by E. Weston Farmer, N. A.
Plans and specifications for a miniature floating home which is driven by an outboard motor and which can cruise safely where the water is spread thin.
Some people seem to think that a small boat on the tabloid order, to be worth anything, must be the kind of hooker into which one can throw a dozen muffins at a moment’s notice, and with a beautiful slant of wind sail down to Cape Horn for afternoon tea. Along with numerous others, this humble writer has long differed with that contention. I am a firm believer in boats for a purpose. I believe that the most satisfactory boat to own is the kind of boat which actually fits the water in which she is nominally at home when roosting time comes and the hook slops overside into its usual resting place. Sailing tabloids have their mighty interesting points. In fact I am working right now on a salty little deep water lady and would be the last soul on earth to condemn them. But too much emphasis cannot be laid on the fact that a tabloid design, appealing to a man’s sense of economy coupled with the itch to own a boat, may often lead him to building a boat he has no particular need for, as after all, the great majority of boating done in these anxious days confines itself to day boating an hour or two from moorings. Ergo, we have Hoocares, patterned for sheltered waters and ditch crawling after the manner of the Holland hoogarts. She was designed for the man who knows that the bulk of his adventures will confine themselves to sleeping aboard a bit, to readings and mug-ups of a chilly Saturday afternoon, and to making use of her comfortable mobility in avoiding monotony of anchorages. Her name Americana of course, for hoogarts, which is Dutch for, well, it’s in the dictionary—and because of the adaptability of the general idea of the hoogarts to the uses this needed tabloid might be put to, I have swiped the general idea and made our little hooker something of a Dutchman—beamy, housed across her midriff, blunt of snoot and thin on the underfoot side. Lets have a look at her from the cruising standpoint. About the first novelty you’ll notice is the fact that you don’t have to grease your hide to get in and out of her accommodations. They’re actual instead of alleged. And paradoxical as it may seem, there’s absolutely full headroom, I don’t care how tall you are. The only place there is room enough for two man-sized feet is right under her ample hatch, although there is good footroom all along the face of the bunk, from the pail which acts as a sink, to starboard, past the Shipmate near the companionway over to the hinged lid which nonchalantly burns a Murad over what’s under. Hoocares in her culinary and sewage departments is as neatly arranged as I believe is conceivable.
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