The pro's and cons of steel boat building

[Brent Swain]

So you dont use calculations to be sure that the mast and rigging you have chosen empiricaly will be adequatly supported by your hull and coachroof.

That was one of the questions Brent.

Instead of repeating endless heresay you sould have answered " I dont calculate anything, I just weld 'em up. "

Lets get to GRP having far more problems and deaths.

Lots of steel boats which are rotten in Portsmouth Harbour Brent, none are long for this world. The " end of usefull life steel dogs " are far higher in proportion to GRP boats in a similar condition. I would estimate that 65% of the steel boats I regularly see on my trips in and out of the Harbour are no hopers.

Perhaps I% of the GRP boats fall into the same category.

You are correct, some keels have become detatched from GRP sailboats. But it is nowhere near as widespead as you would have us believe.

How you can suggest that stock boats have " a miriad of structural problems in far fewer miles and in much milder conditions " I dont know.

Unless you were present on these vessels when they encountered these problems you are not in a position to know. Same with the milage-how do you know.

Heresay again, or you usual embellishment and stretching of the facts to suit your own viewpoint?

My chosen GRP boats keel wont become detatched, it wont suffer structural problems unless something hits it, or the boat hits something.

As my boat ALWAYS has a watchkeeper, has AIS, radar and first class nav gear. I am prepared to risk sailing 1500 NM'S a year on average in challenging busy waters and not lose sleep.

I have full confidence that my boat will get me there and remain afloat.

I would, however, be very worried having welds like those shown holding ANY boat together..................................

The maximum compression load you can put on a mast is the breaking strength of windward rigging. When you reach that point, the rigging breaks, period. The transverse web under my cabin top is 3 inch deep 1/2 inch plate, tensile strength 90,000 lbs. It deepens to 12 inches nearer the cabin sides. 3 inches is only the middle. How much 5/6th rigging wire at 11,500lbs tensile strength , does it take to match that ? How many sloops have 6 windward shrouds, and stays?
Yes , steel abandoned for decades does deteriorate ,but the maintenance needed to keep them up is minimal. Not zero ,but minimal.
So to help us calculate the accuracy of your posts, do tell us how many decades you have maintained your own steel boat for. For me it is over 4 decades, over 3 for my current boat. In your claiming to know more about the subject than I do, then tell us how much longer than 4 decades you have maintained your own steel boat for.
For most of my offshore cruising, AIS had not been invented yet. When I first started cruising, radar would have cost a years wages, ten times what I spent getting from BC to New Zealand. Now it takes a week and a half's wages.
Back then wages were around $4 an hour. A depth sounder was $145.Now kids get over $20 an hour ,and a depth sounder is around $100.
I do know some young low income cruisers, for whom all the electronic toys would mean not going. Would I tell them that they should leave fun to the rich? Not a chance. I have no use, nor respect for that kind of childish, snobby elitism, that you advocate.

You say you can determine the strength of a weld, by simply looking at a photo of the 6011 slag on top of it? WOW , with talent like that, you could put a lot of welding inspectors out of work. You are saying they can scrap all the x-ray machines ,and just send photos of welds to you ( with the slag still on). Makes you the "Bernie Made Off" of welding inspectors ( with as much credibility).
Friends, who bought stock plastic boats here, are constantly dealing with delamination, leaks , rotted out cores , etc. etc. I see it when I go aboard them . No, it is not 1 % , but more like 95 % of them .
You remind me of Hal Roth , in the early 70s, giving a show about his round the Pacific cruise. At the end of the show, he answered questions. The first was someone shouting loudly at him;
"WHAT , you had deck leaks, on a FIBERGLASS BOAT?"
The less brainwashed crowd roared with laughter.
You say that ,because NOT ALL keels fall of, no one should never question why, or how they can be made stronger. You say that "rarely "means "infallible ,"which can "never" be improved?

Th point I was making is how they have consistently missed 7th grade geometric principles( 7th grade " engineering") in their design.

The pictures of Gringo, demonstrate that hitting something, or being hit by something, doesn't mean automatically sinking, as would have been the case in a plastic boat. The fact that the ship did not stop ,suggests the crew didn't know they had hit something, which indicates it was probably going full speed. That would have cut a plastic boat in half.

 

[Brent Swain]

I read quite a few of Bob Perry's comments on the SA site. Helpfull and considerate. Might be that he tried to help BS, but not welcome.

Most of Perry's posts have nothing to do with the subject of the thread, especially when it comes to steel boats . He claims to have designed the Amazon, a Graham Shannon design. He says only 6 of his steel boats has ever been built, ,on which he only drew the pictures, but never got this hands dirty building them. Yet he claims to know more about the subject than someone who has put together over 3 dozen of them, lived aboard them for over 40 years,cruised mostly full time in steel boats and maintained them for over 40 years, How many of those he claimed were Shannon designed Amazons?
His 37 footer was calculated at 27,000 lbs displacement. The owner said it was closer to 36,000 lbs displacement, according to the travelift. He attacked my 36 for being too heavy, at under 20,000 lbs displacement.
He claims his " very accurate" calculations say I am 5ft5 and 145 lbs. My tape measure says 6 ft 2 and the scale says 115 lbs, making him the laughing stock of anyone who has, or will ever meet me. Is that the kind of accuracy people pay him $175 an hour to do?
One disabled guy paid him up to $175 an hour for decades, for a boat which will never be built. leaving him with nothing but a bunch of pictures for his money. He studiously avoids any questions about his offshore cruising experience, and his liveaboard or boat building experience, or hands on steel boat cruising experience, of which he has none. So you go ahead and ask him . You wont get an answer, just deflection of the questions.
Paying $175 an hour for advice from someone who has no such hands on experience with the subject matter, is like paying an airline pilot to fly you, when the pilot has aced the written test, but has never flown a plane.

 

[JumbleDuck]

The maximum compression load you can put on a mast is the breaking strength of windward rigging.

How about buckling failure of the mast itself?

 

[JumbleDuck]

Most of Perry's posts have nothing to do with the subject of the thread, especially when it comes to steel boats . He claims to have designed the Amazon, a Graham Shannon design. He says only 6 of his steel boats has ever been built, ,on which he only drew the pictures, but never got this hands dirty building them. Yet he claims to know more about the subject than someone who has put together over 3 dozen of them ...

You've built over 36 yachts over forty years, despite cruising for 11 months of each year?

 

[Achosenman]

Paying $175 an hour for advice from someone who has no such hands on experience with the subject matter, is like paying an airline pilot to fly you, when the pilot has aced the written test, but has never flown a plane.

There doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day to achieve what you claim. You either sail or build. I would imagine it's nigh on impossible to do both at the rates you claim.

I've met plenty of pilots who have flown for "40 years" That doesn't mean they have been doing it right, it only means they have experience at doing it their way. As a fully fledged ATPL holder, I can tell you it often means they have experience at doing it the wrong way. Time served does not impart knowledge, only experience.

Asking advice from someone who has passed the exams but didn't spend time stranded on a reef or shore and didn't bodge together a floating contraption, is still a better bet than proceeding in ignorance IMHO.

 

[rotrax]

You say you can determine the strength of a weld, by simply looking at a photo of the 6011 slag on top of it? WOW , with talent like that, you could put a lot of welding inspectors out of work.

You are, once again jumping to delusions. I never said, or implied the above.

I have, however, had the benifit of close friendship with the chassis foreman at Lola Cars, in the days when Eric Broadly was the 'guvnor and all the cars were nickel bronze welded tubes. He taught me plenty, as did 50 years of fabrication.

I have won lots of high speed motorcycle races on kit I welded up myself. Cant recall any failures of the welds, although, to be fair, when I went through the "light is good" phase I did construct a little too lightly and suffered vibration cracks-but in the thin wall tubes or exhaust expansion chamber walls.

All machines entered had to undergo rigorous tech. inspection.

The welding quality shown in previous posts would have been refused out of hand. And quite right too.

You seem to miss the point that to do a good weld takes little longer than the poor efforts shown-why do crap?

Unless, of course you have not the skill or wit to do good welds.

Brent-look at the PBO forum. There are no pages of posts dealing with the GRP boat problems you bang on about. If they existed, there would be.

You are a one trick pony-and one who's welding I would not like to rely on.

 

[solent clown]

"You say you can determine the strength of a weld, by simply looking at a photo of the 6011 slag on top of it? WOW , with talent like that, you could put a lot of welding inspectors out of work. You are saying they can scrap all the x-ray machines ,and just send photos of welds to you ( with the slag still on). Makes you the "Bernie Made Off" of welding inspectors ( with as much credibility).
Read more at http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?498580-The-pro-s-and-cons-of-steel-boat-building/page51#c7IMLRdATxhM8cTv.99"

My dear fellow, one does not require x ray vision to determine your "welds" are an utter travesty. You are a useless welder, which makes you a dangerous man if you are helping other people build boats. I am sorry if that sounds like an insult, it isnt, it is a statement of fact. I suppose you are in a rush as you are at sea 11 months a year so all the boatbuilding of these dozens of vessels gets done in a month, but laying don a good weld is quicker and easier than getting it wrong, going back over it to hide it, and then grabbing a grinder. Do it right first time and have genuine confidence in your work.
This below from another forum, so now it makes more sense, welding up a hull on dole money in a tiny flat must be very challenging indeed... Especially with your sister moaning about grinding sparks on the sofa

He claims he's lived aboard most of his life and crossed the Pacific multiple times. He gives example of record runs to exotic destinations on his boat, and uses all the achievement as proof of his sailing skills and boat design superiority.
People who know him well have told a different story. He has lived on the dole, with his sister in her flat for most of his adult life, not aboard his boat.

 

[Skylark]

The keel along that side is 8 feet long, attached to 3/16th plate, tensile strength of 11,250 lbs per linear inch. Times 96 inches gives me 1,080,000 lbs total tensile strength, on a boat under 20,000 lbs.

Proof, if indeed any further proof was needed, that this poster doesn’t have a clue. There’s a lack of credibility here. It’s all very cringeworthy.

 

[GHA]

Going back to the title of the thread.. This is quite possibly high up the list of pro reasons many steel boat cruisers arrived at the choice of hull material -
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f90/norwegian-catamaran-sinks-outside-of-morocco-207213.html


Lots of things to hit out there and lots of things to hit you in anchorages/ports.

These guys didn't even hear the bang, whatever it was it's very likely steel would have survived unaided...>

(google translate)

When Gjevik woke up at 03.00, there was a lot of sea and high waves.
"After a while I received a warning that a pump had started, and I soon realized we took water. I first checked the harbor hull but found nothing. On the starboard hull, however, there was half a meter of water, he said.
Gjevik opened the door to the bathroom, where it turned out to be a big hole.
- It watered water against me. I ran into the lounge and picked up a seat cushion from the sofa. I tried to close the gap with this, but this was useless. The pillow disappeared through the hole and into the sea.

"The hole was probably due to the boat having hit an object in the sea, but since it hurts so much on board when it is troubled sea, we did not hear anything," said Gjevik, who quickly woke up the other three.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

...... Lots of things to hit out there and lots of things to hit you in anchorages/ports. ......

But it is not happening lots of times to demand that steel is used because the probability is high. That is the whole point of this discussion. Personally, I get the consequence angle, a breach is not tolerable because the consequences are high, hence why risk it, have a steel hull. Rather than a steel hull, my approach is to carry a liferaft, because in my analysis that is better mitigation for a low probability / significant consequence event.

 

[Robin]

I'm thinking of switching our RIB bottom out from plastic to steel for when the logs start washing downriver after the winter thaws.

 

[GHA]

But it is not happening lots of times to demand that steel is used because the probability is high. That is the whole point of this discussion. Personally, I get the consequence angle, a breach is not tolerable because the consequences are high, hence why risk it, have a steel hull. Rather than a steel hull, my approach is to carry a liferaft, because in my analysis that is better mitigation for a low probability / significant consequence event.

Back to long distance/off the beaten track again...

I suspect high on the hull choice logic for many global cruisers is general toughness, liferaft might help in your cruising area, a lot of people want to get the odds in their favour as much as possible - probably higher risk is getting spanked by some uninsured barge/ferry/fishing boat in the anchorage. Then the results more likely to be find a someone who can do fibreglass repairs and foot the bill or get the paintbrush out Cos you're on your own.
Unlikely to be a thought process many here will ever go through but keep going far enough it starts to be more relevant.

 

[rotrax]

I have no use, nor respect for that kind of childish, snobby elitism, that you advocate.

Again Brent, where have I advocated childish, snobby elitism?

By suggesting that to avoid the neccessity of requiring the extra strength of a steel boat-which is only required in a collision/grounding situation- that I use modern aids to navigation and always keep a lookout, either personally or with a watch system?

Inside your steel obsessed and tortured mind perhaps.................................................

I, and most other posters here, dont recognise your description of the faults you insist are commonplace on GRP boats.

Are we ALL so stupid to pay out good money-far more money than steel boats fetch-for inferior, soggy cored deck leaking GRP boats?

Of course not. And dont start about GRP boats never leaving Marina's-thats a non starter. The same proportion of steel to GRP boats by percentage dont get used. To suggest that only steel boats leave Marina's is patently not true.

From other bits of your last post, it seems that impecunious young cruisers are attracted to cheap, home built origami steel boats. That is good-really good-its getting people on the water and sailing.

But to keep banging on and on that origami steel boats are a universal panacea for yachting is total Bolleux.

The right boat is the one you can afford to sail and maintain for the type of sailing you wish to take part in.

If it is a 60 foot GRP Superyacht, great. If it is a home built origami steel yacht knocked up on a BC foreshore for little money, thats great too.

Sailing is good in any boat-lets enjoy it eh!

 

[dom]

Boats of the same size and specs, which have done tens of thousands of miles of ocean cruising , all have the same rigging and spar sizes, regardless of how many time they are calculated, or how many $175 hours to you pay a con artist to calculate it.

Empirical estimation certainly has a place, with the caveat that a large data set is required, almost certainly more than your sample can provide. BTW this isn't a criticism, it's simply a statistical fact. That takes us to stability; and we all know a boat with an AVS much less than circa 125 degrees can drown those on deck, even if the hull remains fully intact. One can go lower as the boat's resistance to knockdown progressively increases, but this parameter also requires analytical estimation. The problem is magnified in small boats with heavy rigging and I'm thinking about the 8x windward-stays you say hold up your steel-section masts. How do you estimate stability curves, AVS, knock-down resistivity, etc., as serious storm data will naturally be limited? For clarity, I am not at all trying to get at you here, just wondering how you approach this problem. The good news is that there are plenty of people on this forum who can help formalise your estimates should you so desire.

 

[Achosenman]

Sailing is good in any boat-lets enjoy it eh!

I think that's the final deciding factor for most sailors. More sailing less painting. I lifted this from cruiser forum.

"Hi
I've owned four fiberglass sailboats and one beautiful steel 48ft ted brewer cutter. We put over 10,000 miles on our steel boat and I will never own another steel boat again...why....RUST....you can not beat it.
The maintenance and the toxic paints and primers that you have to use to try to keep ahead of rust is just not worth it. We currently sail a 37 foot tartan in the Caribbean and love the boat..Also most steel boats have a low displacement to ballast ratio because there is so much weight just in the materials to build the boat.
One steel boat was enough for me....I mean are you really going to go sailing where you might hit icebergs????
just my thoughts from 8 years of cruising a steel boat"

 

[rotrax]

I think that's the final deciding factor for most sailors. More sailing less painting. I lifted this from cruiser forum.

"Hi
I've owned four fiberglass sailboats and one beautiful steel 48ft ted brewer cutter. We put over 10,000 miles on our steel boat and I will never own another steel boat again...why....RUST....you can not beat it.
The maintenance and the toxic paints and primers that you have to use to try to keep ahead of rust is just not worth it. We currently sail a 37 foot tartan in the Caribbean and love the boat..Also most steel boats have a low displacement to ballast ratio because there is so much weight just in the materials to build the boat.
One steel boat was enough for me....I mean are you really going to go sailing where you might hit icebergs????
just my thoughts from 8 years of cruising a steel boat"

And there you have it-from the horses mouth.......................................

 

[GHA]

I think that's the final deciding factor for most sailors. More sailing less painting. I lifted this from cruiser forum.

Won't be hard for google to come up with plenty more the same.

Bit harder is meeting the many cruisers who are happily anchored up out there on top of the maintenance. As stated before many times, it's no mean feat getting a steel boat in a good state with nothing bolted through deck and the bilge easily accessible with the whole lot covered in many coats of epoxy. . Get the boat well sorted (which probably means changing lots of design mistakes if factory built) and maintenance should tail off drastically. Then little and often, not that big a deal when you life on the hook time rich. Right now I'm paying with high interest for neglected maintenance....

Not many people go that far though, see the design mistakes and not keeping on top of maintenance in marinas and anchorages all over.

Not many situations where it's worth the effort, but sometimes it comes into its own.

Not many people here can see past the usual forum rants of black and white good/bad either.

 

[solent clown]

One interesting thing here in the UK, (and pleaae correct me if I am wrong) is 99'9% of narrowboats are steel. Granted they are in fresher water, and construction is simpler that a yacht, but even so it was a mystery to me why until I realised the bespoke nature of most of the new ones with length, superstructure etc. You would need an awful lot of huge moulds to make all the variations. So steel is used as it is the simplest way of getting the job done in a limited space, and more adaptable than moulding. Still makes me thin there must be a market for a grp narrowboat, maybe modular design that could have more added to the centre. Still the moulds would take up an awful lot of space

 

[rotrax]

Quote:- Not many people here can see past the usual forum rants of black/white or good bad either.



I can-I own both, a Hartley 32 in steel in Wellington,NZ and an Island Packet SP Cruiser in Portsmouth Harbour.

I am fully aware that they are at opposite ends of the age/price spectrum and that one-the IP-is in use perhaps for 6 months every year before being laid up while we visit our other boat in NZ. The Hartley is used-or usually maintained-for 3 to 4 months each year.

The amount of work required to keep the Hartley looking reasonable is about 10 times that of the GRP boat.

I do fully understand and accept that the Hartley has build defects which BS's boats have pretty much alleviated.

But I am stuck with what I have, a cheap steel boat that gives us an outlet to enjoy the water.

When we are not de-rusting and painting.....................................

 

[rotrax]

One interesting thing here in the UK, (and pleaae correct me if I am wrong) is 99'9% of narrowboats are steel. Granted they are in fresher water, and construction is simpler that a yacht, but even so it was a mystery to me why until I realised the bespoke nature of most of the new ones with length, superstructure etc. You would need an awful lot of huge moulds to make all the variations. So steel is used as it is the simplest way of getting the job done in a limited space, and more adaptable than moulding. Still makes me thin there must be a market for a grp narrowboat, maybe modular design that could have more added to the centre. Still the moulds would take up an awful lot of space

GRP Narrowboats were built. I cant recall the maker, but there were plenty about in the late 60's and 70's. IIRC they were often centre cockpit.

Yes I can-just googled it!

Morgan Giles were the ones.