Entries Tagged 'Boat Building' ↓

We are all familiar with cored fibreglass construction as almost all decks in GRP boats are foam or balsa cored. Hence we will appreciate that they are pretty strong. Even when heavy objects get dropped on them they stand up pretty well in my experience. Also we know of the problems: delamination and absorption of moisture into some core materials where through fittings have not been adequately sealed.

In general there seems to have been resistance to using foam core construction methods in monohulls particularly below the waterline, which would appear to be largely unjustified.

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The Around In Ten is organising a round the world single handed yacht race for boats 10′ long. The race is due to commence in the Bahamas in January 2009. The aim is to beat the world record for the smallest boat circumnavigation of the world. The record, set in 1987, is currently held by Serge Testa in his 11′ 10″ aluminium yacht “Acrohc Australis”. Testa set sail from Brisbane in 1984 and spent 500 days at sea.

The Around In Ten so far has 4 confirmed entrants, with most building their own craft. These days most sailing challenges are dominated by a few (justifiably) well known sailors backed up by sponsors with deep pockets. This race, whilst quirky to say the least, gives the “little” guys a go.

In the shadow of the recent record breaking solo circumnavigation by Francis Joyon a much more low key event is about to start on the other side of the world.

In a boat yard in San Francisco David Vann is struggling to complete his home built trimaran dubbed The Tin Can so he can set sail around the world and avoid the worst of the southern ocean storms. Already several weeks behind schedule David is hoping to launch the boat and set sail on 1st February.

Spartan and cramped are the first thoughts that spring to mind on seeing the photographs. Will the boat survive the journey? It is difficult to judge looking at the photographs, but we will be finding out as a the voyage unfolds.

David has already written a book on his previous sailing adventure in which he survived the sinking of his boat. Lets hope he has better luck this time.
You can read his blog here.

So many boats are built out of steel compared to aluminium, but is this really the right choice.

Broadly speaking to build a boat in aluminium of a similar strength to a steel hull then the aluminium will have to be around 1.5 times thicker, however the resulting weight of the structure would be more than 35% less. The impression I get is that either would be able withstand a similar amount of “damage”, however steel is definitely more resistant to abrasion.

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