Really how long how hard is it to build a boat

[peb]

Originally Posted by babyhauler

Hi I hear about people taking years to build boats.

Then I read that sharpie sailboats are the easiest boats to build. I have searched all over the internet and can't find the answer to this question- how much time and effort should I budget to build my own big sharpie sailboat?

Like this 46' Reuel Parker design: https://parker-marine.com/product/sharpie-46-new-haven/

I'm trying to size up the cost:

Assuming I worked at it alone 8 hours a day, how long would it take a reasonably skilled person to build it?

I'd love especially love to hear reports from people who actually built their own large sharpie sailboats.

Thanks!

I think I can add a little reasonable insight to this. I launched a boat I built from scratch this past March. It is a 24'7" gaff yawl, weighing in at around 5100#. It is glued-lap construction on laminated frames. Full keep, drawing 2.'"9", with a centerboard.

My last boat, which was launched in 2003, was a 29' daysailor with a modern fractional rig. Great boat for PHRF racing and daysailing with my kids. But it was a bit of work to single hand it in anything over a fresh breeze. As my sons were about to be grown and gone, and I wanted a boat I could reliably sail myself in heavily weather. Also, I wanted one that was a little more accommodating for my wife, ie a decent cabin with an enclosed head.

Background: pretty decent carpenter, pretty decent sailor with good experience, and had helped a bit on another build 20 years ago or so.

If I look back in my emails, I first started communicating with the designer, Iain Oughtred (RIP), in 2014. Started lofting the boat parttime back in 2015. So 9 years. The first 4 years I just built parts in my garage and put them in storage. I had built all the frames, the rudder, centerboard, dead wood, deck beams, and bare spars over the next 4 years working maybe 10-15 hours a week. In late 2017 I found a shop I could cheaply least and thought I could get it built in 3 years. 3 years turned into 6 years pretty easily.

The total man-hours I put into the boat is somewhere around 5000, so three years part time. That does not include the hours and hours spend on the internet trying to source parts or trying to figure out the next phase of the build. If I counted that, probably make it 7 to 8 thousand hours. But that is a complete guess, I did not track that at all.

Total cost of materials, that I know quite accurately as I needed to save all of the receipts in order to eventually get the boat titles and registered. That summed up to a bit over $70K, excluding sails, which put the total closer to 74K. That does not include the cost of leasing the shop.

Here are things to keep in mind:

1) if you want to go sailing, its a really dumb way to buy a boat. I can't stress that enough. Dumb. I love sailing and am glad I am back to sailing and maintaining a boat on the water.
2) You can't have 2 hobbies. I thought I could, but eventually had to just haul my old boat out of the water and forget about going sailing.
3) Unless you are single with zero responsibilities, it will NOT be your top priority in life. Quite the opposite, it will be the bottom. From 2019 to 2024, there were multiple periods where I did not work on the boat for 3 months. That happened at 4 times. And there were multiple periods where there was a 2-4 week hiatus. This is called life, it good. I am not complaining at all. If you are married, your wife will probably think its a cool idea at first but by the time you are done, she will be really ready for you to be done.
4) Epoxy and supplies will be the largest cost. Do not skimp on quality of wood, as that will be less than 10% of the overall cost.
5) It really helps to have a project management background and mindset, as you will always need to be planning the next phase while working on the current. And you really need to think out the proper order of doing everything.
6) You really have to be willing to hunt and peck for parts and it can be really frustrating finding the piece that works.
7) You need to be a good carpenter, a decent metal worker, a good electrician, and a good rigger.

As to the boat you are considering, you can assume that the time to build is proportional to the displacement. So that boat could take 3 times as long as mine. There are people who build 15000 lb boats by themselves, but it is a really big undertaking.

While hull construction type is important to being able to build the boat by yourself, it is not the end-all be all. I laid down the strong back and mounted the molds between Christmas and New Years, 2017. I had a hull-turning party in late October, 2018. So I built the hull, dead-wood, sheathed it in xynole, and faired and primed, in about 10 months. That was full time. You are maybe 25% done at that point.

Yes a sharpie would be easier to build, but don't think that matters relative to time. Where it is important is the fact that you are building by yourself. It would be impossible to build a traditional carvel boat that size by your self, too big of pieces to handle. I built in glued lap, and it had the big advantage of being able to tackle it all on my own.

From everything I have heard, Ruel Parker is a good designer to work with and he builds/designs good boats.

If you really need a 46 foot boat that weighs in at 15000 lbs, I would not proceed with a build. But if you can go down 50%, say to a 30ft boat, it can probably be done.

So how do I feel about having done this right now:

Now, I am really happy right. I have a boat that I have gone sailing in 25 knots of wind by myself. It is by no means fast, but I am having a blast with it. I know exactly how everything is made and put together. I know what drives me crazy about many boats out there and I was able to make sure those details were taken care of. But it is still a work in progress as I flush out the infantile bugs. I don't know if I would do it again, but right now I am happy I did and quite proud of the work.

[peb]

Originally Posted by babyhauler

OK In summary:

- If married, do not build a boat unless your spouse starts and leads the project, or unless you are already divorced
- Carefully research to compute how many hours are required, and multiply by 5
- Assume those hours will be spread over 10+ years
- Assume zero resale value, save $10k+ to pay to have it scrapped when done with it
- Either convert your entire house into a shop, or move out of your house and live on the boat project property.
- No doing anything else during the boat construction, no other work, hobbies, social or family activities take precedence over building the boat
- For a large boat, assume only a 20% chance of ever completing the project

I thank everyone for the awesome advice. Helps me see building anything bigger than a kayak is not remotely compatible with me current life. I love the stories and observations most of all.

Sounds like building a boat would be super fun though.

Well, I did not read the thread before writing my previous response. But I would say:

1) Your spouse has to totally be on board at the beginning for sure.
2) multiply by 5 is a high. I would say I should have multiplied by 2
3) For a boat your size, definitely 10+ years
4) zero resale value? Probably. Scrap: not for sure about that
5) I actually moved during the build, that accounted for 2 of those 3 month periods of inactivity. But my shop also served as my office for work.
6) Impossible. That is why it will take 10 years
7) 20% chance? If it is a 15000 lb boat, I would say that might be high. I just don't think that size of build is reasonable for a single person doing the work.

[MicHughV]

While I was building my boat, I got to know many other amateur boat builders, so I offer some observations.

We all came from a wide selection of the general populace and on average I'd say most were in their mid 20's to early 30's.

While some, like me, had done some dinghy sailing in our youth, we were for all intents and purposes neophytes in every sense of the word.
Not only that, I lived 400 miles from the nearest coastline, where there were no boats in sight anywhere. Others could tell the same story.

Having a lack of sailing skill is one thing, but none of us had ever built a boat either.

Everyone had their own perspective of what comprised....for them...the perfect boat.

These ranged in size from 21' to 56'.
Hull materials ranged from ferro-cement to plywood to strip plank, to fiberglass and steel.

I think it would be fair to say, that we were all caught up in the romance of the idea.

For me, my story started in High School when someone shoved a National Geographic magazine in my face detailing the voyage of " Dove", and it's skipper Robin Lee Graham at the time the youngest sailor to sail around the world (mid 60's) . This, I thought, is the life for me. Sometime later someone else shoved a "Bruce Roberts, Build your own Boat" catalog in my face. As I thumbed thru' this catalog, with each page, the boats got larger. When I got to the BR38 ketch, there was something magic about a boat with two masts. I immediately realized this was the one for me, though at the time I couldn't tell a ketch from a stick in the ground.

For others, it was a similar tale. Boat designs ran the gamut from a schooner to trimarans, sloops, cutters and ketches and even a junk rigged boat. Such is the magic of boats.

As stated before, none of us had ever built a boat and at best, barely knew how to hold a hammer the right way up.

For sure, most all of us were in a relationship with one or another woman, none of which really shared our passion....or madness as the case may be, but tagged along to see how things would turn out. When the realization dawned on them, that this was going to be a multi-year project, most all took off for greener pastures.

Now, we come to the sad part. Despite all the dreaming, blood, sweat and tears, many of these projects never made it to completion and were left to rot away in the rain.
For most of these, it was the realization, on part of the builder, that this was not going to be done in one year, nor two, nor three.

For those that did make it to the water, only a few made it anywhere.

So that is a realistic view of things pertaining to building your own boat.

For me, it was a blast. looking back, I can say it was some of the best years of my life. It was the adventure of a lifetime and I reveled in the whole thing. My homebuilt boat ended up being my home for the next 15 years or so, after which, two more followed.

But it's really a passion for the young. At the time, I had no money, not much of anything. If I had $10 in my pocket, I felt "rich".
Neither me nor my boat had any insurance of any kind and I never had an idea as to where I was going to end up next.
Interestingly, often came across other guys from different countries following more or less in the same path I took.

It is a fun thing to do, it really is. It's not an easy thing to do, but it is fun, but one must stay grounded in the reality of the task.

[MicHughV]

To babyhauler,

There is another thread on here about Wharram Cats, in fact, I think there are several threads about Wharram Cats. These are about as simple a craft as you'll hope to ever find. Most all are homebuilt from plywood. They come in all sizes.

Many successful voyages have been accomplished by these boats.

Just google " Wharram Cats" and you'll find dozens of links, websites, etc, pertaining to these boats.

Might be something for you.

[Sailing55]

What you will learn about yourself if you are one of the few who can conceive of, build/restore and launch a sizeable boat, is immeasureable. Sitting on deck in the evening, remembering every screw, bolt, plank, metalwork, rigging, every coat of paint, nonskid, etc., is a feeling that is virtually impossible to express in words to another human being. I met an old timer in Sausalito many years ago, and told him I was ready to take a chainsaw to my project. He pointed to a schooner at anchor, and told me it took 20 years to build. He said the secret for him was to lock everything up when he reached burnout, and go do something else with his life. Coming back to the project fresh and with renewed energy got him through to the end. I took his advice, and it worked.
You have nothing of substance to lose and everything to gain...

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by Sailing55

What you will learn about yourself if you are one of the few who can conceive of, build/restore and launch a sizeable boat, is immeasureable. Sitting on deck in the evening, remembering every screw, bolt, plank, metalwork, rigging, every coat of paint, nonskid, etc., is a feeling that is virtually impossible to express in words to another human being. I met an old timer in Sausalito many years ago, and told him I was ready to take a chainsaw to my project. He pointed to a schooner at anchor, and told me it took 20 years to build. He said the secret for him was to lock everything up when he reached burnout, and go do something else with his life. Coming back to the project fresh and with renewed energy got him through to the end. I took his advice, and it worked.
You have nothing of substance to lose and everything to gain...

^ this! And one more advice came into mind.. Instead of counting "beans", money and work hours it's more beneficial to count weight. Get a scale and weight everything you carry in the boat shed and weight everything you carry out. Didn't do it myself so i'm I'm possibly +-15% of the total weight but can't really know for sure now..

[Lepke]

I built many boats, wood steel, and fiberglass. Steel is the fastest. Before my first wood boat I was already a journeyman shipwright. And I had all the tools and the money to buy supplies as needed. I have built solo, with a partner, and with a crew.

You need a plan and goal for each day. If not, you putter around and don't get much done. In the end, you spend many more hours than you expect. Eventually you will sell the boat. It's best if you build a boat many people will want. I don't think most of the people looking for a 46' sailboat have a Sharpie in mind.

My first wood boat took double the hours estimated. By the time I was done, I wanted something different. Lucky for me someone told me to build a popular boat and it sold quickly. I built 3 wood commercial fishing boats with a partner. Each on over a winter. Later 2 large wood schooners with a crew. I quit doing wood boats in the 1970s because all the good wood was gone. It's hard enough finding enough good wood for a repair. And you don't find it at the local home repair store.
Just sayin'

[JPA Cate]

Originally Posted by Lepke

I built many boats, wood steel, and fiberglass. Steel is the fastest. Before my first wood boat I was already a journeyman shipwright. And I had all the tools and the money to buy supplies as needed. I have built solo, with a partner, and with a crew.

You need a plan and goal for each day. If not, you putter around and don't get much done. In the end, you spend many more hours than you expect. Eventually you will sell the boat. It's best if you build a boat many people will want. I don't think most of the people looking for a 46' sailboat have a Sharpie in mind.

My first wood boat took double the hours estimated. By the time I was done, I wanted something different. Lucky for me someone told me to build a popular boat and it sold quickly. I built 3 wood commercial fishing boats with a partner. Each on over a winter. Later 2 large wood schooners with a crew. I quit doing wood boats in the 1970s because all the good wood was gone. It's hard enough finding enough good wood for a repair. And you don't find it at the local home repair store.
Just sayin'

Thank you for this post, Lepke. I know you've been angry at women here, but I thik this is an informative and honest post, and I think you should get a gold star for it. Thanks for giving the information straight out without some axe to grind.


Ann

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by Lepke

snip..

You need a plan and goal for each day. If not, you putter around and don't get much done. In the end, you spend many more hours than you expect. Eventually you will sell the boat. It's best if you build a boat many people will want. I don't think most of the people looking for a 46' sailboat have a Sharpie in mind.

...snip

May i beg to disagree. If you going to have a boat many people want, BUY one! There's no better good reason to DIY a boat for yourself but when it's different from what's on sale. You are not a professional boatbuilder who builds boats for sale and must earn a living doing that.
That said there's a caveat. Be damn sure what you want, sail first with other boats, read books, get salty. Use 10yrs to plan your boat, with or without a pro designer but be educated about your desires and reality.

[catsketcher]

I have built 4 largish boats (from 19ft -38ft - plywood to foam/carbon)

There is plenty correct in the messages so far. You don't need to build a boat to get what you want now days. I did back in 1997 - I wanted a performance cat and couldn't get it any other way.

But you can do it quickly

I met a guy 10 years ago who built a 42ft foam/glass Crowther cat IN BETWEEN cruising seasons. He sold his previous boat in October (here in Australia) and was cruising in his new boat in May. It wasn't a bad boat either.

He and his wife worked really fast and well - set up their shop, had help from their son and just worked 90 hour weeks for 6 months. That is doable. Peter Snell built a 38ft trimaran in 4 months on his own. My mate had about 10 days off in 5 years as he built a beautiful 13 metre Schionning cat.

I want to do a major refit on my cat and I want to go away - live in the car, strip the boat, say goodbye to the family for two months and get stuck into it - tooling up and down is a pain and makes things really slow. Being super focussed for a short time is one way to get heaps of progress done.

But don't build the sharpie - there is almost certainly a boat you could love as much as it. Find that and buy it instead.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Sailing55

What you will learn about yourself if you are one of the few who can conceive of, build/restore and launch a sizeable boat, is immeasureable. Sitting on deck in the evening, remembering every screw, bolt, plank, metalwork, rigging, every coat of paint, nonskid, etc., is a feeling that is virtually impossible to express in words to another human being. I met an old timer in Sausalito many years ago, and told him I was ready to take a chainsaw to my project. He pointed to a schooner at anchor, and told me it took 20 years to build. He said the secret for him was to lock everything up when he reached burnout, and go do something else with his life. Coming back to the project fresh and with renewed energy got him through to the end. I took his advice, and it worked.
You have nothing of substance to lose and everything to gain...

This is so accurate. I was a bit younger and I thought I could go straight through. I tried. I worked for years without a break. No vacations. No stopping. That was especially important when I was married because it was my responsibility to get the boat done.

I worked through and past burn out.

when the divorce came, I had to take some time off, obviously. I had to set up a new business because we were doing charters and this was going to be a charter boat. And she drained out the bank account and left. I didn’t even know that was legal because I was younger and naïve at the time. But it was perfectly within her rights to drain out all of the joint money and vanish. so I was left without any funds to complete the boat and no source of income since chartering was my income at the time. It was at that time that the burnout caught up with me as well. But I learned to adapt.

I had to take an entire year off building at that point to set up a new business and reestablish a reliable income to make it through. that year was not a break at all. I was working at least as hard as I was on the boat which was also full-time and seven days a week.

from there, I managed to recover and got everything running together. The business, the boat building. It was all going together at once. Then super burnout hit. I have never felt anything like that before. And I’ve always been an overachiever. it was a strange feeling from the center of your chest. When you worked on certain things, it was like a weakness or a crippling type feeling that just started in the center of your chest. It made you unable to think and your body physically couldn’t move properly.

I had to take some real time off after this. I hired more people at my business to help run it and I got a truck camper and went off to tour the continent. it was a really good break not looking at any boat building. I put the boat on a mooring. I went to music festivals. I met people all around the country. A complete break. I forgot all about the boat on this mooring. then, in Los Angeles, I looked up at a television in a restaurant and saw the hurricane. I quickly tried to book a flight but they were already canceled. The entire mooring field dragged and all of the boats piled into the travel lift area. They all smashed against the wall including mine. It was very stressful but I drove straight back. Route 10 from Los Angeles to Jacksonville. When I got there, I saw my damaged boat. It was heavily damaged. Not structurally thankfully, but cosmetically it was looking awful and it had been perfect when I left it. Absolutely perfect.

this created even more burn out because I went backwards. I am still doing the work to try to bring back that hurricane damage. It was low in priority. I have been working on other things. Now is the time to fix the hurricane damage and keep plugging away on the interior, which is actually very rewarding. I’m really enjoying the interior work because I don’t have to think. It’s easy. Designing the cabinetry is a little bit frustrating and too much thinking, but going through the motions to make it look good and doing plumbing and electrical is like I could do it in my sleep. And I really really like that. It’s a little effort, high reward.
this summer I put in the vanity from the thread, redid hatches that I have done three times now because they always leak. Don’t try flush deck hatches. Trust me. They don’t work. The gutters plug up and they leak. I also did my permanent electrical this summer. It’s a wonderful system. 300 amp DC. Got all 1500 W solar running. 3 kW inverter. I make about 50 A when the sun is shining. it’s a distributed system. So neat and easy compared to a standard system. 4 gauge wire distributes the DC power around the boat in a big circle. add a couple of points, there are distributed electrical panels. Small ones. They power things that are nearby. It weighs less, there are less wires everywhere, there are no long runs and bundles of wires,, I’m extremely happy with the outcome. it’s so simple compared to typical production boat installs.

OK I’m rambling. Sorry folks. I just wanted to share how the burn out will affect you even if you don’t think it will. You face life challenges along at the same time as you face all of the boat building challenges and it can be pretty overwhelming. You need breaks. Sometimes you even need to take an entire year off of the build.

[Colin Stone]

We had a 22m steel hull, replica of a 1920s luxemotor barge, built for us in NL to a sailaway spec. That took the builder 18 months which wasn't a concern as we went over for 2 weeks in 5 and overalls on got stuck in with the boatyard builders doing lots of stuff I was happy to do myself - everything except the hull welding, painting teak wheelhouse. The yard quote was accurate to the euro cent, so a very good deal.
We finished the interior in UK on the Thames which took 3 years for most of it. We got KEI back over to France a year before I retired. I had a marine background with a new ship build and a couple of refits under my belt.
Even so, there were days when I got very little done, particularly in the early days when trying to deal with all the curves at the sharp end.

In 20 years since, our ship has been fantastic and there is very little I would change.

The reason to DIY is well expressed by:

"It is for that reason, perhaps, that when it comes, the desire to build a boat is one that cannot be resisted. It begins as a little cloud on a serene horizon. It ends by covering the whole sky, so that you can think of nothing else. You must build to regain your freedom. And always you comfort yourself with the thought that yours will be the perfect boat, the boat that you may search the harbours of the world for and cannot find."

Racundra's First Cruise, Arthur Ransome, 1923

[coopec43]

Originally Posted by Lepke

I built many boats, wood steel, and fiberglass. Steel is the fastest. Before my first wood boat I was already a journeyman shipwright. And I had all the tools and the money to buy supplies as needed. I have built solo, with a partner, and with a crew.

You need a plan and goal for each day. If not, you putter around and don't get much done. In the end, you spend many more hours than you expect. Eventually you will sell the boat. It's best if you build a boat many people will want. I don't think most of the people looking for a 46' sailboat have a Sharpie in mind.

Just sayin'

You are as bad as my Son! He (a heavy diesel fitter) tells me I should only have the tools on the yacht that are required for the day's work. To keep the peace I've tried it and it doesn't work. It is not as if we are re-assembling a motor or piece of machinery- we are constructing a yacht from scratch with no workshop manual.

It is all very well for you (as a journeyman shipwright) to say "You need a plan and goal for each day. If not, you putter around and don't get much done. But we are not journeyman shipwrights and probably we have never built a yacht before.

[LakeSuperior]

In mid 1960 my Father started a 5 year project to build a traditional 36 ft yawl by purchasing a roll of prints from an architect. It was launched in 1980 and made ready to sail a couple years later. Every year during the build he said 5 more years to complete. He said that for 15 years. It has now been sailing every season since the first launch.

The construction is strip planked teak on white oak. The strips were glued with resorcinol and edge nailed with Monel ring nails. Took him 10 years to lay up the hull. Each strip was fitted using carbon paper and hand sanding to a line-to-line fit.

All the other fasteners are silica bronze. He build the spars from Sitka spruce. He used the best hardware money could buy at the time.

Like all home builders, he made some changes to the design and overbuilt (built somewhat heavy.) Toward the end of the project he was a little burned out on boat building.

[Fore and Aft]

Chotu is so right about burn out. We went hard for 18 months, launched the yacht and then just collapsed in a heap for a month.
By the time l finished restoring my first yacht when I was a teenager my boss told me I was like a zombie.
But that's our standard operating procedure for us on all our projects. You either give 110% or go home.
Chotu I feel your pain about the cat being damaged. When I was an apprentice I restored a timber cruiser for a client that couldn't afford a tradesmen to do the job. After the launching I was enjoying a well deserved drink. The boss approached me and said your boats coming back. I thought he was joking but the owner had badly collided with a wharf pile and needed a whole heap more work.
Lake Superior that is a sweet looking yacht.
Cheers