Welsford navigator 'Annie' build slideshow

To celebrate more than 1.5 million views of my boat building pics on Flickr- half of which are of the building of the Welsford Navigator 'Annie', I have put together a five minute slide show of the build process as it happened for me. 

In writing, emailing and talking to dozens of Navigator builders since posting these some years ago, I know that having pictures and resources available is a big factor in motivation for some who are facing these challenges for the first time, often with little experience in the shed, or 'on the tools' (as Australian tradesmen express it).

I hope this is of some use to builders- particularly of Welsford designed boats which all share some common build and design features. The Flickr pics are somewhat annotated and are more useful for careful dreaming, but maybe a slideshow might be of use in big picture dreaming when you should be doing something normal, but need a boat building fix.

Mine isn't the prettiest of Navigators, nor is it the best build. I'm certainly not the best sailor or the best film maker or the most adventurous owner. To be honest I love timber and lines and building challenges most of all and sailing is something I came to very late in life. The workshop in which most of the build happened is crude and agricultural (although some bits are nice when I took it to my place of work) but the boat functions well and the pics have been feasted upon because they are there to be seen.

There is also the book 'Something About Navigator' (available on Amazon) which people tell me has been useful. I think I earn about $3 per copy when one sells, so please don't think this is a commercial plug- I wouldn't have bothered for the money! The black and white edition has pretty ordinary illustration quality, but I had strong advice at the time that I needed to keep the cost of the book down to $20. The colour edition is better, but twice the price.

Navigator 'Annie' build slideshow from Robert Ditterich on Vimeo.

stop curling your sun-drenched toes buddy- I've got wings

This tiny clip is probably best watched in full screen mode, but don't hold your breath for a plot. It merely represents a moment of surprise and pleasure, when the little electric pod did everything I had hoped for it, but with even less fuss than I had expected.

At this point we had already discovered that the boat would float. Always a good start. More than that, the centre-board pin was not leaking. More good news. But all of this is to get well ahead of myself. Not unusual.

I was standing outside my workshop an hour before this with a gusty, enthusiastic northerly busily rearranging what is left of my hair. I'm thinking; 'I'm going to test the results of a year of work in this?' Plan A was just to see if she floats, with an extension plan based around seeing how much I had stuffed up the installation of the electric pod. My lack of confidence was to be dealt with by the presence of a petrol outboard, to save face and give an impression of someone who knows what he is doing if the pod fell off, or fizzed excessively, or failed to move the boat against the wind or current, or jellyfish or some other obstacle sent by the powers that conspire to keep my ego in check.

They all failed. Everything worked.

Which meant that getting on with sailing would have to be the next challenge.

By the time we launched the wind had magically fallen away to a lazy blow, the sun was out and she had been rigged easily within 20 minutes- and I was being slow, precise and careful, it being her first time and all...(without the outboard and with some practice this figure will no doubt improve, especially if I feel like moving a bit more quickly).

I decided that given the morning's anxiety about gusts, I'd start with motor and lazy mizzen, progressing to jib and mizzen if all went well, but the idea of raising the main was not given much consideration until after about ten minutes of relaxed sailing in a gentle breeze, up went the main from the comfort of the cockpit, and without leaving my seat. Such luxury.

I was absolutely gob-smacked (after the luck of having such success with the pod) to find that all systems worked, and despite my own short-comings as a sailor, Annie was having a lovely time anyway.

She was a delight. Tacked easily despite me, light on the helm, lots of nice places to stretch out a naked foot and wiggle the toes in sunlit sheer delight that I was alive and THE DAMN THING WORKED. Arm over the coaming, breeze in my face. Jib furler easy and very helpful, main sail pulling us along, despite the pod, even in a very light breeze.

One or two gusts came out of nowhere, and there I was with two sheets in one hand, my son on the phone in the other, and the mizzen seeming to just let me do my own thing without any great demands on my attention, when all of a sudden, I looked up to the main that seemed suddenly very big and quite capable of something very powerful, and Annie said 'stop curling your toes in the sun buddy, there's plenty about me to see yet. I've got wings and I've got lungs and if you play your cards right we'll have some fun....one day'.

Julia and I had a really lovely, lazy sail, and then I had a blissful potter on my own. Love it.

Thanks for the design Mr. Welsford.

for everything, turn, turn, turn..

I have to say that while upside-down, Annie appears to have gained weight. When she's on-edge she seems as wide as she is long, but I daren't say anything, it is a sensitive subject, girth. Boats don't like to have their great beam pointed out to them. So how can we tell them that we like it without causing offense? We wouldn't want our boats to look like magazine models, would we?

Annie turned over without incident or assistance. I used the blocks that will become her mainsheet tackle to lift her onto her side, then switched tackle over to the other side to lower her gently and with great dignity onto her bottom. She is currently re-gaining her composure on a few bales of grass hay. I had a celebratory drink on her behalf. It was the least I could do.

Navigator: the ugly shots

After ten days off, I've started to undercoat the bits that will be hard to access once the foredecks are glued on. The fillets and corners always seem to need extra attention, so they get treated first, in the knowledge that most of this will be sanded off while working towards getting a nice surface for the final coats.

dry fitting B1,2 & 3

dry fitting B1,2 & 3, originally uploaded by robert.ditterich.

Building the Navigator, a 15 ft open boat. A sequence of photos is in my Flickr collection, shown in the links here.
There are some beautiful curves in the Navigator, but also some potential for awful ones if the wood is tortured without care. The hull has an incredible resolution of a very fine forefoot- a water slicer- into a very flared upper outline- a splash spreader- combined with a bottom capable of planing beyond hull speed- flat across and convex along its shape.