Building a sailing boat

Many years ago I had a secret ambition . It was to build my own yacht and go sailing off around the World. I was fuelled by the achievements of the Vikings, Frances Chichester and a host of other notables who have stamped their niche into history. Although I have not achieved anything like any of my role models, I did achieve one of the greatest desires of all, that was to build my own yacht.
How was this achieved? Well, it was attained by a great deal of reading, studying and working in and around the boating industry for many years and I eventually came to the conclusion that to build my own boat was going to be the only way I could ever actually own one!
I also came to the solid fact that with the new composite materials of today, not only was it possible to build a boat safely and strongly and that also some of the old rules need not necessarily apply.
Lofting was always going to be the bugbear of any boatbuilding project I reckoned and I set my heart on looking at different ways of achieving the same end result without some of the difficulties that seemed to accompany traditional boatbuilding.
Ok so what is lofting?
Here is the definition from Wikipedia;
A carpentry technique (sometimes using mathematical tables) whereby curved lines are drawn on wood and the wood then cut for advanced woodworking. The technique can be as simple as bending a flexible object (such as a long cane) so that it passes over three non-linear points and scribing the resultant curved line, or plotting the line using computers or mathematical tables. Lofting is particularly useful in boat building when it is used to draw and cut pieces for hulls and keels, which are usually curved, often in three dimensions
Hmmm, I didnt like the sound of that, it seemed all too complicated. I started looking at other ways of achieving the same result, that is to build a boat without all the calculations that seemed to be part of the whole deal.
I finally came across some websites that mentioned that Naval Architects could make models from flat plates and that if they could be curved to produce a boat shape the trim and balances could all be calculated later. Also I saw that strip planked vessels could have really beautiful shapes and I reckoned that somewhere in the middle of all that would be my answer.
So I set to work and eventually, cutting a long story short I produced a method of boatbuilding that really does cut to the chase and remove so much of all that former agony.
My designs were frameless, a huge advantage when buiding, especially if you are a beginner to the art of boatbuilding.
In my experience, by the time the frame of a boat is complete most people would burn the boat and go out and take up something ,like golf or possibly contemplate bungee jumping without the elastic as a hobby. Framing was, and is, awful.
I reasoned that some frames ie the longitudinals, could be added afterwards , a much better solution to the problem. This solved another tedious boatbuilding problem, cutting all those amazing and professional timber joints and dovetails and the like.
So it was that the EASYBUILD method of boatbuilding was born. Not only does it work but the Dolphin range of frameless boats has stood the test of ten years and my Yacht the Nicky J Miller is also a frameless boat and has withstood some fearsome seas and is my permanent home.
The Dolphin range of boats was created and it began with the Dolphin twelve constructed with epoxy resin presoaked ply ( 4.5 sheets) and some amazing woven glass matting that to my mind is glass engineering to the ultimate degree. The resulting composite boat is still in existence after ten years of some fairly robust treatment.
The Dolphin 16 sailing boat was the next off the line and has proved to be the best seller out of them all. It is a pretty little yacht sixteen feet long with a gaff rig and there are about three hundred of them out there in the wide world today.
The boats got bigger, The Dolphin 19 was the next off the line and is a twin masted yawl and is also a large boat that has stood some serious sailing. This was followed by the Dolphin 25 , a boat that I am particularly proud of and this is a serious fishing craft, the first to be built using an outboard pod for the motor which also contributes half a tom of bouyancy to the rear end.
Talking about bouyancy, the D25 sports two tonnes of Thermotec bouyancy foam for a boat that weighs just under on tonne ( 1000 kgs) so in theory it is unsinkable. I say in theory because I have no intentions of trying to sink the first one off the line, quite frankly.
Next year, the D25 will be stretched to make a thirty five foot yach or fishing boat ( the plans will accommodate both designs) and I am looking forward to the build of that one!
If this article has been of interest to you and you wish to read more and see some pictures of the Dolphin range of boats, why not take the time out to visit the site that is mentioned below.
Any further info on these tough little boats can be found using the contact details given there
Happy boating