely done,
chris
I also like the freestanding option that Kevin uses on Skate. I’d work hard to simplify a bit though as he went with a jib and a cat ketch…three lines plus rudder is quite a handful.
I like what Gary Dierking has been doing for his Va’Motu there, but I also like the idea of strapping a surfboard or paddleboard to the lee to give a dual purpose rig.
However, that rig is uber powerful and needs two trapped out sailors to balance it in 10 knots of wind. How is that going to work sitting in the Newick slings?
Dan
Ah, you’ve been busy again, Michael! 😊
Very elegant, as always. I like how you’ve arranged the rigging and how it ties in with the water-stays.
Looks like lots of straight cuts in the panels too. It would be very simple to build I would imagine.
Thanks for the comments, all.
This is great, Ive been trying to design a similar proa to suit my Hobie 16s rig,
I began with the Hobie 16 rig but the 8 and a half foot boom was really interfering with the back stays, the F16 fits a lot better.
Would you raise the floor so that the whole thing is self draining the way Gary Dierking has been doing? It eats some headroom in the cabin, but makes everything else so simple.
Yes, there is a floor that runs the length of the boat, 3” above the waterline. It creates the berth flats and a comfortable floor height for sitting on the hammock seats. Hatches in the floor would be nice to access storage below, though they would need to be fairly water tight.
I know that it’s a boat for the rig, but I can’t help wondering what a couple of unstayed masts popping out of the cabin tops would be like. They’d be shifted to windward as far as they can go, and still be stepped on the flat bottom.
The unstayed schooner rig is tempting but it would ruin the fore and aft cabins for sleeping, even with the masts as far to ww as they can be, which is only 5” off center.
Its interesting to think about what a safety ama should be shaped like. What does the minimal safety ama, that still puts her back on her feet like a pod, look like?
Gary Dierking as made some that I think would work nicely, but I’m thinking that a surf board, SUP board or small kayak strapped to the beams to leeward would make an ideal safety ama as well as turning the boat into a dual use sort of craft.
However, that rig is uber powerful and needs two trapped out sailors to balance it in 10 knots of wind. How is that going to work sitting in the Newick slings?
Great point! Perhaps a bit to much power? The boat would want a water ballasted ama, and the jib would be struck to lower the SA down to 160 sq. ft. It would be nice to be able to reef the main as well, I don’t know if reefing systems are made for the F16. I did find that the AHPC Viper comes in a youth size, with a 145 sq. ft. main. Hmmm, the Hobie Getaway has 180 sq. ft, and even a roller furling jib.
I like it! I’m a believer in the “don’t try and reinvent the wheel” school of life, so this strikes a chord with me.
While I do like the sliding mast step in theory, I don’t think it has enough net effect in this case [with the short-fractional stay-base] to be worth the effort and expense: as the foot moves one way, the head moves the other and the centre of effort probably only moves a few inches in the middle. On such a slight craft as Trigger I think that the crew shuffling their seats aft is going to have far greater impact in balancing the boat (and keeping them from getting too comfy in those hammocks!)
Chris’s Pinto sketch has got me sharpening my pencils. I enjoy this kind of loose design collaboration where we are both somewhat aimed at the same target, but are free to define the target, and the arrow, as best suits us individually.
Here’s a version of Palomino as a cat ketch, two free-standing masts, 172 sq. ft., sails roller furling around the 25’ masts. Originally, I was thinking that the bunks had to be in separate, fore and aft “cabins” that were separated by the 6’ cockpit - an arrangement that would be completely screwed by the two masts, so I didn’t consider it. Chris showed me that the bunks could share cockpit space by butting them head to head. Thinking of the boat as a true camp cruiser, I realized that separate cabins for each crew was rather grand for a vessel that seeks to emulate a floating tent. So forget that, we’re all in the same room while sleeping, which doubles as the living room, dining room and cockpit, when we roll our sleeping bags up and out of the way.
This gives us 12’ of distance between two free-standing masts, which is illustrated below. It looks a bit odd, but not so strange that it just might work. I’ve thrown in a pair of red surfboards slung on the beams and the outline of a cockpit tent, to show that it’s basically a sailing VW microbus.
The benefits of two, widely spaced sails for a proa are well documented elsewhere, but the big deal is that they permit quick and simple fore and aft adjustment of CE by simply playing the sheets.
The HUGE problem with this rig is that while it is certainly simple, it is not cheap, the masts are custom carbon fiber. Are there other options that won’t break the weight or the money bank?
Two things, well maybe three.
I also like this kind of loose finagling, the more minds the merrier.
It might not be too bad to bring the mast in to around knee area offset to one side or the other, the main reason would be to bring the inertia of the masts closer to the center of the boat, it does make a difference.
It might work to have larger diameter hollow wood masts, particularly if you have a sleeved sail, once you start furling there would be a good shunt side and a bad shunt side. This is one reason I like stayed rigs, a few feet of spectra is the easier cheaper solution and I like easier and cheaper.
cheers,
Skip
Very nice! I couldn’t agree more that the cockpit, with the two big sling couches, is the most attractive part of this design. Even the bigger cabins of Pinto would be a coffin compared to that cabin under a tent. But having a place to get out of the sun or crash out when underway does seem like a nice to have.
Moving the masts apart makes the nicest part of the cabin (the part just inside the hatch) more habitable. But the masts just outside the akas gets sheets out of the cockpit. The sheet from the fore mast terminates at the base of the aft mast. The aka right there makes a lovely place to put a whole bunch of cam cleats for all the spaghetti right there, near the helm.
The benefits of two, widely spaced sails for a proa are well documented elsewhere,
I’d love to read your favorite. Link?
This is fun. Speaking of Mies, didn’t he say that its better to be good than original?
chris
I’d love to read your favorite. Link?
Favorite link Lot’s more there. Kevin has done a ton of hands on with proas, he loves him his schooner rig, apparently Laurent is now a convert?
I’ve gone full circle, finding a pretty good rig for Palomino in a mass-produced trimaran, the Weta. It’s only 124 sq. ft. (main+jib) but it looks sweet, and it should move the canoe along well enough. Considering the relatively low righting moment of this little pacific proa, it seems like a good compromise between manufacturing efficiency, price, and performance.
Think you hit right on spot with the last one Michael!
/Garg