DIY dinghy – Streaker?

I don't quite know, if it's an indication of a looming midlife crisis, but I have this sudden wild idea that building a (wooden) dinghy might be a wonderful means of spending (wasting?) my time. Not having undertaken a similar project before, it should be something fairly straightforward and ideally the result would be something fun to sail as well (paddle duck racer is out of question). There is no huge rush to have a boat on the water, rather I am looking for a project to fill those windless weekends.

I can recommend checking out Watercraft magazine. There is a whole world out there of plans and designs available good technical articles hits tips & reviews of tools & materials. Have you seen the Farr design often mentioned here? What a lovely boat....plus you'll have fun learning to trapeze if you can't already! Building your own boat is a great thing to do....highly satisfying sailing the seas on something you've built with your own fair hands... Go for it! 

you can self build lots of boats if you can get hold of the plans.  you can buy plans on ebay as well as plenty of other sites.  You can even build a woodie phantom if you join the class.

What you build should depend, however, on whether you want to sail it yourslef, in which case there's no point in building something that wont carry you, or will over power you, that would just be the ultimate frustration.

Oh, the other thing to be aware of, there seem to be designs that are intended for building rather than sailing! Particularly true of boats from what I call "books of plans" designers. As you're a committed sailor I'd recommend sticking to classes that have a good home building ethos rather than the books of plans boats, which may not all be quite as good to sail as to build...

The Farr 3.7 laser cut component route does get you a very easy route into what is basically a very sophisticated build. I'd love to see one built with sapele tiger stripe ply with the veneers across the width ply rather than lengthways. Don't know if its available now, but IMHO that makes for a very pretty boat - the stripes are vertical on the topisdes and across the decks.

The very easiest practical boat to build is probably John Spencer's Firebug. Its a little 8 footer which is probably of dubious value unless you have a youngster available, but the great man managed to get a nice little boat shaped scow type coupled with very easy to build features - the chine angle is identical all the way along, stuff like that... Being an 8 footer there isn't too much money in materials either.

Edited by JimC - 10 Mar 14 at 9:41pm

You could also llook at Keith Callaghan's boats like the Hadron.

BTW, what 'appened to the paper dart thingy on the IoW?