Question for Dave Fleming

[Sailor]

Or anyone else who may have experience in the following,
Dave, I recall you saying you helped build 2 Peterson coasters. What sort of man hours am I looking at. I saw a post of building Suzan IIRC and you told the builder he had been generous with his time alloted. I'm alloting 20-25 years to build Quintessence (Don Quixote Del Mar) in spare time, weekends, leave, evenings etc. With help from my 3 brothers when they're available, my wife as much as I can convince her to help (unfortunately I'm getting less and less enthusiastic with how I had initially gauged the help I'd get from her but maybe when she sees it coming together I can get her out into the drydock more often) and children. (Don't have kids yet but they will be in on dad's project 'cause dad's project is a family project) None of us are experienced boat builders. One younger brother built a Redbird canoe, I'm working on a Redbird that I stretched out to 18 feet instead of 17.5 and have a Catspaw that I want to do before I decide if I feel comfortable going ahead with a 57 foot schooner in my back yard. These two projects were chosen to get more comfortable with the tools of the trade and then with plank on frame construction. Bud's book is confidence boosting as are many things I read elsewhere but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. I WILL BUILD HER I just may have to digest a few others before I can confidently proceed. So.... is 20-25 years unreasonable and approximately what sort of man hours are we talking about here?
Thanks for any help you can give,
Daniel

[Dave Fleming]

2 Very experienced boatbuilders working in sync 6 days a week.

About 2500 manhours per boat.

Lofting was done just once so that saved a goodly bit of time.

Weekend warriors such as myself would come out and pitch in on Saturdays and Sundays with the wonderful lady companions of us all making huge pots of soups, stews, chowdahs, and pasta.

In truth though as much as I like to think we weekenders were a big help, those 2 fellows did at least 90% of the work.

So fugger for an individual that has never built such a vessel before, maybe as much as 5000+ man hours mostly solo.

Gonna be a lot of trial and error, times when ya just want to go someplace else but, remember each such delay sets you back just not in actual lost working hours but, the time getting back up to steam.

You MUST have ALL wood on hand at least 6 months before beginning even the lofting.

Work space should be ready to go with tools, benches, loft floor ( sawn frame construction recall?).

Hardware ie: bolts, screws, nails, red lead primer etc...

If ya don't have it all there, then there will be much time wasted running around gathering same or waiting for delivery of stuff.

Gonna make yer own 'sticks'? If so then there is yet more material to be acquired. How's about rigging? Brion Toss gonna do all standing and running rigging? Engine, tankage both fuel and water, fresh and black?

Ya get my drift here?

edited to add another 1000 man hours after reading your post re: help.

[Sailor]

Thanks Dave. I took a look at your website good stuff. Got any more pics of the coasters going together?
BTW when are you publishing this wealth of knowledge you seem to have put together? Seems to me you have about all you need for a really good book. Put me down for one.

[Dave Fleming]

I have NO photos of the Coasters. The construction photos you refer to are of a 50+ foot William Garden schooner.

If my leaky memory serves that took 3 of us working pretty steady, one calendar year to complete hull and deck . The mechanicals including the engine, tankage, electrical, plumbing were subbed out.

I was let go when the interior joiner work began as I had no experience at that time with it.

Took about another 6 months to compete the interior, rig and step the Al. masts and finally bend on the Franz Schattauer(sp) sails for sea trials.

I was along for that trip, first time for me.

Still an apprentice, I was.

[Bob Cleek]

We alll dream the same dreams. Fact is, how old will you be in twenty-five years? Fifty? Sixty? Not much time left then to be sailing a Don Qxiote del Mar or even a Coaster III! Do you expect to live in the same place for twenty-five years? When you're done, you'll have a twenty-five year old wooden boat that hasn't ever been in the water. Imagine how many times you will refinish her before she's launched! Lotta boat. Where ya gonna keep it? When you start figuring it all out, reality wakes us up.

I've spend a lot of time dreaming of a forty-six footer. and continue to disappoint myself. I don't think a boat in these size ranges can be built by one man. I do know an eight-five year old guy or so, who just finished a thirty-eight foot sharpie, but he's a master boatbuilder with his own shop, so he's the exception that proves the rule. Fact is, the scale is too large for one guy to handle a lot of it. You just can't lift the timbers alone, or often without a crane. Same for horsing plank through your stationary machines and so on. It takes at least two or three who really know what they are doing to even get some of the necessary tasks done.

You'd be a whole lot better off spending your spare time working a second job. You'd be able to have the boat professionally built and paid for a whole lot sooner than twenty-five years!

[PeterSibley]

I've got an old article here from "Boating"magazine July '74 by a bloke called Frank Raposa.Its a very indepth break down of his times building an Atkin 33' cutter, single handed,plank on frame.About 20,000 lb displacement ,no engine.

His total was 4900 hrs.

For your interest these are the sub totals

Hull ....1376 hrs.... 28%
Roughing out ,deck,hatches etc...840 hr.... 17%
Interior...1001 hrs.... 20%
Finish work,ie sanding ,painting,rigging...1032... 21%
Mast,further rigging...354..... 7%
Sailmaking 310 hrs.......... 7%

Looks as if he did absolutely everything himself.A good looking boat.

As an aside does anyone know the boat, he named her " X "

[Ken Hutchins]

Larry Pardy's boat building book has his and Lyn's hours recorded for each segment of the process of building Talesin, total 8682 hours for a 17,500 lb boat.
I have about 6,000 hours into my TALLY HO II with just the basic hull finished, a 30,000 lb boat, working mostly alone. It can be done working alone but you need to know how and have equipment to handle large heavy stuff.

[MAGIC's Craig]

FWIW, MAGIC was built in 1993 by Bent Jespersen and his crew of 4 men. She is a 40' LOD cold-molded schooner of 25,000 lbs. cruising displacement. Bent and his crew put roughly 7,000 hours into her and Vicky and I built all the spars, did the rigging (perhaps another 1,000 hours), and nearly all of the final fitting out. They were a smooth, experienced crew who were knowledgeable about building this sort of yacht. In this case, it really made sense for me to just keep working at my job. She was launched in 14 months from the time of lofting and took another month or 6 weeks to ready for sea.

Vicky and I had previously finished out a 28' LOD (14,000#) Lyle Hess-designed FG bare hull BCC. We kept careful track of our hours and found that we spent 6,000 hours of spare time building her, including a wooden deck/house, buklwarks and hollow spruce spars over the course of 3-1/2 years. We worked 4 days a week, 3 weekends a month and found that we had no social life, and a near-obsession to make (and cross off) lists.

Just a couple more examples to consider when weighing your commitment to such a large project. Certainly can be done - but it is some kind of major, life-consumimg task. And, sadly, we have seen that such a huge effort can eat a marriage easily :(

We would urge you to think carefully about what all the costs might be to put such a boat in the water.

Craig and Vicky Johnsen
(married 34 years this July - both with advanced degrees in sanding wood :rolleyes: )

[Sailor]

I see what you're saying Bob but I not only want the boat but the experience of building her. I don't want to be a "boatbuilder" but I do want to build my own boat. I see satisfaction in being able to say "I built her". I'm still wanting to build her, but I'm starting to think that Dave's 5000 man hours may be a little ambitious. I still think I'm willing to give it a go. I also see the point about the Marriage taking it's toll MC. You never know what the futur holds so we'll have to wait and see about the family stresses involved in this sort of project. That's another reason for building a small rowing/sailing dink before hand. All in all I figure I'll begin construction in a couple of years time. Maybe 10 000 hours may be a little better estimate. That gives say 10 hours per week, 500 hour per year (Rounding down to be on the safe side) 20 years I'd be 51-52 ish. That ties in just about with my retirement time and gives me a couple of years to get to know her really well before heading off. If I get more hours in per week I launch earlier otherwise, later. I get 25 days of leave per year where I can put in long days and play catch up for the time I'm deployed. Maybe even get ahead of schedule (Don't tell me that never happens I don't want to hear that part!!! LOL ) Saturdays can be long and sundays as well. With help from the brothers I may gt it down to 15 years but that would be completely eliminating any sort of other social life. Either way I really want to do this project. We'll see how I feel about it after I've done a few smaller ones then I can reassess. Thanks for the input guys.
Daniel

[kc8pql]

I've spent about 8000 part time, solo hrs. building a 38' lod, 25000 lb. wood/epoxy Buehler Jenny over the last 10 years. I think that's about as long as even a somewhat obsessed and highly motivated human can manage. I'm glad I'm done. Launch in June.

[Sailor]

kc8pql That is the sort of post I need to read. Thanks. Hope she is everything you want. (We all know that the first sail you'll stubb your toe on the widget and think D**n I should have mounted it over there:) ) Glad to hear that you're nearly ready to launch.