2bros, 2yrs build and 3yrs around the world!

[2brosana55ftr]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the valuable information thus far. We've been reading up on Samson ships all over the net and we are 100% this is a C Breeze 45'. We've tried reaching somone locally who knows the history but it's just not working out. The man who was building it died and we have no information connecting us to anything. It looks as though the plans have been followed in general but we havn't taken a tape measure to anything yet. It looks as thought someone finished the exterior of the hull, sanded, preped and coated but the coating has peeled in some spots and there ARE cracks, some of which are fairly deep. Not too wide just deep. At this point I don't see any way to know exactly how this guy built the boat in the way of mixture and application...not good!

Photos should be up in a day or so, I post a link as soon as they're online.

mudnut, your right. One, we love adventure and two, we sure as hell don't have 100k laying around! As for the Rover it was a Discovery. You can see it at www.get-rhino.com. I have a SII though and I love it! I'm Land Rover to the core! Fawking bulldust! What a nightmare that stuff got it every crack on my body! Had the best time of my life though. I can't wait to sail our ship to Manly Beach to see some friends we met.

Charlie, thanks for the note, I'll take a look at it. I'm starting to think that 2-3 years is a bit unrealistic. While we're both extremely craft and talented with our hands there's things that I see simply just taking for ever. The interior is what worries me..I've found interior companies but they all seem to require the ship. Does anyone take plans, design and build interiors for end user installation?? I've found some good books on Amazon.com so far.

Encore, do you have progress of yours documented anywhere? I'd love to see photos if possible.

I'll report back with more as this evolves.. Thanks all!

[GordMay]

I’ve worked with numerousl excellent marine finish carpenters. Every one of them templates their work as they go, either in craft paper or /w door skins and hot glue.
Measure, draw, build and afterfit just won’t work on a boat - where nothing is straight, square, level, or plumb.

[hellosailor]

2bros-
"At this point I don't see any way to know exactly how this guy built the boat in the way of mixture and application...not good!" The civil engineers call it "destructive testing". You need to send out a concrete sample and it can be analyzed and a report generated for you. Concrete usually being the realm of civil engineers, someone down there must be testing for all the new highway work and condominium construction.
The cracks are normally fixed by chipping out the concrete to a specific width around them, and then laying new concrete in--preferably the same mix or a stronger epoxy fortified mix. The procedure should be documented better from the may sources on ferrocement boatbuilding and repair. You can't just patch them over, and if the interior rebar has started rusting, the problem can be larger.

[encore]

2bros
I haven't posted any pictures of my project but there is very interesting site at http://www.geocities.com/sacolesuk . Sam has done an excellent narrative on his project and has made many transatlantic crossings since the project was completed. Building in the inside isn't much more complicated than building a house--just a lot of patterning and fitting for all of the different curves and compound curves. Just take your time and cut everything a little long and trim and fit. Probably the most important thing to keep in mind is that it's like eating an elephant, do it just one bite at a time--if you look at the whole project it can get overwhelming. This is a really good site, once you learn who are the self-proclaimed experts and compulsive posters and zip by them you can learn alot here.
Ellis

[jzk]

Run for your life! Take your hundred grand, go find a nice used sailboat, and go sailing! There will be plenty of repair work along the way to satisfy your quest for hard work...

[Alan Wheeler]

OK 2Bro's, you still don't need to panic. Get Colin Brooks's book on Ferrocement boats. It will help you with lots of info and will put your mind to rest of just what you can do with a hull that looks in very bad shape. Trust me, a very very bad looking hull can be made as good as new with not a lot of cost, except your hard work and time. Even if the boat has been very poorly built, it can be saved.
Hellosailer, NO you don't do destructive testing. It will tell you NOTHING. This is one of the really big misnomers out there. FC hulls are NOT built like a building and will not test like a slab of structural concrete and any results from such testing mean absolutly NOTHING.

Back to 2Bro's, cracks are not always an issue. Grinding them out is not always the way to repair. You need to asses and determin EXACTLY what the crack is, where it is in relation to what is in the hull and why it has formed. It maybe as simple as the ground is sinking unevenly under the hull and creating great unnatural stresses on the hull. Cracks can easily be repaired. If they are through to the Steel armature, then you would see great rivers of rust after 20yrs. So seeing as you haven't mentioned such as of yet, I would suggest you don't have major reoair issues.
Get Colin Brookes book. It is cheap and will give you a wealth of knowledge. I can help with contact info if you can not track it down.

About fitting out. It's not too scary actually. It just depends on what quality you want to go for. Your major cost will be determined by timber type. For framing, we use white pine here in NZ as it is very stable timber and easy to work with and cheap. For finishing timbers, well what ever you want to go with, providing it has a reputation for remaining stable. Personaly, I like light coloured timbers, it helps to brighten up the inside.
As Gord has stated, it is best to fit in place as you will always get slight minor discrepencies in the build as far as levels etc go.
Something of great help is a cheap laser level. You can mark reference points around the inside of the hull from one central point and then know everything is level.

[hellosailor]

Alan, without sending a sample out for testing, how do you know what mix was used? Especially when it is supposed to have been an oddball like "fer-o-lite" or whatever? How do you know how good a job was done with the mix, and if it has the proper strength the design calls for?

And without grinding out cracks to keystone in the new material...how do you fix them? Just rely on the outside appearance and throw epoxy at it? Is that really bet-your-life-in-the-sea reliable?

Apparently there are now two materials that may have been used, the FeraLite epoxy over rebar method, or the FeroLight(?) lightweight concrete over rebar. Are they sure for sure which it is now?

I've got nothing against fc boats, and even like the concept. It's the "some guy built this in his backyard and we don't know anything else" part of them that makes me say "RUN AWAY!" especially when the buyer doesn't know anything else about them--or boats--to start with. That's a lot of learning curve, and the resale value won't pay them back for it.

[Weyalan]

While this all sounds like a fun escapade, I would advise extreme caution! Personally I wouldn't touch this profect with a 100' barge pole. Bear in mind, we are talking about a 25-odd year old hull, of unknown provenance. It is unlikely to have been professionally built (if it was, there ould likely be some sort of record), and there seems to be no way of knowing whether it was made in a single shot, or multiples....

Leaving that issue aside, and assuming, for the sake of argument, that the hull is, by some miracle, reasonably sound (or at least possible to make so), I still wouldn't go near it. I would estimate that the cost of completing the boat would be such that one would be able to buy a proven 2nd hand yacht, ready to sail, for similar or less than what tyou are going to spend getting this project ready to sail.

Bear in mind, that even if one did complete the build, one would end up with a 25 year old ferro-cement boat who's hull is built using a technology that did not prove popular, and is of questionable provenance.

I would advise, as have others, keeping your coin, finding a decent 2nd hand boat (FC or otherwise) and saving yourself 2 - 3 years of hard work and cash outlay.

Having siad that, if you do decide to go for it, good luck!

[Alan Wheeler]

Sorry Hellosailor, I thought you meant to remove say a large panel of hull and have it load tested. this has and does happen and it tells absolutley nothing. But identifiying what the mixture is is a fair enough task. However, I think that should be easy to identify. Cement is quite different to Epoxy mortar in its consistancy. Plus the epoxy mortar method is expensive compared to cement and I doubt if someone would have gone to the expense of epoxy when they are after all, building a hull that was designed to be built by cheap methods. As for cracks, if they are sevear, then you are correct about grinding etc. But what I am trying to say is that if the cracks ar seriuose, one would expect there to be glaring evidence to support that after 20years of weather. So I am suggesting that those cracks need to be identified correctly as to what they are first. The fine hairline cracks should not be ground out you see, so it is important to identify them first. Different types of cracks appear for different reasons and each require a different means of approach.
I also agree with Weyalan. The cost of a hull is about 10-15% of the over all cost of a boat. So 85 to 90% of the budget still has to be found and as FC has a poor resale value, especially in the USA, then it would be far cheaper to buy a pre-existing speciman.

[mudnut]

How about if 2bros were to put the boat in the water for lets say 3 weeks?If it floated and didnt sink,then,maybe it would be a lot easier to assess the hull condition and the crack's.I would imagine that after puting the boat in the water,if it started taking a huge amount or small amount of water or even no water,it would be a better way of gaugeing the overall condition.Lets not forget,It was free,and they haven't got X amount of $$$ to go out and buy a boat and start from there.This surely was the reason their new adventure was born of!!Remember,if the hull is allright,these blokes are able to and willing to ,do this restoration over a few yrs.Personly,I shudder to think what a barge pole would do to any boat.LOL.Mudnut.

[hellosailor]

Mudnut-
"If it floated " Still wouldn't tell you if the boat was going to break her back doing 18 knots while falling off a 25' wave in the ocean. Or a 12' wave at 9 knots. It is, perhaps, somewhat boring to find out the likelihood of these events while still safely in port but if you do it at sea, it tends to make the cornflakes soggy.<G> (A damned inconvenience, not necessarily an emergency.)

Wheels-
Hell no, I was just talking about sending out a plug to have it tested, not installing screen doors.<G> Since the first mention was "FeraLite" and that's someone's *epoxy* system, unless there's no question of this not being that any more, I'd want to make sure someone didn't get Really Creative about one hull. After all, FeraLite (the epoxy system) sounds like it might produce a hull much lighter than ferrocement, it might be a good thing. Maybe someone decided to compromise and use a resin-fortified concrete instead, or a latex additive in the concrete. Or, for that matter, maybe someone used aluminum screening (no rust) plastic "snow fencing" or something else in it, so the rust weeps weren't obvious. Then again in lots of Florida there's no much free iron in the water system that you see huge rust stains on building walls (stucco) from where the lawn sprinklers have been hitting them. Dunno. Don't want to bet my cornflakes on "dunno."<G>

I've found one, and so far only one, memorable statement from our Fearless Leader over here: "Trust, but verify."

You know, we actually did have one instance here where the USCG shut down a life raft repack station because of bricks, seaboots, and other material being found in what was supposed to be a repacked life raft cannister?

So, with a 'dream boat' hull that the dreamer, for whatever reason, couldn't or didn't complete...which has been sitting unsaleable and unsold in one of the hottest boat markets in the US for 20 years...

Well, it probably has potential as a landmark hot dog stand!

[encore]

2 bros,
ferroboats.com has Collin Brookes book listed (it's his site) and he also has many of the Samson plans. If I remember right I paid under $400 for the plans for my boat. The site also has a good listing of ferro boats for sale (along with some bare hulls). If you are really interested don't let the age of the hull bother you. Because they aren't valued very highly, quite a few hulls sit in parking lots and aren't advertised agressively. My boat had about as many problems as you could stack up. I needle scaled the hull (it has some of the characteristic cracks), removed the engine and ballast and basically started over. The hull was plastered on a cedar mold (not advised any more) and has some of the voids typical of this type of construction. The hull is as hard as rock and is extremely fair, when the outside applications are finished it should look like fiberglass. For small patches with Portland, there are number of preps that provide good adhesion. Congresive LPS is expensive but a super bonding material (It's used now in the construction trades.) I use West epoxy with mostly Portland as a filler and it really grabs on and once cured you can't hammer it off. Some have tested it on glass and couldn't remove it. If you check Brookes' site or book, he recommends it in some cases.

The biggest issue about a project like this is time, and don't underestimate it. I had a window of 8 or 9 years, enjoy building (a house, airplane, houseboat and numerous other smaller projects) and so far it has really been enjoyable. I also love to sail and have a Catalina 25 that I trailer sail on Superior so that urge is somewhat satisfied. Cost, I'll have somewhere between $20 and $30 thousand in my project, and there are many sailable boats out there for this or less. But I like my boat and in the end that's what counts for me.
Ellis

[Alan Wheeler]

The big advantage of doing it yourself! you know the boat intimately. And that can be a big plus when conditons are bad.
OK, so this is where I am coming from and why I am in support of the hull. Of course some home work will be required to confirm this.
Here in NZ and Oz, there was good support for those building FC hulls by Hartley, Brookes and the Ferro builders association. IF the builder chose to take the support of course. This support covered both the Hartley and Samson designs. Samson was a Canadian design and was also well supported via Samson in the Northern Hemisphere. So it is possible that the hull was built with excellent knowledge backing the builder up. If it was any other design than those two names, then I would say stay away. Especially a design never meant to be FC. That was one area of mistakes made in FC and giving it a bad rap.
OK, so it just means some confirmation. How do you confirm??? Well first of all, there will be many tell tale signs of a poorly built hull. The first glaringly obviuose and the most detrimental is the hull thickness. Many that didn't know what they were doing, thought the Cement thickness is what gave the boat it's strength and over applied the plaster to make a doubly thick and incorrectly assumed stronger hull. All this results in is an over weight and out of balance hull. The second issue to give FC a bad rap.
The next issue, was the mesh. There were four meshes that seem to crop up. The correct and most highly recomended mesh to use is a bird netting(not Chicken netting, which has a larg diameter hole) made by the Tinsel wire company. It is small mesh diameter and is made by this company only, making a little difficult and expensive to get hold of. The next was steel reinforcing mesh. It has also been used with good results. It is not considered as good as Bird netting, but is workable. The detrimental ones were the Chicken netting and the worst of all expandemet. Expandimet was disaterouse. Although very rarely come across as the few boats built of this stuff don't exist anymore. They simply can't support their own weight. It was mainly found in a commercial builders product whom no longer exists because of the failures.
From there on, it is determining what the cracks actually are and why they occured. Cracks can be easily repaired. But you need advice on why they accured. Often cracks are found around internal stiffer structures. Like a frame. A crack may show up either side of the frame.
I suspect that the boat is settling into the ground slightly unevenly. Over 40ft of ground, there is always going ot be a hard patch and softer patch that all together will support the boat unevenly. Over 20yrs, this will cause small structural cracks. If the boat is floated and the hull allowed to settle to what it is intended, plus the pressure is distributed evenly over the hull, then many of these cracks will close up. Of course, they will need to be bonded to seal them and to tie it all back together. But that isn't hard.

To wrap up, all in all, if the hull looks to be fair, chances are, the guy took some time and did the job properly. If the Hull looks compleatly sloppy in apperance, then chances are, these are tell tale signs the guy didn't know what he was doing and so the internal structure may be bad news. However, you would all be shocked at how bad a condition an FC hull can be in a still be brought back to life. Colin Brookes has even stated, with some of the bad nightmares of boats out there, he has only ever had one or two over his lifetime, that they have simply advised the owner to demolish.

[2brosana55ftr]

Despite some of the negative feedback we've gotten we're still pushing on. Big bro secured a spot at a DIY marina with full facilties this week. Right now we're looking into having the ship moved there. Any suggestions on this? The plan is to get her there and work from the inside out...our reasoning behind this as that as soon as we can have the inside finished we can live aboard the ship while completing it. I know, I know crazy but that's just how we do things. Wide open and full force!

The space at the marina is around $600/mo with full workshop, laundry, showers, water, power, ETC. You ditch a combined rent of around $2100 a month and both of us live aboard well get to our goal much much faster. We are going to order the plans from Samson to see how things were supposed to be on the inside and then start to form how we want it setup. I'm going to do the rough framing and layout and we will find a custom carpenter to complete the work. We want something really nice when we''re finished so think it'll be worth the dough. Savvy?

Encore, thanks for the link. We are spending a good deal of time there already. I think about this project in little pieces and one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs comes to mind...I did it one piece at a time and it didn't cost me a dime. HAH! We wish!

I will be posting photos of the cracks soon and you guys can give us your opinions.

Still trying to find info on the construction of the hull. While it's covered in leaves and mold the hull actually looks EXTREMELY smooth and well built. Hopefully this is a good sign that the guy who built it paid attention to detail.

Back to cost, can someone throw up a quick outline of what they think might be spent? Engine, Sails, Interior, Appliances, Water Systems, Bildge Pumps, ETC...we have a basic idea but never having built a ship I know there are things we are missing miss-calculating. Any help would be appreciated.

As for putting the boat in the water..we could move it from one marina to the other by water. I wonder if the cost of putting in the water at one marina and removing at the next would be cheaper than having it put on a truck and moved. We have another power boat which we could tugg it with and the other marina isn't that far. This might kill two birds with one stone. Floatability and savings.. Any suggestions?

hello, as for the boat sitting the guy who didn't finish. The ship is approximately 20 years old. He spent 3-5 years building to where it is today and then passed away in a car accident. The ship has sat for that past 12-15 years as a result of no one being able to claim it I believe. The guy had no kin and the marina wasn't going to pay to move it so it just sat. I'm sure that there was some sort of statue that allowed the marina to acquire it after a certain amount of time. They have never tried to sell it until recently [the reason I know not] but it's not like this thin has sat on the market for 20 years un touched.

More soon guys! Thanks.

[hellosailor]

2bros-
"I wonder if the cost of putting in the water at one marina and removing at the next would be cheaper than having it put on a truck and moved."
Only if you are SURE it will make it. If the hull sinks, you'd probably be billed for salvage and removal fees, which could make the truck seem cheap. Then you'd still need to pay the launch fee at one side and the haul fee at the other. If your schedule is flexible, you can try asking some of the trucking companies if they can give you a break (often over 50%) for a short haul from here to there AT THEIR CONVENIENCE. They often will wind up with a half day or day that the trucks are idle and they are often willing to give you a break if they can call you on zero notice and say "Can we work today?" to fill in the idle time.

On the costs...I'm a big fan of using a spreadsheet on the computer:

ITEM.....minimum...catalog...maximum

List each item you need in each system/group, i.e. Electrical, Engine, Rigging, deck hardware. As you find out what you forgot <G> you just add a line item. For the prices, you put in the absolute minimum price that you might buy/scrounge it for on the perfect day, then the price from a known source like the WM catalog (with apologies to our hosts, only because it is a thicker book) then a higher price for the "worst case" you might have to pay. That's mainly so you can also figure LABOR using the same columns, figuring marine contractors or yards as the worst case, and the other two columns for what you think it would cost you (as a minimum) and what it would cost you at twice that much time (the boating norm<G>).

Anything that's not in a catalog (like sails) you call a loft and say "Look, I'm restoring a boat and need a ballpark price for...can you help me?" Most will. Sail prices vary with "busy season" or slack, so "busy season, we want to sail now" would be part of your max pricing for them.

Makes it easy to see the magnitude of the job, and keep track of all the many items that accrue. Like, an engine may be $15,000, but then you also need to add the mounts, the bed, the controls, the instruments and panel, the fuel tank and plumbing, the hull fittings for same, and maybe a fire supression system for the engine room. And since there's a labor figure to add for every one of those...I find the computer is easier since it can keep and change the running totals without a lot of erasing.

Seriously, you may have found a bargain. But if you go over the boat, comparing it, say, to a picture from a boating magazine and using a catalog to see what each of those parts will cost...Just check over the totals before you sink any heavy money into it.

In the US laws vary in each state, but usually there is a "yard lien" or "storage lien", "warehouseman's lien" or something similar that is used in these cases. If the man died and left no estate, no one in charge of probate, no one to contact the yard...They could attempt to deal with it as simple abandoned property, which usually allows disposal (by "finders keepers") after one year. Beyond that, they can file a storage lien saying "such and so left this in storage with us and hasn't paid storage charges for xxx months, the payment owed is #### and we're seeking title to the property as payment for the storage" and that allows titled property--like boats and cars--to be transferred legally to the storage yard. Then they can legally sell it off. Requires some time and money for a lawyer from the yard though. If it sat for 12 years, that's just called someone at the yard didn't want to bother with the paperwork, and was banking the land.
A lot of yards in the US have 'yard queens' that way, boats where someone has been sick, the heirs have been arguing over the estate, etc. The really busy yards won't, they'll tell the owner "pay up or we file" and they'll get rid of it.