my new boat

The conception of our project

In February 2008, while we were walking along the north shore of Flathead Lake, my husband Richard commented that he wanted to build a wooden sailboat and sail away into retirement. How else do travel junkies afford their habit, but take their house with them?

As the winters tend to get rather gloomy here in the Flathead, a long term project sounded great. We toyed with buying and refurbishing an older boat. A 30 year old hull, however, is still a 30 year old hull with it's inherent weaknesses and problems after almost as much financial outlay to repair and update it. Besides the challenge of the building process, and the intimate knowledge of every aspect of our boat was something that appealed to us. The next hurdle was deciding what and where to build.

As Richard owns a custom cabinet shop, and has been working with wood for over 30 years, he really wanted to build a modern wooden sailboat, but with traditional appeal. After a lot of research he decided on the strip plank-cold mold method of construction. He wanted to build a vessel large enough to live on, but small enough to be a realistic goal financially and in terms build time. We also wanted a boat that could be easily handled by a couple, with shallow enough draft for poking around remote areas, but designed for bluewater and passagemaking.

The lengthy process of picking plans began....