Thunderbird Sloop

Last crawled date: 1 year, 12 months ago

This project is a boat I owned, sailed and raced for about 20 years. As I put it together, I remembered that saying, "Boats are holes in the water you throw money into." Once you had the boat it seemed like there were an endless number of parts you needed to buy.

In 1957 Marine Grade Plywood was a new development and to promote the product, the North American Plywood Association held a design contest for Naval Architects, to design a boat that could be built by an amateur in his backyard over a two year period. The boat had to be under 26' and sleep four.
Most 26' boats are actually 25' 11" as your Homeowner's or Renter's Insurance Policy covers General Liability on boats under 26', no need to purchase a separate policy

The contest was won by Naval Architect Ben Seaborn, who took a cold molded plank design, and redrew it for plywood with a fiberglass cloth overlay.. He called it the Thunderbird in reference to Native American icons of the Pacific Northwest.
The plywood creates what are known has hard chines, the edges of the plywood seams. The boat would heal to these chines and go.
Hundreds were built by do-it-yourselfers, and hundreds more were built by professional boat builders.

One Design fleets formed throughout North America, and compete today under the International Thunderbird Class Association.

As I said this one was mine. I no longer had plans but I found some line drawings that included bulkheads on line and pulled more from memory.
I didn't build the boat but bought it used, and over time I tweaked for racing with cockpit rigging and a very fast paint job.

And yes it was a lot of work, on macro and micro levels.