Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Some of you may remember my adventure of mounting a folding hard sided 16 foot Chalet travel trailer on top of a salvaged Party Hut 30 foot toon.

It went well, but it's time for a new project.

This time it's going to be a 28 foot rear queen bedroom model Airstream International Howard Deam series. It's - ahhhh - pretty luxe.
For $75K it better be the Taj Majal. Considering it has DUCTED heating and air conditioning... with return ducts in the ceiling. It's also damned heavy compared to my 2,000 lb. Chalet, coming in at 7,000 lbs. wet. The beautiful thing about the Airstream is it has an amazing panoramic view out the front from the inside which I DON'T have on my current rig.

My initial calculations tell me I'm going to need a 45 foot long, 8 foot wide tritoon with 34" diameter logs. (I want to be able to tow it) This will give me a nice 5 foot fishing deck aft and covered 15 foot lounge deck on the front. I've decided to go big or go home and will be mounting a 350 hp. Yamaha outboard.

http://blueoceansmarine.com/yamaha/36-y ... -f350.html

I get a solid 20mph out of my trusty 90 hp. Yammy 2 stroke on my current boat, and I figure this one will cruise at 30 with a top speed of 35. Lifting strakes of course.

I've already had a naval architecture firm draw up the blueprints for the toon, but now the question is who should I have build the logs and deck for me? I'm going to go with honeycomb polycarbonate composite for the deck instead of Meranti this time. It's going to save a LOT of weight not to mention be virtually indestructible and make the entire toon incredibly strong - able to take a pounding from breakers.

Recommendations for fabricators please.

http://u-fabboats.com/ would be the only one to tackle such a job.

Airsteams are heavy and very poor values due to initial cost--new and used. You'd do better to purchase an existing houseboat.

Thanks, but I'm sure there are more than a few capable fabricators in the US - Ontario is a looooong way from Tucson and I would rather keep my hard earned dollars in the US.

As far as purchase a houseboat I could do that in a heartbeat, but you may have forgotten the primary purpose of my first project was to make it an *amphibian*: The trailer rolls off the front of the toon on 16 foot aluminum ramps so that it can be separately towed on land. I intend on taking this boat to Chile with frequent inland sojourns into different latin american countries. Airstream is the only answer for a job like this. All the others will fall apart on their crappy roads, guaranteed. Sure, there's a weight penalty, but then again it's made out of steel and aluminum instead of Styrofoam - hence the huge logs. The design spec for the toon is 12,000 lbs. with the trailer making up 7,000 of that.

As I type I'm sitting here in San Diego harbor and it's 75F.

At that price and a build that big from ground up, why not go with twin 350s? My buddy has twin 350s on his 32' sportfishing boat and loves them. A guide I fished with in south La had one on his 24' center console.

I believe both Harris and Southbay (maybe others, too) offer toons with twin outboards.

That's a heck of a price at about 1/2 retail and even includes free shipping from Indonesia.

When you get this project going ill be watching I liked your last build thread so looking towards the next one. Take lots of pics thanks

TDJ2591 wrote:At that price and a build that big from ground up, why not go with twin 350s? My buddy has twin 350s on his 32' sportfishing boat and loves them. A guide I fished with in south La had one on his 24' center console.

I believe both Harris and Southbay (maybe others, too) offer toons with twin outboards.

That's a heck of a price at about 1/2 retail and even includes free shipping from Indonesia.

Twins would be awesome, but this is going to be more of a "coastal cruising" type of boat and all out speed is actually low on the list of priorities - but fuel consumption is a major issue considering the long distances. I'm also considering diesel inboard at this time but the price is triple. That price on the 350 from Indonesia will be impossible to beat in the US - $20K is where they seem to be here... I don't really care if it takes 6 weeks shipping. For $4.5K I can wait. The one issue I have not completely resolved is if it will be covered under factory warranty since it's a grey market engine... My thought is to have it serviced exclusively by authorized Yamaha dealers during the warranty period even of course that's not mandatory.

The design spec calls for 30 knots cruising at 75% power, in reality I'll be looking for 20 knots at 50% which is right at the bottom of the torque curve and should provide the best mileage.

With 700 horsepower I'll bet it could cruise at 40. Tongues would be waggin' for sure as I fly by sipping my Kettle One martini at the helm. Up and olives please, just wave the vermouth over it.

My driver's license actually starts with 007.

tkrein wrote:When you get this project going ill be watching I liked your last build thread so looking towards the next one. Take lots of pics thanks

I'm going to do a blog and have a friend produce a half hour documentary. I'm hoping I can sell it to recover part of the cost of building this monster.

Right now I'm having a nosebleed after looking at my spread sheets.

Here's my current "office" at Marina Cortez, Harbor Island, San Diego - 30 degrees cooler than Tucson. It's 75 and sunny every day and 68 at night. EVERY FREAKIN' DAY. No wonder 100 billion people live here... but not at the end of my dock!
..and the new first mate Toby on watch:

http://www.custompontoonboatkitsetc.com/index.html

http://usapontoon.com/Pontoon_Size___Pricing.php

Thank you sir.

I own a Forest River RV, and I am on a forum for the owners. We get no end of people who complain about the build quality of the FR campers. I think they are built great provided you understand that they sell for under $30K. Anytime someone complains about "why cant they build them right" or shit like that, I always refer them to Airstream. I tell them they are hands-down the best built RV's out there.

When they see you gotta pay $75k for a sub-30 foot camper, they almost always come back with "Forest river aint that bad" LOL

Airstreams are sweet, but I don't care for them too much.

Tim

how well do you trust this place in Indonesia? I would be afraid to wire them 10k+ for a motor that may never show up

RonKMiller wrote:
My initial calculations tell me I'm going to need a 45 foot long, 8 foot wide tritoon with 34" diameter logs. (I want to be able to tow it) This will give me a nice 5 foot fishing deck aft and covered 15 foot lounge deck on the front.

You'll haft to pardon my math but 34 x 3 is already wider than the 8' overall width of you're project. IMHO if you were to slam all three pontoons together under the deck you could make the maximum legal width of 8'6" but you'd be opening up another can of worms "displacement". What makes the pontoon hull design shine is the pontoons ability to efficiently displace the water around the hulls and to allow efficient forward progress of the boat. IMHO it I were to attempt this build I'd seriously consider 10' min. for minimum width myself. But even at that it would only allow a foot between the pontoons for water displacement between the pontoons. So even at that it may still be lacking displacement qualities that will force the boat to push tonnage of water forward and out of the way to make room for the hull to pass, making a lot of lost efficiency and additional engine power and fuel neccessary to "get it done". At 10' it is still relatively easy to pull in most states with a wide load banner and an inexpensive permit. Anyway it's something to consider.....

That's a really good point - and eggsactly why I've hired a naval architecture firm to design it. My initial calculations obviously aren't worth squat, and it looks like I'm going to end up with a 10' wide boat - unless I want to go REALLY long which doesn't make much sense... I am toying with the idea of having the logs extend beyond the deck in the rear, but that leaves them really vulnerable to damage. Such much to consider here since it's never been done.