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.