Friday, February 2, 2024
Building a Spindrift 9 nesting dinghy
The question of a dinghy is one that all cruisers need to answer. There are multiple options available and you need to pick the one for your requirements and budget. Our budget and needs lead us to the world of self-built hard dinghys, and we chose the Spindrift 9 nesting dinghy from B&B Yacht Designs as the one.
The project started with ordering the plans and familiarising ourselves with them. After having a somewhat good overall understanding, Suski meticulously drew the cut plan on Autodesk Fusion 360 for cutting. There are build kits available, but they ship from either US or UK, so it was easier to find a place with a big CNC in Berlin instead. Armed with the 3 files and 4 sheets of okume plywood we drove to Cadus and proceeded to cut all the pieces required. And we didn’t even need the extra sheet or any of the reserve milling bits as all of the cutting went as planned.
After this it was time to deal with the solid stock. We did all of that at c-base workshop, where Suski has spent most of her Fridays for the last 10 years. The raw materials were transformed to wood chips, cleats and benches. Also the first pieces were glued together and we had our build in progress.
Transporting the long pieces through the city with public transport was successful and we didn’t even get any weird comments about it!
When we had all the pieces at Gothia, it was time to start building for reals. We started by gluing together the long side and bottom pieces, and after proceeded to glue and glass the butterfly seam. We attached zipties loosely on the center seam and were ready for the the exiting moment of opening the boat into a 3D shape. Before opening we had hot towels on the outside sides of the plywood and with minus degrees outside the relative humidity was aroud 40% and we were afraid of cracks.
We attached helper supports with clamps at the end of the butterfly so that it was easier to handle the pieces. Ever so slowly we started pushing the pieces into their correct shape removing clamps from supports as necessary. In about 2 hours we had the required shape with transom in place and all zipties tight. Success!
After we had the shape we left the boat to settle for the night. In the morning we tightened all of the zipties once more and proceeded to cut out and glue the breasthook and quarter knees. Those in place we ziptied in the nesting bulkhead and wrestled in and glued the gunwales. Getting the gunwales in place was the hardest part of the whole build. We were just the 2 of us but more extra hands might have made it easier. So when the plan calls for “extra hands” be warned that you really need them.