Building In Steel ?

[BC Mike]

The axe story has been accredited to George Washington.
I pointed you towards the Lois Riel site in my first post.
Bummer when you come up with a boffo idea and everyone rips away at it. Natures way of slowing you down for a second look. I think steel would be fine for a 53 foot boat. I think it is fine because that is what you want to do. There is no need for others to make false claims and dump on other boats to make a point. George Washinton's axe would cut through a Chevy truck chassis. Steel is not impervious to any impact. But steel is fine if that is what you want. 53 feet is very big. The Lois Riel 40 is large. Do you really want to go that big.
I prefer light boats for racing, I like moderate displacement boats for cruising, I have not found a good use for heavy displacement boats. If your boat fits the moderate displacement rule then I am happy with that.
There are plenty of stories about serviceable boats of all types working hard for many years. There are many failures in all materials. I refuse to dismiss as out of hand credible designers and witnesses. I would be suspect of the source of such criticism.
Michael

[BC Mike]

It is true that I currently sail on a small pond, it is also true that Hillary lived in a fairly flat part of NZ, and it is also true that I have probably been closer to more waves ( salt water ) 15 feet and bigger than most.
And while we are on the subject it is highly likely that I will be on salt water, sailing overnight sooner than many others on the group. Late May to be exact. Some of us get around, so it is possible for me to be out in the North Sea or the Bay of Islands. I have been in the North Sea in some very ugly weather in January, in a 55 foot wood boat that had been in service for many years. It was ( and likely still is ) a commercial fishing boat, so went out quite often, like all the time. At the other extreme I have sat on top of a 25 foot wave at Sunset Beach on a surf board. I have been in fizz boats that have swamped, sail boats that have gone upside down, so I do have a few thoughts on the subject. Even been accross the Atlantic on a steel ship, the SS Marine Tiger, crossed the Pacific on the Oriana. I will tell you something that Lois Riel and I agree on, and that is the design of his previous boat was quite bad, yet that is what was accepted in North America at the time. There is more to this subject than just the North American view. I grew up next to the water, just like a few million other Kiwis.
Michael

[CaptainK]

BC Mike C once whispered in the wind
I pointed you towards the Lois Riel site in my first post.

Yes, Micheal you did refer me to the "Oragami" site. I never forget about that!!

[Yachts66]

Well, I guess I'll jump in here and take my share of rocks too. For me it started when I read Bernard Moitessier's book, "The Long Way." Here was a guy with almost nothing, sailing a boat across the Atlantic thence to Mexico only to loose it during a storm in Cabo San Lucas....but wait, he didn't loose it, he gave it away! He didn't have the heart to deal with his beloved boat that had laid in the surf for days being seemingly pounded to death by the sea. So, rather than deal with the wreck, he gave it away and walked away. Too bad, for despite that pounding and the boat being filled with water and sand; it was essentially undamaged. The people he gave it to cleaned it up and it was fine. Now, to me, that's a BOAT; and it was a STEEL boat!

Flash forward to a couple of months ago, a couple sailing their Gozzard stuck something in the water at night (probably a container) and the boat sunk very quickly. Fortunately they were rescued and got a nice trip to Belgium out of the deal. Their Gozzard was a glass boat, and a well built boat according to most. Yet it sunk very quickly after striking the object. Interesting that.

I heard of another boat, a cat, which sailed onto a reef in the South Pacific causing the loss of a leg in addition to the boat. The reef destroyed the boat rather quickly. It was a glass boat. Yet one of the Johnson's name sake steel boats recently spent some time on a reef in heavy weather too...but it didn't sink! Guess what? It was a steel boat too!

The pacific is littered with glass boats that have stuck objects and sunk. Not so steel boats. I don't care about the modulus of elasticity, I care that my family will be safe when we cross oceans. I want to feel safe on my boat and have confidence that if we hit one of the thousands of containers that have fallen off ships or a log or....well, pick your hazard. I want my family to have the greatest chance to survive that happening. From all I've read, their chances of doing just that are much greater in a steel boat.

Ok, fine, you can develop a special panel for testing that stands up to a battering ram, that's great. Unfortunately, they don't build such boats out of these panels, at least not that I've heard about. Steel is easy to work with and with modern coatings it can certainly be well maintained. Sure you can find some steel boats that are rust buckets, but you can find a lot of glass boats that are delaminating too. Boats, any boat that is not maintained will suffer from the harsh marine environment, I don't care what it's made out of; neglect it and it will deteriorate.

So, if you want to cross oceans in your glass boat, please do. Do it in your wood boat too, that's fine with me. However, don't dis me because you don't like my choice in boats. It's not only unfair, but it makes you look kinda like a jerk, ya' know?

Regards,

TJ

[Dman]

I thought i would mention one more thing that gets forgotten when talking about steel.Beat on it and when it gets bent it gets stronger,before it gets weaker,interesting material.Now that we are into telling stories.....I had a younger guy working with me at the shop.He was applying 100 tons pressure to a 4inch steel pin,he reported back to me that he tried heat and this thing wasn`t going to come out without burning.I told him to remove his equipment and i returned with a 15 pound sledge.With 3 mighty swings i stopped,i said try it now,he told me that he didn`t have to because he measured it and it never moved at all.I grabbed the gear and within 75 tons out it came.He came back the next day telling me it was a fluke because he did the math using his books and there was no way with that sledge i applied that much force to move it.There are things like shock waves i replied that just are not calculated in doing this work,you learn things in life outside of your books.I have worked in my fathers machineshop since i was 10 years old and am still surprised to this day by things you cannot learn from a book or by googling.I have shot holes through just about everything,crushed,bent,heated,froze,hit,ground,dr illed,polished,not to mention machined pretty much any material that has been around.When we talk about tests that were conducted by the military,or for the military,i tend to be very skeptical,usually the politics come into play sort of like the Patriot missile,that have their own agenda and the facts get lost in the shuffle.

[Brent Swain]

Put a piece of 1/8th inch plate in a vise . Pound it over 90 degrees with a hammer. Pound it straight. Then pound it over 90 degrees the other way. Now try the same trick with a piece of fibreglass.Drive over a steel soup can and squash it flat without putting a hole in it. Try to do the same with a fibreglas container.That is what we mean when we talk about toughness.
Brent

[Lightfin]

http://www.yachtsalvage.com/Listings/RI05068.htm


Here's a steel yacht looking for a new home and quite a bit of TLC & $$.

Would it be worth it??

[Yachts66]

Pretty boat. Charlie always had a good eye. My response is maybe. In order to really evaluate the hull you'll need to have an ultrasound (audiogage) performed. This is not all that expensive, but the boat does need to be on the hard to do it. From the description, it sounds like it received some maintenance anyway. The rust streak on the topsides doesn't concern me, provided you can find the source and take a look see for yourself. Steel boats tend to rust from the inside out, so you have to rummage around in the hard to reach parts of the bilge and see what you find, but again, the audiogage is the only way to know for sure. Figure what a new engine will cost you, sails and rigging and add that to your bid price. Then figure what it will take to bring her interior up to snuff and to paint her inside and out. Add all those numbers and look on yachtworld to see what like boats are selling for. Bottom line then is $$. If her ballast is lead and not concrete, and if she passes your visual inspections and you can afford it, make a bid. If she's got concrete in the bilge I'd walk away. My $0.02 anyways.

Regards,

TJ

[BC Mike]

And the purpose of the audiogage would be to determine ????? something that other posters say does not happen, and they do what ????? rust from the inside out. Some very reliable witnesses and designers have been defamed for saying that sought of stuff. Might be a good idea to check it with a plastic hammer as well. Otherwise it looks okay. I could not get the exterior pictures to show larger.
Michael

[Yachts66]

Well Michael, my son is a professional diver and just graduated from diving school last year. A part of his curriculum was learning to use the audiogage. He tells me a modern audiogage (called a triple phase I think) will tell you the thickness of the steel and even the thickness of the paint over the steel; so assuming you're using an up to date machine the test would tell you how thick the steel was at any given point on the hull. If she's rusting from inside or out and just painted over, the audiogage would tell you that. If there are problems with spot corrosion, the test would tell you that as well. Older machines required you to remove the paint which was problematic in itself, not to mention expensive. That's what my baby boy tells me anyway and as he just got a degree in this stuff I gotta believe him. For my money, the small fee for getting a steel hull tested with an audiogage is well worth the cost for the peace of mind it gives you.

Regards,

TJ

[Jeff H]

That appears to be one of the designs that I worked on during my time with Charlie Whitholz. These were based on a stock design that Charlie had developed in several lengths and with quite a few variations. Many of these boats were built with wooden deck cabin structures. They were better sailing boats but should be carefully checked for issues related to the wooden construction. Charlie actually had a 35 foot version of this design built for himself.

These were pretty nice sailing boats and quite attractive boats in the flesh. Charlie had quite an eye. They did not offer very good performance and were in many ways better suited as coastal cruisers than offshore boats. This particular boat looks well finished.

As others have mentioned careful inspection should be undertaken. The standard specification for protecting the interior of the steel on these boats was to sand blast the interior 'white' and then coat with a zinc rich, coal tar epoxy. It sounded impressive at the time, but as I mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, I was somewhat disappointed at how these boats have stood up over time. The worst areas of rust were adjacent to the longitudinal stringers where moisture got under the stringer and started corrosion that spread outward from the stringer, under the epoxy. I would start by looking at these areas near the turn of the bilge.

Respectfully,
Jeff

[Yachts66]

Jeff, didn't Charlie advocate foam spraying the interiors? That should have gone a long way towards protecting the steel after it was primed and painted.

TJ

[BC Mike]

Yachts66, I will admit to stirring it a bit here. In a very well written piece earlier it was mentioned that steel boats can rust from the inside out. Also a well known yacht designer said the same thing, yet both of these people and their comments were somewhat derided, and it was suggested that it was not true. Then we are given a link to a steel boat and it was correctly ( in my opinion ) suggested that the hull be checked for thickness. Well some of these comments do not match.
Also a bit of history. NZ built a fibreglass boat for the Americas Cup held in Western Australia. Dennis Conner said the only reason they would built a boat out of plastic was to cheat, and he went on to say it was because the thickness of the hull could not be determined. Dennis was informed that the technology was available, and that the local fishing boats were tested often. They did not use the word audiogage though, just called it something like a thickness tester. I appreciated your reply and am also pleased for your son. My low tech way would be to drill a hole in it, but that could be a problem for testing the entire hull.
Michael

[Yachts66]

Hey Michael, I don't know who "the well known yacht designer" was, but I think he's right on. Steel boats do rust from the inside out and for a reason. Generally, if the boat is rusting from the outside it's easy to detect and easy to correct the problem; however on the inside the opposite is true. Much of the interior of the boat is behind the joinery and not accessible, so any imperfection in the paint or damage turns to rust and the area is not only invisible but pretty much inaccessible. This is why foam spray after shot blasting and painting is such a good idea, as the foam not only protects the steel and paint from damage, but serves as an oxygen barrier and without oxygen you can not have rust. To argue otherwise is just nonsensical.

I had a conversation with another "well known" designer once and he said he didn't like sprayed foam because you couldn't inspect behind it. He prefers glued on foam blocks. I don't at all agree with that philosophy. The foam is a protective barrier; I don't want to disturb it. Gluing on foam blocks does not serve the same purposes, because oxygen can still get access to the surface in many places and thus rust can form.

Then again, I'm not a "well known" anything so what do I know?

Regards,

TJ

[Boracay]

If this boat http://www.yachtsalvage.com/Listings/43Morgan87.htm is in good condition it may be possible to buy it for less than the price of the steel boat + fixing it up.
Many seem to like the Morgan as a cruising boat.