which cat to build?

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janeh

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Opinions much appreciated.

Plan is to build and do some long distance cruising in about 2 years from now. Warmer climates most likely.

I have the plans to a 30' wharram - 900 hour build. Easy to build and maintain and sails well. Resell value used to be about £21k. Accomodation very basic.

Or I have access to 40' Prout moulds. Trouble is, although I'm good with fibreglass, I don't have plans and would be guessing at which areas to strengthen with Carbon or kevlar and guessing where to place stringers etc.
I would not fit out the boat straight away (with posh wood etc) , but plan to sail as a very bare boat; mast, sails, 2 outboards, winches and lights. Also, it does not sail that well, 110 degree tacking, nacelle means slamming etc,etc, very slow catamaran by other standards -e.g. Whites, Shuttleworth etc.
But resell value (once finished) is like £125k (and I'd certainly finish it better than a production boat). I have no idea how long it would take to build the hulls.

I could fork out £21k if I really had to but would prefer to build myself; I know I / we would do it better.

Merci boocoo, in advance and tra la.
 
Dont know which Prout you are referriing to - there never has been a 40ft one nor one near that size that could be powered by outboards. A friend completed a 37 ft Prout from hulls and using Prout's help and plans - still took him 5 years and when I saw it it was still not quite finished. Another friend built a Wharram round the same size range, and that took 4 years almost full time - near bankrupted him and the result though well finished sold for very little when he had a heart attack.

Best of luck but from your post you come over as a dreamer. Sometimes they succeed but the creeks and small boatyards are peppered with abandoned projects and broken dreams. Best advice is to work hard and save up the money to buy a decent second hand. In all probability, you can earn more per man hour doing your job than you will save per man hour in the build. Be realistic

P.S. As an ex Prout owner, slamming was never a problem and performance was as good as the equivalent French cat. Pointing ability depended on how clean the hulls were and now rough the sea. Like all cruising cats, it was a motorsailer to windward in a seaway but would point up to 35 deg hard on the wind in a flat sea. Definitely better performing than a Wharram but not up to a Shuttleworth. Construction was simple and heavy - there was no carbon or aramid in my boat and I doubt there was in others. The strength came from the bonded in bulkheads - the boat simply wouldnt stand up structurally to your "sail it empty approach". A few stringers but not many.
 
G'day Janeh,

Take heed of the advice offered above, boat building is not a pass time, it's a disease that few survive.

I suspect I have worked on more unfinished boats than I will ever build. The last one was a 42 foot cat, the owner planned to build her to lock up in 3 years working full time.

After 3 years he had two hulls and part of the bridge deck glassed up, but not a thing inside including no coatings to give her any sort of finished look, no sign of anything to walk on or even frames for the beds. and not an opening anywhere.

After 14 moths with both of us and a few friends from time to time mostly on weekends she was ready to move out of the shed. Still no openings but for the entry on the bridge deck.

It has sat in the yard for at least 3 years now, the owner ran out of money and has returned to work, spends his weekends working on the internal fit out.

He has the rigging still laying in the shed, but no sails or engines yet.

As others have indicated building your own is no small task, not a task I would recommend to any amateur without many years of experience.

Have you priced a hull and deck manufactured by a builder? You have a chance of getting that completed in a couple of years.

I had my 2 Sons lined up to build our next cat, we spent almost a year looking at plans and other cats trying to find one that met all our needs, finally we drew a plan of our own, put it past a Naval Architect and noted the changes he wanted to ensure she was strong, light and would sail well.

I was about to set up the whole deal when number one Son called me to advise he had seen a cat that met all our needs located about 4 hours drive away. I contacted the Marina and set up a meeting with the owner. Bought it after a haul out and sea trials the next day and sailed her home the day after. I estimate we have gained at least 4 to 5 years of sailing and saved ourselves a lot of work.

The changes we made were all done on the water during thr 'wet season'.

Take the advice offered by others and look at a second hand, part built as in hulls and bridge deck completed, or pick up one of the many unfinished projects laying in yards around the world.

The only thing you need when purchasing a boat, apart from the money is time. DO NOT look at 5 and say well @3 is my choice, look at 5 every weekend for the next 6 months and you will pick up a bargain with all the bits and the right layout.

Good luck.

Andavagoodnewyear......
 
Best of luck! But try typing 'project' into web sites such as www.yachtworld.com or similar. Hundreds of half completed boats around. Maybe buy a half completed one to complete yourself. Then you'll have more time for sailing?
 
Yes, thank you. Will try that. Have been looking for at least a year, but always found the quality of the work poor and could not always guarantee they'd used marine ply etc.
Recent wharram project on ebay - chap had sheathed the hulls in polyester resin (ho my gosh!) polyester resin - lack of adhesion, flexibility, plus he used wrong grade of glass cloth - ended up about a tonne too heavy - I don't thinh he will be able to give it away.
 
Thanks.

I take the point about sailing time.

I did build a Woods Strider from scratch years ago, sailed well and sold for a profit - super easy to build.

I should be able to do a lot of the build in 'work's' time. Maybe able to get some funding as a project, and maybe able to get sponsorship and very cheap materials.

I would continue to sail my dinghies during British summer (if we get one this year) and build at other times.

Will think about it.

Glad you found a great boat for yourself.

Much respect for your postings on epoxy by the way.

Tra la.
 
Good to hear from a Prout owner.

The reports I read were by journalists for Yachting monthly in the 1990's and I was quite miffed to see that they couldn't get much above 6 knots and they really slagged the boat off. They said construction was isophthalic resins and biaxial rovings with kevlar i or carbon fibre in high stress areas and foam cored above waterline.
Do Prouts not have a reputation as very spacious but poor sailors? Are they not super heavy with poor clearance due to elongated bridgedeck and low wide nacelle?

Another website (by a prout owner) totally slammed the build quality of his prout and said he had spent more time having it worked on than sailed on.

I'd love a prout if it sailed like a cat should.

But I think I was kind of hoping people would say the Prout would take 5 years to lay up and the Wharram was dead easy to build (which it is) or at the other end of the scale maybe even say that laying up moulds would be quicker and cheaper than a ply built.

"2 girls and 2 catamarans" by James Wharam does state that his cats are for dreamers and average earners (which unfortunatley I am, despite a good education a good skill-set:- poor career choice at fault)


Love the idea of photographing a prout - I'd want to be pulling up fittings though I fear.
 
I built a tiki 30. Sailed beautifully enjoyed building. I dont agree with your costings - takes longer, costs more, sells for less. We sold it because we wanted to go long term cruising. We thought the 30 too small for long term liveaboard. Headroom, space, carrying capacity. There are no economic reasons for building your own boat. There are many emotional ones. Satisfaction of eventually sailing your own creation is brilliant. Tiki 38, Pahi 42 best size for long term cruising but costly in both materials and years of work. NB Modern wharrams will outsail older prout designs but cannot compare with modern performance oriented multihulls.
 
Tiki 30 is a great design; was yours the one designed to be the largest trailerable wharram?

Re: costings; you mean it cost you more than £20k to build? All the tiki 30's 2nd hand I've seen have been selling for that mark.

If so, then that is scary and also the end of my build (unless I can get an even cheaper supplier of ply).

Which means I will be looking for a career change to earn more.

How long did it take you to build? Did you build your own mast?

Glad someone else said the wharram sails better than a Prout. What do / will you sail next?
 
I spent my life in the industry and built a 37ft Prout myself from bare mouldings (not a kit) I am now retired and can tell you that if I attempted the exercise again to build such a boat up to a good cruising standard I would allow about £75-80K minimum for materials and 2 years to complete single handed. Laying up hulls from a mould tool is skilled work and would require more time but you could save a bit doing it. The very fact that you have to ask the questions you do though indicates that you don't have the required skills and the learning curve is far too steep. Think about buying a clapped out 34 ft Prout for about £30K and spend six months refurbishing it perhaps but forget the idea you can build a boat very cheaply. You can't. Also forget the rubbish talked about performance. They point high, sail well, and are good cruising boats with better load bearing capabilities than most. They are not fast however. Never built to be. But in a gale of wind......
 
I have spent years re-building and renovating two yachts, long time ago. It always takes three times as much time and money and a lot of frustruation. I now bye yachts that others have build; much much better.
 
I built my tiki 30 some years ago, I sold it for what it cost to build excluding costing my labour. Given inflation and the fact that boats do not sell for the asking price I would expect 18k would be a reasonable estimate for both building cost and selling price (after 5 years courtesy of RCD). This assumes you can buy both the ply and the epoxy at trade price. It allows for professionally made sails and an aluminium tube mast. If you want to build a boat - great. If you want to sail away - great. I have done both, but as separate schemes. The vast majority of people who plan to do both seem to fail. I dont know why, but you have to be pretty single minded to do either. Perhaps it is hard to be single minded about two things at once.
 
Do as others suggest, either buy a tatty cat and spend money on doing it up or buy one and sailaway. I built, with 5 friends a 46' Wharram nearly 40 years ago when they were first marketed. Took 9 months working every evening and every weekend. Even then when it was launched it was not properly finished. Can't honestly remember how much it cost but it did include professional sails, materials only and wooden homemade spars but no engine. Would I do it again? NO! When sold two years later when the group broke up we didn't cover the cost of materials. If you do build, TREBLE the hours you think you need and DOUBLE the estimated cost as an absolute minimum. Good Luck antway and keep us informed of your final decision. If you do decide to buy a complete boat, look at several before committing yourself.
 
[ QUOTE ]
I have the plans to a 30' wharram - 900 hour build. Easy to build and maintain and sails well. Resell value used to be about £21k. Accomodation very basic.

[/ QUOTE ]

I own half a 35' Wharram.

Easy to maintain if you know what you are doing, but still time consuming. If you don't know what you are doing, the opportunity to seriously screw-up is significant.

A 30' Wharram provides very basic accommodation. I would not want to live on one for a long period, but people do. Personally, I would be hesitant to spend long periods with more than 2 people on a 35' wharram. Performance is good provided you are ruthless about keeping weight down.They are downright dangerous if overloaded, and I think it would be hard to cruise a 30' long distances without overloading. But again, people do. Wharram's are wet to sail and shelter is minimal.

Overall, great boats, but fitting a very specific niche. They are ideally suited to minimalistic cruising in warm climates, but as different from a 40' Prout as can be imagined.

As others have said - building a boat is a crazy thing to do (but then so is owning a boat).
 
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