Derek Ellard said I could and that others were already doing it. He also reassured me that the Scruffies were easy to build, easy to sail, good sea boats and motor well with. nothing more than 5hp.

So, enter a Scruffie 16 kit and, as all readers of Australian Amateur Boatbuilder know, just about anyone can turn that into a strong, functional hull in no time at all. No scouring Townsville's timber yards for an awesome list of timbers in all shapes, sizes and qualities, no lofting of plans, no setting up a strongback or jigs. It all fitted together nicely and, about three months and two turning-over breakfast parties later, there sat a very shapely hull, complete with bowsprit. Now Christmas was looming so all that remained for 1997 was to tie it down to its custom trailer in case of cyclones and head off down south to visit the children.

hat I needed was a wooden sailing
boat, big enough to sleep two, small enough to tow with an l8OOcc Lantra Sportswagon, easy to build in my garage/shed, and manageable single-handed by a novice.

What I wanted it for was to explore the more sheltered waters of the Queensland coast, doing a bit of marine research, maybe some fishing, and generally enjoying my early retirement.

Who could provide such a boat? My initial investigations, primarily through the pages of this magazine, yielded nothing suitable. A pile of expensive plans and building instructions vouch for the fact that anything that fitted my requirements was 20 feet or longer, weighed too much and seemed to require an expert knowledge of timber and boatbuilding even to get the bits together

But then I revisited the Scruffie Marine range which I had originally passed over as unsuitable open dinghies. What if I could put a cabin on the 16 footer?

Back late January, and now for the challenge - design and build the cabin. Actually, after months scanning magazines and marinas, the specifications were already in my head and in some cases already incorporated into the hull. The cabin was to run from under the foredeck (the foot cubby) for a clear 2m, seats had been dropped 15cm to make the bunks, 5cm had been removed from the top of the keel to increase headroom, and several frames had been modified to redistribute the buoyancy lost from the bow compartments. Current Scruffie 16 owners might be interested to know that all these changes, shown in the accompanying diagram, can easily be done in retrospect, and I even managed to use the original mast tabernacle. So all is not lost if you want to pupate your larval dinghy and emerge as an en-cabined adult! Few extra resources are needed for the cabin itself - some laminated beams for mast support, kingpost timber, side stringers and

several sheets of ply. Scruffie Marine will provide them all in a cabin kit. Once I had decided that the line of the cabin top should mirror that of the gunwales, that the back should slope at a suitable angle to form comfortable G & T positions in the cockpit, and that the windows and door would be the lift-out variety, everything fell into place. A bit of soul-searching about the obligatory popup hatch, though. There had been talk of making it collapse forward to allow direct access from the cockpit to the yardarm halyards on the mast. However, in the interests of weatherproofness, I eventually made it as simple as possible, opted for the tricky sidedeck shuffle past the cabin onto the foredeck, and bought myself a good lifejacket... All was done by the end of February and, after a third champagne breakfast party in the backyard, she had a name. That was altogether more relaxing than mixing champagne with all the uncertainties of the first launch, and a week later Cymodocea had her first

is pretty sprightly under sail but at the same time very forgiving of a novice sailor. And what a sea-boat under power, taking 20 knot winds and 2m waves in her stride when I recently misread the weather forecast. Spray flying everywhere except into the cockpit and still clocking up 4.5 knots according to the GPS. Then there are moments for creature comforts - a very cosy cabin with the 6cm cushions and drop-down table making a V-bunk. It is pretty weatherproof with the hatch down if need be but very airy with it up, the windows out and the front ports open. Even mossieproof with velcroed screens on all windows and the door, and that is important in the mangrove creeks up here. Quite a traveller too, on her superb custom trailer which my Sportswagon hardly notices even on 1500km hauls to Brisbane. Aready Cymodocea has explored spots from Moreton Bay to Hinchinbrook Channel, half the length of the Queensland coast and an interesting range of launchinb/recovery facilities. So, what am I doing on these trips besides fishing and having fun? Well, Cymodocea was actually built with science in mind. She had to be able to deploy some fancy underwater instruments connected to a computer in the cabin to log the data. In particular, I needed to use a hefty spectro-

cruise. A quiet affair, highlighted by the retrieval of a piece of the seagrass of that name on the anchor after morning tea - what an omen! Six months later I am still adding little features - I think I am addicted to epoxy now, not allergic as is more often the case - but quite honestly this boat has already exceeded my wildest expectations in all

radiometer to measure the effects of pollution on the underwater light spectrum in order to estimate its effect on seagrass photosynthesis. Derek gave me a nice bit of timber for a science boom which I clip onto the mast and control with the yardarm halyards, freed up because I don't try to do this under sail. Then I spent a couple of

Does she look good? Ask anyone who saw her at the Pumicestone Passage Classic Boat Regatta last May, or the 4000 visitors to the Townsville Wooden Boat Festival in October. They voted her the 'best under lOm', not bad for a Scruffie. Does she function well? The sails and motor can both push her along at six knots, close to maximum hull speed, and she
___________________________

weeks in Moreton Bay, in conjunction with an extensive Water Quality Project which has been going on there for a couple of years. And that's also what I was doing up in Hinchinbrook Channel, not,

as you might suspect, to check up on Keith William's Oyster Point development although I did use the nice new public boat ramp there, but rather as part a project looking at the effects of prawn-farm outflows.