Could I do this?

[stevenelane]

Hello everyone.

Back in 2000 I sailed on a BT Global Challenge (Compaq) steel sailboat in a race across the North Atlantic in Winter.  We battled howling storms as depressions came through. This has been on my mind recently as I start to think about what retirement might look like in the next 5-10 years. Since 2000 I have only been on a sailing yacht a couple of times but I have been dinghy sailing and windsurfing for most of those years. I like adventures.  I have raised my family, done some fun holidays, but nothing has compared to being in the North Atlantic in 60 knots of wind on BT Global Challenge boat.  The waves were the height of a house at times.  It was epic.  

I was surfing the ‘net, watching youtube, googling around and looking at people on their global sailing adventures.  I watched a great youtube documentary called Chasing Bubbles about a wild sailor that took off around the world in a boat called Bubbles. And then I read about Adam Waugh building his own boat.  It was a really random thing to find on Apple News.  Since then I have been looking a lot of this McIntyre Class Globe 5.80 and wondering, could I do that?  Could I build a little boat and sail in that around the world or at least a TransAT. Or at least the Fastnet.  It’s almost daring yourself to dream that I could build my own boat and sail it around the world. 

I have not got a clue how to hang a shelf properly let alone build a boat.  I am a computer security specialist in my career.  I can do technology and program stuff.  I am terrible at DIY.  I once tried repairing a Laser with glass fibre and totally messed the little dinghy up.  So my skills are awful. 

But I can’t stop looking at the website, watching videos about these boats and reading.  In my mind I have tentatively started thinking about what a project like this would look like:

I would have to get my RYA training done.  I saw that fyney boat kits run boat building courses.  So perhaps I could learn?  I guess I could put in 10 hours a week to build the boat in a year or so.  I live in small house so I would have to find somewhere to build it. Etc. 

You start to think about the art of the possible.

I have some questions:

• How much do I need to save to be able to build a boat in the UK?
• Is it permitted to get it sponsored and has anyone tried?

• What will happen after the 2025 race?  Will there be future Ocean and Mini Global races? What will happen to the class?

[brucel]

On costs have a look at northcardinal.co.uk/category/mini580/ then price it on todays money.
For ability's, I’d try something smaller first with the same process (ply on frame) it’s a lot of boat in a small package. Find out if you like the work before taking on the expense and TIME of one of these. I wish I had of, it’s been a steep learning curve. There are lots of wooden boat schools that do a training build at their facility if you have one close that would really put you ahead on your own build.

There is a post by Don somewhere but the idea is he will pass it off to an owner class association to maintain registration, run events etc. will not happen till after MGR.

[hull113]

Can you do it? Yes
How much? Much variability... We probably spent about $50k US in materials. AT LEAST. Could spend a little less, and probably a lot more.
Time? Took me about 21 months. About 8 months full time/60 hours a week, and the rest 20-30 hours a week.

Somewhere I saw 500 hours. Yeah, if you have 6 guys working...

I think anyone with some sort of building brain can build this. There are no directions included. Just prints and parts. Just remember that your ass will be in the boat in some pretty rough weather, circumstances. You can skip and take shortcuts and be cheap to the extent that your risk management software and hardware (thoughts and brain) allow you to do that. The only thing that you can/should really allow to slip is finish. You need to build a strong/bulletproof boat. How it looks is up to you.

Jack
Hull 113

[stevenelane]

I think I will build a dinghy about optimist size first. I see that www.fyneboatkits.co.uk/kits/sailing/ have some courses. I need to learn the skills but this is fast becoming a dream to do this.