# New flats skiff



## Punkrawqer (Dec 26, 2009)

Check out this new skiff.

www.flatsflyer.com 

It isn't a micro but floats like one. I didn't belive it until i saw it. 

if that video won't play click this link

http://www.vimeo.com/19045248


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## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

Nothing really magical going on there, from what I could get to load looks like a light weight no frills boat with a small motor. At 25ft long it should be able to float in spit, bigger boat equals more surface area equals less draft.....

Kinda the concept behind the fx20
http://bateau.com/proddetail.php?prod=XF20


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## Punkrawqer (Dec 26, 2009)

I don't know man. You can't compare those two boats. That fx20 is basically a 20' jon boat, flat bottom and flat front = wet ride...


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## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

Watch the video again, from what I can see it has a completely flat bottom as well, even more so then the FX20. Only differnce is it has a pointed front and sponsons. It's also a prototype, once they actually finish out the interior and add all the bells and whistles their figured will need to change quite a bit.


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## DuckNut (Apr 3, 2009)

What a crappy website...I couldn't get anything to work.


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## anytide (Jul 30, 2009)

> What a crappy website...I couldn't get anything to work.


   :-[ :-/ :'(


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## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

It's pretty bad, I only got it to work by clicking on the option for mobile devices.


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## Brett (Jul 16, 2008)

25 foot long crab skiff with rolled topsides.
Old school hull being updated for sportfishing.
Always was a shallow water design,
never needed much horsepower, a workboat.


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## anytide (Jul 30, 2009)

> It's pretty bad, I only got it to work by clicking on the option for mobile devices.


 -and i thought it was my TRS-80 computer 
- tide


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## oysterbreath (Jan 13, 2009)

Ahhhhh, another Timm Smith design!


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## Punkrawqer (Dec 26, 2009)

> Watch the video again, from what I can see it has a completely flat bottom as well, even more so then the FX20. Only differnce is it has a pointed front and sponsons. It's also a prototype, once they actually finish out the interior and add all the bells and whistles their figured will need to change quite a bit.


Seriously? Lol. You can't get any flatter than the fx20. If you watch the way the boat handles you can obviously tell its hull shape is way different, not flat...


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## anytide (Jul 30, 2009)

i dont know 
"and its fun to drive"  until it digs in and flips over :-X
-'tide


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## Punkrawqer (Dec 26, 2009)

> i dont know
> "and its fun to drive"  until it digs in and flips over :-X
> -'tide


wow...really? :-X


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## Punkrawqer (Dec 26, 2009)

> Watch the video again, from what I can see it has a completely flat bottom as well, even more so then the FX20. Only differnce is it has a pointed front and sponsons. It's also a prototype, once they actually finish out the interior and add all the bells and whistles their figured will need to change quite a bit.


wood is way heavier than glass, right now with all that wood it is heavier that the final production...


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## Brett (Jul 16, 2008)

> wood is way heavier than glass


You might want to rephrase that...


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## oysterbreath (Jan 13, 2009)

> > wood is way heavier than glass
> 
> 
> You might want to rephrase that...


LOL, I saw that too! Maybe he ment Guaiacum sanctum wood? lol well even if he did. the statement is still in error. Go ahead and learn um! lol


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## anytide (Jul 30, 2009)

pound for pound plywood is stronger than steel,, and lighter than f-glass by a mile, lighter than most materials of equal "size" dimensionally (sp.)
-its a cool design- i like it , and it would be fun to have, but it wont pole in any kind of breeze...and isnt practical as a flats "skiff"
but cool            my .02    -anytide


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## WhiteDog70810 (May 6, 2008)

The Flats Flyer is flat bottomed. The XF20 is flat bottomed. Neither has any vee to work with. They will both be wet if it gets rough. The XF20's bottom slopes up toward the bow, but once it is on plane, only the last third of the boat is in the water. Performance wise, they are very similar concepts that target the same customer population, hence Firecat's comparison between the two. One happens to have a pointy nose and one happens to have a flat nose. Pointy nose vs flat nose is mostly a decision of personal preference when no vee is involved. 

I've seen that style of hull on some other production boat, but I can't remember which one. It did pole nice on the video. I was stunned at how easily he spun that big beast. At 25', it should track straight. 

[smiley=1-biggrin.gif]

Wood is heavier than glass? You've kicked a hornets nest. 

[smiley=popcorn2.gif]

Wooden boat no longer means water logged pine planks caulked with tar soaked cotton. Check out Bateau.com. Jacques explains ply/FG composite very eloquently. 

Nate


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## Charlie (Apr 5, 2010)

> > What a crappy website...I couldn't get anything to work.
> 
> 
> :-[ :-/ :'(


Such a conflicting set of emotions!

Didn't work for me either...


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## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

> wood is way heavier than glass


Ummm, no. a Wood/glass composite will weigh much much less then an all glass boat. Wood has gotten a bad wrap over the years, but it is still one of the best and lightest materials, and a boat done right, like the flyer, can out perform and last just as long as a heavy glass boat.


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## Punkrawqer (Dec 26, 2009)

> The Flats Flyer is flat bottomed.  The XF20 is flat bottomed.  Neither has any vee to work with.  They will both be wet if it gets rough.  The XF20's bottom slopes up toward the bow, but once it is on plane, only the last third of the boat is in the water.  Performance wise, they are very similar concepts that target the same customer population, hence Firecat's comparison between the two.  One happens to have a pointy nose and one happens to have a flat nose.  Pointy nose vs flat nose is mostly a decision of personal preference when no vee is involved.


having seen the boat in person, i can assure you all that there is a vee. now we can put that to rest. I don't see why you can't see the vee...i see it in the running video. Oh well, check back on Feb 15 for more information...


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## Punkrawqer (Dec 26, 2009)

> > wood is way heavier than glass
> 
> 
> Ummm, no. a Wood/glass composite will weigh much much less then an all glass boat. Wood has gotten a bad wrap over the years, but it is still one of the best and lightest materials, and a boat done right, like the flyer, can out perform and last just as long as a heavy glass boat.


...wow


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## anytide (Jul 30, 2009)

> > > What a crappy website...I couldn't get anything to work.
> >
> >
> > :-[ :-/ :'(
> ...


 ya gotta WAIT 
-anytide


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## mudd_minnow (Oct 13, 2010)

I think everyone has to admit that for a 25 ft boat that floats shallow that is impresive. As far as the weight, I don't care if it weighs 10,000 lbs, if it floats shallow, poles easy, that's a good thing. This is not a micro skiff but, I think because of it's shallow draft and easy poling, it should be in the class of the larger microskiff's...if there are any. Called the gigantic micro skiffs.... I'm impressed. I had a 20 ft pontoon boat that would float very shallow, and a small trolling motor ran it great.


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## Punkrawqer (Dec 26, 2009)

> > wood is way heavier than glass
> 
> 
> You might want to rephrase that...


Indeed I will, the wood prototype is heavier than the final model...


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## Charlie (Apr 5, 2010)

> > > > What a crappy website...I couldn't get anything to work.
> > >
> > >
> > > :-[ :-/ :'(
> ...


Stupid connection timed out one me..... 

Oh well, another day when the internet feels like going faster....


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## Taterides (Nov 10, 2008)

Looks pretty neat. Some possibilities. Would be fun to check out.
I went in on the mobile/slow computer side and worked fine.


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## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

> Indeed I will, the wood prototype is heavier than the final model...


That makes alot more sense to me. With all the extra bracing in there for creating the mold, most of it can be eliminated once they finish designing the stringer system. I'm not sure about the rolled sheer though, if you do have to run any kind of chop it will be less protection agains spray, but it does make it look fancy


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## floridanative1028 (May 30, 2009)

Dave Exley in that video was the original designer of the Dolphin Super Skiffs and the Banana River skiffs. And I agree with SJ, you can clearly see a slight deadrise in the video (2:08)


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## Boatdesigner (Dec 9, 2009)

The Flats Flyer is NOT a flat bottom boat. It is actually a very unique hull that is more akin to a trimaran or a cat. There is nothing else like it that I have seen. I don't want to say too much as Dave may want to describe it himself as it was his concept. I was merely the one who put his ideas on paper (hard drive!?). Quite frankly, I tried to steer him toward a more conventional design a number of times! The boat does work well though, running very flat and it is very stable. 

The boat in the video is a wood strip running plug that was built to fine tune the design. This hull will be used to build the tooling for the hull and deck molds. I am not sure what the final layup will be, but Dave has mentioned cores and carbon fiber quite a bit. It will be very light, especially for a 25' boat. 

The website was meant as just a tease, I think he has something more planned for a February launch. On the general topic of wood composite construction, whether glass is lighter than wood composite depends a lot on the type and size of boat, as well as how much money the glass builder is willing to spend on autoclaves and pre-pregs. Considering relatively conventional glass composites, the wood composites are very competitive in weight and are somewhat less expensive for a one-off boat.


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## WhiteDog70810 (May 6, 2008)

You all have seen the hull in person, so I stand corrected. The runner that extends to the bow camouflages the deadrise to me.

Nate


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## 345davex (Jan 19, 2010)

*Note from the builder*

A year ago a friend asked me to jump into a microskiff.com forum and do some explaining about the Banana River Skiff.  At that time, I had the urge to mention the Flats Flyer, which we’d already been working on for more than 3 years, but I decided not to.
The same thing happened today with this thread about the Flats Flyer – a friend asked me to jump in.  Since there is no MaxiSkiff.com, I hope you will forgive me for bringing this to MicroSkiff.com. 
Together with a few friends and a lot of help from other marine business professionals, we have spent nearly 5 years developing the Flats Flyer.  It is big: 25 feet long with a 7 foot beam.  At the start of the project we were wondering if we were crazy and if it could possibly do all the things we hoped it would do.  Now we can say, “Yes”.  The only thing it doesn’t do is go extremely fast, but that was never on our list of requirements.
A few days ago we activated FlatsFlyer.com and placed a preview video there to give notice that it is coming.  My apology to all who had difficulty trying to view the video – that was our fault. The problem has been fixed. Anyone whose computer can display a YouTube video will be able to play the Preview at FlatsFlyer.com.
I would love to tell you everything about the Flats Flyer right now, but for some innovations we will have to wait.  I did not think to secure a patent for the level chine design that many flats boats builders use today, but we are protecting the Flats Flyer hull design and must wait for a couple of verifications before we can make those features public.  On the positive side, most of the other 30+ innovations in the Flats Flyer will not be design protected, and now we can tell you about some of those.  When all are revealed, I think some microskiff builders will adopt some of those for their skiffs.
There has been some debate in this thread about the hull bottom shape. What I can tell you is “Yes, it does look like a flat bottom boat” and “No, it is not flat.”  We selected video clips that did not give a good look at the hull bottom.  The only other thing I can say about the hull at this time is that the boat has a surprisingly comfortable and dry ride, has superior stability, and I think it is the quietest flats boat ever built.  When poling, it has almost zero forward vibration signature.
Another point of debate in this thread is about the value of wood in modern boat building.  Production Flats Flyers will be built of inorganic composites – no wood – but I find no fault in using wood for my personal boats and plan to build a wood rowboat for myself in the near future.  Wood has a lot of wonderful qualities for boat building, but the Flats Flyer will be built with fibers and pvc foam composites, held together by 100% epoxy, and post cured in a large oven for max strength and impact resistance.  PS – select balsa wood is very light and is an outstanding composite core for certain applications.
We expect finished and fully equipped Flats Flyers, including 3 batteries and filled gas and water tanks, will weigh about the same as the bare wood prototype seen in the preview video, or maybe weigh a little less.  The boat seen in the video weighs nearly 1,600 lbs. before adding motor, battery, etc.  It took 20 healthy guys lifting wood extensions to carry it out of the barn and turn it over; then we trimmed out some excess to bring it down to 1,600.  We weighed it on a certified scale.
I’m pretty sure the Flats Flyer has more development time and more innovations than any other flats boat ever built.  To back me up, I’ll tell you a little about it:  In May 2006, Jesse and Clint Marshall and I began a conversation about building a new flats boat.  In August, we decided to build one.  In October, we attended the annual IBEX (International Boatbuilders’ Exhibition for marine professionals; about 1,000 exhibitors were there) to see all the latest hardware offerings and make decisions for hardware in our boat.  It is a real bummer if you build a boat and then discover you have to get out the chainsaw to get the hardware to fit.  From that point, I worked full time for 5 months designing and drawing it.  We started with a blank sheet of paper, not building onto or using anything from a pre-existing boat.  We looked at every single piece and part of flats boats and asked “How could this be done better?”  In January 2007, I began sending the drawings to Timm Smith of Smith Marine Design who loaded those into his CAD program (created a table of offsets and made 3D drawings).  He would send me the CAD files and, with a CAD reader, on my computer screen I could “fly” the boat in all directions and look at it from all angles, zoom in and out, and discuss lines and changes with Timm.  We talked a lot of theory and debated a lot of possibilities.  In April, we printed 20 full size cross section drawings on 3x8 foot stabilized blueprint paper (the same used for templating airplane parts), glued those onto sheets of very stable  ¾ plywood (I think it is 13 ply), and very carefully cut those out to make sturdy plywood rib cross sections.  Jesse and Clint built a nearly perfect building platform (less than 1/32 inch variation on surface height), and we erected the plywood sections on about 14 inch centers and trued them up.  Then we bought a pile of #1 white pine in 20’ lengths, many sheets of 3/8 and ½  marine grade plywood, ProSet epoxies and 10 oz fiberglass cloth and began planking and fairing.
The hull was difficult to build, particularly because Jesse is a perfectionist.  Then, GET THIS, after nearly 4 labor intensive months of building the hull, we took it for the first test ride and after only 15 semi-satisfying minutes we took the boat back to the shop, turned it over, and cut away more than one third of the bottom and rebuilt it.  We rebuilt the hull several times and fine tuned it a lot.  That took a few more months.  By the way, the finished boat will be a bit lower than the video prototype boat. It still has a builder’s form attached on top of the gunwales (gunnels) to help keep everything true until we cast the hull mold.
You may find this interesting:  before we cut the first piece of wood we knew the hull’s center of balance and center of gravity (both 58% back from the bow), its flotation value (2,370 lbs at 6 inch draw) and some other things that I struggle to understand, such as prismatic coefficient.  Among other benefits, that knowledge guided us to locate things like batteries and fuel tanks for optimum balance.  Most small boats are delivered with empty storage areas.  The Flats Flyer will be delivered with every necessary component already installed and placed in the best locations for good access and balance, much like a well designed car.  That brings me to a few innovations I can reveal to you:
1. The Flats Flyer has a ballast system.  In our preview video, if you look at the first poling clip what you are not shown is the beginning footage of that clip.  At the start of that missing footage the bow is slightly out of the water and gradually lowers until the hull is perfectly level.  The colored stripes at the waterline fore, mid, and aft, indicate inches of draw at those locations.  The lower edge of the red stripes is 6 inches above the keel, so on that video clip you can see the boat is drawing almost 6 inches the full length of its keel.  When a hull is at optimum level, it moves through the water easiest and is floating its shallowest.  There are other things ballast can do:  you can make an unpowered boat point into the wind or point downwind or to points in between.  So you don’t have to fight to keep the boat pointed in the direction you want to go.  Or another way to think of it: if the boat tracks straight, you get to use most of your poling energy to move the boat forward.  The FF hull was designed to respond to ballast.  If you try to add a ballast system to most boats you may be fighting against some inherent buoyancy and balance points that don’t want to cooperate.  To avoid that, I can tell you about another innovation:
2. A section of the Flats Flyer hull is open to the sea at all times – it has no buoyancy in that section and helps trim the boat with less ballast.  That section is securely isolated from the rest of the hull and doubles as a pump room with inlets and outlets for livewell, baitwell, etc.  That brings us to another innovation:
3. The main bilge of the Flats Flyer has no thru-hulls. Marine insurers will tell you the majority of boat sinkings are due to drain plug accidents and bilge thru-hull, hose, hose connections and pump failures.  Our solution: no drain plug or thru-hulls in the sealed main bilge under the self-bailing cockpit floor.  Four more innovations, then I am done for now:
4. The production boat will have internal lockers for two 21’ push poles, stored straight to prevent a curve set. The boat owner can sleep worry-free at night without having to take the pole(s) into his house or a hotel room (very difficult in high-rise hotel elevators.)  Why two push poles:  What happens to your very special flats fishing trip if you break one?  And you can take both a super light and a tougher-but-heavier one for variable conditions.
5. There are no aggravating and guide-damaging rod tip tubes – the Flats Flyer will have completely open, well protected, under-gunwale storage for 8 flyrods up to 10’ long.
6. It will have tight seam hatch lids with precision fit gaskets – so tight fitting that even the smallest fly hook cannot fall into a crack.  The seams are so tight they are virtually waterproof, so the Flats Flyer does not need complicated gutter systems and has 100% opening storage areas – no big boxes with small openings.  Did you ever have to clean around the underside of a small hatch opening, or wonder what was lurking there?   I don’t mind telling you those matched hatches and openings are difficult to build, fit and hinge, but the result is very nice and they are very quiet.  
7. Our boat will be offered in two versions: The Grand Class Flats Flyer, Model 1 (M1) and The Essential Flats Flyer, Model 2 (M2).  Among the differences, the M-1 will have a yacht quality elongated toilet (head) with odor-free holding tank and pop-up privacy enclosure.  It satisfies requirements for no-dumping zones and modesty issues.  That, combined with the Flats Flyer’s size, makes the FF “Family Friendly”.
No matter how you get there, I hope all of you experience tight lines and good fishing.
Sincerely,
Dave


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## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

> Among the differences, the M-1 will have a yacht quality elongated toilet (head) with odor-free holding tank and pop-up privacy enclosure. It satisfies requirements for no-dumping zones and modesty issues. That, combined with the Flats Flyer’s size, makes the FF “Family Friendly”.


Gotta admit that does sound nifty and wife friendly


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## grovesnatcher (Sep 25, 2007)

Sounds like a river camping machine! You could take all the gear u need for a week. I love camping and fishing with family and friends this boat seems to be perfect for extended river or glades trips.


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## Punkrawqer (Dec 26, 2009)

> Sounds like a river camping machine! You could take all the gear u need for a week. I love camping and fishing with family and friends this boat seems to be perfect for extended river or glades trips.


Indeed my friend, indeed...


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