Lifelong dream plans L.F. Herreshoff/Cherubini44 lines

And on the vacuum infusion - you might instead look at going the Cold Molded route. no reason you cant have the Cherrubinin lines (they are sexy - and the advantage of cold molding is that your builder skills are much more directly applicable.

 

Another option might be to restore a little trailer sailer. You'll gain valuable skills, have something to play with and it'll offer a bit of insight as to if this is a path you want to travel down.

As I eluded to in my previous post, even with a set of 44 hull molds and completed hull shell, liners and deck cap, you still have a huge amount of work before you. Restoring a trailer sailer will show you how little the actual hull build impacts the project. You may find you don't like this goo and fabric stuff, as well as the itching and this is a lot cheaper lesson to learn then a 44 build.

 

All of you guys have great things to say. All of your comments will be processed in time. I have considered and mulled some of these ideas already. You may be interested to know that I have in-fact spoken with Dave Cherubini on the phone a very friendly and unassuming guy. I had inquired as to whether he wouldn't sell me a bare hull. He informed me that he had an already finished hull and deck that he was willing to sell. I don't think the ballast had been set into her keel. He quoted me a price if my memory serves me of $250 k. I believe these boats to be worth every cent of there cost. But compare that to a quote I got from Cape George cutters in Port Townsend Wa. of $45,000 for an Atkins 45' foot bare hull. It kind of makes me scratch my head. What is their overhead? What would I pay for the raw materials assuming I could do the rest.

 

You seem to be making the implicit assumption that the selling price of a bare hull has a fixed relationship with the cost of building that hull.

It doesn't. It's all about perceived value. Cherubini thinks their hull is worth 5X the price of the other one and yes, it might not actually cost any more in material and labour expenses. If you don't agree, no problem, don't buy it. Same logic when looking at a Toyota versus a Mercedes.

Anyway, considering raw materials costs alone is a one way trip to trouble. Unless you have unlimited free labour, materials costs are just one component. Just how much time do you have to spare? Projects like this, especially if you've never done it before, *never* go to timeline and budget. I've built 3 houses and a boat is a lot harder. Houses are dead simple in comparison.

PDW

 

The raw materials estimate wouldn't be especially difficult to work up. take a stab at figuring the sq. ft of the hull shell, then estimate how much goo it takes to wet this out. The goo and fabric weight will be about the same, so calculate how much to wet out a single layer of fabric. Next, pick an average laminate thickness and figure out how many layers of fabric and goo this will take. For the liner and deck cap, triple the costs associated with the hull shell and you'll be in the ball park. The MK II hulls where hand laid with alternating 24 ounce fabmat until they where a 3/4" thick in most of the hull and an all vinylester laminate. The Cape George 45 is a 1/2" thick hull and a polyester build, with vinylester against the gel to prevent blisters. The cost difference are really in the quality of the work and materials. For example the Cape George uses a lot of Douglas fir for it's load bearers a wooden deck and deck structures, while Cherubini uses G-10 for it's load bearers and single skin for it's deck and liner. Cape George uses a little vinylester, in key locations, with the considerably cheaper (and weaker) polyester everywhere else, while Cherubini is all vinylester. These differences can be seen in their respective weights and ratios. The Cherubini 44 is a 30K pound, 50' long boat with a 40% ballast ratio. You'll find the CG 45 considerably heavier (while being 10% shorter) with less ballast, mostly because they use so much wood in their upper works.

Again, the hull, deck cap and liner will only be at best 20% of the build effort and cost, so maybe you should price a 75 HP turbo diesel and it's related pieces, maybe some spars and sails, to get a feel for some of the other costs.

If you want to build a yacht this size, the cheapest method is to find a derelict and bring her back to live. I bought a 65' yacht a few years ago, damaged in a hurricane, for literally pennies on the dollar. She has several times her purchase price in a new rig, sails and engine and will be sold when the market picks back up for many times what I purchased her for. There are hundreds of desperate owners out there, looking for new loving homes for their neglected yachts.

 

Go take a look at the "Restoration of Ron Holland Flirt of Paget" in Sailing anarchy http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?showtopic=117372 if you want to see a beautifully executed receussitation

bucnet currently has a 1973 Columbia 45 available for $45k http://www.bucnet.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=yachts-for-sale No she doesn't have the lines or hand laid build quality of a Cherubini. but she will definitely cost less to get to that Cherubini interior level of quality.

or a 1970s Formosa http://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/40274


As for passage making. with your sailing experience you know its boring

 

There is really not much to scratch your head about here until you make sure of an apples to apples comparison. Are you getting hull and deck? What is the quality of the mold? quality of the layup? Complexity of the hull form? Is the deck bonded on? What is the weight of the materials in both cases? Does it come with any required internal structure bonded in already? Is the lead already in place? (in the case of Cherubini that is probably $25k right there) Those are just some of the rudimentary questions...there are plenty more.
I'd say that there is some value just in the Cherubini name so you might expect it to be more expensive. There would be some value transferred to you in the reputation of the Cherubini Yachts. It is possible the proprietor of the Cherubini company would ask you to you sign a contract agreeing to never use the Cherubini name anywhere in the title or sales info on your boat although now that they are out of the business they may not care anymore.

I agree very much with the others that starting out with a much smaller and easier project would serve as a little "reality therapy" for a future project like this. However if you are determined to continue you have a serious amount of homework to do just in comparing your options!

 

Is anyone willing to share some knowledge about design software. Something that is available to the amature. I want to design a Cherubini *******.

 

Software is a great tool, but it's just a set of wrenches, you still have to learn which nuts to torque, to get the end result you desire. Software doesn't offer this. What software does is faithfully generate shapes, from the inputs you've applied. What software doesn't do is suggest if these newly generated lines, are appropriate for your SOR. It takes a great deal of experience to design a boat like the 44. The shapes alone are very refined, but more importantly is the engineering for the structure, which works in concert with the shapes employed.

 

PAR
My intention is to COPY not to design a new wheel. I guess I should ask whether it is possible to input a set of lines, individual stations and profiles of an already proven masterpiece and mirror them with the appropriate design software that would then yeild very accurate numbers and guides for the layout of keel and station moulds. like SolidWorks. I suggest that it is possible with a basic understanding of structure that it can nearly become an intuitve process to apply the internal stiffening structure of longitudenal stringers and bulkheads. Intuitively I understand that the full keel design of the Cherubini 44 is already a very stiff hull shell. Do you agree that this is possible. I don't claim that I could myself design a Cherubini like masterpiece.

 

the exterior shape is the easy part. The load paths are the hard part to get right without overbuilding. And CAD isn't going to give you that. lofting and 3D CAD programs will let you build any sort of structure you want.

I'll happily sell you and older fully legal fully licensed version of Solidworks 3D CAD for $500. But I don't think you will be happy with the purchase

 

That sounds very much like a plan to violate the copyright of the original designer, unless you are going to make some significant changes so that it's actually a different boat. In which case, you're back to what PAR said. Box of tools, no knowledge of their use.

This keeps coming up on this forum. Someone who's never designed *or* built a boat in their life wants to design & build their own. Buy a set of plans if you're determined to build it yourself. Building it is going to be a big enough challenge.

If you insist on being both the designer and builder, for something that big & sophisticated, I'd bet money on you failing.

PDW

 

Is it 100% legal to copy this boat ? You don't want any phone calls from lawyers ? It is one thing to have your heart set on a certain design, but is it really such a stand-out that nothing else is comparable ? If so, why isn't it still selling like hot cakes ?

 

Oops, never saw pdwiley's post regarding 'copyright'. Even if the OP does "steal" the lines and make a reasonable facsimile of it, come the day when it unexpectedly needs to be sold, it's market value will be well short of the real deal, especially as 'factory' make anything trumps imitations just about every time, in market appeal.

 

PDW it is 100% legal to copy a boat. You cannot copy the blueprints - those are protected by copyright, but the implementation itself is not. Just like with a house, you cannot copy the blueprints, but you can do takeoffs and then do your own.

But that's a great example. walk into a house with a big cathedral ceiling (mine is 4 stories tall in the central staircase) Freeh as a builder, you well know that there is a fair amount of engineering that went into that structure.

So simply taking measurements isn't going to tell you what is in the walls, what the fasteners used are, what the footings are and what the joist patterns are.

Now you can use "rule of thumb" to do that, but you will end up with an overbuilt boat that is heavy and does not sit on her design lines. Or you can take the time to learn the engineering of itt, and do the naval architecture of the boat. And 3 years later have a set of blueprints that you can start building from.

How old are your kids? 7? 8? so if it takes you 8 years to build this boat - during what time are they going to learn to love sailing from you? Because by age 15 or 16 - tthey are already set in what they love to do and their social interests are going to overwhelm acquireing a love other than of the lustful kind.

So think hard about what you want your kids to learn from you and how you want to remember them and be remembered.