# "best" micro hull design



## Edfish (Jan 4, 2013)

What elements of hull design maximize the trade-off between draft (less is more) and ride in rough water (smoother is better)?  What skiffs do it best?

This is where I'm coming from: most of us seem to want boats that float shallow, and most of us seem to want boats that ride well.  This seems like a trade-off to me.  I guess that trade-off would be maximized by the greatest ride per draft inch.  
Maybe there is no real objective way to quantify "ride". The best I came up with is max wave height you'd be comfortable operating the boat at ~15mph, assuming some moderate interval.  Draft seems like it should be floating with two people and gear.  In the spirit of microskiff, I guess limiting power to <70hp.  

I know nothing about the hull design and probably less about physics than most of you, but my guess is one would need a flat back and a sharp entry.  Is that it?  How does bow height play in?  Are there "tricks" bottom design that can create a better ride, or does it make more sense to figure out how to get a heavy hull to float shallower?


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## BayStYat (Sep 12, 2012)

Glide and Caimen 

This is just my opinion.


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## el9surf (Dec 23, 2008)

Getting into a Ford vs Chevy debate on who does it best.


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## anytide (Jul 30, 2009)

8 pages and some butthurt HB owners.....


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## CurtisWright (May 9, 2012)

This entire website exists to debate this one argument.


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## mudd_minnow (Oct 13, 2010)

I believe:
   If you want to draft shallow, the hull needs to displace a lot of water (surface water). The wider the hull, the larger the water surface area that has to be displaced for the hull to float..  A deep V type hull will not get a shallow draft. But, with a flat hull you get a bumpy ride.  That is the trade off.  My Carolina skiff would draft very shallow with a lot of weight but would beat the snot out of you if you ran it hard in choppy water. 
   Boat manufactures try to combine each style in boats to get the best of both worlds.


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## Edfish (Jan 4, 2013)

> Getting into a Ford vs Chevy debate on who does it best.


I get this. I'm most curious if the boats mentioned most often share common features. I'm also curious if there is actually a theoretical "sweet spot" of multiple attributes (e.g., weight, deadrise, beam, or maybe surface area). It seems like there should be some sort of "frontier" where the boats that are considered to have the best ride for the draft would need similar ratios of these attributes. 

If the ride per draft is a function of a lot of hull details, the problem maybe isn't tractable--i.e may not be reasonable to find the "sweet spot", and we're left to just argue over whose boat is better. But if there are some basic ratios, it seems like theoretically the "best ride for the draft" could be built across a range of sizes, with power scaling up accordingly. 
Maybe I should bug some friends with more of an engineering background, I'm a bit out of my league...


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## anytide (Jul 30, 2009)

as for micros Yat is spot on... lil bit bigger then your into Hewes / Mav as flats boats.


just ask mike....

[smiley=jackson.gif]


its all about physics , there not enough hull / mass in a micro to cut thru chop and make a smooth ride, as you gain more "entry" / weight the ride feels better. 
true micros arent for anykind of chop - shallow yes.


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## pt448 (Mar 22, 2014)

Read Chris Morejohn's blog post from Friday 1/9. He posted a thread on here a few days back too. He talks about a lot of hull design elements with pictures of current skiffs as examples. It's a very interesting read. Sounds like he's designing the perfect skiff for Tom. 6" draft and a ride that rivals a Marquesa. 60-90 hp.

http://chrismorejohn.blogspot.com/


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## jaythefisherman (Feb 13, 2013)

this was an excellent article, very well thought out, lots of good insight1


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## tj14 (Sep 8, 2013)

In a micro, just can't include just draft and "ride" imo. Ought to include stability also.....


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## Edfish (Jan 4, 2013)

> In a micro, just can't include just draft and "ride" imo.  Ought to include stability also.....


I think that's fair, and I initially considered it. But then I had trouble coming up with a micro that's decent in chop and decent in draft and not stable "enough". I know it's all subjective, but the stability to me was more subjective than the other two (draft + ride) and I know a lot of guys fishing narrow, "less stable" rigs who bounce around them pretty nimbly. Further, it seems that if one wants shallow draft and decent ride, one would need enough mass in the boat so as to require a beam likely to yield reasonable stability. 

I need to do some physics homework. I had read Chris Morejohn's post, and that's actually what got me thinking on this line. Chris obviously has a ton of experience to be able to draw (or carve) something and intuit how it will function in water. I lack this experience and intuition, so I wondered what an analytic approach could yield. The answer so far, is not much


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## coconutgroves (Sep 23, 2013)

Man, I hate to ask this question since it might further fuel a Chevy vs Ford debate - completely honest here, that isn't my intention, but here she blows...

I've heard several people mention the Glide as the top micro, but how does it compare to the HB Glades Skiff?  The Glades Skiff is 8" longer (17'8" compared to 17'), but the beam is the same.

I have not fished out of a Glide, but have seen one in person here in Austin.  I recently fished out of a Glades Skiff for the first time and was blown away at the draft.  It gets about 2" shallower than my boat (4"-5" compared to 6" to 7").  That extra 2" opens up an entirely new world.

Outside of brand preference and subjectivity, what technically separates these boats?


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## mmccull5 (Nov 15, 2012)

> Read Chris Morejohn's blog post from Friday 1/9.  He posted a thread on here a few days back too.  He talks about a lot of hull design elements with pictures of current skiffs as examples.  It's a very interesting read.  Sounds like he's designing the perfect skiff for Tom.  6" draft and a ride that rivals a Marquesa.  60-90 hp.
> 
> http://chrismorejohn.blogspot.com/


great blog. thanks for the heads up


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## Brett (Jul 16, 2008)

One of the favorite topics at the ramp at the end of the morning.
Best design, greatest flats skiff, best ride, shallowest poling,
least expensive...always ends up the same, on a scale from 1 to 10, there ain't no 10's.
To get shallow you have to have minimal draft. To obtain minimal draft
you have to maximize the area in contact with the water and minimize load.
To be able to pole easily the 3 to 1 rule seems to work (length = 3 x width)
So you end up with a long skinny hull that weighs almost nothing,
then try to run it in water where a 2 foot wave has the cross sectional mass measured in tons
being impacted by a hull that weighs a fraction of a ton. Wave wins, every time.
There aren't any perfect skiffs, just ones that get the job done.


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## oysterbreath (Jan 13, 2009)

Brett, please wait till the thread reaches at least 3-4 pages before offering up your infamous "game ending commentary!" ;-)

My 2 cent:
blah blah blah, everything Brett said but with a few more Ebonics inclined euphemisms.
Naw but seriously, I think that when asking this sort of question you have to approach it almost as if you have a magical matrix of importance.

For example, is storage or transporting this skiff important? If I didn't have to store the boat at home or tow it...I would want a 20 foot long x 50" wide microskiff. But since garage storage is a biggy...16 foot is ideal. BUT as ya' know, a 16 footer sacrifices a whole slue of other properties. So in reality, one would have to work up a program matrix/list of skiff properties so that as you select one specific property, other properties would automatically react. If speed is important, you're gonna have to sacrifice supper light weightiness and small motor desire. Someone needs to figure out how all these things are related and get a good list together. That would help folks to see the light.


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## Brett (Jul 16, 2008)

Matrix of importance, eh?
Can that be done? Maybe.

                        
W                   
  E               T
    I             S
     G         ROOF 
       H         C
          T   
         R
       O
      F
    M
  O
C


As weight goes down and comfort goes up, the cost goes through the roof  ;D


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## Godzuki86 (Nov 30, 2013)

> Matrix of importance, eh?
> Can that be done? Maybe.
> 
> 
> ...


Your T in cost is crooked.


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## Brett (Jul 16, 2008)

Not only that, bit I think one of the O's is inverted.


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## Godzuki86 (Nov 30, 2013)

> Not only that, bit I think one of the O's is inverted.


Or just backwards.


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## [email protected] (Nov 6, 2013)

> Man, I hate to ask this question since it might further fuel a Chevy vs Ford debate - completely honest here, that isn't my intention, but here she blows...
> 
> I've heard several people mention the Glide as the top micro, but how does it compare to the HB Glades Skiff?  The Glades Skiff is 8" longer (17'8" compared to 17'), but the beam is the same.
> 
> ...


Never been on either of the skiffs but from just looking at the 2 hull designs I would say the glide has bigger spray rails which will give you a dryer ride. But with the same beam I would have to guess it would take away from the surface area at the waterline which would make the skiff less stable. I think the Glide has a sharper entry which would cut thru waves a little better but maybe the Gladeskiff makes up for that with its extra length to span waves. This is all just using my good old Florida high school education so I could be far off.   As you can tell I didn't learn much in writing/grammar class so I could be very far off.


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## paint it black (Nov 3, 2007)

Don't sleep on the 17' non-tunnel Shadowcast. It will impress. I've been running one of the prototypes for almost a year now, and can tell you it will not disappoint.


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## Jared T. (Apr 13, 2014)

I have done a good amount of long distance kayaking in kayaks longer than most true micros. The kayaks always ride like a Cadillac when fully loaded.  I preferred paddling a full load in nasty weather. 

This might sound crazy buuuuuut .........why not mimic that. Have water ballasts to increase weight while running and pumped back out when coming onto flat?


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## Godzuki86 (Nov 30, 2013)

In theory that sounds good. Only problem is a micro on plane is a bit different than a yak under paddle. Most of the hull surfaces are flat on micros and when on plane the nose is out of the water just pounding away.


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## Rediculous (May 5, 2012)

> I have done a good amount of long distance kayaking in kayaks longer than most true micros. The kayaks always ride like a Cadillac when fully loaded.  I preferred paddling a full load in nasty weather.
> 
> This might sound crazy buuuuuut .........why not mimic that. Have water ballasts to increase weight while running and pumped back out when coming onto flat?


I've pondered this, also... Before I refurbed my skiff, it was really light and floated crazy shallow. But was absolutely horrendous on plane in a chop. After the refurbing and adding close to 120lbs.It now rides pretty damn good in a chop, but it no longer goes as shallow as she used to. I'm not upset with the trade-off, considering the difference in ride far out weighs the little bit of draft sacrificed. But, I thought... what if you could have your cake and eat it to? Having some sort of ballast in the right spots to assist, seems like a good idea. We used to have 2 350lb ballast sacs we'd fill when wakeboarding. I'm in no way an engineer or designer. But adding weight to my skiff did nothing but enhance the way my skiff rides. I'm curious to hear from an engineer or designer, how this would or would not work though.


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## Brett (Jul 16, 2008)

Been there, read that...http://www.westsystem.com/ss/the-pt-skiff/


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## Edfish (Jan 4, 2013)

Thanks for responses.  
What I'm imagining doing is building a small, simple piece of pseudo-code to allow a user to enter attributes above: LOA, beam, entry angle, deadrise, possibly beam and deadrise at a multiple percentages of LOA from transom to bow.  This information should allow rough approximations of surface area, and with a little meta-analysis on mass-per-surface area from common micros, hopefully displacement. Ride will probably only be evaluated as a relative index of some force generated by the mass of the vessel and entry angle.  Perhaps this will need to be integrated over the bow-third of the vessel, assuming planing travel as opposed to displacement.  
If there really is a physical trade-off between ride and draft (and there seems to be) this trade-off should be returnable from the basic inputs that determine hull shape.  Just the shape of that trade-off could be informative.  A 1:1 trade-off would just be a choice of what you wanted more.  But a concave down decreasing trade-off would mean some "sweet spot" of the best ride per draft.  

Feel free to critique however you want to.  Sometimes criticism keeps stupid ideas from causing more damage


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