Again on Ferro boats

[Dennis]

Not to badger the subject, but on the Ferro boat page, there are a lot of these boats for sale and they are not cheap! Maybe cheap to build, but it seems to me that their resale is pretty high! Anyway according to the site, many of these boats have sailed around the world, with no ill problems, are still used in many parts of the world, I guess mostly overseas, and are repaired easily! Certainly they have proven their moxie if circumnavigating! Have any Macs duplicated these feats, outside of the biggest ones? Has anyone taken a 22 or 25 footer Mac to Tahiti, etc.? hey Im just saying!

 

[Ross]

All manner of boats and people have

sailed to far away places. We hear mostly about the good results and the shipwrecks. What we don't hear about are the ones that started but were unable to finish. The material cost of building a boat is small compared to the labor cost. When I rebuilt Bietzpadlin my material cost including a new engine was less than thirty thousand but my labor hours were close to three thousand and I purchased more than two thousand dollars worth of shop tools.We have quite a few ferro-cement boats on the hard up on this end of the bay but I don't know of any that are being sailed.

 

[sailortonyb]

Has anyone.........

Has anyone taken a 22 -25 foot ferro boat to Tahiti?I agree with Ross. You have to remember that when it comes to special interest groups, they will always toot their own horn. Go to sites for junk rigs and they will tell you that they perform just as well as sloops. How many have you seen in major races? You also have to consider that if they were that good and that easy to make, ALL of the major manufacturers would be cranking them out. We also have to remember that most ferro boats were larger (30 ft. plus)boats and the seller is comparing his boat to a standard production boat in value. Most ferro boats i have seen, stay on the market for years and are derelict boats. Not to start a fight...I said "MOST" not all.If you like ferro boats, thats great, it is still part of our heritage, but i dont think its a reasonable comparison to fiberglass in performance or value.

 

[Calif. Ted]

Okay, Just so happens I did run into a cement

boat last winter in Oceanside which is about 50 miles upcoast from San Diego. It was next to me in the transient docks, it was large, no sense building a small cement boat. Current owner had bought from owner/builder recently, started 35 years ago it had been launched about 10 years ago and this was first time out of San Diego Bay. Owner loved the great galley, head etc. but got the impression he'd have sold it in a heartbeat for any cash offer.This is the best example of the breed I've seen, probably one of the better built and even a cursory exam revealed problems most people would rather not deal with.

 

[Moody Buccaneer]

Amateur Hour

Look at fero-cement boats like any other home built vehicle ... many (most) were started by backyard dreamers that had NO experience with boats or building anything, much less structural concrete.One reason that many of these contraptions never got finished is the fact that the cost of the hull is minor compared to the cost of the finished boat. When faced with the cost of fitting out the boat, it is very hard to take a chicken wire and concrete, Home Depot mindset and spend 10's of thousands to buy proper gear.Ask a surveyor how the soundness of a fero-cement hull can be evaluated.Would you trust your life to a home built boat that YOU didn't build?

 

[Bill Roosa]

That's the rub in my mind

Moody hit the nail on the head. If I built it I'd know, if he/she built it there would always be a big ? in my mind about anything going on on the boat. This is not about FC, even a homebuilt FG boat would make me shy away for the very same reasons.

 

[Pete]

ferro boats

May i suggest that before you puchase a ferro-cement hull boat talk to a insurance agent about getting it insured. Most boat insurance companies don't want much to to with them or cost is very high. So you may be the owner/self insured. Just another twist to the issue !

 

[tom]

Old newspapers and epoxy

I bet that you could make a boat to sail around the world out of old newspapaers and epoxy cement. Make it like paper mache'. Use chicken wire and wire coat hangers to make a fram and then cover everything with a 6" thick layer of old newspapers glued together with waterproof epoxy. I wouldbet that it would be stronger than a fero cement boat and with enough entrapped air in the layup would float even if flooded. Maybe use styrofoam blocks to reinforce critcal areas and provide flotation. Use chunks of ferro cement boats for ballast. Seriously you can build something that floats from almost anything. The wheelr yacht club has a cardboard box boat race each year.People have crossed oceans on log rafts. Cubans have attempeted the strai ts of Florida in pickup trucks using old innertubes for flotation. But the overwhelming majority of reacreational sailboats are made of fiberglass with a small proportion of wood,aluminum and steel. Most be a reason.

 

[Cap'n Ron]

FRP to Ferro

Mr Roosa is right, and there were many, many pits dug in backyards and filled with ferro 'projects' back in the hayday of home-built ferro-cement yachts in this country.However, not true in New Zealand, lotta seaworthy ferro yachts there, they are insured, but they have many wood yachts too, these are all insured, and it is not easy to insure a wood yacht here in the U.S. but, like a ferro, they can be insured.When talking ferro vessels there are two factors that reading rsponses I don't see...1) the 'armature' 2) the history. The history, with pictures showing the actual building, the armature framing, and all other aspects come into play.I have seen some pretty fair examples, and one that circumnavigated in the early sixties. She had a full logged and photographed history of when she was built, plus a scrap book of magazine, newspaper and articles of her round the globe trip.Now most of youse guyse shy away from wood too, when FRP first hit the market it was a suspicious material too, but light-weight and strong it is a fine material with it's own problems.Ferro is heavy, the biggest negative, but so is steel. The navys of the world don't use ferro, but neither do they use glass...A lotta buildings made out of cement, they do all right, no body is critiquing them...;-)

 

[Tom]

Any Homebuilt is Suspect

Any boat suspect??? I explored the possibilty of making a boat and an airplane. I have seen fine examples of both. But there are so many things that can go wrong... There was a steel homebuilt at my last marina. They practically gave it away instead of the cost of junking. It was an ugly boat but probably capable of long trips...except the builder didn't cut "weep" holes to the bilge. Water mostly condensation collected next to the frame members and started rusting away the members. The solution was to cut out and reframe a very expensive and time consuming task. The couple that bought the boat use it as a cheap waterfront apartment and to my knowledge they have never moved it from the dock..I don't think that it even has state registration. There is another steel boat at the marina that is well made and the owners might well circumnavigate. But the steel is a constant challenge to control rust.  With a ferrocement boat the ferro part of the boat can rust!!!! Cement has great strength in compression but is brittle and has little strength in tension. Fiberglass is pretty much inert as is the plastic that glues the fibers together. But cement and steel are both easily attacked by inorganic chemicals especially acids. Saltwater is notorious for attacking metals.  In my mind probably the best material for homebuilding a boat is cold moulding plywood with waterproof epoxy.  But unless you want a special purpose boat that requires a custom build I still say that homebuilding is a mistake if you want to go sailing sooner and cheaper. If you are a skilled carpenter capable of building a quality wooden boat you can probably make $20+/hour anywhere. When you add up the thousands of hours required to build a boat and and the cost of materials, buying a used boat is more cost effective.

 

[J.B. Dyer]

Your Call

There is some good solid advise in these posts from people that have no agenda. You have to remember that anyone trying to sell you something is not going to tell the down side.I've seen several of these things over the years in different stages of development, from the steel framework to floating. My opinion (just mine) is that I wouldn't have one if someone offered it to me free.If you have an itch that needs scratching, go ahead and buy yourself a FC boat. Nobody trying to sell one of these things is going to tell you about the problems. You've been warned. Buyer beware!

 

[filthy liberal scum]

at first glance they sound good.

most notable other than the weight and difficulty of getting rid of one is the wide variation of quality of build,since most were home built. i understand or vaguely remember that there were a number of these built in england on a production scale that were actually sought after. the biggest problem i see with them, is the almost total lack of knowledge about them.an aquaintence of mine bought one a number of years ago but i don't have a clew as to how he fared with it or even if he still has it. i do know that they tended to be very large 40'+ and beamy boats and not very good looking. sorta like a mack truck on the water. S/V Que Pasa?

 

[Dennis]

Home built boats

From what I have heard, ferro cement or otherwise, home built boats were something to avoid anyway and that included kit boats! I always kind of liked the kenner Privateer ketch though, and that was a kit boat!