Any experience with plans of Bateau.com?

[MartinV]

Does anyone know if the plans and designs from Bateau.com are good?

[Deering]

I built their Fast Skiff 12 last year, and heavily modified it. I liked the design and the skiff is terrific, though not sure how much is due to my mods vs the original design.

Plans were generally accurate though a bit confusing on some of the dimensions. I prefer a scarfed hull panel which gives a fairer curve and doesn't require blocking at the panel joins, but their system works. I'd build another Bateau boat. They have a nice range of designs in their portfolio.

[MartinV]

Thanks for your feed back!

[rwatson]

Go through their forum and look up 'GT27' houseboat.

You will find heaps of questions about missing specs and explanations, especially of the metric plans.

I ended up converting the lines to a 3d CAD drawing just so I could take-off dimensions at will.

The designs are worth what you pay for them - not a lot more.

[Deering]

I've also built designs from Devlin, Chesapeake Light Craft, and Pygmy. They were all superior (from a plans quality standpoint) to Bateau. But if Bateau had the boat plan I liked, I'd buy it from them.

[Surfszup]

For some boat building practice, I downloaded the free plans for the D4. There was plenty of information in the plans and even more help from the forum. For not spending money for plans, I had a good experience.

[tx57]

I've built a GF18 from Bateau and would have to say the quality of the plans and the butt block splices are subpar. Knowing what I know now I could deal with it a lot better. Missing dimensions are usually obvious if you think a little bit and butt block splices can be replaced with taped splices. I've only been on two of their designs and would say the are good. I know a guy that has been on 12 different boats and he is of the opinion that they are all good, some are special. Since he's spent his life on the water as a master mariner I'll take his word for it.

[rwatson]

There are a lot of dimensions that can be extrapolated from others, but the are some that are just too hard, especially when the plans are plainly marked 'Not to Scale' ( which in itself is strange)

Then there are some that should just be plain 'be there' out of professional courtesy - like the vertical height of all of the stations keel points above the base line. When you get an answer 'just wait till the side panels meet at the front - and that will give you the answer' is NOT to standard.

It was only when another actual builder said he was puzzled as well, that the dimension was provided. see http://forums.bateau2.com/viewtopic....597&hilit=gt27


In the end, I fed all the chine positions into Freeship, so that I could look at the three dimensional model and make sure everything 'fitted'.

[Ike]

I also built an FL 12 from Bateau.com. See http://newboatbuilders.com/pages/fl12.html It is a good little boat and I like it a lot. I too made a few minor changes but nothing significant. It was not difficult to build, but, as has been said, the plans are not the best. But they do have a very good forum and many of the problems can be easily solved by posting a question on the forum. Also they sold me almost everything I needed, resin, glass etc., at a reasonable price.

I used butt blocks to join the panels for the sides and bottom, but if I did it again I would use scarfs. It gives a much fairer line. The thickness they specified for the butt blocks was too thin and broke on one side. But using thicker material resulted in an unfair curve, a "hard spot". So scarf the panels.

As for the boat, it is very stable and works well with oars (rows easily). I use a 2 hp motor and it scoots right along. It would probably plane with a five hp. I go fishing on a fairly large lake, and there are lots of boats. It handles wakes well but being flat bottom does pound if you head straight into it. It is very sensitive to wind because it has high sides and only draws a few inches. But the opposite side of that coin is you can take it into water about four inches deep. For a 12 footer (actually slightly under 12 ft) it has a lot of carrying capacity. My wife is not a boater. Boats in general scare her, but she likes this one and feels very safe in it. That's about as good a recommendation as there is.