Beginning the Build

Prior to starting the project, about 6 months were spent scouring the internet and reading such books as Buehler's Backyard Boat Building, The Laminated Wood Boat Builder, and of course, Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction. There are so many techniques and many opinions on the best methods for building wood epoxy boats. It is hard for the un-intiated to determine what would be the best procedure and materials to use, and all the available plans seem to use slightly different methods.

One of the features we liked about the NorthSea was that the permanent bulkheads were shaped and used as frames for the strip planking. There were also several laminated rib type frames. All of these shapes were plotted from the "off sets" provided in the plans. In order to draw these from the off sets, a little bit of lofting was required.


In December of 2008, we created a lofting table that flipped down from the wall to save valuable space. It was, of course, Jane's job to do the knee busting work of grid drawing.



The grids were then labelled by the distance above and below the designed water line (DWL), and then to the right or left of center. These points were then used to plot the provided off sets at each station (cross section of the hull). This created the shape of the frame to be laminated or the bulkhead to be cut from marine plywood.



Here is where we started to see the shape she would eventually take. This was bulkhead at a station near the bow.