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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.
 
#2,872 ·
Lou,

The Glen-l boats have some very good well written and pictured directions and plans. I may still have the plans to the 8-ball I built in about 6th/7th grade. Great little boat to sail!

Later I built the G-L 12' sailing sloop. Fun fast boat. Step dad built the 21-cb sail boat. ALso a fun boat for on lk washington.

THey do take some time to do. Not sure what kind of dinghy style you want. In the salish sea there are a few that look pretty nice....
Bigger than 20', well that is another ball game!

Marty
 
#2,873 ·
Wow you have talent to build that young ! Some of my glue together plastic models needed help. Extra parts leftovers failure to follow the step by step plans is not the way to go.
Glen L has some nice looking boats. It is more telling that I do not know what I want yet. They look like they support the builder. I might need to see and feel the boat. I do not have the vision to look at a blue print a make a call so right now they do not have (what I want ). I have never seen a steel dingy or an Aluminum I could do steel Aluminum wood or fiberglass. The metal is where I would do the best craftsmanship. It is just my humble opinion the most labor intensive to work in metal.
I think a Laser is close to what I want in a dingy. I do not like the sail sock idea. I want to have a main Halyard and maybe even a reef. I like my FJ but it swamps and becomes scuttled in small 2 foot waves if I capsize and do not get back up fast, I want to surf in a dingy. I want to sit and not be on a trapeze. I like how a laser is low to the water If you capsize you are not up high like in a beach cat. I like that a Laser will still go in light air. My FJ will also. I think I might need to stop because I am so far off topic.
Good day. Lou
 
#2,881 ·
I just supervised another 36 being pulled together. Great to watch youngsters doing all the climbing and lifting, and not getting my hands dirty. All three have a natural knack for steel working, and all three will be qualified to build my designs, etc, so I can sluff all my work off on them, and go cruising on my pension instead.
 
#2,885 ·
Wolf was an interesting character. He lived on an old wooden boat that he cherished madly and was fixing up with the hopes of sailing her from Port Townsend to Califonia and finding work. He had a number of medical issues and he was found DOA due to one of them at his pretty young age. http://www.sailnet.com/forums/general-discussion-sailing-related/102419-r-i-p-wolfenzee-dammit.html

He was at the center of a long dialogue on traditional boat design that led to an expercise where that started with the design and displacement of his boat. With Bob Perry's guidance and sage advice, and my fingers doing the drafting, the exercise showed how small tweaks could be done to improve the sailing ability of his boat without changing the hull much but modernizing the rig, rudder, and keel.

http://www.sailnet.com/forums/sailb...38-bob-perrys-take-wolfenzees-dream-boat.html

Then the same displacement was used to create a similar sized but more modern cruiser.

Lastly, we took the same displacement and drew up a boat that would be reasonably modern and would be a boat that I personally would like to own.

May David (Wolfenzee) rest in peace, or at least sail through a heavenly place where old luggers are faster than anything else they encounter,

Jeff
 
#2,889 · (Edited)
Nelson of Nelson/Marek has a degree.
Gary Mull had a degree.
Alan Andrews has a degree, I think.

Bob Perry G.O.M.

Brent:
Got the same memo. As a person in the business I was told I had to identify myself as such.
Apparently G.O.M just wasn't enough.

"My first boat had a toe rail which looked exactly like that one. What a huge pain in the ass, and waste of time. Never did that again. "'
Brent, you still don't get it. Read slowly this time:
This is not a boat for you.
This is a boat for my client.
My client has lots of money he does not do his own maintenence. His current Hinckley is immaculate.
My client could care a less what you like. He lives in a very different world than the one you live in.
My client likes beautiful yachts.
You do not do beautiful yachts. You build aesthetically challenged steel boats for people who don't care about beautiful yachts.
 
#2,891 · (Edited)
Bob, Brent himself explained why he can't comprehend anything but his own, sad world.

I heard a neurologist describing "either or" thinking as a mental deficiency . I also saw it described as a consequence of sports injuries, in a science magazine. In balancing "either or ", they have a toggle switch instead of a rheostat equivalent between the two, and are thus incapable of comprehending the concept of there being varying shades of gray, on any issue.
This is obviously him telling us about the diagnosis he received from his neurologist. We really need to take it easier on him - be more compassionate. It has to be extremely difficult going through life with a toggle switch "mental deficiency".

Hang in there Brent. We're with you brother.

BTW - which NHL team were you on?
 
#2,897 ·
Damn- I'm a board certified boston trained neurologist and I just found out from Brent I wasted the last 35 years of my life. Didnt know it was so simple. Gee just a bunch of switches. Who would have guessed it?
Sounds like just one binary switch...:p ;)
 
#2,898 · (Edited)
Good thing my wife knows my on/off switch but too bad she also knows just how to push my buttons.

Getting back to the O.P. Down at the yard there's a ~60' steel bulbous bow trawler. We've had a lot of wind recently and given the size of the thing and the windage she went bump into something hard. ( don't know the details). The cut water and port side of the bow were struck when she was leaving to go south. There were three significant indents. What surprised me was when talking with yard hands was:
Dented areas could not be hammered out or forced out with hydraulics. Any indent stretches the metal so original shape cannot be restored. Just like with a car skin.
Dented area should be presumed weak and should ideally be cut out.
even if not struck on frames- frames and symmetry of the hull need to be examined closely. Repair may need to involve area much larger than area of apparent damage.
Area to be refinished will also encompass area much larger than apparent damage.
Mounts and welds quite some distance from point of impact also need to be examined and may have failed.

It's true the hull skin remained intact but the repair bill looks like it will be quite significant. Surprising so given the external damage did not seem so bad to my un educated eye.

This boat was fully framed. I can see how after repair she'll be "as good as new". I can't see in a similar circumstance how one could restore a frameless hull to it's original conformation if the dented portion of the hull was in a portion that was bent as part of the origami method?

Brent has made much of the strength and ease of building in steel. I have some limited knowledge of repairs in solid glass, cored glass/synethics, and cold molded wood. I thought metal repair was much, much easier.I thought that was one of the major advantages of metal boats. It was an eye opener to hear of the potential complexities of metal repair. Particularly if one wants to restore to original beauty and hull conformation. I think I gained understanding why with commercial boats it's not uncommon for dents to just be recoated and left alone.
 
#2,899 ·
........ I think I gained understanding why with commercial boats it's not uncommon for dents to just be recoated and left alone.
Look at any harbour tug/workboat/log salver.. they get pretty beatup, but it all gets painted over (every once in a while..) I guess the key to the 'steel' side is that the skin is rarely penetrated or fractured despite amount of deformation or stress - though I'm sure there are limits there too.
 
#2,902 ·
Love Mikes posts.Interestingly it reminds of a statement I heard ten years apart. Once from an professor at Colombia school of engineering and again from a professor of neurology at Harvard.

To be truly wise it is more important to know what you don't know then the details of what you know. You can always research the later but will always fail in your endeavors if you don't accept the former.

Brent must have missed that class.

Merry Xmas to all.
 
#2,908 · (Edited)
Brent although I'm not a Trawler kind of guy I can appreciate the beauty of this particular vessel. I had hoped you would address the question asked not clumsily try to make a blind attack. The yard folks know it wasn't my boat. They also know I'm not writing the checks. They finally know the owner wants his/ hers boat returned to its pre damaged state. I would appreciate input on how you would do this with one of your designs. Instead of throwing stones, if you have the stones please answer.
 
#2,937 · (Edited)
I'd take patterns of the opposite side, cut the plates out and replace any damaged ones. Temporary longitudinal stiffeners across any seams would be needed to keep things fair during welding . The more the better. Foam in the area would have to be removed to 6 inches either side of cuts and welds, to avoid a fire, and wet blankets put over the foam while welding. I'd use the steel cutting skillsaw blades for cutting out any damaged plate, to minimize fire risk.

You can add more short welds to the stringers without doing any harm. Dented plate on a 60 footer has no structural relevance. There is zero chance of it causing holing there. Workboats go for decades with such dents, and no worries. Working on a brake press, I would sometimes bend plate 90 degrees the wrong way , flatten it out and bend it back 90 degrees the other way, with no structural problems. Stainless or high tensile aluminium would have cracked end to end in that situation . Mild steel is that forgiving. However ,replacing the plate eliminates the problem of filler falling out.
The auto repair business and auto rental business have honed to a fine art doing or not doing, but billing for, unnecessary work. Should it surprise anyone that the practise has found its way into the marine industry? The work and arguments you describe sound like exactly that.
 
#2,909 ·
Brent in the past I wanted to be an ee not civil or mech e. But I seem to recall complex curved materials resist deformation to a greater extent than simple curves. I also seem to recall even with simple curved trusses curvature does not produce a linear response as regards deformation. In simple terms a little curve gives a little improvement but a little more gives much,much more. Perhaps mike would know if this is correct and the equation. I also recall that thickening the skin is not nearly as effective as even modest framing.
 
#2,910 ·
Correct. This is basic engineering, solid mechanics. Generally, shape is much more important and effective than material properties. Shape usually goes as ~r**2 (as in Steiners theorem) or ~r**4 whereas typical material as thickness of course is linear in r (r being a typical distance).

To put it politely, not everybody has understood this ...

/J
 
#2,911 · (Edited)
Let’s see:
Most of us here enjoy exploring the edges of yachting from canoes to ocean racing gran prix boats and everything in between. Why? Because we just like boats. We are open to new ideas and we respect the ideas of old. We do our best to investigate all new structural options. We pick and choose what we like and don’t like and we try to be broad minded. We exercise both subjective and objective criteria in making our preferences known. I can’t possibly see how the term “luddite” would apply here. Someone embracing everything from Viking longboats to my Baba 30 to the latest Euro rocket from Paulo would hardly fit the definition of “luddite”.

On the other hand, there are some who cling to a simplistic creative process in a material that is anything but user friendly and consistently produces boats, not yachts, that give no value at all to aesthetics. But still these boats are held up as the “ultimate and only answer” and if you do not agree then you area fool. The same designs are produced over and over as if they had achieved ultimate perfection already and there was no value to change or evolution.. We have seen this philosophy voiced here ad nauseum by one poster. “You do it my way or you are stupid” pretty much sums it up accurately. Given the consistency with this approach I think we have found our textbook definition of “luddite” . But I won’t use that term. I’ll try not to be a name caller. It’s really a low point in the debate when all you have left is name calling and personal attacks.
I’ll make it my New Year’s resolution not to be a name caller.
 
#2,935 ·
Let's see:
Most of us here enjoy exploring the edges of yachting from canoes to ocean racing gran prix boats and everything in between. Why? Because we just like boats. We are open to new ideas and we respect the ideas of old. We do our best to investigate all new structural options. We pick and choose what we like and don't like and we try to be broad minded. We exercise both subjective and objective criteria in making our preferences known. I can't possibly see how the term "luddite" would apply here. Someone embracing everything from Viking longboats to my Baba 30 to the latest Euro rocket from Paulo would hardly fit the definition of "luddite".

On the other hand, there are some who cling to a simplistic creative process in a material that is anything but user friendly and consistently produces boats, not yachts, that give no value at all to aesthetics. But still these boats are held up as the "ultimate and only answer" and if you do not agree then you area fool. The same designs are produced over and over as if they had achieved ultimate perfection already and there was no value to change or evolution.. We have seen this philosophy voiced here ad nauseum by one poster. "You do it my way or you are stupid" pretty much sums it up accurately. Given the consistency with this approach I think we have found our textbook definition of "luddite" . But I won't use that term. I'll try not to be a name caller. It's really a low point in the debate when all you have left is name calling and personal attacks.
I'll make it my New Year's resolution not to be a name caller.
Some young beginners just pulled a 36 ft hull together in a few days, a beautifully fair hull. No filler necessary. One has worked on fibreglass boats, where the "Experts" sarcastically ridiculed her for wearing a mask to stop the fumes . She said they didn't have many brain cells left among the lot of them. That stuff sure didn't look user friendly to her. I have worked on fiberglass boats in the past . Anything but user friendly, if you value your health. And damned expensive, and time consuming as well. Also far more fragile and less forgiving. Many have built fair, fine steel boats, with no more help than a book, a video and a set of plans, which left them with few if any questions to ask me. This is the reason steel boats have become the dominant choice for long term offshore cruisers, especially among Europeans.
( Check out the book "Modern Offshore Cruising " by Jimmy Cornel.)
These are practical people who wouldn't consider sacrificing strength function and seaworthiness for decorativeness. They don't give a rat's ass what naïve landlubbers think. Nor do I.
 
#2,916 ·
I've been off sailnet for a few years but recently started to pop by again.

Having 2 steel boats I was delighted to see such an active thread.

I was then somewhat chagrined to read the last few pages and hear the tone, ug.

Bob, thanks for your post above re: name calling. Who wants to step into a mud slinging contest!

I hope to have some time to catch up on the thread ove the holiday.

Merry Christmas to all.
 
#2,917 ·
#2,919 ·
Merry Christmas to all of you.
Here is one of this years crop of cartoon boats. I did this one for the daughter of a friend.
Cartoon boat calendars are available in a powerboat version and a sailboaty version. If you are interested PM me and I can hook you up with the guy who put them together.

 
#2,920 ·
Well, it may not be the salon of a steel sailboat, but I've got this going for me...





...along with two awesome sons and a steaming pot of seafood gumbo bubbling on the stove.

Brent - Merry Christmas! Seriously. I truly hope you have a wonderful holiday.

Everyone else - same to you!
 
#2,923 ·
Wait a minute!
Don't you live in Florida Smack?
What's with the fire in the fire place? Ambience?

hpeer:
I have this line from a movie where the guy says something like "Do you have a voucher?" I cant remember the movie and you can't Google anything with the word "voucher" in it. Maybe the movie is THE JERK with Steve Martin. I'm not sure.
 
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