Exuma 52
The
EXUMA SERIES of shoal-draft cruising boats originated with
this design in 1984. It started with a
client who wanted a simple, economical to build and maintain, but large
enough
to comfortably live aboard, cruiser for the Bahamas and Florida Keys. After working with some sharpie concepts,
both client and designer concluded that the vessel should be modeled
after the
remarkable vessels of Commodore Ralph Munroe, and should have some
features
common to the Chesapeake Bay bugeyes. Sarah, the vessel that evolved, is
52'6" on deck, 13'
beam, and draws a mere 2'9", giving her access to cruising grounds that
most big sailboats can't even dream about.
In a world with increasingly crowded anchorages and ever more
expensive
marina slips, the ability to "get away" is invaluable.
A
simple schooner rig with fully battened sails was chosen for low
cost and ease of handling by a husband-wife team with two small
children. Reefing is traditional slab
style, and the
reef points are above the battens, substantially reducing the number of
nettles
needed. The hollow laminated Douglas
fir masts are free-standing except for the forestays and triatic. Running backstays from the mainmast truck
provide extra jib luff tension, but are terminated far enough forward
on deck
to allow short-tacking without letting them go; thus the vessel is
completely
self-tending. We later developed an
alternative rig using foremast backstays, eliminating the triatic and
running
backs. The powerful balanced rudder
turns Sarah very quickly, yet
her long, straight skeg-keel enables
her to track long and straight. She
will steer herself to weather, and with her big centerboard all the way
up, can
steer herself wing-and-wing running downwind.
Divided
trunk cabins provide great privacy, circular living areas
(the boat actually has more living space than a walk-through
arrangement which
loses living space to wasted cabin sole), and enable tankage and
ballast to be
placed in the deepest part of the hull,
which is also closest to its center. It
is essential that free-standing masts the size of "Sarah's have
partners at the deck and not a cabin roof, which simply could not be
built
strongly enough to take the athwartship loads.
A water-tight bulkhead between the cabins has a gasketed hatch
to allow
emergency access between cabins, or just to let you listen in on
children
asleep forward while adults are active in the aft cabin. "Sarah" has
five full bulkheads, all of which can be made water-tight providing
great
safety.
Sarah was built in cold-molded wood
because it is
fast, easy, inexpensive, incredibly strong (her bottom is 2" thick!)
and
very low maintenance. The exterior wood
surfaces were covered with epoxy-saturated fabric (we use
Xynole-polyester),
and painted with linear polyurethane paints, providing the most
durable,
resilient surface possible. AND THERE
ARE NO BLISTERS, EVER! Thus the maintenance of the EXUMA and other
boats built
by Parker Marine Enterprises is simpler and cheaper than that of many
fiberglass boats. Cold-molded wood/fabric/epoxy technology, properly
used,
provides the highest quality construction available, at very economical
prices,
using procedures which are within the grasp of the amateur builder. Besides being superior to fiberglass
construction, cold-molded wood is ideal for building one-off vessels.
Sarah's hull bottom consists of
double-diagonal marine
plywood planking over tongue-and-groove fore-and-aft planking. There are no frames, floor timbers or cabin
sole. You actually walk on the inside
of the hull, enabling the trunk cabins to be the lowest possible and
the hull
to have the flattest possible run. This last fact makes the boat very
fast,
especially off the wind. Sarah can achieve speeds over ten
knots for sustained
periods of time. She is also very
weatherly, and in a recent informal race beat a much larger, relatively
narrower vessel on all points of sail; indeed, she seems to walk away
from everything! The EXUMA 52 design also includes the option of
external ballast--included with Stock Plans.