Building a Wooden Sailboat: The Design, Build, and Launch of the Whimsey

The tale of building my outrigged wooden sailboat is one of limitations imposed by materials, space, money and time, making decisions on the spot, solving problems created by mistakes, and the daily slog which was the building process. I follow this process from the initial idea, research through boat-building manuals, sketching out the design, purchase of the lumber, and completing the build of a five-thousand-dollar sailboat.
I began with an unimposing pile of lumber from a local sawmill, and gradually transformed that into a wooden representation of the plans I’d drawn. Designed with a stern of a caravel, the prow and beam of a Marshallese sailing canoe, and out-rigged like a South Pacific sailboat, there was no other boat like it. I had some unusual design parameters. I wanted to be able to beach her in an emergency, sail even if she were holed, and for her to be unsinkable. If the main hull became no longer viable, I designed the outrigger to be used as a boat in its own right. Not being able to swim, I’m fond of contingency plans.
In two-and-a-half months of daily labour I laid the keel, built the ribs and the frame, and planked in my round-bottomed main hull. I built the outrigger next, relying on plywood and stitch-and-glue to give me the shape I sought. When it came time to join the hulls, I built robust timbers, and by the time I had the mast tabernacle done and finished the mast, I had a better sense of what I’d built.
On launch, the Whimsey floated right at the waterline, proved to be both stable and seaworthy, and before long I was living aboard as I traveled around the inner passage between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia.