A pocket cruiser, microcruiser or pocket yacht is a small, often lightweight sailboat with a cabin, which is intended for recreational cruising (either overnight or for extended periods) of the owner's chosen waterways. In some cases less is more The purpose of this article is to give an overview A cabin or berthing is an enclosed room generally on a Ship or an Aircraft. Pocket cruisers often can readily be loaded on a trailer and towed by most passenger automobiles. Both commercially made and designs for home built pocket cruisers are readily available.
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Description
Pocket cruisers range in length from 10 feet (3 m) to about 26 feet (8 m), with some variation, depending on individual requirements. Most are in the range of 15 feet (5 m) to 20 feet (6 m) long, with a beam around 6 feet (2 m). Commercial models generally have either a short, ballasted shoal draft keel or a weighted centerboard, while home-built designs often use water ballast and leeboards. Ballast is used in Sailboats to provide moment to resist the lateral forces on the Sail. In boats and ships keel can refer to either of two parts a structural element or a hydrodynamic element A leeboard is a lifting foil used by a sailboat much like a Centerboard, but located on the Leeward side of the boat The short length and low weight of most pocket cruisers (and short keels on models with fixed keels) allow them to be trailered easily.
While the short overall length keeps most of these boats to inland waters or onshore sailing, many have keels or other forms of ballast (often water ballast) that allow them to be self-righting from angles of 90 degrees or more, which is usually not the case for similarly sized day sailers. A day sailer or dayboat is a small Sailboat without sleeping accommodations but which is larger than a Dinghy. Many people have sailed pocket cruisers long distances across open ocean, including a number of Atlantic crossings. There has been at least one circumnavigation of the globe by a pocket cruiser.
The cabin also makes it possible to keep the pocket cruiser out for extended periods of time. They will generally provide enough space to sleep two adults, with the larger examples sleeping up to six--though at that point two of the berths are generally under the cockpit seats (and known as "quarter berths" and are often only suited for children. The ability to sleep aboard makes weekend outings popular.
Qualities
Pocket cruisers are popular for a number of reasons:
- They are inexpensive; popular designs such as the Montgomery 15 or West Wight Potter 15 sell new, with trailer, for around US$10,000 or less.
- They are easy to build out of easily obtained materials such as plywood, using stitch and glue or more traditional methods. Plywood is a type of Engineered board made from thin sheets of Wood, called plies or veneers Stitch and glue is a simplified boat building method which uses sheet plywood and eliminates the need for stems and chines
- When working on smaller boats the inevitable tinkering away on various modification projects is often cheaper and more quickly gratifying.
- They are small enough to sail single handed, yet the wide beam gives them the capacity to hold more people.
- They usually weigh less than 2000 pounds (900 kg). This is light enough to be towed behind most cars.
- They are suitable for overnight trips.
- The wide beam and common use of ballast makes them very stable.
- The small size means they can be stored out of the water, which negates the need to rent expensive marina slips.
- Many of the small cruisers have active chat groups on the Web where tips, ideas, and sailing stories are freely shared.
Performance
Pocket cruisers are, in general, not fast boats; the short waterline and wide beam required to provide the basic accommodations generally limit the speed that the hulls are capable of. Since the short, beamy hull of the pocket cruiser is not suited to speed, designers are willing to sacrifice some performance for ease of use. Traditional rigs, like gaff rigs, are not uncommon, compared to the nearly universal high aspect Bermuda rigs found on other modern sailboats. Gaff rig is a Sailing rig (configuration of sails in which the Sail is four-cornered Fore-and-aft rigged controlled at its peak and usually The term Bermuda rig refers to a configuration of mast and Rigging for a type of Sailboat and is also known as a Marconi rig; this is the typical The lower aspect rigs lose some windward abilities, but make up for it in superior downwind performance and ease of use. The West Wight Potter 15, for example, uses a unique sail design that is a cross between a gaff sail and a Bermuda sail, which gives it more sail area on a shorter mast than would be possible with a true Bermuda sail; this gives a greater sail area with less heeling force than a taller, narrower sail. Still, it is not a performance craft, as evidenced by the fact that it has the lowest Portsmouth handicap (138. The Portsmouth Yardstick (PY or Portsmouth handicap scheme is a system of Handicapping used in Yacht racing. 1) of any production centerboard boat listed. The Sunfish, which is by far the most popular day sailer ever made, has a Portsmouth handicap of 99. Racing There are regional continental and world championships every year 6. This means that the Potter 15 would take nearly 1. 4 hours to sail the same distance under the same conditions as a Sunfish could in 1 hour.
Pocket Cruisers, though not generally considered especially fast compared to longer waterline boats, however are still quite exciting to sail much in the same sense that a go cart "feels" faster when riding on it as compared to a longer wheelbase automobile going the same speed. Closeness to the water, smaller relative size compared to the wave height, and (as is in the case of some trailer sailors) a lighter ballast to dispacement ratio can combine to make for a thrilling sailing experience nonetheless. Some selected small cruisers are designed with flat profiled aft bottom sections and are capable of actually coming up on a plane in breezy to marginal wind conditions in which specific case they may become (if briefly) quite fast indeed even when directly compared to somewhat longer displacement hulls under the same conditions.
Examples
One of the smaller commercial pocket cruisers was the Guppy 13, made by Melen Marine Ltd. in California. California ( is a US state on the West Coast of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. They made about 300 of them in the period between 1974 and 1975. Year 1974 ( MCMLXXIV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the 1974 Gregorian calendar. Year 1975 ( MCMLXXV) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The Guppy was a fiberglass boat with a shoal draft keel, and would sleep 2 adults in a 6 ft 8 in (2. Fiberglass (also called fibreglass and glass fibre see Spelling differences) is material made from extremely fine Fibers of Glass. In boats and ships keel can refer to either of two parts a structural element or a hydrodynamic element 0 m) cabin. Overall length was 12 ft 6 in (3. 8 m), beam was 5 ft 7 in (1. 7 m); displacement was 480 lb (218 kg) with 150 lb (68 kg) of ballast in the keel. Ballast is used in Sailboats to provide moment to resist the lateral forces on the Sail. It drew 1 ft 7 in (480 mm) empty, and flew a Bermuda rig consisting of a 32 square feet (3 m²) high aspect main sail and a 48 square feet (4. A sail is any type of surface intended to generate Thrust by being placed in a Wind &mdashin essence a vertically-oriented Wing. 5 m²) jib (technically a genoa since it overlapped the main). A jib (also spelled jibb) is a triangular Staysail set ahead of the foremost mast of a sailing boat The genoa or jenny was originally referred to as the 'overlapping jib' or the Genoa jib, being named after the city of Genoa as explained below Length at waterline was 11 ft 10 in (3. 6 m), giving a hull speed of just under 4. Hull speed, sometimes referred to as displacement speed, is a Rule of thumb used to provide an approximate maximum efficient speed for a hull 5 knots (8 km/h). The shallow V hull was not designed to plane, but is generally considered very capable at cutting through choppy water. planing Boat 's hull skims across the surface of the Water rather than pushing through the water in the way a traditional Displacement hull
In Australia, the best known and most popular pocket cruiser is the locally produced Savage Nautilus, a shoal draft yacht of 19 ft 4 in length overall with a 7 ft 10 in beam and a full length keel that draws only 2 ft 9 in. Fitted with an 8 hp Yanmar diesel inboard motor (an unusual feature in a boat so small) and capable of sleeping four adults, they were produced in large numbers and have proved incredibly popular with Australian pocket cruising enthusiasts. is a Japanese company involved in the Manufacture and Sales of Engines Agricultural machinery and light Ships Yanmar's Diesel or Diesel fuel (ˈdiːzəl in general is any Fuel used in Diesel engines The most common is a specific fractional distillate of petroleum An inboard motor is a marine propulsion system for Boats As opposed to an Outboard motor where an engine is mounted outside of the hull of the Loosely based on a lifeboat design, they are sufficiently stable and heavily constructed to sail offshore and some have made long distance blue water crossings, such as the notorious waters of Bass Strait, between mainland Australia and the island state of Tasmania (including the pictured example, "Bullwinkle", which was sailed from Brisbane to Hobart). A lifeboat is a small craft carried on a ship to provide a means of emergency evacuation in the event of a disaster aboard the ship Bass Strait (bæs is a sea Strait separating Tasmania from the south of the Australian mainland ( Victoria in particular For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. Tasmania is an Australian island and state of the same name It is located south of the eastern side of the Continent, being separated from it by Bass Brisbane ( is the state capital of Queensland. Brisbane is the third most populous city in Australia and the most populous city of Queensland Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. You find more about the SAVAGE Nautilus at http://www.riverbendnelligen.com/dearall42.html .
See also
External links
- Stevenson's Projects pocket yacht designs for the home builder. This article is about yacht cruising For cruising on cruise liners see the article Cruise ship. The Newport 16 (N-16 is a Yacht that was originally designed by William Lapworth as a daysailer and called the Columbia 15 The Sandpiper 565 is a sailing Sloop with four berth accommodation
- Shorty Pen's Pocket Cruiser Guide, a list of most commercial cabin sailboats from 12 to 20 feet in length.
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