Catamaran Construction Hours – How Long Will it Take?

From day one,
I kept track of every hour of work put into the boat. My reasoning was that
since I estimated it would take 1,500 hours (a greenhorn’s guess) to build,
I thought if I knew I had done 150 hours I would know that I was 10% of the
way there. It didn’t work out that way, but I did feel better and have
some sense of going forward after an evening’s work to mark down 4 hours
and the work done even though there didn’t seem to be a lot of visible progress
on some nights.

The following grid shows my hours, Carllie’s, as well the friends who
helped for major component moving or hull turning. It does not include non-boatyard
time, i.e. buying/sourcing supplies, planning, countless trips to Home Depot,
etc.

Date	Garett	Carllie	Friends	Month Total	Grand Total	Done	Task
1997
February	19			19	19	1%	Cuddy
March	76			76	95	3%	Cuddy
April	70			70	165	5%	Cuddy
May	100			100	265	7%	Beams, cockpit
June	78			78	343	10%	Rudders, bulkheads
July	119	37	12	168	511	14%	Make shed, make hull panel sides
August	98	42	16	156	667	19%	Make hull #1, hull #2
September	121	39	19	179	846	24%	Joins hulls with cockpit
October	84	13	24	121	967	27%	Attach cuddy cabin and beams
November	66	26	6	98	1065	30%	Port inside and decks
December	70	10		80	1145	32%	Star inside and decks
1998
January	96	18		114	1259	36%	Walkways, bow stems
February	81	29	4	114	1373	39%	Fairing fwd beam
March	111	28	6	145	1518	43%	Keels
April	64	29		93	1611	45%	Underside fairing pieces
May	65	17	1	83	1694	48%	Sliding hatches and ladders
June	97	32		129	1823	51%	Hatch bases, head cabinets – **completed shell**
July	49	16		65	1888	53%	Port hull – inside fair and paint
August	117	32		149	2037	57%	Star hull – inside fair and paint
September	101	61		162	2199	62%	Cuddy inside fair and paint
October	89	60		149	2348	66%	Outside fairing
November	110	65	4	179	2527	71%	Priming and start painting
December	74	58		132	2659	75%	Painting
1999
January	112	102		214	2873	81%	Painting, non-skid & hardware
February	84	52		136	3009	85%	Hatches, bridgedeck interior / galley
March	130	54		184	3193	90%	Windows, rudders, netting
April	118	38		156	3349	94%	Rudders, door, hatches
May	131	39	7	177	3526	99%	Electrical and plumbing
June	20	7		27	3553	100%	Put up mast, launch !!!
Total	2550	904	92	3553

You will notice that as of June 1998, we had done 51% of the hours and had
a complete rough structure. The remaining hours were spent in the fairing, finishing,
painting, and outfitting. At that point you feel you have a boat but you are
really only half way there.

If you are
thinking of building a bigger boat, the surface area is proportional to the
cube of the waterline length. This means that a 33 foot boat will have 33% more
area to fair and finnish than a 30 foot boat. A 36 foot boat will have whopping
66% more area. Consider this carefully before you plunge into a project.

While building Light Wave, Carllie and I were both
working Monday to Friday at full-time jobs. The boatyard was about a 30-minute
drive from home/work. I figure we spent an additional 700 hours in travelling
on our daily trips that was not included in the above grid. I went out to the
boat virtually every week day after work and Carllie came out about two nights
per week. We both spent Saturdays and Sundays in the boatyard.

As you can see, I averaged almost 100 hours per month on top of the 140 hours
per month at my regular job. The boat project was small enough that we would
always see some progress and this provided the energy to keep us going. When
we would get out there together on the usual Friday evening for 4 hours of work
from 5 to 9 pm, it was slow going for the first 3 hours but usually in the last
hour we got more done than in the first 3.

At 26 months we were both reaching our breaking point. I would have to say
that to build a boat much bigger would be very difficult while working full
time jobs like we were.

If we were to ever build another, bigger boat (and that is a very big IF),
we would only do it if I could work at it full time and do about 200 hours per
month and thus complete it in 2 to 3 years. At 100 hours per month it would
be difficult to see progress on a bigger boat and you just couldn’t keep
doing 100 hour per month on top of a full time job for 5 years on a bigger project.
It just couldn’t be done. What would happen is that you would start to
do 50 hours per month in an effort to pace yourself and then it would take 10
years, your life circumstances would change and you may well throw in the towel!
Life is way to short.

Another avenue to speed things up is to hire some competent help to put hours
in on the project. This would ensure continued progress.

So going back to Richard Woods’s advice:

       “build
the smallest boat you‘d be happy with it”

and keep putting in those hours….small is beautiful….small is beautiful…!