Mini-Trawler Conversion -- Part 3

Materials

Since the hull for my trawler project was free and my good old outboards would provide the propulsion, the prime directive, after safety, was that further expenses be minimized (and since I’m retired, investing big bucks into restoring old cars and boats now has much less appeal). My plan was to re-purpose old plywood panels where possible, use assorted wood and fittings that I had sitting around my shop. This is an electric catamaran that got built but never got very far. I figured that I could reuse many of the straight, wide epoxy-coated marine plywood panels.

I try to patronize the marine flea markets and consignment stores, and as a last resort I buy retail from the usual ship chandlers. The one exception to this “use it up” approach was that I would not significantly restrict my purchases for epoxy and other useful items from Duckworks Boat Building Supply (www.duckworksbbs.com) -- their prices are always better, the quality of the merchandise is great, and the customer experience has always been excellent. 

Experimenting with different materials for use in future projects is always one of the goals for my boat projects. I’ve learned that some “alternative” materials just don’t hold up to the weather conditions that we have where I live and boat: snow and sleet in the winter; hot and humid in the summer. I still have most of a gallon jug of Titebond III that didn’t work well as a coating, although apparently others have used it as a substitute for clear-coating epoxy. 

At one point I acquired a stack of surplus lauan flooring plywood that was purchased years ago for boat building projects; how would this material work on this project? Having experienced plywood “checking” with neat epoxy on ply, I planned to use some glass this time around. And maybe I would experiment with “dynel” instead of fiberglass, as Ruell Parker recommends [4]. I would buy paint and caulk from big-box construction stores. It would be useful to do some low-cost experiments and get some experience and long-term exposure results now, on a smaller boat, rather than making mistakes later on with a bigger and more expensive project.

4. Ruell Parker, “The New Cold-Molded Boatbuilding” (International Marine, 1990).

Building Schedule

Building a hull is usually considered (and wrongly, in my humble opinion) the major part of a boat building project. As anyone who has completed building a boat has quickly discovered, the hull is the quicker -- and probably the most fun part, as the shape comes together and you can see the lines -- portion of the project. Painting the boat, adding necessary things like windows and hatches, assembling the rig (or propulsion system), and installing electronics and instruments (if there are any) consumes much more time and money than the hull. So, even though I was starting with a finished fiberglass hull, and therefore had a head start in that area, I still had much work ahead of me.

I live near the north end of the Chesapeake Bay and the best times out on the water are during the spring and in the fall. It’s hot and humid during July and August, and I’d prefer to not be out on the water dodging thunderstorms (been there, done that years ago when I crewed on boats). Therefore, once my spring boating and travel season was wrapped up, right after the Independence Day holiday, I started building.

Since my boat shop is on the north side of the house, it is well shaded and reasonably comfortable during the summer heat. And air conditioning is close by during the heat spells. Early in the project planning process (Spring 2019) I acquired a used, road-worthy trailer that was big enough to easily handle the Cutter runabout. I transferred the gutted Cutter hull from a yard trailer, reset the bunks, hosed out the accumulated debris, and then cleared out the shop. With the hull on a good trailer with new tires I could easily move the project outside to work on it, and then back inside to keep it out of any thunderstorms.

The weather in September on the Chesapeake can be very nice; or it can be hot and humid. Or we can get a tropical storm; or a hurricane. Some years we get all four, but September is also a good time for sailing -- a potential distraction to boat building. And early October is when the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival (MASCF) happens down in St. Michaels, MD -- a landmark date for small boaters on the Right Coast. As a result, I feel that all of my boat projects should be finished, or at least winding down to a respectable stopping point, by the time the MASCF weekend rolls around so that I can take advantage of the beautiful fall weather out on the Bay -- rather than working on boats. My goal for the trawler project was to get enough completed so that I could move it out of my shop and tarp it for the winter. In the best case, I would be able to get the boat down to the water to find leaks in the hull and get a good reading on the waterline and trim. And maybe even test the steering and the outboards. That was my three-month build plan…