(Andy’s Toy)
“Old Dad 46”

Big and simple plywood “day” or” vacation” boats used to be common up into the 60’s, but slowly, design emphasis has shifted more to maximum interior accommodations, and other than the serious sports fishing crowd, the bigger cruisers are more like luxurious motorhomes than vacation pleasure and fishing boats.

This boat, built of plywood, powered by a marinized GM diesel used in the big Chevy Suburban, is a throwback to the type. It’s simple to build, relatively inexpensive, comfortable to spend vacations in, seaworthy enough to run across to the Bahamas or to fish in the ocean in season, and should be a lot of fun to own.

Very comfortable weekend/vacation interior and a real cockpit and bridge

Her construction uses a lot of lamination and is all based on normal lumberyard plywoods and dimensions.

Simple and very stout plywood construction

The hull is a very moderate “V” bottom which helps her plane on lower power. The chine is raised at the bow to give her a relatively narrow entrance, and, coupled with the narrow beam, should reduce the pounding at speed (in choppy water) that moderate “V” bottom boats can experience. It’s all a trade-off, you see. The deep “V” doesn’t pound at speed in chop, but takes massive power to get up on plane, and is tippy when going slow. While certainly necessary for open ocean powerboat racing, I personally think the moderate “V”is far better for general use.

Very simple and basic hull lines. Nothing “leading edge” here!

Power could certainly be a big gas engine but the fuel costs, if you’re going to run it much, would be terrible. No big planning boat is cheap to run, but diesel power, giving almost twice the range for the fuel, makes it more bearable. And the GM pickup diesel is a fine engine, light weight, reliable, and easy to get parts for. You can buy a fully marinized version, or of course buy one from an auto wrecker and marinize it yourself.

This boat was designed for a guy who reduced her to 38′ and put in two massive Cat diesels. I saw a photo and she floated right side up. Never did hear how she worked out though.