NAS asks the question on everyone's lips these days..."Is this the new bow of yacht racing?"... and well they should!
The thing is though, the scow bow is hardly new. Let's just say it has simply languished in the memory hole and, if you were to ask me, a scow bow makes a whole bunch of sense for cruising, too...
I expect a lot of regular readers here are aware that our last boat, "Loose Moose 2" (featured in Phil Bolger's "Boats With an Open Mind"), was a scow-bowed sharpie and, in its travels, caused no end of consternation and scandalized anchorages on three continents.
As it happens, I really like scows and there is a pretty even chance that the next Loose Moose will, in fact, be a scow (if it is not a catamaran or proa).
I'm not exactly alone in the whole liking scows thing... Tad Roberts first came to my attention while I was living in France and just about to build our first Loose Moose (a Bolger Jessie Cooper design) and, if I had seen his Harry design just a little earlier, I'd most likely have built it...
While we were building our "Loose Moose 2" in Meaux, France, Reuel Parker included some drawings of a 44-foot scow cargo schooner stock plan in his book that has (in my opinion) set the standard for what a scow schooner should look like. Sadly this plan was something of a vaporware design (we tried to buy the plans just after we lost Loose Moose 2) and, while Reuel does have a couple of scows in his design portfolio, neither comes close to the 44-foot cargo schooner in his book. Well worth a look.
Willliam Garden, of course, is known to have designed an awesome scow or two and Tillicum certainly pops to mind...
Pete Culler was not adverse to the idea of a scow either...
What can I say... Pointy ends are so passé these days!
Listening to Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution
So it goes...
