Seawind or Woods

[owly]

On the Woods Design versus Seawind, I think that's a bit restrictive. It's worth looking at other alternatives as well. Flicka is a very old design, and there are quite a few out there compared to his newer designs. It might be worth looking at things like the FPs, Kelsalls, Simpsons, and numerous other designs.


Personally I'm comfortable with owner built compared to factory built.... Is an owner built house inferior to a trailerhouse or modular? Clearly owner built offers places for things to be poorly built or corners cut, but people building their own boats of this scale tend to make it a labor of love. They don't need a supervisor looking over their shoulder to motivate them to do good work. They aren't low paid wage earners who think only of drawing a paycheck and spend Friday daydreaming about what they are going to do on the weekend, and Monday recovering. Factory built does not mean "quality". It requires skilled labor and skilled attentive supervision with an eagle eye. Worse yet, the construction methods used in many modern boats, especially cored ones are questionable at best. These methods are refined to keep labor costs down and appearance good. Imagine if you will constructing a boat hull in a female mold with a foam core. You first lay in the gelcoat and outer skin... pretty straight forward so far. Now you lay in the core, and here's where the problems arise. A bonding paste is applied first, then the foam is pushed into a concave shape attempting to achieve a good bond on a blind surface. Foam is not inherently strong, so in a structural application it needs to be well bonded all over. Core failure is quite common these days, and that failure is always where it bonds to the outer skin.
In an owner built foam core boat, usually the core is laid on or in a temporary structure, smoothed and fiberglassed over using epoxy resin, and often vacuum bagged, the other face being covered the same way. The result is a reliable bond... and also a LOT of labor.

Virtually any modern owner built plywood catamaran is built with epoxy, and almost no factory built boats are. Unlike polyester resin, epoxy is impervious to water... it doesn't blister, it doesn't create pockets of trapped water and chemicals that eat away at it. Plywood that is encapsulated in epoxy & glass does not rot or deteriorate, it must have moisture intrusion, and that can only come where it has been penetrated. That's where a good survey comes in.


David Pasco, a well known Marine Surveyor has a whole series of articles on the various structural failures and flaws in design and manufacturing. Here is a link if you are interested.... and you should be if you are buying a boat!
https://www.yachtsurvey.com/structuralissues.htm