Just build the darn thing.

This thread is just to offer a bit of encouragement to any potential boat builders out there who are on the fence about building their dream boat. I know that scattered all over the world are copious half finished boats, large and small, from a bright-eyed, eager, ambitious and maybe a little naive builder wannabe that had a dream of building his or her own boat. But among those bright eyes are thousands of people that stop just thinking and start doing too. Maybe a small skiff to take the kids out in or your retirement world cruiser, our dream of sailing a boat that we built is a one common to few people, and that dream realized is common to even fewer, but only because so many of them never even started.
My dream come true is an all wood schooner which is about 1/3rd completed, and will sail in March, 2007. I've been on and around boats on the Chesapeake Bay and coastal South Carolina for most of my 38 years, and it took an extended stay in Thailand to finally show me that I would never have that boat until I started it. The mountain of obstacles I faced were intimidating and discouraging: no design, no big boat building experience, foreign country/culture, language barriers, limited budget (of course), lack of familiar building supplies and materials, limited skilled labor for help in the build, did I mention no design? All of these things kept my dream-come-true at bay until the day I made my decision to start building. It was that simple.
So, just do it. Give it plenty of thought first. Work out the numbers, the time, family obligations, all of those things. But, when you think it's time, it's time. Just do it.

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nice ,,,I like the shape,,,,,, what kind of wood is it? how much ballast? what design? how big? ,,to reflect on what you say ,,Im in ohio,,building a 32 ft spencer,,you wont believe the flack im getting from everyone ,,,,,exept my wife ,,,,,who keeps me going,,,,,,,,,I want to know all the specks on her ,good luck ,,longliner

 

Excellent post, Scott! Looking to hear a more about your build....

 

No kiddin'! Even if it is a plywood box,....build it. One success leads to another leads to something to brag about...


Steve

 

74' Schooner sailplan

Thanks for the kudos guys. I'm living, breathing proof that ANYBODY can build a darn fine vessel if they want to, and know how to buy lots of books from Amazon.com and read them. The list of books that I bought is a little longer than the ones that have actually guided me and made it possible. The invaluable ones for me have been:
Larry Pardey "Details of Classic Boat Construction: The Hull". This one has been like a bible to me.
Dave Gerr "The Elements of Boat Strength"
Norman L. Skene "Elementsof Yacht Design"
There is some overlap in each one, but for us non specially trained designers this helps emphasize many important aspects of good boat design. I didn't even know what a scantling was four months ago, and now I are one!

I have a question that I'll post on another forum as well: I'm working out the sail plan now for my schooner. I have one I like (.tif file attached to this post) and now of course I may need to tweak it for balance. When finding the combined centers of effort of the entire rig, how do I account for the overlap of the forestaysail, jib and flying jib? It makes sense that I simply treat them as centers and not as triangles, but then I also feel like some account needs to be made for the overlap. Anybody?
Boat specs are:

Beam: 17.9'
L.W.L.:63.1'
Depth of hull (not draft):10.35'
L.O.D.: 74'

I've got 3 tons of lead ballast hung below her very substantial deadwood keel. The wood part of the keel is also 3 tons. The entire boat thus far is made from a hardwood called Takien Tong. Very rot resistant and dimensionally stable, moderately easy to work.

That's Tigger. Any help on the center of effort thing will be great.
Scott

 

tigger's sail plan

Here's the .jpg I mentioned previously.

 

om,scott,u 4got 2 post it.(sorry bout the slang and shorthand)

 

OK, really, here's the file. No kidding this time.
scott

 

Thank you so much for this great post!
Know exactly what you mean.

Looks like a nice boat you're building there, very classy!

 

Wow, Scott, she's looking really nice. Do keep showing us your photos, that is going to be a beautiful boat!
I took your advice back when I was in grade 8, and just started building... took more than a year of grabbing whatever time I could between classes to build a 15-footer, but it was worth it. I'm trying to decide what I'll build next, y'know, when there's money again.... something bigger and better for sure. You gotta start somewhere!

 

Thanks for the encouragement folks. Here are are a couple of recent build photos. s/v Tigger's build so far is still basically on schedule, although there were many question marks when I sat down to figure out how long she'd take to build. Many people have asked me questions like "How long will it take to build?" or "How much will she cost?" Questions like these are impossible to answer, because the answer to the first question ranges from 6 months to 2 years, depending on how many leaded glass panels I want in the saloon's humidor. The answer to the second question is basically the same, except substitute dollars for months.
p.s. there's no friggin humidor.
The fact is, she could be seaworthy in 6 months, but I wouldn't feel at all comfortable with crossing an ocean in her. Another 2 months for that. Then, there's always the creature comforts to attend to. How many heads does a crew of 10 need? OK, 2 it is. Gotta go buy another toilet. Stuff like that adds greatly to the build time and budget. But, you know what? It's worth it. Every minute and every nickel is worth every second out on the water under sail on a boat I built (with a little help holding the dumb end of the tape measure, of course).
Actually, on that point, if any of you do decide to build your own boat and do it on a budget with little or no experience, then A.) Good on ya and 2.)don't neglect the sometimes pushy advice of veteran builders who've made the mistake you're getting ready to make, or offer a great and better idea at the expense of the great idea you already thought you had. There are many definitions for "experience" (mine happens to be that whole list of **** that doesn't work), but whatever it is it's valuable. If you have the chance to recruit, even for a 10 minute chat over coffee or a beer (be careful of designing stuff over beer. I refer you to my personal definition of "experience") an expert or someone who's done it before, don't pass it up. In fact, seek it out. Maybe you don't take their advice, but at least you've fortified your own ideas and opinions that they're the best way. That means a lot. Be confident and you'll finish her.
Fair building
Scott

 

This could be dangerous....
Not in terms of seaworthiness I mean... she looks like a gorgeous and very strong boat.
No, I'm talking in terms of getting the rest of us a little too motivated. Took me over a year to scrape Sunset Chaser together, and she's only fifteen feet. Now you've got me seriously thinking about SC II, which will certainly be a lot bigger and pricier. Been drawing for years, trying to figure out exactly what she'll look like.... well, hey, I wouldn't mind sticking to cheap used cars for a while to save up for the next boat.... (heck, I wouldn't mind having ANY car right now....)
Cheers, Scott- looking forward to seeing more of her!

 

Matt,
To help you visualize SC II's lines and shape and performance, if you've not already discovered it, I'd recomend a hull design software package called
Freeship (literally free of charge, no gimmicks). If you haven't already found it then you might be pleased with how easy it is to learn , the depth of geometric, hydrodynamic and hydrostatic data and pretty pictures you can get out of it. There's already lots of posts on this topic in other threads on this site.
Unfortunately, I dicovered Freeship after I'd purchased Blue Peter's "Hullform" design software for about $500. While still a bargain in the big picture, I found Hullform much less user friendly, a few graphic bugs (nothing serious), as well as not nearly as capable in manipulating whole surfaces at a time. Don't misunderstand, neither FreeShip nor Hullform are complete baot design CAD packages, they just help you in the initial stage of designing the hydro-aspects of the hull.
Once I familiarized myself with the important terminology of yacht (read boat) design, I found that Skene's "Elements of Yacht Design" and copious other well read journals of boat design and building refer to the same basic, core set of relatively critical "numbers", and conveniently so did the number crunching output's from both of these hull design programs.
I hope we can see pictures of SC II building progress soon!
Scott

 

Well, Scott, I've been using Freeship (also Rhino, and a half-dozen others....) for quite a while,and I too am quite impressed with it. Including the rapidly growing \Marine\ directory on my hard drive as well as all the old paper floating around my file cabinet I probably have five hundred, maybe a thousand sketches of various ideas, mostly fanciful and impractical....
You won't be seeing anything of my next boat for some time, but feel free to check out the solar car project I'm working on right now at http://qsvt.ca , that one's slated for racing next October.

 

Way COOOOLLLLLLL

Nice work!

JPG