O'Day Daysailor II Cuddy Mods

[Woodworker]

I am considering a 17 ft 1978 O'Day Daysailor II. Has anyone modified the Cuddy by lenghtening and enclosing to accomodate Two Persons overnight? Possibly adding storage for a Porta-Potty?
I have experience in working with Fiberglass and Woodworking since 1944, yes, 1944.
I would appreciate your views.
Where can I find drawings of the layout of this boat?

 

[Joe11688]

I am considering a 17 ft 1978 O'Day Daysailor II. Has anyone modified the Cuddy by lenghtening and enclosing to accomodate Two Persons overnight? Possibly adding storage for a Porta-Potty?
I have experience in working with Fiberglass and Woodworking since 1944, yes, 1944.
I would appreciate your views.
Where can I find drawings of the layout of this boat?

Check out "Small Craft Advisor" Magazine, issue #63 May/June 2010. There's an article in there entitled, "Convert Daysailer For Cruising." I think the boat he converted is an O'Day Daysailer.
I say, if this is what you want to do, go for it. Myself, I love small boats with cabins. It sounds like a fun project to me.
In this month's SCA #66, Stephen Ladd who wrote about his 12' boat "Squeak" in a book called "Three Years In A 12' Boat" is now working on a Sea Pearl for his next adventure. Good luck with that.
Joe

 

[Sunbird22358]

I own a 1979 DS II, the cuddy is "just" long enough as is to squeeze an intimate couple inside for pup-tent style cruising (without the threat of the tent collapsing!) and doing so will bring new meaning to the phrase "crawling into bed". In order to make room for a porta-pottie you will need to increase the headroom (no pun intended!), by raising the height of the cuddy. My recommendation is that if you want a cabin boat, the DS II is not what you want, by the time you have rebuilt the boat to what you want, you will have spent far more than the cost of a boat originally built with a cabin. (and I'm the type of dreamer that has considered doing just what you propose to do, but not on my DS II, I've thought of rebuilding an O'DAY 192 or similar boat, to have just 2-berths and a galley instead of the stock 4-berth layout) My advice is to look at such boats as the SIREN, a 17' boat similar to the DS, but with more freeboard and a 100# CB. That boat has a nice cabin with built-in space for a porta-pottie, and will much better suit your needs. Price used should be close to a DS II. If you look at 19' boats then there is the O'DAY MARINER (cockpit is as large or bigger than the DS II, with a 4-berth cabin, hull is the same as a RHODES 19 and so is similar proportions to the DS II), other designs are available too. Getting back to 17' there is the NEWPORT 17, The VENTURE 17 (old MacGregor design, similar to their 21, and in fact looks like they added 4' to the stern of the 17 hul lto create the 21. The Capri/Catalina 16 is good, but the 2.5' wing-keel will make launching/hauling at a ramp harder. Their 18 has even more room without being that much bigger, but again has a 2-2'5 keel. The O'DAY 19 is another centerboarder, has 2 berths and room for a potty. Also has lots of stowage room below. That one is on my dreamboat list. The COMPAC 16 will give you the cabin space and a large cockpit... but is definitely smaller than the DS II and I don't think she will sail as well (I could be verey wrong on that?), The Montgomery 17, Vagabond 17 (AKA HOLDER 17), and the Sanibel 17 (might be 18) are other great boats in this size.
Over all, I've looked at a lot of used sailboat ads and unless you got an incredible deal on the DS II AND she needs a lot of TLC, it is not going to be worth it to modify one for cabin cruising. The DS II that Joe refers to in Small Craft Advisor was modified to allow 1-2 people to sleep out in the cockpit, the owner cut out the seats and extended the cockpit sole out almost to the sides of the hull. He was going to use the cuddy strictly for stowage. The final thought is to Resale Value, any modification to the deck of a DS II will make her no longer "Class Legal", and that could make it harder to sell the boat later, since she will no longer be suitable for racing in the class. Now, not many DS owners race, (I don't and am not even a member of the association anymore) but still.......
I'll include a couple of SIREN pics as reference and one orf a Montgomery 17 (lapstrake hull).

 

[Joe11688]

Woodworker,
Have you considered building a kit boat? Two of my favorite boats are the Stevenson "Weekender" and the Pocket Cruiser.
http://www.clcboats.com/shop/boats/wooden-sailboat-kits/pocketship-sailing-pocket-cruiser-kit.html I can't speak about most of the boats that Sunbird has mentioned except having once owned a new Sanibel 17 back in the 1980s, that boat would be dead last on my list. Of course, a lot of years have gone by and they may be building them better now, but the one I had, you could push the hull in with your hand very similar to squeezing a plastic bottle. Fortunately, my Sanibel 17 burned up on my trailer while it was sitting in my yard, but that's another story.
I love this little Pocket Cruiser but I know that it could never be as comfortable as my O'Day 222, nor could it ever have the room to carry the gear that I'm accustomed to carrying when I go on my overnight cruises in the summer. It's a trade off I guess, and it all depends on the type of boating that you intend on doing. You may be better off sticking with a design that will work for you rather than take a chance with a boat that wasn't designed for what you may have in mind. Good luck with whatever you decide.
Joe

 

[Sunbird22358]

Joe, I'll bow to your experience with the Sanibel, although there have been several different builders during the on again/off again production of that design. My biggest beef with far too many of the "small overniters" is that the builders try to squeeze too much cabin into too small of a boat. I like the styling of the 192, but the interior of the older 19 with 2-berths seems more practical, the Mariner is nice and the interior is better than the 192 in some ways (at least there is a potential provision for a galley). Our old CAL 21 had 4 berths (and the sales brochure mentioned that 2 more could sleep out in the cockpit in good weather!) but 2 adults was really the comfortable limit, maybe 2 adults and one child would still work (we did sleep one night with all 4 of us..... Mom, Dad, My 8-year old sister, and 12 year-old me... in Hadley's Harbor) to allow for room to stow food and clothes.
I can't imagine sleeping 4 people in anything smaller than a boat like your 222, and even then they'd need to be REAL friendly!

Those Weekender Boats are pretty cute! Shoal-Draft, and easy to build if you have some wooodworking skills I've heard. There used to be a fleet (well, averaged 2-4) of them that periodically launched in Wareham to go off for a weekend cruise. It was fun to watch them all sail out of the harbor together, each one slightly different (based on owner's skills and tastes) in appearance. Like a minature Friendship Sloop regatta.

PS: How about a SLIPPER 17? Talk about a "quart in a pint pot"!

 

[Joe11688]

Joe, I'll bow to your experience with the Sanibel, although there have been several different builders during the on again/off again production of that design. My biggest beef with far too many of the "small overniters" is that the builders try to squeeze too much cabin into too small of a boat. I like the styling of the 192, but the interior of the older 19 with 2-berths seems more practical, the Mariner is nice and the interior is better than the 192 in some ways (at least there is a potential provision for a galley). Our old CAL 21 had 4 berths (and the sales brochure mentioned that 2 more could sleep out in the cockpit in good weather!) but 2 adults was really the comfortable limit, maybe 2 adults and one child would still work (we did sleep one night with all 4 of us..... Mom, Dad, My 8-year old sister, and 12 year-old me... in Hadley's Harbor) to allow for room to stow food and clothes.
I can't imagine sleeping 4 people in anything smaller than a boat like your 222, and even then they'd need to be REAL friendly!

Those Weekender Boats are pretty cute! Shoal-Draft, and easy to build if you have some woodworking skills I've heard. There used to be a fleet (well, averaged 2-4) of them that periodically launched in Wareham to go off for a weekend cruise. It was fun to watch them all sail out of the harbor together, each one slightly different (based on owner's skills and tastes) in appearance. Like a minature Friendship Sloop regatta.

PS: How about a SLIPPER 17? Talk about a "quart in a pint pot"!

I agree with you about about the sleeping capacity of these boats including mine. They claim to sleep four but I can remember sailing over from Mattapoisett to Hadley's and spending a night there and also nights in Cuttyhunk and Vineyard Haven with just my wife and we were always bumping into one another. She'd be sprawled out on a quarter birth reading and I would be cooking and needing to have her move to get something out of the compartment under the birth. We've spent a week on the Cape on our O'Day 222 and sometimes we had our youngest son with us.
I've often thought of getting rid of at least one of those quarter births and doing something different with that space like adding a nice easy chair or a small dinette perhaps. We always slept in the V birth section anyway. Since my wife "swallowed the anchor" many years ago, I no longer have space problems. A 40 lbs Pit Bull/Grayhound uses very little space on the boat and she provides excellent companionship on my cruises.
There are two guys in my city who built Weekenders and one of them lives down by me. He claims that they are pretty easy to build, as his own woodworking skills are very lacking, according to him. According to what the other fellow told me about these boats, they will capsize but they can be righted as easy as a sunfish. One of my YC friends is building one right now. He's built boats before and does pretty good work.
I think that the whole key is having a large floor space to build it. A two car garage would be ideal. Also, the boat can be put on a large dolly and wheeled out in the driveway on nice days, to work on it. You'd want to do that anyway when it came time to do the fiberglassing.
I think that I'm going to stick with my 222 for as long as I can because I know from past experience, I'll never get the same comfort out of a smaller boat, nor will I be able to go as far and stow as much gear as I'm accustomed to having with me on my two and three day cruises. I still can't help but to think that there is a little boat out there that could meet some of my needs when it comes time to bid farewell to my 222 in favor of something more simple, easier, and cheaper to keep up, that doesn't require a pickup truck for towing it. Wayne has been threatening to get rid of the Seaward 22 in favor of a Norseboat. Every year he does a lot of swearing when it comes time to do bottom painting which is a job that I'm becoming less fond of myself.
Joe