Gartside Sloop

Completed Project

This design is of a shallow-draft, beamy daysailer with both an efficient gaff-rigged mainsail and a jib. It is an excellent step-up for beginning sailors who have learned on smaller, mainsail-only designs.

Price: $18,000

PROJECT SCOPE

Paul Gartside Design #139
18’ Centerboard, Gaff-Rigged Sloop

This design is of a shallow-draft, beamy daysailer with both an efficient gaff-rigged mainsail and a jib. It is an excellent step-up for beginning sailors who have learned on smaller, mainsail-only designs. It is similar in design to Gartside’s 15’ #113 ‘Jessie’ design. In addition to the centerboard, this design carries a small amount(280#’s) of outside ballast.

This design was selected for both its suitability to the sailing conditions in and around the Les Cheneaux Islands and, more importantly, for its appropriateness in teaching traditional carvel-planked wooden boat building skills. As Paul Gartside notes in describing this boat….’Contained here are all the elements of plank-on-frame boat building at the smallest scale and in a shape that will present few difficulties to the competent woodworker.’

In addition to the actual boatbuilding skills, this boat requires lofting, which reinforces the earlier exercises done by the students. It is also their first large-boat project on which they will begin setting up the stocks, making and laying out the molds, building the backbone and moving forward from the ground up.

STUDENT LEARNING EXPERIENCE

As part of the Traditional Boat Building session, students will work on two different boats to learn advanced wooden boat building skills. Because there is not enough time in the school year to build a single advanced wooden boat to completion, staggering the building process between two different wooden boats is an alternative. Having two different advanced wooden boat under construction at the same time exposes the student to many advanced boat building skills in the time allotted for the Traditional Boat Building session.

Each year students will loft and construct the backbone of an advanced wooden boat and plank it. Then it will be left to the next years class to complete it. At the same time the class will pick up on the advanced wooden boat project started by the previous years class and build it to completion.

The Gartside 18 ft Centerboard Sloop, is another excellent choice for an advanced wooden boat building project. The first year class of 2014 will loft, frame, and plank her. And the first year class of 2015 will complete her. Students will expand their lofting skills learned in the previous session Classic Wood Working and Small Boat Building, and will learn to loft the developments (rabbet, stem sections, transom expansion, deck camber, shelf and clamp expansion) to properly shape the transom, stem and deck.

Students will then learn how to build the Gartside Sloop’s backbone consisting of the keel, stem, and transom. They will construct and install the molds which will be framed with ribbands. Then they will go on to steam bending the oak frames that get shaped around the ribbands.

The Gartside Sloop, will be carvel planked, so students will learn how to line off, spile, shape, hollow, round, and bevel carvel planks to fit around the oak frames of the boat and butt up against one-another edge-to-edge. Then students will seal tight the planks by caulking the seams with cotton.

Students will learn spar making skills beginning with learning how to develop the taper lines for spars and then go on to shape them using hand tools.

In the final stages students will learn to “fit out” the boat in installing all the necessary hardware. Second-year students will apply yacht joinery skills to complete the interior of the cabin.

Finally the students will learn finishing skills beginning with fairing the hull, preparing for topsides paint, bottom paint, and varnish, and then applying the various finishes.

In the building of the Gartside Sloop, students will learn team work. It has been said, “To work with someone is to know him; to build a boat with him is to know him well.“ And so it goes at GLBBS. The goal is to have the Gartside Sloop ready for launching on graduation day 2015.

PARTICULARS

  • LOA: 18′ – 0″
  • Beam: 7′ – 4″
  • Draft: 4′ – 3″ (centerboard down)
  • Displacement: 1,200 lbs.
  • Power: N/A
  • Capacity: 4-5
  • Sail Area: 198 sq. ft.
  • Sailing Rig: Gaff
  • Ballast: 280 lbs. cast lead
  • Hull Speed: _6 knots
  • Estimated Build Time: 1,200 hours

DESIGNER

REFERENCES

CONSTRUCTION

  • Backbone: White Oak
  • Frames: Steam-bent White Oak
  • Floors: White Oak
  • Transom: Sapele
  • Planking: Cypress
  • Breasthook and Quarter Knees: White Oak
  • Gunwale Cap: Sapele
  • Coamings, Rails, Fife Rail, Bowsprit Knees, Stern Sheets: Sapele
  • Bilge Stringer, Deck Frame: Douglas Fir
  • Deck: Marine plywood/fiberglass-epoxy sheathing
  • Sole: Iroko
  • Rudder: Douglas Fir
  • Fastenings: Silicone Bronze
  • Spars: Sitka Spruce
  • Hardware: Bronze
  • Rigging: S.S. Wire
  • Finish: TBD
    • Hull:
    • Bottom:
    • Deck:
    • Interior:
    • Spars:
  • Sails: TBD