choosing a wooden boat for cruising the world?

[Celestialsailor]

Well then I guess you really did not have to start this thread. You had already made up your mind on a steel boat.

[Fore and Aft]

Ralph there are plenty of commercial fibreglass boats out there. I spotted one of these fishing boats in the link below in NZ and was most impressed.
Rust, osmosis, delamination, rot etc, there is no such thing as a perfect boat. I will tell you right now after surveying countless steel boats it's a rare one that has no rust somewhere.
Cheers
https://fiberglass-boats.ready-onlin...ing-boats.html

[HeinSdL]

Well then just get a steel boat and back off on the GRP bashing. It makes you look silly.

[Manateeman]

Hi. It would seem you have made up your mind and it’s steel. Before you make such an important financial commitment, please slow down and just think about what I have to tell you. I’ve been building boats for 60 years. Wood glass composit aluminum. Steel boats are something I know quite a bit about. I had to inspect for purchase, and review for repair, steel vessels for a corporation that owned two dozen over 50 meter vessels and had their own shipyard. I worked directly for the president who owned a steel yacht in Norway.
You have a budget. You want a lot of things on your next boat which might not be possible on that budget ...irrespective...of the vessel hull material.
Let’s say you find a good price on a boat and your surveyor finds no major issues. You need to budget for surprises...it’s just reality. And budget for normal upkeep. Budget is not just money...it’s time. Time to repair or maintain and time to clean up.. Obviously the larger the boat, the higher the costs.
So here is what I know about repairs. Wood. It’s getting more and more difficult to find material and skilled labor to help. Work isn’t too dirty. Carefully, as in lots of yard time...its nice. Lots to choose from and if you have good skills and faithfully care for the boat, you will be happy.
Fiberglass is just less work, less skill needed but itchy and dusty and requires epoxy for repairs. I detest balsa, fin keels and cheap OEM boats. Good selection of solid classics. Budget for new systems and you will end up fine.
Steel. Very strong and easy to weld. If you are rich, it’s nice, you can just tell the yard to fix it. Rust never sleeps so buy a small inverter welder and learn.
The worse part of steel is the actual repair and cleanup.
It’s a horror show. Wood dust...it’s dust, no big deal. Glass, you got to pick up every thing unless you think it’s ok to eat.
Steel. You grind and everywhere the dust goes, you’ll see tiny rust spots.
To get at the rust from inside the boat involves removing stuff. Not just the cabinets but tanks, engines. Glass dust can sit but not steel dust. Tell the yard you need to repair from the outside and they will stick you in the furthest corner and make you tent everything. You need to repair your steel boat, find a dirty commercial yard, pray for good welding and painting weather and be prepared for a filthy job. You can tell the difference between workers and hull materials.
The guy with clean clothes and like new gloves carrying a helmet is a aluminum TIG welder. The guy in the white paper suit is a fiberglass man. The guy in the ripped, burned and dirty stuff is the steel worker. Every little nick requires attention which takes time to wire brush, cleanup, prime, epoxy and topcoat before it becomes yet another ugly defect. You can slap some epoxy on a wood bad spot or 5200. You can do the same with glass but you just cannot ignore steel. When you get fed up with steel, what have you got. Not a lot of resale value and even sitting on the hard, it’s going to eat time or funds.
Lot of advice from owners to follow, but few from professional experienced boatbuilders. But...Happy trails to you.
Captain Mark and his “clean machine “manatees

[argonauta1]

Ralph, go steel or fiberglass

[Babbitt]

Incase you have not seen it this guy has been living and traveling around the world on an enginless wooden sailboat for more than 15 years. If you love your boat and enjoy working on it wood can be a wonderful material.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTm...3IL7Bvtf_7nTLw

[Rainbow48]

Been sailing and cruising, coastal and trans ocean, US and international, for 55 years. Always with wooden boats. Strong, reliable, not hard to maintain - if you use common sense. Would not have anything else. One thing I can guarantee: if you cover a planked wooden boat with fiber glass, you’ll be asking for trouble. Current boat, “Rainbow”, is wooden, 63 ft LOD, disp. 81,000 lbs, which I sail and maintain by myself.

[ktbaker]

If you want to know what a well built wooden boat looks like check out Samson boat co on youtube.

[edlepera]

I been looking to size up from my old 22 foot fiberglass boat. So I am in boatyards thumping away at hulls of boats newer than my 40 plus year old sailboat. And I cringe at the thinness of the more modern fiberglass hulls. So I am leaning toward steel hull European sailboats and older British built Fiberglass sailboats Like contest

[md7a]

CruisersForum is home to a very long-running thread/community dedicated to Searunner trimarans - homebuilt wooden world cruisers now over 50 years old.
Wood-epoxy-fiberglass composite multihulls have cruised the world successfully for many years. Mine is just a coastal cruiser, but my family and I do love the simplicity and warm feel of our boat.
Fiberglass over traditional planks is indeed problematic, but fiberglass over strip-built, plywood or "Constant Camber" hulls is quite doable. Some wood is very strong for its weight; it insulates well, reducing condensation, and it sounds nice to my ear - like sailing a cello instead of a kettle drum.
I love steel too - worked for a few years on a lovely steel schooner. Like steel, composite boats can be repaired with simple tools by amateur owners.

[Dougtiff]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

Teak is very rot-resistant. North American boats are generally built of woods not nearly so rot-resistant.

What happened to her after the seven years? Is she still sailing?

I sold her (a Virtue class sloop), sailed on to S.Africa,ect.

[tomtriad]

My first ocean going boat was a 25 year old double diagonal planked mahogany fastened with copper rivets on oak frames. Steel floors, chainplates, mast partners and some drifts. Lots of maintenance as it got "iron sick". I swore no more wood boats.

Then, 10 years later I got the bug for a Newick trimaran, and found Triad, epoxy cold molded double diagonal 3 mm fir veneers over 3 mm 3 ply mahogany plywood. single layer of 8 oz. glass epoxied to exterior surfaces, except the deck edges. The only routine structural maintenance I've had to do is keep after those plywood edges ; when they show a hairline crack (zipper ) I scrape or sand to bare wood, coat with epoxy thickened with a little silica, then paint. Still going strong after 38 years of hard use.

The problem with plywood is keeping the water out so it won't delaminate; the glue used to lay up the panels is not waterproof. The edges are where most moisture intrudes. The key to keeping a wood boat in shape is being diligent with the coatings.

Strong, light, and easy to repair.

[RUSTYNAIL]

Unfortunately every year the old wooden boat shipwrights are retiring and very few young shipwrights are available. I was a Marine inspector for the USCG and commercial vessels had to pull keel bolts as part of the exam. After seeing keel bolts half their original size after 20 years, I'd stay away from a wooden boat that was a good deal. If I had lots of extra money, I'd build a beautiful planked sailboat.

[nortonscove]

Originally Posted by tkeithlu

I don't like fiberglass, and own a steel boat.

There are several wooden work boats and one conversion in and out of the local yard. The thrust seems to be that if you go with wood, renew the fasteners and then lay up fiberglass on the outside, with doing the deck as well as the hull preferred. Water gets in both ways.

Wooden hulls without fiberglass overlays do not do well in this Florida environment. The first problem is the hot/cold and wet/dry extremes, that cycle wood through expanding and contracting on a cycle of several days. That's not good for keeping water out or fasteners tight. The local tragedy was an all-wood conversion that a getting-on-in-years couple invested in, in both time and money. The yard had to pull it out one day when it was obviously sinking, and even the keel is rotted away.

Another problem is shear maintenance time. Wood work above deck in this environment is varnish, caulk, varnish, caulk. Even a teak deck on a fiberglass "bathtub" boat, or pretty wooden rails, result in threads on this forum for hints on maintenance.

Then you've got labor expense. If you don't do it yourself, it'll cost a bunch more than you (or I, at least), earn per hour. I'm remembering an aquaintance at the yard, an airline pilot, who told me that it was a toss up between his hours flying versus the yards hours working on his boat.

So go for it! Get your wooden boat of your dreams. Then take the consensus in the posts above, give it a barrier layer of resin and cloth, sail off into the sunset.

I've done work on fibreglass over wood fishing boats for years and that my friends is a recipe for a short life boat. In my neck of the woods those boats are disappearing because the lack of circulation around the wood turns it into mud. The freeze thaw cycles also cause numerous issues. The only boats worth anything in the fishing industry is those built of fibreglass or metal. Wood under fibreglass results in an extremely short life span.

[Scorpius]

Originally Posted by nortonscove

I've done work on fibreglass over wood fishing boats for years and that my friends is a recipe for a short life boat. In my neck of the woods those boats are disappearing because the lack of circulation around the wood turns it into mud. The freeze thaw cycles also cause numerous issues. The only boats worth anything in the fishing industry is those built of fibreglass or metal. Wood under fibreglass results in an extremely short life span.

Right on! A previous post said covering wood with fiberglass can work. Maybe using wood for structural members and very carefully encapsulating it in glass during construction can work, but you probably can't fully encapsulate every square inch of wood in an old boat - and everywhere there is wood showing moisture will get in and it will rot. Even the old Chris-crafts, which were built in factory conditions, have largely disappeared.



Personally I think wood is wonderful. But for boats I'm afraid it is generally passee. There just isn't enough quality, dry wood available, and the skills to work with it are disappearing just as fast. Wooden boat owners out there who love and maintain your own boats: I love and am in awe of you. But you are a dying breed. Very, very few have the skills to do what you do. I salute you!


Our yard won't even haul wooden boats anymore unless they are owned by someone the yard personally knows has a history of doing a good job of maintaining their own boat - ie. some of the local commercial fishermen. Too many wooden boats have been abandoned in the yard and have had to be disposed of - an expensive process!