Selecting a boat design to build

Once I’d built my Nutshell pram Pearl and confirmed that I loved to sail my own boat, I began to think about building a larger craft that would comfortable seat more people. But how to go about selecting a design?

I began to investigate possible designs by getting a copy of The WoodenBoat Store’s Fifty Wooden Boats: A catalog of building plans, which set out specifications for each of the watercraft for which they sold sets of building plans. I later got their follow-on Forty Wooden Boats. These books describe plans for six categories of craft: Tenders and Prams; Sailing Dinghies and Pulling Boats; Performance Rowing Craft; Power Cruisers; Daysailers; and Cruisers. How to limit the choices?

Well, I knew I wanted a boat I could sail, and I’d decided I wanted to build a wooden boat. I also know that I’m especially fond of traditional designs and building techniques. Then, the more practical issues: What skills would be required to build a particular boat? How much time would it take to build? Where would I build it, and how large a space would I have?

I had successfully built Pearl from a kit. The hull was constructed entirely of plywood and the pieces were pre-cut. The hull has a small plywood bow transom in front, a larger plywood transom aft, and seven plywood panels form the remainder of the hull: a bottom panel and three planks to starboard and three to port. The planks overlap each other and required beveling with a hand plane before being clamped to a building jig and gluing the overlapping joints with epoxy. This method is called “glued lapstrake construction” and it is relatively straightforward and results in a very strong, leak-free hull that is easy to maintain (scraping, sanding, and repainting).

Pearl was built in the basement of our home in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. She is 7′ 7″ long, about 40″ in width, and about 24″ high. The basement had a bulkhead and the size of the opening and positioning of the stairs allowed me to carry the finished boat out through the bulkhead, with little room to spare. The basement itself could accommodate construction of a boat about 20′ in length. As I looked anew at prospect of building a larger boat in the basement, I noticed that there were adjacent basement windows with wooden frames that fit in an opening in the stone foundation that was 60″ wide and 24″ tall, provided that the windows and framing were completely removed. So I was looking for a design that when completed, would be able to fit out this opening.

My criteria were relatively simple: A sailboat design that would take a few passengers, have a traditional look, and be able to be built, and removed, from our basement. From my study of available plans it was apparent that I should focus on the Daysailers, and these ranged from a 14′ Catamaran, Pixie, to a 28′ Camden-class sloop. Some designs were plywood, and some of traditional “plank-on-frame” construction that yielded a continuous, smooth hull.

The design I chose is the Biscayne Bay Sailing Skiff, a 14′ 5″ sloop that could be built with a plywood hull, using a method known as “batten-seam” construction. In this method, the hull planks butt against each other, rather than overlapping, and the joints are backed up with a solid wood “batten” that serves to both strengthen and provide sealing for the joints. And, this boat would fit out the 2′ x 5′ opening in our home’s foundation, though again with little room to spare.

This project required learning some new skills which I’ll simply mention here and explain in more detail when we get to building my larger and more complex Flatfish. I needed to learn how to “loft” a boat design: making full-size drawings of the boat from which I could take measurements to make parts that would accurately execute the boat design. The new boat would require steam bending some “frames” (ribs) that would fit inside the plywood planks and provide support to maintain the hull’s shape. And not least of all, I needed to learn where to acquire the wood, fasteners, and hardware that it would take to produce a finished craft that was ready to launch and sail.