As any of you with personal contact with me may have noticed, I have been a bit preoccupied with the idea of building my own boats. Obsessed may be a more apt term. Since I purchased my sailboat in May of 2011 there has been a growing hunger in me which I have term the “boateritus condition”. In this condition I have a strong urge to buy boats, lots of boats, as many boats as I can get! Not good! Boats are expensive.
As I have been meandering around the net, I keep bumping into this idea of building my own boat. At first I thought it was crazy talk. I cannot build a boat. The deeper I have explored the idea however, the more convinced I am becoming that not only *can* I build my own boats, but it will be many multiples cheaper than purchasing pre-made boats. Plus it takes time to build a boat so it will slow down my acquisitions significantly.
Building boats out of basic plywood using the stitch and glue style looks like something I can get good at, and do for relatively cheap. I have been reading lots of articles about wooden boat building online, a few books ( so far ), and watched a couple video series. It is all rather exciting. My favorite book is Devlin’s Boat Building. In the book Devlin shows you how to build wooden boats in the stitch and glue style. Devlin also produces many designs and kits that can be acquired. The best part though is that he is within an hour drive from me! I plan on using his boat designs extensively for my first few projects, though eventually I would like to try my own hand at designing a boat.
I want to share a couple of my more favorite boat ideas with you i got from Pontoon rentals in Fort. Lauderdale. Every one of these will eventually be built, but until I am able to rent a shop to build in I will continue to drool all over my keyboard while anticipating when it will be done.
Chesapeake 16 wooden kayak by Chesapeak Light Craft ( CLC )
Cool, sleek powerboat. Hopefully similar to this, but it does not need to be exact. The builder of this boat has not responded to any of my inquiries about the designs.
A fun little trailer sailor, the Winter Wren II is actually designed by Devlin himself
Stay tuned into this site and you will see status updates as I look for a shop, look for a good boat to build, and start building
I went out and purchased some wooden boat plans, not really knowing exactly what I wanted to build. I ended up forking over cash on plans that could have been written in Greek! I spent far too much on materials as the plans just weren’t clear and ended up with a half-finished boat.
Then I found these plans: http://www.bestquicktips.com/easy-boat-plans. Now I’m proud to say that I have completed my first wooden boat. Building boats is not that hard if you just follow the right plans.