Steer me away from a steel hull?

[Mr B]

Two pack paint is the way to go on steel boats, As soon as it is shot blasted, Paint it immediately, other wise it gets rust under the paint,

A full size brand new Mig for the job will cost $3000-00 Lincoln, with a 12 metre remote for those high up places,
A good invertor welder, Tig and stick, $800-00

If you punch a hole in a steel boat, run it up the beach, wait till the tide goes out and weld a patch on it,

But punching a hole in it will need a hell of an impact,
It usually just bends and you end up with a dent in your boat,

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by boden36

Steel's fine, often cheaper than fibreglass, as most people feel more comfortable with the herd.
Make sure you buy one that has been built by someone that knows how to do it, and have it surveyed by a competent steel boat surveyor.

I would like to know how it is cheaper than F/G. Perhaps the hull is if you build from scratch. But the hull only represents 10% of the total cost, Weigh in long term maintenance and you loose it.
How do you make sure someone who built it knew what they were doing? a surveyor?...Please!

Originally Posted by Mr B

If you punch a hole in a steel boat, run it up the beach, wait till the tide goes out and weld a patch on it,

But punching a hole in it will need a hell of an impact,
It usually just bends and you end up with a dent in your boat,

If you hit something that would punch a hole in a steel boat, you have bigger problems than finding a place onshore to weld it.

[capn_billl]

That's pretty much my opinion too. I know how to weld, and am thinking about a steel boat someday....but probably not.

Other than the downside of sailing in a craft that is soluble in salt water....

Steel is the strongest, and most resiliant material we now have, unless you want exotic alloys, or titanium.

If you don't mind grinding off rusted areas, and welding new ones back on, a great boat material.

[Mr B]

Originally Posted by Celestialsailor

I would like to know how it is cheaper than F/G. Perhaps the hull is if you build from scratch. But the hull only represents 10% of the total cost, Weigh in long term maintenance and you loose it.
How do you make sure someone who built it knew what they were doing? a surveyor?...Please!



If you hit something that would punch a hole in a steel boat, you have bigger problems than finding a place onshore to weld it.

Total cost of steel for a 40 foot steel Catamaran is $15,000-00 AUD, I know because it is all sitting in my yard,

As you build a steel boat it is surveyed fully, All welds are checked by a welding inspector, Who just happens to have Supervisery Welding tickets, In Australia its under the DLI, or was,

Surveyors, do not supervise building steel yachts, Welding Inspectors do,

All Steel Has to be of a minimum standard, All electrodes, Mig wire, Etc also has to be up to a minimum standard,

As for punching a hole in it, It does need a hell of an impact, But you only have a small hole, Can be plugged very easily till you can run it up a beach,

And thats all the damage you will ever have on a steel boat, a hole, and not a very big one either, Structurally, No damage what so ever,

A steel hull can be run up a beach with out any further damage, What so ever,

If you hit some thing with a fibreglass boat with the same impact you need to punch a hole in the steel boat, You have sunk your fibreglass boat or it is one very bad mess that would be struggling to stay afloat, I would very much doubt it would still be above the waves,

Shot blast the steel and coat it immediately with two pack paint, you dont have problems with steel boats,

A steel boat can sit on rocks and Reefs, with out damage, Scratch the paint off, Big deal,
Wait till the tide goes out and patch up the paint,

Just like you do on a fibreglass Catamaran, But make sure the F/B cat is on a sandy beach, or you will have holes in it,

Even electrolosis can be very easily avoided,

I dont know if you have noticed or not, All shipping is manufactured in steel and painted,

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by Mr B

A steel hull can be run up a beach with out any further damage, What so ever,

If you hit some thing with a fibreglass boat with the same impact you need to punch a hole in the steel boat, You have sunk your fibreglass boat or it is one very bad mess that would be struggling to stay afloat, I would very much doubt it would still be above the waves,

...and of course you have real life examples of this. When I built my boats, I was of the camp that their were containers, whales and what not out there just waiting to sink me. The reality is that it's 1:10,000 chance anything catastrophic is going to happen.
I do like the idea of the steel surveyor keeping a watchful eye while under construction. In the US...forget about it. That would never happen to the home builder.

[NewEnglander]

Originally Posted by conachair

Where are you going? Long distance cruising the arguments for steel get a bit stronger, weekend coastal stuff possibly hard to justify.

I'm in Boston, and I've made trips up Maine, Nova Scotia, to Greenland and Iceland. I'd like to go back there at some point, the Caribbean, cross to Europe? I don't want to be unrealistically ambitious.

I was initially asking about peripheral things I may not be thinking of. Insurance, heating/cooling, etc.?

But since we're on the subject of rust and maintenance, if I get a well-maintained boat now, what sort of routine maintenance am I looking at over the next two or three years that's unique to steel hulls, in your experience?

Thanks again.

[sy_gilana]

short answer...about 30 man-hours per year for a 50 footer.

[Lagoon4us]

Mr B
In Australia the only time anyone cares about the steel boat you choose to build is if it is going to be in survey. Then if you are an accredited builder then no one inspects the build as you sign it out yourself.
If you are not accredited you need a surveyor with steel certification to sign it out as you go, it has nothing to do with a welding inspector UNLESS a question is asked re quality of the weld/welds.

The PO is asking what are the problems with a steel boat, to carry the welders you propose would be silly, i own a Fibreglass yacht, i don't carry cloth and resin around with me. But SIKA yes.

If the PO buys a steel boat that's in good nick he only has to keep up with the maintenence ie anodes, chips etc.

Cheers

[gjordan]

Slightly longer answer: It all depends on if it really was built correctly and painted correctly, and maintained correctly. I bought a 37 foot Van DeStat amature built steel boat. It was on the hard when I bought it and the paint didnt look too bad. I found out after I owned it that the paint was enamal, so I touched it up and (after much much other work) went sailing. Left CT. for Burmuda and when arriving I realized that the boat had rust streaks all down the sides. Lots of rubbing with OSPHO and it looked good again. Spent a month in Bermuda and it still looked fine. A couple of weeks down to Antigua and we arrived looking like a Korean fish boat. Rust everywhere! Again, lots of OSPHO and elbow greese and not too bad. By the end of the season in the tropics most of the paint along the waterline was gone and much rust coming down the topsides from less than perfect welds on the cap rail. None of this was a design problem. It was mostly the wrong prep and paint system, but also some poor welding in some areas. The point is that if I had put it up for sale when I had touched up the paint and put a coat on the topsides, some unsuspecting buyer would have said WOW IT IS BEAUTIFUL and like me, would have learned the hard way. My wife put her foot down and the next boat was fiberglass. I still like steel boats and there are some very good ones out there, but I would be very cautious of any amature built one, and the pro built ones bring a high price. ____But, like everything on this forum, it is just my opinion._____Grant.

[Jimbo485]

Like many others, we have cruised on both plastic and steel boats. The plastic seems, for us, to require more hours of maintenance. When a 3rd world local boat smashes alongside with a friendly greeting, there is another chip knocked out of the topsides. The 2 pack paint on steel holds up better.

Roughly we do a half day every couple of months with resin and paint now. With steel it required a steel brush and paint for a few hours every 6 months and a grinder and paint once a year.

With the steel boat, we would throw out a stern anchor and just sail the boat up on the beach. But we used to get some strange looks and even frightened the sun bathers on a beach in Tampa Bay who leapt off their towels and scurried away. Coral didn't worry us. Smash into it, break the coral, run out a kedge and pull ourselves off. With the current boat, we assume we are sailing in an egg shell and behave accordingly and much more conservatively (usually!).

So if you intend to sail around lots of coral or icebergs and go to out-of-the-way places, go for steel. It is fantastic insurance and the maintenance is about the same in our experience as plastic.

[Jim Cate]

G'Day all,

Leaving the maintenance issues for a moment, one other thing that might influence your decision is weight. You may be in the "heavy is good" school of boat design, but if sailing performance is of importance, steel has drawbacks in the size of boats most of us are involved with. May not matter to you, but when Ann and I were in the search for our current boat there were simply no steel boats that were anywhere near the SA to D numbers that we wanted.

And, IMO having the possibility of striking a floating object drive the design (and hull material) of a typical cruising yacht is pretty paranoid. Considering the vast number of non-steel boats at sea, the number that are lost due to hull breaching from such incidents is really tiny. I have better things to worry about!

I know that our opinions do not align well with the mainstream cruising philosophy, but they have worked well for us for a lot of years and miles.

Cheers,

Jim

[xymotic]

Originally Posted by Jimbo485

Like many others, we have cruised on both plastic and steel boats. The plastic seems, for us, to require more hours of maintenance. When a 3rd world local boat smashes alongside with a friendly greeting, there is another chip knocked out of the topsides. The 2 pack paint on steel holds up better.

Roughly we do a half day every couple of months with resin and paint now. With steel it required a steel brush and paint for a few hours every 6 months and a grinder and paint once a year.

With the steel boat, we would throw out a stern anchor and just sail the boat up on the beach. But we used to get some strange looks and even frightened the sun bathers on a beach in Tampa Bay who leapt off their towels and scurried away. Coral didn't worry us. Smash into it, break the coral, run out a kedge and pull ourselves off. With the current boat, we assume we are sailing in an egg shell and behave accordingly and much more conservatively (usually!).

So if you intend to sail around lots of coral or icebergs and go to out-of-the-way places, go for steel. It is fantastic insurance and the maintenance is about the same in our experience as plastic.

great post, thank you

Just curious, what two part paint are you using and can you use it in tiny batches for touchups?

[Snowpetrel]

If you are looking at a steel boat, it would be worth reading this book Metal boat maintenance-A do it yourself guide

The book is enough to put anyone off metal boats, but is a great primer for anyone looking towards getting a steel boat.

I still think Steel is a fantastic material for a boat, especially if you are thinking of playing with ice, but it is not without it's problems, and two pack epoxy paint is not a cure all, though much better than any other paint system. There seems to be good steel boats that never have a spec of rust, and bad ones that you can't stop the rust...

My current boat is steel, my next will probably be Alloy. My first was GRP. All materials have their downsides, and their benefits.

[NewEnglander]

Originally Posted by sy_gilana

short answer...about 30 man-hours per year for a 50 footer.

Does anyone want to bid higher?

[Jimbo485]

Originally Posted by xymotic

great post, thank you

Just curious, what two part paint are you using and can you use it in tiny batches for touchups?

Right now we are cruising in the egg-shell plastic stuff, so we use West System resin and 1-part paint. On the steel boat, it was 2-pack paint and, sorry, I can't remember what it was called. They used it on the offshore oil platforms.