Considering wooden boat for first time

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m1taylor

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I have a perfectly good 17ft GRP Silhouette (apart from knackered sails!). But I have fallen for am inexpensive 17ft wooden clinker built day sailer with cabin (mahagony on oak). The boat appears good to the amateur eye. Two questions - is it totally mad to consider a clinker built baot needing loads of maintenance as opposed to the trusty plastic silhouette - my brain would certainly say that? And is there any such thing as a reasonably priced survey (in South Devon) of a wooden hull to check that it will be ok - ish?
 
If it was 'totally mad', then people would be giving wooden boats away to get rid of them! It all depends what you want a boat for.

Its said there are various types of boat owners:

1. 'The Yottie' who just wants to get out there and go sailing. Maintenance is a necessary part of the game, but getting afloat and getting out there is the thing.

2 'The potterer' Who is just as happy messing about fixing his boat as he is sailing it

3. 'The fixer' - has spent the last 20 years restoring the last surviving example of a Winkle drudger, but has never yet actually been to sea in it! - or anything else for that matter!

4 'The Propper' Owns a boat, rarely uses it except to go to the Oyster and Winkle just down the river, but will spend hours boring the pants off anyone who will listen at the bar....

5. 'The tax dodger' owns a large expensive boat for 'corporate entertainment'. Better tax benefits on it though than a Penthouse suite in the marina village.

6. 'The climber' who 'owns a boat on the Hamble' or some other well known Harbour: the fact that it is an old wreck that is well past its 'sink by' date doesnt actually matter. its the fact of ownership....

There are of course many variants of these basic types.

If you want the work that goes with wooden boat ownership, then great. Go for it.

Survey. If you are not familiar with wooden boats - or even if you are, you need a second opinion. You can ask a Surveyor for a simple general condition report rather than a full survey, and agree with him what he is actually going to do (and charge you for!) before he starts.

Much cheaper is to get a wooden boat builder to look at it and give a report on the condition of the hull. He may not spot all the faults, but will be able to tell you whether she is worth pursuing, for a fraction of the cost of a full survey.

Whatever you do, they will produce a list a yard long of things that are wrong, armed with this list you can maybe haggle the price a bit, then decide how much of it actually needs doing now, and what can be safely left till next winter - aand the winter after.

One thing you can be totally certain of with a wooden boat: however much you work at it, the list of defects never gets any shorter!
 
Ok cards on the table - I own 2 wooden boats but am not the sort of fanatic that considers all other materials inferior. If I was looking for a 40+ ft global cruiser I would be very tempted by steel (well cupro-nickle) or concrete but wood gives more benifit as size gows down. At 30-35ft wood is hard to beat for wt to strength and stiffness, steel and concrete is often heavy at this size and GRP needs a lot of panel support to get things stiff enough so needs complex cores which complicat things - try adding a new cleat to an average GRP 35ft cruiser and the bill is likely to be in hundreds to do it properly, on wood you just screw it ti the beamshelf.
At under 28ft GRP mouldings become quite stiff without complex reinforcement. Below 20ft I recon it comes down to personal tast not engeneering.

The maintainance myth - mention wooden boats and the reaction of almost everyboady is "lovely, but the maintainance" - Try asking them if they have owned one? First dont confuse maintainanceand restoration. My 'old' boat was built in 1885 and will take many hours of skilled work to get her back on the water but thats restoration. My 'new' one was built in 1976 but she was practically a bare hull and I bought her to convert her for long range cruising, again loads of work and expence but thats a conversion.

The amount of maintainance a particular boat requires depends on her age, construction and condition. On a sound wooden boat the jobs you will have to do anually which you dont do on a GRP boat are to give the hull and topsides a coat of paint, varnish or oil. I use paint and oil on the 35 footer and this takes about 3 days once per season - rub down hull and give one top coat of gloss then clean and touch up deck finally rub down brightwork with 'green scoury pad' and wipe over with oil. If you insist on traditional varnish it looks lovely but you will be redoing it at least twice per year and its a sod of a job. Ask any honest paint manufacturer and they will tell you there is no such thing as a clear weatherproof varnish, if its clear it lets sunlight through, UV decays the wood then the varnish falls off!! If you need to do more than this either you are restoring, changing or repairing your boat not maintaining her. This is perhaps wher some of the confusion comes from - most wooden boat owners LIKE modifying or resoring and usually have some project on the go that make everyone else think wooden boats NEED constant work!

To put it into contex the time I spend on maintainace probably splits about 50% on engin machinary and systems (nav gear, electrics plumbing etc) 30% sails and rig 10% safety (including stuff like ground takle) and personal gear and 10% on the wooden bits

So If you are still considering I would say think about the following, probably in order of priority

1 - Do you like wooden boats? if you don't there is no point
2 - Do you want a boat that you can pack up and ignore from sept - may every winter or if you live miles from the sea and only get to the boat for sailing trips these both strongly say 'dont go for wood' One of the problems is that if you leave a job it can get much bigger. This particularly aplies to paint and varnish, renew when it looks tired don't wait till it peels
3 - Get someone who really knows wooden boats to look at it and tell you if its sound. The test is not their qualifications but what does their wooden boat look like!!
4 Be cautious of fast lightly built boats - a 30ft fishing boat is probably half the work of a 20ft racer. The reason is that light boats are very flexible and all the bits keep moving, this causes leeks also fastnings are light and shallow so faial much more often.
5 wooden boats die because the rain gets in the top and causes rot not because the sea gets in so decks are crucial. Teak planks look lovely but the eaisiest is a simple sheat of painted ply. Nything with layers, even canvas on ply tends to trap water and make it run complicating maintainance.
6 Only take the boat out for esential work and get her back afloat as soon as possible. When wood changes its miosure content it changes size. Put the boat on the bank for 4 months over the winter I garentee the cabin top will leak for a month till she settles again.

Hope this helps, good luck and have fun

PS when was the last time you met someone who loved the feel and smell of freshly laid GRP!!
 
Re: Don\'t do it

24.679 times as much? Pourquoi je demand? Is this some curiousity linked to the waterline length? And you must have a bow or bolt spirit. My experience in France is that if you stay a number of days they don't charge you on the last day because 'Elle est jolie'.

As far as I can see the advantage of a GRP is that you get a headlining to hide any wires. Can't think of anything else.
 
Thanks very much for the really good detailed posts. As a result I have a wooden boat builder/restorer lined up to give a report for a very affordable price. I take on board the issues of maintenance. But its is also worth pointing out that old GRP boats need alot as well - painting when the gelcoat gets too old, repairing minor cracks, dealing with leaks, osmosis, delamination where GRP is bonded to wood or steel. So I guess its a measure of where you want to put your effort in.
 
Re: Don\'t do it

Nah, I was just being flippant, along the lines of Brass Eye's expose on homosexuals in the Navy ("...they attract enemy fire, they attract sharks, they insist on being placed at the Captain's table, they muck about...". I woudn't have a boat made of anything else. The marina thing, actually, does have some truth in it in my case, as Crystal has bowsprit that cannot be run in, and also a bumkin, adding about six feet onto her LOA. However, I knew this before I bought her, and I love bowsprits, so I can't complain.

I've been let off a number of marina charges by people who like the boat, and we're known to quite a few of the big ones on the East Coast (for a variety of different reasons). It's also nice to attract attention from other boat owners and enthusiasts.

I also think the nature of the maintenance is nicer with wooden boats - if you're doing the thing traditionally, there are far less nasty chemicals and gunks to work with, and I find a well-varnished bit of wood immensely satisfying. Or, at least, I would, were there any on the boat!!

Best of luck with the survey, and keep us informed.


/<
 
Re: Don\'t do it

"I also think the nature of the maintenance is nicer with wooden boats - if you're doing the thing traditionally, there are far less nasty chemicals and gunks to work with, and I find a well-varnished bit of wood immensely satisfying. Or, at least, I would, were there any on the boat!!"

Spot on! After 30 years of sailing plastic boats of various types I acquired a wooden Grand Banks trawler and find that wood is a such delightful material to work with.
 
roly_voya

I've only just had time to read this reply properly, and it sums up something I've been trying to put into words for a while: I like the strength of a small wooden boat.

Crystal is 30ft on deck, and displaces five tons. She feels like she means business and I know that, in nasty sea conditions, I would give up long before she would.

I'm an inexperienced sailor, and having faith in my boat is the thing that gives me confidence to take my friends sailing. She always looks after us, and I'm not at all sure I'd have the same feeling from a GRP boat of similar size.

I'm sure it's subjective, but it's what keeps me sailing!

/<
 
If you do go for your wooden boat, then you might as well make like easy for yourself.

When i got my boat, it was varnished everywhere and was peeling etc. To make my life easier, many of the varnished areas were given liberal applications of epoxy and white paint. I now have much less wood to varnish, and it really cuts down the the maintenance that varnished wood needs! Its much quicker and easier to sand and apply paint each year.

Modern materials like epoxy are well worth having a play with. Epoxy stick to wood like sh*t to a blanket, and paint stick to nothing better than epoxy. It really makes the paint finish last alot longer.
 
Update!

Well, my wooden boat builder gave the prospective purchase a cautious thumbs up - sound hull, but some minor attention needed sooner than later. So I have taken the plunge and now have transferred to the world of classic wooden boats from the more ordinary one of clapped out GRP ones. So now to work....
 
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