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Skipper's Boat-Building Blog |
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Building a dinghy I wanted to build a sailing dinghy. I'm not completely sure why, a number of reasons I expect; something to do, something related to sailing, a reason to get out of bed at the weekend ... Anyway, I think it's more to do with building than sailing. As always it needs to be done as cheaply as possible so, the first thing to find was some free plans. Choice of boat 
I 'Googled' for 'free boat plans' and found Radoslaw Werszko's site www.dinghy.pl and was
instantly impressed. Radoslaw offers 4 designs
from 2.6m to 4.5m all beautifully drawn and with photographs of his own built versions. Two weeks passed while I searched for and considered
other options but I kept coming back to his 2.6m 'Pram' design and I finally
resolved to make that my first boat. My criteria has little to
do with how it will sail and is chiefly concerned with what will fit in my garage and on the roof of my car. Besides that Radoslaw's
drawings are very good and much better than many others I've found.
So, It's Sunday morning and I have just returned from the office where I have run off a copy of Radoslaw's plans at their full size of
A2. It's okay, I did ask the boss if I could do this ... honest, I did. As soon as I got home I started to study the plans. Hmm, I'll have to find out where to get that mast section, and a few stainless steel bits to make, may have to ask the boss for another favour, and what's this? A scarf joint what's that? A quick Google and ... What? How am I going to do that? That's proper carpentry that is! With a little apprehension I continue studying the plans and find that there are a number of other details I'm not sure about; moulded parts, stitch and glue construction, curved foredeck ... I've got an idea, I'll clear a space in the garage. I think I can handle that. Warning: there is no more boaty stuff in this entry. Making space 
Maybe I can't handle that. It's worse than when I want to make a sandwich and have to shift 2 dishwasher loads first! Oh well,
'how do you eat an elephant?' and all that. I started by shifting out the table and sofa bed that have been in there for months
on their way to the charity shop (or the dump). I had to advise more than few spiders to be gone when I got back from having a cup
of tea. I re-located two of them but the rest had found new homes by themselves. Well, there's a bit more space but there's still a
lot of mess although a lot of the mess is actually very useful looking pieces of wood which should be good for the building stock if
nothing else. Among this I found a couple of large, semi-circular pieces of chipboard and, for some reason, thought they'd make a good
tool-board so I started doing that. I'm very easily distracted. I know it looks odd but I just used what I found.
Whilst building the tool-board I dropped two large tubs of nails on the floor and I just couldn't be bothered to separate them from the rest of the detritus. The garage is still depressingly cluttered and I'm tired of stepping on things and tripping over things and bumping into things. A lot more 'small bites' are needed. But just before I deal with that I spot my next excuse for procrastinating. I need better lighting in there so, of course, I'll need an electrician. While I'm waiting for him I'll just rig a few extra lights off the existing one ... | |