yacht building

Building a Yacht: Top Things to Know About the Yacht-building Process

Owning a yacht and having the freedom to explore our beautiful planet by boat is a dream shared by many. But building a yacht is a long and complex process. Should you be one of the fortunate ocean explorers who will get the opportunity to have your semi custom yacht built from scratch, you will undoubtedly require the services of an experienced and knowledgeable boat builder.

Knysna Yacht Company is a boutique yacht-building company based in the picturesque coastal town of Knysna on South Africa's world-famous Garden Route, and crafting beautiful, artisan-made semi custom yachts for clients around the globe is what we do best.

Having your yacht designed and built by a professional, acclaimed yacht builder like KYC will not only see you sailing off in a unique boat that was built to the highest standards. It will also ensure that you are a pivotal part of your yacht's design and construction process, right from the very outset. 

While KYC builds your yacht, your input will not only be valued, it will be sought out and encouraged, with your particular tastes and preferences incorporated in every aspect of your boat's construction. 

Continuous consultation and communication with the KYC team of expert yacht builders will see you taking to the seas in a boat that not only complements your personal style, but one that can truly be your home on the high seas.

Read on as we take a closer look at the various aspects of the semi custom yacht building process.

#1: What are the trademarks of a semi custom yacht?

When you first start to do your yacht-buying research, you'll no doubt come across various types of yachts available for purchase. Most of these will be standard, production yachts.

With a production yacht, what you see is truly what you get. There are virtually zero customizations that you can make to the layout or interior of an off-the-shelf production yacht,

A semi custom yacht, however, will afford you much more opportunity to add all those little touches that will make your boat a true extension of your personal style and tastes. 

Even though semi custom yachts are built on a standard hull, when it comes to trims and finishes, appliances and the interior layout, that is all up to you.7The planning and design of a semi custom yacht can be compared to working with a home builder. Many larger home building companies have several base floor plans to select from, with the selection of cabinets, finishes, layout, and other details entirely up to the owner. It's the same with the design of a semi custom yacht.

#2: The advantages of a semi custom yacht

You might be wondering if a semi custom yacht is a better option than a standard production yacht. Buying a production yacht may save you money, but going for the cheapest option is not always the best choice.

There are clear advantages to having your own semi custom yacht built by professional yacht builders. One of those advantages is that you will personally be involved in the entire process of your yacht's construction.

A semi custom yacht build takes around 12 months to complete, allowing you ample time to really get stuck into the various design, building and finishing aspects of your boat.

In addition, you will almost certainly be cementing a long-lasting relationship with the dedicated team that is building your boat. Should you choose KYC as your yacht builder, this relationship will continue long after your boat's build is complete.

With a semi custom yacht, the price may be higher than what you'd pay for a standard production yacht (although the costs of KYC's boutique semi custom yachts compare very well with some new production yachts on the market).

But, if you choose to go for a semi custom yacht, you'll be getting much more than just a boat.

You'll be setting sail in a vessel you can take immense pride in, because you would have played a central role in crafting your boat to your exact tastes and specifications. If you select KYC as your yacht builder, you can also look forward to the many benefits of becoming a member of the KYC family of yacht owners. 

This means you'll enjoy the support and expertise of an experienced team of yacht-building professionals for many years to come.

#3: Semi custom vs. production yacht

The advantages of having your own semi custom yacht built for you may be clear, but how do these boats compare to standard production yachts ?

Well, one major difference is alterations. When you're having a semi custom yacht built, you can make changes as you go. With a standard production yacht, you are buying the boat pre-made. Alterations to a production yacht after the fact can cost a lot of money, and may not be that simple – or safe – to execute.

Why would altering a production yacht post-sale be a safety risk? A production yacht's design and aesthetics may hide pre-existing flaws in the boat's construction. In itself, this could already pose potential safety risks. Making further changes or additions to a yacht that may already contain pre-existing design flaws would not be a wise course of action, and could be very dangerous indeed.

If you're involved in every step of the build of your semi custom yacht, you will have the opportunity to closely inspect your boat at every stage of its construction. This is a valuable advantage that could potentially allow you to avoid safety issues and layout problems relating to your boat.

#4: Building a semi custom yacht

If you choose to have yacht builders build your semi custom yacht from scratch, you'll be involved in every step of the process. For this reason, it will be in your interest to know as much as possible about your boat's building process.

So, what is the actual process of building a semi custom yacht?

Building the hull

The first stage of the yacht-building process involves the "bones" of your yacht. During this stage, your yacht's hull and superstructure are made.

Unless they have commissioned a completely custom yacht to be built from the ground up, boat owners typically aren't involved in the selection of their boat's hull. However, it is important to know what this process involves.

Constructing a boat's hull is a process that takes four to six months to complete and takes place in a boat builder's aluminium or steel workshop. A steel yacht hull is extremely durable, but it will add a lot of weight to the overall weight of your boat.

Steel is one of the most common hull-construction materials, as it can be constructed and maintained with low technology, and at a relatively low cost.

Aluminium or alloy hulls are one of the better options available for hull construction, as they are so much lighter. These hulls offer the durability and longevity of steel hulls, but add only a fraction of the weight of a steel hull to your yacht.

After your yacht's hull is complete, it will have to go through a rinsing and priming process before your boat will be ready for the next step in its construction: finishing.

Finishing the yacht

Once your yacht's hull is complete, the second stage of your yacht's build can commence. This is the part where you'll start to see your boat "come to life".

The finishing process of your yacht is made up of several stages, including:

• Installing the yacht systems
• Interior and exterior carpentry
• Insulating the yacht
• Varnishing the yacht interior
• Spray painting the hull/superstructure
• Installing the mast

Semi custom yachts are beautiful machines. And, under such a boat's surface, a lot goes on to keep that beautiful machine moving and functioning as a self-contained living unit on the water. A large network of wiring and systems will be expertly installed to keep your yacht running smoothly and safely.

Yacht systems

It takes several systems for your new boat to run, including a navigation system, anchoring system, electrical system, propulsion system, air conditioning system, water systems, and more.

Each of your yacht's systems requires an expert team possessing the necessary knowledge and expertise to install it correctly and efficiently. Some people set sail with a yacht engineer as part of their crew team, to keep everything running smoothly onboard. However, KYC offers all new Knysna yacht owners a complimentary, 2-week training period during which they are shown and taught everything they need to know in order to maintain their yacht's systems themselves.

Gel coating & interior and exterior carpentry

A yacht's gel-coating process is done with a resin that bonds with the fibreglass surfaces throughout your boat. Gel coating ensures no leaks and cracks on a yacht's surface, but it can also be applied to add more colour to your boat.

Since most yacht hulls and exteriors are finished in fibreglass, gel coating becomes an extremely important part of the yacht-building process.

After gel coating, the interior of the yacht receives a protective varnish. The yacht exterior is also gel-coated and waterproofed to prevent leaks and ensure the boat is completely sealed.

Carpentry is also an essential component of your new yacht. Marine carpentry experts are required for both the interior carpentry (think bathroom cabinets, kitchen counters and seating), as well as the decks and other carpentry aspects on the boat's exterior.

Yacht builders and their teams

If you select to have your yacht built by a big yacht-building company, a project manager will be appointed to oversee your yacht's construction, making sure the entire process runs smoothly. Project managers are typically the face of a boat-building company, and clients will deal with their boat's project manager as their point of contact throughout their yacht's construction process.

Underneath the project manager, you'll likely have a team of engineers, systems installers, artisans, an interior designer, and a few legal team members.

Should you choose to have your semi custom yacht built by KYC, you will be dealing directly with KYC’s owners. You will also have access to your under-construction yacht at all times, ensuring that the lines of communication remain open and that your needs are being met.

Selecting the right yacht builder

It's essential to choose the yacht builder best suited for your particular project. There are several questions you should ask yourself before selecting a company to build your yacht.

First, you will have to decide on the type of vessel you want. Many boat builders specialise in certain types of boats. Knowing what type of boat you want will be the first step toward deciding which yacht builder is right for you.

Next, you'll want to figure out how far you'll typically be sailing. This is known as your yacht's range. If you're only planning on doing shorter sailing trips, that will require a specific type of boat. If you want to sail out on the ocean for weeks or months at a time, that will require a different kind of boat entirely.

Finally, ask yourself how long you're willing to wait for your new boat . This wait is known as your lead time. If you're okay with waiting 2-4 years for your yacht to be built, then you can consider selecting a fully custom yacht. 

Semi custom yachts, including KYC’s artisan-built Knysna 500SE and Knysna 550 yachts can be completed much faster. This will vary from builder to builder, but most semi custom yachts have a much shorter lead time than a fully custom boat that is built from scratch.

Financing a semi custom yacht

Financing a boat that is yet to be built is notoriously difficult, with most banks and financial institutions only willing to provide loans for completed boats. At KYC, we offer clients a Yacht Construction Financing Option, allowing them full flexibility to pay off building costs over the boat's complete building timeframe.

Become a yacht owner faster

Let us answer your yacht-building questions!

Read our blog article on yacht financing and learn more about KYC's unique Yacht Construction Financing Option.

Let us answer your yacht-building questions

There are lots of points to consider when you're thinking of having a boat built. 

Our team of KYC yacht-building experts will help you navigate the yacht-building process to ensure that your journey towards ultimate freedom is smooth sailing every step of the way.

Don't hesitate to send us a message at [email protected] and let us know how we can help.

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Yachting Monthly

• Digital edition

Boat building: what will yachts be made from in the future?

• Sam Fortescue
• December 17, 2021

Sam Fortescue shines a light on boat building jargon and looks into a future devoid of fibreglass

Building with pre-preg materials is efficient, but the hull must be 'cooked' at a precise temperature to cure it. Credit: Eva-Stina Kjellman

The end of GRP? Sam Fortescue looks at past, present and future boat building materials

Glance at a brochure for a new boat or walk the pontoons at the Southampton show and you may have come across some terms that didn’t mean much to you.

The art of boat building is as recognisable as ever, but the science of it is constantly developing. New materials and new techniques can make it hard to compare like with like.

Take wood, for instance: the material of boatbuilding choice for millennia.

There are still plenty of wooden boat-builders out there, labouring away in dingy sheds and halls to craft pilot cutters, rowing skiffs and other emblematic vessels of yesteryear.

But perhaps the best known of the wooden boatbuilders is Spirit Yachts in Ipswich, building thoroughly modern boats – in composite wood.

The Spirit 44E is a ‘zero carbon’ cruising yacht. Credit: Richard Langdon

‘Certainly we use epoxy resin to bond the components together, but the amount of resin used is minute compared to GRP or carbon,’ says founder and head designer Sean McMillan.

‘Both carbon-fibre and GRP rely totally on being saturated with a high density of polyester or epoxy resins to impart structural integrity. Wood, whilst also a linear fibre material, is cross-linked with a cellular structure entirely created by nature and has full structural integrity in its own right.’

In fact, the 1.6-tonne Spirit 30 daysailer employs just 73kg of resin and 12.2kg of hardener in its entire construction.

‘In 20 years’ time, when GRP has become socially unacceptable – not to mention any future end-of-life legislation – who knows, we may look back and see the last 60 years of GRP boats as a historical niche,’ finishes McMillan defiantly.

Another example is racy French builder RM Yachts, whose boats are famously swift, with offshore hulls designed by Marc Lombard.

And yet they are built in plywood and epoxy.

Thought every Spirit yacht us built of wood, it is a composite of glue and epoxy sheathing.

It is flexible, robust and far more sustainable than standard glass-reinforced plastic.

Sheets of laser cut Okoumé plywood up to 22mm thick are bent around a mould and epoxied to plywood structural members.

The whole lot is also epoxy sheathed for longevity.

It’s a technique which means that the brand-new RM 1380 is 9.8 tonnes light – slightly less than the comparable X4-6 from X-Yachts.

‘Plywood is the soul of an RM. It a very useful material, allying a good stiffness with lightness – perfect for building the hull and the structure,’ says head of engineering Edouard Delamare.

‘But plywood is nothing without epoxy, because it ensures the waterproofing – vital in a marine environment.’

Boat building using glass-reinforced plastic

Many series production yards, from Beneteau to Bavaria , still use the most basic form of wet lay-up – splurging resin on to mats of glassfibre with a roller to get them well wetted out before laying down the next layer of glass.

It is very hard to control how much resin is applied and there are often air pockets between layers.

For this reason, hulls built this way tend to be overbuilt and heavier.

RM Yachts is unique in building its offshore yachts in plywood and epoxy

Polyester is the cheapest and most commonly used resin, but it can bond with water, creating the problem of osmosis.

That’s why isopthalic gelcoats are applied to the outside of the hull, to act as an effective barrier to moisture.

Vinylester creates many more bonds than polyester and is reckoned to be up to three times stronger, but it costs more too.

And epoxy is the best performing resin of all, used only in high-quality lay-ups. All are pretty toxic, and sport the ‘dead-fish’ icon on the side of the tin.

When vacuum infusion emerged as an industrial technique in 1990, it allowed boatbuilders to use less resin and spread it more evenly around the finished panel for greater strength.

But it generates a lot of waste, because each infused part has to be prepared with a host of plastic layers.

Besides the plastic of the vacuum bag itself, there’s a breather layer to distribute the resin and a peel ply to stop it sticking to the infused part; a thick bead of sealant tape; disposable feeder tubes are required every few inches, and many of the vacuum tubes must also be binned.

The technology has not stood still, though, and there are now reusable vacuum bags made from inert silicon, for instance.

Some bags have the mesh structure necessary to spread the resin built in, while the aerospace sector has pioneered the use of PTFE membrane that stops resin clogging up the vacuum pump side of the system.

Sweden’s Arcona builds its fast cruisers using vacuum infusion, and has for many years.

Hand lay-up is a process that has changed little over the years of boat building

But in order to add strength and stiffness, it laminates in a steel support frame amidships to transfer the loads from the rig into the keel.

Improvements in lamination techniques mean that the boats are lighter than ever.

Late Arcona designer Stefan Qviberg said the current Arcona 40 displaced a whole tonne less than its equivalent a decade earlier.

Other boat builders use other types of reinforcing for the high-load areas of the hull.

Aramids like Twaron and Kevlar often feature, as do selective areas of carbon-fibre on stringers and around keel bolts and chainplates.

High-end yacht builder Baltic uses carbon reinforcing, for instance, to add strength without extra weight.

Vacuum infusion uses less resin but creates a lot of plastic waste

Performance catamaran brand Catana likewise uses Twaron and carbon in its lay-up to save hundreds of kilos; some 700kg in the old Catana 47.

Some claim that aramid reinforcing makes a hull safer, for example in the event of collision with a container, but others refute this.

Naturally enough, carbon is still the ultimate performance material because of its blend of strength, stiffness and light weight.

It is also prohibitively expensive relative to other fibres and very resource-intensive to produce, as it requires temperatures up to 3,000º C and a plastic feedstock.

The bulk and waste of the infusion process has led to another step forward in the form of so-called pre-preg materials, where the sheets of fibre used to strengthen the hull come ready-coated with a pre-catalysed form of the resin that reacts very slowly at room temperature.

Instead of needing to mix epoxy with hardener and reduce its viscosity with toxic styrene to draw into the mould, a precisely-controlled curing process activates and sets the resin.

The result is a stronger, lighter laminate than can be produced through wet lay-up.

Gurit’s SPRINT system goes a step further by sandwiching a thin film of heat-activated resin between two layers of fibre.

Windelo uses basalt fibre to strengthen its hulls during the boat building process. It is said to be much less carbon intensive than using glass

The advantage of this is that the fibres remain dry until curing so air can be more easily removed under vacuum to produce a laminate with a void content of less than 0.5%.

Baltic Yachts uses this technique, building an oven around its hulls to cure them.

‘With one or two exceptions, we haven’t infused a boat for some time,’ says CEO Henry Hawkins.

‘Using Sprint and pre-preg materials saves weight compared to vacuum infusion. With hand lay-up, generally more resin is mixed than needed and a lot gets discarded. This is the same with infusion where resin is lost or wasted in the plastic hoses and pipes and breather film and within the distribution channels.’

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Even at this sharp end of the composite business, rapid advances are being made – driven by aerospace and Formula One.

‘We can now take away the expensive autoclaves and ovens – they can cure at ambient or 40-60ºC,’ says Ashley Parkinson, a research engineer with the UK National Composites Centre.

‘It’s a more expensive process to use, but in the high-performance market, it’s worth it.’

Greener composites

Now, there is nothing particularly sustainable about producing glassfibre – a technique that involves heating raw silica to 1,370º C, then pultruding the molten strands onto a bobbin.

You can use some recycled glass to lower your emissions, but it is an energy intensive process and it is very hard to extract the raw materials from end-of-life fibreglass.

Swiss supplier Bcomp tested alternative natural fibres 10 years ago, when it was a start-up in a garage.

‘Flax turned out to be the best in terms of mechanical properties, soil usage, water requirements and overall performance,’ explains marine and industry manager Paolo Dassi.

It actually locks up carbon rather than producing it – as much as 500g of CO2 per kilogram of flax.

Precise cutting is key to reducing fibre wastage in boat building

‘The plant acts as a CO2 sink during its growth. This completely offsets the CO2 emissions of the manufacturing stages.’

Bcomp’s extraordinary growth began when it managed to process the flax stems to be of uniform size and flatness, replicating the grades possible using glassfibre.

Its AmpliTex product is available as a unidirectional, stitched biaxial or woven twill, ranging from 200-500gsm.

In lamination it is 50% stiffer than glass and just a little weaker, making it an ideal substitute.

Couple this with an extra flax mesh called PowerRibs, and you end up with a composite that closely resembles carbon, but with just 25% of the emissions.

AmpliTex has already been used in niche boat building projects, including the glorious Flax 27 daysailer by Green Boats of Bremen, which sports cork decking.

Foam sandwich hull construction (green) or balsa core (wood) is much stronger, for little extra weight. Credit: Graham Snook/Yachting Monthly

It was a key part of the lay-up of the new Café Racer 68 from Baltic. Although her hull is in carbon, 50% of the structural members were in flax composite.

France’s Windelo has taken a different tack in its catamarans.

It uses basalt fibre – made from melted volcanic rock – which ‘is slightly stronger than E-glass and just one-10th as carbon intensive to produce and use’.

Its first 50-footer has a hull that also features a recycled PET foam core for strength and stiffness. But it is not just the fibre that is being decarbonised.

So-called ‘green epoxies’ have been developed, where a significant chunk of the synthetic oil-derived molecules of the resin are replaced by bio-sourced molecules.

Gurit’s Ampro for hand laminating is 40% bio derived, for instance.

Green Yachts focuses on environmentally-friendly boat building techniques. Its Flax 27 is built of sustainable flax fibre

And the ProSet range from West Systems includes epoxies containing up to 30% bio molecules.

They can essentially just be dropped into any process that would have been suitable for the equivalent synthetic resin.

‘Any customer that is familiar with epoxy processing, vacuum consolidation or post curing will be very familiar with the process,’ says David Johnson of Wessex Resins, European manufacturer for West.

‘Even wet lay-up with no vacuum bagging.’

There is a modest cost increase, but it amounts to less than 25% compared to a standard epoxy, and a drop in the ocean of the boat’s overall build.

‘Bio-based epoxies are more expensive because there’s more sophisticated chemistry involved,’ says Johnson.

Pre-preg flax fibres being laid up around a balsa core

‘Compared to building a boat in vinylester or polyester, you can use slightly less material because of the superior qualities of epoxy. The end cost differences are negligible and there are benefits in lighter weight: you become more efficient, and the loads are less.’

Suppliers like Gurit are also finding ways to substitute the synthetic foam core used in sandwich hull construction.

Standard foam is made of virgin PVC, with all the associated environmental pitfalls.

Gurit has developed more renewable alternatives using up to 100% recycled PVC and balsa wood.

Builders from Arcona and X-Yachts to Bali and Gunboat catamarans use foam cores in their lay-up to build boats that are stiffer and lighter than they would be otherwise.

Away from composites

Some innovative new boat builders are going in another direction altogether, eschewing the by-now traditional GRP for something that can be genuinely reused repeatedly.

Start-up Vaan is building its 42ft R4 catamaran out of a grade of aluminium alloy commonly used in window frames and road signs, so up to 60% of the hull is already recycled.

‘There’s no way to distinguish it from virgin material,’ says Vaan founder Igor Kluin.

Vaan uses a high proportion of recycled aluminium to build its hulls, which can then be easily recycled

It hasn’t been easy to secure supplies, however. That’s partly because window frames last for 50 years or more and also competition with other sectors.

‘In the short term the costs are higher because there are so many people jumping on the bandwagon, but it has only 5% of the energy use of virgin alloy, so in the end it should be cheaper.’

Vaan’s novel approach to sourcing more sustainable materials extends to the interior finish as well.

It uses a pineapple leaf fabric instead of leather, plentiful European poplar for cabinetry, cork instead of teak decking and recycled PET.

Greener boat building: A hull made from recycled aluminium

Parts of the boat are 3D printed – something that higher end brands are doing more and more of.

‘Recycled industrial PET is being 3D printed for the back of the Vaan spoiler because it produces a lower volume than moulding,’ says Kluin.

‘We want to see if it can become load bearing. We’re also 3D printing with aluminium, too. It’s useful for smaller structural elements that are hard to reach and would traditionally have been milled.’

Recyclability of boat building materials

Besides wood, all forms of composite suffer from the same problem; at end of life, it is very difficult to separate the component materials for re-use.

This is why using materials such as steel or aluminium can make sense, despite the higher environmental cost of the virgin metal. They can be reused repeatedly.

The composite recycling systems developed to date, which include pyrolysis, burning and shredding, are all unsatisfactory because of the energy intensity of the processes or the fact they yield a lower quality material that has to be downcycled.

In principle, it is possible to use resins that melt again at high temperatures and can be collected, refined and reused.

Elium resin from Arkema is capable of exactly that, and is already being used in recyclable wind turbine blades.

Laminate are expensive to separate for re-use. Credit: Rob Wilkinson/Alamy Stock Photo

They even built a 6.50m Mini Transat boat from it.

The process also yields reusable glass, but carbon and flax don’t support the heat: carbon loses as much as two-thirds of its strength and flax simply combusts.

However, an Australian study has shown how carbon-fibre composite can first be heated without oxygen in a pyrolysis chamber to burn off resin, then oxidised to yield carbon-fibre with most of the strength of virgin fibre but only 10% of the environmental impact.

Cured laminates can also be separated using a chemical process proven in the lab at the National Composites Centre, with a big vat of acetic acid.

Portsmouth University is researching enzymes to decompose plastic, starting with plastic bags.

The approach could eventually handle boats as well.

‘You have to find the right enzyme that works for snipping the molecules of a particular polymer. Practically, it’s a decade away,’ says Ashley Parkinson of the NCC.

We enable your vision

Then you have to be prepared to head off the beaten track.

You want a team that feels like family, that can be entrusted to challenge your imagination and be challenged by you. Our ambition is to create and support the most advanced and inspiring yachts in the world. Together.

What if you want to go your own way?

Oceanco yachts tell the distinctive stories of their owners, who come to us with visions that go beyond the yachts that already exist. Sometimes, even beyond our notions of what a yacht can be.

Bravo Eugenia

Black Pearl

Tranquility

What if we lead a positive change?

Innovation is a continuous process of meaningful progress. Our clients come to us because they don’t want yet another iteration from a blueprint, they want a yacht that is theirs and theirs alone. Oceanco achieves meaningful innovation that is aligned with progressive thinking about how we live and the impact on our planet, working with trailblazers from inside and outside the industry to challenge the existing paradigm. We embrace collaboration, partnership and openness while checking our ego at the door.

Tomorrow’s Designs

Oceanco partners with luminaries of the creative world to spark your imagination. We plunge ourselves into the deep and don’t come up for air until we have nailed how to transform our bold ambitions into achievable designs.

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Yachting World

• Digital Edition

How (and why) wood is making a comeback in yacht building

• Rupert Holmes
• May 30, 2023

Rupert Holmes reports on latest developments in wooden yacht construction, and why this ancient material is being used for hi-tech contemporary design

Why would a naval architect and structural engineer used to working with cutting edge materials for America’s Cup teams, including INEOS Britannia , and companies like Airbus, be excited about working with wood?

“It’s quite simple for me,” says French designer Thomas Tison, “Modernity does not neglect where we all come from – on the contrary it makes the best of it. In a way a boat is a heritage, so to ignore wood would be to ignore the essence of yacht design and building.

“Carbon fibre is only an evolution from this heritage and reinstating wood as a modern material increases the number of options a naval architect has for creation and performance.”

Tison designed the stunning, contemporary 48ft offshore racer Elida which launched last year, and currently has a timber/epoxy 40ft high-end daysailer on the drawing board. To optimise Elida ’s weight and stiffness Tison tested three different timber and glue laminates at an Airbus facility. “What we found was very interesting,” he told me. “The existing data was 20 years old, but now we can carefully select the glue and timber, so the figures for our laminates were stiffer than predicted, with the sitka spruce an order of magnitude better than expected.”

Elida is built of diagonally planked sitka spruce covered with a 3mm mahogany veneer. Additional internal stiffening is provided by local layers of 200g carbon fibre. The result is a very stiff structure – projected forestay loads match those used on TP52s, yet the total weight of the 48ft hull shell is only 1,000kg.

Tison’s next project is a very high end 40ft daysailer. Construction will be an evolution of Elida ’s, giving a strong and stiff structure that meets Category A requirements, yet total displacement is only 3,700kg. He also has a concept under way for a 45m superyacht built in a similar manner.

Outlier is a cold-molded custom 55-footer designed by Botin. Photo: Billy Black

Traditional skillset

The enthusiasm naval architects young and old have for wood/epoxy composite construction is striking. Many of today’s stand-out new designs on both sides of the Atlantic are built this way and it’s often the best option for one off builds and short production runs. Key advantages include stunning aesthetics, stiff, lightweight structures and excellent longevity.

Today British yard Spirit Yachts is perhaps the most well-known specialist in this form of construction and their wood-as-art concept is well documented, including the sculptural approach taken with the Spirit 111 Geist . However, examples of other yachts abound, including Rob Humphreys’ Tempus 90 superyacht. This was built in Turkey, which unlike many countries never lost its wooden-boat building industry. As a result plenty of yards today are familiar with working with epoxy/timber composites. And many other top-notch recent wooden yachts have been built there, ranging right up to superyacht size, including Andre Hoek’s PC Yacht range and a number of his Truly Classic designs.

Britain has its own strong tradition of wooden-built designs: the Elephant Boatyard on the River Hamble has a long history of building, and maintaining, timber/epoxy yachts, including the Barracuda 45 built for Bob Fisher in the late 1980s.

Wood was the medium successful IRC raceboat designer John Corby made his name with in the 1990s and 2000s. And it was the choice of one of the UK’s most successful yacht designers, Stephen Jones, for his own 46ft one-off Meteor , launched in 2006. She was built in Grimsby by Farrow and Chambers, which also built two cedar epoxy yachts for former Yachting World editor Andrew Bray.

On the other side of the Atlantic, several New England yards are active in building new custom and semi-custom yachts in wood/epoxy. Notable recent examples include the Lyman-Morse 46, Brooklin Boat Yard’s Jim Taylor-designed 44ft Equipoise , and the Botin custom 55-footer Outlier . A long list of other notable recent launches include Anna , a 65ft Stephens Waring design built by Lyman-Morse and launched in 2020.

The beauty of wood inside a hand-crafted Spirit. Photo: Paul Wyeth

Build techniques

UK-based designer Rob Humphreys has a long association with this build method, having designed his first vessel in wood in the late 1970s, followed by a string of others, from 22-footers to superyachts, over the following decades. Humphreys remains keen to design more: “The only thing that’s holding us back really is an issue of market education,” he told me.

The medium is often poorly understood, with few people realising the benefits and many assuming it has the same drawbacks as traditional timber construction, or that the technology hasn’t moved on since cold-moulded wooden boats of the 1960s. These were built with resorcinol glues that were originally developed in the early 1940s, but required considerable clamping pressure to create a reliable bond and couldn’t be used as a coating to protect timber.

The epoxy revolution, driven enthusiastically by brothers Meade, Joel, and Jan Gougeon in Michigan in the early 1970s, marked a turning point for boatbuilding. “They got chemists to reconfigure epoxy to be runny enough to saturate the wood rather like a varnish,” explains Stephen Jones.

Even though epoxy doesn’t penetrate deep below the surface of timber, it sticks so well that, unlike paint and varnish, it forms a genuine barrier that keeps water out of the timber in the long term. As a result these boats have potential to last as long as any fibreglass structure.

Lyman-Morse 46 hull completed and being turned outside the boat shed. Photo: Alison Langley/Lyman-Morse

There was another key advantage. “It could also be thickened as required for glueing and, most importantly, gap filling,” adds Jones. This significantly speeds up the build process. These vessels are generally inherently stiffer and lighter than conventionally built fibreglass yachts and it was a preferred build method for performance yachts before cored composites became reliable.

Meade Gougeon’s 35ft trimaran Adagio , launched in 1970, was the first large all epoxy bonded and sealed wooden boat built without the use of mechanical fasteners (and is still sailing on the Great Lakes over 40 years on). Three years later the brothers built the Ron Holland-designed 41ft IOR Two Tonner Golden Dazy , ahead of a slew of further designs including a 60ft trimaran for Phil Weld’s 1980 OSTAR single-handed transatlantic race , before race organisers imposed an upper size limit. Weld subsequently had the 50ft timber/epoxy tri Moxie built by Walter Greene, in which he won the OSTAR.

Over the years precise construction methods have varied, although all but a handful of boats are built with several layers of timber with the grain running in different directions to create a stiff structure. Some have a purely cold moulded construction, with larger boats often employing four or more layers laid at around 90° to each other. This creates a lightweight and stiff structure that can be protected from impact damage with epoxy and glass cloth. The Lyman-Morse 46, for instance, is built of four layers of vacuum glued Douglas fir and western red cedar.

Hand-built expertise at the Spirit yard in Suffolk. Photo: Spirit Yachts

Others start with a layer of narrow planks, termed strip planking. This had been a construction method long before the use of epoxy, but it became much more popular thanks to the development of the Speed Strip technique by Sunderland timber merchant Joseph Thompson & Co (now renamed NYTimber) with help from Farrow and Chambers. The planks have a loose tongue and groove profile, allowing them to neatly conform to the hull shape and giving space for thickened epoxy glue.

Speed Strip also eliminated the need for scarfs to be cut where planks are joined and reduced the number of mechanical fasteners needed. This reduced planking time by a quarter, and clean up and fairing time by 70%. An additional advantage, Jones says, is the “predominance of fore and aft timber strips/planks increases global hull stiffness – the ability of the hull to resist rig loads.”

Around the same time Humphreys was also working on ways to reduce build times. The hull of his H22 sportsboat, which was available as a flat-pack kit with CNC cut components, could be assembled from scratch in a few hours by one person. I know of 40ft offshore racing yachts that were planked up in a week.

Strip planked boats can be built over laminated frames that become part of the final structure, and don’t require a mould that is subsequently discarded. These frames are surprisingly quick and easy to create – at Spirit Yachts, for instance, they’re assembled on full-size print outs of the boat’s plans laid over a plywood floor. This allows each piece of timber to be bent by hand into exactly the right shape and held in place using spikes driven into the floor. They’re then clamped together in situ while the epoxy cures.

The Lyman-Morse 46 interior shows off its timber construction, with plenty of white painted surfaces for an airy feel. Photo: Alison Langley/Lyman-Morse

Originally cedar was used for Speed Strip planks as it’s lightweight yet very resistant to rot, although other species with similar properties, including Douglas fir and sitka spruce, are also suitable. Typically two thinner outer layers of double-diagonal planking are added outside the strip planking.

In the case of Zest , our 36ft Rob Humphreys design built by Farrow and Chambers in 1992, this forms a 20mm-thick tri-axial construction with the grain of the timber oriented in three different directions. Larger yachts may have four or more layers outside the strip planking and a few boats have an additional transverse skin to help strengthen the area around the keel.

Impact protection

In all cases the whole lot is glued together and sealed from water ingress with epoxy. Therefore no more maintenance is needed than for a fibreglass hull and it will never succumb to osmosis.

Jim Taylor, designer of the 44ft Equipoise and 50ft Rascal , both recently built by Brooklin Boat Yard in Maine, says that in North America this construction is likely to be referred to as cold moulded, with the term referring to the outer layers, rather than the inner skin of strip planks.

Modern wooden builds created using latest CAD at Spirit Yachts. Photo: Spirit Yachts

Equipoise was built with a first layer of fore-and-aft tongue and groove larch planking which is epoxy bonded to the laminated keel, keel floors, bulkheads and ring frames. Outside of that two layers of diagonal 3/16in (5mm) paulonia were vacuum bagged at +/-45° to the initial planking. Then a further layer of tongue and groove larch was laminated over the paulonia, again in a fore and aft orientation. Outside that is a protective layer of epoxy/glass. Displacement is little more than six tonnes, despite an unusually large 44% ballast ratio, allowing a large rig without the drawbacks of excessive draught.

“There is a whole lot to like about this type of construction,” Taylor says. “The approach is cost effective and the result is extremely attractive on many levels. The boats are light, strong, tough, quiet and well insulated thermally. A bright finished inside skin can be integrated into an especially elegant interior, the construction materials are environmentally sustainable, and there’s not a lot of waste. They’re not as light as carbon skins over lightweight core, but they are much more liveable and not nearly as fragile or as expensive.”

The outer glass/epoxy sheathing can vary from light cloth for impact protection, through to heavier laminates that add structural strength in high load areas such as around the keel. A few boats have glass only outside, rather than additional layers of timber, but these heavier laminates need more work and filler to create a fair surface.

Carbon stiffening for Elida. Photo: Emeric Jezequel

Of course, if the outer sheathing is punctured, then it will need to be repaired quickly, but a quick application of epoxy filler is all that’s needed until a neat long-term repair can be made.

Developments and refinements over time include vacuum bagging the various layers of timber together, along with the external protective layers of glass cloth. At the high end carbon reinforcement is increasingly used strategically to add further stiffness where necessary, without a significant weight penalty.

Elida ’s varnished topsides look stunning, while those of the 1987 Humphreys-designed Apriori and 1988-built Old Mother Gun of 1988 still look great. There’s therefore a huge temptation for anyone building a wooden yacht to opt for similar finishes. However, it’s important to note in these cases the epoxy needs a more traditional varnish for UV protection and that can require a lot of maintenance. On the other hand, today’s polyurethane paints can last up to a decade in dark colours and Meteor ’s original white paint from 2006 still looks almost new.

L’Été is a new 40ft daysailer design by Thomas Tison.

Modern look

On the other hand, varnished bright work on deck and coachroof sides are subject to less wear and tear than topsides. Jones says these are easy to prep for varnishing if designed with simple surfaces without fiddly detail. The cleaner style of modern classic deck structures also reduces water retention, so surfaces dry quickly. “It can still look the part but becomes less onerous to keep,” says Jones.

Below decks it’s easy to fall into a trap of showing off so much natural timber that the interior becomes dark; a strategic mix of white painted panels and clear timber finishes gives a much brighter result. The Spirit 72 , for instance, has satin painted panels and a carefully planned LED lighting system to enhance the warmth of the natural timber.

The Spirit 111 has a sculptural cockpit and interior. Photo: Spirit Yachts

Hull windows are possible and, even if maintaining a classic external appearance is a priority, it’s possible to allow a lot of light in from the deck. Spirit Yachts’ trademark fantail window is an excellent example of this.

Alternatively, interiors can be absolutely contemporary in style, as seen in RM Yachts’ 29-43ft range of plywood/epoxy performance cruisers. Plywood also offers excellent stiffness in relation to weight and is an ideal medium for today’s chined hull shapes. At RM all the pieces for an entire boat are delivered on pallets, ready for immediate assembly. Hulls are built over frames of substantial chipboard set up on jigs. Assembling a hull is therefore a straightforward process that doesn’t require a full mould.

The Ace 30 scow bow short-handed IRC raceboat also employs plywood/epoxy construction. It’s an approach the builder says considerably reduces the carbon footprint of building each boat.

Matt Newland of Swallow Yachts tells me their Whisper 300 retro-style planing motor cruiser has demonstrated that at sizes above 30ft an epoxy/timber construction can compete directly on labour hours with conventional fibreglass boatbuilding. The company’s next model, the Bay Cruiser 32, will be a traditionally styled, but very lightweight and quick, 32ft trailerable weekender made of clinker-style plywood and epoxy.

Other forthcoming projects include a range of 45-70ft modern classics by Stephen Jones and illustrator/designer Jonty Sherwill that will be built by the Elephant Boatyard.

These boats will also be more sustainable than their contemporaries built using conventional glass fibre or more advanced composites. The quantity of epoxy used for the build is small and bio-sourced resins can be used without the requirement for a full size mould. The result is that the carbon footprint associated with building the Ace 30, for instance is 1.9 tonnes, but would be more than three times that value for a boat of conventional construction, even before accounting for building the moulds.

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Welcome to 

Bristol , s hipwrights.

It's been 10 long months since the last episode of Building Evelyn. But there's a new one that picks up where Lou and Ken left off. We're updating the website. Check out the new Gallery photos and video. And  we're scheduled  to post a new video on the first Friday of every month. 

Watch Episode 18: Fitting, glueing and fastening planks. 

Our Mission

Bristol Shipwrights' mission is to preserve and demonstrate traditional woodworking and boat building skills and techniques. More than that, we're working to develop new ways to use the latest tools and materials to help us and you build stronger, more affordable and enduring boats and construction projects of all kinds. The best way we know to do that is to video and share with you our current and future projects. Evelyn is our first project and only the beginning. But we hope you'll join us for each and every video and voyage.  

Meet Evelyn

Rethinking a cruising schooner from the 1920s 

43” o.a x 33” w.l. x 12’ beam x 6’ 5” draft

Able offshore — handy — roomy, full keel schooner, ready for delivery, alden design no. 270.

Join Bristol Shipwrights as we document and video the challenges of building  a  43' Alden 270 schooner.  Whether you're a professional or backyard boatbuilder, a woodworker, or a dreamer, we're confident you'll learn something new about boats and woodwork from our screw ups and successes. 

See the progress we're making on Evelyn

In EP17,  pretty much the whole crew worked seamlessly to glue up  Evelyn's heavy deck beams. All beams were made from the strip planking off-cuts.

The simplest way  to make a pattern for a plank requires a stop at the lumberyard and the office supply store.  See how in  EP16 of Building Evelyn.

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British tech magnate Mike Lynch, 2 US citizens among missing after luxury yacht sinks off Sicily

15 people were rescued and one body believed to be the cook was found near the wreck, but six others were unaccounted for and believed inside the hull, by andrea rosa and nicole winfield | the associated press • published august 19, 2024 • updated on august 19, 2024 at 6:21 pm.

British tech magnate Mike Lynch and five other people were missing after their luxury sailing yacht sank during a freak storm off Sicily early Monday, Italy’s civil protection and authorities said. Lynch’s wife and 14 other people survived.

Lynch, who was  acquitted in June  in a big U.S. fraud trial, was among six people who remain unaccounted for after their chartered sailboat sank off Porticello, when a tornado over the water known as a waterspout struck the area overnight, said Salvo Cocina of Sicily’s civil protection agency.

One body was recovered, and police divers spent the day trying to reach the hull of the ship, which was resting at a depth of 50 meters (163 feet) off Porticello where it had been anchored, rescue authorities said. They returned to the site after 10 p.m. to see if it would be possible to search through the night, when weather conditions were expected to worsen, said Luca Cari, spokesman of the fire rescue service.

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It had a crew of 10 people and 12 passengers, the Italian coast guard said. A sudden fierce storm had battered the area overnight, and struck the place precisely where the 56-meter (184-foot) British-flagged Bayesian had been moored.

“They were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Cocina, noting that another superyacht nearby wasn't as badly damaged and helped rescue some of the 15 survivors, who included Lynch's wife Angela Bacares.

The Bayesian was notable for its single 75-meter (246-feet) mast — one of the world’s tallest made of aluminum and which was lit up at night, just hours before it sank. Online charter sites listed it for rent for up to 195,000 euros (about $215,000) a week.

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One of the survivors, identified as Charlotte Golunski, said she momentarily lost hold of her 1-year-old daughter Sofia in the water, but then managed to hold her up over the waves until a lifeboat inflated and they were both pulled to safety, Italian news agency ANSA reported, quoting the mother. The father, James Emsley, also survived, said Cocina.

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Karsten Borner, the captain of the Sir Robert Baden Powell, said he had noticed the Bayesian nearby during the storm but after it calmed he saw a red flare and realized the ship had simply disappeared, ANSA and the Giornale di Sicilia newspaper reported. Borner said he and a crew member boarded their tender and found a lifeboat with 15 people, some of them injured, who they then took aboard and alerted the coast guard.

Eight of those rescued were hospitalized while the others were taken to a hotel. One body believed to be the cook was found near the wreck, but six others were unaccounted for and believed inside the hull, said Cari, the fire rescue spokesperson. The rescue operations, which were visible from shore, involved helicopters and rescue boats from the coast guard, fire rescue and civil protection service.

#Palermo , naufragio imbarcazione a Porticello: recuperato dai #sommozzatori dei #vigilidelfuoco il corpo senza vita di un uomo, all’esterno del relitto. Proseguono le operazioni di ricerca con il coordinamento in mare della @guardiacostiera [ #19agosto 11:30] pic.twitter.com/Y2m9o5ohCe — Vigili del Fuoco (@vigilidelfuoco) August 19, 2024

Fisherman Francesco Cefalu’ said he had seen a flare from shore at around 4:30 a.m. and immediately set out to the site but by the time he got there, the Bayesian had already sunk, with only cushions, wood and other items from the superyacht floating in the water.

“But for the rest, we didn’t find anyone,” he said from the port hours later. He said that he immediately alerted the coast guard and stayed on site for three hours, but didn't find any survivors. “I think they are inside, all the missing people.”

He said he had been up early to check the weather to see if he could go fishing, and surmised that a sudden waterspout had struck the yacht.

“It could be that the mast broke, or the anchor at the prow pulled it, I don’t know,” he said.

Cocina said the crew and passengers hailed from a variety of countries: In addition to Britain and the United States, passengers and crew were from Antigua, France, Germany, Ireland, Myanmar, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain, he said.

Among the dead and missing, four were British, two were American, and one was a man with dual citizenship from Canada and Antigua, according to Luciano Pischedda, the Italian Coast Guard official overseeing the rescue operations.

The UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch is deploying a team of four inspectors to Italy to conduct a preliminary assessment. The Foreign Commonwealth and Development office said it was “providing consular support to a number of British nationals and their families.”

Dutch foreign ministry spokesperson Casper Soetekouw said the lone Dutch citizen on board, a man, had been rescued and was not in life-threatening condition.

Lynch, once hailed as Britain’s king of technology, was cleared in June of fraud and conspiracy charges related to Hewlett Packard’s $11 billion takeover of his company, Autonomy Corp.

The not-guilty verdicts followed an 11-week criminal trial in San Francisco that delved into the history of HP’s  2011 acquisition  of Autonomy, a business software firm founded by Lynch.

The  fraud accusations  represented a dramatic turn in the fortunes of an entrepreneur once described as the Bill Gates of Britain — a title he seemed to live up to when he netted an $800 million from the Autonomy sale.

The acquittal vindicated Lynch, who had vehemently denied wrong doing and portrayed HP as a technological train wreck.

“I’m looking forward to returning the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field,” Lynch said in a statement released after the verdict.

The yacht, built in 2008 by the Italian firm Perini Navi, can accommodate 12 passengers in four double cabins, a triple and the master suite, plus crew accommodations, according to Charter World and Yacht Charters.

The vessel, which previously was named Salute when it flew under a Dutch flag, featured a sleek, minimalist interior of light wood with Japanese accents designed by the French designer Remi Tessier, according to descriptions and photos on the charter sites.

AP writers Danica Kirka and Sylvia Hui contributed from London.

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Search to resume Wednesday for 2 people missing after deadly boat crash in Old Saybrook

A motorboat carrying nine people struck a jetty at the mouth of the connecticut river monday night, by andrew masse and nbc connecticut staff • published september 2, 2024 • updated on september 3, 2024 at 11:17 pm.

One person has died after a boat crash in Old Saybrook Monday night, two others are missing and five people are in the hospital. The search for the two missing men was suspended overnight and will resume Wednesday morning.

Nine people were on the 31-foot motorboat that struck a jetty at the mouth of the Connecticut River around 9:15 p.m. Monday while returning from Block Island, according to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection EnCon Police.

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Several 911 calls came in about the crash and rescue crews found the boat half submerged and significantly damaged.

One man was found dead in the vessel and six people were taken to the hospital, according to DEEP. One person is in critical condition, Captain Keith Williams, of Connecticut Environmental Police, said Tuesday morning. They believe that person was driving the boat, but they have not confirmed that.

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Williams said he believes one person has been released from the hospital. The extent of the injuries the others sustained has not been released.

The investigation is ongoing, but Williams said they believe all nine people are friends who went to Block Island for the day.

The capsized boat was recovered from the river on Tuesday and it was pulled from the water around 11:30 a.m.

Williams said Tuesday morning that the tide was coming in when the boat crashed.

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1 person taken to hospital, 1 cat dead after Meriden house fire

Multiple agencies, including police and fire crews from several nearby towns, the State Police Dive Unit, and a helicopter from the U.S. Coast Guard station on Cape Cod were searching and the search was suspended overnight.

It resumed Tuesday morning and continued for the majority of the day before suspending at 7:30 p.m.

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