Boat Inside

I decided to start this blog to share my journey on building my first boat.  I wanted to build a wooden boat to get acquainted with how wooden boats are built, as I have a (waning!) ambition of buying a wooden cruiser to replace my lovely Jeaneau...

It is a John Brooks design, called Somes Sound 12.5 - based on a Herreshoff design, in glued lapstrake construction.  Apparently, its a bit more advanced than usual for a raw beginner, so thats my excuse for slow progress and bountiful questions.

When I first received the plans around October 2011, I wondered what I had let myself in for.  Very little of it made any sense to me (still lots of it doesnt!) and so I took off to one of John Brooks weekend workshop in Brooklyn Maine.  Living in Ireland that was quite a trip but I can safely say without it, I wouldnt have been able to even get started.

I am currently starting to plank the boat, so the initial stage of this blog will be retrospective.   I have been taking photos and also some short video clips, which were taken more as a means of communicating with John Brooks and my fellow class mates at the workshop.

I do not have any real carpentry experience other than I am an enthusiastic DIYer and so I had to build out my workshop - or rather build a new shed to house all my clutter and motorbikes (another passion of mine) and gather a selection of new tools: bandsaw, table saw, thicknesser among others.

Do not rely on my approach for building your Somes Sound - but hopefully you will maybe avoid some of the pitfalls I made along the way.  Whatever, enjoy the journey...I am!