Building a Wooden Sailboat: The Design,
Build, and Launch of the Whimsey
The tale of
building my outrigged wooden sailboat is one of limitations imposed
by materials, space, money and time, making decisions on the spot,
solving problems created by mistakes, and the daily slog which
was the building process. I follow this process from the initial
idea, research through boat-building manuals, sketching out the
design, purchase of the lumber, and completing the build of a
five-thousand-dollar sailboat.
I began with
an unimposing pile of lumber from a local sawmill, and gradually
transformed that into a wooden representation of the plans I'd
drawn. Designed with a stern of a caravel, the prow and beam of
a Marshallese sailing canoe, and out-rigged like a South Pacific
sailboat, there was no other boat like it. I had some unusual
design parameters. I wanted to be able to beach her in an emergency,
sail even if she were holed, and for her to be unsinkable. If
the main hull became no longer viable, I designed the outrigger
to be used as a boat in its own right. Not being able to swim,
I'm fond of contingency plans.
In two-and-a-half
months of daily labour I laid the keel, built the ribs and the
frame, and planked in my round-bottomed main hull. I built the
outrigger next, relying on plywood and stitch-and-glue to give
me the shape I sought. When it came time to join the hulls, I
built robust timbers, and by the time I had the mast tabernacle
done and finished the mast, I had a better sense of what I'd built.
On launch,
the Whimsey floated right at the waterline, proved to be both
stable and seaworthy, and before long I was living aboard as I
traveled around the inner passage between Vancouver Island and
mainland British Columbia.
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