In the thick of it....

It's been a few months since I decided I was going to build one of these boats. Since that time my wife and I have moved into a new house, and I've been busy doing all the sorts of things that don't have much to do with boat building. I also was starting to question why I was going to bother; I didn't know of anyone else in the Portland area who was building, and I wasn't really sure this boat could fit into any of the other fleets in Portland. I didn't really want to be in a fleet of one. I was starting to consider just buying a J/24 and being satisfied with that. Well, things have all of a sudden changed dramatically...

A week ago I was contacted by Eric Rimkus, who is well known in the Portland sailing scene, with a proposal to join four other guys in building a fleet of at least 5 of these things. All of a sudden I've gone from being alone to being in the middle of what I believe is the largest group build there is. I met most of the guys last Wednesday at Rivers West, which is a boat building facility on the Columbia River that is open to the public. I'm planning on doing most of my building in my garage, but some of the others already have a space rented out and are considering renting another so there can be builds going on in parallel.

I also just happened to be travelling to Evanston for Thanksgiving shortly after this all came together, so I contacted Kevin and got to check out Pipe Dream on Saturday. Jeff from Madison was there as well to compare rigging notes with Kevin, so I got to see the boat almost fully rigged. It looks awesome and is almost completely ready to go except for the minor detail that his local launch ramp is closed for the winter - bugger! I did however get to ask a bunch of questions and finally get to see one of these things up close and personal. I now have a much clearer picture in my head of how the whole thing comes together.

So now I've got the inspiration, I've got a kit on the way, and I've got a local group of guys who are doing the same crazy thing as me. I'm ready to go...

By the way, if there is anyone else in the greater Portland area who is curious about building one of these things, get in touch!

Why the heck do I want to build a boat?

I've been thinking casually about building a sailboat for a while now, but I never really had a good idea what I wanted to build or why I even wanted to do it. I don't have any experience building boats, and I also kind of worry about what building a boat will do to my ever-dwindling sanity. That's why my interest was piqued a few weeks ago while I was checking out Sailing Anarchy. I came across a post about the i550 sport sailboat, and it pretty quickly struck me that this would be a great boat to build.

The i550 is built using the "stitch-and-glue" method, which is fast and relatively easy for utter novices like me (at least, I hope it is!). The other big advantage is cost. Comparable 20-foot-something production sport sailboats are pretty much unobtainable for less than $20,000, and that's optimistic. The i550 can be cobbled together for less than $10,000 (or so they tell me!). Thus I can "justify" this undertaking to myself since I couldn't afford a boat like this otherwise. It can also move like crazy in a breeze.

So, I ordered the plans last week. I've been looking at marine plywood suppliers. I've been trying to figure out how to convince my wife this is a good idea. I was even trying to figure out a good name for the boat until it came to me as I was going to sleep last night: "Cheap Date". Looks like I'm probably in trouble here... I guess I need to build this thing.