Plywood Boat Building Blog

This blog will take you along the different steps of building a 23 foot dropkeel sailboat. The DIDI 23 is one of the available designs for the amateur builder designed by Dudley Dix. The boat is built as a radius chine trailer sailer from plywood with bulb dropkeel.

ABOUT ME
I am 64, married, have two adult children and working as engineer for rf techniques at a physical research centre of the Helmholtz Association. I live close to the Elbe river in a suburb of Hamburg, Germany.

Friday 23 August 2019

At Length Back into the Water

Sunday 18 August 2019

Ready for Launching

After mounting the bulb slabs to the keel fin and and a stopper to the trailer the boat is ready for launching.

The weight of the lead bulb is now 240 kg and its rightning moment 560 kgm.

Thursday 15 August 2019

Complications in the Assembly of the Lead Slabs

I casted another two lead slabs to increase the stability of the boat. When screwing to the keel fin, it turned out that the thread bolts are a bit too short.
I had feared that, but I hoped it would be close enough.

To overcome the problem I had to make a set of thread extensions from brass.