Creek Crawling Centaur from Salty John

I have a friend who sells excellent sailing related stuff from his on-line chandlery

http://saltyjohn.co.uk/

it is well worth taking a look. My anchor light and my outboard sling both come from his excellent emporium

 

Poor fellow though.... he does not sell much sailing paraphenalia at this time of year in the dog days between when boats come ashore and the Christmas rush starts

 

so he starts wandering the web

 

He is the Uk's best sailing cartoonist - he has a great eye, all boat bits are drawn accuratly and he has that side-ways thinking that every cartoonist needs

 

he has drawn my dream boat

 

Centaur

 

This is about Centaur Project, Dylan Winter's Blog. Tags:

9 Responses to “Creek Crawling Centaur from Salty John”

  1. 31 October, 2013 at 8:11 pmgiles says:

    Hi Dylan – I too like Salty John’s products and cartoons. I bought some stuff from him for my last boat – cheap and good. I love your Centaur plan – I miss the ability to vector the engine. Having owned outboard powered boats for years I have always felt secure with them and I have on one occasion got tangled up in some floating line which stopped the motor dead. All it took was a few minutes with a knife on the levered out engine and I was off again. Furthermore I lent my inboard powered Centaur to a friend this summer and he managed to get a Genoa sheet wrapped around the prop whilst crossing the shipping lanes at Harwich. The coastguard turned out and towed him to the Ha’penny Pier – very embarrassing. I keep getting ribbed about the incident and no-one believes me when I say loudly “I WAS IN ABERDEEN AT THE TIME!”… I wish you well with the project and will say just this: I have a 23 horse Nanni which, when not trussed by a line, is a fabulous engine, requiring very little maintenance and gives me all the power I need. I just wonder whether a 9 horse outboard will be up to the job you want done – going around Cape Wrath. I really wish they hadn’t called it that, makes me feel faint.

  2. 31 October, 2013 at 11:09 pmPaul Mullings says:

    Out of interest it is usual with outboards that the quoted horsepower is actually at the prop….does that apply with an inboard, I think not as they are generally driving alternators and often compressors etc etc.

  3. 1 November, 2013 at 12:06 amdylan winter says:

    you have got me worrried now

    the Centaur was designed to take a 10hp inboard

    wonder if I am going to be overdoing it

    D

  4. 1 November, 2013 at 2:34 amPaul Rogers says:

    I looked up the Tohatsu website to see what the range of props was like. It seems you can choose any one of about five. Which do you plan to use?

    Regards

    Paul Rogers

  5. 1 November, 2013 at 9:05 amdylan winter says:

    dunno

    any suggestions?

    Prop physics is a complete mystery to me

    I planned to let Tohatsu tell me what to use

  6. 1 November, 2013 at 1:19 pmRon says:

    Probably best to let Tohatsu tell you.
    It will probably be a fairly fine pitch one, and with a large diameter if that’s possible.

  7. 1 November, 2013 at 7:51 pmPaul Mullings says:

    It will be one of their High Thrust props….a larger version than the one Dylan has on his current Sail Pro

  8. 2 November, 2013 at 12:30 pmgiles says:

    While your going for these extreme modifications, why not devise some retractable bilge keels for the Centaur – then you’d have the best of all possible worlds – proper skinny water sailing. Or is that going too far…

  9. 6 November, 2013 at 12:12 pmAndyCaledoniaSailing says:

    Salty John did my VHF aerial package! Very nice too. The Metz antenna even survived chopping the top off an overhanging tree in the Crinan Canal…first I knew about it was when a 6 foot length of branches landed in the cockpit, complete with Windex. Aerial still up there working well though!

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