Is any boat now better than waiting?

[Mike Cole]

I have been offered a bare hull on a trailer with a collection of bits, prop and shalf, hot well and many smaller fittings ect. However it is not my ideal hull shape and it is also a bit rough.However if I can get it cheap, then together with the engine/boiler I already have then I will have 95% of the parts needed to finish.
As I do not plan on starting the build proper until end of 2013/14, should I accept that my first boat will not be the slim elegant boat that I want. But I could be on the water a couple of years quicker, than waiting for the right hull to turn up.
So is any boat better now then waiting for the right boat at some time in the furture?

Mike

[Mike Rometer]

One of the eternal dilemas. I have a similar situation, but have a load of other projects that really should be got out of the way first, and little space to park said beast. Many is the time I've rued letting a golden opportunity slip. You can only do what you can do, and hope it pans out in the end.

[fredrosse]

Not knowing what type of hull you are offered, you may want to consider the following:

Many a good centerboard sailboat hulls, 14 to 20 feet length, are available for next to no money. These can be easily converted to propeller drive and are well suited to steam or electric propulsion. I bought an O'Day Javelin bull, with trailer, on e-bay for $107, and made a nice inboard propeller driven (14 inch prop on a 14 foot boat, good efficiency) boat with one week's labor. These sailboat hulls go so cheap because they have bad sails, no sails, a broken mast, etc. There is a detailed review of this building process with many pictures on the internet.

Many of these sailboat hulls are a reasonable approximation of a steam launch hull, with a plumb stem (or nearly so) and rounded bottom, much better than a typical powerboat hull that has hard chines, and way too much beam. The attached picture is the $107 boat/trailer after conversion. I am in the process of now putting a steam plant into this hull, after using it for 7 years as an inboard electric.

[Lopez Mike]

I went through pretty much the same thing with Folly (named by my wife!)

The hull is made of the cheapest plywood imaginable. The workmanship is startlingly bad in most places. The shape approximates a launch but is slab sided and is the poster child for ugly.

But.

The engine and boiler were new. A current prices there is over 15K in machinery there. I got the whole pile on a reasonable trailer for $4500. For that kind of bargain my pride is over there in the tool box somewhere.

As it turns out, the beast moves along well. After throwing away (literally!) the feed water pump and all of the valves and all of the boiler lagging, I have a fun boat. I take people for rides. I toot the whistle. What more do I want from a boat?

Yes, I have some difficult decisions ahead. Do I go ahead and try to polish up this 'sow's ear' or plant vegetables in it and start over? I dunno.

It's a constant trade off between building and steaming. Each person has their own balance.

As others are saying, we don't know what it looks like but I'd go for it. You will learn sooo much from steaming this boat that will make any subsequent boat far better.

Dessert first!

Mike

[artemis]

As others are saying, we don't know what it looks like but I'd go for it. You will learn sooo much from steaming this boat that will make any subsequent boat far better.

AH-YEP!

[Mike Cole]

Thanks for the replys a nice mix of opinions
At the moment I am leaning towards leaving it, as it would only be left for 18 months until I finish my current build.
As I live on the coast there should be a good choice of boats around.

Mike

[Lopez Mike]

Dunno just which coast you live on but here in the Puget Sound area there aren't many launch type hulls laying about. Plenty of old sailboat hulls but I find most of them pretty beamy and short on room for a large wheel.

What with the price of oil where it's been for the last decade or so, fiberglass isn't quite the bargain it used to be. More and more boats seem to be being built of plywood.

Mine is. A good beam to water length ration, a plumb bow and fairly decent wheel clearance. I just wish the builder had used A: better plywood, B: a more visually appealing sheer and side profile, and C: better glue and workmanship. A real trifecta. But it was super cheap.

I am caught in a place where I hesitate to put much effort into hull improvements but am not in a place to just go out and drop thousands on a new glass hull. We'll see what turns up. I might build a Panatella with more volume. If I can keep the weight under control by the application of low cunning and some high tech it might make a boat I can live with.

Mike

[Mike Rometer]

What's wrong with steel Mike, at least the glue doesn't tend to come apart in water.

[DetroiTug]

There is a lot to be said in favor of a steel hull for a steamboat. Seems a lot of builders are concerned about weight when putting a boat together and then wind up adding ballast anyway as they are too corky and tender dockside etc. I'm in that camp. Now I wished I had built out of heavier material. Once set up for it, building in steel is fast and the resulting hull is very strong. Properly cared for it will have good longevity. Many very old steel boats still around.

To the original poster: it really depends on the "ideal" hull showing up. It might and it might not. Steam hulls or anything close to it are in higher demand, any sort of hull satisfactory for the purpose is always going to draw a higher price, as there just aren't very many. Most steamboat projects start out with an engine - then a boiler - then the hunt for a hull to put it in. They tend to either wind up building a hull, buying a new one or the project goes on permanent hold.

If you have a hull to use, go with it. Use it and then watch for or build a hull you like better and swap everything over. The chances of finding a bare Steam launch hull with trailer or similar are slim to none. I have only seen one in the last seven years or so of looking, mostly complete boats with engine and boiler.

-Ron

[Lopez Mike]

Thoughts about a steel hull.

I like steel. I am a machinist so I know a good deal about it. My welding skills are modest but I have a good wire feed machine designed for sheet metal work and practice would improve them.

Weight.

I have been a boater for most of my life and adding ballast for stability works but signals a failure at the design stage. With the modest power available and the low thermal efficiency of our power plants, I am reluctant to add any weight. I think that keeping the weight of the hull (and particularly of the superstructure) down should surely pay off in improved performance and fuel economy.

I am startled by the weights listed for many of our boats. Fuel consumption rises directly with displacement. It avails me little to worry about how to reduce fuel volume and weight issues and not address the weight of the vessel.

My experience with sailboats has been that metal hulls work above a certain size. Below that size the thinness of the plating makes then too prone to denting. Unless the plating is made heavy enough and then the weight rises rapidly. Aluminum helps through its lower density but brings it's own issues, electrical and cost wise.

There is a reason that almost all modern boat engineering employs sandwich construction of some sort if only by using plywood.

To each their own but my preference is for a slender lightweight boat with the longest water line length, narrowest beam and lowest energy expenditure I can arrange with some small ability to escape the elements both when under way and possibly over night (my wife's words ringing in my ears about spending the night in misery!)

This thread has surely been hijacked big time and I am the worst culprit. Sorry.

Mike