Wouter:




Hey, I didn't say you couldn't home-build a competitive A-cat, I only said that you couldn't homebuild it for less then 10K USD. Of course I will have to add here that this assumes that you can not get access to all the required tooling and moulds (of a competitive A-cat class design) for some incredibally low cost.






Well that is another thing. As far as I know the group around Steve Clark is the only A-cat group of homebuilders that seem to have access to a modern A-cat hull shape. All the plans that are available for A-cats are seriously outdated and will not result in a competitive A-cat or are very rudimentary. The last means that you pretty much have to find your own way with respect to building steps and methodes. Of course this requires alot of time and even some prior building experiences. The Taipan building plans (Not an A-cat) are more elaborate in these respect and they also cover the design and building method of the beams, mast and boards (among other things). But still these plans are pretty dated and do require alot of time investment to sort out the errors and such.

If you want a modern (competitive) shaped hull then you need to do what Bill has done and get into contact with the builders around the moulds owned by Steve Clark or get the Blade F16 plans. Both of these designs are modern hullshapes and both allow you to build the parts yourself.


Picture below shows a Marine-ply/epoxy Blade F16 (orange) and a Marine-ply/epoxy Taipan F16 (grey)




One benefit of the Blade F16 is that it is designed to be build out of tortured marine ply and will probably fit in very well with your wood working skills. Only the seams are glassed (with epoxy resin and glass tape); the main surfaces are not. If the used batch of marine ply is of a good quality then the hulls will be very stirdy as well despite their low weight. You don't need moulds for the hulls, nor extensive vacuum bagging techniques. The building plans cost 250 Aus$ = 190 US$ and rought 200 hours are required to complete the ply boats. For an impression Go to this page (showing the building of a Taipan by tortured play method) : http://www.geocities.com/phillbrander/taipan/taipan_construction.htm


If you are interested then e-mail me at wouterhijink(at)hotmail.com and I will show you pictures of the Blade F16 building proces in tortured play or the pics of my Taipan 4.9 homebuild when it was under construction. And I can put you into contact with the design of the boat itself so you can purchase the plans or ask questions to him.

With respect to cost. You must not expect to save much money when homebuilding. You can save some but in my experience not more than about 15 %; that is unless you can really cut costs due to work relationships or something. You can buy a commercially build Blade F16 for 13.000 USD; I don't expect a normal average homebuilder to go below 11.000 USD.

The true attraction of homebuilding is the satisfaction of sailing a fruit of your own labour and the fact that you can do everything (have everything) exactly the way you want. The last thing really adds to the enjoyment of sailing.






The A-cats require some close control on the building techniques in order to not come out to heavy. Typically the A-cats hulls at 18 feet length come in at 13-15 kgs a piece. Same applies to most other parts as the overall A-cat platform minimum weight is 75 kgs.

The Blade F16 hulls are 25 kg's a piece. F16's have a minium weight of 107 kg's and a relatively good homebuilder can achieve that minimum weight.

In performace there are not many boats at all who can outpoint or outrun an A-cat upwind. With the introduction of the spinnakers (F20, F18, F16's) quite a few boats can now outrun and outpoint A-cats on the downwind legs. On reaching legs all boats seem to be pretty even. Don't expect to outpoint a monohull skiff on any catamaran, but you completely expect to outrun them when going upwinds. The VMG of the A-cats are just much higher.

Cost ?

In general you should be able to homebuild an F16 for about 25 % less money then an A-cat. Especially now as the carbon cloth is pretty hard to get these days as Boeing and Airbus have bought up nearly all the production capacity of desired carbon cloth for the next two years. The only alternative is to go for full Kevlar construction of the hulls (in the way of Blade F16 you can also choose to use marine grade ply) ; however Kevlar is a pretty rotten material to work with. It produces great hulls, maybe even better then carbon cloth, but it is really not much fun to work with.

Well, if you are interested in the Timber/epoxy construction method (either F16 or A-cats) or just the F16 path then I'm open to all your questions. With respect to carbon and kevlar A-cats I can best refer you to Bill and the group around Steve Clark.

I hope this helps,

Wouter