Wobegone Daze Bow

BOAT REPAIRS & MODIFICATIONS

New Bow for WOBEGON DAZE

The owner of WOBEGON DAZE (a modified Freedom 36) bought the boat as a cat ketch, one of four or five that were changed from the original sloop configuration. Because of the fine bow shape, the heavy mast forward caused the boat to sail bow-down all the time, which made it wet to sail and hard to control. Sponberg Yacht Design designed a new plumb bow to be built right onto the existing bow. Concordia Company Inc. of Padanaram, MA did the construction. For an additional 440 pounds of structure, the boat gained 928 pounds of buoyancy. The redesigned boat now sails on level trim, is easier to control, and sails drier and faster (the waterline was lengthened by 12%!). See the before and after photos. For a complete description of this project, see Eric Sponberg's article "Case Studies in Redesign" in PROFESSIONAL BOATBUILDER magazine, issue no. 45, February/March 1997.

Photo 1. WOBEGON DAZE at the dock at Concordia before modification. We measured the waterline location to verify the "before" flotation.

Photo 2. Construction begins by taking off all the gelcoat in the repair area.

Photo 3. Foam/fiberglass stations were erected at 18" centers, to which were attached pine ribands, which were covered with 1/8" plywood, which in turn was covered with new solid fiberglass laminate. We used computer-generated full-size patterns for making the stations. This method also allowed us to check the fairing of the new hull at four critical stages during construction so that we could ensure the new hull came out perfectly symmetric and fair.

Photo 4. WOBEGON DAZE complete, ready to go back into the water.

Photo 5. WOBEGON DAZE sailing in Newport harbor with her new bow and new wingmast rig.

This type of modification can be applied to just about any boat. Success of a project like this depends on having good design information to begin with (we had the original lines plan), writing a complete and detailed specification, and monitoring the project and the costs. I think one of the great things that helped this project was that Concordia, the owner, and I spent a few hours at the very beginning going over the entire specification line by line to get a complete understanding of the construction process. This helped enormously in making sure that yard management knew what to expect, that the work crew knew what to expect, and that the owner knew what he was getting for his money. The process also revealed any potential pitfalls, such as they may have been, so that we knew how to address them by the time they arrived. It also gave the crew confidence to suggest alternatives to some sticky problems when they showed up. These were quickly brought to attention and solved readily. In all, this was a very successful modification.