This blog is being written primarily to document the building of SeaBeeZee, an Easy Cat Sarah design. It will include photographs and descriptions of the construction stages so that the choice of materials and workmanship can not be questioned.
SeaBeeZee is the current project for Chris and Birgit (C and B Easy cat). There may be stuff about us, and our family, but the focus is on the boat.
We were looking for a boat to cruise the northern coast of Australia. Living in the Northern Rivers of NSW meant that our boat was going to have to be shoal draft. The range of swing keel yachts was limited, and the seaworthiness of shallow draft yachts was questionable. Catamarans were well out of our price range.
And then we found about Peter Snell’s Easy cats. Building one of these is certainly within our capability. Peter’s constant evolution of the design over the last decades have created a really efficient design in the “Sarah”. We have been impressed by the efficiency in materials, creating the maximum strength and volume from the minimum of materials and mass, and the efficiency in construction. It seems to follow from the generations in the evolution to this point.
If you have read about our boating in SeaBee, our Hartley Vixen, you will have seen that we have experience with plywood boats. That boat was built almost 30 years ago, and has been well cared for all that time. Plywood does not scare me as a boat building material. The thought of a cored hull, and especially cored with balsa – that really scares me.
I know that the value of a home built boat is reduced by questionable workmanship. The information within this blog will be retained as documentation of the building of our boat.
It will be a big boat, at 12m LOA and 6m beam, displacing over 4 tonnes. Once built, getting that to the ocean will be a whole new adventure.