Tad Roberts

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Sitka Spruce

Construction: plywood
Length: 18' 0"
Beam: 7' 0"
Draft: 11.5"
Displacement: 2,900 lbs
Power: outboard 70 - 130 HP
Top Speed (with 70 HP: 28 Knots
Builder:

Comments

With a deadrise angle of 17 degrees at the transom, Sitka Spruce is just barely a "Deep Vee" planing hull. Today designers consider any boat with deadrise over 16 degrees at the transom to be a deep-vee.

One of the very first successful deep-vee's was Moppie, built in 1960, she had 24 degrees of deadrise, was designed by C. Raymond Hunt, and maintained 23 miles per hour through 9-10 foot seas and thirty knots of wind to win the Miami-Nassau race in 8 hours. She was a radical boat at the time, other planing boats of the day had very shallow vee bottoms that were almost flat at the stern. Moppie's deadrise was almost constant her whole length, meeting the chine well above the waterline, which made her tender at low speed or at rest. The narrow vee shape also needed more power for a given speed than the flatter bottomed boats. But by wining Miami-Nassau, breaking the old record by 32 minutes, in truly rough conditions, Moppie established a whole new class of boat. Sitka Spruce and all her relatives are direct descendants of the Hunt deep-vee.

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