I decided to start this blog to share my journey on building my first boat. I wanted to build a wooden boat to get acquainted with how wooden boats are built, as I have a (waning!) ambition of buying a wooden cruiser to replace my lovely Jeaneau...
It is a John Brook's design, called Somes Sound 12.5 - based on a Herreshoff design, in glued lapstrake construction. Apparently, it's a bit more advanced than usual for a raw beginner, so that's my excuse for slow progress and bountiful questions.
When I first received the plans around October 2011, I wondered what I had let myself in for. Very little of it made any sense to me (still lots of it doesn't!) and so I took off to one of John Brook's weekend workshop in Brooklyn Maine. Living in Ireland that was quite a trip but I can safely say without it, I wouldn't have been able to even get started.
I am currently starting to plank the boat, so the initial stage of this blog will be retrospective. I have been taking photos and also some short video clips, which were taken more as a means of communicating with John Brooks and my fellow class mates at the workshop.
I do not have any real carpentry experience other than I am an enthusiastic DIY'er and so I had to build out my workshop - or rather build a new shed to house all my clutter and motorbikes (another passion of mine) and gather a selection of new tools: bandsaw, table saw, thicknesser among others.
Do not rely on my approach for building your Somes Sound - but hopefully you will maybe avoid some of the pitfalls I made along the way. Whatever, enjoy the journey...I am!
