The Northern Bay lobster and sport fishing boats are built in Qgunquit, Maine. Known as Down East boats they are semi-displacement hulls. They are very good sea boats stable in heavy seas. Compared to semi-vee hulls common to many other sport fisherman boats in the U.S. the Down East hulls tend to be wet boats. As with everything else, boat design is always a compromise.

1&2 The inspiration
3&4 Beginning steps

The half tower will be among the challenges. It will be aluminum tubing to keep everything above the gunnels as light as is structurally possible. Aluminum tubing means no soldering so have to think about how to connect the pieces.

Since the hull I use is not an exact match of the hull of the 1:1 I typically end up with a non-standard scale rather than 1/12, 1/24, etc. My builds therefore involve a lot of TLAR. So I typically like to do a massing study to determine if the odd scale components I’m working with Looks About Right & are in the right position.

If you look really close you can see I’ve modified the shear line.

Thank you HS. I was not aware of that. It would certainly simplify construction.👍

Piecing things together in a temporary way.

1 & 2 Making up blank pieces for final finishing &
placement while in Florida.
3 Shear clamps in place. All part of deciding
where to set running gear & what parts to
make removable for access.

Building the structural elements. One of my favorite parts.
1. Framing for the cockpit sole. Running gear in
place.
2. False works balsa strips to temporarily form
house.
3. Another view. Allows me to determine rough
size of other components; windscreen, etc.

A few more things done before we head to the warm weather.

1. Into the ballast test tank the other day. No leaks & initial ballast set. 16.5 oz in the stern. With 12 os NIMH an additional 9os of lead ballast. Right now float weight about 4 lbs. Might be a bit light.

2. Gloss black hull, white anti foul paint on bottom & red boot top.

3. Profile view.

The yard has become busy! The second hull, the 36 ft Northern Bay splashed today.
- deck & gunnels (1/16 in styrene) dry fit
- with battery fwd a few oz ballast required aft
- no leaks
- unlike the Wasque 26 this one is very fast
- twitchy steering needs exponential adjustment

Starting to construct & install wheelhouse/trunk cabin. In second photo you can see the difference between the Stbd & port wheelhouse lengths. Third photo shows the coaming; fourth shows falseworks in place to pull house sides into position so roof beams can be placed.

After several days of contemplation I derived a method to frame the house assembly for the bulkheads. Very rigid yet allows above deck structure to be easily removed for access.

The pieces are beginning to come together.
1. Second windscreen construction after badly messing up the first attempt.
2. Some final fitting required & then on to the windows.
3.The framing for the house bulkheads worked out as intended.
4. Look closely & you can see a lift strake was added (P&S) at the turn of the bilge.The 1:1 has a longer strake inboard of the bilge strakes. I’ll probably add those also. The hull now gets out of the hole which before the addition of the strakes & a reduction of ballast weight in the bow it could not do.

Hi Ron & Bob.
The 1:1 boat I’m using as the inspiration is shown in my first in this blog. What interested me was the 36 Northern Bay’s rather unique, for a sport fisherman’s, shear line & the unusual house geometry. It’s the first time I’ve seen one arranged this way. The 1:1 shows a lobster pot hauler in the Stbd cabin offset but there is no sign of any provision for an accompanying pot hauling davit. I’ve never seen a large sport fish also rigged for lobstering. Harpoon fishing yes, but not for lobstering. The offset in my build will be used as an aft helm station occasionally seen on boats that fish for really (300 lb +) big species & have to back down on the fish during the fight to land it. A lot of backing down is required to keep the fish on the stern of the boat. An aft helm makes it easier to keep track of the fish’s position relative to the boat’s stern.

Bob, when I have ready access to water such as now when I’m temporarily in Florida 😎 I throw a build in the water. Sometimes the results are very exciting to say the least! Here, I toasted the ESC since the hull was wide open to water particularly over the stern. Once a build is closed in to water I run it for fun, correcting problems, & trying ideas. The lift strakes were added & ballast weight adjusted as a result of this displacement hull’s inability to lift its stern out of the hole as discovered in one running session.

Work continues.
Bill

First lap at WOT. After that the speed is more scale.

Mocking up the tower

1-3 Views of the tower or to be precise, 1/2
tower.
4. House fully enclosed & windows added.

The SW Florida boatyard manager

The mock-up of the half tower has become THE half tower.

The boat will be trucked to the northern branch of the Cape Cod & South West Florida Shipyard next Monday where work will continue.

Bent butt rods with Penn International reels in swivel holders for fishing flat lines as part of an array of towed lures.

Rods in stored position for running to the fishing grounds.

Life raft canister installed & grab railings begun.

A 2.8 MB photo .
2nd photo is what I tried to post under “ My Builds. 3.8 MB it didn’t post here as an edit. Error message “Write failed”.

Well, trying to post the same photo as below yielded a “failed to write” error message. Note the image that successfully posted was posted in the “Build Blog” The image would not post when tried under “My Builds” section of My Account. May well be your intent Stephen.

Posted photo done in My Build. 3.8 MB. Well, it didn’t post. Error was “Failed write

Testing the improved photo posting, but also providing a bit of an update.

1. Total file size of photos 5.7MB. Second photo did not post on first try. Added it as an edit which worked but without text. Then in another edit I could add text to the second photo.
2. After creating the new post the blog did not move into the newest spot on the blog list. Rather it remained on page two where it resided originally.

Observations, not criticisms. Larger photo file size allowed plus enabling text under the photo is a huge improvement.
I may have to retest photo/text observations to be sure I described it correctly. Second observation may be more problematical.