For a long time this boat lived in spreadsheets, class rule books and late-night reading. Planning feels like progress, but it isn't. Sooner or later the only honest next step was to stop researching and commit, so I placed the order with B&B Yacht Designs. That was the moment the project stopped being an idea and became a delivery date. Once 25 sheets of marine plywood are on their way, there is no more "someday". There is a crate coming, and a start line in the Atlantic.
The package
The CNC kit that turns a pile of plywood into a boat. Flat-pack furniture, only this one has to float. Assembly time: two years. Test drive: the Atlantic.
Here's what was purchased:
- CNC plywood kit — the kit from B&B Yacht Designs is the backbone of this build. 9mm marine ply throughout: Okoume for the interior parts, Meranti for all of the hull exterior, per the class guidelines. Every part CNC-cut and numbered.
- Pine timber framing — solid clear Southern Yellow Pine, planed to final thickness: the framing, deck beams, and stem.
- White oak "strong timbers" — laminated clear white oak, CNC-cut: the keel floor timbers the keel plate bolts to, plus the mast support beam and posts.
- CNC-shaped rudder and daggerboards — the rudder laminated from layers of 9mm Meranti and CNC-cut to its 3D shape, ready to sand and glass, so I don't have to loft the foils.
Why a kit + a set of drawings, rather than starting from scratch
The honest answer is time. The boat has to be built, launched and sailed hard before it ships to Portugal for the qualifier in December 2028, and every week spent cutting parts is a week not spent at sea.
Building from plans alone means lofting the lines full size, marking out every part across roughly 25 sheets of plywood, and cutting each one by hand. That is weeks of work before the first frame goes together, and every small error carries through into the hull. The kit removes that stage entirely, so the hours go into the work that actually decides how good the boat is: the joints, the epoxy and the glass.
That said, time isn't the only reason. Others include:
- Accuracy. Every part is cut to the designer's geometry from the official class file. A kit cut from that file is also what the class expects to see when the boat is certified.
- Parts that locate themselves. Parts come pre-notched, numbered, and marked with pen lines showing where every piece of framing goes. The bunk sides even locate most of the frames in the jig, so only two frames need their height set by hand.
- Every part becomes a gauge. Because the panels are cut exactly to shape, I can dry-fit them to check that the framing is true before anything is glued.
- Space and equipment constraints. The parts are nested tightly on the sheets, and I don't need a full-size lofting floor or big-panel cutting tools in a small shelter workshop.
Some may call using a kit "cheating", but the class was built around home builders using CNC kits cut from the official design file. The kit doesn't make it easy or build itself. It makes the time I do have count.
The 9mm consequence
Choosing 9mm ply has a knock-on effect I want to be honest about. The plans call for 10mm plywood on the hull, and the class allows 9mm only if the hull carries extra glass. How much extra depends on the plywood. The class ruling gives 1,170 g/m² for a 9mm Okoume hull and 450 g/m² for stronger plywoods, while B&B Yacht Designs' glass package for their 9mm Meranti hull uses about 800 g/m².
Those figures don't line up, so before I order any cloth I'm asking the class organisers to confirm which schedule applies to this hull and deck. The laminate schedule is part of the registration file, and I'd rather settle it now than at certification. Whichever figure applies, it means more cloth, more epoxy and more hours, and that is already in the plan.
Still to come
The kit is the bones of the hull, not the whole boat. In essence, a lot is still to come, including:
- Keel assembly — the steel fin and lead bulb
- A workshop — a shelter (essentially a big party tent) to build in
- A level platform for the shelter floor, so the boat can be built true
- Tools — from the bench and clamps to sanders and a laser level
- The strongback — the jig the frames stand on
- Epoxy, fillers and glass for every joint, coat and layer
- Fastenings — stainless screws that stay in the boat for good
- Mast, rigging and sails
- And plenty more.
Next up: the workspace. The shelter platform has to be right before a single kit part comes out of the crate.