Boat Design

This Blog will follow the progress of my construction of a Steel Hulled cruising yacht. I'm a first time boat builder and spent the whole of 2005 studying designs and building the skills needed to start building my yacht.

The design I've chosen is an old design drawn by Canadian Ted Brewer called the Alaska 43. She is a sturdy boat displacing about 16 tonnes that would more accurately be described as a motorsailer. I will attach some line drawings of my little ship so you can see how she looks in profile and interior layout. If you want to look at Ted's designs go to www.Tedbrewer.com where you'll see plans for a lot of nice boats.

I actually started building in February this year in some temporary space I've rented and over the coming weeks I'll add detail to bring my Blog up to date on progress so far.

The big plan with this project is to get her finished in anywhere between 3 and 5 years then go cruising with my wife and 2 boys. We'll start cruising the Australian coast north to the Barrier Reef and if all goes well and everyone is keen on going further we plan to take our kids out of school for a year and cruise to Europe probably via Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Red Sea, Suez Canal then spend at least 6 months in the Med and the canals of Europe. But that's a long way off and first she has to be built.

MP