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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.
 
#224 ·
I'm in Brent-land now and was anchored near a steel boat last night in the Octopus Islands (northern Quadra Island, about a long day's sail from Comox). It would be great if his website had photos of not only the two boats that he's built, but others that have been built using his processes. I wondered if the boat that I saw last night was one of his, but didn't see the owner and get a chance to ask.

There were actually two steel boats in the islands night, but the other was multihull (looked like a cross between a cruising catamaran and a battleship, I should have taken a photo).
 
#226 ·
Joe:
Very funny.
46 years ago I read a study conducted by the US Navy on the durability of hul materials. It concluded that steel was the most durable, i.e. watertight integrity could be maintained while sufferring major damage. Aluminum was next but alu had the problrem of rating lowest when sustaining minor impact. So I have known that steel is the "tooughest" hull material for some time. But the weight of steel makes it a bit confining for my design ideas and I prfer not to be constrained bu a geometry technique whether it be coninal developoment or NS's method. I want total control over my hull shapes. I have designed two steel boats and they came out nicely but I would prefer to work in composite, alu or wood veneers/foam. It's just the way I like to do it. My own favorite material is aluminum.
 
#228 ·
Bob- ?Al. Went back and forth and back and forth again on this. Once wife said "Thought the idea was to never be cold again" so no high lat cruising and "Can we stay in a marina from time to time?"went with glass. Sure like to hear your reasoning. Tx.
 
#229 · (Edited)
Out:
Took me a couple of minutes to figure out who "Al" was.

I like alu from a designer's point of view. I can integrate the structures easily and I can get a very good handle on the weights. I can also control the shaping of the deck structures better with alu compared to steel and I like to produce good looking boats. If I were choosing my own boat I would go composite like you for ease of maintenance.

Here is one of my favorite Perry alu boats. This is YONI built at Jespersens in BC. It has inside steering and is an extremely well built boat. It's about as far from the Value Village approach that BS preaches as you can get. This client did not want a cheap boat. He wanted a great boat. I tell the complete story of this design in my book.

I added the deck plan and sail plan drawings. These are some of the very last hand drawn drawings I produced. They are pencil and ink on 4 mil mylar. I worked hard from the time I was a kid to master hand drafting. Chuck Paine gives me a veryu nice call out on my drafting in his own book. I'm proud of this skill although I will most probably never use it again.

I added the General Construction drawing. This drawing was augmented by a framing drawing and a plating layout drawing. I don't have those digitized.
 

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#230 · (Edited)
Smack,

A few days ago, you asked whether anyone on this thread had ever considered building a steel boat. I had relatively seriously. There was a time in my life when I almost always had ideas in my mind for the custom boat that I would design and build for myself, at least in that moment. Some of these musings never got beyond the simple sketch stage, while on others I would develop in a high degree of detail and might even put together detailed drawings, calculations and a detailed estimated cost of construction.

I had first become aware of steel construction when I was running the drafting room at a naval architect's office designing an ocean going tugboat. Then when I worked for Charlie Wittholz, I was exposed to steel construction as it related to yachts. Charlie was a master at designing ‘deadrise’ sail boats (single chine) so that the chines looked right whether above or below the waterline. It started me thinking about steel as a building material. Probably 4-5 years earlier I had designed a small 26 foot MORC boat which designed with sheet plywood bottom, topsides, and decks, but with radiused cold molded chine.

I had previously begun to design a 40 foot version of the smaller MORC boat to be constructed the same way as the MORC boat with epoxy and glass over a mix of sheet and cold molded plywood. I had gotten far enough to have priced out construction of that boat. After seeing what Charlie was doing with steel, I began to adapt that design to a roughly 40 foot multi-chine steel boat, which was a stretched version of the MORC boat but with an extra panel instead of the radiused cold molded chine on the wooden boat. (To imagine this think of a stretched Express 37 hull executed as a muilti-chine steel hull).

I was actually a pretty fair welder at that point. Years earlier I had done a group project in architecture school in which we designed and fabricated a small steel bridge. That course included a chance to take a welding course at a vocational school which I opted to do. I had gotten good enough to weld the light gauge steel tubing that I used to build the frames for the motorcycles that I raced in my 20’s, and so thought with some practice and a bit more instruction I could get my welding skills up to a point where I could weld up my own hull.

This design did not follow the origami concept per se, and the deck and house were glass over wood to save weight. The hull plating was steel, as was the internal framing. In terms of framing, I had planned to have some transverse frames or partial bulkheads at the forward end of the vee-berths as a kind of collision bulkhead, three in the area of the keel attachment, mast, and at rig load points, another near the engine mounts and in the version with the skeg-hung rudder and internal rudder post, at the skeg. (There was an outboard rudder version which did not have the aft transverse frame. I also planned to have longitudinal flat bar on edge frames near the end of the chines and on either side of the bilge. I had gone so far as to create ‘nesting plans’ showing how the parts would fit on the steel plates to minimize waste. And then I priced the steel and the protective coatings . At the time the cost numbers came back very high compared to the numbers that I had for the wooden/glass composite version.

But the steel hull was also substantially heavier than the wooden hull (maybe 30%, which added roughly 10-12% to the overall weight of the boat). In a value engineering exercise, I began doing comparative structural calculations to see whether I could use lighter steel panels, or whether the wooden panel thicknesses were too thin and therefore needed to be beefed up. What also surprised me at the time was that wooden hull was actually stiffer and stronger in bending than the steel hull even though it was lighter.

At that time, I was not able to do impact studies so I assume to this day that the steel version would have had greater impact capacity and certainly would have had better abrasion resistance than that particular composite of wood and glass. I had a chance to discuss this with Charlie at some point after that and it was his sense that the weight disparity was less as the boat got larger so that at some point over 45 or so feet steel became more compelling as a building material.

For all kinds of other reasons, I never built either boat, but I have owned a number of FG boats that I could daysail, race, and cruise and have done so continuously ever since.

I also want to talk a little about my views on Brent’s work. While I agree with Bob that Brent does not seem to have done the math to back up his designs, I am not sure that bothers me. What Brent describes as his process is very similar to what traditionally happened with the evolution of working water craft. By and large, working watercraft were never drawn up. Builders would make small scale models by eye, and the take measurements off of those models. These were experienced builders and they would draw on their experience from one design to another. They would also tweak a design toward something they expected would improve the design. Sometimes the boats were better, sometimes not, but with each iteration they learned what worked and what didn’t and improved their designs.

In that regard, what Brent has done over the years, follows in the footsteps of very venerable tradition. I would be the last to criticize that tradition.

But within that tradition, there was also an understanding that in the absence of formal weight studies, there had to be reliance that these vessels would be operated by knowledgeable skippers and crews, who would load them in a way that the ship sat properly on its lines, with ballast and cargo shifted to accommodate the changing loads.

I respect the inventive details on his boats, which cleverly employs ‘found objects’ to produce simple, inexpensive (ignoring the value of fabrication time for the moment) and functional solutions.

If Brent merely said, ”I follow in a working water craft tradition of trial and error design, using workboat levels of finish and that is all I and my clients aspire to. There have been a bunch of boats built to my designs that have operated up to expectations. For one off designs they were moderately quick to build and reasonably cost effective.” I would respect that and understand how that fits into the broad range of options out there.

Where I suggest that Brent goes off the rails is when he claims a universality to his thinking suggesting that everyone would be better off with one of his boats for the reasons that he and his clients prefer his boats. He denies that other people may have values different than his own which is get out cruising quickly while you are young. (While I have no gripe that this is in fact the right answer for some people, I also think that others of us might actually think that a life well lived needs to be broader than that, and may actually prefer to be a part of a shore side community, contribute to society, and perhaps have families or that people may actually value aesthetics and craftsmanship.)

My other gripe with Brent is that he denies the value of science and engineering, and makes claims which are dubious at best, without the ability to provide real data to back up his dismissals; providing instead non-symmetrical arguments (i.e. comparing the strength of a purpose built, one off steel boat, to a value oriented glass hull) or hyperbole filled anecdotes intended to be a metaphor for real life (i.e. the ability of a 5/16 steel plate to stop a bullet vs. a fir stump, which ignores that the real comparison is a low speed impact and a comparison between a 3/16” steel plate, and a equal weight composite with Kevlar skins and nearly 2 3/8” of wood behind it. )

Unfortunately, all that said, I suspect that Brent and I are close to the same age, and that at our age nothing any of us say to him is going to change his thought process or point of view, nor is he likely to change mine. We have been trading jibes for what must at least 15 years and a bunch of forums. Over the years I have put up speadsheets showing the data and assumptions that I have used as the basis of my positions, with Brent usually responding by calling me a liar, denying the science, or countering with some irrelevant metaphor. At this point I must admit that I view Brent as being in the unenviable position of Monty Python’s Black Knight, insisting "'Tis but a scratch", "I’ve had worse", "It's just a flesh wound!" and finally, “All right, we'll call it a draw."

It’s not a draw….its a shame.

Jeff
 
#235 ·
jak:
That's an interesting ands handsome YMT design. But here are the questions I ask myself when I study that design:

Of the boats YMT lists as inspirations, i.e. long, light, narrow boats, how many are steel?
What do the boats he list all have in common? Light weight hull construction, even RAGTIME.

What is the one thing you need to make a long, narrow, lght boat go to weather? Stiffness from a low VCG. This is hard to do with a steel boat. Every extra ounce in the shell is an ounce out of the ballast. This is excatly the reason that long, light, narrow boats are usually built with lightweight shells.

There most probably are several very good reasons you do not see long, light, narrow boats built from steel.

But I could be wrong. You make a list of your own existing examples to prove me wrong.

Not sure YMT's design was ever built. I've never seen one. Does anyone know?
 
#237 ·
My thought exactly Bob. As I read the article I couldnt think of any steel sleds.I did read somewhere recently that he has a Steelstar 50 that is being built of Alu.If I can find it Ill post it.Ragtime was here a few years back I think for ther Pacific cup.Very interesting boat she had a carbon spar that had some problems they were working out.
 
#236 ·
Bob-that's a pretty boat.in some ways reminds me of the pre glass trinella boats.yours is prettier of course. Still think the k& m 50 in aluminum is a sweet boat.hear they now make it in glass and it took boat of the year in Europe. Still, if I could have one would do it aluminum and head for the Bergie bits. Problem is would come home alone as admiral don't like taut nipples from the cold.grin
 
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#253 · (Edited)
Wow TQ. That is definitely well documented!

The timeline sounds about right. What is ironic is this statement at the very beginning:

My partner, Gena, and I have decided to take an early retirement
in three or four years to voyage around the world by sail, cruising from
country to port, while we're still young enough to do so!
It ain't always as promised eh?

So do you want to build a steel boat for the next X years? Or do you want to sail?
 
#353 ·
Wow TQ. That is definitely well documented!

The timeline sounds about right. What is ironic is this statement at the very beginning:

It ain't always as promised eh?

So do you want to build a steel boat for the next X years? Or do you want to sail?
I started my steel boat April 12th 84, launched her May 12th 84, had her sailing by mid October 84,. and moved aboard.The second 36 I build was started February 4th 82 launched april 15th 82 , went for her first sail, May
24th 82 then headed for Mexico November the same year.
Takes a lot of focus , but can be done, and has been many times.
 
#360 · (Edited)
Brent, that's awesome. It really is very impressive.

But it has absolutely no bearing on what it will take a green boat building dreamer to get it done after they've bought your plans. You've already said you've worked with steel all your life. So, for your boats to make any sense for anyone, that person needs to have years of experience working with steel (and many other systems).

Your boats are not for the 99% - period. They are for the 1%.

Nothing wrong with that at all. It's just the way it is.
 
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