Marine construction
Over the years, I have come across many private boatbuilders and projects. People broadly subdivide into two categories: builders and sailors. Sailors are those who have sailed quite extensively before and build a boat as a mean to go back to sea again. Those achieve very high rates of completion and usually keep to acceptable timeframes; […]
Yacht building costs break-down in material costs, labour and some ancillary costs that don’t contribute to the final product, but can’t be eliminated either, like leasing space or equipment. There are different ways of undertaking the construction of a yacht, but the basic cost components remain the same, the difference is the extent to which […]
Loading, Transportation and Launching The new yacht is lifted with the expert assistance of two work colleagues who were kind enough to also bring the lifting gear. A trailer is wheeled underneath. The boat leaves the yard with its new antifouling. Yes, the unusual staying arrangement was extremely effective and stable: supported by physics, not […]
A certain amount of machining and engineering was involved in the construction. The machining of the rudder stock over one Easter weekend (when the workshop was deserted and quiet) was not documented, but a few other tasks were. Engineering tasks are great on a build like this. They provide a welcome break from fabrication and […]
Construction of the appendages was placed in the harder basket and deferred until the hull had been built. This was also good work for the winter, when working with filler is slow and painting is not really possible due the colder temperatures. Keel Construction The keel foil – easy to make – was built as […]
The construction of the interior started as soon as the hull was rolled over and the bilges painted. It was intertwined with the completion of the shell as some of the external paintwork could not be undertaken in winter due to low ambient temperatures and, in all cases, it is good to have more than […]
This page deals with completing the exterior shell and painting. All of the deck hardware had to be fitted before being removed again for painting. Backing plates were added inside as required. The steering vane and stainless railing were fitted. The deck plane was eventually sandblasted, sealed and faired, just like the hull earlier. Epoxy […]
This section covers the construction of the aluminium hull and deck, starting with the fabrication of the frames. The frames were built by welding pre-bent aluminium T extrusions into CNC-cut floors. Each frame was manufactured on top of a full-scale drawing on a table with a precision tolerance better than 1 millimetre. T extrusions were […]
The keel and rudder arrangement was also constrained by the intended use for the boat. In the Foveaux Strait and Stewart Island area, dealing with floats and lines on the surface is not uncommon, especially when picking up cod or crayfish pots. This prompted for extending the keel underneath the propeller and bridging the gap […]
The design was always intended to be built in PVC foam core/E-glass sandwich laminate. It is a construction method that is light, stiff and strong and leads to very low maintenance as paint systems benefit greatly from the inert fibreglass substrate. Unit construction is also easy to undertake for small yards or amateur boat builders […]