Building stuff is another passion of mine. Before getting married, I built a beautiful kitchen set that included a table, benches and corner cabinet, all of which still serve us today. Five years into our marriage I designed and built our 3,000 square foot passive solar home in Barrie, Ontario, and for 20 years of my career, I owned a construction company.

So, it wasn’t a far stretch to consider the task of building a boat. The original plan was to have someone complete all the aluminum work for us and then we would finish off the interior, install boat systems and rigging. After receiving a couple of quotes in the $150,000 range, I was reviewing some details with the designer, Ted Brewer, when he suggested that I do the aluminum work. He explained that if we had the aluminum work completed now, what were we going to do for the next 14 years of the project? Certainly the remainder of the work would only take a few of those years. So after careful consideration and realizing the time was available, the decision was made that I was to do all the metal work.

I hadn’t worked with metal before, but it wouldn’t be that foreign to me. As a carpenter, I had been cutting and fitting pieces of material together my whole life. Aluminum is similar to wood in that it can be cut and trimmed with a circular saw, electric plane and router – tools I was familiar with. The only task I hadn’t done before was welding … and how hard could that be? Then “people in the know” started commenting on how difficult aluminum welding is. “It is so tricky that few welders ever get the skill to weld aluminum” they would say.

Well, if I was one to listen to people who thought they were “in the know”, this project would never have started, let alone become finished.

So, off to the local supplier of welding equipment and supplies I went. The technical sales guy at Air Liquid  listened intently to me describe the project for about 10 minutes. The salesman put it quite simply, “I can sell you a less expensive unit that will do the job, but you will be cursing me the whole time. Or you can pay more (an extra $1,000) and we will remain friends forever.” Well, I didn’t necessarily come to make friends, but as a carpenter, I do know the importance of having and using the right tools for a job.

So I forked out thousands of dollars for equipment, and forever more couldn’t figure out why “people in the know” had said welding aluminum was so difficult. I compare welding to running a bead of caulking with a good caulking gun. I just had to make sure all the settings (voltage, amperage, wire speed, gas) were set just right for the type of weld and the thickness of aluminum. However, this was made easy by using tables published by the American Welding Society. The Society also published a book entitled “Welding Aluminum Hulls”, with the whole welding process described to a tee.

Ring frames welded together and laid out on the strong back.

At this point we had lofted the boat out on a 15’x50’ drawing table. From the full size drawing, we made plywood templates for the sixteen rib sections that would give the boat its final shape and strength. From these templates, we had the arduous task of bending 3×3 aluminum angles to their exact profile. We didn’t have the benefit of today’s technology, using computerized drawings with CNC files for robot plasma cutters, to cut the profiles. So this task seemed to take forever, after which it looked like “a heap of twisted scrap metal” (Carol’s exact words). These words were not much of a morale booster, after days and days of work! But I knew each twisted piece was perfect, then the project turned from tedious to fun. Welding these pieces together to form ring frames was quick, and soon the 16 ribs of the boat were standing up, forming the partial skeleton and the shape of the vessel to come. “Wow, I can see the boat starting to materialize!” Even better, Carol finally saw the progress and a form that sort of resembled a boat. The shape, however, was upside down, resembling more of a submarine than a sailboat.

All our research on constructing boats showed that the easiest way to build a metal boat was to assemble the components inverted; allowing gravity to give you a helping hand. It did indeed make things easier, but led to future complications … righting it at some point.

Frames are all in place, stringers installed and the plating is underway. The hull was built upside down for ease of construction.

While fabricating Voyageur 10.10, I was running a construction company and spending time helping Carol run her dance studio. I was also volunteering as a director/manager/trainer with freestyle skiing, running elite events … and I taught sailing four weeks of the summer in Ontario… and… another two weeks in the Caribbean… Oh yeh, and found time for my children too . . .  Whewww!

“Wow” everyone would ask, “where do you find the time to fit in building a boat?”

However, to this day, I can’t figure out what everyone else did with their time. Maybe time moved slower for me, allowing me to get more done in any hour, everything just seemed to fit in to the busy schedule.

The first years of constructing the hull passed quickly, and the day came when it was completed, but still upside down.

So the time came to hire a crane to turn the boat over in our backyard. The first big milestone of the project had arrived! Next was to complete the deck, cabin and cockpit. These are areas where we strayed a little from the original design. We reconfigured some details to suit our specific needs for long distance ocean passages. Seat back heights were increased and a hard dodger was added, to name a few.

The first big milestone was flipping the hull right side up. Here, a 70 ton crane is parked in our back yard. The job only took a couple of hours.

As I am writing this, Carol is poking me, saying “don’t forget to include the part where you set yourself on fire, or the nasty cuts I had to clean and mend for you. Oh, and remember the days you would swear up and down that you were quitting the project and selling the obelisk for scrap metal? How about mentioning the days you were so frustrated that there were tears streaming down your cheeks.”

“No Carol, I don’t think anyone wants to hear those stories” I replied. “Actually, I just don’t want to remember those moments … they were real downers, and it may turn people off starting their own project. This is supposed to be inspirational, making people feel like they can do anything they set out to do.”

Yes, the project had some real low points, but sticking with it soon produced some incredible highs that overshadowed them.

Now, with 95% of the welding completed, we started to install windows, hatches and port lights. With the boat closed in we could start thinking about installing interior components.

During the many winters throughout the construction schedule, when it was too cold to be working outside, we fabricated components for the interior of the boat. We started with the saloon table made of solid cherry plank with maple inlays, then cabinets and settees … the pile was building. Where am I going to put all of this stuff?

At the time, it was way too early to install them in the boat. One day, while standing in our living room with Carol, I casually said “we don’t use the living room very much any more … right?” Carol hesitatingly said “nooo?” wondering where this discussion was going.

Before she could blink an eye, our son had removed all the living room furniture down to his pad on the lower level of the house. Carol was figuring it out now … and too late … the furniture was gone. The living room was perfect, measuring 14’ x 36’, pretty much the exact size of the interior of the boat. Now, as pieces were completed, they would be placed exactly as they would appear in the boat. ”But this is our living room!” Carol exclaimed. It turned out that we didn’t even miss it. This decision helped keep the project on track. There was a real sense of excitement as each finished piece made its way to its proper place in the room. We would walk through it pretending we were in Voyageur 10.10.

Our living room just happened to be the same size as the boat interior, so it became the staging area for all the interior components.

A couple of years back, when we had the boat flipped over, the crane operator asked about the future plans for the project. The topic of 16,000 pounds of lead in the keel was brought up. The crane operator was very insistent and strongly suggested that we didn’t put the lead in the keel until after the boat was moved to a marina at the water’s edge. The bare hull and deck weighed 12,000 pounds and adding another 16,000 would make the difficulty of hoisting the boat out of the back yard nearly impossible. This lift would extend the reach of the crane to capacity; risky business when the boat had to fly over the house onto a flatbed truck parked on our patio.

Great advice! Getting the boat out of the back yard came off without a hitch. In only four hours, on that second milestone day, all equipment arrived. We built a 150’ long gravel road, hoisted the boat onto the flatbed and watched it sail down the street, faster than it will ever travel again.

What an amazing sight! A couple of tears were shed, with the pride of knowing, “I MADE THAT!”