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Pros and cons of steel sailboats

909K views 5K replies 127 participants last post by  Faster 
#1 ·
I'm thinking about making the leap from fiberglass to steel for our next sailboat. We want to do some far flung cruising - maybe even circumnavigate. Our present boat is a 1977 Tartan 37 and while we love it - since we've had a child and possibly will have another one on the way it might get a bit small for a liveaboard situation.
This summer I drove a big, old steel tour boat around the finger lakes and started thinking that steel might be a good way to get my family around the big marble.
I've spent a week in the Caribbean on a glorious aluminium boat but have never sailed a steel one, so I have lots of questions about their performance as cruising boats?
What are some of the better designers to keep and eye out for?
How good are they in the hot climates?
Are there any extra dangers in lightning?
Thanks for any and all advice you can give.
 
#3,843 ·
Brent:
That was regarding the Islander Yachts series. You seem to want to apply it to everything I have done. Do I need to post more construction drawings? They will only succeed in making you feel more inadequate. Islander always did their own engineering. This is common with almost every high production boat builder. But how would you know BS? You have never designed a grp boat so by your own definition you would know nothing about the process. You have never designed a production yacht. You design backyard boats.

For the record our "basic" set plan provided to Islander would have included:
Hull lines
Keel lines
Ballast
Rudder lines
Deck lines
Interior layout
Interior inboard profiles
Interior joiner sections
tank layout
Prop shaft strut
Deck plan
Deck gear schedule
Deck details
Sail plan
Rigging plan.
Often a detail drawings or two or three of various areas.

Any owner of one of my design can buy a complete set of plan for their boat for around $500. On my bigger designs where there may be 20 or more sheets of drawings the cost will be around $1,000. I am selling plans to boat owners all the time.

And, once again Brent your reading comprehension fails you. I asked you to provide the quote where I said wood and grp boats wers stronger than steel boats.
 
#3,846 ·
Hey Brent. While back I politely asked you a series of questions. You have yet to do so. Please go back and try. That's what threads are for.
By the way any ocean sailor knows jack lines and harnesses are what to count on to keep you on the boat. Life lines are to steady yourself so you don't fall.
By the way taking an outbound from bvi to Bahamas. Getting plane in am. Nicer than bcc this time of year. No leaks except off the stern at night. Bye now.
 
#3,855 · (Edited)
I answered them. I guess the answers went right over your head. I aint used to shooting any lower.
Most intelligent cruisers would rather stay on deck, behind proper lifelines, than be towed by a harness on jack lines . Proper lifelines make that the case, and have for my 40 years of cruising. I've never been towed by a jackline . That doesn't sound anywhere near as much fun as staying on deck, nor as good seamanship. Prevention is better seamanship.
Offshore, I rig a chest high lifeline ,from chest high on my upper shrouds, to my canopy aft ,then down to my bow pulpit foreward. It doesnt get in the way, in any way. In port I take it down.
Smack suggested that it is easier to fall under an intemediate lifeline 17 inches above the decks, than to fall over one 24 inches above the decks. Are you gullible enough to believe that?
After he claimed that the minimum height for safe lifelines is 36 inches?
Then he claimed that his (Proper) 24 inch high lifelines require you to crawl around on your decks, like a sewer rat. Duuuhhh!!! How many cruisers do you see crawling around their decks like a sewer rat? How many would prefer a boat which requires that, instead of being able to walk safely?

I just checked the lifelines on a 35 ft Beneteau. 25 inches above the decks! Duuuhhh!!!
 
#3,851 ·
Can you make a good drink? Play a gee-tar? singing I know is out.........

a nice designed boat.........

Time for bed, 1400 miles of driving hte last 4 days, I'm pooped and probably not making any sense after dinner and a measly glass of vino.....

BUT I get to go skiing tomorrow! yee haw!

Marty
 
#3,852 · (Edited)
"And, once again Brent your reading comprehension fails you. I asked you to provide the quote where I said wood and grp boats wers stronger than steel boats. "


Maybe it was the boxing or he banged his to many times on his indestructable, magic, stability inducing wheel house.Its amazing.George Bernard Shaw or James Joyce said of someone he didnt like " He has an unfortunate personality".
 
#3,853 ·
"And, once again Brent your reading comprehension fails you. I asked you to provide the quote where I said wood and grp boats wers stronger than steel boats. "

Maybe it was the boxing or he banged his to many times on his indestructable, magic, stability inducing wheel house.Its amazing.George Bernard Shaw or James Joyce said of someone he didnt like " He has an unfortunate personality".
Go back and read thru the posts, where several people, not necessarily you, have freequently claimed that wood and plastic boats were stronger than steel.
 
#3,864 ·
Cruising on $4K a year? I presume that all happened in the 70's. Or earlier - I remember books in the late 60's with titles like Europe on $10 a day. That was $3650 a year 45 years ago, with no boat to keep up and was directed at starving students backpacking and hitchhiking their way around.

Nowadays you'd have to work very hard at living cheap to last more than 3 years on $40K.
 
#3,879 ·
I have been living on less than $4K a year for many years , very comfortably.
No moorage bills, no car to support , no other people to support, no boat yards to support, no heating bills, no water bills, no electricity bills , no Rob Fords to feed, good hunting and fishing. What would I spend money on?
 
#3,865 ·
"Go back and read thru the posts, where several people, not necessarily you, have freequently claimed that wood and plastic boats were stronger than steel. "

You see Brent, there you go again. You clearly post that I said that. Then you post that "not necessarily you" said that. You just invent quotes to suit and in doing so you make yourself out to be a liar and with no help from anyone else you destroy your credibility.

I'm sure 95% of the "facts" you post are pure BS.

"Mine sacrifice little in the way of aesthetics "
But Brent your eye for aesthetics is severely deficient. Why should anyone pay attention to what you think is good looking when our own boats are living proof that you have no eye for aesthetics. We can plainly see what you think "good looking" is.
 
#3,866 ·
..................
But Brent your eye for aesthetics is severely deficient. Why should anyone pay attention to what you think is good looking when our own boats are living proof that you have no eye for aesthetics. We can plainly see what you think "good looking" is.
Care and craftsmanship and Brent are not bedfellows. For Brent to comment on aesthetics is a joke.

When you look closely at Brent's boat building you quickly see he's not at all interested in quality or longevity, only speed of construction. In the process he hacks a hull together with the poorest quality you will ever see from a boat builder. His detailing is abysmal and his welding is shocking which is why he's so fast.

A good impartial comment from an intelligent observer ( Another Tom not the same one who found Brent cabin tops deficient in my last post )) is worth reading. It's a response to viewing the promotional origami video where Brent puts Alex's boat together. This video sent what are best described as shock waves through the steel boat building community as Brent hacks the boat together with no symmetry and ill fiting parts and the worst welding you will ever witness. This puts it quite succinctly:

What struck me the most was the incredible lack of care and craftsmanship Brent showed in building Alex's hull and the utter illogicality of it. It was stunning. I mean, he's been hired to build someone's dream boat, presumably because they don't have the knowledge and experience to do it themselves which means they're putting their faith in his abilities. He's the "professional" in this equation and his customers are hanging their hopes and dreams on him. In this case he was hired to build ON VIDEO; there's $10k worth of material sitting on the ground… and he set about butchering it in a slapdash fashion that would get him fired from any jobsite in the world. I was amazed. I wouldn't put together a barnyard gate without grinding the torch cut edges but Brent apparently builds entire hulls that way. It's incredibly bad practice and there's absolutely no reason for it. Brent, your "cost of labour" excuse doesn't fly because if money was an issue you could have simply had Alex grind the plate edges himself and call you when he was done, it would've taken a day; but of course you didn't and he didn't know any better. Your "6011 burns through slag" excuse is baloney, yeah it does but the likelihood of slag inclusions is far greater than with clean edges and since below the waterline welds are pretty damn critical what on earth is wrong with doing the safest, soundest job possible? Are you seriously going to argue that spending an extra day grinding is going to "cost someone their cruising dreams"? What a tired meme.

When you drew the plate shapes it looks like you mostly eyeballed it with with a batten which explains why the edges didn't match up when you pulled them together to create the half-hulls, and why you had to cut an oblong piece out on each side to get the edges to match up. Assuming your drawings are accurate Alex could have lofted the plate shapes himself and done a perfect job of it but he apparently didn't know any better and you're on video telling him it's totally normal, nothing to worry about. Who knows what that did to the lines of that boat compared to "as designed", again assuming your drawings are accurate.

When you joined the half-hulls you apparently didn't join them at the same relative point at the stem because once the centerline was welded up one half-hull had a noticeable overhang at the stern which you simply cut off. You also had to warp the bow over to one side with a come-a-long to get the stem to match up. In your book you write "If the plate for one side of the hull matches perfectly the plate for the other side of the hull - and they all attach to one another at the same relative points, it's geometrically impossible for the hull to be anything but symmetrical" Well, by the same principle that hull is permanently warped, for no good reason. How much effort would it have been to take a piece of string and measure down each half-hull at the stem and scribe an accurate mark for joining them? Apparently too much. I'm running out of adjectives to describe how bad your work is here but suffice it to say; if I had welded a truck body that was 2" out of square when I was working that job I'd have had to fix it. If I'd tried to argue that it didn't matter because it's "just a truck box" I would have been fired and rightly so. You only get away with this appalling standard of work because you prey on people who don't know any better.

That brings me to the worst part of this whole thing. Throughout the whole video you can feel Alex's enthusiasm about getting his boat built and thinking he's getting a good deal. I feel sorry for him because he seems like a nice guy who deserved a lot better. It's sad that he's tied his name to your "work". You're constantly going around accusing people of taking advantage of other people's ignorance to make a buck but it is you who does this very thing constantly! It's your entire business model! Your economics are provably false. What sound money saving advice you give (building your own deck hardware, used engines, etc.) is hardly exclusive to origami building. Your wacky class warfare narrative is illogical and I think it's only an excuse to feed your messiah complex. I feel bad for anyone who has fallen under your spell, I would have if I wasn't lucky enough to have some fabrication background. It was the video that gave me pause, I couldn't trust someone who did work like that, I wasn't even aware of the structural issues until I started reading these threads. Like most people who read your book I have no engineering background at all so your structural approach sounded logical. But even I can easily follow the thought experiments that the professionals on here have posted (thank you!) and see where you are in error; which makes your profound incuriosity all the more troubling. And it's all so senseless because none of the people who know are saying origami in itself is a bad idea but you're wedded to your narrative and apparently determined to stay out there on your branch; sawing away…

reproduced from: Origami steel yacht construction - Page 24 - Boat Design Forums

I posted some stills of his fit-up and welding here:
Origami steel yacht construction - Page 18 - Boat Design Forums
 
#3,869 ·
Smackers/John:
I think that is an amazing testimony to what some of us have been trying to say all along.
It's quite depressing.

On a happier note:
I picked up my "intern" at the airport this morning. His family is world cruising in their Halberg-Rassy and Will flew here from Panama to do two weeks of intensive, often abusive, work with me. I have a 16 year old kid in the house, again. How lucky can one man be? Photos to follow. I am already making him wear a Scottish bonnet. The poor kid is freezing. I gave him one of my Pendleton shirts to wear and for God's sake, some socks.
 
#3,870 ·
After sitting in my backyard fir over 15 years thought it time to remove and replace metal. Keel has 6000 lbs lead. Used tire weights with metal clips melted off poured in.
 

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#3,873 · (Edited)
Well, it looks like everyone is dumping their BS Yacht:

36' Brent Swain Steel Cruising Sailboat

Does this kind of quality really justify Fukushima Fear?





This is a "2000" model for crying out loud (11 years younger than my Hunter)...

The boat was lanched in 2000.
Ouch.

Asking $40K ($15K less than the owner of my Hunter was asking). We'll see what he actually gets. There are other BS Yachts still on the market for right around $20K. Of course, this one has very "yachty" granite counters in the galley:

 

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#3,897 ·
Well, it looks like everyone is dumping their BS Yacht:

36' Brent Swain Steel Cruising Sailboat

Does this kind of quality really justify Fukushima Fear?





This is a "2000" model for crying out loud (11 years younger than my Hunter)...

Ouch.

Asking $40K ($15K less than the owner of my Hunter was asking). We'll see what he actually gets. There are other BS Yachts still on the market for right around $20K. Of course, this one has very "yachty" granite counters in the galley:

Smack claims those solid welded 35 inch high lifelines are not as safe as his 24 inch high plastic coated trip wires, held to a plastic deck by tiny bolts, because his are shinier? He has the priorities of the totally consumer gullible, inexperienced ,arm chair expert.ittakessomeonewithalotofoffshorecruisingexperncetoapreciatewhatthisboathas
Many people told me they would have bought other brentboats for sale, had they been twin keelers.This one is.
 
#3,874 ·
WOW.

That granite really does offset the rot.

Refitting Tip: Stolen local park benches make for affordable excellent aft deck seating.

That is I guess a great example there of living the BS dream??

No need to work in those slave factories with those poor wretched indoctrinated plastic boat fools.

Go now, go rusty, go slow, go alone, go bitter.

Meanwhile I am real happy to keep working in my hard yet rewarding job, spending my money outfitting the boat I have chosen because it is right for me, to a standard that I am proud of. I am not fooled I have consciously decided what I believe are the 'essentials' and 'nice to haves' for the cruising we intend to do and happy to spend our money on both.

By the way - My 3 year old daughter helped me change the engine impeller today. You haven't lived until you have done a boat job with a three year old. We had to stop midway to feed to ducks. We like feeding the ducks. Once we made sure stinky( the engine) was fixed we got a ice cream.

You cruise your way Brent, I am real happy cruising mine.
 
#3,876 ·
WOW.

That granite really does offset the rot.

Refitting Tip: Stolen local park benches make for affordable excellent aft deck seating.

That is I guess a great example there of living the BS dream??

No need to work in those slave factories with those poor wretched indoctrinated plastic boat fools.

Go now, go rusty, go slow, go alone, go bitter.
Can't believe it took me this long to stumble upon this thread...

Pure Platinum, some of the most amusing stuff I've seen in quite some time. I had no idea we had such a visionary in our midst, a veritable modern day self-proclaimed Copernicus of yacht design...

Carry on, gentlemen... Great stuff...

That is grim. This is a perfect eample of what happens when a home build had inadequate or no design support. He will have trouble selling that boat at any price.
How do you steer the boat? With the BBQ?
That's a good question... On closer inspection, what I thought was some sort of rudderhead on deck appears to be a winch... Looks to be some sort of outboard rudder connection, the owner is probably diving dumpsters in search of a 5-6' length of black iron pipe to use as a tiller...

Perhaps it's always steered with an AP remote? You've gotta love the convenient placement of the engine controls, no?

UFB...

 
#3,899 ·
p

Park benches were his idea, not mine. I would never build a boat that way. I like cockpits. I offered him all the design support the builder needed ,and he ignored the plans I sold him. It did give him a huge aft cabin. All designers have had that problem, like the builder of the Perry design, who refused Bob's advice to have lifelines.
Not everyone has style over substance priorities, as you suggest they all do. Not all accept the programming ,and some actually think for themselves.There really are more practical people looking for a boat. For anyone looking for a well built twin keeler in that size range, she is the only one on the market here in long time.
 
#3,877 ·
Jon:
Yes, there is a wealth of entertainment on this thread. You will fit in very well.

Now what I have in mind for you is this:
You buy that steel cruiser and keep it out here near me. The we can get together more often. I'll even help you remount the engine controls. But then we wouild be tampering with the design.
 
#3,882 ·
Calm down Brent. Don't be so angry. I might be angry too if I had to live on $4,000 a year. Ugh! But if that's your style it's good you are happy with it. Only you sound far from happy. If you are proud of your body of work why don't you sound happy about it? I'm very happy about my body of work. It brings me satisfaction and I have made a good living while doing it. I know you would like to think your angry words can
"undo" what I have done but they can't. All you can do now is to continue to whine.
So, whine on. I am working with my intern today so I'll be here to enjoy watching you flail around in your never ending fruitless effort to find credibility by attacking others.
 
#3,891 ·
Bear in mind that Bobs definition of "angry"is "anyone who disagrees with him, or who refuses to challenge disinformation". I wouldn't change places with anyone else on the planet. Tried living the 40 hour work week, like the mindless masses do.I didn't have a choice, initially. I have been happy ever since I gave that up. I delivered papers to guys who lived that life , in my youth.
It was clear than most hated their lives , were a thoroughly miserable bunch, but didn't know of any alternative, which convinced me to become a cruiser, and maximize my free time. No regrets whatever.
So stop your whining Bob. Real cruisers know better than to believe you.
 
#3,888 ·
I agree with Miti. SILAS looks Ok up to the sheer. The hull shape is clunky but I'm amazed at what BS can do with his fold up method. It's not a hull I would draw and I don't think BS drew it either, but it works. His sheer looks quite nice. Someone else must be reponsible for that. ( joke)

But then come the details and the deck structure. In the end the overall look is agriculrural at best.

My Tayana looks fine. Not what I would draw today. But they did build more than 600 of them so there must be a few admirers. To my eye, today, I'd say, not bad.
 
#3,890 ·
I agree - some of them are pretty decent, if rather ordinary looking - certainly the equal of most of the Bruce Roberts boats I've seen.

You certainly can't argue with their success - around the Horn and through the Northwest Passage. Despite all the hashing about transverse VS longitudinal framing and so forth, those two accomplishments indicate they are plenty strong.

It's puzzling that Brent can't simply settle for his boats undeniable strengths and promote them that way. Instead he has to project all the nonsense about them being superior in every way to every other boat ever built.

I'd like to see one of them done with a "Channel Cutter" aesthetic - I think it would work, ultra heavy disp and so forth.

I guess it would require too much "dead vegitation" (sic) to make it look right. :D
 
#3,892 ·
No Brent, my definbition of "angry" is someone like you who attacks anyone with an independant point of view. I like diversity. I'm not keen on little, angry people who breath paranoia when a diverse idea appears. Your myopic approach to life is far too confining for me.

But I am having a fun day with my new intern. I am tormenting him with a 3 day crash course on using spline wieghts and splines, just like the old fellers. I'll give him 3 days before we move to the computer. I figure that in our next step here at the shack we will move to computer drawn lines ansd the lessons learned drawings lines by hand will serve him well.

Will flew in from Panama where his family is currently on their HR 53. They are a third of the way into the circumnavigation. Yes, it's a grp boat and they are not all dead. They are having a good time. I enjoy kids a lot so having Will here is a lot of fun for me. It's stimulating to be pushed to keep a kid thinking hard and learning.

The only one whining Brent is you. But that never changes. Me? I'm having fun with Will. I showed him some of your boats as examples of exactly what happens when you have no training.

 
#3,893 ·
Geeze Bob - pens, pencils & spline weights AND a rack of pipes on the wall? Your going to send that kid back as a certified old fart. :D He's a good looking kid - looks smart.

It IS good to have kids around. Our house has been empty for a couple of years but now our daughter is home to have her baby (so it will be Canadian). Her husband & MIL will be coming in a couple of weeks. It will be good to have more life in the place - and a new grandson in a few weeks.
 
#3,894 ·
Jon:
He's smart. He knows his way around my compooter better than I do. Darn whippersnapper. But he likes my cooking. He has requested lasagne next week. We seem to be getting along. He likes having a big bed. He igores me when I am faseechus. We are knocking off now. It';s getting too dark for the high tolerance hand work I am having him do.
 
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