Smiltserkskis

Dave, with respect, I don't think it was so much about religion as about anguish between making the right, reasoned choices and the fact that they take you further away from what you actually long to do. And Jim, a stroke is a very serious case of life getting in the way. I wish you to get well, and get to sail your boat really soon. You seem to be pretty close to finishing it, looking forward to lots of pictures. Wishing you the best.

Except for the fact that it should have been (quite) a bit longer, that's a very nice video, thanks Steve! Hope you will have more sailing videos to upload.

Yup, thanks. I guess everything will fall into place once I actually start building the boat, which should happen very soon, hopefully.

Dave, It's 838 mm, if Im getting it right. Also, 50 mm wide (about 1/3 from the aft end) and 25 mm wide at the tip, and 25 mm 3rd dimension. But there is much more on that sheet, so perhaps you should try to find/borrow it. On an unrelated note, does anyone know if the Hull construction plan is the same as the Hull assembly sheet? And, even more importantly, what is in the Construction details sheet? I am asking because I don't have these two. Not implying that they were not sent to me, i may well have put them somewhere safe, just like Dave.

Clicked every image and read every caption, there's a whole story in there. Very emotional and inspiring, thank you Steve.

Looks like we're in the exactly same boat, distractions wise Last time I had to put building my Spindrift on hold was last weekend, this time for two weeks. The hardest part is to get started, from there it will be much easier - or so I've read somewhere on these forums.

Funny how I overlooked most of what was in Arnie's post and went on with statements that I actually have no proof to support. Arnie's account, on the other hand, is a testimony to the high quality of birch ply and the suitability thereof for building another Spindrift, I believe.

Arnie, thanks a lot for responding - your post is the best I could have hoped for A fellow boat builder is really really great! Please check your messenger, in a few moments. Ray, I did send the guys a request for nearest broker, but they have not yet replied. Frankly speaking, they may as well not reply at all, because I have looked elsewhere on the net (the most reliable source of information, I know - but), it appears that boatbuilders who have used birch ply generally find it to be a very good material, Finnish/Latvian ply in particular. Therefore I retract the quotation marks from the water-resistant part in my original post, and plan to use local plywood, hopefully to a good result.

Hi all, I have plans for a Spindrift 11 that I want to build and sail together with my eight-year old this summer. Never built or sailed a boat before, neither of us. We are yet waiting for warmer weather so we could finally start building the boat, nighttime temps are still around zero degrees (Celsius) over here, and not much higher by day. So I've been looking for supplies in the meantime, found a supplier of good epoxy, but such plywood as stated in the plans is unavailable - the best I have found is "water-resistant" birch plywood, but I'm pretty sure it is not marine quality. My concern is that birch is roughly one-and-a-half times heavier than okume (plus, for some reason, it's 6.5 millimeter plywood everywhere, not 6), and given that it is not proper marine plywood, it will probably have to be sheathed in fiberglass on both sides, which will make the boat even heavier. I've searched the forums and saw that using anything else except okume is frowned upon, but the alternative is usually fir plywood for some reason. So I wanted to know your opinion about birch. Do you think it would do to just fiberglass the outside of the boat - or maybe it is worth switching to thinner plywood? Any comments will be much appreciated.