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 The basic tools I use most. 

 My must have boat building book list.

The technical, ecconomic and labor aspects of boat building are not the primary challange. This page is a more personal look at the motovations, mental conflicts and turning points in the process of undertaking the construction of a sailing yacht.   

(You might want to print this page as it is mostly text and could be a great cure for insomnia.)

Over the years the dream was fed by an O'day 19, bare boat charters, occasional boat shows and a perpetual subscription to sailing magazines. The responsibilities of raising a family almost cured me.  The idea of s pending five years salary on a cruising boat and then paying to maintain it pushed the dream to the far recesses of my consciousness.  But it was still there. I sublimated with woodworking.   To prove my endurance, I built my own house and for ten years accumulated tools and worked on my joinery skills and vacuum bagging veneers. I built a McKenzie style drift boat during a fly fishing jag and a 19' Hershoff reproduction but neither really fulfilled the dream.

Then suddenly I was approaching fifty years old and still didn't have my boat. The dream flared up in earnest.  For the next few years I medicated it with annual bare boat charters in the BVI but that only aggravated the problem.   We gradually built a list of features we wanted on the dream boat and things to avoid.   I read every book on boats and boat building I could find and refined the list.

Several things combined to make the dream possible.  The mortgage was paid off.  Number one son has been awarded a scholarship. I was working from home with a reasonably successful software package and therefore could sneak out during slow times to work on a boat.

One of my fixes was the Sailing Forum on CompuServe and one day, fate intervened in the form of an E-mail exchange with John Fox, at the time, chief of engineering at Carol Marine. I was actually talking seriously about building my own boat!  I sent him my wish list and he responded with a conceptual plan that was something like a Mum36 on steroids.   Suddenly all the practical advice I had learned in Dave Gerr's "Nature of Boats"  and the CCA's "Desirable and Undesirable Characteristics of Offshore Yachts" evaporated and the base instinct that made me spend my teenage fortune on a '57 Cheve took over my brain.  Fortunately, over the next year as we refined the design, practicality regained control and the result was a plan for a comfortable 45' performance cruiser. With a 14' beam, the interior was roomy enough for three staterooms, two heads, a generous navigation station that would double as my office, a nice galley and dining area.

In a concession to my latent hotrod urges, the design is a bit stiffer than most production cruisers and the draft of 7' is a bit more than optimal for the Bahamas, but fine for the Caribbean and would give excellent up wind performance.

Because my experience was in woodworking, the hull would be white cedar clad in Kevlar, biaxial-glass and epoxy. My accumulation of mahogany would be turned into the stem and frames.  The deck would be Divinicel and okume plywood.

Now my attention turned to financing.  After several months of take offs, hundreds of calls to vendors and bid submissions, we arrived at a total cost just under $90,000.  I estimated about five years from erecting the molds to launch and budgeted $1,200 per month for the boat fund with a loan at the end to pay for rigging, sails and fitting out.

With the first draft of the plans in hand, the urge to start doing something was overwhelming. With a nagging doubt still in the back of my mind, I looked for things that would not signal a total commitment. What I did was to make my first mistake. I bought 8,000 pounds of old X-ray shielding for the keel figuring that if I chickened out, I could resell it for a little profit. Fortunately, I was correct because pure lead is far to soft for a fin keel.

The other "reversible" step was the white cedar. I found that I could save a great deal by purchasing green rough lumber and drying it myself. If I chickened out, I could resell it at a nice profit.  After checking many sources, I found Bill Beety in Nags Head, NC who specializes in boat grade lumber and ordered 1,400 board feet of Atlantic white cedar.  Before the wood arrived I researched wood drying and built a solar drying kiln. To save on freight, Bill arranged for a logging truck that was dead heading back to South Georgia to deliver the load.  The truck arrived at 4:30 in the morning. After the driver and I unloaded those 2" thick boards 14 to 16 inches wide I began to feel the effects of my fifty years.

Soon after the Mylars arrived, $200 worth of particle board was cut up into molds and stashed about the shop.  I donated some of my mahogany collection to laminate the stem but it was still not a permanent commitment. Now it was time to build a place to build the boat.  Two months later, I had a concrete slab 24' by 52'. My out here was to put power and dust collector ducts down the middle.  Then it could some day become my dream shop and the garage would be free to do what it was designed for.  A double layer of silver tarps over 3" steel columns and aircraft cable formed a tent over the whole thing.

The commitment came the day 100 gallons of Pro-set and West epoxy, seven rolls of Klynex glass and Kevlar, rolls of peel ply and  bleeder fabric arrived. This was a substantial non reversible investment.  I knew at that point there was no turning back.

The first real challenge was telling my wife. 

Staying Motivated

You don't really comprehend the scale of the project until you see the molds erected.  Building the shed gave me a hint of the size but I really didn't get a true sense of the real size until I could see the shape defined by the molds.   It is not like building a house.  A house starts with a hole in the ground and takes months to assume the general shape of the final product.  A boat takes shape in just a few days as the molds go up.  I was a little taken back by the size as was everyone who stopped by to see it.   The good part was that it went pretty fast..  I precut all the molds, legs and bracing so it was just a matter of propping them up, setting them square and level and screwing them together.  Friday afternoon there was a concrete slab with a cable strung down the middle and Sunday evening there was a boat!

This was the first illustration of an effect that can be very discouraging.  Progress seems to come in spurts. It took a month to mark out and cut the molds and another month to build the clamping jig and lay up the stem.  All during this time the only thing that seemed to happen is that a large pile of particle board just changed shape and moved from one side of the shed to the other.  The project was fresh and I didn't really notice the effect then, but later, there have been points when the project almost died. 

The first was just before the glassing.  Laying the strips took about two months but I was able to lay four to eight strips a day and I could see the progress but then came the rough fairing. This took another two months and a lot of labor but nothing seemed to be happening. When it came time to glass many things forced delays.  It was too hot or it was too damp or I couldn't get enough volunteers together. Delays stretched out for months. I would just go out to the shed and putter.  I did build the keel bulb pattern and ripped some cherry for the interior but mostly I just cleaned the shop.  Then suddenly in a matter of three days the hull was glassed!

The greatest challenge so far has been final fairing.  After five months of back breaking long boarding I still had two more coats to go.  I was skipping days working.  Days turned into weeks. Something had to be done.  A saying I use with my software customers is "Money solves almost any problem." so I fell back on this universal solution.  I had no choice.  It was either spend some money or loose the whole thing.  I considered hiring some help but there was no one with any experience in fairing a hull. I asked a couple of drywall finishers to come out and take a look. They walked into the shed,.  Their mouths dropped and I never heard from them again. Salvation came in the form of a $1,200 rotary power long board.  This device was a wonder. I could do in an hour what would have taken a week by hand. Fairing was actually fun!

Now the major challenge is self doubt. Boat building requires a wide variety of skills. You have to climb a series of learning curves and just as you get close to the top, that part of the job is completed and you start again at the bottom of the next curve. This can be very traumatic, especially as more and more work is completed. You don't know how to do the next job but you do know how much labor has gone into the boat and you know what the effect will be if you don't  get this job done right the first time. I spend a lot of time at these points just thinking and building up my nerve. After setting the bulkheads and scarfing up the carlins, I did nothing for over a month but stand in the hull and look at the cherry veneered bulkheads worried about how to cut the notches. If I cut them wrong, I would have to add some awkward trim to hide the mistake. 

A little aside here: Probably the most vital requirement for staying motivated is maintaining pride in your work.   If you realize about half way through that the end product will not be something you can truly be proud of, you will probably not finish. Even if you do, you will not be happy with it. When I built my house, I made a mistake in laying out the footings and one foundation wall ended up slightly out of square. I compensated for it all the way up to the roof and worked out the error so that the only noticeable effect was in one corner of the bedroom ceiling. Nobody ever noticed it but I knew it was there.  Every morning when I woke up that corner was the first thing I saw and every morning I got out of bed kicking myself.

Visitors

When you are perceived by the public as openly and notoriously crazy, you attract a lot of attention.  When what you are doing results in an attraction that is a bit unusual, you attract a lot of sightseers.   This can be very dangerous for the success of the project. 

As I said on the home page, the only valid reason to build a big boat by yourself is an overwhelming desire to create something beautiful.  A big part of that is the urge to show off your talents.  There is a major urge to become a tour guide and spend valuable time escorting visitors around. At first I gave everyone the grand tour but suddenly realized that I was not getting anything done.  I sometimes get five or six visitors a weekend. It is hard to avoid getting a reputation as  grumpy old man but you have to continue to work.  Now I greet them as friendly as possible.  Point out the plans hanging on the cabinet door and tell them it is OK to walk inside the hull.  Then I go back to work.

There are a few visitors where this will not work. People like your 80 year old parents, your future son-in-law's parents, the mayor,  I even had a Congressman stroll in one day. (I took that opportunity to lobby my opinions on the USCG budget and boating regulations. Can't remember if I showed him the boat or not.),

Strangely, there is a big variation in boat owning visitors. The big boat owners, especially those with custom built boats, tour with a certain reverence, asking a few pertinent questions and commenting on their experiences. Smaller production boat owners seem to ask a million questions and kibitz constantly.

Money

Time for the unplesant subject.  Seems it can't be avoided when you build a boat of any size and when the boat is this big, the subject comes up more often that I would like.  Other than loss of motivation, lack of money it the major reason big projects get abandoned.

I set a budget of $1,250 a month to go towards the boat. I figured that would be enough over the 60 to 70 months of the project and about the same as what it will cost for maintainence and a generous cruising schedule after it is launched.  That has proved to be about right in theory but sometimes it is hard to accept as true in reality.

One of the concepts that I used to justify building was that I could time my purchaces and limit the amount I borrowed. That way I would be buying material rather than renting money. Well that is true up to a point. The problem is that money has to be spent in bunches in order to get the most value from it. To understand this, you need to understand the concept of "Boat Bucks". 

Like pennies, dollars are to small a denomination to work with when you build or own a boat so you have to think in a larger denomination called the "Boat Buck". Boat Bucks are an international value not directly tied to any currency. Like the Yen and the Euro the Boat Buck varies in value related to the US dollar. It goes up and down but kind of centers somewhere in the range of $1,000.  (I wonder if Grover Cleveland ever owned a boat.) When you start thinking in Boat Bucks your mind set changes. Half a Boat Buck for an anchor rode doesn't sound so bad.  The problem is you often have to spend several Boat Bucks to get the best deal. You can buy 5 sheets of PVC foam at $150 each or you can buy a case of 15 for $95 and pay about the same for shipping.  When you are going to need 20 or 30 sheets, that is a no brainer but you still have to come up with 3 Boat Bucks all at once.

This can lead to some accute emotional and moral delimas.  For example, just this week I found a brand new pair of Lewmar 48 self tailers on e-Bay that I could buy for 40% of retail.  Unfortunately I just ordered a couple of boat bucks worth of material and have an estimated tax payment due next week.  I could pass on the winches, hold off paying the IRS or dip into the family emergency savings. It took some serious introspection to decide.  (I just hope we don't have any family emergencies for the next month or so.)

Another danger is credit cards.  Macon, Georgia is not exactly a hot bed of boat building so most of my material has to be ordered. The plastic gets a pretty serious work out.  It is very tempting to use the card as a buffer to cover a lack of funds but when you are dealing in BoatBucks, the interest will eat you alive. I use the Amex card, COD when possible, open an account when available or prepay if all else fails. Even then the Master Card usually has a balance of several Boat Bucks.   When you are in the business of boat building interest is just another cost of production but for the backyard builder it is wasted money.

Bargains, Auctions and Innocent Scams

There are hundreds of ways to save money on materials. Buying cheap materials is not one of them. When you start looking around for specific parts you will be amazed at the bargains you can find with a little patience.  I am using three basic strategies; builder discounts, Internet searches and e-Bay.

Builder discounts

Lets face it.  When you are building a boat, you will buy a heck of a lot more stuff than the average boater.  That has the potential of opening up access to some better sources. Some manufacturers will discount directly if you are buying say 12 port lights and 6 hatches. Others deal strictly through distributors.

 It takes a little work to buy through a distributor but the savings are often worth it  You need to start a small "boat repair" proprietorship and fill out a couple of forms to get a Federal Tax ID and a Sales Tax number.   Start with an application to the distributors that deal with small repair and maintenance operations like Lewis Marine and Paxton. Compare prices carefully.  Many Items like paint, hose, pumps and electrical parts have great discounts but many other things will be cheaper from Boat US.  Buy hose and wire in full rolls. Cut lengths can be twice as expensive and you will need it all any way.  After you have traded with them for a while, use them as a reference on applications to the more specialized distributors to save more on glass, resin and other structural materials.

There is another side benefit here.  You learn a lot more about systems on your boat when you install it yourself and other boaters find that out. I have developed a small clientel of boaters who now come to me for upgrades and are willing to pay for the service.  It is not hard add a couple of hundred bucks to the boat fund with an hour or two of effort.  The extra orders will increase your volume, possibly improve your discount and it will give you a bit of moral comfort that you are a "legitimate" business.

The Internet

The Web is a great research tool but you are not going to find a lot of real bargains here.  Some sites run by established dealers like Rigging Only are very competative but many dealers that are exclusively Internet based  will charge a premium of from 5 to 10% for the convenience of Internet shopping.  I search for sites with low prices on brand name items and use it as a reference point for negotiating over the telephone.

e-Bay

99.99999% of what you find on e-Bay is either over priced or junk but if you spend 5 minutes a day looking in the right places and are patient, you can find deals.  For instance, I picked up a 1500 watt Lofrans Progress II windlass, control box, 150 amp breaker and 90' of 3/8" HT chain for a bit over $1,000. List was about $3,200 but the importer was liquidating the windlass because of some "cosmetic damage" and the chain was the tail of a bucket that was to short to sell. The cosmetic damage was a 1" scratch on the windlass base that took 10 minutes to find.

Some importers also liquidate overstocks on e-Bay. All of my lighting is custom made Italian fixtures that sold for about 1/5 the regular list price.  Then there are the distress sales.  I picked up a pair of brand new, in the box Lewmar 48 self tailers, list price $2,240 each for $1,900. A 58% discount.  The owner was building his sailing kitty for a trans Atlantic cruise and found he needed the money more than new winches. You will find a lot more opportunities if you are building a big boat. There will not be many buyers out there in need of the size equipment you will need.

You can waste a lot of time on e-Bay so there needs to be a strategy.  Check in every day. Go to the boating section and check "New Today". Look for big ticket items that you will need.  Don't waste time on the small stuff. When you find something, "click watch this item" and write down the make, model and size.  Check your distributor catalogs and your favorite Internet sites to compare prices. Keep in mind that you can usually get 40% off list for almost any marine product with little effort. Never bid more than 50% of list for new in box items or more than 35% of list for "slightly used".  Don't bit untill the last few minutes.  Above all, keep cool! don't let yourself get in a bidding war. Let it pass.

In 3 years I have only won about 10 bids but I have saved over $6,000 over the best discount prices I could find.

To be continued

Site last modified:04/12/04