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.
