Arethusa 15: a glued clinker - or multi-chine - 15 foot sailing dinghy or beach cruiser for the home boat builder, with gunter yawl and lug rig options.

Arethusa is a beamy, yawl or una rigged gunter or balanced lug design, flat-floored, round-bilged and stable with a broad but well-lifted tumble-home transom not so dissimilar to the gaff rigged Apple's, with excellent carrying capacity, and being unballasted and light and beamy has a long forebody as on the IO_11 to slice through a sharp wind against tide chop without being brought up short or throwing spray in a dramatic fashion. She would be a good beach cruiser for a couple or a single-hander, whichever rig is chosen, as well as making a fast and easily handled day sailer. She is suitable for open water, but very spacious with her lowered decks and ample lounging room. The set up and rigging is simple and straight-forward, allowing for fast and trouble-free launching after trailing, whilst her strength and relatively light weight make her very suitable for trailer-sailing. She can be constructed either as a stitched seam multi-chine hull or as a glued clinker one, using the same moulds, and one sheet details the inverted mould set-up, with the bevels and clinker laps having been justified for each plank at each station to ensure that the final appearance as shown below is accurate and appealing, though the main plans deal specifically with the stitched construction. The sail plans go from a very modest single lug, to a handy lug yawl or a gunter yawl with foresail. The lug yawl has an offset mizzen and conventional tiller, while the gunter has a centred mizzen partnered with a wishbone tiller. There are also two different cockpit layouts, each with 9 separate yet accessible buoyancy tanks. A pair of long - 2.5m - oars can be stowed within the boat out of the way and unobtrusive, yet ready for instant use without cluttering up gunwales or seating within the cockpitm

LOA: 4.648m or 15ft 3"; BOA: 1.803m or 5ft 11"; maximum designed displacement: 450 kg; rigged weight is around 300lbs or 140 kg; sail area gunter yawl approximately 11.6 sq m or 125 sq ft.

The hull planking takes 5 sheets of 6 mm ply for the stitched version, with an additional 5 sheets of 5 for decks, framing and bulkheads and cockpit. All the strakes, decks and bulkheads are carefully nested to make the most of the material. The stitched hull is shown in the two studies below, while the third one below them shows how the hull will appear if the offsets are used for glued clinker planking. The bevel, plank overlap and edge radius were laid out for each plank at each station on the body plan and then projected onto the profile so that the lower edge of each plank would accurately reflect the true finished appearance.

Unless otherwise attributed: Copyright © Tom Dunderdale 2000. All rights reserved.