BoatBanter.com - View Single Post

[email protected]

On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 22:27:43 GMT, (Richard
Casady) wrote:

On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:27:28 +0700, wrote:

The reason that ferocement boats have a bad reputation is because
people used to b build them in their back wards and when it came time
to plaster them would get a bunch of beer and all their mates in. some
of these were pretty horrible. Other people were smart enough to have
a professional plasterer do the job and never have a problem.

I think they are far too much work for what you get. Steel is a good
material for a homemade fifty footer.

The thing that made fero boats popular was that they were cheap to
build. The armature is mainly cheap re-bar and chicken wire, a few
bags of sand and cement, case of beer for your mates, and you got a
hull.

They are heavy for their length though and you'll probably find that
you can carry a lot more sail then the fiberglass boats.

Put enough ballast in the glass boat to bring it up to the weight of
the cement boat, and _it_ will carry more sail. Ferro is just plain
inefficient. It can be fairly cheap if your own time is low priced,
but the hull is usually a small part of total cost. Someone once said
it had all the charm of steel and the strength of wood. That, of
course, is unfair to both steel and wood. Steel can be beautiful, but
only if the plates are thick enough to weld properly. Fifty feet is
minimal, seventy five or so is good. Wood can be strong, but it does
cost too much. Cutty Sark is wood and they had a fire. I think the
iron frames are OK.

I've never argued that they were efficient or anything else except
cheap to build.

It isn't as strong as steel, for sure, and (to my mind) have very
little charm

I've seen 35 foot steel boats built in Holland that were as fair as
any boat you care to look at. Of course they were built at
professional yards that do nothing but steel boats and their cost
quite a lot more then you would expect.

Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)