Why build a wooden yacht based on an outdated working boat?
Not only are these boats ideal for the cruising yachtsman but they attract notice wherever they sail due to their sheer character and beauty, two things that are often lacking in production boats. Traditionally built, long-keeled, wooden boats based on the working boats of the last days of commercial sail are the culmination of generations of experience put in to their design by the sailors (pilots, fishermen, small cargo carriers) and builders of centuries gone by. Their vessels were built with combinations of factors in mind: speed, cargo carrying capacity, seaworthiness and seakindliness, power under sail and ultimately for ease of handling when short of crew. Different combinations for different end uses. And some – including pilot cutters, fishing luggers and smacks – were snapped up as soon as they were released from their commercial roles by cruising yachtsmen who recognised and valued these qualities.
This is the tried and tested tradition that we, and others, are picking up on by building new boats in the old mould. So we build wooden yachts based on working boats. The advantages are beam, depth, weight where it matters - wooden boats carry momentum, choose when to go through and when to go over waves (as opposed to bobbing along on the top) – comfort, seakindliness, the culmination of centuries of experience, beauty and they are relatively easy for the amateur to maintain and even repair.
Wood, a natural, sustainable material with its own buoyancy, has always been used to build boats. It is the obvious material. |
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Is wood more expensive to maintain and does it last?
Wooden boats should not be more expensive to maintain. They only have this reputation because they last so long that people are looking at very old wooden boats and comparing the cost of maintaining them with the cost of maintaining shiny new plastic boats. Not a fair comparison. Constant vigilance will be massively rewarded. I would like to say that if paint, varnish and anti-fouling are kept up then the boat will last indefinitely. In fact this is only partially true. The boat also needs to be used. If it is sailed and kept aired when it is not being sailed; if knocks and scrapes are touched up with paint or varnish; and if any repairs after accidents are carried out properly - then a wooden boat should last indefinitely. Look around at the ex-working boats that have survived well over 100 years.
Our boats are built using bronze fastenings, rather than steel or iron which rust and react with the wood to its considerable detriment. So if working boats (that were fastened using steel or iron as well as being given a hard life before becoming yachts) can last over 100 years, what does that say about the longevity boats being built traditionally but using bronze fastenings? |