Hull Construction Materials

When searching for your perfect boat, the question of hull material will inevitably come up. The most common categories are fiberglass, wood, and metals; lesser seen categories are carbon, kevlar, and cement. 

Exotic Hull Materials

High Tech Materials

Kevlar and Carbon Fiber hulls are typically found in the ultralight and high performance yachts. These materials have incredibly high strength to weight ratios, creating hulls of mammoth proportions and negligible weight. The price tag of these yachts keeps pace with the astronomical properties of these construction materials, and the cost of repairing any damages that might occur to these hulls is pricey. Even more difficult than the yard bill to fix an issue is the struggle to find qualified skilled technicians who know how to work with these materials. Large cities will usually have one yard that is capable of handling these repairs, but a small yard on a tiny island may not be able to help with these repairs.

Cement

Cement hulls were popular for amateur boat builders. It was advertised as an easy way to make a cruising boat, you could buy the molds and get a bunch of friends over to mix and pour the cement. After the cement cured, you could pop it out and sail it (after you finish the rest of the construction, it is funny how kit boat companies make it sound like building the hull is the hard part)! The problem with cement boats is the integrity of the hull greatly depended on the skill of the builder. If the cement was not mixed properly, the hull could develop cracks and leak. The other problem with cement boats is insurance companies do not like them, so finding insurance for a cement hull can prove difficult.

All this aside, there is a cement boat in my marina that has been abandoned for years.  The owner died and the heirs have not come to collect it. This boat has been rotting away for the past 4 years with no maintenance, and it still floats! The paint is peeling and her topsides look like hell, but the boat doesn't leak, doesn't fill with water, and doesn't sink. This is probably an example of a well made cement hull, which shows that any well made boat will last a long time.

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Popular Hull Materials

Looking at the more common hull construction materials, we see wood, fiberglass and metals dominating the scene. Each has their strengths and weaknesses, proving that none is better than the other. It really is a personal choice about which hull material you prefer. If the cons outweigh the pros from your perspective, then that is the wrong hull material for you. On the contrary, if you don't mind the drawbacks and love the strengths, that is certainly the perfect material for you!

Metals

Metal hulls fall into two main categories: Aluminum and Steel. Metal hulls in general are favored for their high strength and durability. People who are comfortable working with metal tend to love metal hulls. To them, it is a known material that they feel confident in their ability to repair. Steel hulls are preferred by people who plan to sail in high latitudes and will run into ice. Steel hulls offer excellent durability and repairability, if you were to collide with a reef, sandbar, or ice sheet, the steel will simply rub on it without much damage. Thicker steel hulls will offer more puncture resistance and added durability to the wear and tear of uncharted cruising where groundings and collisions are inevitable.

Aluminum hulls are very light weight and incredibly strong, making them a favorite material for boats over 80 feet in length. High performance luxury yachts are made of aluminum because the hulls are lightweight, strong, and sturdy without taking up much interior space in the form of bulkheads and frames. This allows the interior to be finished in utmost luxury and spaciousness. 

While metal hulls may sound like a dream come true, they have one major pitfall: corrosion. Steel hulls rust wherever water accumulates on bare metal. If you rub into a pilling, you need to cover the bare metal in fresh paint quickly to avoid rust from starting. The inside of the boat is at risk of rusting in unseen areas where the paint has chipped and moister has accumulated. Rust can propagate at alarming rates if left unchecked, and it can be difficult to repair when the time comes to recondition the yacht. Steel hulls are repaired via welding new metal onto them. The problem is the act of welding produces incredible heat which will ignite interior joinery and insulation. This makes a simple patch become a arduous project of dismantling and reassembling the interior.

Aluminum hulls won't rust with the epic red bleeding that spews from beneath the paint of a steel hull, instead they corrode in a much quieter way. Aluminum will turn to aluminum oxide, a white dust that will blow away when exposed to moist air, or via galvanic corrosion when immersed in an electrolyte such as sea water. Aluminum hulls must also be very careful about what bottom paint they use, as copper bottom paint will destroy the entire bottom of the hull in a short amount of time due to the dissimilar metals reacting in the solution. If you use the correct type of bottom paint and maintain the hull clean and dry, you still need to worry about stray current in the water. Galvanic corrosion caused by this stray current will eat holes into your hull if insufficient sacrificial anodes are not available. Aluminum hulls will typically have anodes attached all over the hull, hoping that if something will be eaten away by electrolysis, let it be the sacrificial anode. While these holes are easy to fill with a welder, they still require the same amount of disassembly and reassembly to protect the interior from the heat of the welder.

Welders are available worldwide, so your chances of finding a repairman on a remote island are quite high. It would be a good idea to carry some welding wire with you, that way you don't risk the welder accidentally welding on the wrong kind of metal and causing greater problems to your hull. People who have had metal sailboats love them! They feel very safe and secure in their vessel, knowing that they won't sink if they run aground or brush against some rocks.

Wood

Wood is another known material which has been used to build boats for over a millennium, and there is a reason it has been so popular, wood floats! A properly built and cared for wooden boat will provide a very safe and sturdy vessel which can take you across oceans! If you run into problems in a foreign port, you are probably going to be able to find the needed materials and the skilled labor to repair the problem. If you are capable and willing to do the work yourself, you can do all the maintenance yourself which will keep costs down.

While wood may sound amazing, it does have it's draw backs which have given it a bad name. If left in the water, marine borers (worms) will eat away at your timbers. Termites will attack the dry wood inside the boat, and on land the wood will dry out and the seams may pop open. It may seem that wood is in danger no matter where it is kept, but it can be easily repaired with only a few tools. 

Wood boats do need a lot of care. If neglected, they will begin to rot away in their slip, slowly becoming a major undertaking to revive. 

Insurance companies and marinas seem to have an aversion to wooden boats as well. Some marinas won't allow them into their slips or yards. It seems that they feel that stems will open up and draw in the seas, taking them to the bottom and are too much of a liability for them. 

Wood hulls are susceptible to electrolysis damage. Electrolytic damage will cause acidic damage to the wood planks, eating them away and turning them into mulch and mush. Electric connections must be properly installed and maintained to prevent serious damage to the hulls planking.

A well built wooden boat is not a disaster as most will make you believe. Poorly built wooden boats which were not properly maintained simply ruined the name for all wooden boats. It is not uncommon to come across a properly built wooden boat with original frames and planking that is approaching 100 years old. These boats were well built and maintained throughout their lives, letting them be strong cruisers for nearly a century!

The most common issues on a wooden boat are leaky garboards and open seams. If the keels rabbet line is not wide enough, the garboard seam will wear out and open up. This will start a leak that can only be remedied by manufacturing new garboards. Most people will try to over caulk the seam to avoid the task of fitting new garboards, leading to the continued leaks. A leaky wooden boat will have a musty smell, which is what most people think of when they picture a wooden boat.

The truth is, if the rabbet seam is cut properly and the garboard is well attached, the joint will be strong and not leak. When it does finally wear out (as this seam resists the forces of the shrouds pulling up and the keel pulling down), replacing the garboard with a new strake will fix the problem so that the boat can continue sailing along with a dry bilge.

Fiberglass

Fiberglass has been around for a long time now, and has dominated the boating scene as the standard hull material for most boats. When fiberglass was first used in boat building, the builders didn't know how strong fiberglass actually was, so they greatly overbuilt these hulls. Hulls from the 1960s will typically be very thick and not cored. 

The benefit to a very thick, non-cored fiberglass hull, is they will last forever! The draw back to these hulls is they are insanely heavy. Fiberglass hulls from these years were the pioneers, testing the waters with these plastics. It turns out that these hulls did hold up over the years, as is evidenced by the number of boats from these years that are still floating.

As time progressed, they soon realized that the hulls could be much thinner and still be strong enough to provide a safe boat. Core materials were also incorporated into the hull construction to produce a very strong and light weight hull. 

Thinner hulls do tend to flex more, and some brands of sailboats are famous for this flexing; at the same time, the weight savings greatly adds to their performance. Everything on a boat is a trade-off, you just have to find the kind of boat that you are happy with.

Cored hulls are a double edge sword, similar to sail battens, they are great when they work and will be the root of all your problems. Cored hulls add thickness to the hull without adding much weight. A thicker hull will be much stiffer and stronger than a thin hull. Adding a core adds thickness without adding much weight to the hull, resulting in a much stronger hull without the added weight. If a solid fiberglass hull were made to be as thick as a cored hull, it would have a similar strength but it would also be insanely heavy. This sounds great, but cores tend to rot when they are exposed to moisture, leading to delamination issues and costly repairs. 

Cores are supposed to be applied to the hull as the fiberglass layers are being laid up. Layers of roving and chop strand mat will hold copious amounts of wet resin which will adhere blocks of wood or foam to the hull. This wood or foam is the core. After the core is added, more layers of resin and fiberglass will be added and allowed to cure. The core needs to be fully saturated with resin before it is applied to the underlying mat, but it rarely is done this way. What usually happens is the core is a bit dry and acts as a sponge, drawing the resin out of the mat and into the core. This dry pocket that develops is the beginning of the end for a cored hull. This dry space will slowly collect moisture and begin to rot the core. 

Sadly, no brand of boat is exempt from this problem. I have seen quality boats like Hatteras and Kadey Krogen suffer from dry cores delaminating. These boats underwent the long and costly process of re-coring the entire hull, which left the owners with a very strong and sturdy yacht after the expensive yard bill was paid.

You might be wondering why boat manufacturers don't use a bit more resin and avoid these problems? It is once again due to a trade off. Hull strength comes from the fiberglass and not from the resin that binds it together, the more resin used, the heavier and weaker the hull will be. In order to minimize weight and maximize strength, hull manufacturers use various techniques to mass produce a strong hull with as little resin as necessary. The result is a very strong hull with the risk of core failure. 

Another issue that plagues fiberglass hulls is blisters. Blisters are caused by water getting into the layers of the fiberglass and causing little bumps on the hull. They don't know exactly why some hulls develop blisters and others don't, but some boats will have blisters develop everywhere while other boats will hardly develop any. Blister repairs are costly and time consuming, and their necessity is debated. Some claim that they can lead to larger delamination issues, others disagree. While small blisters are more of an eyesore than a structural problem, large blisters (larger than a few inches) should be repaired as they can cause costly repairs later on. Wooden boat owners often tout that their hulls will never develop a blister, but a blister won't sink a fiberglass boat.

One major advantage of fiberglass hulls is they are more resistant to neglect. While I don't condone neglecting your boat, it won't kill your fiberglass boat to sit in the water for months on end. Growth will form and dirt will collect, but the boat will continue to float until you return. Fiberglass offers a more flexible maintenance schedule over other materials. Wood hulls need to be hauled every year for maintenance and inspection of the strakes; metal hulls need to be hauled to check for electrolytic damage and corrosion below the waterline. Fiberglass hulls don't need this rigorous schedule. Two year maintenance rotations are commonplace, where the boat is hauled for a few days every two years to apply new anti-fouling paint. Bottom cleaning and anode replacement can be completed by way of diver or short haul in between the maintenance hauls. I know of a couple who has had their boat in the water for the past four years without a single haul out. They have a diver clean their bottom every two months to knock off any growth that has started up and to change their prop shaft anode.

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When considering the hull material for your next boat, take into consideration the amount time you have to devote to maintenance and the resources you have to pay for repairs. Doing the repairs yourself will save a lot of money, but you still need to pay for materials, making any repair "not free".

Living Aboard: Monohull Sailboats, Displacement

In the interest of full disclosure, my wife and I live on a 1968 Morgan 45 with a cutter rig, full keel, very heavy displacement, 11 foot beam, and a tiny electric motor.

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If you choose to live on a sailboat, you will live in a completely different world from powerboaters around you. Space is limited, and the weather is both a safety concern and necessary for navigational power. There are many different types of sailboats, ranging in styles and build quality. 

Sailboats fall into two major categories, monohulls and multihulls, and they are just as different as sailboats are to powerboats. 

Monohull sailboats can be further subdivided into various categories based on displacement:

• Light displacement
• Medium displacement
• Heavy displacement

Displacement is directly related to weight. A heavier boat will displace more water where a light displacement boat will displace less water. As a boat moves through the water, the amount of water displaced by the boat needs to move around the boat. More displacement means that more water needs to move out of the way for the boat to pass through. The categories of Light, Medium, and Heavy Displacement are based on a numerical value of Displacement to Length Ratio. 

(Displacement in pounds / 2,240) / ((0.01 x Length at Water Line)^3)

For example, Wisdom displaces 34,000 pounds and has a waterline length of 32 feet.
(34,000 / 2,240) / ((0.01 x 32)^3)
(15.178) / (0.32)^3
15.178 / 0.032768
Displacement to Length Ratio = 463

Light displacement will have a numerical value of 90 to 180
Medium displacement will have a numerical value of 180 to 270
Heavy displacement will have a numerical value of 270 to 360

These three categories can then be broken down further based on their keel designs, rudder styles, and hull profiles; as you can see, there are a lot of choices!

Light Displacement

Light displacement boats are fast! They displace less water, which means they can move quicker through the water. Since they weigh less, they also sail faster with the same amount of sails up as a heavier displacement boat. This means that you can get to your destination quicker and with less effort. As with everything in life, there is always a trade off.

Light displacement boats move quickly through the water, which means they will pound into the seas harder and at a faster rate than other sailboats. Since they weigh less, they will also be tossed around more than other sailboats. In light conditions, the added speed is exhilarating! When the conditions deteriorate, so will the morale on board. Light displacement sailboats do not weather storms very comfortably as they will be thrown around by the winds and waves. 

The argument that negates a light displacements low storm comfort is they can out sail the storm. When a storm is spotted with enough warning, the crew can sail to avoid the storm entirely! If you can get out of the way of the storm, then you never need to weather a storm. 

While light displacement sailboats can escape storms, there is one issue they can not escape: weight. Liveaboards tend to accumulate stuff. As minimalistic as I think I am, I still have storage lockers filled with junk that I need to sort out and decide if I still need it or not. Light displacement sailboats are very sensitive to where weight is stored on them as they will list and lean if not evenly loaded. Something as simple as where you store your anchor and rode can make a huge impact on the boat. Imagine having a 45 pound anchor on the tip of the bow with 300 feet of chain weighing 480 pounds all sitting up in the bow.  That's 525 pounds at the very front of the boat! This will cause the bow to droop and raise the stern (and the rudders) out of the water a bit. I have seen light displacement boats carry very lightweight aluminum anchors in their bilge (centered in the boat) connected to an all rope rode in an effort to reduce weight on board.

Ground tackle aside, imagine where you want to store your canned goods or your books? All of these items must be carefully considered before they are brought onto the boat and then maintained organized in a location that will balance the boats trim. 

If we plan out where we will keep everything on the boat and make sure the boat is perfectly balanced, the final consideration is still total weight. Light displacement sailboats are very sensitive to how much weight they can carry. They are designed to be very light and if you begin loading all of your belongings into them in a sensible and balanced fashion, you may overload the boat. The easiest way to spot an overloaded light displacement boat is to see how high the owner paints the waterline. 

An overloaded boat will not perform as well as it was intended to and is less sea worthy. If you have an overloaded light displacement sailboat and plan to out run storms, and then weigh it down with tons (literally) of stuff, you might no longer be able to out run the storm. Now when you get hit by the storm, you will find yourself in a very bad situation where your life is actually at risk. 

As displacement is increased, so are the loads on the rigging. Weighing down the yacht will put un-planned loads on the standing rigging, far greater than what the boat was designed to manage. Keeping weight down in a light displacement boat is as much a safety concern as it is a structural concern.

If you love the look and performance of a light displacement sailboat and decide to live on one, make sure you keep it light and pay attention to the waterline. If the boot stripe disappears, the correct answer is not to raise the bottom paint, but instead to unloaded the unnecessary cargo.

Medium Displacement

Medium displacement boats are a compromise between light and heavy displacement boats. They are better performers than a heavy displacement sailboat, but not as fast as a light displacement sailboat. This means that they can out run a storm, but if they get caught (which will eventually happen), they can weather the storm better than a light displacement sailboat would.

These boats are also less sensitive to weight. The trim of the boat is not as sensitive as on a light displacement sailboat. This means that you can pack more of your junk on board and take it with you! 

This displacement range is quite popular with modern boat builders as they can build the boat with lighter materials but don't have to engineer the boat to an extreme level where they shave every possible extra gram off. This means they can build a sturdy boat without worrying about using the latest in ultra light weight materials while at the same time they don't have the extra expense of overbuilding the hull. Medium displacement yachts seem to be rather economical to buy and own, allowing more people to explore the world of sailing with good performance on a capable boat.

Heavy Displacement

There is no nice way to put it, heavy displacement boats are slow and lumbering. They won't outrun a storm, but they will weather the storm comfortably. When the winds are light, they will need all the sail area in the world to move forward. Most people with heavy displacement sailboats give up on sailing in light winds and motor everywhere. When the winds pick up, they will power through the waves in style! Since these sailboats are so heavy, they will cut and plow their way through the waves. Rough seas will feel like if you are being gently rocked back and forth as the boat powers through the chop towards your windward mark. 

Weight is also not such a touchy matter on board a heavy displacement sailboat, the extra weight of your belongings will not affect the trim of the boat much, nor overload her easily. If you think of cargo as a percentage of the boats total weight, each pound has less of an impact on a heavy displacement boat. Each person who lives aboard will tend to bring 2000 pounds with them while cruising. This number includes water, food, clothes, gear, and random junk that people pickup and bring back to the boat along their journey.

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Let us consider a set of boats with a 32 foot waterline and see what effect adding 1 long ton (2,240 pounds) per person will have on it.

• Light Displacement: 3 long tons and 32 foot waterline = 91.5
• Medium Displacement: 6 long tons and 32 foot waterline = 183.1
• Heavy Displacement: 9 long tons and 32 foot waterline = 274.7

If we add 2 people to the yacht, the following will happen

• Light Displacement: 3 long tons becomes 5 long tons, a 40% increase in the weight of the boat
• Medium Displacement: 6 long tons becomes 8 long tons, a 25% increase in the weight of a boat
• Heavy Displacement: 9 long tons becomes 11 long tons, an 18% increase in the weight of the boat

As you can see, the heavier a boats designed displacement is, the less sensitive it is to the addition of weight on the boat. If you increase the weight of a light displacement boat by 40%, you need to be completely certain the weight is evenly distributed. The same load in a heavy displacement sailboat will only be an 18% increase and weight distribution is not as critical. This is why displacement to length ratio is an important category that should be considered at the beginning of your search.

If you want to travel far and fast and promise to live a spartan lifestyle with almost no belongings and only enough food to make the journey until your next port, a light displacement sailboat would be a perfect fit.

If you want to travel far and are not that worried about speed, like to carry along some personal belongings and extra food, a medium displacement sailboat might be your ideal cruising boat.

If you want to travel far, do not care about how long it takes or when you will get there and want to bring along whatever you want because this is your home, a heavy displacement sailboat could be your perfect cruising boat and home. 

Living Aboard: Powerboats

Powerboats are nice! They have lots of space in them and are typically made to feel plush and lavish. Aside from houseboats, powerboats take as much advantage of the beam available to provide a large interior living space. 

The most common type of liveaboard powerboat we have come across in marinas has been the motoryacht. Motoryachts are simply huge wide boats with as many rooms as they could cram into them. The bows of these boats will flare out quickly as they develop their full beam very far forward and this full beam will extend all the way back to the transom, usually ending in a very large owners cabin. These boats are expensive to operate, but if all you do is stay tied up in a marina, they only cost the slip fees. 

Motoryachts will tend to have a stateroom aft, also known as the "owners cabin", a stateroom forward; and if large enough, a third stateroom midship. They will usually have at least two heads (boat bathrooms), one forward and one aft. The galley will be located near the salon near the middle of the boat, where the large windows will let in plenty of natural light to make the interior bright and airy. In the winter, these huge windows will be a huge source of heat loss, which can be easily remedied by shrink wrapping the boat. While motoryachts will have plenty of closet space, most liveaboards will convert the forward stateroom into a storage room and closet for their off-season clothes. These boats are tend to be considered "floating condominiums" by their owners, as they never leave the slip.

Sport fisherman boats are the next most common motor boat we come across being used as a liveaboard. They are very similar to a motoryacht in hull size, but the entire aft cabin and deck is lost to give way for a massive cockpit. These cockpits are nice during the warm months, when these owners will typically entertain a party in this open area. Cockpits are a good place to host an event because if someone spills a drink, it can be easily washed away with a hose. There is no concern of staining carpet or hurting interior grade wood soles. Cockpits are designed to pull bleeding fish into and be washed out later. In the winter, most sport fisherman liveaboards will set up a frame in the cockpit, allowing the shrink wrap to make an additional room that would otherwise be lost in the cold months. Of the liveaboards I know personally, the ones who live on sport fisherman boats tend go out for the weekend more often than those who live in motoryachts. I also find that those in sport fishermans will have less house type items, such as large TVs standing on their unsupported base in exchange for a bulkhead mounted TV that will not fall over when they bounce around in the Chesapeake chop. 

Express cruisers are much sleeker looking than a motoryacht, and tend to be very plush! They typically have a full galley inside and a small galley in the cockpit, where drinks and snacks can be stored and then presented to guests. Inside, these boats tend to be smaller than a motoryacht. Motoryachts are massive blocks on the water, offering loads of interior volume with subtle features to make them hydrodynamic, where express cruisers are very sleek, sacrificing interior volume. The massive engines also tend to be in the back of the boat where the owners cabin would be on a motoryacht, meaning one less cabin inside. Even at very long lengths, these boats do not offer much interior space. They tend to be setup on one level, where a comparable motoryacht will have two levels, giving you twice the interior space. The sleek lines and massive engines of an express cruiser make them notably faster than a motoryacht or sport fisherman. One of our neighbors is very pleased that his express cruiser can do nearly 30 knots!

On the other end of the powerboat spectrum are trawlers. Trawlers have less interior volume than other motoryachts, but are very fuel efficient. Trawlers are based off of the fishing trawler style of boat, moving slow and steady through the water with its high bow and transom. Trawlers are practically sailboats with a tiny mast and a large motor. They do not plane and are limited to their hull speed, but this also means that they do not consume much fuel. Most of my friends with trawlers consume around two gallons per hour. While most people with trawlers are retired sailors, some of them are actually first time boaters who decided they like the look of these boats. Thanks to their low fuel consumption, these powerboats are very economical to run and the owners will take them on very long distance voyages. Most of the people who live on trawlers in the marina are snowbirds, spending the summers up North and the winters in Florida. They make the trek down the East coast in the ICW every year in these boats, greatly demonstrating the long distance capability of trawlers. 

Trawlers tend to have a more traditional interior, with varnished wood on every surface instead of soft fabrics and coverings. There are also two common styles of trawlers, tri-cabin and sedan. The big difference is a tri-cabin has an aft stateroom under the dinghy platform where the sedan has a larger salon with no aft stateroom. Basically, two staterooms for the tri-cabin versus one stateroom for the sedan.

The sedan trawler has a much larger salon with a lot of natural light, but you are forced to sleep in the bow and there is no additional stateroom for guests. The tri-cabin has three smaller rooms, a central salon with steps forward that lead down to the forward stateroom and steps aft that lead to the aft stateroom. The engine is under the raised floor of the salon, allowing plenty of access for maintenance and engine repairs on both styles of trawlers. They tend to only have one engine, but some of the larger models have two motors which gives you added maneuverability as well as added fuel consumption. Most trawler owners are retired sailors as they are well versed in maneuvering single screw vessels and are accustomed to the slow voyaging speeds of a displacement hull.

If you are thinking of living aboard a powerboat, consider what you want from your boat and what you want to do with your boat, then try to find one that you also think has pretty design lines. If you want a dockside condo that will never leave the slip or fuel costs do not concern you, consider a voluminous motoryacht or sport fisherman. If you are more fuel conscious and also want to travel great distances, consider looking at trawlers. Lastly, if you want to go really fast and are willing to sacrifice interior space, you would greatly enjoy an express cruiser.

Decisions about Living Aboard

When you decide to leave your land based home and move into a boat, there are a lot of decisions to make at the beginning that will drastically affect your life on the water for years to come. The biggest decision you need to make is "What kind of boat?" 

The three biggest categories that your choice can fall into are: Sailboat, Powerboat, and Houseboat. Within each of these categories, the choices will be nearly endless, but in a broad sense, these three options will pave the way for a very different liveaboard life.

Houseboats are practically floating homes. They have house sized appliances, and plenty of space inside. If your dream is to live on a boat in a marina, plugged into shore power and water, a houseboat may be the answer. If you would like to take your boat out for the weekend or longer, you might want to keep looking at other styles of boats. Houseboats are roomy, but not very sea worthy. They are designed to be comfortable homes, not capable cruisers. While this is a general statement, and there are always exceptions to the rules, most houseboats fit this mold. Even the houseboats that are marketed as "performance cruisers" can only handle mild seas. 

Powerboats trade some of the comforts of a houseboat for added performance and sea worthiness. Powerboats range a huge spectrum from tiny express cruisers to titanic mega-yachts. Common liveaboard boats are sport fishermans, motoryachts, and trawlers. Each of these types have their benefits and drawbacks, you simply have to see which one strikes your fancy. While living in a powerboat gives you the comfort of space and the ability to go out for a weekend or extended cruise, you will have to pay for it. Powerboats consume fuel to get anywhere, and this means you have to pay to go places. Typically, the faster you go, the more you pay: trawlers typically consume 2 gallons per hour and move around 5 to 6 knots while sport fisherman and motoryachts will consume 40 gallons per hour or more while planing along the surface of the water. If you have places to be and money to burn, a powerboat will keep you to your schedule.

Sailboats are the polar opposite of a houseboat and quite far off from a powerboat. They offer the least amount of interior space while living at a marina when compared to their beamier brethren, and they don't move very fast either. Sailboats have tapering bows and sterns, allowing them to glide through the water more efficiently. This means that the beam of the boat is only the beam at one point of the boat. If a sailboat has a 14 foot beam, that means that the middle of the boat will be 14 feet; as you move forward or aft from this point, the boat will taper down to only a few feet wide. By contrast a powerboat with a 14 foot beam will be 14 feet wide from the stern almost all the way up to the bow, where it tapers to a point. A houseboat with a 14 foot beam will be 14 feet wide from bow to stern, because they are a floating box which offers maximum interior volume.

It might seem that sailboats are the worst choice to live in when powerboats and houseboats are available as well, but they do have one strong point: they can sail! Sailboats are powered by the wind, which is free, giving them a nearly unlimited range. What sailboats lack in interior space they make up for with travel space. Sailboats can take you to countless places, letting you explore new waters and voyaging off into the distance.

If you plan to stay tied up the a pier and never leave the marina, a houseboat might be your best bet. If you want to take your boat out of the slip from time to time, a powerboat will grant you that versatility for a price. Lastly, if you plan to travel a great distance and don't want to pay for fuel, a sailboat can take you there!

On a less "performance" point of view, you should also live in a boat that you like the lines of. If you think houseboats are ugly, try a roomy powerboat. If you like the look of a sailboat and are willing to sacrifice interior space, get a sailboat! It should start with what you want out of the boat and then move towards what you like best in a boat. 

Islander 36 Conversion: Making the Deadeyes

Once the length of the stays has been measured, manufacturing of the synthetic rigging can begin! The total length of the stay is a combination of all the components involved. 

At the top of the shroud, you will have the mast attachment components, and at the bottom of the stay, you will have a system for tensioning the stay. The length of all of these components needs to be subtracted from the length of the shroud to tell you how long your synthetic stay needs to be from eye splice to eye splice.

Before you can make the eye splices in your stay, you need to know exactly how long all of these components are, meaning you need to assemble everything before you can put the eye splices in the stays. 

The first step will be to manufacture the deadeyes. Each deadeye consumes four feet of line and is a bit of a tedious process. It is important to make all the deadeyes first, before you start making the stays. Having the finished deadeyes will let you measure the entire ends of the shroud and calculate how long the stay needs to be.

For the Islander 36, we will need to make one deadeye for the backstay and eight deadeyes for the shrouds, since it is a double spreader rig. This means that nine deadeyes in total must be manufactured. 

These dyneema loops are called grommets. They are made by creating a mobius brummel splice in the line, connecting the two ends together in a way that they can not slide open under pressure. The splice actually locks the two ends together in a fair and low stress method with the tails buried within the length of the grommet. 

The lot of these grommets took me just under seven hours to make, and it was a very tedious process. The next step will be to insert the stainless steel thimbles and tie a seizing knot in the middle to hold everything together. For more details on how to make a dyneema deadeye, check out the link below.

I didn't service the ends of these deadeyes like I did when I made my first set because the service is completely unnecessary. My thought process when I made the first ones was that the lashings might chafe the fibers of the deadeye as they run by it. The reality is the lashings do not chafe on the deadeyes because they are led by the thimble and never contact the deadeye. Secondly, as the deadeye creeps into place, the bluk of the deadeye thins and the service become loose on the deadeye and begins to unravel. Servicing the ends of the deadeyes took more than an hour per deadeye and was completely unnecessary. While it did add a splash of contrasting color to the deadeye, it ends up being a rather expensive feature that offers no additional benefit to the deadeye. If it is requested, the ends of the deadeye can be serviced with whipping twine, but it will add considerably to the labor time involved in manufacturing the synthetic standing rigging.