The Troller Yacht Book, 2nd Edition - The Book Locker

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The Troller Yacht Book, 2 nd edition found him again, but they kept on looking, driving their lifeboats through the breaking surf. Those old Coast Guard double-ended motor lifeboats were incredible sea boats, able to take pretty much anything. A few bought at surplus were turned into pleasure cruisers and commercial salmon trollers, and I still occasionally see one for sale. A life boat converted to a cruiser-troller. You can still find one around! Sometime in the late 1960s the old motor lifeboats were retired in favor of 44-foot steel boats. When the coast rescue service was founded the boats were launched from the surf and rowed out. When motors were developed the rowed boats evolved into the motor life boats, and many of them were launched from tracks that went out into a bay. They were essentially just a heavy duty version of the old surf dory. Although the Coast Guard retired them years ago, several west coast guard bases still have one sitting on land, as a monument, and there are still a few around, converted to pleasure or commercial fishing use. By the early 1900s jetties were being built on river mouths, and new coastal communities sprang up, many building usable harbors near the ocean. Small commercial boats now had places to dock and hide 2
The Troller Yacht Book, 2 nd edition from weather, and whole small boat industries such as fishing, building, repair, towing, and supplying, evolved. In those innocent days the mission of the Coast Guard was to rescue working watermen and the odd pleasure boater if they needed it, and with the new harbors and the greatly increased number of small boats out on the ocean, a new Coast Guard boat evolved. Longer and narrower in proportion to the length than the motor life boats, built of steel so they could come down on a rock or sand without damage, much faster with bigger horsepower engines, these new boats were designed to be able to get up and plane: to slide across the surface of the water instead of push through it. They could get to the scene in a hurry and had the power to tow medium sized fishing boats if they had to. And now in the 21 st century these fine boats are being surplused off, replaced with aluminum ones that are faster yet. Like all the rescue boats, these newest ones are self righting too, and can be completely rolled over and still keep going. I don’t know if they’d survive hitting a rock though. So while the last generations of Coast Guard boats are tremendous and the newest are interesting but not as dedicated a rescue boat, the low-speed efficiency of the original motor life boats is what’s worthy of our study today. The new boats may also be tremendously seaworthy, but they could never carry enough fuel to power those big engines for long-range voyaging and don’t have a hull form that is meant to go displacement speeds. It will of course, but that isn’t the design criteria. For small powerboats like the Coast Guard lifeboats including the newest ones, unbelievable feats of seaworthiness were almost routine, and for the most part they went unpublicized. We’ve all read books and magazine articles detailing the grand cruises of sailboat cruisers like Eric and Susan Hiscock, Lin and Larry Pardey, and Tim and Pauline Carr. But while the Hiscocks, Pardeys, Carrs, and all the others were out there sailing and writing, countless small powerboats were out there, too, their owners for the most part also earning a living, but not by writing for yachting magazines. 3
Page 2 and 3: This is the 21st century update of
Page 4 and 5: Copyright © 2011 George Buehler IS
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Page 14 and 15: 2. Aren’t sailboats more practica
Page 18 and 19: 4. What Happens If the Engine Quits
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The Troller Yacht Book, 2nd Edition - The Book Locker

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