by Weston Farmer
LOA 34 ft., Beam 9 ft. 4 in., Draught 34 in. Weight 11, 318 lbs.
Andalusia is small as yachts go. You'll find her great for northern waters
This story of Andalusia is not a how-to-build story in the usual sense. I am not going to tell you how to bruise your nearest thumb with the nearest hammer. Rather, this is a story for those who believe in the importance of noodling a new thing just for the excitement of it. It is always refreshing to conjure something new in boats, especially if the ship is a departure from the ordinary and is based on sound practice. She is novel in that she is designed for a real need. We’ve had designs of V-bottomed pointed house trailers which are fine for southern service. They’ll float on a morning dew, go to leeward like a paper bag in any kind of breeze, will slam in any sea, and will roll your neck until your teeth ache because they have excessive beam—-said beam following every uplift and heave, jerkily, because the boat is so wide it has to do this. But we have had few boats for the northern scene—-the waters of Maine, of Georgian Bay, of the Great Lakes and Puget Sound. Here it is often rainy, always windy, frequently cold. Sharpened house trailers with accent on chrome and mahogany are sucker bait in waters like these. So I have made Andalusia in reduced image of the little Caróo motorships a person sees sagging past the green coasts, alabaster, houses and red-tiled roofs of Andalusia, hence her name. I suppose you’d call her a tug-type yacht. She will have some of the wonderful, weighty fore-reaching ability of the tug hull, and she does have a tug-type fantail stern. On second thought, I wouldn’t call her—-just go on betting on her and you can count on her to take care of you and your family on any dark night, no matter what the welter of weather outside the cabin. You may not like the layout. Okay—sketch in your own. This hull will handle about any arrangement you want. She can carry several imore tons than I show, and will never feel it. My main idea in designing her was to get away from trying to pack a 5-room apartment into an 18-foot cheese carton. For instance, you may want more aft deck, and may not like the aft cabin. All right—just run the cabin bulkhead down to the level of the main clamp, deck her cockpit over and use the aft quarters under the cockpit sole for storage. It is my reasoned prediction that Andalusia will appeal in direct proportion to the amount of real cruising experience you’ve had. The man buying his first “cruiser” is often looking for the Fountain of Youth: He must cover 500 miles the first afternoon, he must sleep 60 people in his 15-footer, and reckon not the cost of speed, little realizing that his pocketbook must be sublimated in some way to an oil refinery where fuel grows on bushes. Your seasoned man knows his craft must be big enough not to wallow if she’s going to have comfort, and that the fewer you sleep, the better. Two or three will be plenty. And speed? Keep it low! Any 9- or 10-mile craft can comfortably do 100 miles a day if you know when to start out and when to pull into harbor. Let’s look at the layout, and describe it: basically it is the layout of the usual cruising boat just turned around. Instead of narrow bunks forward, followed by a cramped galley, opening into a saloon, or deckhouse, followed by a cockpit, I have reversed the usual. In so doing we gain much. Forward in Andalusia is the head, or toilet. This narrow, cussed, and infrequently used chunk of equipment demands only that portion of floor space due it. Privacy is gained by the companion doors which close off the main deckhouse. By disposing of the head quickly we get the rest of the ship to use for layout. Have you ever noticed on real ships there is an engine room? A roomy place where machinery can be maintained? Most cruising men come by their love of the game through a secondary love of good engines, and like to keep their machine brass bright and squeegeed down with clean rags. Andalusia’s engine is down forward in a space amply large to allow access all around. Machinery in such a place lasts longer, runs sweeter, is more reliable for the attention it thus gains. Motor weight in this ship is only about 5 per cent of total displacement, therefore the positioning of the mill weight—wise is not critical. Andalusia, like many craft her size, ought to be ballasted to final trim anyway.
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