Flicka Red Rascal

Red Rascal is not a production Flicka. Bob Collier built her himself, in his garage, from a set of Bruce P. Bingham's plans ordered from Bruce's father Fred Bingham — eighteen blueprints and full-size frame patterns that spared him the lofting. The hull is strip-planked in Douglas fir, about 120 planks scarfed at a 1:9 ratio and glued and screwed over the frames, then sheathed in epoxy and fiberglass with a doubled layer through the bilge. Collier turned the hull over single-handed in a six-hour operation using four winches on posts he built around the boat, an episode he recounted in Flicka Friends #57 (Spring 2014).

Below decks she departs from the plans in several ways. An enclosed head with a shower was built on the port side, which cost her the pilot berth, and a permanent dinette went in to starboard with a convertible table and an upper bunk to bring the berth count back to four. Trim and cabinet work throughout are Padauk, and the cabin sole is Padauk laid with Eastern hard rock maple rather than the usual teak-and-holly veneer. She carries a laid teak deck, six bronze New Found Metals portlights, and a gaff cutter rig on four spruce spars, the mast a hollow box section 23 feet long and 5 inches in diameter, with a 77-inch bowsprit. For auxiliary power Collier chose a 3 hp ELCO electric motor with six AGM batteries, a house battery and solar panels; because the banks add some 525 pounds low in the boat, he fitted 1,500 pounds of lead rather than the 1,750 the plans call for.

Getting her out of the garage after eleven years took the removal of the door, the 18-foot header and part of the fascia board, and she cleared the opening with less than a quarter of an inch to spare. She was trailered to Dana Point, California, transferred to the travel-lift at the Dana Point Marina, and christened Red Rascal after Collier's wife Marilyn — the original Red Rascal — before motoring on electric power to her slip, where she has since sailed on the Pacific. Four years after that first launch she came out again for fresh topsides paint, a corrected waterline and new sails. Collier told the whole build as a twelve-part series in Flicka Friends, running from #52 (Summer 2013) to the launch in #66 (Winter 2018), and published it separately as a book through Blurb in 2014.

GPS, VHF w/DSC, dinette converts from seating 2 to seating 4 (pull out seats and dinette sole),hot water heater, shower, electric aux. propulsion, dinette converts to double bunk beds.