| Philip Cunningham Bolger | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 3, 1927 Gloucester, Massachusetts |
| Died | May 24, 2009 (aged 81) |
| Occupation | Boat designer |
| Years active | 1950s–2009 |
| Influenced by | Lindsay Lord, John Hacker, Lewis F. Herreshoff, Nicholas Montgomery, Bill Bolger |
| Spouse | Susanne Altenburger |
Philip C. Bolger (December 3, 1927–May 24, 2009), prolific boat designer, was born and lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He began work full time as a draftsman for boat designers Lindsay Lord and then John Hacker in the early 1950s. Bolger also cites being influenced by mentors L.F. Herreshoff, Nicholas Montgomery, Howard Chapelle and his own brother Bill Bolger.
Bolger's first boat design was a 32-foot (9.75 m) sportfisherman published in the January 1952 issue of Yachting magazine. He subsequently designed more than 668 different boats,[1] making him one of the most prolific boat designers of the 20th century, from the solidly conventional to extremely innovative, from a 114-foot-10-inch (35 m) replica of an eighteenth-century naval warship, the frigate Surprise (ex-Rose), to the 6-foot-5-inch (1.96 m) plywood box-like dinghy Tortoise.
Although his designs ranged through the full spectrum of boat types, Bolger tended to favor simplicity over complexity. Many of his hulls are made from sheet materials — typically plywood — and have hard chines. A subclass of these designed in association with Harold Payson called Instant Boats were so named because they were intended to be easily built by amateurs out of commonly available materials. Bolger was also considered to be a modern expert in the design of the sharpie type and advocated the use of traditional sailing rigs and leeboards.
From the 1990s, Phil Bolger teamed with his wife Susanne Altenburger, designing boats under the name Phil Bolger & Friends Inc. During this time, they emphasized the design of sustainable and fuel-efficient boats for the fishing industry. Also, they participated in a large military commission with the Naval Sea Systems Command on new designs for military landing craft utility boats.
Bolger was a prolific writer and wrote many books, the last being Boats with an Open Mind, as well as hundreds of magazine articles on small craft designs, chiefly in Woodenboat, Small Boat Journal and Messing About in Boats.
Bolger died on May 24, 2009, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His wife explained that "[h]is mind had slipped in the last several months, and he wanted to control the end of his life while he was still able."[2][3]
Contents |
In the 1970s, Phil Bolger began a long and successful collaboration with Harold 'Dynamite' Payson. It resulted in the design of a series of easy-to-build plywood boats which were named Instant Boats. Unlike traditional boat construction which involves building of jig and full size lofting of the shape of the hull prior to construction, the Instant Boat method uses shaped panels on pre-shaped permanent frames, plywood, and dimensional lumberyard wood. This results in quicker construction and less requirement for skilled craftsmanship, and has proved appealing to amateur boat builders.
Following articles in WoodenBoat magazine, Dynamite Payson published Instant Boats, (1979, 152 pages, 7" × 10", 48 illustrations). Still in print, describes basic techniques (gluing, nailing and screwing with some fiberglass). Six designs: Catfish Beachcruiser, Elegant Punt, Kayak, Light Schooner (Folding), Surf, Teal, Zephyr.
Build the New Instant Boats came out five years later. (1984, 160 pages, 8½" × 11", 110 illustrations). Also still in print. Here are 11 more boats: Diablo, Diablo Grande, Dynamite Sailboard, Gypsy, June Bug, Light Schooner, Madeline, Nymph, Pointy Skiff, Rubens Nymph, Skimmer, Tortoise, Windsprint.
Both books are detailed enough that you can build from the small-scale plans in them, but larger plans are available from instantboats.com.
Many instant boats have simple one-piece plywood sides and use external chine logs for simple construction. The Bolger Bobcat, an easy-to-build take on the Beetle Cat, is a multichine design featured in Build the Instant Catboat, but still "instant" compared to a conventionally-built plank-on-frame catboat.
There are more Bolger designs, such as the 24-foot Birdwatcher, which are intended to be built just like the smaller Instant Boats. These are available as plans: see http://www.instantboats.com/instantboats_cake/boats/index along with plans for the original instant series.
Bolger put a lot of thought into relatively cheap, high-performance boats. He is well known for designing a series of single chine sharpies, typically long and narrow.
Sailing sharpies give high performance for the amount of sail they carry because of low displacement and light weight overall. Power sharpies can use low-horsepower motors (see, for example, the Bolger Tennessee, and Sneakeasy designs) yet reach respectable speeds.
One design family is sometimes called Square Boats. Bolger reasoned that a simple rockered bottom and vertical sides gives the most volume, and form stability, on a given beam. After experimenting and studying traditional sharpies and the writings of small-boat historian Howard I. Chapelle, he decided the chine line should represent a regular curve without breaks, changes in radius or straight sections. Chapelle had decided, after documenting traditional New England sharpies, on a slightly different chine profile which Bolger felt was inefficient and prone to causing steering difficulties.
Both designers thought traditional rigs and boat types were suitable for small yachts, especially sailing boats. For a small Chapelle sharpie design, see http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/04/s/articles/chapelle/index.cfm. Here the chine profile begins straight, becomes a circular section, and then the radius increases toward the stern. Generally, Chapelle noted that the transom should not drag when the boat is loaded, and the foot of the stem should not be immersed. Bolger agreed on these parts of the sharpie concept.
Squaring off the bow and stern give the longest useful waterline and the masts are usually as far forward and aft as possible. The bow on these designs is often cut off and scow-like and the sterns are not raked. The open bow can allow passage to land if the boat is beached, space for holding anchors and cables, or clearance to step and unstep a mast. Oldshoe, Micro and the AS29 and AS39 are well-known examples. (Very short sharpies like the Oldshoe and Micro are something of a contradiction in terms but nevertheless are fun to sail. A relatively large number of Micros have been built.)
In the past decade, many rare or even never-constructed Bolger sharpies have been "built" using 3D boat design software and images are available on the Web.
For many years, Small Boat Journal carried a monthly design cartoon. A reader would ask a question or suggest a boat for a particular purpose and Bolger would talk his way through a design exercise. Some cartoons later turned into essays in his books. Others never went further.
The series continued in Messing About in Boats, where it often expanded into a multi-part design essay.
Bolger championed leeboards as low-tech and practical, to the chagrin of many yachties. The conventional wisdom is that they are ugly. Even many of his centerboard designs had boards that were off-center or all the way to one side or the other (for example, the Birdwatcher and the AS29). He concluded that a single leeboard is sufficient in many cases on small boats, and that rigs could be stepped off the centerline without much affect on performance.
He advocated traditional rigs such as the sprit-boomed leg of mutton, on a range of vessel sizes.
Bolger often repeated that an efficient boat design that sailed well and was comfortable often did not turn out looking like a "yacht."
Jim Michalak is one amateur designer who has taken Bolger's design ideas into account with a series of skiff, scow and sharpie designs. Twice a month, Michalak posts essays on his own web page, http://jimsboats.com. His designs are handled through Duckworks Boat Builders Supply: http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/jim/michalak.htm.
The PD Racer (see http://www.pdracer.com) is another very small boat which owes a debt to Bolger's example.
Beginning in November 2002, Bolger and Altenberger advocated for a re-examination of the fisheries paradigm, a paradigm presently undergoing a collapse both globally and locally in their hometown of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Their proposal centered on the principle that, especially in an era of high fuel cost and economic pressure for gentrification of depressed fishing ports, sustainable fisheries require a balance of business economics and public planning versus the available fishery resources. Key to this is a restructuring of the fishing fleet towards boats with lower complexity, lower initial cost, fuel economy, and lower operating costs.
| “ | Most modern vessels are horsepower intensive concepts with often oversized drive trains that cost extra in terms of hardware, operation, repair and replacement. ... Today this is as economical and sustainable as taking a Suburban™-size SUV to the mall to buy a pair of socks.[1] | ” |
Large expensive complex boats demand taking a high number of fish to be economical. Simpler, lower powered, and lower cost boats can still be economical with lower fish catch rates. Bolger and Altenberger expressed concern that existing governmental fishing permits are issued based on length of the fishing boat, which creates an incentive to use inefficient wide and deep fishing boat hulls. If the fishing permits were issued based instead on displacement tonnage of hull, then the incentive would be for the fishing to use long, narrow and shallow hulls which would be more economical to purchase and to operate per ton of fish caught.
The existing fishing fleet, composed of ever larger boats with high construction costs, debt loads and operational costs, in the long run forces fishermen to search for ever increasing catch sizes to remain economic, in a fight against regulatory quotas. Ultimately, fishermen would find it more economically sustainable to do more with less. A consolidated fleet could make it possible for fishermen to survive with lower catch rates, lower debt load, lower fuel burn, lower insurance rates and lower depreciation.[4]
This idea is described in the September 2004 issue of the magazine National Fisherman, and again in 2007 as a series of essays published in the magazine Messing About in Boats.[1][4]
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
