Same with boats. If you're willing to stand the risk that the boat won't be
any good and will have zero value (or worse, drown someone), have a nice
trip.


Oh for heaven's sake. A guy who's actually built a boat appears, asks a
respectful question, and this is the sort of useless quack people make.
If every aspiring designer had listened to this sort of cynical
self-defeating advice, we'd still be paddling across the river on a log.
You know, we shouldn't have anything to do with those guys with their wild
talk about hollowing out their logs. I have it on the best authority that
hollow logs attract bad juju, and anyway my grand-daddy paddled across the
river on a regular log and it was good enough for him, so it's good enough
for me.

There are a number of useful books: Google for Dave Gerr, Sam Devlin, and
some of the Gray Eminences of boat design like the Atkins and Chappelle
(primarily a historian, but vernacular design that has stood the
test of time is very often superior to things designed on the basis of
current trends.) Marchaj is a good source for empirical data. There are
several active boat design and building groups on Yahoo-- very useful
communities, and largely devoid of pointless discouragement. Make a list
of boats you like and research their designers. Often they'll have written
about their work, which will give useful insights into the design
philosophy they have developed. Eventually you'll develop your own, and
who knows? Sure, the odds are your boat will be no better and perhaps
worse in some respects than a design from the board of a professional, but
so what? It'll be yours, and that's what you want. In a hundred years it
won't matter a bit, and there are far less noble pastimes than trying to
create a thing of beauty.

There's a wealth of information out
there, and someone out there who's going to be the next great designer.
Might be Thomas. Probably not going to be someone who's excessively
concerned about the financial risks of home boatbuilding.