External Versus Internal Challenges in Building (and using) a Boat

Article by Stephen Ladd

The author, during a previous adventure.

Boaters are generally can-do people, willing to take risks, willing to make mistakes and correct them. This implies not only grappling with external forces, but understanding and critiquing ourselves as well. For example, it’s easy to fall in love with the idea of a certain boat yet be unrealistic about how we would actually use it, and how long it will take to build, modify, or restore. By the time it’s ready to go our interests or capabilities may have changed. The lack of self-knowledge is just as dangerous as the lack of boat-building skill!

I think this as I design and build a tacking proa. As usual, the project has taken much longer than imagined. Meet psychological foible number one: a tendency to overestimate our productivity while underestimating the project’s complexity! Could there be an ego inside us refusing to accept our limitations? I try to accept them. I’m not a formally trained boat designer. I have no computer-aided design skills. It’s a bigger boat than I’ve built before, of a material that’s new to me (foam-core fiberglass), and it’s a multi-hull, which is quite different from a monohull. Yet I keep underestimating the difficulty!

Here's how I deal with my limited skills. Unable to entirely pre-plan the boat, I fill in the details as I go along. My shop walls are covered with little sketches. My computer drives and filing cabinets are full of notes, to-do lists, spreadsheets, and narratives. For each component I plan in enough detail, soon enough in time, to keep the project moving and not screw anything up, hopefully. My ideas evolve. It goes through iterations. I design system A, then system B, which requires me to re-design system A, et cetera. I deem this okay. I don’t mind re-designing as long as I don’t have to tear off components I’ve already built!

Here are some examples of aspects that have proven challenging:

1. The hulls are panels without compound curvature except at the bow and stern of the main hull’s superstructure, where you might say the garboard merges into the topsides. Planks are simultaneously bending longitudinally and twisting radially. Some torturing was required in these places, implemented via various props, pulls, and clamps.

2. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to reinforce the hull-to-deck joint with thickened-epoxy fillets due to lack of interior access after the deck is on, I devised wooden shelves instead. Given plan-view curvature and deck crown, these members are subtly shaped.

3. The mast steps (through-deck, for free-standing masts) are complicated by the fact that I am adapting a pre-existing, cast-off rig to a new purpose. In addition to the masts themselves (carbon-fiber), it includes “stub masts” as well. These aluminum tubes step to the keel and at their upper ends incorporate the goosenecks and vang attachments. The masts are of equal height but one has a longer boom (its sail has a longer foot). Unable to predict the helm balance, I won’t know whether my boat will be a ketch or a schooner until I determine, through trials, the better order of their placement!

4. Currently I am designing the attachment of crossbeams to hulls, which is critical due to the stress loads at these locations. Fortunately I have a new friend who is an aeronautical engineer and likes solving problems!

We like solving external problems. They’re out in the open where you can see them! But we also have to be honest with ourselves. Do we know what we’re doing? Are we taking undue risks? I’m reminded of parallels in my voyaging, extra-challenging stages in which there were too many unknowns to pre-plan it all. For example, while I was descending the Milk River in Alberta I was told that the river runs underground part of the way. In that pre-internet day there was no way to verify except by going there, and I could only go by boat. Another example is my exit from the mouth of the Amazon, which is plagued by tidal bores that sometimes destroy the estuarine forests. I researched as best I could then went ahead, one careful step at a time. I always made it, so either I was lucky or I understood my limitations and never exceeded them. It's hard to say which! I was optimistic, and that optimism proved well-founded. I hope this proa-building project warrants the same optimism.

We’re all different. My own mental maze is uncharted territory. For example, I 1) build then 2) voyage in boats in a slow, low-frequency cycle. The design-and-build obsession is distinct from the voyaging obsession. The former is intellectual while the latter is physical. When I finish a voyage my wanderlust has been extinguished. I then return to the boat-building obsession, sure of what I need in my next boat. Years later, when that boat is done, my wanderlust reboots and I resume voyaging. At least that’s how it has played out in the two and a half cycles thus far. Not a very big sample size! I hope that my current boat-building investment will also pay off in ample usage, but there’s no guarantee. I could be physically incapable by the time it’s done, or the wanderlust could fail to reappear. It’s hard to be honest with oneself about such things.

In short, a big building project presents two sets of challenges. The first are the obvious external ones. The second set is psychological. Success depends on self-understanding. What are our motives in the project? Are we under-estimating how long it will take? Are we forgetting other commitments, other goals? Do we have the necessary skills, tools, and persistence? How will we use the boat? Will our physical capability be sufficient by the time it’s ready for use? Might our dreams change? What is the nature of our obsession? Many boat-building projects have been abandoned over the years. I personally have been offered a couple of unfinished boats. I hate to think of that happening to my tacking proa, but none of us is infallible. •SCA•