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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.
 
#4,386 · (Edited)
i loved the tri, but it was glassed over ply, and it was heavy, and safe, i had her fo 2 years sold her for 8 then bought her back, now 2 months ago i sold her to a guy who lives across the country, and the boat is here, he hasnt even seen it, and i still am helping him run the bilge pumps, but yesterday i got a call saying she was going down, so, i had to go and save her, its stressful taking care of 2 boats, and the tri takes water thru the inboard rudder shaft, anyway, i loved that boat, kristofferson boats are scattered around here,
my tri was the only one built with round roof, and had a very innovative rotating mast steped on a trailer hitch
 
#4,422 ·
Wrong! Steel sinks much slower, because the same impact would create a much smaller hole, if any hole. It would probably just dent from an impact which would tear the bottom out of any non metal hull.
For this reason ,wood sinks the fastest, unless it is a raft.
 
#4,388 ·
Any thoughts on metals other than Fe & Al ?. Remember a boat called the corten. Wonder about Monel until I heard the price. Wondered why Fe plate couldn't be constructed with an inner flange. Flange would be untreated. Rest factory coated. Could weld together at construction site. Perhaps ceramic or other impervious material. Shape of plate be developed at factory with hydraulics so no limitations and complex curves permissible. Heard of molded Al. Why not molded steel.
 
#4,424 · (Edited)
I was moored for a year off a shipyard in Auckland which built tugs ( A&G Price Limited) They said they had tried Corten . Wasn't worth the extra cost. You could only get it in plate, not in angle, rounds pipe etc, so any mild steel welded to it got ate by electrolysis, as did the welds, which couldn't be got in corten. It was far more prone to distortion,and more expensive. The foreman in that yard was building himself a 36 footer, and had no use for corten. He said common mild steel was as good as anything.

A Dutchman told me of a company in Holland who had matched dies made for a round bilged steel hull. Each half was pressed out of a single sheet and joined along the centreline. Super fair ,but super expensive.
 
#4,403 · (Edited by Moderator)
it is a long story but, basically it put me on the map, i was paid 2k to have it, then i sold it a week later, during winter here in canada's west coast, and gales ripped thru fulford harbor, so i sold it, hard to anchor 197 tons in gales, so.. i panicked, folded my cards, sold it to ganges marina, where they fought islands trust 5 years to keep it and sunk twice, it was a soot show,lol, i sold it for 8k, so it was a stressful 10k profit,
wont be doing that again
 
#4,392 ·
Titanium wouldn't have the problems that aluminum has with copper based bottom paint. Aluminum is more reactive than copper, whereas there isn't much that is more noble than titanium. I'm thinking that normal bottom paint probably wouldn't be a problem. You'd probably still want to do an epoxy bottom coat of some sort, if only for better adhesion of your anti-fouling bottom paint. Now, price, well, if you have to ask, you can't afford it! (titanium is ~14x the price of aluminum) ;)

 
#4,401 ·
There would be some logistical issues welding Ti.. can't be welded in free air, needs to be done in an argon cloud or it will literally catch fire... It can be done, but it complicates things... The light/spark show when you're sandblasting it prior to painting would be fun, though... ;)
 
#4,409 ·
No idea.. member Stumble would know better. We used a lot of it in the Pulp & Paper industry - it's the only material that resisted the corrosion of the ClO2 we used for bleaching. As a general comparison, but no idea how valid it would be in this case... a regular SS tubing connector ran $15-20... the same fitting in Ti was $100. How that would compare to relative sheet/plate prices I'm not sure..
 
#4,410 ·
It would be my assumption that if you bought enough to do a 40' boat, you'd get at least a bit of a volume discount, but a 24" x 24" x 0.125" sheet of titanium at McMaster-Carr is $1592, while a sheet of 24" x 24" x 0.125" of high quality (corrosion resistant, high strength) aluminum is $110. Like I said, ~14x more than aluminum. I'm guessing that you'd also want to do more than 0.125" thick hulls..
 
#4,421 · (Edited)
Last time I talked to the Pardys, they were talking about a copper nickle boat , zero antifouling or maintenance needed. I suggested he first ask Winston what his maintenance costs in time and money per year are, then calculate how many dollars and years it would take to make up for the tiny amount of maintenance time and cost per year going for steel would work out to.
Several copper nickle boats were built in Britain. Expensive but doable. I once sold a set of 36 plans to a guy in Malasia who was planning to build in copper nickle. Don't know if he ever did.
 
#4,416 · (Edited)
DEAD WRONG!
The many people happily cruising in small steel boats, and making just as good a passage times as most, who wouldn't dream of owning anything but steel boat, prove this dead wrong with every good passage they make .You'd be far better off getting your advice from those who have actual long term cruising experience in steel boats, rather than from those with little or no steel boat experience,trying to justify their plastic boat decisions.
A Canadian boat from Saltspring Island BC was just rolled and holed 1300 K NE of Auckland.Luckily for the skipper, a nearby freighter was able to pick him up in rough conditions. The boat was lost. What could punch a hole in a boat after being rolled? Probably a broken mast. The odds of a mast punching a hole in 3/16th steel plate?
ZERO!
I just checked a dent in a 36 anchored next to me, a dent made by hitting a rock at hull speed, about 6 inches deep by 40 inches in circumference. Tensile strength of 40 inches of 3/16th plate at 11,500 PSI per lineal inch? 460,000 lbs! It would have torn the bottom out of anything but a steel hull. This impact happened several years ago. The skipper has continued cruising since then , and hasn't got around to straightening it out. Its just not that important.
Ya Bob . I know . Its all the designer's fault when anyone hits a rock! (Jeeeezze)!
Odds of a mast floating in water, giving that kind of impact?
ZERO!
A plastic boat is only lower maintenance if you use it like Smack does, park it in a marina , throw money at it by day, then go home to a house and spout advice on all there is to know about living aboard and cruising full time, something he doesn't do.
A steel boat is more like an off road vehicle of cruising. Things simply don't work loose, pull out or leak .You don't have to keep rebedding gear, and chasing down leaks , as you do on nonmetal boats. Using a stock plastic boat for off the beaten path, full time, long term use is like using a Lincoln continental for off road or logging road use. In that kind of use, a steel boat has far less maintenance (repairs).
Without the freighter, the skipper of the returning boat NE of Auckland would be just another "lost without a trace" , skipper, like so many plastic boats cruisers. Had he had a steel hull, he could have jury rigged for the distance left to Tonga , or Rarotonga, had a new mast shipped up, and continued cruising.
 
#4,437 ·
Nice lifelines. Nice wheelhouse. Nice bow roller.
Roberts with skeg hung rudders are suspect, as he said he designs skegs to fall off if they hit anything, in his book "The Complete Guide to Metal Boats"

It can be rectified, if this boat has that problem.
 
#4,439 · (Edited)
Thanks
I remember building Pearl Song for Will. We built the shell on Quadra Island. Getting steel to Quadra was not all that expensive , but to Cortes, where Will and his family lived, was super expensive. So we turned the steel into a shell ( hull, decks, cabin, cockpit, keel rudder and skeg) in 12 days, and floated her over to Will's back yard on Cortes, where he finished her. Evan did his apprenticeship on her. Will and his family ( Wife and three kids, one in diapers) were picking clams for a living. He had just enough money for the shell. 5 years later they were cruising Mexico, an example of what can be done on a super low income.
I windjammed my last boat for several years on the BC coast, including the Gulf Islands and Tahiti, before putting an engine in her. One compensation for the glassy, windlessness of the Gulf |Islands, where one can spend days in an open anchorage without a breath of wind, is when the wind dies, no swell lasts for long.It quickly becomes a very comfortable glassy smooth, and you can throw light kedge out anywhere you can hit bottom. Another is it is never very far to the next fully protected anchorage. You can also go a long way in a glassy calm, by timing the currents.
When Will left Cabo , into a strong NW wind ,he covered 1066 miles in 6 days. He then broke the top 1/3rd off the box section of his wooden mast (using fittings I had warned him against) He still beat a Colvin Gazelle into Hawaii, which had left the same time as him ,by many days.
 
#4,418 ·
locally i see 3 of your boats within a 30 mile radius of victoria, im a big fan! sounding like a freak, but, i have sailed pearl song and she was awsome, although no motor was a downer in the gulf islands as you would know, i talked to a father and son on the main land some years ago, on pricing a pilot house 37, but they built your boats, tried and true!
 
#4,420 ·
since, i am on a rampage i will note, that every swain owner i have met, witch is lots, all say the same thing "safe", i only have a columbia 36, right now, because of convenience according to my budget, or i would own the sailing submarine that will take me thru the arctic! but i could see, some people liking fb boats, for their speed in light winds, and probably will never even hit heavy winds, steel is not meant for fair weather
ok i am going to stop now
 
#4,423 ·
Tomorrow Kim and I are going out for a photo shoot on FRANCIS. The German magazine YACHT is doing a multiple page feature story on the boat and we need some new photos it seems. So I'm happy that I will enjoy a nice day of very fast and easy sailing on one of my beautiful creations.


I suppose I could say defensive and cranky things but I'll let my work speak for itself.
 
#4,427 ·
I said a similar thing about 4000 posts back - If I was possessed enough to want to sail the North West Passage, a Brentboat would be high on my list.

If one is looking for a utilitarian boat with the ultimate survival aspects as the main goal, his boats are at or near the top and I don't think anyone here has ever disputed that.

It is the messianic zeal that says any other kind of boat is basically stupid, no matter the purpose it is for, that has caused much or most of the friction on this thread.

The same logic applied to cars would be a diesel powered early Land Rover.

Neither of them suit me and my needs.
 
#4,428 ·
Jon:
4,000 posts back?
I read he first BS post tonight and I thought, "****ski, it's like a broken record around here. Nothing ever changes with Brent." Well, I have a couple of new things in the work that will have you chatting and arguing, in a good way, and I'll spring them on you when the time is right.

Tonight I am sitting here excited that tomorrow I will experience performance under sail that truly raises the bar. And, I'm taking my granddaughter out for a put-put around the marina before we go sailing. Dad, Max, has to stay with her and Dad has to stay close to home because my grandson is due any day. I am doing my best to insure the strength of the gene pool. The pleasure has been mine.
 
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