How to make a sailing catamaran with your own hands?

2024 Author: Erin Ralphs | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-19 11:42

Catamaran is a type of boat that is built using two or more structurally joined hulls. This type of watercraft is especially suitable for fishing, sports, tourism and entertainment purposes, access to various hard-to-reach places. The sailing catamaran, reliable and safe due to its design features, is becoming more and more widespread. Moreover, you can not only buy it, but also make it yourself.

Why do-it-yourself sailing catamarans?

In addition to sailing, catamarans with a motor engine and pedal propellers are common. They are also suitable for making on their own. Especially if we take into account the fact that the purchase of a finished catamaran costs several times more than the cost of its independent production. But many people start building a catamaran on their own, not so much because of saving money, but because of the desire to express in their offspring the original author's ideas regardingshape, design, constructive solutions, achievement of certain qualities of the vessel, which are absent from the proposed industrial or other designs available on the market.

In any case, no matter how difficult it may seem at first glance, the work of building sailing catamarans with your own hands, this is a very real and achievable task for a more or less able and skilled person. Therefore, below we will consider the main stages of building a sailing catamaran. It is sailing because it is not necessary to be subject to mandatory registration with the GIMS, which is required for almost any small boats with a motor engine.

Choice of catamaran design

The first thing you have to decide when starting to build a catamaran is to choose its main structure, namely what its hulls will be made of. They can be made of plywood, boards, water bottles, plastic barrels, pipes, etc. An inflatable sailing catamaran has a big advantage, the float hulls of which are made of rubberized material. It is this design that allows you to get a collapsible sailing catamaran.

Design requirements

The construction of a catamaran essentially depends on the purpose for which you are building it. It is one thing to use it for recreation and fishing on a small quiet lake, it is quite another thing to use it for rafting on a stormy mountain river. The requirements for the strength of the structure and its elements in these cases are radically different. The ratio of the mass of the vessel and its carrying capacity is also important. After all, the smaller it is, the easier it is to transfer the vessel to the place of its intended use. According to this indicator, there is no equal to an inflatable collapsible catamaran, for which the weight of the vessel per crew member is from 4 to 10 kg, and for inflatable kayaks - 8-11 kg.

Catamaran project

There are and are available real projects that can be implemented in a small apartment, using only hand tools, providing high mobility of the product (there are no parts longer than one and a half meters - you can transport it free of charge in any public transport and on an airplane), its low weight, ease of assembly and disassembly of the structure, the necessary strength and reliability.

So, if you finally decide to make an inflatable collapsible sailing catamaran, then you should look in the special literature for drawings of sailing catamarans that match your choice. Trust me, it's not that hard.

Let's consider a sailing catamaran based on two inflatable rubberized bags, forming two "cigars" with a diameter of 40 cm and a length of 280 cm when inflated, weighing 12 kg together with sails and oars, which easily withstands four crew members, providing them with sufficient facilities for work, recreation and fishing. Each crew member has only 3 kg of the boat's weight, and the unsinkability, convenience and excellent navigability of the vessel have been tested in practice by dozens of short and long trips along the rivers and lakes of the central part of the European territory of Russia. Thesevoyages have shown that catamaran designs based on easily reshaped "bag" floats are much safer to navigate obstacles and shoals, where rigid kayak-type structures often damage the rubberized fabric, forcing repairs in the field.

Floating balloons

The main thing is to make bag-shaped cigar-shaped (inflated) floats. To do this, we take the fabric "500" - a very strong, light and dense rubberized fabric with the common name "silver", because it is equipped with a special aluminum coating. We cut out the details of the cylinders from two pieces of fabric measuring 300 x 64 cm (two per cylinder - the lower and upper parts) and glue them with ordinary rubber glue. If there is no source material of a suitable size, then first we glue such pieces from smaller cuts. We glue with an overlap with an overlap of at least 2 cm. In the future, we glue the resulting seams with additional strips of the same or less thin fabric with an overlap of 2-3 cm, first from the inside of the balloon, then from the outside. In advance, we glue tubes with flanges for inflation from the inside of the balloon so that the tube in the upper part is directed inside the catamaran structure, providing convenience when inflating. Lastly, we glue the rear wider part of the cylinders following the example of a bag of flour.

A ready-made (not inflated) balloon made of such fabric weighs about one kilogram. For a more robust design, cylinders can be made fromthe so-called gas holder fabric, which is used, for example, in metallurgical enterprises in tanks for storing oxygen reserves. Cylinders made from this fabric are twice as heavy, but also many times stronger than those made from silver.

Deck

The project of a sailing catamaran provides for the presence of two floats made of rubberized fabric, which are combined with rigid elements that are available only in the upper part of the structure. They are a bolted with wing nuts (to simplify assembly) platform of four longitudinal rails or pipes (two per float) and four to six transverse beams. It is desirable to make longitudinal rails from the main part up to 150 cm long and the stackable part (up to a total length of the rail up to 220 cm) from an duralumin channel. Cross beams with a length of 110 to 150 cm are made from the material available to you, for example, from dural tubes with a diameter of up to 30 mm. The floats-cylinders are fastened to the platform with the help of strong tapes (corsage), three per cylinder, or with cables using special overlays with eyelets glued to the cylinders. On top of the resulting platform, three air-filled swimming mattresses are tightly fixed with cables - one in the bow and two (on top of each other) at the stern. On these mattresses are members of the rowing crew. They provide convenience for the crew and additional buoyancy of the vessel in the event (although this never happened) of damage to one of the floats. Under the mattresses, it is desirable to strengthen the diagonally located screeds and the canvasmade of durable fabric so as not to wet the cargo on deck.

Steering

The catamaran is controlled by means of a feather rudder fixed on the aft transverse beam, made from a piece of duralumin plate measuring 23 x 48 cm. (cable for lifting the steering wheel in small places). To prevent yaw when oaring, a small daggerboard is provided on the bow cross beam, which is not needed when sailing. Steering wheel - collapsible with a removable pen.

Mast, oars and sails

It is best to make a mast from three duralumin tubes inserted into each other. Although a variant of wooden rods with connecting strips is possible. When carrying the vessel, other elements of the mast are inserted into the long parts of the mast - a hafel and a composite boom, made from duralumin ski poles or tubes of the same diameter. The mast base is fastened in the middle of the second beam, as well as by four guys with tensioners from the upper end of the mast to the ends of the first and third cross beams.

The oars are also made composite, like a canoe.

The sailing catamaran is equipped with feather percale sails, they regularly consist of a mainsail and a staysail, the total area is 7 sq. m. Such sails, mounted on a mast with a total height of 360 cm, complemented by a jib, allow the catamaran to gain speed up to 8 km / h with a favorable wind. If desired, the sailing armament of the catamaran can bebuild up by experimenting with your sailing experience.

Having made all the elements of a catamaran, inflating floats and mattresses, assembling and adjusting the deck, mast, rudder and sailing rig, you will get the result: a sailing catamaran made by you, ready to use and eager to set sail to its true worth reward you and your companions for your efforts.