After about a year of searching for a suitable design for a small sailing boat I decided to build John Harris' excellent Pocket Ship. I compared a lot of designs and every time a came back to this design so it wasn't a difficult choice. The Pocket ship is (in my opinion) a very attractive design, sails quite well and above all it has an overnight accommodation and still is trailerable behind a normal European car.
So I bought the plans, began to study and found out everything about wood epoxy "stich-n-glue" building and I was ready for building...
In that time I told a colleague (Erik) about my plans and it surprised me that he knew the design (we live in the Netherlands). He even was very enthusiastic about it and told me about his dreams of owning one of these as well. Erik is a real Sea Sailer and has a larger yacht but fancied the idea of trailering the Pocket Ship to remote or isolated locations and explore it with this unique vessel.
We got in a lively dialog and we both got even more enthusiastic up until the moment Erik asked: "why not build it in Aluminum?" And the question stayed in my mind.
After that day we explored the possibilities and had contact with all kinds of builders, small wharfs, metal-industries etc. And guess what...
Yes building the Pocket Ship design in Aluminum is absolutely possible. Even better: its easier to build, its more durable and it cost about the same compared with wood-epoxy!
There is just one thingie: Welding aluminum is about the hardest thing to do and learn...
So... I started orienting at welding courses. First thing I decided was that I surely would not going to weld my boat with MIG. This is however the most used technique as it is fast and works well on Aluminum. But... it also is a very rough welding method, leaving welds that could not match my ideas of building a slick craft like the Pocket Ship. So TIG welding it became.
And yes, I now understand that I still have to go a certain path to achieve enough skills. And I love it, it is such a satisfactory thing to do. My enthusiasm even doubled!
From Left to right is my progress in 2 lessons ;-)
So this is a start of my Blog. I hope to keep you posted in the various steps of building my Alu Pocket Ship. And please feel free to ask questions and tell me your tips and ideas.
