There's a girl sitting here in the library where I work. She's using the public computer to search for universities and checking out what programs the different schools are offering. She's going to school!
She's older than most people entering college, so I assume she's has a good long break since high school, experienced a bunch of life, and is excited about the opportunity to spend the time at college, go into a new career, and experience a big change of lifestyle than what she's probably used to.
I am similar is a way. I am just as eagerly scouring the web, but for information on the boat I want to build, materials, techniques, sailing, anything. I am ordering tomes on celestial navigation and coastal piloting, cooking and eating exotic foods that I've not heard of. I am excited about a change in life as well. We're both seeking desperately, eager for what the future will bring us as a reward for our efforts and desire.
The only difference is the goal. This woman wants to go into a new career as a journalist, have an interesting job, and maybe make a name for herself. Whether she wants to travel or not, I don't know, but it's not the point really.
I want to sail off into oblivion, never to be heard from again. I want to exit this shrinking nation while the going is good and never look back. Maybe one day I'll write about where I went and what I did, on some internet forum or in a magazine, but it's not a goal, it's just what I might do one day, if I think the things I saw were worth recording.
She wants to dig her roots deeper into society with a professional career. I want to uproot and drift off over the horizon, and be lost to memory.
Hopefully we both get what we're seeking, and finally be content.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
No Chebacco....
So, I didn't want to come here and say this, but I felt the obligation for anybody who might have read it up to now, and was waiting for an update.
The Chebacco plans came in June, straight from Payson's. But now that they're here, I'm kind of sad to say that I won't be building one after all.
Here's the tale of how this came about:
Father's Day, 2008. My wife and daughter have me open presents and cards. A new Black & Decker corded drill is the big gift, and the card plays the Jack Sparrow theme when you open it.
This drill was meant to spend hours upon hours in my hands building Chebacco. It was just what I wanted. The plans were on the way already, and I was about to go buy the wood.
But that same day - the very same day I got the new drill - Father's Day, my wife hit me with a rather large and ominous statement which will have effects for years. The immediate effect was that my dreams of Chebacco building were in the trash.
She told me to go after that other boat. She wanted the big one. She wasn't content to go camp-cruising and gunkholing on a Chebacco.
"Find us a boat that can go anywhere, with the three of us."
Wow, so after giving up the idea of the 'dream-boat' as I earlier discussed, I am told that this is exactly what I must accomplish. This was no small order she made, it was a huge deal.
I quickly had to reshuffle my priorities. There was no thought of a huge boat, or an expensive one. To bring it from dream-land to reality, it woud have to be one of two things:
1. Very old and cheap.
or
2. Very very, VERY modest
I began looking at hundreds and hundreds of used boat listings. I know every sailboat for sale ofer 26 feet on the US East Coast. I saw them cheap and I saw them dear. The cheap ones were mostly objects which would entail massive amounts of work and money to restore to use, only to have an average 30 year old boat under my family. There were one or two gems in the mess, but still, there was another big problem - I could not think of a way, once buying one of them, of having it any where near close enough to repair or restore, without paying the boat's price again to have it transported to West Virginia.
I'm not driving 200 miles every weekend to work on an old junker boat which is sitting in someone else's lot (which I am also paying for) or in an expensive marina slip eating my meager earnings, going "om nom nom nom' to my paychecks. I have 3 acres right here, a workshop, storage for free under my bedroom window. This is the beauty of West Virginia, it's main saving grace.
No, option one would not work for us, so on to option 2, which had now been modified from my experiences with #1.
A. Very very modest
B. Very seaworthy
C. Can transport without a trucking company
D. Can store at home.
E. Three of us can cruise and sleep aboard for reasonable lengths of time.
There are not many boats that exactly fit this bill, and as the saying goes, every boat is a compromise. The field is narrowwed further by some more discussions with my wife to include
F. Shoal Draft
...and that, really, only leaves about ONE boat to chose from, ONE boat that meets every requirement listed, and it's not Chebacco.
It's this:
So long Chebacco, hello Wharram Tiki 30.
The Chebacco plans came in June, straight from Payson's. But now that they're here, I'm kind of sad to say that I won't be building one after all.
Here's the tale of how this came about:
Father's Day, 2008. My wife and daughter have me open presents and cards. A new Black & Decker corded drill is the big gift, and the card plays the Jack Sparrow theme when you open it.
This drill was meant to spend hours upon hours in my hands building Chebacco. It was just what I wanted. The plans were on the way already, and I was about to go buy the wood.
But that same day - the very same day I got the new drill - Father's Day, my wife hit me with a rather large and ominous statement which will have effects for years. The immediate effect was that my dreams of Chebacco building were in the trash.
She told me to go after that other boat. She wanted the big one. She wasn't content to go camp-cruising and gunkholing on a Chebacco.
"Find us a boat that can go anywhere, with the three of us."
Wow, so after giving up the idea of the 'dream-boat' as I earlier discussed, I am told that this is exactly what I must accomplish. This was no small order she made, it was a huge deal.
I quickly had to reshuffle my priorities. There was no thought of a huge boat, or an expensive one. To bring it from dream-land to reality, it woud have to be one of two things:
1. Very old and cheap.
or
2. Very very, VERY modest
I began looking at hundreds and hundreds of used boat listings. I know every sailboat for sale ofer 26 feet on the US East Coast. I saw them cheap and I saw them dear. The cheap ones were mostly objects which would entail massive amounts of work and money to restore to use, only to have an average 30 year old boat under my family. There were one or two gems in the mess, but still, there was another big problem - I could not think of a way, once buying one of them, of having it any where near close enough to repair or restore, without paying the boat's price again to have it transported to West Virginia.
I'm not driving 200 miles every weekend to work on an old junker boat which is sitting in someone else's lot (which I am also paying for) or in an expensive marina slip eating my meager earnings, going "om nom nom nom' to my paychecks. I have 3 acres right here, a workshop, storage for free under my bedroom window. This is the beauty of West Virginia, it's main saving grace.
No, option one would not work for us, so on to option 2, which had now been modified from my experiences with #1.
A. Very very modest
B. Very seaworthy
C. Can transport without a trucking company
D. Can store at home.
E. Three of us can cruise and sleep aboard for reasonable lengths of time.
There are not many boats that exactly fit this bill, and as the saying goes, every boat is a compromise. The field is narrowwed further by some more discussions with my wife to include
F. Shoal Draft
...and that, really, only leaves about ONE boat to chose from, ONE boat that meets every requirement listed, and it's not Chebacco.
It's this:
So long Chebacco, hello Wharram Tiki 30.
Monday, June 2, 2008
The Boat in Question
Now, after looking at too many boat designs to remember, I was still undecided.
The first thing was to pick what general "type" of boat to build. This is a painful process, because you have to stomp on some your own favorite and long-held dreams at this point. We all seem to want that perfect world-cruising sailer with the deep keel and the ability to deliver us to any point on the globe at will. Many try to build this beast - this homewrecking 'dreamboat' - out of any number of designs.
Out of these hundreds or perhaps thousands who start - likely less than a dozen will finish. The rest sit and rot in someone's yard, unfinished - or get sold to someone else as a 'project' boat, not even close to complete.
It's a huge undertaking, and a LOT of expense for a boat we may or may not ever get away on. It didn't take long to come to the conclusion that if I wanted to sail the seas on a self-built boat, it would have to become the central element of all the family's financial planning, plus occupy all of our spare time for many many years - not a good prospect. Building this boat would be, in my mind, about 10x the effort and expense of just buying and refitting one already suited to the purpose, and 100x that of just simply chartering one for that once-in-a-lifetime cruise. So, the "personal pirate ship" went out the window rather quickly.
This isn't happening unless I want to not have a house instead!
This led to the next logical conclusion in the process: Now that we've disposed of the fantasy boat, what about the reality boat? Of course, just because I won't be sailing the seven seas any time soon doesn't mean I've given up on life! I still want the fun of building a boat, but I also want to live in the real world. I'm not getting any younger, so we need to start looking smaller.
After some thinking and some plotting, I came up with a new set of requirements:
20 feet and under, sail being the primary means of propulsion.
Trailerable
A cabin to sleep in
Pretty to look at
Can build it myself at home
A lot of boats suggest themselves. In fact, most people in my situation, after some web browsing, would settle upon Stevenson Projects' "Weekender" for it's simple building, and it's extreme good looks:
Stevenson's "Weekender": Beautiful, but tiny.
I came close to buying the plans for this boat myself. But the more I looked at it, the more my back started to unconsciously ache. I'm 6'4" with a bad back, and this beautiful boat is deceptively small. To one my size, it's more of a largish scale model than an actual craft. There was no way myself, my wife, and our young daughter would ever be comfortable on this boat. And the bigger version they sell plans for, the 'Vacationer' , is largely untested, and frowned upon even by the designers themselves ( for reasons of added expense, difficulty, and building time.)
There were other reasons I chose to avoid the design, but let's move on.
I eventually decided on one that I think suited my family well. This is the Bolger Chebacco.
Sheet-ply hull Chebacco
A Chebacco under sail.
Phil Bolger's Chebacco is a cat-yawl sailboat (which can also have a small outboard attached) of about 20 feet in length. There are two sails: a large mainsail and a smaller mizzen. These are at each end of the boat, leaving the rest of the space to you. It has a nice little cuddy cabin, which you can build a bit bigger if you like.
Best of all, it's roomy enough for me to stretch my legs out in, either in the cockpit, or the cabin. It seems like a wonderful camping boat.
I've read nothing bad about this boat from anyone. It's considered a great boat all around, albeit less well-known than other designs. It's got a shallow draft, lots of space, and is a treat to the eye.
This boat is commonly built in one of two ways, the easier sheet-ply, and the more attractive, yet more difficult lapstrake version. I'm opting for sheet-ply, as that fits my boatbuilding experience at the moment, and appears much cheaper to accomplish. I still think the boat is a beauty in sheet-ply. It has a bit more 'workman-like' aesthetic, like a crab boat turned into a cruiser.
All around, Chebacco seems like the best boat for my buck. My dreams have matured from sailing the high seas on a $250,000, 34 foot boat and trying to keep it afloat, to having a much higher 'fun ratio' building and sailing in this $4000 boat.
Hopefully, Frontier Town Campground will let us sleep on the boat if we pay for a slip-front campsite and a boat slip. If not, we'll set up a tent on the camp site, and sleep on the boat anyway! We'll explore Chincoteague bay in our little boat, and maybe of an evening, head the few miles up to Ocean City, MD and find one of those restaurants with a dock to tie up to while you eat steamed crabs and corn-on-the-cob. Then, our bellies happy but not quite full, we'll head back to the campground slip and take in a banana split while the nightly movie plays in the picnic pavilion.
Frontier Town Family Campground.
And if we ever quit the Land of Winter, and move South to Florida, Chebacco should be an excellent choice for exploring they Keys.
Well, that's enough about the choice of boat, on to the building! The next posts will be about the beginnings of building: site preparation, materials preparation, and emotional preparation.
The first thing was to pick what general "type" of boat to build. This is a painful process, because you have to stomp on some your own favorite and long-held dreams at this point. We all seem to want that perfect world-cruising sailer with the deep keel and the ability to deliver us to any point on the globe at will. Many try to build this beast - this homewrecking 'dreamboat' - out of any number of designs.
Out of these hundreds or perhaps thousands who start - likely less than a dozen will finish. The rest sit and rot in someone's yard, unfinished - or get sold to someone else as a 'project' boat, not even close to complete.
It's a huge undertaking, and a LOT of expense for a boat we may or may not ever get away on. It didn't take long to come to the conclusion that if I wanted to sail the seas on a self-built boat, it would have to become the central element of all the family's financial planning, plus occupy all of our spare time for many many years - not a good prospect. Building this boat would be, in my mind, about 10x the effort and expense of just buying and refitting one already suited to the purpose, and 100x that of just simply chartering one for that once-in-a-lifetime cruise. So, the "personal pirate ship" went out the window rather quickly.
This isn't happening unless I want to not have a house instead!
This led to the next logical conclusion in the process: Now that we've disposed of the fantasy boat, what about the reality boat? Of course, just because I won't be sailing the seven seas any time soon doesn't mean I've given up on life! I still want the fun of building a boat, but I also want to live in the real world. I'm not getting any younger, so we need to start looking smaller.
After some thinking and some plotting, I came up with a new set of requirements:
20 feet and under, sail being the primary means of propulsion.
Trailerable
A cabin to sleep in
Pretty to look at
Can build it myself at home
A lot of boats suggest themselves. In fact, most people in my situation, after some web browsing, would settle upon Stevenson Projects' "Weekender" for it's simple building, and it's extreme good looks:
Stevenson's "Weekender": Beautiful, but tiny.
I came close to buying the plans for this boat myself. But the more I looked at it, the more my back started to unconsciously ache. I'm 6'4" with a bad back, and this beautiful boat is deceptively small. To one my size, it's more of a largish scale model than an actual craft. There was no way myself, my wife, and our young daughter would ever be comfortable on this boat. And the bigger version they sell plans for, the 'Vacationer' , is largely untested, and frowned upon even by the designers themselves ( for reasons of added expense, difficulty, and building time.)
There were other reasons I chose to avoid the design, but let's move on.
I eventually decided on one that I think suited my family well. This is the Bolger Chebacco.
Sheet-ply hull Chebacco
A Chebacco under sail.
Phil Bolger's Chebacco is a cat-yawl sailboat (which can also have a small outboard attached) of about 20 feet in length. There are two sails: a large mainsail and a smaller mizzen. These are at each end of the boat, leaving the rest of the space to you. It has a nice little cuddy cabin, which you can build a bit bigger if you like.
Best of all, it's roomy enough for me to stretch my legs out in, either in the cockpit, or the cabin. It seems like a wonderful camping boat.
I've read nothing bad about this boat from anyone. It's considered a great boat all around, albeit less well-known than other designs. It's got a shallow draft, lots of space, and is a treat to the eye.
This boat is commonly built in one of two ways, the easier sheet-ply, and the more attractive, yet more difficult lapstrake version. I'm opting for sheet-ply, as that fits my boatbuilding experience at the moment, and appears much cheaper to accomplish. I still think the boat is a beauty in sheet-ply. It has a bit more 'workman-like' aesthetic, like a crab boat turned into a cruiser.
All around, Chebacco seems like the best boat for my buck. My dreams have matured from sailing the high seas on a $250,000, 34 foot boat and trying to keep it afloat, to having a much higher 'fun ratio' building and sailing in this $4000 boat.
Hopefully, Frontier Town Campground will let us sleep on the boat if we pay for a slip-front campsite and a boat slip. If not, we'll set up a tent on the camp site, and sleep on the boat anyway! We'll explore Chincoteague bay in our little boat, and maybe of an evening, head the few miles up to Ocean City, MD and find one of those restaurants with a dock to tie up to while you eat steamed crabs and corn-on-the-cob. Then, our bellies happy but not quite full, we'll head back to the campground slip and take in a banana split while the nightly movie plays in the picnic pavilion.
Frontier Town Family Campground.
And if we ever quit the Land of Winter, and move South to Florida, Chebacco should be an excellent choice for exploring they Keys.
Well, that's enough about the choice of boat, on to the building! The next posts will be about the beginnings of building: site preparation, materials preparation, and emotional preparation.
The Beginning: Purpose of this Blog
Building Bolger's Chebacco 20' cat-yawl.
The purpose of this blog is to document the building of a Bolger-designed Chebacco catboat, and the learning process that goes with building anything of this sort.
I will try to keep building logs here, post construction photos, and record the various bits of frustration that all builders meet up with before they are done.
The process of construction starts, not with the first board cut, but with something much more difficult: a decision. I've gone for several years dreaming about building a boat, and I think I've looked at literally hundreds of possible designs. Some made me cringe, others made me drool. Most of the latter were out of my league in terms of cost, skill, or of simple logistics.
I've built one boat before this, a David Beede-designed Summer Breeze skiff:
While she is a joy to go out and sail, it is a bit of a pain. To sail her, I have to put her in a truck, drive 30 miles to a lake, set her up on the boat-ramp and launch. If there's no wind that day, it's all for nothing.
But building her was as easy as walking downstairs and picking up a tool. There were always challenges to face, and even when I wasn't physically hammering away on some bits of the boat, I could be thinking about what to do next, what to make next, and how to do it. I guess what I'm saying is that the 'buildng' phase of this boat kept me much more pleasantly occupied and
mentally engaged than the 'owning' phase.
I want that fun again - that pleasure that comes from being constructively busy on something you've dreamed about for years. So, I'm doing a bigger boat now - the Bolger Chebacco. Here's a fine example of one:
More on this decision in the next entry!
The purpose of this blog is to document the building of a Bolger-designed Chebacco catboat, and the learning process that goes with building anything of this sort.
I will try to keep building logs here, post construction photos, and record the various bits of frustration that all builders meet up with before they are done.
The process of construction starts, not with the first board cut, but with something much more difficult: a decision. I've gone for several years dreaming about building a boat, and I think I've looked at literally hundreds of possible designs. Some made me cringe, others made me drool. Most of the latter were out of my league in terms of cost, skill, or of simple logistics.
I've built one boat before this, a David Beede-designed Summer Breeze skiff:
While she is a joy to go out and sail, it is a bit of a pain. To sail her, I have to put her in a truck, drive 30 miles to a lake, set her up on the boat-ramp and launch. If there's no wind that day, it's all for nothing.
But building her was as easy as walking downstairs and picking up a tool. There were always challenges to face, and even when I wasn't physically hammering away on some bits of the boat, I could be thinking about what to do next, what to make next, and how to do it. I guess what I'm saying is that the 'buildng' phase of this boat kept me much more pleasantly occupied and
mentally engaged than the 'owning' phase.
I want that fun again - that pleasure that comes from being constructively busy on something you've dreamed about for years. So, I'm doing a bigger boat now - the Bolger Chebacco. Here's a fine example of one:
More on this decision in the next entry!
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