BUILDING THE PEREGRINE
Here's my duckboat, the Peregrine. She was built of
Okoume plywood and fibreglass using the stitch and glue method. I built her myself.
She's 15 1/2' long and 60 inches wide, very low profile with the top of the coaming just 17" above
the bottom. She has a flat bottom and can get into areas where there is no water, just mud, with the
25 hp Prodrive outboard on the back. The boat is designed so that it is very easy to hide. When
camouflaged she looks like a little grassy island. The boat is very, very stable and doesn't rock
a bit when we're hunting. The cockpit is 40" wide and 12' long, big enough for 3 guys, but really
best for only 2 and a dog. Surprisingly, this little low profile boat will handle some fairly sizeable
waves. I wouldn't take it into the ocean, but I routinely run into shipping in South Louisiana's Intracoastal
waterway, and run through 3 or 4 foot waves thrown by the ships that use the ICW. I've never gotten wet yet.
I started thinking about this boat about 2 years before I started construction. I like Sam Devlin's
duckboats. Devlin lives in Washington State, and I guess that duck hunting there is very different from where we hunt
in coastal Louisiana. We need boats for no water, not just shallow water, and we use mud motors, therefor, our boats
are all flat bottom, extreme shallow draft. Devlin's are all V-bottom boats, but they're beautiful. The other thing
is that by the time ducks get all the way down to Louisiana, past all those hunters in the Mississippi flyway, they've been
educated. Our boats have to be invisible, and in the marsh, that means very low profile. The grass around here stands
about 3' above the water, and so if you're higher than that, only the stupid ducks who've somehow survived will make it
into your spread. Also the boat needed to be fast. I use it in an area that is 22 miles from the nearest boat launch. I stay
down in the marsh all weekend at our camp, so the boat needs to be able to carry everything I need to live for several days. I had been drawing ideas and posting them on
Duckboat.net,
getting some constructive criticism. I bought a set of plans for Devlin's Scaup and got some ideas from there.
One other thing this boat needed to do was accomplish the mission of water hyacinth control in the off season.
This meant that a 55 gallon drum full of water needs to be supported on the floor at amidships for spraying the dreaded weed.
After some initial drawings, I built some models
This boat was built with minimal computer design help. Using techniques described by Devlin,
in his book
Devlin's Boatbuilding: How to Build Any Boat the Stitch-and-Glue Way I built the above half hull model
and took the measurements for the panels off this model.
Using these measurements I scaled up the model to 1/4 scale and built the model above out of 1/8" doorskins and Gorrilla Glue.
I put weights into the model to make it weigh the scale weight loaded down (the scale cubed, or 1/64th of the design weight)
and took the little booger to Bayou Des Allemands and pulled her around. It was rough and windy on the day we went, and
I was surprised how this model performed in the choppy water. It looked like it could handle some pretty rough stuff. Also, she
planed out nicely and was stable, so I knew I had a good boat. I had designed an earlier version that I couldn't get to plane
out, and I'm glad I started all over. It took longer to get to the point of testing this model than it did to build the full scale boat.
So after building a jig and scarfing and cutting the panels, I started to stitch her up with cable ties.
I removed the temporary ribs. I didn't want to make the real ribs, because I couldn't be sure
what they're dimensions would be, since I had taken measurements from a crude 1/4 scale model.
Then I applied fibreglass across the seams, and later covered the whole bottom with some light weight cloth.
I made a big beefy transom to hold up the
200 lbs mud motor.
These three stringers were cut from 1x lumber. I knew when
I did it it was overkill, but this is one very tough little boat. If I were to build it again, I'd just have the one in the middle.
The 3 stringer set up meant over 50 limber holes that all had to be carefully sealed with epoxy, and greatly complicated
the building process.
Now the real ribs are in and secured with fillets and glass.
We flip her over, glass the seams, and cover the whole bottom with 12oz biaxial.
Nearly bullet proof.
Then back over and install the sole, which is later
glassed in and sealed.
There are my floatation compartments on the sides of the boat, they get foam poured in them later.
The framing for the nose is installed.
The decking is installed.
Then
the coaming, cut from 1x spruce, goes on. It gets a layer of glass as well
The rainproof center compartment (which has proven itself
to be bone dry in the most severe conditions) was created.
Ready for paint.
Finished.
Launched.
Gotta love it.
Top speed 25mph in shallow water, 23 mph in deep, with
the 25hp Prodrive air cooled outboard.
Great for fishing.
Even better for hunting.
EMAIL
My other websites:
Peregrine Camo
The Kara Hummer Sneakboat for Duck Hunting
A 20' barge and Cabin built on the cheap
How to build a wooden pushpole
Make one of those big hard hat lamps cheap
Copyright 2005, Edward Askew, III. All rights reserved. No reproduction of text, designs, or graphics without the expressed written consent of the author.
