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Old 02-07-2014, 06:11 PM   #34
Tad Roberts
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City: Flattop Islands
Vessel Name: Blackfish
Vessel Model: custom
Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 724
Quote:
Originally Posted by sunchaser View Post
Some of DeFever's earlier FD designs were vessels with canoe style sterns much like Eric's. He was not pleased with the canoe stern vessels' hobby horsing, stability at anchor and lessened carrying capacity aft. So in the late 60s and into the 70s he started designing very large FD yachts with no canoe stern and gasp, active stabilizers! I was fortunate this past summer to be on one of his earlier canoe stern designs, his first yacht type vessel. A DeFever FD design all the way
I'll be a bit nit-picky...... It's (another) fine point but I wouldn't say DeFever ever designed a canoe stern. If you google "canoe stern" you'll get a lot of pictures of double-enders and boats (as the Willard) with narrow, tight-radius round sterns. They used to be called "Cruiser" sterns in the UK. These could be called canoe sterns. The early DeFever stern was that of Marda, pictured below. This is a wide, rounded shape, with large transverse flat, usually with a knuckle well above waterline where the hull bottom ends. Here in BC we call this a Horseshoe stern, it's common on trollers and other fishboats.

The Horseshoe is very definitely a displacement hull feature, designed to ease the return of water from under the hull to the "at rest" level somewhere astern. At the correct speed this stern leaves no wake at all. The deeply immersed transom of DeFever's later designs is far more "draggy", but does allow greater speed without squatting. It costs money to drag that around though......of course I know you toy boat owners don't care about such things

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