The First Project: The Coot

As alluded to in my last post, I have chosen the boat I will build for my first project.  It is a small, 8-foot dinghy called the Coot.  This is (hopefully) what the finished project will look like.

It is broad and slow, but it can seat two people (a request of my "crew") and is a good beginner strip-planking project.  Also, if I am so inclined, it can be modified into a small sailboat; we'll see about that.  The cost of construction should be no more than $800.  Actually, a more reasonable estimate would be $600, but I'll tack on $200 since it's my first project. 

The Coot combines a strip-planked, open hull with a stitch-and-glue interior.  The sides of the hull are strip-planked and attached to a transom (flat side) on both the bow and stern.  The transoms are made out of a single piece of marine plywood, as are the seats in the boat. At the end, the whole boat is fiberglassed.  This is a simplified description of the procedure, but I'll go into details once the project is underway.

Term of the Day:  Length/Beam/Draft
There are three main measurements when looking a boat diagrams: the length(s) of the boat, the beam, and the draft.  There are several measures of length when talking about boats, but for now we will discuss the main two: the Length Overall (LOA) and the Length at the Waterline (LWL).  The LOA is fairly self-explanatory; it's just the length of the boat from tip-to-tip.  The LWL is the length of the boat at its waterline.  The waterline can be thought of as the hypothetical line at which the water reaches when the boat is launched.  Basically, the LWL is important for calculating the hull speed of a boat.  The longer the LWL, the faster the boat... more or less.  The Beam of a boat is a measure of the widest point of a boat.  Pretty simple. The wider the beam, the more stable it is (harder to capsize); however broader beams also affect speed. The Draft is the vertical distance from the waterline to the bottom of the boat.  The draft is important because it tells you what the minimum depth at which a boat can travel.