Interview with TransAtlantic Flats Boat Skipper
As we reported in our Sept. 23rd newsletter, brothers Ralph and Bob Brown set a Guinness Book Record by taking their 21’ flats boat over 6,000 miles across the Atlantic by way of Greenland and Iceland unassisted by a mother ship. Recently we caught up with Ralph Brown, the owner of the fledgling boat company, Dream Boats, which built the Intruder C-21. Given the number of center consoles that capsize each year offshore we were keen to ask Brown if he was concerned about capsize and what measures he has taken to prevent it or right his boat if it happened, and how he planed to be rescued if need be.
 The Intruder C-21 built by Dream Boats on Aug. 28 at 2:38 pm between the Shetland and Orkney islands in 12’ seas. Video taken from a UK Search and Rescue helicopter. |
See video of the Intruder C-21 taken from a S&R chopper in 12’ seas --
See video interview when the Brown brothers arrived in London --
Five years ago Ralph Brown started a boat company that would build flats boats out of fiberglass. “I wanted a boat that would be stable offshore but which could operate in very skinny water,” said Brown. He designed a center console with a catamaran bottom.
“Deep-V hulls are not stable,” Brown said, “and I wanted a boat that was incredibly stable. That’s why I designed the catamaran hull. At first it looks as if it has two tunnels, but it actually has three,” he said.
 Ralph can be seen here in his 21’ Intruder. The two-axle trailer sells for $2,850 extra. |
Stability Offshore
“As soon as you flood the bilge of a boat it starts to become unstable,” Brown said. “When the cockpit is flooded the boat can easily capsize which is why we put two 3-1/2” scuppers in the transom of the boat.” Brown went on to say that he used rubber exhaust pipe flappers to cover his scuppers on the outside and act as a check valve.
Once the cockpit of a small boat is flooded, the “free surface effect” of the water as it moves from side to side unfettered by baffles will usually capsize the boat.
“I filled the hull with foam flotation and placed it on the outside in the gunwales to make the boat harder to flip,” Brown said. “I knew the boat would never sink no matter what happened.”
 Bob’s Machine Shop jack plate, called Flats Jac, is used on the Intruder C-21 to give it shoal water draft. |
No Room for Free Surface Effect
In fact, the transatlantic boat seems to have been impervious to the free surface effect simply because there was very little room for water in the cockpit. The foredeck of the Intruder C-21 is a flat casting platform with six hatches for storage. The cockpit was filled with numerous large containers of fuel, water and supplies, leaving little space for anything else -- including sea water!
When looking at the boat it is easy to see that because the boat has such a low freeboard and the containers actually extended above the boat’s coaming, there was actually very little space in the cockpit for boarding seas to settle. There was no room for a "free surface effect" of water to do its harm. In order to capsize the boat a breaking sea would have to lift the boat up and turn it over.
 Note the depth of the cockpit which can’t be much more than 12”. |
Plan for a Capsize
“If the boat capsized,” said Brown, “We had rigged our air mattress on our T-Top. That would give it buoyancy. Then we had two long poles and rope and with them we planned to right the boat.”
“If you look at life rafts on some ships and you will see that they have flotation on the top of their boats in order to keep them upright,” Brown said.
Did Brown carry a life raft aboard? “No, the boat would float, so I didn’t need a life raft,” Brown said.
Brown went on to say that while he was in the little fishing community of Tassila, on the east coast of Greenland, he saw fiberglass fishing boats which had “Two-foot circular plates in the cockpit sole with many holes in it so that a boarding sea would fill the bilge with water and give the boat stability.” Brown said, “These boats had flotation in their gunwales. If they capsized the fishermen would die, so stability is important and the bilge becomes a ballast tank.”
On the Dream Boats website the Intruder C-21 is advertised for $26,098.29 with a Suzuki 115-hp engine and a hydraulic jack plate.