RCU Forums - Any AMSTERDAM (Or her sisters) Builders?

I had forgotten just how pretty this ship is. Unfortunately I left itwith a friend forstorage and it got destroyed, so I do not have pics of what I did. I will GLADLY tell about it though.

First off, I agree that it was a TERRIBLE handling ship, even with a custom prop and enlarged rudder. There was simply NO graceful way to bring her to the dock. As far as the high CG... well, I had13 pounds of sand in the bilge to ballest her to the water line, so she came back up from a 90 degree knock-down from a real tugs' wake. No issue there. I also had the aft deck design that had the low engine cover and overhanging deck just forward of that. Had no issues there, aside from occassional water ingress from a boarding wave.

Engines (Yes, plural): I used two Traxxas Marine .15 engines geared to a single Traxxas T-MAXX transmission, which was the only way I knew of at the time to get reverse out of a nitro-powered boat. I have no idea what the gearing was, but I had enough power and rpm at the prop that I could use trim alone and have her at hull speed. I ran two electric pumps to pump water through the engines, and ran them off an ESC linked to the throttle servoto govern water flow. Fuel was in a 40oz tank forward draining to a 10ozauxillary tank between the engines, and would run both engines at 1/4 to 1/2throttle all day. I ran the exhaust through a custom-built heat exchanger using copper tubingand an outer housing of a short peice of 4"PVC pipe, then into a re-welded tuna can asan oil trap, then up the stacks and out the stockstack tubes. (LookedSWEET with the smoke coming out of those stacks, too!) The oil trap was for thewaste oil that would havemade amess of my deck like it does my T-MAXX, and was cleaned by using a smallcustom-built hand pump to suck it up and out aspecial port I installed under one of the forward hatches. The fuel fill was under the other.

Cooling: For the engines I custom-built a pair of impeller pumps using a set of bilge pumps that I tore apart and rebuilt. I just cut a set of holes in the hull and epoxied the pump housings right to the hull, back aft near the prop so I wouldn't suck them full of sand or other garbage if I went aground. These pumps ran off a cheap little ESC tied into the throttle circuit with a Y-harness, and worked PERFECTLY. They cooled the engines, exhaust, and then went overboard through dual outlets. I wanted to know they were running no matter which side of the ship I could see, so I had dual outlets for both. Also hooked to that ESC was a fan I had scavenged out of a cheap little NIKKO hovercraft. This was the centrifugal lift fan, so I mounted it up under the bridge deck, which was the highest interior deck on the ship, and cut a hole through the deck for the air inlet, then just left the bridge windows out of the model. The air went out through holes I put inthe engine cover, as well as under the deck overhang just forward of the engine cover. Between the pumps and the fan, that engine room NEVER got hot.

Lights: I did not know how to do the range lights, so I just did a basic port/starboard/mast head light system, hooked to the reciever switch to come on when it did. I also had a red light in the bridge, and white lights in the cabin which I took out later because of the open holes in the deck for airflow. I then used those white lights down at the forward portholes to add some character to the hull.

Pumps: I ran my ship on the Columbia River a lot, so I was out with large shipping and so got hit by their VERY large wavesquite often. I hadfour bilge pumps in her... one forward in the fuel compartment,two mid-ship in the engine room, and one aft in the electronics bay. Each compartment was seperated by water-tight bulkheads so if one section flooded it would not flood the whole ship, and each compartment had an automatic pump switch in it to turnonthe pumps and an audible alarm. I got knocked down by a large Foss tug wake one time, and when she came back up I had two alarms going and the port engine shut down due to water in the intake. Another time I wasn't paying attention while pulling a 6' long, 3' wide barge I'd built for her loaded with sand (about 150 pounds), and got hit on the bow by a breaking wave that BURIED her... if it hadn't been for the pumps and remote electric start on the engines I'd have lost her.

Power: I used a 6-volt wet-cell power-toy battery for my power needs, and a 6-volt bicycle generator geared into thetransmission gearto keep it charged. I did not have the generator geared real high, so while it did help, I doubt it was actually replacing all the power I was using. I think I would have burned up the engines if I'd tried to do that, but it would run all day without any issues at all. I wrapped the generator with 1/4 inch copper tubing to create a cooling jacket, and even after running for 4 or 5 hours straight, it was never hot.

Prop and rudder: I wanted to keep the stock look as much as possible, so I went with a three-blade brass prop of the same diameter as the stock plastic one (don't remember the measurement), and ran a shaft through sealed ball bearing set into a brass tube which served as my through-hull and shaft packing. To keep water out the rest of the way, I welded in a vertical tube just inside the hull and poured it (and the shaft tube) full of 90-weight gear oil. It seeped only a VERY tiny bit, and served to keep the bearings from getting corroded by water. There was almost no drag at all with those ball bearings, unlike the stock brass bushings. (That shaft assembly is the only thing I THINK I still have of her... somewhere.) As seems to be commen with all these kits, and probably the real ship too, the rudder was just not adequate. I did not think of a bow-thruster, (nice idea by the way), but I extended the rudder aft using epoxy and sanding it down to the shape I wanted. I ended up stripping my servo with the load under full engine power, but thatwas fixed by replacing it with a higher torque unit. (Do you RELLY need that super-fast shark-tail rudder?) Anyway, by running the tow bridle over the ROUND line guide over the aft deck (the stock stuff is square... chafing hell!), around the winch drum, and then aft to a small eye set in the bulkhead, it handled as well as anything would towing that much of a skiff around the river.

For a long time I had just been using the Traxxas 3-channel transmitter that comes with the T-MAXX, which gave me throttle, steering, and transmission shift, but then I wanted the ability to start the engines remotely, so I bought a 6-channel system and set it up to do that for me, with plans to put in a light switch on the last channel. There was also room to put in functional anchor windlass and functional tow winch, but I did not have the chance before I put her in storage. This ship is just so big, with so much room in her, there is almost no end to the things that can be done. I had me and my wife in a ten foot aluminum skiff that weighed about 700 pounds with us and our gear for fishing, plus a deep-cycle battery and electric trolling motor, and I only had to use full throttle to get to cruise, but not to maintain it. The first time I tried this, I pulled the winch off the aft deck, ripping the #10 hold-down bolts out of the plywood deck! (I hit the tow bridle too hard is why, but still...) After repairing it and getting some pointers from a tug crew member that saw it happen, this ship pulled us all over the Columbia River with no problem.

Now to my own question... I want to build another tug, but do not have the room for something as big as this one. I am towing just me in a hand-built skiff weighing about 350 pounds with me and stuff. I want something big enough to dothe kind of work I did to the Amsterdam, but small enough to be relatively easy to store while living on a boat. Say a larger harbor tug or a smaller coastal tug. Anyone got ideas?