My "perfect" boat.

Re: My \"perfect\" boat.

Wow ! Ironmaiden, where did you find that Grit Blaster and Epoxy paint for £600 !!!! I paid that for sandblasting the inside of ours alone !!! Spent about that again on epoxy paint, which did 3 coats, and our boat is only 24 foot! Tell me tell me :-)
 
Re: My \"perfect\" boat.

Ah yes Quote:
As for wood........ well.....lets be realistic the cost is off the planet.....you could save money using ply,

You dont build new wooden boats! You take an existing one thats ecologic its renewable product dosent add to global warming and woods the best material for a boat!Its what made Britain great looks good ---- and i built a tender useing 3mm ply!!Very sturdy will last forever and easy to repair!Plus its very lightweight
 
Re: My \"perfect\" boat.

chibb costs are.. £225 for the hire of the kettle and 1 ton of grit rest in paint ( at trade prices)
a very dirty job to do yourself but not hard to do in any way
 
Re: My \"perfect\" boat.

chibb you can also get comercial foam spraying kits for spraying yourself that work out quite economical, i'll hunt out the web add if your interested
 
Re: My \"perfect\" boat.

[ QUOTE ]
what do you mean by " steel only comes in to it's own after 40ft .........sorry (and this is not very lady like) but thats a load of bo**ocks, as a professional boat builder I can assure you that steel is without doubt the most cost effective boat building material as well as the strongest !!

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I didn't say that, Chris_E did - but there is truth in it. What I said is that you don't see many steel yachts below 30 feet (and indeed your boat is larger than 30 feet).

Most steel yachts are built with 4mm steel and yes custom steel construction can be relatively cheap if the design is hard chine. However the hull weight is such that small steel boats generally have a poor (in relative terms) sailing performance, which is why not many of them are built. Steel tenders are an irrelevance in this context.
 
Re: My \"perfect\" boat.

steel boat dont have to hard chine, they can be multichine or radius chine. 4mm plate is not all that difficult to form by hand if cut correctly, it is a bit more difficult to keep fair compared to multi chine...but it can be done. there is also more welding to be done if using radius chine and cost are therefore higher but still viable compared to other materials.

small steel boats were being built long before GRP, Aitkin designed a cute little 18 footer.some 80 years ago.
the dutch have been doing it in steel for........well...ever.
 
Re: My \"perfect\" boat.

Try thinking "outside of the box"

Easy to single hand, take the ground, separate sleeping cabin(s). easy handled rig, strong. Look at an older cruising cat with low aspect ratio keels - small Prout or Heavenly Twins from the mid 1970's.

OK I am biased - my last boat was a 42 ft classic with a steel hull. I almost gave it away due to corrosion from the inside - and am glad I did as once the new owner stripped out the interior and started cutting out plating the corrosion damage was far worse than my most pessimistic fears.

My present boat (a Prout 31) has been bought for extended cruising and meets all your criteria except 'steel' and 'ketch'. The GRP is fairly easy to repair as you have a spare hull to make a mould from if need be.
 
Re: My \"perfect\" boat.

An interesting search for steel or aluminum sailboats would be to google:

oragami boats


This is the dominant form of metal boat construction on the west coast of North America and cetered on Vancouver Island in B.C.

Brent Swain built his 20 years ago and he often contributes to the oragami boats forum on yahoo.
 
Re: small steel cruising yachts

There are many small (under 30') steel cruising yachts who have successfully completed extensive voyages in reasonable (ok, this is relative!) comfort and often on a shoe-string.
I met one in Barbados about 18 years ago - her name was simply 'Shuffle', and she was 24', double ended, flush deck (with a lot of camber), very sea-worthy, and with a fair turn of speed - she did anything but shuffle! Her Owner did a double transatlantic cruise in her singlehanded. Shuffle was built by Alastair Hunter of Huntward Boats in Cowes - sadly they are not in existence any more.

And then there is Julia Hazel and her fine yacht 'Jeshan'....... Jeshan is 28' long and Julia designed / built her by herself in Sydney in 1976, and I believe still owns her today.

In the 10 years after launching, Julia and Jeshan went off round the world singlehanded, and 99.5% of the way without an engine - the 0.5% was when they had a small outboard engine strapped on the back for going through the canals in France.

Julia wrote some wonderful articles about her adventures in Cruising World magazine in 1987 / 88, and after later finding out that we had some mutual friends in common, I wrote to her, and she kindly sent me some information about Jeshan (as it was my dream at the time to design and build my own little steel boat - but that didnt quite happen....).

Here is a web page about some of Jeshan's more recent adventures down under - http://www.jupacami.net/adventures/qld_2000/qld_reefs_islands_p1.htm
There are a few photos of her on here.
Have a look also at the other links on this site re her adventures in PNG.
 
Re: small steel cruising yachts

Alastair is a bit of a genius and still designing innovative small steel boats and some incredible solutions to reduce omissions in the housing sector.
 
Re: small steel cruising yachts

TNX for your update re Alastair! I am pleased that he is still designing some steel boats - although like most boat designers it is a sad fact of life that he has to do other work as well to survive..... I know this is a bit off topic, but what are these solutions for the housing sector like?
Please say Hi to him from me - I met him a couple of times, in the early '90's, in Cowes and at SBS I think.
 
Re: small steel cruising yachts

She does look rather fine for sure - and I really like that novel sail locker up forward to starboard!
My only slight worry would be if you ever have to tear out any of that lovely timber panelling to get access to the hull for repairs, but there again, this comment would equally apply to just about all other steel yachts.

An exception to this is another fine yacht, the 34' ketch Brazen designed and built by Danny Greene (he of two part nesting dinghy fame). The whole interior of Brazen is modular, and he claimed (in an article written in Cruising World some years ago) that he could take the whole interior out in a few hours (I think).
 
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