The pro's and cons of steel boat building

[Brent Swain]

At least Brent has the practical experience of building steel boats. How many of his critics on here have equivalent experience and knowledge. It's easy to criticise.

Thanks.

Most of my critics have none, or almost none of the steel boat building, designing, living aboard, crossing oceans, and and full time cruising ,or decades long steel boat maintenance experience I have . It is getting their advice from those with so little hands on experience, that is the source of many problems with steel, or cruising boat decisions. I know several designers who charge up to $175 an hour for advice on such matters with almost zero hands on experience in the subject they are charging for advice on. Determining how much actual hands on experience a source has is step one, in avoiding a lot of problems.
Don't assume successful self promotion, automatically means they have done any of it.

 

[Brent Swain]

Now you mention it, I agree.

I have found sailors in general seem to be more balanced in outlook, especially those with extensive cruising experience.

Maybe BS spent too much time crashing into things, rather than sailing to develop that wisdom. ?

Been cruising 11months a year average, since my mid 20s. I can still count on one hand the times I have bumped hard into things. Could have reduced that drastically, by using the strategy most of my critics use , rarely leaving the marina.
If you aint been aground, you aint been around !

 

[Brent Swain]

Do they??

https://www.sailingworld.com/moments-impact#page-2

[h=4]Alex Thompson, 11.16.16; Location: South Atlantic; Damage: Sheared foil; continued racing[/h][h=4]Thomas Ruyant, 12.19.16; Location: Tasman Sea; Damage: Cracked hull; Retired[/h][h=4]Sebastien Josse, 12.5.16; Location: Southern Ocean; Damage: Broken foil; Retired[/h][h=4]Vincent Riou, 11.20.16; Location: South Altlantic; Damage: Broken keel box; Retired[/h][h=4]Morgan Lagravière 11.24.16; Location: Cape of Good Hope; Damage: Sheared rudder; Retired[/h][h=4]Kito de Pavant 12.6.16; Location: Cape of Good Hope; Damage: Broken keel; Retired[/h]

This is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Contrary to claims made here, not all such failures are documented or reported, in cruising boats . Just met another stock plastic boater who hit a rock and had water coming in.

 

[Brent Swain]

So, steel or not steel, you are not at ease sleeping at night in case of a collision. In which case the hull material is irrelevant because if you are run down and there is a breach, your main worry is that you will drown, trapped inside your steel or GRP hull. Hence, the debate around steel or GRP is moot. Which brings us back to why GRP is popular.

Gringo did not breach, nor the one Moitessier mentioned, nor the one a whale landed on ,etc etc. No breach, no holes , no water inside ,no drown.Only works with steel ,not plastic . Plastic holes, fills, and sinks quickly .

 

[Brent Swain]

I think long term, steel is a nightmare.
I don't believe steel is done by a long chalk, but it's only a matter of time.

A comment based on HOW MANY decades of steel boat experience in building, designing, maintaining, living aboard or cruising ?None?
That is what I thought . Most such criticism comes from such a lack of actual hands on experience. Old wives tales from the tunnel vision, "plastic is the only way" crowd, is grossly inaccurate.

 

[Brent Swain]

Here you go again. I said NOT MUCH LONGER, but you chose to ignore that. The extra time for the VdS chines is not much in the overall build time. ( I do a lot of welding as part of my day job, so this is not guesswork) And one ends up with a boat that has some resale value, which does not appear to be the case with yours.

VDS modernizing of his version of origami steel boat building was a huge improvement over imitation wooden boat building. Did other designers copy it, and pass the benefit on to boaters?Not a chance!
Most of my boats have sold for far more than the owners had into them. The trick is keeping the initial cost down.It is not uncommon to spend an extra $40K on a boat, to increase the resale price by $20 K, a $20 K loss. The higher the price tag the greater the loss. Bob Perry has some carbon fibre 37 footers costing $1 million dollars. So who is going to pay a million dollars for a used 37 footer , regardless of what it is made of? A friend bought a 30ft carbon fibre boat here for the same price as any plastic 30 footer.

 

[Brent Swain]

Nice to see you back. I'd be grateful if you could give a minute or two to answering the question posed before:given that you now say that steel is only "sometimes a better, safer choice" than GRP, could you let us know when, in your opinion, GRP is a better safer choice than steel?

Thanks in advance.

i have never claimed that plastic is ever safer.Are you saying the crew of Gringo would have been safer in a plastic hull?
The "good seamanship" decision to go steel instead of plastic, saved their lives, undeniably. Good seamanship begins with choice of vessel, and choice of hull material.

 

[Brent Swain]

Here is an article of a T boning of a steel yacht by a freighter, along with a picture (of what the Sleavin's boat would have looked like Had she been steel. NO lives would have been lost ).
A plastic boat would have been cut in half ,probably with the loss of all lives aboard.

Yet again, an example of a tin can being necessary only because of poor seamanship. On-watch crew saw a collision situation them disappeared below decks.
It seems the main reason for sailing a tin can is to make up for not being a very good sailor.
But keep throwing in the unprovable assumptions as if they are facts.

Yes, poor seamanship in not paying attention, but saved by superior seamanship in choice of hull material. Good seamanship is leaving as little as possible to chance, and not relying on odds for safety.

 

[Brent Swain]

https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/whale-lands-on-yacht-670260

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ne...s-on-yacht-during-Cape-Town-sailing-trip.html

https://abcnews.go.com/Internationa...sh-lands-yacht-south-africa/story?id=11215915

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/07/21/south.africa.whale.boat/index.html

And more

https://www.google.co.za/search?sou...22i30k1j0i22 i10i30k1j33i160k1.0.QhUr8RZTgDw

Thanks.
What would have happened, had this been a plastic boat?
What "poor seamanship" on the part of skipper and crew caused this to happen? Would it not have happened, if he was one of the "Infallible" plastic boaters, to whom accidents and adverse events simply don't happen, because they simply don't dare defy their "Plastic Karma?'

 

[JumbleDuck]

i have never claimed that plastic is ever safer.

You wrote that "steel is sometimes a better, safer choice" than GRP, That clearly implies that GRP is "sometimes a better, safer choice" than steel. Have you changed your mind or are you retracting your comment?

 

[Deleted member 36384]

Gringo did not breach, nor the one Moitessier mentioned, nor the one a whale landed on ,etc etc. No breach, no holes , no water inside ,no drown.Only works with steel ,not plastic . Plastic holes, fills, and sinks quickly .

He is uneasy sleeping on a boat whether it is made of steel or not because he cant trust his night watch and I assume navigation. The reason for his uneasiness is that the boat will sink. Therefore, his uneasiness is irrelevant to the material that the boat is made from. Hence, it is a moot point, in his case. As it is in the majority of peoples minds.

What is your point Brent Swain in participating in this thread?

 

[JumbleDuck]

I know several designers who charge up to $175 an hour for advice on such matters with almost zero hands on experience in the subject they are charging for advice on.

Don't think of it as them charging $175 an hour. Think of it as people being willing to pay them $175 per hour. How much are people willing to pay you?

Been cruising 11months a year average, since my mid 20s.

How long does it take you to fit out a hull, as a matter of interest.

 

[Achosenman]

What is your point Brent Swain in participating in this thread?

I think you'd need to ask a clinical psychologist to get an answer to that.

 

[Robin]

I think you'd need to ask a clinical psychologist to get an answer to that.

Perhaps he has one that told him to get rid of his angst by trolling on any and every boating forum that will (still) tolerate him.:highly_amused:

 

[Brent Swain]

You wrote that "steel is sometimes a better, safer choice" than GRP, That clearly implies that GRP is "sometimes a better, safer choice" than steel. Have you changed your mind or are you retracting your comment?

Sometimes better, for certain uses. A friend anchored near a marina ,said he has seen some boats change hands 6 times, without ever leaving the marina. Fore that use, and leaving a boat abandoned,and only used for the odd rare weekend, and maybe a 2 week summer cruise , plastic is certainly better, but it is never safer.

 

[Brent Swain]

He is uneasy sleeping on a boat whether it is made of steel or not because he cant trust his night watch and I assume navigation. The reason for his uneasiness is that the boat will sink. Therefore, his uneasiness is irrelevant to the material that the boat is made from. Hence, it is a moot point, in his case. As it is in the majority of peoples minds.

What is your point Brent Swain in participating in this thread?

The suggestion being that singlehanders should stay awake 24-7 for weeks on end? The suggestion being that Blyth, Moitessier and Knox Johnston should have stayed awake for their entire circumnavigations?

The suggestion being that only those with minimal steel boat experience should be allowed to post on the subject, and falsehoods should never be allowed to be corrected by anyone with decades of steel boat building, maintaining , mostly full time cruising , and living aboard experience?
You ask, what is the point of anyone with the above experience, participating in the thread, when it should be restricted to those who have far less, or in most cases, no experience on the subject?
What a stupid question!
I am here to challenge old wives tales, and falsehoods with decades of hands on experience ( to the dismay of plastic boat salesmen, who thrive on falsehoods about steel boats being the only version available.)

 

[Brent Swain]

Don't think of it as them charging $175 an hour. Think of it as people being willing to pay them $175 per hour. How much are people willing to pay you?



How long does it take you to fit out a hull, as a matter of interest.

Steel detailing takes about 100 to 150 hours. Coffee shop's closing. More tomorrow

 

[JumbleDuck]

Steel detailing takes about 100 to 150 hours. Coffee shop's closing. More tomorrow

I was thinking of interior (cabins, bunks, heads, everything) and exterior (rig, deck hardware, everything) completion. Wondering what proportion of the time is spent actually building the hull.

 

[rogerthebodger]

I was thinking of interior (cabins, bunks, heads, everything) and exterior (rig, deck hardware, everything) completion. Wondering what proportion of the time is spent actually building the hull.

It was the cost/time that ended up killing the home built ferrocement boats. The hull build was quite cheap for the home builder but the fitting out cost and time was still the same.

It was the supply of GRP hulls from the clkes of Colvic that took over from the home built hulls of ferro and steel. Steel in the earlier days in the UK was not an easy home construction metkod due to the suitable build sites and the equipment required. Today requirement is less costly.

Where I am and where BS builds suitable build sites are easier to find than in the UK.

 

[john_morris_uk]

The suggestion being that singlehanders should stay awake 24-7 for weeks on end? The suggestion being that Blyth, Moitessier and Knox Johnston should have stayed awake for their entire circumnavigations?

The suggestion being that only those with minimal steel boat experience should be allowed to post on the subject, and falsehoods should never be allowed to be corrected by anyone with decades of steel boat building, maintaining , mostly full time cruising , and living aboard experience?
You ask, what is the point of anyone with the above experience, participating in the thread, when it should be restricted to those who have far less, or in most cases, no experience on the subject?
What a stupid question!
I am here to challenge old wives tales, and falsehoods with decades of hands on experience ( to the dismay of plastic boat salesmen, who thrive on falsehoods about steel boats being the only version available.)

One of your idee fixee's is that your experience of building in steel trumps other peoples professional design qualifications and opinions.

I used to spend time on nuclear powered submarines. They run on Pressurised Water Reactors (The design of which is amazingly cunning and clever and is classified in case you are wondering...). When ashore I sometimes wondered round the workshops where the specialist fabricators and welders would either repair for real or practice their welding of difficult and easy bits of stainless to exacting standards.

The engineers who designed and ran the boats couldn't have welded them together to save their lives, yet they operated them and knew all about their design and construction.

By your logic, I should have listened to the welders....

Do you listen to the monkey or the organ grinder?

Experience at sea counts for something, and I have some knowledge of yacht design and theory. (I have to as part of my professional sailing quals in order to understand stability etc) But I wouldn't dare to suggest I knew enough to design a boat. I could sketch one out and build one, and it would probably float and sail, but those who properly know about these things would do a far better job.

Your dissing (to use the youth slang term) professional naval architects because they have the temerity to point out some flaws in your designs doesn't do you any favours. Mentioning that they design boats for high prices is completely irrelevant, because that's what their customers have asked for and are paying for. So it isn't what you want, SO WHAT? I have met a couple of naval architects. (Andrew Simpson is one of them and he's currently sailing somewhere in the world on his self built WOODEN boat: its cedar strip and epoxy and glass sheathed and I've been on it and admired some of his innovative work...) and I know that if you asked him to design you a boat that could be built cheaply he would. Again: so what? What I do know is that they will have done calculations about the various centres and stabilities and displacements and all the various parameters that will ensure that the thing works as intended. I don't see any such arguments from you - just a lot of barracking,

What I am also waiting for is for you to stop being so rude about GRP boats and stop claiming that so many are lost at sea. The 99.999% of GRP boats survive perfectly well sailing round the world and hull failure is such an infrequent occurrence that its not worth worrying about for most of us - even those of us who sail across oceans. You've been repeatedly asked to justify your claims that GRP boats are sinking left right and centre and can't come up with any accounts except the slack handful you keep repeating.

It must be rather annoying to you that I've sailed across oceans in steel yachts AND GRP yachts and can take a broad view of these things. I'm also aware that most true ocean sailors are well balanced and pragmatic about boats and hulls and materials. The fact that you aren't as balanced in your attitude makes people question your authenticity (just saying...)