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Building your own boat

8K views 21 replies 16 participants last post by  denverd0n 
#1 ·
Someone slap me if am crazy, but I am considering building my own steel hull cruising sailboat.
I am a contractor with the following skills:
Welding (oxy, arc, mig, tig) no problem
Licensed Electrician, Construction & Maintenance
Licensed Refrigeration Mechanic
Licensed Gas Technician
Engines/mechanical: built my own street rod when I was in my twenties
Carpentry: good (brother-in-law is a Master carpenter and loves my idea)
Sailing: bareboat license
I am considering this direction because I have the time to build it, and I could feed the project $$ as it progresses. If I could put 25k per year for 5 years (plus my time) I think I could have a great 40' liveaboard vessel.
Bruce Roberts has some great boat building plans.

or......in your experience, this is generally not a good idea?

No regrets.
 
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#2 ·
SLAP! Cheaper to buy a good used cruiser. :D

:D boat building skills are quite different then general construction. You'll have to understand how to read tables of offsets. Then, there's lofting involved which is quite a mystery to some. Then, just finding a building site and shelter for a very long time while building is often a problem. If you building in steel or alum the metalurgy has to be a certain type I think too.

I think a quick search will find you hundreds maybe thousands of boats built and left unfinished by well meaning well intended people just like you :)

Ok assume you built the boat? Now to fit it out.. Then the standing rigging, masts spars. winches.. $$$$$$$$

40ft?? would cost you easy 200K! but that's just a W.A.G
 
#3 ·
Much cheaper and faster to buy a boat and refit it. If its really the DIY aspect that appeals, customizing a boat to your specifications can be just as rewarding and will save you a whole bunch of time and money.

I know of a very talented marine surveyor who built 45' Roberts. He did an amazing job and is talented enough in all areas with access to enough professional products tha he ended up with a solid, immaculate boat. A solid boat that took him so long to finish it, he only had the chance to do one season in the Bahamas before it was time for a refit due to age. He put it up for sale and it never sold. There was no way to get even a portion of the money he put into it out of it. People see a Bruce Roberts boat for sale and there is no way to know whether it was built by a craftsmen, like the surveyor I mentioned or by someone without a clue.
 
#5 ·
This is not especially a great idea. I often say that the only people who should build their own boats are really knowledgeable sailors with very specific objectives that can't be met in the marketplace. For the rest of us, even if we have the skills to build a boat, building a boat makes no economic sense unless your hobby is building boats.

Having been around a lot of these projects, building your own boat almost never saves money over buying an equal quality boat, especially if you count some fraction of the value of your labor. Materials generally represent more than half the cost of building a production boat where boat builders can buy materials cheaply due to volume. Few home builders get those kind of discounts and typically can pay as much as 40% to 100% more for materials and equipment than a production yard. In other words, amatuer builders often end up paying more for materials than they would pay a production builder for labor and materials.

I cannot strongly emphasize this next point too strongly. If you are spend a chunk of your life building a boat, you had better build a good one. That means a boat that has a really good design and which is built well. Steel a really poor material to build a boat under 45 or 50 feet in length. If you are a great welder than aluminum might make sense. Otherwise there are very strong reasons that most modern boats are composites. Tnen there is your major misconception at the bottom of your post. Bruce Roberts sells a lot of boat drawings, he does not have particularly great boat building plans. There are much better designers out there (Dudley Dix for example) and I would suggest that if you are going to build a good boat you need great plans.

Frankly if you have $25 k to put into this a year, I would put that $25K in the bank for the first three years. Use the spare time to work almost anywhere and bank that extra 15K per year and at that point you can buy a good solid cruising design and spend the next two years and $50K repairing, upgrading and restoring and end up with a great boat.

Respectfully,
Jeff
 
#6 ·
Building a boat is a great idea.....
if you want to build a boat.

If you want to SAIL, to cruise, to live the dream, then there are better ways to go.

I refit old boats, refurbish old boats, improve old boats, break old boats, build parts for old boats and yes, i even build small boats. Every year, usually in mid february, i get the itch to build a cruising home. i'll spend a day or so sketching, planning, working on the layout, laying down masking tape on the floor of my shop to determine how big a head really needs to be.... and then I find another 40 year old center cockpit Oday on yachtworld for sale for about the same money that I would invest in plywood and epoxy and running gear, and i grab a beer and ask myself, "self, wtf was you thinking?"
 
#7 ·
Step dad just took 25 or 30 yrs to build a 25" Bill Garden designed Seabird Yawl II, probably one of the last plan in Rudder when it existed. Launched it last year, not he is upper 80's, barely walks due to a bad hip replacement, Family attny is surprised he still has a drivers license, much less should he be sailing the boat! 30 yrs, and for the most part, he is past any potential to sail the boat!

If you want to build a dinghy for a boat like this, go for it, but something as you are talking about, Not sure I would want to guess the people hrs it would take to build. Frankly, as mentioned, you would be better off taking out a loan, or saving that money over the next few yrs and then paying cash. Or at least do what I did, found a boat I could use, the over 3-4 yrs redid the interior etc while dockside, in the mean time, raced every 2 weeks or so 12months a year, along with some daysails etc.

marty
 
#9 ·
Anyone care to guess what proportion of projects such as this actually get splashed? My guess is MAYBE 10% within five years, and MAYBE 20% ever see the water.
 
#10 · (Edited)
If I could put 25k per year for 5 years (plus my time) I think I could have a great 40' liveaboard vessel.
Bruce Roberts has some great boat building plans.

or......in your experience, this is generally not a good idea?

No regrets.
If you can afford $25k per year then in two years you could be sailing an already built 40' steel Bruce Roberts boat ready to live-aboard and cruise for about $50k, and then continue to improve and modify it if you wish!

Building a boat sounds like a fun experience, but you have to decide if you'd have more fun sailing an already built boat, or continually working on a long-term project.
 
#14 ·
So far the negative comments you have heard are on the money, especially if you are building a Bruce Roberts boat with framed construction. There are tons of his boats lying around unfinished. Take a look at the Origami Boats forum on Yahoo. You'll find a whole different way to build a metal boat that radically changes the picture. The designer of these boats Brent Swain actually lives on one. He is for hire too. You can buy the steel, find a building site and provide a place for him to stay, plus his hourly fee, and in about 2 to three WEEKS you have a hull all tacked together ready for finish welding! His designs have very little welding too, so that goes quickly. If you use pre-primed steel, or aluminum you skip the sandblasting step. If you build a framed hull and it takes months then the primer fails and you have to sandblast. His plans and book are incredibly reasonably priced.

I have sailed on one of his 36 foot boats. It sailed amazingly well, like it was on rails, and was much quicker than I expected for a steel boat. It DID take that guy 7 years to finish it. However shortly after starting it, his house burned to the ground! I believe the pictures I took of his boat are still on the Origami website. Some of these boats come on the market from time to time, and most of them sell very quickly, for prices that sound like the owner didn't get hosed.

Gary H. Lucas
 
#15 ·
BTW, if you're serious about building your own boat, please don't skimp on the materials. The materials end up being a very small fraction of the real cost of the boat, and if you skimp on the materials, you end up with an inferior boat that will be a waste of time and resources.... going with premium materials is the way to do this, if you're serious about it.

Chris White's book, The Cruising Multihull, has a great section on building your own boat. While it may be focussed on multihulls specifically, there is a lot of good advice in the book for ANYONE BUILDING THEIR OWN BOAT. :D
 
#19 ·
I agree with what's been said, The only reason to build a boat if you want to build a boat. If your goal is to sail, buy one ready to go.

If your interest in building a boat comes from wanting a unique interior, (custom is overused and meaningless these days) refitting a good project boat is a decent compromise, you can normally pick them up at seriously reduced cost, and rebuild to suit your preferences, taking as much or as little time as you want.
 
#22 ·
I think the bottom line is that if you are interested in boats and boating, and want to get a boat into the water cheaply and quickly, then building your own is a REALLY bad idea! If, on the other hand, you're a projects sort of guy, who likes building things, and thinks that building a boat would be a lot of fun, and ending up with a boat that you could use would be a nice side benefit, then why not?

In other words, do you want to sail, or do you want to build? If you want to sail then at the very least buy a solid hull and refurbish it. If you want to build then build.

Oh yeah, and I would agree that the 10%/20% guess is probably optimistic. My own guess would be about half that.
 
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