Thread: Setting up for boat building

No offence Mark, but your desires, wishes, ideas and dream yacht concepts are not unheard of to us, particularly those such as Mik and myself, who have handled this set of questions repeatedly over the years.

Without exception, all yacht dreams that eventually evolve into real sailing vessels, either home built or other wise start from the experiences of the owner. These dream craft are a continuously developing set of criteria, ever changing, even being refined and constantly being updated. These "adjustments" to the dream are a direct result of the sailing experiences of the would be builder/owner. Without a reasonably extensive amount of cruising and certainly sailing miles logged, under your feet, making rational decisions about what you want in a boat is frankly, not practical, nor logical.

The best advise you can take to heart is forget about any specific design right now and work on develop you needs, desires and wishes, based in fact instead of speculation.

For example, you may think you can't live without an item or feature, though once you've spent some time at sea, you may quickly (or slowly) learn, that as handy as this item or feature might have seemed, while fantasizing about the life style, it turns out to be as impractical and difficult a thing to live with, farther from shore then you can swim back to, as you could ask.

It's a bit like entering collage. You have firm ideas of what things you'll need, what you want and how you'll approach these goals. Then you settle into your dorm and within a month, everything you thought was important is taking a back seat to those things that actually are.

Get some sea time, beg borrow and maybe steal some sailing time. Forget about the junk rig for the moment. It's just not a rig you're going to find many of (there's a good reason for this). Learn how to sail as many rigs as you can. The skills you get from this apply to all sails types and rig types.

Buy a small 2 to 4 person daysailor. Nothing fancy, just a simple boat, maybe a cat rig or a sloop. This will teach you boat handling and seamanship skills much faster then a bigger boat and not kill a bank account or marriage. Take boat handling classes, do some bare boat chartering on a None Such cat. All the while you'll be working on, developing and refining your desires for your dream yacht.

I've had clients come back to me 10 years after I've given them this speech. They're ideas about the dream yacht where radically different then when they started and a few have asked for a custom design to suit their now well cemented concepts.

So, before plopping down several grand for something you will very probably "mature" away from in the next couple of decades, as your experience grows, try to just live for the moment, enjoy and learn about your needs. Then with a reasonable "education" based in practical experience, your decision making about a particular design, will be refined enough to be described as intelligent instead of spirituous choices.

I hear what you are saying, whilst racing last week we were overtaken by a cat which was level while we were heeled over and being drenched.It was certainly tempting!

I am going to have a go at building a dinghy so that I can get out on the water when the time suits me and not just during the races, this should be a bit cheaper, we are looking at dinghy lessons and we know someone who is keen on sailing dinghies so we can get a few tips from them.

As the density of sea water is different to that of lake water, would I need any extra ballast for sailing a dingy in the sea if it was designed for lake use? Or at that size is the difference negligible? Are dinghies designed for either sea or inland use or does one size fit all?

Cheers for the advice, I don't want to make any expensive mistakes or even worse get put off what looks to be an interesting hobby!

MArk

No ballast other then a beer belly is necessary in a dinghy. The None Such I was referring to isn't a catamaran, but a cat rigged mono hull. This and the cat ketch, maybe a Freedom, will give you a hint of the junk rig, but with a lot less strings to pull and the modern convenience of push button sailing if you want it.

And don't overlook multihulls either - they are a lot of building and some are much poorer sailors than their advertising suggests.

But the good ones will extend your cruising range, give you a good feeling of space - but they do take a lot of building because of sheer surface area.

Try and sail as many different types of boats as you can and you will find one that suits you. Building a smaller boat to get on the water is an excellent idea. Don't make it too complicated - just something that sails well to get you and another person on the water and builds as quickly as possible - it is not the main project after all!

But still do what you are doing and get out on a variety of boats.

Best wishes
Michael