By Dan Beard
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Fig. 205
A Home-Made Catamaran
Possibly after you have built and sailed on the rude catamaran described above [Raft that Will Sail] you have grown ambitious and wish to try a real catamaran. In this case it is, of course, necessary that you should be in some locality where you can have access to ordinary building materials and tools.
In place of the two unwieldy logs substitute two narrow boats. If such boats can be found already built, so much the better. Two old-fashioned dugout canoes make most excellent hulls for a catamaran, but unfortunately dugout canoes are now few and far between. In these modern days we must look for something more up-to-date, and probably the shortest way out of the difficulty is to build two long, narrow boats.
This is not a difficult piece of work. Any boy who has successfully built either of the preceding craft, or is sufficiently skilful to build even a rude skiff, will be able to put together two long water-tight boxes, and it does not require much additional skill to make boxes pointed at each end.
Make each side of the boat of one straight-grained white pine board, twelve or fourteen feet long, and put the boat together after the fashion shown in Figs. 160a, 161, 162, 163, and 164 (Rough and Ready), with this difference:
You rest make the bow and stern just alike, and leave the four stretchers or moulds in their places, to add strength to the hulls. This, of course, divides the hulls into to five compartments, each of which is liable to hold water. To prevent this saw a triangular notch in the bottom of each mould to allow the water that may leak in free passage from bow to stern; then it may be all bailed out from one trap or hatch.
Particular attention must be paid to making the two side boats exact duplicates of each other. If white lead is applied to all seams and joints before they are fastened together, it will make them very nearly watertight, but a new boat will leak until the water has caused the wood to swell.
