Goat Island Skiffs Rule

We have a new Facebook and Twitter presence!!!

Like us on Facebook

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Lots of updates direct from boat show thanks to Chris Freeman and his social media prowess.

Our Twitter is

www.twitter.com/clintchaseboats

The Show is over. It was a great time and people loved the Goat Island Skiff. The message was clear: the GIS is about as much boat as you can get for the money/effort/time, etc.

The first builder of the Yawl version, John Goodman and family, has a great video that really shows the skiff's stuff.


Maine BoatBuilders Show

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Here is a boat moving in for the Show....it is that time of year again. The Maine Boatbuilders Show started Fri and tomorrow is day 3 already. This year has been a good show so far and tomorrow should bring even more interest. People are really intrigued by what I have to offer, a couple dozen truly unique boat kit designs most of which are available only through CCBB!

This is the first time a Goat Island Skiff has been displayed at a US boat show as far as I can tell and people are loving the boat. My boat is still unpainted, but there are always a few boats at this show that are in progress, which makes it a lower key boat show. The philosophy behind this show is that it is a boatbuilders show. People talk to the boatbuilders not reps and, in the case of an unfinished boat, get a rare glimpse into the workings of a boatbuilder, work that is normally inside a shop until it is all painted.

Set up day at MBB Show 2011

Lastly, we are live on FACEBOOK and TWITTER. Like us on Facebook



Economics of Kit Building

I receive a lot of questions and comments regarding the true cost of building a boat from scratch, full size patterns, and kits. Since I track time and materials closely, I have found that building from kits makes a lot of sense from an economic stand point. I took some discussions with customers/potential customers and put together this PDF on the 'economics of kits'.

In a nutshell, the cost of building from a kit is not as much more than building a boat from scratch as people think because of the extra plywood required to build from scratch not to mention the time savings.

As of last week

In the meantime, we are making progress on the first professionally built Goat Island Skiff (yawl version) which will be at the Maine Boatbuilder's Show in Portland on March 18-20th. Please stop by. We'll be in building 2 near the stairs up to food court.

When I post next, I'll have a PDF link that goes into more detail about how the designs/kits are produced in CAD and CNC cutting.


New Blog by Francois Vivier

Francois Vivier, famous boat designer of France, has started a new blog. If you are using Google Chrome you can very successfully translate the page to English and read the text with little difficulty.

Vivier has many designs that are not evident on his english website, mainly because he must translate all plans and building instruction to english, a huge effort.

But he will make the effort with an order or strong inquiries. I am his US agent, so if any of these designs are of interest, please let me know.

Sorin_motor

A number of new boats are emerging, such as the skiff 'Sorin' above, aimed at "budget" oriented home projects. The first of these was a dory and he also has a couple skiffs.

Epoxy Encapsulation & Prefinishing in Montana!

We can go one step further with epoxy encapsulation: paint some parts before they get set up on the strongback. One of our kit builders is demonstrating this nicely in his Beg-Meil build. He lives in Billings, Montana and started the project this past summer. I advised him to layout all the parts from the kit and precoat them with 2-3 coats of epoxy. He took it further and precoated the bulkheads in his chosen interior color for the boat. This will be quite handy for the bulkheads that are trickier to reach.

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You can imagine there is a little more work in tighter places if you do not precoat:

Beg-Meil bulkheads

When you precoat with epoxy it is important to think about primary and secondary bonding and your timeline. If you precoat with System Three epoxy, you have a nice long 72-hour window where you get a primary (chemical) bond when you glue pieces together. In a small boat, you can probably put parts together in this timeline. However, with a bigger boat, since it will take longer, it is good to mask off areas that you want to keep as bare wood. This way when you glue those parts (e.g., the end-grain of the bulkheads and 3/4" or so along the sides for the fillet) you can get a primary bond. If you choose not to tape, you can rigorously sand the faying surfaces with 80-grit and get a very good bond, but it will be a secondary bond.