XFS21 version of the XF20

[attownsend]

EvilD

Sounding better by the minute!

.




Man you have'nt seen anything yet.I dive on them all the time for speer fish some and fish from the boat,either I don't leave until I have something decent to show and eat.Evild.BTW, Im an advanced open water
diver license to teach,by PADI.We could have a ball. Build on dude.

[Mike Adams]

Gary,
Lovely work. I'm following your build with interest and I'm real sorry that I missed you when I was in Florida earlier this year - it would have been good to see your boat at first hand.
Who knows, maybe one day I'll build that TW28 (or the bigger version) and sail it across the friggin' Pacific to join you guys fishing on EvilD's reef! Now wouldn't THAT be something to tell the grandkids?

[gpratt]

Latest pics of the seats and casting decks being rough fitted to thge boat. That should be most of the bigger pieces. Now it's time to put it all together.
http://gallery.bateau2.com/thumbnails.p ... 319&page=3

Thanks Mike. I'm sorry we missed out on tipping a few cold ones while we talked about boats and such.

[JeffD]

Gary,

I have been thinking about building an GF16 but have been concerned about hull slap. Do you think the pointed bow thing could be done to the GF16? If so would you tell/show me how?

Thanks,
Jeff D.

[gpratt]

Jeff

I don't see why not but I'm not the expert here. I know that bow steer can happen more with a pointed nose and a flat bottom. I know that it can happen on my OD16 with the step chine. First time it happen to me it was a real attention getter. More for my wife than me. The other negative is it will take more ply for the contruction.

I can describe the how to part better than show.

To start, I laid out the bottom as designed on the ply then used a batten to adjust to a pointed bow. On the XF20 I started narrowing the chine at the front of the forward seat and extended it until it looked right to me (strictly subjective on this one).

Once I had the bottm about right I decided the angle for the bow edge that runs from the bottom to the sheer. LOA ended up being about a foot longer than the XF20 spec.


I raised the nose about 3" and that ran back about 4' to the flat bottom.

I cut templates out of thin cheap ply and fastened them to the bottom. The top of the template was left extra high to allow for the trial and error fit to get the shape and angle to what I thought looked good. Once I had the nose about the where I wanted I used the batten to extend the sides from the original sheer to the new bow point.

From there is was a matter of building the boat hul to spec up to the front seat and custom fab the nose.

If I can help you more feel free to call me at 407 957-9553.

Gary

[OzzyC]

Seeing your boat gives me a lot of inspiration.

[tech_support]

I like the color. That boat may take the award for the most under-deck storage space. Nice job Gary

[gpratt]

Thanks for the kind comments!

Joel
There is a bunch of storage. I'll be using TH Marine Sure Seal hatches with drop in boxes for all the deck openings. That way I can put the stuff regularly used in them and seldom use items below the drop in boxes.

The hard part was paying for all those hatches!

[gpratt]

Most pics of the near completed boat. Hopefully it will get inspected on Friday so I can get it registered. Please ignore the leaves and dirty foot prints just a progress report.

Some testing!

Mounted the engine without the jack plate just to see how it works. Going to try it at a few heights to see what happens. Then I'll put the jack plate on and do some more testing.

The foot wells forward of the front seat has wall recepticles connected to 12 trolling motor batts for my shrimping lights and on wall cover that has my board batt on charger cord in it.

Still need to install the plug for trolling motor. Hole is there just covered with glass and paint.

The console has guages for water press, volts, gas, hrs, tach, engine trim and trim tabs position indicators. Controls for trim tabs and jack plate dial adjustment.

Need to get it to the dealer for 1st startup and activate the warranty.

Will post performance specs as they happen. Hope to get video of the tunnel in action one of these days but not sure the best way to make it available to others. My have to break down one of these days and actully build a web site.

http://gallery.bateau2.com/thumbnails.p ... 319&page=5

Later Gary

[MadRus]

Gary, you've outdone yourself. I thought your OD stood out as one of the finest "amateur" built boats I've ever seen, and would be tough to top, but wow! Congratulations.

I'm not saying it would be profitable, but you can't tell me you couldn't get top dollar for that kind of workmanship!