DIY dinghy – Streaker?

 

 

Tom is a great guy, genius craftsmen, and excellent sailor.

 

When I used to be a member at Haversham he would race these boats in the handicap fleet, although always seemed to get crucified by yardstick he was given.

Thanks for the large number of helpful and supportive responses! I have followed up on all of them, doing some more reading and am now beginning to lean more towards the Farr 3.7.

In more detail with some additional background: This is going to be my wife and me working on the project together. We want to go for a single hander, as they tend to be smaller, but mainly because we have a double hander that we sail together. So a single hander (or two :-) would make an interesting addition. While not necessarily for racing, we do want a performance boat, so the "book of plans" as well as the Campion boats are out. Obviously, we won't find a boat that suits both of our weights perfectly, so the idea was to first go for one that better suits her weight which we would be able to both sail, and then we can tackle building a Hadron or a Phantom for me ;-)

I have been in touch with Dave Butler, who was very helpful, but is reluctant to sell a simple pre-cut kit. They clearly prefer selling the hull with bulkheads, which takes away a lot of the risk of building, but also quite a bot of the fun. From what I have read, there are no CAD files for the Streaker available and also the plans appear to be minimally off, making transferring them to ply a bit more difficult.

I don't know why I didn't look at the Farr 3.7 in more detail initially. With the option of purchasing the CAD files ready for laser cutting along with the plans, this looks exactly like what we are looking for. We will go through the Farr building blogs and then decide.

Keith Callaghan's designs look quite hot, but my impression is that they are a bit more involved to build than a Streaker or Farr 3.7. That might be an option for the next one :-)

Watercraft magazine: thanks for that tip. It looks like interesting and useful reading. I will definitely be ordering one or two books from their selection, to help me (us) get started.

Firebug: nice design. Once there's a youngster around, it is something I would consider. I have very old plans for an Optimist lying around somewhere ...

I will keep keep updating the plans as they develop and we are committed to keeping a blog on the build once we get underway.

As before, I continue to be interested in any input.

Thanks again, Chris

I enjoyed every minute of my Farr 3.7 build. I built one from scratch but used laser cut frames. For me the hull framing and stringers were the best bit, seeing the skeleton shape develop.

It took me a year from start to launch, but I purposely had no target launch date and still took holidays, biz trips and other sabaticals. My blog is on the Farr web site, but I'd be more than happy to spend more time to go through the process with you, or if you fancy a trip to Draycote water, come and have a sail

 

It's a great long term project and you'll learn the woodwork as you go along (all the early stages that you learn on are well hidden on the finished boat!)

Best of luck with your choice