My homemade sailboat

The boat itself is loosely based on a drawing I saw for a "two-sheet boat" and was originally made from two 4'x8' sheets of 1/4" plywood, and about 9 1"x2"x8's. By time I put a deck on it and daggerboard and rudder, I probably used another 2 sheets or so of ply and a few more 1'x2's. What you see in the video is the third and forth version of the rig. The first time I just used a blue tarp cut in a triangle and some half inch electrical conduit for a mast at the front of the boat. Also at the time I was using a leeboard. Half inch conduit proved not to be strong enough, but I could tell it might be possible to sail. I replaced that mast with one made from 2"x2"s, 8' lengths screwed together. I had a forestay and a backstay connected at the top but it turns out the wood would bend so much it would just bend in half in the middle with a good gust of wind. But it did work better, so I went all out after that. I made the deck in the front, mounted the mast in the right place to have two sails, put in the daggerboard, put on the bowsprit, I built a new mast, and put on all the right stays in the right places (except for the backstay, which is why it failed). The mast was made by scarfing together 8' lengths of 1"x3"s, then laminating 3 layers of this to end up with a 3"x3" post, then I eight-sided it with a circular saw and did the final rounding with a combination of hand plane and sander. The final length was about 19'. I couldn't use a backstay because of the size of the mainsail. The sais were made from gray tarps, and the edges were finished with gray tarps. I know it sounds bad, but they were really strong, plus I planned on making canvas ones eventually once I figured out the right sizes. After the mast broke I redesigned the rig slightly so I could use a permanent backstay, I did this by making the mainsail smaller. I left the jib the same size as it was, and the boat was so much more balanced that it was actually faster this way, even though I don't have any good film of it. Actually I don't have any good film of the boat at all, as the only time I could get video was in a tiny cove by the house where the wind currents were extremely unpredictable and constantly changing. I got about 5 mph on the gps almost everytime I went out in the boat, at times it had gone about 8 maybe a little more. On the final rig the controls I had were: Main halyard, jib halyard, mainsheet, jib sheets on both sides, boom vang, outhaul for the main, downhaul on the jib, and one spare line to the top of the mast for lifting things, etc.

Duration : 0:10:1

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