S 360

At the time, in 2008, I was building wooden lamps. Lamps were nice, they have the electricity inside, the cables are integrated in the wood, the colours, the game of light and shades... But, compared to sailboats, they are boring. Then I thought.."Hey, I have just one life, I have to use it to do what I really want to do!. Let's check if I could build a nice sailboat."

At the time I was inspired by small, 11-12 ft dinghies. In particular the racing dinghy International Europa, and the Truc 12, designed by Marco Croci.

I start the design process in the traditional manner, with paper and pencil. After many iterations I had a simple sailboat drawing.

Then, for tridimensional development I use the software FreeShip. After many versions, I came with a dinghy that could be built from 3 plywood sheets (2.5 x 1.7 m).

I built a scaled down cardboard model ...

and developed a set of drawings:

The first phase of building was the building of the foils for the daggerboard and for the rudder. I glued up laths of the appropriate dimensions and used a manual planer to shape them.

Then I started to build the hull. I used a ruler and a wooden batten to transfer the drawing lines from the drawing to the plywood sheets.

I cut the parts. I glued up wooden battens along the borders of the stations in order to make them stiffer.

The bottom sides were glued together, and a stations were placed on positions.

The internal filets, the stations in place, and the side strips. It looks like a real small boat.

But there are a lot of small things to do, like protecting internal volumes with some layers of epoxy and with some paint. It is important to do it before closing the volumes. The transom also need to be stiff because it will support the rudder and because it is important for the overall torsional stability. Hence the triangular wooden elements in the corners.

After finishing the top side, the hull is turned over. The bottom looks finished, but it needs to be finished with sandpaper and protected.

A layer of thin glass fiber will be applied and impregnated with epoxy. It improves the rigidity of the bottom. It makes a composite material. Or a sandwich of plywood, epoxy resin and glass fibers.

Epoxy is not UV-radiation resistant, hence it also has to be protected by some layers of paint. A light blue does the job, plus I find it to be very nice looking.

On the top side, I left some exposed plywood surfaces, without paint. It is protected by the thin glass fiber fabric, epoxy and some layers of varnish. On some parts I made some black lines, in order to make it look like the teak strips. I made the holes for inspection hatches.

The mast is also home built. It is an aluminum-wood combination. The sail groove is a square tube with a cut. The stiffness, or the bending curve was tested, in order to get a correct sail shape.

The boat is finally equipped and almost ready to sail.

I enjoyed the project and building process a lot. I had to repair some details at first. And it was far from maintenance-free, but the process was a joy. Of course, I enjoyed also lot of sailing.

Pros and cons

+ looks good

+ light weight

+ good light wind performance

+ pleasant to sail

+ simple, fast and cheap building

- there is no room for a passenger

- can't be moved by a single person or car topped

- unpractical to row

- narrow waterline, instable, not suitable for swimming or fishing trips