A Lesson in Seamanship

I had a bit of a scare Friday.  I had a couple days off, and had taken my three boys to a local state park to camp and sail our 8' dinghy.  Thursday night conditions were ideal, and the two older boys had a fun adventure sailing from the boat ramp to the campground.  Friday morning, though, the wind began to pick up to dangerous levels and I made the difficult decision to scrap any plans for sailing that day.  That's where the trouble began.

Elliott, my youngest, was in tears that he hadn't had a chance to sail yet.  And then the winds calmed down for a bit and stayed moderate for 10 or 15 minutes, luring me into a false sense of security.  I caved, and took Elliott out for a quick sail towards the boat ramp.

Within 10 minutes of launching, the wind began to rise again, and changed direction drastically.  What had been a favorable south breeze pushing us gently north to the ramp was suddenly coming out of the northwest, putting the ramp directly upwind.  Worse, as the breeze strengthened to force 6 or greater, I found that I couldn't get the boat to sail.  It was weather-cocking, turning the bow almost directly into the wind, leaving us drifting to leeward and bouncing in the whitecapped chop.

I'm pretty sure that shifting my weight far aft would have allowed us to sail again, but I'm not sure it would have been a good idea to try it.  I wasn't certain I could hold the boat down in such a strong wind.  And Elliott is very lean, and I'm not sure how long he would have lasted in the 60-degree water if we'd capsized.  So I did the only smart thing I could do after making the stupid mistake of trying to sail in marginal conditions: I took the sail down, and we surfed downwind to the opposite shore of the lake.  To give an idea of how bad the winds had gotten, we were moving at a faster-than-walking pace with no sail up, in whitecaps that had grown to 16-24" height. I got Elliott ashore, and hauled the boat out.

This left us about 4 miles (by land) from my other sons, but we were in cell phone contact.  I soon secured a ride back to the state park side of the lake from a kindly retiree in the neighborhood, and we were reunited within the hour.  After retrieving the boat, we drove home with plenty of fodder for a post-mortem discussion of what had gone wrong.

In my mind, the primary problem is that I allowed my role as "Dad" to interfere with my role as "skipper."  "Dad" wants to be fair and give each kid a chance to experience the joy of sailing; "skipper" knows not to sail in dangerous conditions or when dangerous conditions may be expected.  I'm proud of how well I handled it once I was in trouble, but I'm ashamed that I allowed myself to get in trouble with my most vulnerable child aboard.

My dad, who's a pilot, likes to quote the old saw that "any landing you can walk away from is a good landing."  There's some truth in it here: the boat and its crew both came away unharmed, and I gained some valuable experience that will make me think twice about launching when the weather's questionable next time.

Table Saw Time

Well, thanks to the generosity of my good friend Ray, I was able to get my dimensional lumber cut down last night.  It wasn't easy.  Cutting a continuous 1/2" strip out of a 16' length required a 32' open space with the saw at the center.  So we had to move his table saw to the door of his garage.

The results were spectacular - not only is Ray's shop well-equipped, he's also very skilfull.  Everything came out as specified by the plans, and we both finished the job with the same ten fingers we started with.  Sadly, I don't have any photos of the process; we had our hands full performing the cuts with just two sets of hands.  Seriously, table saws are scary.  I'm thankful to have an experienced guide to shepherd me through the process.

The only problem we encountered was that the 16' 2x4 I brought had some knot issues.  It was the clearest piece I could find at the store, but we were unable to get any knot-free slices out of it.  One gunwale actually broke as we lifted it off the saw table, because the 1/2" slice was completely interrupted by a knot.  Each of the "good" gunwale cuts we got has at least one point where the wood is compromised.  So I may end up having to epoxy shorter pieces together to make my 16' pieces.  We'll see how they hold up when I use them as flexible straight edges to loft the patterns on the plywood.

In other news, my mother's garage - home to my brother's Teal project - is under contract to sell along with the rest of the house.  So we're going to need to get it... not necessarily finished, but weather-proof, at least, and quickly.  I think we'll probably epoxy-and-glass-tape the seams tomorrow, and try to paint the hull by mid-May.  Once it's painted, the final details can be safely completed in an outdoor work space without hurting the boat.  This push to "completion" on the Teal might pull me away from the Melanesia for a bit.

But while we're mixing epoxy for the Teal's seams tomorrow, I'm hoping to laminate the pieces for my steering paddle.  Then I'll have a shaping project to occupy idle hands in the little bits of time that occasionally become available. 

JAWS

Today was Easter Sunday, so I spent most of my time cooking and groaning about how much food I'd eaten.  The rest of the day was a bit frustrating.  I had time to devote to the boat, but none of the next steps were ready to go.  So I used the extra time to clean the covered & screened back porch, which was desperately overdue.  Not only have I begun to stack boatbuilding tools and materials in there, but it's also a dusty, disorganized mess due to its winter role as a dumping ground for muddy shoes, kid debris, etc.  Since I am trying to use the space for my build - without preventing the rest of the family from enjoying it when I'm not working - I really had to clear out the junk and give it a good sweeping.  Well, that's done now.  While it doesn't exactly qualify as boatbuilding, it certainly was a necessary step in the process.

Mast jaw with joining cut

I also managed to find something useful to do in the evening, which has to do with the title of this blog entry.  I have a couple crotches cut to use as boom jaws.  Tonight, I trimmed one of them down to nearly the recommended diameter.  That was a lot of work, and I have about a half-gallon of wood chips to show for it, even though I was only going from 2.25 to 1.75 inches diameter.  Once that was done, I cut a stepped diagonal shape into it as detailed in the plans.  That process was sketchy.  The plans show the cut and the method of joining the jaw to the crabclaw spar, but they don't detail the length of the cut, or the angle, or any other guiding info about this particular bit of joinery.  Apparently, one is supposed to eyeball it. 

Eyeballing joinery is not my strong suit.  But I eventually decided to go for it; by starting on the crotch, I'm not risking much, as I've got at least one spare already cut.  In the end, it turned out reasonably well, though it didn't exactly follow the lines I'd shakily drawn in to guide me.  But the diagonal cut surface is nice and flat, and it is believable that I could do it again on the end of my spar if I needed to.  We'll see if my optimism is justified.

Once I have two pieces that fit nicely together, the plans indicate that they should be pinned and lashed together.  This seems awfully shaky to me.... I wonder if there's supposed to be epoxy involved, or not?  It's not mentioned anywhere, but the shape of the joint suggests it.

Another (rare) example of ambiguity in the plans is that there are a couple small timber bottom frames specified, but they're not listed in the timber shopping list.  It's no big deal, as they are to be cut from 40x20mm timber, and I have plenty of scrap 1x4" pine left from a home improvement project.  I checked with my calipers, and the nominal 1" thickness is about 19mm, which I think is close enough.

Since I haven't spoken much about the plans yet, I'll try to collect my thoughts on that matter over the next few days.  And I should have my lumber ripped to the plan dimensions on Wednesday night, which means I can start lofting by the end of the week, and begin cutting the plywood soon thereafter.

Trees, trees, trees....

A busy week behind me, one in which I had little time to work on the boat.  But that doesn't mean it wasn't on my mind.  Every sapling I passed was evaluated for its suitability as a pole. I stole the occasional moment to debark some of the 3/4" diameter poles I've collected.  And on Friday after work, I managed to fell and limb a small tree that will make one of my two crabclaw spars.

Tonight, after a busy day of swimming with the kids, I slipped off to Home Depot for some dimensional lumber.  I purchased one 16' 2x4 to rip down for the gunwales, two 8' 2x4's to make my steering paddle, and a 4' 1x12 for the seats.  All of these pieces will require careful ripping down to smaller widths & thicknesses,  but my friend Steve has a beautiful SawStop saw in a location that will accept 16' lengths, and has graciously offered to let me use it, so we have the ability to do the precision cutting we need. 

Speaking of 16' lengths, it's a little shocking to me, after chasing straight 13' trees around in arid Colorado, that there are trees around big enough to pull 16' lumber out of.  The store had 16' lengths of pieces as big as 4x4 or 2x10.  That's a huge tree.  It's pretty humbling to think of how long it would take to grow such a long 2x4; I'll try to deserve the wood by not messing up and having to scrap any of it.

All this wood is Douglas Fir from the Pacific Northwest, which may not be sustainably sourced, but at least it's harvested under first-world labor and environmental laws.  It makes me think of the role big timber and shortages of the same have played in world history.  Easter Island became uninhabitable because they ran out of canoe trees.  England's dominance of the seas in the 18th & early 19th centuries owed a lot to the giants they harvested in their North American colonies - trees they were dependent upon because such timber was getting hard to find at home.  The American Revolution was a pretty significant blow because it reduced England's access to quality shipbuilding timber - though eastern Canada continued to provide for a while.

In my case, I got all the dimensional lumber my project will require, plus a 3/4" drill bit, for just $21.47.  Once I get this lumber cut to its final shape, I'll be able to use some of the 16' gunwale timber to loft the cuts on the plywood.  So buying and cutting this lumber is the critical next step that's been keeping other things from happening.

Found and store-bought lumber together for the first time.

Here's a pile of my lumber and found wood on the back porch, leaning up against two sheets of marine plywood and a decommissioned mountain bike.  Longer pieces aren't shown here because they didn't fit into this space, but I'm trying to keep everything under cover in what has turned out to be a very wet spring.  The found timber is stored vertically to encourage drying and keep it from warping.  In this picture, you can see 2x4's, several of the peeled poles, as well as some unpeeled ones and a few "Y" shapes that are candidates for making the spars.

A Quiet Weekend

After picking up the plywood on Friday, I had hoped I might carry that momentum through the weekend - maybe get the paddle laminations done, or visit my friend with the table saw to rip the gunwales....  But in the end, I had to settle for finishing my three deadeyes, and getting a little further with the found lumber. 

I felled a diseased elm that hangs over our driveway on Saturday, and was able to get one good timber "Y" crotch out of it.  The rest was too crooked to use, sadly.  I found another crotch on something I brought home a few days ago, but it's shaped oddly and may not be usable.

I peeled the bark off of most of my outrigger sticks ("tuki"), and they are pleasingly solid pieces all.  The plans don't definitively indicate how long they should be, so I'm not sure how many lengths I have right now. 

I also noticed that I had been wrong about the length of the outrigger poles ("kiato").  I was thinking they needed to be 12' long like the ama, but the plans actually say 10' is adequate.  I think I had been confusing them with the crabclaw spars.  So I found one piece long enough on my yard, and spotted another couple down the street that I need to ask about before the neighbors haul them away.  That could resolve all of the poles, leaving me with just the ama and spars to find.

I've spotted a roadside strip where the utility company is cutting trees that are getting too close to the power lines overhead.  A couple of the trees in question are long, straight and skinny.  I'm thinking of taking those down myself, or leaving a note asking that they be left whole.

And on the ama issue, I'm not sure whether to try to join 9' and 3' pieces of aspen trunk to make my 12' ama.  It's hard to imagine that kind of joint handling the punishment I suspect the ama will take, though if I could perform a pinned, epoxied and taped diagonal scarf, it should be strong enough.  I stopped by my friend's house to look at the pieces in question, but he wasn't home.

In non-Melanesia news, my brother and I got the mast partner installed (correctly this time) on our Teal project.  And we cut decking to go on the bow and stern, which really makes it look more like a boat somehow.  That project is probably a little more than a month from being rowable at our current schedule of a couple hours per week (he's a busy college student).  It only needs the shoe and skeg installed, the chines taped & epoxied, and a couple coats of paint. 

It will be some time longer before it's ready to sail, as that requires building and finishing rudder, leeboard, mast and boom, not to mention sewing a sail.  There is a real possibility that my boat will be ready before his, since it's a simpler design, simpler process, and will benefit from all the lessons I learned working on his boat.

That's all for now.  I don't expect any progress for the next few days, as we have a busy Monday through Wednesday here.

Got the Plywood

Stopped at the local family-run wood shop today and bought 2 sheets of "Hydrotek 6mm Marine Ply 4x8 1/4" 5-ply BS1088 Meranti, No Face Defects, No Core Voids" plywood for $51.85 each.  With tax, it came to $111.53.

Had a heck of a time getting them home in the force 6-7 winds that came through town today, but we managed.  They're on the porch awaiting the next step, which is marking and lofting.

Toggles, Deadeyes and Found Wood

I walked home from work today, shaping my first deadeye with my Leatherman tool as I went.  By the time I got home, it was nicely formed and smoothed.  Since the line in the outer rim will be eye spliced tightly on to the deadeye and stationary, it doesn't really have to be perfectly round, so the drill press idea is probably overkill.  I started a couple more of them after I got home.  I'm playing with different ways of forming the groove around the circumference, with mixed results. 

Homemade teak toggles and deadeyes

I also made three toggles  to secure the lines after they pass through the deadeyes.  They're the rectangles in the photo.  Line passes through one hole in the toggle, then through the center of the deadeye, then back through the other hole in the toggle and is tied off there.  This way, when the line is tensioned, the toggle prevents it from slipping.

I also spotted a brush pile in a field along my route home, and found 5 more decent ama attachment sticks.  This puts me close to having enough of those, which is great.  But... it also means that I need to start worrying about the serious wood - the ama, the spars and the outrigger poles.  All of these things are much longer and stouter than what I've found easily in my wanderings.  Hopefully, I'll be able to take stock of what I actually have over the coming weekend, so I can make a plan for finding what I lack.

Materials, part 3: Sailcloth

Dreaming of this boat building project over the last few months, I've largely forgotten that it is a sailboat, and will eventually require a sail.  The Bolger Teal I'm building with my brother has caused the same sort of amnesia.  I guess one gets so caught up in making the hull that it's hard to remember all the other pieces required to make it move when the wind blows.

Luckily, the Melanesia plans come with a detailed description of the crabclaw rig, how to trim it for performance in various winds and on various points of sail.  They also describe how to sew together the sails with a simple technique that actually seems achievable, despite my complete helplessness with cloth.  So I've been thinking about the sail materials before I've even begun lofting the hull panels.  Quite a turnaround!

A crabclaw polytarp sail  in action

on a different outrigger canoe design

I've read about people cutting their sails from inexpensive plastic tarps.  It's certainly an option, and one Mr. Wharram endorses, though he warns that such sails deteriorate rapidly from UV exposure.  But it would cost only about $10 to make a sail from a tarp, and that option will remain on the table until I get a sense of the budget.

Another option would be to use Tyvek, a sort of plasticized paper that is commonly used as a semi-permeable house wrap in the USA.  If the name doesn't instantly conjure up memories of the Tyvek logo plastered all over a new home, you may recognize it as the stuff of FedEx envelopes or disposable painter's suits.  From what I've learned reading other cheapskates' sailing stories, it is lighter than polytarp, performs better in light air, and lasts a bit longer.  It's available in 3' x 100' rolls - enough to make ten or fifteen sails - for under $30, or I might be able to score a partial role from a construction site dumpster for free.

And then there's the "real" sailcloth option.  I happen to be within an hour's bike ride of Rockywoods Fabrics, who stock a large variety of outdoor fabrics for camping/backpacking DIY'ers.   I looked up specs on a replacement sail for my El Toro, and found that it was made from a 3.5oz polyester fabric.  (Polyester apparently stretches less than nylon, and so makes longer-lasting sails.)  Rockywoods sells a white 4.5oz coated ripstop polyester fabric for $5.09 per linear "yard." (At 5' of width, a "yard" of this fabric is considerably more than a square yard.)  It appears that I would need about 5-10 of these yards to make the sail; at $5 per yard, this makes  a real sail cost-competitive with buying a roll of Tyvek and only 3-4 times as expensive as polytarp, while lasting much longer.  Rockywoods sells online, in case you're looking into sails for your small boat & like the sound of that fabric.

As I said earlier, I'm postponing this decision until I see what I can afford.  But if at all possible, I think I'll go with the polyester fabric option.  It seems much more of a "real" result, and it's only slightly more expensive than the cheaper materials.

First Sawdust

I spent the evening with a scrap of teak I had lying around from a repair job on my El Toro.  The plans call for a few simple deadeyes - basically a pulley shape - for the forestay and side stays.  I cut a small square of the teak with my lovely new pull saw and trimmed it to an octagonal shape.  I then drilled the center, drove a screw through it, and clamped the screw in my electric drill.

This produces a portable lathe, a trick I learned from my boss at the bike shop long ago.  I used my home's built-in grinding surface (the concrete step at the back door) to grind the octagon into a circle, and then used the edge of the step (and later a chunk of sandstone, nature's long-lasting 150-grit sandpaper) to groove the outer edge to accept the 1/4" line that will go through it.

An Amateur Deadeye

It all worked beautifully, or it would have if I owned a drill press.  The center hole really has to be at a perfect right angle to the surface of the pulley; if it isn't, the wobble introduced by the deviation leaves the circle with flat spots and causes the groove in the rim to meander around.  I really tried to hit it square, but I wasn't very close.  With that one flaw, the product of tonight's efforts may end up being useless.

I have enough of this teak to try a few more times; tonight was really just a trial.  I also have a friend with a drill press.  I think I'll stop by some time with a few squares to center-drill, and then I can try again with better hope of success.  I'm not too upset by tonight's result - teak sawdust has a lovely smell that I had forgotten about until this evening.  And it was fun to finally be making sawdust for the new boat, even if it was only practice.

Materials, pt. 2: Found Timber

One neat thing about the Melanesia is that it calls for several pieces of found timber, to be used as spars, outrigger poles, outrigger attachment sticks, and the outrigger itself.  The plans give detailed specifications, including length, diameter, and, in the case of the outrigger float, ideal density.  They go on to recommend certain species of tree that might be good for each purpose, and mention that bamboo is acceptable for most of these applications as well.

Dimensional lumber can be substituted, but it's described as an inferior choice, and I'm on a tight budget anyway, so there's no reason to go that route.  I'm tempted by the idea of using bamboo poles because of their incredible strength to weight ratio, which would really maximize the boat's performance.  But poles are prohibitively expensive, because they don't seem to be available locally, and only expensive trucking companies will ship parcels as long as 12-13 feet.  So found lumber it is.

James states in the Melanesia plans that using found timber will change your relationship to your environment, because you'll suddenly find yourself assessing every tree you pass.  I can confirm that this is the case.  In the last week, I've noticed dozens of trees along my daily commute that never caught my eye before.

The plans actually list a density figure for the outrigger float (ama) of 30lbs/cu. ft.  Not knowing wood densities by heart, I looked it up and found that elm, the most plentiful wood in my back yard, is too heavy.  Pine, which is abundant in Colorado, is all over the density table at 23-55lbs/cu. ft.  Some varieties are light enough on paper, and a friend has a few dead pines standing on land near his cabin in the mountains that I could have.  But I have a theory that our dry climate produces a denser pine than is typical.  The growth rings are pretty slim on the pines I've seen; I might find something suitable, but it would take a bit of looking.

We have plenty of cottonwood about, but it's rarely straight, and I think it has all the structural virtues of soggy cardboard.  It's an odd, spongy wood, and I don't think it could be used for anything on my boat.

Another common Colorado wood that is well under the maximum density but stronger than cottonwood is our fabled quaking aspen.  I happen to have a friend who's been battling a blight in a stand of aspens he owns, and frequently brings chunks of dead aspen over when we host bonfires.  I buzzed him, and he has a trunk that would be promising, but it's a little short.

So for the moment, the ama could end up being two pieces of aspen joined together, a pine trunk from the mountains, or a particular elm in my backyard.  Unless I find something better.  I'm considering calling around to local tree services and see if anyone has a better aspen trunk available.

As for the rest of the pieces, I scored a few small sticks of unknown species for the outrigger attachment role.  They're supposed to be about 0.75" and springy; I chanced on a pile of saplings the city had cut near our bike path, and found several decent lengths of the right diameter.  There are 12 of those sticks; I have at least 3 or 4 now, possibly more.  I stripped the bark off a few of them this evening after work, and they seem perfect for the job.

I have one or possibly two standing elms that could make outrigger poles, and I found a couple pieces in my neighborhood this evening that might make good spars, if they're long enough.  Length seems to be the biggest problem.  Twelve feet is long, apparently longer than I think, because I keep bringing home sticks that are too short to use anywhere.

And a couple good crotches are required to make the spars.   I'm pretty sure I can take them from the elms in our back yard.

I'm sure there will be plenty more to say on the subject of found materials in the days to come.  I'll be nervous about it until I see a neat stack of stripped poles against the shed.

Materials, part 1: Plywood

The Melanesia plans call for 2 sheets of marine-grade plywood.  Here in Colorado, marine ply is a mythical substance rarely seen.  I called around once a couple years ago and was quoted prices near $100 per 4x8 sheet!  So I was a bit nervous about what this item would do to the tight boatbuilding budget.

James discusses the issue in the building instructions at some length.  WBP ("weather and boil proof") ply can be used, but it's a gamble, as not all WBP ply is truly up to marine applications.  He then mentions that one of the better, more affordable options is  quality Douglas fir marine ply.  This sounds great for two reasons: first, because low cost is important to me, and second, because I would much rather use a relatively local wood.  As James points out, tropical hardwoods are being harvested faster than they can be regrown, and I'd rather not be a part of that.

I called our local "boutique" wood shop and found that they stock Meranti marine-grade ply at $55 per sheet.  That's great news, far cheaper than I expected!  I inquired about Doug fir marine ply, and they said it's a special order item but yes, they can get it, and it only costs $34 per sheet.  This news puts me over the moon - it's so rare that the cheapest and greenest options converge like that.

Sadly, it turns out that their supplier won't sell the Douglas fir for orders less than 100 sheets, and the local shop isn't willing to order that much of a low-demand product unless I'm buying it all.  Since I'm not interested in spending $3500 and the next several decades as a regional marine plywood distributor any more than they are, the Meranti ply appears to be my best local option. Unless....

I called every lumber store in the region - big chains and local shops alike, and got the same answer each time.  (They apparently all deal with the same supplier....)  "Yes, we can get it.  The minimum order is 100 sheets.   No, we will not stock 100 sheets of it so we can sell you 2 sheets."  An understandable response, but frustrating nonetheless.

I checked with some of the better-known online retailers of boatbuilding supplies, Noah's Marine of the Niagara Falls region, and Chesapeake Light Craft of Annapolis, MD.  Both had good prices on plywood - but both had shipping charge structures that made a small purchase like this financially prohibitive.  It was something like, "$99 shipping for the first one to ten sheets of plywood."  So a $70 purchase might cost $170 by the time it got to my doorstep.  It might make sense for large boats, but certainly not for my tiny Melanesia.

So it turns out, after several hours of phone calls and internet searches, that the best price on marine plywood is at my expensive local boutique lumber shop.  Who'd have thought it?  I'm disappointed that I couldn't purchase a North American ply, but I'm happy to be able to give my business to the local guys.  And they will probably be able to sell me local softwoods for the gunwale pieces, so it makes for one-stop, low-guilt shopping. 

Final plywood cost: $110 US.

Coming up in the next couple posts: epoxy options, and the ongoing search for found timber to make the spars, outrigger float and outrigger poles.

Getting Started Getting Started

This blog will document my efforts to build and learn to sail a small sailboat.  As such, it's unlikely to be of interest to anyone except those considering building a boat themselves, or those who know me and wonder how my project is going.  If neither of those descriptions apply to you, yet you continue reading, you have only yourself to blame for the wasted time!

The boat in question is a Wharram Melanesia, plan number 696, designed by James Wharram and Hanneke Boon.  It is a very unconventional design, to Western eyes, because it attempts to recreate, in modern materials, the traditional indigenous watercraft of the Pacific island peoples.  To build a Melanesia in northern Colorado, about a third of the way around the globe from its home waters, may seem silly.  But I chose the design because I admire its simplicity, its light weight, its potential speed, and its bigger siblings in the Wharram catalog.  I'm hoping that this experience will provide the chance to dip my toes in the waters of boat building and to judge whether I have (or could acquire) the skills to build one of the larger Wharram designs some day.

In this inaugural post, I'm going to try to answer some of the questions raised by my apparent folly.  Specifically:

• What are you doing with a sailing hobby over 1000 miles from the nearest salt water?
• What makes you think you can build a boat?
• Okay, but why on earth build such a strange boat?
• Are you sure this is a good idea?  And what are your goals?

So... what business does a Coloradoan have with a sailing hobby?  Well, I spent my teenage years sailing with my father and family on large keelboats in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland.  We raced at the Wednesday night races at Solomon's Island, Maryland, we slept on the boat at anchor occasionally, and we sailed across the Bay to the Eastern Shore once or twice.  We weren't too adventurous, but I learned a fair amount about sailing then.

I moved to Colorado right after college, and have lived here ever since.  For most of that time, sailing never crossed my mind.  In the last four years or so, I've begun to get the sailing bug again.  I purchased a beat-up old  El Toro, a very small sailing dinghy comparable to an Optimist in size and layout, and found that my skills were only a bit rusty.  (Part of the credit there belongs to Jan Adkins, whose beautiful little book The Craft of Sail provided an excellent refresher course.  I can't recommend it highly enough - Adkins is an illustrator on par with the best of them, and he writes as precisely as he draws.)

Anyway, I took a sailing class at the Victoria Sailing School in Denver and achieved some basic ASA certifications.  I found at that class that Colorado is actually full of sailors.  There's some challenging sailing to be done in our regional reservoirs, where the topography keeps the winds swirling about and we're forced to constantly adjust sail trim. Denver is certainly not Annapolis, but there's nothing odd about living here and sailing.

What about this business of building a boat myself? I'll admit that this is a weak link in my chain of reasoning.  My previous efforts at woodworking have been flawed at best.  I'm able, after a lot of practice, to produce non-ugly dorm furniture and utilitarian shelving.  But boats are a different matter, since they need to be water-tight, right?

The Teal, designed by Phil Bolger and Dynamite Payson

It just so happens that this is not my first attempt at building a boat.  My younger brother and I are currently in the final stages of building a Bolger Teal.  The Teal is a so-called "Instant Boat," which means that it is built using a technique developed by the late Dynamite Payson.  Instant Boats are of simple, forgiving construction - at least in theory.  Our Teal project has been quite finicky, and I suspect that part of the reason is that the "instant" method is not foolproof.  It relies heavily on chine and gunwale lumber to give shape to the plywood, and our lumber was a bit off; the resulting hull looks great from 10 or 15 feet away, but shows a lot of imperfections when you sight along its length.

I've actually learned a lot from that first project.  I've also learned from other blogging boat builders that some other popular construction methods aren't as simple as they sound, either - strip planking, in particular, comes to mind.  But I know several people who have built stitch-and-glue boats, and I'm convinced that stitch and glue construction - where precisely cut plywood shapes are joined along their edges, curving into the proper hull shape as their edges mate - will actually be more forgiving.  Cutting the shapes out for the Teal has not been my problem; instead, it's been joining them cleanly.  So I have high hopes.  We'll see if they're well-founded.

Of course, stitch and glue is the most popular amateur boat building technique in the world these days.  Why did I choose such an odd craft to build with so many designs to choose from?  Well, to answer that question I need to go back to my personal sailing history a bit.

Sunrise at anchor in a cove behind Padre Island, TX

After my class at Victoria Sailing, I read about coastal navigation and took the family on our first charter vacation, bareboating in Corpus Christi, Texas.  The trip was spectacular - good sailing, dolphin sightings, exotic shorebirds, great food... Nothing went perfectly - navigation and docking were a little hesitant, but functional - but it was all good enough that the beauty and thrill of the experience shone through.

The next year, we tried again in Southern California and had a terrible experience. The head began to back up, and the battery bank wasn't charging off the engine.  We later learned that our charter's head had a clogged vent from prior customers; I'm still not sure what was wrong with the electrical system.

The second charter sticks in my mind.  We were completely stranded by the electrical problem, and I realized that I'm not happy with the RV experience one gets from big keelboats.  In my early 40's, I'm still an occasional backpacker and bicycle tourist.  I'm not frightened by a lack of creature comforts; even my wife is an enthusiastic tent camper.  I'd rather give up some of the luxury it is assumed one demands on a typical charter sailboat for greater freedom and simplicity.

And that's why I've fallen in love with James Wharram catamaran designs.  They are designed for safety and performance, simplicity and affordability, but certainly not luxury.  Even his smaller designs have circumnavigated and survived hurricanes, so they're clearly seaworthy.  But if a sea kayak is akin to backpacking, and a standard charter yacht is akin to a 35-foot RV, the Wharram catamaran is somewhere in between.  A VW camper bus, perhaps?  As Goldilocks would say, just right.

Boatsmith's beautiful Tiki 30 would certainly suffice.

In a perfect world, I'd go straight to one of his larger designs, like the Tiki 26 or 30, maybe even buying a pro-built one like the lovely Tiki 30 pictured at left.  (It's for sale as of this writing, by the way.)  But money's tight, my boatbuilding skills are, as yet, unproven, and my track record with large, complicated projects is uneven.  So the Melanesia is a chance to test my skills, evaluate the quality of the plans Wharram provide, and all for a relatively modest cost.

Which brings us to the next question: is this really such a good idea?  My father very wisely says that a successful project requires three things: time, money and work space -and in a pinch, passion can make do with two of the three.  I have, let's see here... barely enough money for this small project, a little free time, and no dedicated work space. As I write this, I own the plans (around US$150 at the current exchange rates) and could afford to buy either the wood or the epoxy; I plan to start with the wood and save up towards the epoxy as I do the lofting and cutting.  I will be borrowing general family spaces for this project and doing my best to stow it out of everybody's way in between work sessions.  We have a screened, covered porch that I'm eying for that purpose, though I've been strictly forbidden from monopolizing it.  Luckily, it has a tall ceiling and I think I can store the project overhead as it progresses.  We'll see how that goes....

I've been told never to begin a project without a clear definition of success, so here's mine.  This effort will be a raging success if:

• I get a fun, usable boat out of it
• the boat is reasonably attractive and structurally sound
• it is built on-budget
• I get an honest sense from the process of the value provided by the Wharram plans
• and I manage to do all of this without driving my wife and family to distraction in the process
• [and not to get too greedy, but I'd like to sail her before the end of this year]

As I mentioned earlier, I have the plans in hand now, and have begun sourcing materials.  My next post will deal with suppliers, costs, and material selections.  If you're still reading at this point, it should relieve you to know that I promise to be more succinct in the future.