The building of a sailboat ........

Rugludallur* is the name of our sailboat, us being Carl & Jarl. We started working on the Rugludallur project back in 2002, a "Hout Bay 33", 33ft long steel cutter designed by Dudley Dix.

Back in 2002 we had no idea what we were up for, neither of us had done any real sailing and the scope of the project is far beyond what we imagined. This page is intended to help others realize the dream of sailing away. Before you even consider building a boat you should think really hard about your dream. Many people think they can sail into the tropicals cheap by building the boat themselves, this could not be further from the truth. Building your own boat is in fact the most expensive way to get afloat! Even if you just add up the raw materials and equipment a second hand boat will be available for a fraction of the price. If work has any value to you it most certainly will be cheaper to buy a production boat new. So why do amatures build boats?

As far as I know there are only two valid reasons for building your own boat, the real question is how important these are to you. By building your own boat you gain immense knowledge and experience, for me knowledge is the most valuable thing in the world. This knowledge will be called upon when performing maintenance and sailing the boat at later stages. Secondly building your own boats lets you tailor it to your wishes and demands, it's like a tailor made suit.

If you still choose to build your own boat you are a Rugludallur* for sure.

We have been keeping very busy recently building a CNC Plasma cutting table which will be able to cut the hull plating from the full size 2x6m plates (6x19'). We will add more material, schematics and a material list as we near completion, for now you can see some pictures in the Gallery and we have uploaded all of our videos to Google Video video.google.com/videosearch

* Define:rugludallur, An Icelandic word best translated as weirdo, it is composed of the words Rugl (nonsense) and the word Dallur (leaky boat)