by Luther H. Tarbox, Naval Architect
LOA 15'3", BEAM 5' 0", WEIGHT 200 LBS.
If you are as disgusted with the roughwater performance of the average outboard utility boat as the writer is, then you’ll like "Baby Blue", for she is designed expressly for rough-water use. There are many stretches of water where an able outboard hull is a sterling possession: Long Island Sound, Barnegat Bay, the Delaware, the Chesapeake, the big sounds of Carolina and Georgia, the Great Lakes, Puget Sound, Mississippi Sound, and so on. All such waters require outboards such as Baby Blue. A properly designed outboard-powered skiff can be fast in smooth water, but get her out into a good chop and she will just about pound her bottom out. That’s one of the things "Baby Blue" is designed not to do. Why the name "Baby Blue?" Well, Horn Island and Petit Boise Island lie 12 miles out across Mississippi Sound from where the writer lives. On their offshore sides, just beyond the breakers, there are plenty of bluefish to be had for the catching. Since the writer has built a "Baby Blue" for his own use and also has a yen for bluefish, the name is a natural. "Baby Blue" is in no way an experimental design; she is developed from two earlier utilities. The first of these was "Mullet", a 15-foot 200-lb. boat. She rode choppy water like a duck and banked nicely on turns. With two aboard and a 5-hp. Johnson on the stern, she did 14 m.p.h. The second boat, a 15½-footer, had the same bottom as "Mullet", but had 4 in. more freeboard. She was fitted with a motor well just forward of the transom, a live-bait well, a short forward deck, and narrow side decks; so she weighed close to 300 lbs. Both the motor well and the waterscoop for the live-bait well added considerably to the resistance. Like her predecessor, she behaved perfectly.
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