Wooden Boat Building project scope

I’ve been chronicling the adventure of building a Caledonia Yawl, a design of Ian Oughtred that caught my eye and appeals to me. It is an opportunity to write and to challenge myself to develop new skills. I hope you’ll enjoy following the adventure. The process of construction uses marine plywood and epoxy to create a glued lapstrake construction method that is very light and strong. This method is well adapted to creating boats with beautiful lines that mimic the methods of traditional timber construction. I’m also hopeful that it will prove to be durable and last many years.

Here is a review of the boat by the Small Craft Advisor magazine.

Caledonia Yawl
The Caledonia Yawl sail configuration I chose

Although it appears to be a less popular rig for this boat, I chose the gunter yawl rig, because although the standing lug rig is probably quite a good performing rig. I can’t shake the idea of loosing a few degrees of windward ability.  The best rig for windward performance is probably the gunter sloop rig. But that brings the mast back and leaves less flexibility for camp cruising, and I like the idea of being able to drop the main and still sail under jib and mizzen in a strong breeze. This will be fun to build, as there are six spars to build in this design (same for the standing lug rig as well)

Choices to make are (I’m open to suggestions):

Hull colour: white, black, or a colour or should I give the shearstrake an accent colour. Sail colour: white, tan bark or cream A boat name

I’m currently leaning towards light blue/teal below the waterline with a black hull and light blue accents along the shearstrake.

You can follow the construction by following the Caledonia Yawl category of the blog.

Update: I’ve recruited my family to help come up with the colour scheme for the boat. Here are some options they’ve come up with so far.

Another update: I received this wonderful article link from a friend that considers the value of the balance lug sail option by John Harris. Lug Sail article Lug Nuts

This article really helped me reconsider my assumptions and consider what is most important to me.

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