Please do, yes!

I know only of three built & launched, a fourth presently a'building, not including the two original prototypes.

It'll have been three years come Feb. '20 that my kit arrived! Alas, as yet it remains a kit. Expect to commence assembly next month now that I've prepared a suitable space. 

Of course they would. Please do, and welcome to the forum.

Laszlo

Yes, please do!  My favorite thing to look at online in the mornings before work with my cup of coffee is a good boat build blog...

   Thank you gentlemen for the welcome.

I can't guarantee it will be a 'good build blog', but I'll do my best not to cause you to spill your coffee Captain!

 Part 1

‘Plain sailing’

Last year I sold my Winkle Brig ‘Winkle’. She was an extensively modified GRP, 16ft  (LOD) gaff rigged yawl ‘pocket cruiser’ which I had owned for over 17 years and sailed mainly single handedly throughout the UK and Europe.

However neither ‘Winkle’ nor I were getting any younger and we were both putting on weight in all the wrong places. Consequently, she was becoming an effort for me to launch and recover. Added to which, when on the water I was doing more motorsailing than I was happy with.

As pretty as ‘Winkle’ was, I was yearning for a lighter, purer sailing vessel. I tired of engine noise,  straight line voyages in a losing battle with time, tide and nature, and I longed for timeless meanderings through the countryside, unencumbered by celestial, terrestrial or temporal constraints, exploring shallow inlets and waterways in a craft at one with the natural world.

I have always been an admirer of the lugsail rig in its simplicity, elegance and flexibility, and having long sailed with a mizzen I cannot imagine being without this steadfast friend. It was auxiliary propulsion which was the issue. I didn’t want an engine.

Oars have always seemed rather 19th century to me. With all their Edwardian attractiveness, in the right hands on wide calm rivers they are indisputably the king of propulsion, but facing backwards was not the way forward for me.

I like paddles; forward facing, direct and sleek propulsion, but really only effective on conventional kayaks too narrow for my purposes, and of course if sailing, there simply aren’t enough hands to cope with sheets, tiller and paddles ..... so, the discovery of the peddle power of the Hobie Mirage Drive came as a revelation. I have not seen one in operation as they are rare here in the UK, but its fascinating combination of an organic flipper movement with ‘Leonardo Da Vinci meets Heath Robinson’ mechanics is irresistible, so I bought one. 

The ‘Waterlust’ lug yawl with the Hobie Mirage drive propulsion thus met all my requirements without compromise. The vessel is as pretty as you would expect from her East Coast American pedigree, but the only problem was that I had to build her. I had no previous boat building experience at all; no space for the building and storage of a 17ft vessel, and no means of transporting the finished article. Apart from that it was plain sailing!

MartinC I'm going to anxiously await Part 2!

Most of your caveats I've had to (or yet to) overcome: 

"...the discovery of the peddle power of the Hobie Mirage Drive came as a revelation."

The inspiration to incorporate a Mirage Drive was the kicker that put me over the edge when the Waterlust project premiered several years ago. I've had plans and materials laid by to build one of Ian Oughtred's MacGregor sailing canoes since the mid '80's.

As I was a younger man than today the practical part of tippy vs. reasonably stable (to say nothing of lofting vs. CNC kit-assembly) got the better of me starting my 66th lap around Sol. That was just after wife & I'd pulled up 37 years of roots, bringing us into a new abode where I have a basment now for my tools and my half of a 2-car garage for a 'birthing loft'.

The trials and tribulations of making a new (to us) home comfortable have occupied my time since the move. And I still work part-time. Getting that garage insulated, drywalled then painted was a major accomplishment. Adding a garage heater last fall was the icing on the cupcake so a'building I too will be going pretty darn soon.

Floorspace in the garage is at a premium of course. Once I got pretty much settled into it I realized the vertical dimension was worth exploring as an off-season storage option. So I acquired a Harken lift kit in anticipation of a future-to-come when my Waterlust will be safely hoisted to the roof rafters and - maybe - I can park my MINI Clubman underneath!

Whether the Clubman's up to 'roofing' a Waterlust & kit remains to be seen. Don't want to have to add a trailer....

I haven't bought a Mirage drive yet, opting instead for the sail kit. I'm saving for the drive though, it'll come. Probably well before I get this project wet.

Part 2. Revised design requirements and preparations.

  The UK distributers of the Waterlust are a company called Fyne Boat Kits based in the beautiful Lake District beloved of Wordsworth and the 19th Century romantic poets. A six hour drive later I was elbow deep in a romantic day course on epoxy with my wife Deb, at the end of which the delightful staff at FBK had convinced me that I could build a Waterlust despite the warning online that this kit was ‘intended for people with some prior experience in stitch-and-glue boatbuilding’. 

The Waterlust is 17ft long. This is a big vessel to house unless you are fortunate enough to own a barn and I don’t. My single garage was annoyingly three feet too short, narrow and already full of car bits. The only solution was an extension to accommodate the length of the Waterlust and a new workshop area.

Prior to starting on the garage extension I needed to know that the Waterlust could be a true two man vessel. The enchanting videos online showing the vessels travelling down the Intracoastal Waterway sometimes featured shots of the boat with two crew, and I needed to know if this was artistic licence or if the boats really were stable and comfortable enough as a two man boat, for although Deb is not a sailor she is an accomplished kayaker and is keen to join me.

After much consideration the designer Dillon Majoros concluded that the best option was to make the cockpit 9” shorter so that the helmsman (me) would sit on the increased aft deck in an elevated ‘stadium style’ position and control the sails, whilst the propulsion unit (Deb) would sit inside the cockpit and peddle when necessary. This arrangement avoids the problem of having too much weight aft and I liked the idea of the cockpit being smaller and therefore less prone to flooding. In addition it meant very few design changes, as the pedal position is unchanged and the helm position is immediately over frame #5 so there was no additional reinforcement required. The option to add outriggers for increased stability was discussed and Dillon felt that as these can be added later if required a decision did not need to be made at this stage.

I was concerned about stability and capsizing, but Dillon assured me that the vessel has a huge amount of positive flotation built in, so even if you capsize, swamp the boat and fill the forward storage compartment with water (highly unlikely), it will still float and right.

Dillon pointed out that the forward storage hatch has a gasket and will be dogged down while sailing, and recommended adding float bags under the aft deck just to reduce the swamp-able volume.  Tightly sealed dry bags with gear will reduce this volume, too.

The Mirage drive:- Hobie’s latest model is  a "reversible" (180) Mirage Drive.  Dillon confirmed that the mounting points on the Waterlust are the same as the earlier version and the drive will install without issue except that the reversing controls interfere with the drive well as designed.  However, if the reversible Mirage Drive is required on the Waterlust the pull cables can be swapped with line, run through the frame, and terminated in loops and this works apparently. However, I settled for the ‘non-reversible’ version as not being a fisherman, I could not see a need for a reverse. I did however, opt for the slightly longer ‘turbo fin’ option on the Mirage drive.

The kit arrived in May but it was not for another month that I had completed the garage extension, checked all the parts and assembled tools necessary for the job. The Mirage Drive was something of a challenge to source here in the UK as most units are imported and sold as a package with boats. Eventually I found a distributer who was able to import and sell me one, but it took almost a month to find and import the essential drive brackets (‘click and go’ assemblies), which are not sold with the unit. The whole exercise was eye wateringly expensive - over £800 - but I console myself that I will never have to buy any fuel ever again.

The sails - whether white, 'Egyptian' cream, or tanbark - are all built from dyed dacron. I wanted cotton but Dillon pointed out that they are neither as durable nor as light as modern Dacron sails. Our boat is to be called ‘Gaia’ after the Greek earth goddess, as I feel its sleek engineless form is completely in tune with Mother Nature, and Deb designed a colourful sail emblem to go on the Mizzen sail. Dacron seems a bit too slippery for adhesive vinyl decals but we will give it a try.

So by June we are all ready to go.....Just in time for the hottest summer on record!

Enlightening report there MartinC! Thanks for the comment about fitting reversible Mirage drive. I have yet to source one, had planned on opting for that feature only 'cause where I am I anticipate 'backing' out of some too-tight-to-turnabout waters sooner or later. Will have to consult w/ Dillon (once he's back from vacation) as to what needs modifying on the Mirage trunk assembly.

I've begun to assemble my kit as of two days ago and as Gramps suggests will endeavor to keep the momentum going... as I watch the first real snowfall of this season outside my garage window.

I'm curious as to your progress after some six months; how far along are you at this date?

Thanks SPClark.

Don't worry about my extremely slow rate of progress. You will be much quicker as I have had a few setbacks along the way - not all boat related!

For my own reasons (which I will detail in further progress posts) I am not following the same stages in the same progression as the manual. I have  presently completed all the ancilliary bits (dagger board and casing, rudder and casing, Hobie drive console, mast steps etc etc) and have glued all the planks,deck and base jigsaw joints  - so I am now ready to start stitching the whole thing together. My guess is that you could get to this stage in 2 or 3 weeks if you were going hard at it.

We have now been hit by some colder weather (not cold by your standards but too cold to epoxy), so I have taken a break to insulate and heat my garage to make the whole experience more enjoyable over the winter.

Good luck with your build.

Drat... had nice reply made up then lost it to an inadvertent swipe back a page.

You want to take this conversation to another venue, share your e-mail address with me. We can save the highlights for posting here for the other members. 

Part 3. How to build it.

Even with 18’ by 15’ of working space it seemed to me that the logistics of the build needed to be carefully studied before any gluing took place in order to reduce double handling and to keep the consequent risk of damage of the components to a minimum.

Firstly all the parts needed to be laid out, identified, inspected and measured. There are about 100 parts in the kit and most of them are pretty fragile. My front coaming piece was broken on arrival and a close inspection of the parts showed that the sheerclamps were 4” too short. In addition, one of the daggerboard halves was warped and the mast had a 3/4” bend in it. These kind of issues are best discovered on day one!

In the event my UK supplier FBK was very helpful and as well as providing advice they replaced the broken coaming and sent completely new sheerclamps so that there wouldn’t be a colour match problem with the six hardwood sections. They suggested I persevered for the time being with the dagger board and mast but assured me that help would be on hand if there were problems later. More of this later.

Although explicitly not a ‘manual-cum-educational textbook typical of most CLC kits’ it is difficult for the rookie builder not to regard the 14 page CLC supplied documentation for the Waterlust as a bible in the absence of any other written guides; but having read the documentation  carefully together with the excellent CLC online information (https://www.clcboats.com/shoptips/stitch_glue/), it seemed to me that there would be major storage issues if I followed the chronology of the manual and glued up all the planks and longer elements first to create 17’ long, very floppy (and vulnerable) pieces.

It seemed more sensible to me to work on the ancillary elements first (dagger board and assembly, rudder and assembly etc) and this would have the added advantage of allowing me to learn a bit about epoxy and stitching on those parts of the boat which would ultimately be the least visible. I am glad I did.

As for a work surface, I decided that what worked for me was to use three 2’6”’ wide 4’ long trestle tables with two 8’x4’ sheets of 3/4 inch ply on top. Laid end to end this provided a useful surface for laying out and identifying the parts, but more importantly it was versatile enough to be adjusted to suit the different needs of the build throughout the construction period. ie

1. The surface area was big enough to lay out all the components on day one to check them and work out what goes where;

2. It was wide enough to support the substantial width of the deck (the largest element) whilst gluing and glassing, but not so wide I couldn’t get to each of the overhanging  sides in order to use them both for gluing and clamping of the smaller elements;

3. The 8 ’x 4’ sheets could be parted in the middle to allow mid length clamping to the plywood and gluing of the puzzle joints on the longer elements;

4. The trestle tables allowed for a useful working height;

5. My hope is that in the later stages the plywood can be dispensed with and the three trestle tables used to provide intermediate (and adjustable) support for the hull whilst allowing easy access from both sides and underneath.

During the first stages I covered the plywood with the cardboard packaging the components arrived in, and then covered the whole thing in polythene to prevent anything sticking to the plywood. I guess everyone discovers the hard way the importance of polythene protection as it is difficult to image anything which is quite as sticky...and permanent... as epoxy!

Good post there MartinC, you've an eye for details.

It took me nearly three years to get my building room ready. When we moved into this place six years ago the garage was bare stud walls and roof. Starting about the time my kit arrived I embarked on a project to get it wired for power tools, insulated, drywalled, then getting a grip on making the double-wide overhead door somewhat more draft-resistant (losing battle) than what the former owners left us with. Last year I added a gas-fired garage heater, this past August finished tying it to the gas supply to the house; last winter I had it running off 20lb propane bottle set outside to get an idea of the heat load and gas consumption.

Week ago this past Monday I actually got started gluing up the panel and bottom's puzzle joints. Yesterday was Day 10, saw me beginning to stitch P & S Panels 1 to the bottom. You can view pics in the other thread I've authored here.

Well done SPClark!

Terrific progress and really neat work. I am following you on your site and I am very jealous of your work bench!

I have eased up a bit it now as the weater here  is so variable at the moment I can't keep a constant temperature in the garage - so I will enjoy your build vicariously and try and learn from the master.  Keep it up!

Disabuse yourself of any thought I'm a master at anything!

At 70+ the only consistent thing I've learned along the way is to think through what I plan on accomplishing, try to apply any lessons I've learned prior to this newest unfamiliar endeavor that might ensure success!

Having a forum like this'n at my fingertips goes a long way to satisfying that urge. It's not just my experiences I have to draw from! Having a mentor - or several - is always of great value, even if they're not immediately at hand!

Hello (again!),

Regrettably the Waterlust project has been on hold for a few months but I am now back in action here in the UK! 

I have been reading your really helpful posts, SPClark, to try and catch up and stay on track and I have reached the very informative part about where you post a 'dropbox photo of the 'Breasthooks dry filled in their respective positions', but I can't seem to view the photo. Would it be possible for you to post it again please?

Also, I am now at the wiring-up stage, and at the bow and the stern where the clinker boards stop overlapping, I am having difficulty wiring them so that there isn't a gap between them. Does this matter at this stage? Or should I try and clamp them tighter before wiring?

Finally, how are you getting on with your project? As I guess you must have nearly finished, I would love to see some more photos if you have them.

My best wishes to you all in these difficult times.

MartinC you have another excellent forum option, vastly easier to post images to, run by a CLC distributor in your own country! There's a thread there started by a Waterlust builder in Norway, whose post here in fact first clued me into the other forum he's started a 'blog'-type thread on.

You can view it here, and post pictures there too of your project's progress after you sign up for a 'free' account.

There's another instance of that same breasthook clamp-up photo there, as well as one of how he did his. Hope this helps you, maybe others too!

Thank you so much fro putting me onto the Fyne Boat Kits website. Stupid of me not to think of them (I bought my kit from them!).

How is your build progressing? 

Hull's assembled. Cockpit's essentially done but I need to sand everything after I did the first epoxy coat on stuff that hadn't yet received one. Last step'll be installing console cap as I want to leave access to drive well & air boxes on either side for painting before cap goes on.

Did first coat on hull panels three days ago, then filled stitch holes yesterday. Got called back to work so anything further'll have to wait.

It's so much easier posting pics on Fyne's forum I'll hijack Bergen_Guy's thread from time to time, maybe post links here to what's been uploaded there.

Glad there's interest in this design, glad I started mine last Nov., be four months come 4/5. If I didn't have it to work on the last month I'd probably be in jail now....