Building the Starfish
The Inspiration
My wife Robyn and I had recently bought a Crown 28 keelboat with 2 other couples. The keelboat didn't come with a real tender, but rather a light-duty inflatable raft. As a result, I was thinking about possible tender solutions that would work well for us. I wanted something that would fit comfortably on our relatively small foredeck, something that was relatively easy to hoist in and out of the water, and something that was a pleasure to row. I couldn't seem to find what I was looking for.
I then saw a youtube video by Sam Holmes in which he builds a nesting dinghy; the Stasha nesting dinghy, to be precise. I was very intrigued and bought the plans, but slightly put off since the dinghy seemed a bit flimsy (I wanted something that wouldn't be sunk by scraping on an oyster shell). I was also concentrating my free time on fixing issues with our keelboat.
Towards the end of the summer, our inflatable raft developed a leak, which made me reconsider the tender situation. I had a roll of fiberglass laying around that I thought I maybe could put to use by making the hull of the Stasha out of this, instead of the Dacron called for in the instructions. After talking to my friend Eamonn and remembering that others have done similar things, I decided it would be better put just put the fiberglass on top of the Dacron.
Taking my cue from the discussion concerning the "tweed" edition of the Stasha which is covered in flax instead of Dacron, I modified the plans by shrinking the width of the largest pannel of the aft section by 1cm (to still allow for nesting), omitting the kevlar twine used to strengthen the hull (I figured the fiberglass would be strong enough on its own), and chiseling out a 1 1/2" wide recess in the center panels that join the two boat halves together.
Planning and Preparation
Before I began building the actual boat, I needed to stock up on tools and supplies. New tools included a heat gun, a jigsaw, a chisel and bench plane, a sharpening stone, and a table saw. The table saw was the biggest challenge: presumably due to the COVID-19 pandemic, lots of people had decided to upgrade their workshops, and most budget table saws were sold out. I managed to pick up a King Industrial jobsite saw without breaking the bank. Of all the new tools, my favorites are definitely the plane and the jigsaw, though!
On recommendation of Eamonn, I picked up the wood (a nice board of Ash, and some marine plywood) from Windsor Plywood. My woodworking brother-in-law Adam helped out with some sage advice on what to buy. Hardware and other various items I picked up from Home Depot and Lowe's. I ordered the heat-n-bond tape through Amazon, and the Dacron (Ceconite, actually) from Aircraft Spruce. All the epoxy supplies I picked up from Coast Fiber-Tek.
As you might imagine, tracking this down and putting it all together took a fair bit of time! On top of that, I had to cut down all the lumber to size, which additionally generated a mountain of sawdust. Surprisingly, there were no complaints from the neighbors.
First Steps
The first steps of the project involved cutting the bow and stern out of marine plywood and adding notches for the stringers (the longitudinal supports of the boat), as well as cutting out additional plywood molds around which the boat is built. These were then mounted on a 2x4 to from the "strong back" around which the boat is built. I then epoxied the ash stringers into place. I first did this for the forward section of the Stasha, but the procedure for the aft portion was very similar (and went much more quickly). Apart from not knowing what I was doing, the trickiest thing here was putting an appropriate bend in the bottom-most stringer (the keel). When gluing things in place, I initially didn't thicken the epoxy enough so got a huge mess of runs, but this largely got cleaned up later.
Rib Bending, Take One
I was apprehensive going into this, since Sam Holmes had difficulty with this stage as well. The plans call for bending 9mm thick ribs to an almost 90 degree turn with a very tight radius. Supposedly, you can get by without using a steam box. Instead, one soaks the wood for several days, then uses a heat gun couple with water, pressure, and time.
Despite my concerns, I was eager to give it a try. I did some test bending with some extra wood, then began bending the ribs. I had cut eleven rib strips (the boat needs nine) so that it would be OK if I broke a couple. In the end, I broke all but two! The most frustrating part was that I would have invested an hour or more into getting a rib bent almost to the angle it needed, only to have it start splitting at the very end. I'm not sure what the problem was. Either the grain of my wood wasn't great for bending, or I was heating the wood too little, or too much! Who knows?
With only two ribs bent into place and all my rib lumber gone, a new plan was needed.
Rib Bending Revisted
As is suggested in the instructions as an alternative to bending ribs, I decided to cut 3mm strips of rib material, and laminate them together after they are bent. This is also what Sam Holmes ended up doing. Windsor Plywood didn't have a suitable piece of replacement ash, so I ended up buying some red oak instead.
After cutting the strips, I could proceed with the bending, which was now a piece of cake. The instructions suggested laminating the ribs without gluing them in place, and then gluing in place later, but I decided to do it all in one go. This worked fine, although the ribs look a little messier than if I had been able to plane down the edges.
Finishing the Frame
To finish the frame, I first cut out the recess for the fiberglass. It was an exciting moment when I finally liberated the frame from the strong back and cut off the ends of the ribs and stringers! After gluing on the gunwales, I sanded and put on some spar polyurethane (Home Depot apparently does not carry varnish).
Dacron and Fiberglass
The first step for applying the Dacron skin was to put heat-n-bond tape along the gunwales and keel, and the bow and the stern. It turned out to be extremely tedious to remove the backing paper from the tape.
After using the heat-n-bond to glue the fabric in place, I then started to shrink it using my iron. I followed the instructions and tried to pre-shrink fabric near the gunwale as I neared the bow, but I still ended up with far too much fabric. In retrospect, I should have preshrunk even more in the longitudinal direction.
I then started shrinking the fabric everywhere. Things looked great near the stern, but there were tons of wrinkles near the bow. I felt like the fabric wasn't shrinking as much as it should be. Ignoring the stern warning in the instructions not to, I decided to try out my heat gun. I did some experiments on some cut-off pieces to determine how far I could push the material before it melted, and then went at it with the heat gun. This worked better, but I still ended up with some wrinkles. I fixed some of these by gluing down folds using heat-n-bond; I should have done this earlier before shrinking things so much.
For fiberglassing, I decided to use two long sheets, each positioned lengthwise covering a bit more than half the boat. I spent a considerable bit of time laying things out, and figuring out where to cut and fold. I also set up some jigs and weight bags to hold edges in place during the layup.
To have an extra pair of hands, I then recruited my wife Robyn to help, which was very helpful indeed. We applied the epoxy using some miniature rollers, which worked very nicely. All the preparation really paid off.
Filling the Weave and Fairing
The fiberglass had set nicely, but I needed to coat it with several more layers of epoxy so that it's surface would be smooth. I was trying to strike a balance between getting a nice finish with good protection, and minimizing cost and added weight. I ended up putting on one coat of mildly thickened epoxy, and a coat of fairing filler. The weave still showed through a bit in some places, but I couldn't really tell if the glass itself was still exposed, or if the epoxy layers were just conforming to the fiberglass's texture. I ground down the edges and a couple of rough spots.
Finishing the Other Half
Up to this point, I had mainly been working on the front half of the boat. Everything I had done for the front, I needed to repeat for the slightly smaller stern section. Most things went much more smoothly since I had a better idea of what I was doing this time.
Metalwork
To join the two halves of the boat together, the plans call for using two keyhole slots below the waterline, and two bolts above it. Since they didn't have the desired thickness of brass, I ended up buying some 2.5mm stainless steel sheet from a local metal shop. In retrospect, this was a mistake, since it turned out to be quite difficult to work with.
I managed to cut the sheet with my Dremel Saw (thanks Dad!) although I ended up going through 2 cutting discs to do so. Drilling through the sheet proved impossible at home. Fortunately, my sailing club has a drill press which I was able to use to drill all the holes I needed. The machine shop that had sold me the steel sheet was nice enough to tap some of the holes I drilled for free.
In the end, it was a lot of work to make the keyhole slots, and getting them mounted on the two halves in a way that gave a reliable connection turned out to be quite finicky. If I were building the boat again, I would definitely find a different solution.
Gelcoat
For better or for worse, I had decided to finish the outside of the boat with a coat of white gelcoat. I've had issues in the past getting gelcoat to work well on an epoxy/glass layup, but after doing some reading I decided that things should be ok as long as I had a controlled temperature, I removed amine blush from the surface, and I made sure to use waxed gelcoat so that it wouldn't stay tacky.
I used a scotchbrite pad and soap to scrub off the amine blush, then quickly scuff sanded the hulls with 80 grit paper. My friends Pierre and Amy kindly let me borrow their garage for three days. Since I had bought waxed gelcoat, I could only put on a single coat, unless I wanted to scuff sand again (which I did not). So the boat only has a single coat for now, but I might put on another coat in the future.
In any case, the gelcoat went on easily enough. I left the boat in the heated garage for two days, and everything seems to have cured nicely enough. The hull is still slightly translucent, but at this point I was caring mainly about UV protection instead of appearance. To protect the inside of the hull from UV, I put on a single coat of polyurethane.
Floors and Seats
The plans give quick directions for making the rowing seat, but not for a passenger seat or for floors. For the passenger seat, I decided to make myself tons of extra work by making mortise and tenon joints. These worked pretty nicely, but took a fair amount of effort.
Continuing the trend of extra work, I decided to save money by making floorboards by laminating leftover pieces of rib and stringer wood. In the middle of the process, I was cursing myself, but the end result certainly looks nicer than if I had just used plywood.
Making Oars
A homemade boat must have homemade oars. This project was a very nice diversion while I was getting bogged down with the myriad details on the boat I had to finish. I bought an 8' cedar 2x4 and ripped it down the middle to make the oar handles, and boat an 8' 2x2 to cut up for the oars' blades. After trimming things down a bit with the table saw, I epoxied everything together.
I had cut the oar shafts octagonally with the table saw, and rounded them off by sanding. I shaped the blades using my friend Eamonn's draw knife, a bench plane, and an orbital sander. The oars are finished with spar urethane, and the handles with teak oil. I made my own leathers out of some old cotton cord I had laying around.
The Name
I had been pestering Robyn for a long time, asking her what she thought of various names. For a while, I had settled on the name "Whiskey Jack" and even went so far as to make a sketch of the name. In the end, I decided that this was too long, and went with "Starfish" instead.
I had initially thought to spray paint the name on with a stencil, but I decided against this when I realized what a pain it would be to cut out the stencil. Instead, I painted it on by hand. After looking at a number of different typefaces, I decided to go with something close to Baskerville, decorated with a number of swashes. I first made a sketch on paper, making ample use of the ruler to get proportions right. Using the ruler, I then made some guide marks on the boat, and finally began painting. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and am very satisfied with the result.
The Launch
On a cold October Saturday, I invited some friends down to the "Village Dock" on False Creek to heckle me while I launched the boat and see it if sank or floated. Weather was beautiful, and after bringing the boat and gear down to the dock, we had a quick toast while officially naming the boat. I lifted it into the water, and indeed, it floated! It paddled very nicely with one person aboard. With two people aboard, it is a bit bow heavy, but I suppose that this can be remedied by putting a cooler filled with beer in the stern.
Everything seemed to function more or less as planned: a huge success!
Final Thoughts
I had initially intended to include a budget for the boat here, but since the project ended up costing much more than I anticipated, let me say nothing more than that I spend between $1000 and $1500 on supplies. Some of the costs were increased by poor decisions or mistakes on my part. At the end of the day, though, there are a lot of materials that go into building a boat, and they all cost money!
Overall, I'm happy with the boat, and it was a very fun (albeit at times stressful) project. It took me just under two months of time to finish the project. I estimate having spent somewhere between 100 and 160 hours on the boat. Were I to do it again, I imagine that I could almost cut that amount of time in half. I would be much quicker building the strong back and frame, I wouldn't waste time trying to bend ribs, and I would have a much clearer picture of what I was trying to do. I would likely also rethink how the two halves of the boat get joined: the keyhole slot hardware took lots of time to make and all the fasteners were quite expensive, and in the end it doesn't work so well.
The next immediate step is to make a bike trailer for the boat. Then I will be setting the boat up to sail; I'm hoping to get an old Laser sail for free and cut that down. Then it is off to the wild blue yonder for some rowboat camping. I feel the Sea to Sky Marine Trail calling, for example! After that, maybe it is time to build another boat?
Addendum
I did manage to build a bike trailer and a sailing rig for the Starfish. The trailer is a simple wooden frame using two 20" wheels I took off a child's bicycle. It went through a couple of iterations until it became stable enough to transport the boat.
I made the sail by cutting down an old Laser sail. It is slightly smaller than an Optimist sail. All the spars were cut from a single cedar 12' 2x4. I made the foils and mast step from marine plywood. Instead of wasting money on pintles and gudgeons to mount the rudder, it affixes to the hull using four stainless eye-bolts with a hardwood dowel running down their center.