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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.
 
#1,793 ·
Another issue we are dealing with is the "black aluminum" problem...

We tend to follow what we know, and that can result in designing using structural concepts that were designed for aluminum, instead of inventing/finding new ones more appropriate to the very different characteristics of composites.

The result is an airplane design in carbon composites that is very similar to the structure of an aluminum airplane..

Hence: the "black aluminum" problem...

Different aerospace companies have this problem to different degrees.

It would also be fair to say that proceeding with innovation slowly has its benefits.
 
#1,798 ·
For those of us not of the aerospace pursuasion I wish you guys would post pics of the planes you talk about. I am very interested I just don't know the planes by their technical names. Blackbird?

Dave's comment on learning how to use CF hit home. When we first starting using it to "reinforce" areas built in oridinary grp we soon learned that CF did not always "load share" well with other materials. In the yacht design business we typically do not have the engineering budget to do extensive engineering studies with new materials. Back in the old Ballard days when I had my hands on a new material I would take it out onto the stair landing and pound on it with a hammer. No, I'm not kidding.
 
#1,799 ·
Tripp senior drove his Jag roadster over early fiberglass laminates so you were following in an honoured tradition.

I remember back in the 80's a guy brought some surplus/scrap Boeing carbon/aluminium honeycomb pieces to the local boatyard. I was absolutely stunned and fascinated by them - a piece around 12" X 8" X 3/4" (IIRC) was so weightless I couldn't believe it - noticeably lighter than plain balsa. We "curbed" it - put on an angle between a support and the ground - and were unable to deflect it ANY visible amount - that's 220 Lbs stomping on it. It was amazing - and that was about 30 years ago. What they make at a place like Lockheed now must be pure science fiction.

Bob - here are the planes with chines
 

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#1,800 ·
Jon:
Thanks muchly for that tid bit on info that I had been looking for for years. I always had an inkling that Tripp drove a Jag. Seems sillly to even care but, I'm weird. I do.

Yep, when the comment was made that planes have no chines I thought , now wait just a cotton pickin' minute. What about the stealth fighter ad the blackbird? Hell, on the stealth even the chines have chines.
 
#1,802 ·
Can't say I am all that fond of the look of hard chine boats but having owned one I've come round to multi chines. The slab sideness of the hard chiner does not please my eye, somewhat wonky though it may be. Otoh, I always felt that our steel VDS34 was a better looker than a mate's cold moulded version of the same design. That is said even though I'd have preferred the timber boat to the steel and the timber would blow us out of the water except in a big blow.
 
#1,805 ·
One can make a beautiful boat, house, car etc out of ANY material. BUT, one needs a good design and a good builder/people that also have a knack for how to build with said material.

Otherwise as noted by some of the pics, along with the recent on smacky posted. some are fugly, other fantastic. The smackers steelie is beautiful! That BS boat on the outside was very rough, inside, wow! for the one in BC that was/is for sale recently posted.

marty
 
#1,806 ·
Yeah, I think we have reached a concensus here. An important one in the the scope of his discussion. I don't think there is an anti steel guy among us. As a group it appears we have a problem with bad design and not the material.

Steel does not mean hard to look at. It can. But there are a lot of grp boats that are hard to look at too. It's all in the design and the execution. But from my perspective it starts with good, techically competant, aesthetically sensitive design.

I'll hoist a cup of Taiwan Oolong tea to that.
 
#1,812 ·
From the page PCP linked to under the photo:

Wellenreiter is the largest Jongert yacht ever launched. She was designed by Andre Hoek and built in 2003. This 46 m steel sloop with aluminium superstructure and keel/centreboard configuration has a very high sail area to displacement ratio for a keel boat. Other technical elements include her furling boom, captive winches and storage for two tenders in the stern (under deck) and bow (integrated in the superstructure).

Below decks luxury prevails. The full beam owner's stateroom is located astern and includes an office, sitting room and vast walk-through bathroom, a spectacular feature normally found on large motor yachts.
The Custom Line has become synonymous with personal comfort and perfection down to the finest detail.
 
#1,849 ·
The biggest sheet of steel I ever worked with was a 12 ft by 60 ft sheet of half inch plate, while working for Canron in the 70's . I used two 25 ton cranes on it. It was laid out to be cut into small pieces.
Steel is shipped in coils, up to 150 feet long, like huge rolls of toilet paper , to be flattened and cut to whatever length the supplier wants to deal with, at the destination.
 
#1,814 · (Edited)
There is no reason for a steel yacht to be less beautiful than an aluminium yacht and there are plenty of beautiful relatively small aluminium yachts. It can be done, but it is not done, I mean the designers specialized in aluminum and steel boats are for many years doing almost exclusively aluminum boats. I don't say that they will not consider steel a good option it is just that there is not a significant market for them.

The Dutch (Hoek is Dutch) are one of the European countries where metal (steel and aluminium) boats are truly appreciated and they always had NA specialized in steel and aluminium boats.

Let's take for example Dick Zall, he says about steel boats:

"Steel has many advantages for boat building, among the foremost of which are its strength and resistance to abrasion and impact. "A small boat built of steel is as close to truly indestructible as it's possible to get," writes naval architect Dave Gerr in The Nature of Boats. Another advantage of steel is that it's easily worked on by welders anywhere in the world, making repairs inexpensive for cruising boats.

It is also ductile, or stretchable, which means that if you hit a rock or a half-submerged shipping container, you're not likely to sink. The hull may be dented and deformed, but it probably won't be holed, as a wooden or fibreglass hull might be. On the other hand, steel vessels are heavy because to keep the skin plating from wrapping during welding, a plate thickness of 3 mm is minimum, and often 4 mm is used for this reason.

So it takes boats longer than 15.00 metres to become more or less equal with some other building materials, although it remains a lot heavier than composite for instance.

However the performances of a proper designed heavy displacement yacht are just what is ideal for the long distance cruiser, taking a lot of stores and gear along.

She will more easily float on her designed lines, while a light displacement yacht taking the same load will become dangerous as well as misbehaving."


He says something I have heard other NA saying: It does not make sense to make a very small (less than 40ft) steel boat. The sail performance would be bad, while a bigger boat (45/50ft) would have comparatively a much better performance. This is because the weight of a steel boat is not proportional to its size and it is possible to make a bigger boat proportionally lighter.

Regarding what I was saying about the almost non existence of new designs in steel even in the designers that used to work with the material, just look at the page of Dick Zall regarding the boats he had done in steel and the ones he is doing in aluminium. It is easy to see that steel designs are all old designs while we can find several contemporary designs regarding aluminium boats:

Designs Overview : steel | Dick Zaal Yacht Design

Designs Overview : aluminium | Dick Zaal Yacht Design

If we do the same with other famous Dutch Na specialized in steel and Aluminium (Koopmans, father and son) we will see the same. New designs are in Aluminium.

http://www.dickkoopmans.nl/news/

For what I understand many aluminium designs could be built in steel with some structural alterations and vice-versa. Koopmans offers many of his designs in steel or aluminium. The reason steel is not utilized has not to do with any difficulty in doing nice boats and nice designs but due to the market, meaning sailors want faster boats even if at the cost of less resistance to impact and a bigger price (regarding aluminium).

Fact is that the standard of sailing boat speed have been increasing rapidly. Today a main mass market boat like the Jeanneau 409 is faster than a 30 year old cruiser racer, new materials and the use of infusion cored boats made fiberglass boats much lighter increasing a lot the difference of weigh between a steel boat and a fiberglass boat and to that difference corresponds an increase in the difference in performance.

Steel boats made no sense today? Off course not, they are still the strongest boats but only few (except for some extreme sailing) would chose them over other material options. That is not an opinion, it is a fact that as a direct reflex on the market.
 
#1,819 · (Edited)
The Designer is Martin Bekebrede another Dutch NA specialized in steel and aluminium with very conservative but many times beautiful drawings. Most of them have a traditional look and a also "traditional" hulls.

MBYD - Martin Bekebrede Yacht Design

But I like more the work of another conservative Dutch Na, also with many steel and aluminium designs, particularly his Zaca series. Have a look at the bigger one (steel).

http://www.oliviervanmeer.com/fleet/sail.html



 
#1,820 ·
I’ve worked with a lot with and steel vessels of all sizes and flavors. New designs, re designs and project management of maintenance and rebuilding. One thing you learn with steel commercial boats is to keep the steelwork simple well finished, visible and maintainable. Direct any possible water ingress quickly and cleanly to the bilge and allow inspection of the hull interior below surrounding any insert in the hull deck and cabinsides.

But too often a fitout that suits a GRP hull is fitted in a steel boat to it’s detriment. The trend to installing seamless glued fitouts in steel leisure production boats from yards such as Jongert and Trintella wasn’t a great trend. It gave steel a bad name because interior maintenece, even basic inspection was impossible without ripping out, and then rebuilding parts of the interior. Charter sailboats were milked till they needed substantial replating then sold.

Steel screams it’s demise to corrosion. Only a third of rusts mass is from iron, (there are 2 moles of Oxygen to one mole of iron) and the corrosion product puffs up 4 to 6 times the plate thickness prior to actually holing it and it’s ugly and highly visible. As a result even neglected boats tend to have external rust issues fixed while still a minor pitting problem. As a result most steel hull problems are internal not external. Althoug there is one real killer and that’s putting timber over a steel deck. This was a big problem with European steel production boats. Little streams of rust stain flowing out from under teak decking is a common sight.

There are a lot of large initially very expensive steel sailboats for example sold for a pittance 25 years down the track with hulls that need substantial patching. That is nearly always because the interior was inaccessible for inspection. Particularly in the typical problem areas.

In my anchorage on moorings ( near Hobart) are a 65 foot steel ketch built in Germany in circa 1910 called ‘Mahe’ and a 1935 steel ketch of 50 feet built in Holland called ‘Scaldis’ both have had some replating over the years mainly in the bilges and anchor locker, but both are very capable ocean going craft of immense strength and have been (and still are) sailed offshore extensively. There’s really no reason I can see that they won’t see another hundred years of use, and probably another after that. But they were built heavily to scaled down ship scantlings by shipbuilding yards and are immensely strong full keel designs. Scaldis goes like a scalded cat with the wind over 20 knots.

I think hot zinc ( or aluminium) spray of the interior of a steel hull is a worthwhile effort for a newbuild. But it pays dividends lond after the first owners have moved it on so it’s never been popular with production boat builders unfortunately. They ( production metal boat builders) have moved to a man to Aluminium alloy now.
 
#1,822 ·
Here's a picture Of scaldis Built 1935 50' on deck around 43 LWL 25 tons displacement lightship around 28 tons departure. Sailing up to her mooring with one adult and and 2 children as they do in all weathers. A very handy boat.

Build is flush riveted steel by De Vries Lentsch. She just had her first cut and patch since 1935 and had around 10 One ft square patches replaced along the bilge concrete ballast line in the wet bilge, a few pinholes had been weeping for a while.
 

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#1,861 ·
Here's a picture Of scaldis Built 1935 50' on deck around 43 LWL 25 tons displacement lightship around 28 tons departure. Sailing up to her mooring with one adult and and 2 children as they do in all weathers. A very handy boat.Build is flush riveted steel by De Vries Lentsch. She just had her first cut and patch since 1935 and had around 10 One ft square patches replaced along the bilge concrete ballast line in the wet bilge, a few pinholes had been weeping for a while.
Another old steeler.

This from I think the first edition of the Proper Yacht. From memory posted in an Anarchy thread on double enders. I have no idea if she still lives.



 
#1,875 ·
I saw some stuff on Angantyr on the web not all that long ago - she had been heavily or totally restored.

A real ship that one.
 
#1,828 ·
It's pretty simple really...The Pros and Cons of Steel Sailboats.

One of the primary cons is that most of the examples have been less than pretty. PCP's examples show that this needn't be the case. There are some really beautiful steel yachts out there.

One question now is - can origami steel boats be beautiful? That would be a "pro".
 
#1,829 ·
I'd like to see pics of YMT's origami boats - the little drawings I've seen so far indicate yes but pics would be the clincher.

I suspect the answer is yes.
 
#1,835 ·
Bought my boat through anchor yachts.he also is dealer for waterline in New England . The waterlines are drop dead gorgeous but unfortunately too dear for my wallet. There is no reason a metal boat need be ugly.look forward to M.Tautons input.always loved his inventiveness .
 
#1,921 · (Edited)
Apart from mine, Waterlines are the only well built steel boats in BC, apart from home built boats . They are extremely well built, and fair ,before the paint goes on. Its been decades since I have seen any smaller waterlines built. Most newer ones are huge.They have progressed a lot, eliminating wood for stainless trim, a huge improvement.
However ,for a boat the size of my 36 ,I understand they want over a quarter million dollars .All of mine get built for a fraction that amount. Steve on Silas Crosby talked to Waterline first , got a quote ,then gave me a call, and we got started .Steve, after cruising the BC coast for many years , then to Mexico , Hawaii and back to BC, then to Cape Horn then the Aleutians and back to BC , is extremely happy with his choice.
Used Waterlines , much lower priced than new ones, can be a good deal.
Waterline side decks on 35 footers can be a bit narrow ,but I'm sure they would build them wider, on request.
 
#1,836 ·
Just got off the phone with Yves-Marie. He will be here later.

We had a good chat. He has lots of experience with the origami method and he has been doing a lot of alu and steel boats lately. Keep in mind that Yves-Marie has designed just about every kind of boat imaginable, from state of the art racing machines to large power yachts. He has a ton of design experience and a good eye.

He talks funny though.
 
#1,839 ·
Poor guy's gotta read through this entire thread first!... could be a while ;)
 
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