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.