Helping Us With Boats

When I decided to build my own catamaran I started off by looking for suitable designs and the plans to go with them. I went to my local chandlers, to a boat mart and I talked to a few people at my local sailing club. Nada. Nothing. I couldn’t find anything that came any way close to what I was looking for. Then a friend of mine told me about some do it yourself boat design software she’d heard about. I tracked it down and I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were offering what seemed to be the solution to my problem for under 50 dollars. Some of the plans I’d seen for sale cost over $700. But then the realization hit me. I didn’t know anything about designing boat hulls and I’d never designed anything using a computer. What was I thinking of?

Curiosity

But curiosity began to get the better of me and I thought, Hell, it’s only fifty bucks. So I bought myself a copy and quite frankly, it’s the best piece of software I’ve ever bought. It took me an hour or two to become familiar with the interface but it’s all pretty intuitive and within the first day I had come up with something that I was pretty pleased with.

A Mini Production Line

It wasn’t actually a catamaran at all, but a small dinghy that the kids could use on our local boating lake. I didn’t want to take on anything too ambitious at first and I didn’t actually build it myself, my brother-in-law did, building two next to each other in his garage – one for his kids and one for mine. Seeing those two partially completed hulls standing next to each other in his garage really got me enthused about catamarans and so I set about my design with renewed vigor.

Catamarans Are Different

As you know, a catamaran hull is somewhat different from a single hulled vessel and it took me a little while to get to grips with the hydrostatic calculation for hulls with a much deeper shape. But I’m very glad I did. The hulls are now under construction in my garage. It’s taken rather longer than I’d hoped because my wife had a baby in the middle of the build – very inconvenient of her – and that’s slowed things down considerably. But no matter, half the fun of this project is the design and the build – but I still can’t wait to get her out on the water next spring.

It’s a Bug!

I’ve really got the bug for boat design (particularly catamaran design) now and I’ve actually sold a couple of designs to fellow sailing club members. Whether they’ll go on to actually build them is anybody’s guess but I made seventy  dollars on the deal so I suppose you could say I got my own plans for free!

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