Project Dinghy

Since it appears we've moved back in to the house for a full year (starting last October) and we've removed the house from the market due to the wife's medical issues I've decided to clear the garage out and start our dinghy project.

About a year or so a ago I bought the plans for a "Passagemaker" dinghy from Chesapeake Light Craft in Annapolis, MD. This boat is what is known as a "nesting boat".

http://www.clcboats.com/scripts/phpT...hoto.jpg&w=580

It is 11' 7" long, weighs 90 pounds, has about a 650 lb displacement (Means it can float with 650 lbs of people or payload), can be sailed, rowed or powered with a small duty engine (2-4 HP) and has roughly a 78-80 square feet of sail area depending on how you outfit the boat.

I shopped around for plans for several months before I decided on this one. Then with all the work on the house, remodeling and work I was doing, I didn't ever have the time to get going on the building.

I've not posted this publicly anywhere yet - but my wife, JoAnne has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. On the 17th she went in for major surgery - they did a complete hysterectomy, removed an 18-20 cm tumor and some of her large and small intestines. She's in rough shape two weeks later, but getting stronger. She's not going back to work for about 8 weeks. On the 14th of March she goes in for an outpatient surgery to install a port for the chemo. She'll undergo 6 sessions of chemo, over the next approximately 6 months.

I bring this up to mostly explain the sudden change in plans. I needed to make sure she has a place to recover from the surgery, and a comfortable place for her to go through the chemo.

We have not changed our plans to sell our home, and travel the world via sailboat. But this has all put a slight kink in the plan to do it sooner.

Sometimes one has to look at things thrown at you as a blessing in disguise. She can't quite see it yet, but I do. Thinking if we had sold the house this past summer and found ourselves in the Bahamas or some other place when she fell ill would have not been so easy for me to handle. I might have given up, sold the boat and brought her home again.

At this point, we're fighting to get her well, clear the cancer and give her the world tour she wanted to do. It's going to happen. It's now my goal to make that woman happy, keep her healthy and make her smile again.

She and I have gone over and over the type of dinghy we want and we settled on the one above.

Here's why:

It can be shortened down for stowage on-deck. Instead of a 11' boat taking up 11' of space, we can shrink it to a 7' space with 4 feet of the boat stored inside the larger part. The whole thing at 11' will be a decent sailing dinghy, to be used to get us to shore or to the boat, to explore the bay where we anchor, to fish away from the bigger boat and to haul our groceries, water, fuel and other supplies to the ship when we're outfitting.

The boat will last "decades" as it is a fiberglass covered (can be anyway) wooden boat. The thing will likely outlast me...

We plan to make it a sailing dinghy first - with a dagger board to stabilize the boat, a sloop rig, and oarlocks to row the boat when sailing isn't convenient.

http://www.clcboats.com/scripts/phpT...er_1.jpg&w=580

http://www.clcboats.com/scripts/phpT...r_12.jpg&w=580

http://www.clcboats.com/scripts/phpT...2013.jpg&w=580

http://www.clcboats.com/scripts/phpT...ring.jpg&w=580

http://www.clcboats.com/media_galler...content_type=1

http://www.clcboats.com/shop/boats/w...lboat-kit.html

This boat is sold as a kit, with laser, pre-cut pieces and with the glass, glue system and most of the stuff we need to build it.

However, I think I'm going to simply go purchase the wood from a local hardware store and use the patterns and manual I already have bought, along with the West System epoxies and tools to build this myself as a stitch-and-glue boat.

When I start this one, I'll have the camera ready, and will probably blog this one. I estimate about 100-150 hours of building work on this one, a little more probably because I'll have to do my own cutting. I'm still up in the air on ordering the kit - because it's going to cost around 2-3k to do that, but should provide me with precision cut parts to assemble. I'll have to think it over. I have a few days or weeks to get this started.