Wooden Boat People

By McKenzieDriftBoat.com

"Soft Chine"? Anyone ever built one?

When I was doing some boats in the past, I did up a design-model of a dory that I never got around to building, one with a soft chine.

The design had a 'double chine', I guess you would say. Amidships, I had an intermediate 'plank', about 4-5" wide just under the rowing station, bisecting the angle between the sides and the bottom tapering to nothing, bow and stern.

It was my thinking that a boat shaped this way might handle better, especially crossing eddy lines or 'busting out' of a back eddy into swift current. A normal dory will often behave alarmingly when the chine gets grabbed by water counter to the boat's momentum. Most swampings seem to happen when the chine digs in and gets pulled under.

Has anyone ever seen or heard of a soft chined drift boat being built? And/or rowed one? Do you have any opinions on how a boat shaped like this might handle?

The closest boats I've seen to the 'soft-chined' concept are those Hyde glass production boats, which seem to have a larger than normal radius at the chine/bottom. Has anyone rowed one of these and care to extrapolate from there?

I seem to have been 're-infected' with the 'boat disease'. Dang! :>)

Don Hanson

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Don Hanson on May 6, 2011 at 12:29pm

Yes, an interesting idea. So far, nobody seems to have any real experience or actual observations on the question, though. I know how a conventional dory rows and tracks...how they behave in the water. Everyone seems to agree on that.

My first ever dory was a frame-less strip-planked and glass one with no chine caps. The chine 'corner' was probably about an inch radius...so not soft, but not with the chine strip that most boats have. I liked the way that boat handled, especially compared to 'normal' boats, which did exhibit that propensity to 'dip a gunwale' if you went hard sideways into 'soft' water... I could just have been feeling that difference due to weight, as my cedar strip (from the lines of a 14' Eastside glass boat) was super light and quite maneuverable.

I'll have to look around better amongst all my old models and designs..see if I can find the model I did on a 1" : 1' scale with model plywood. I'll post a pic if I do find it...everyone can critique it..I did go pretty fat aft, after running the 'Eastside' boat on the Snake, the Madison and the Yellowstone with two casters.. and three big fishermen with beer and gear...that was a bit of a load for the 14' Eastside lines, I think.

Don Hanson

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Randy Dersham on May 6, 2011 at 2:28pm

There has been a lot of talk about this on this forum and on Montana SnG forums. The big advantage for no chine cap is the lack of chine dip. The big disadvantage of no chine cap is on river repairs.

I was interviewing Martin Litton last week and he said the same thing about early fiberglass boats on the GC with no chine cap. He was chuckling that every lunch the early fiberglass boats would have to repair. Even today there are no, as in almost never, fiberglass boats that run the Rogue River. The potential for damage and the requirement for clean tracking is just too high.

The other interesting difference is side slip. The more rounded the chine area the less damage as the larger radius deflects more energy. The larger the radius the more side slip or less true tracking.

This is all centered around a "hard chine" boat design. I am very intrigued by the idea of a two chine boat and how it might be able to address these issues.