I built a boat last year of my own design, a 15 1/2' flat bottom boat
for duckhunting. It was the forth boat I've built. The reason I
designed it myself, is that there was no existing design that could do
what I wanted the boat to do. It has worked out very well. I'm very
happy with the boat. I looked at several other boats, designed by
professionals, that were about the same size and got ideas about how I
would build my boat. I read a book by Sam Devlin, that was very useful
on Stitch and Glue boats (my boat is stitch and glue). A very
satisfying experience overall. It took me 5 months to build the boat,
but I fooled around with different designs and built and tested 4 scale
models over a 2 year period before I started building. The design part
of the project was more time consuming than the actual construction.
My advice to you is to consider the hundreds of sail boat plans out
there, and only design one yourself only if no existing plan can be
modified to suit your needs. Here's an old link to Devlin's book on
Amazon. Not sure if it still works:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846

Oh, and if you haven't been to bateau.com, definitley check it out.
Also there's www.amateurboatbuilding.com

Ed.


Thomas Veber wrote:
Hi all,

After building a simple plywood dinghy to test my capabilities, I now
feel
confident to go on and realise an old dream: To build my own sail
boat. It's
going to be trailer-able and around 15-16 feet. With centerboard and
a
little cabin with sleeping capabilities for two and a half.

I have searched the net, read a lot, and found many nice designs in
this
category. But then I realised... Why not take it one step further and
make
the design my self?

I have Googled some more, and found Carlson Designs "Hulls" program
and
started playing with it. Fantastic that you can get such a program
for free!

But I know, that designing a Hull is one thing. Designing a seaworthy
and
yet beautiful hull is another. And then designing centerboard,
rudder, rigg,
cabin, deck and so on is another thing. How do I know that the sails
will
not tear it all apart in the first breeze? How do I ensure that the
sailing
capabilities will be Ok?

For this I am now asking here for any good advice, books, web pages
etc.
which can help me. I have no particular time-frame, and I will rather
do
this good, than ending up with a useless boat after spending
thousinds of
hours in the shed building it.

Best regards,
Thomas