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Good books, with some notes:

Dierking's Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes Excellent reference for building any plywood boat, but you should be careful. This book will seduce you. Gary's an expert on making a single outrigger boat that works, is pretty, and is fast and easy to build. You'll buy the book to read and end up the next weekend heading off to Lowes to buy plywook, and ordering an epoxy kit from Raka. These boats are faster and more capable than anything but quite a big monohull, are simple to build, you can sail them yourself, on most of them you can take someone out with you, it's hard to see why anyone would build a ever build 15' dinghy instead of an Ulua or a Wa'apa, honestly, unless there was a racing class they wanted to get into. Highly recommended.

Payson's Go Build Your Own Boat Very good, very readable, some stuff that I still wonder about. Edge nailing into 1/4" ply, for example. How was that supposed to work? But the basic ideas of get it done fast and go sailing still apply.

Stambaugh's Good Skiffs Good, readable, interesting introduction to traditional heavy skiff construction as well as stitch and glue. The traditional methods are usually ignored, but if I were going to build a skiff I wanted to keep in the water I might pick that. The heavy skiffs sail really well, are enormously strong, are self-righting, they have a lot of advantages.

Andrew C. Marshall's Composite Basics Good intro to composite work. Technical but readable. Good reference.

Gougeon Bro's On Boat Construction Classic, necessary. Very good coverage of all kinds of stuff, really good.

Russell Brown's Epoxy Basics: Working with Epoxy Cleanly & Efficiently Expert level epoxy tricks. This is the stuff that will amaze people at the next messabout. Read the Gougeon Bro.'s book first, then read this.

Michalak's Boatbuilding for Beginners and Beyond Good. Kind of basic stuff, but if you need a book on figuring out centers of effort and basic rudders and boards and stuff it's fine. The boats are plain and kind of simplistic, but they sail fine. For the most part they don't go to windward in any kind of impressive way, but really who wants to be bashing to windward all the time anyway? They're not racing boats, and for dinking around they're great. Don't build his proa; no one ever has, and there's probably a reason for that. The rest of the boats range from fine to quite good (the Laguna is probably the best of his designs).

Bolger's Boats With An Open Mind Classic, great. A must-read. Even if you never build one you'll learn a huge amount from this.

Other Bolger books: 30-Odd Boats, Folding Schooner: And Other Adventures in Boat Design. Anything he wrote is worth reading. I mean, not the novel, but any of his boat books.

Parker's The Sharpie Book Very good intro to sharpies of all sizes.

Little known classics:

A 30', $6,000 Cruising Catamaran : Built, Sailed and Written About Hardcover – 1987 by Roy F. Chandler
I mean, don't pay $48 for it, but if you see a copy in a used bookstore it's worth a few bucks. Some of his 'tricks' for saving money don't translate very well ("My friend gave me this huge bucket of stainless hardware", hey, good idea! I'll try that), but it's a good general outline of turning a worn out racing cat into a small cruising cat on not much money.

Finally, for a lost classic: Chapman 's The Plywood Boatbuilder Vol 41 Excellent and readable look back at what early plywood designs and construction looked like forty years ago. I wouldn't build any of these, there are better designs around now, but it's fascinating to see how the thing developed. Designs for prams and dinghys, sailboats, outboard, runabouts, 47 designs, sailboats from 13 ft to 24 ft.

But really, a great and cheap way to read a lot about boatbuilding is to get hold of old copies of Wooden Boat or some of the other boating publications. You can often pick up a stack cheap or free. In depth articles, lots of pictures, I learned a lot from stacks of ten year old mags people gave me. In fact, I have a big stack of Wooden Boat and some other stuff I need to get rid of right now. Anyone want them? Free to good home, paypal me back the shipping when you get them. Send me a PM if you're interested.

A dinghy is quite a manageable project for a couple of people to build in weekends and evenings over the winter. It's a lot of work, but it's varied and you won't need to spend weeks doing the same thing so you see regular progress to keep you going. When you make a mistake, it's not too expensive to just cut that bit out and do it again.

Assuming you're using epoxy, you often spend an hour or two making a part and gluing it in place, then you have to leave it until the next day while it sets. That fits really well with hobby building. The gradual progress motivates you to do something almost every day, even if it's only half an hour.

Also, working with epoxy is a lot more forgiving than traditional wood work. It will easily fill gaps of a few millimeters and you can make epoxy fillets or even use glass tape to strengthen joints - there's no need for the complex joints of traditional wood work. Even adding glass cloth over wood is fairly easy - composites are only difficult when you're trying to mold something big like a whole hull.

Before starting an old design like a Contender, you should look around for a second hand one. It will probably be significantly cheaper than building. Renovating an old boat is less work than building, and almost as satisfying. Even a hull with terrible rot should have a trailer and rig, foils and sails that you could use, none of which you can make yourself and all of which is expensive.

For a new design like the Farr, remember that the hull is most of the work but only part of the expense. Cost the rig, hardware, sails and trailer before you start.

IMO, the best reason to build your own boat is when you want something really unusual, like a proa, or a small trimaran.

I highly recommend Russell Brown's Epoxy Basics - I wish I'd read it before I started.

You don't need a wood working shop full of big machines to build a dinghy but a few hand power tools are really useful. They don't need to be professional grade either, you're not going to be using them all day every day.

Do look after your working conditions - good lighting is important when you'll be spending hundreds of hours there. Ventilation too, as power tools make a lot of dust - a dust collector makes a huge difference but even a desk fan in the doorway and a dust mask helps. Ear defenders also make power tools a lot less unpleasant to use.

Take lots of pictures and keep a blog. It's a project you'll want to share and look back on.

Yep it's pretty thick haha, but for your practical purposes you don't need to concern yourself too much with the complex math and calcs. I have no idea how versed you are in Naval architecture or engineering so skip what you already know and forgive me if some of this is obvious to you, but start with making sure you understand the definitions of everything in section one and then section two is what you're looking for. Simple stability. Make sure you understand the equilibrium conditions and the forces and moments that govern them, and the concept of metacentric height. For what you're doing that will be more than enough to make a simple model to roughly ensure you'll be stable. Take the hull you're wanting to build and make a general representative shape to make the calculations easier, i.e. A typical v-hull fishing boat could be simply modeled as a box on top of a triangular prism for simplicity. Down at pages 121 and on there are some simple examples that will illustrate what you'll want to do if you are going to calculate stability. You could also of course just understand the principles and "eyeball" it for s small boat like you want to build. If you are though interested in serious naval architecture I suggest applied naval architecture by zubaly. It's a very practical and straight to the point text that's presented in a logical order and understandable way in my opinion, although there are a few other texts that are considered the bibles of NA as well. Good luck and hope the dinghy turns out great!

https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Naval-Architecture-Robert-Zubaly/dp/0870334751

I don't think you should buy any epoxy for that project because I don't think you should build it. It is an ugly boat and I believe it is beneath you.

A well-made wooden boat is a beautiful thing. It is not beyond your reach to create, regardless of the skills you start with. You might send a few planks to the scrap pile and fling a clamp or two across the shop, but think about what you'll have in the end. Instead of settling for something you can knock together in two days, take a little more time. Learn the skills. Read the books. Watch the YouTube videos. And at the end, you'll have something rad AF like a Banks Dory or a skin on frame canoe or a cedar strip dinghy.

When you've finished, you will step back and be proud of your creation. This is a wonderful feeling. And the rest of the world will have one more beautiful thing to admire.

You can do it, brother! Be bold, and Mighty forces will come to your aid!

Ian Oughtred book is excellent: https://www.amazon.com/Clinker-Plywood-Boatbuilding-Manual-Oughtred/dp/0937822612

John Gardner book is also great: https://www.amazon.com/Dory-Book-John-Gardner/dp/0913372447/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492717229&sr=1-2&keywords=john+gardner+boat

Kit boats are excellent intros, Chesapeake Light Craft is a good provider.

Boatbuilding classes are great too, Piediver suggested a good one

> Any suggestions or ideas (or better yet plans or tutorials) would be greatly appreciated.

1. Start by building scale models. You can learn 90% of the essential concepts of boat building very quick and cheap this way. And, you can actually end up with a successful full size built boat more quickly by learning first by building small scale models. They can be simply made of cardboard and tape, too.
   
   
2. Read a couple books. I recommend Jim Michalak's Boatbuilding for Beginners and Instant Boatbuilding with Dynamite Payson. You can expect the price of both these books to be paid back via saving you a costly mistake.
   
   
3. Avoid the temptation to be a boat designer. At least at first, stick with a well known tried and tested popular design of a well respected boat designer.

i'd guesstimate the hull length to be around 30ft. I'd say it's closest to some sort of racing (as opposed to cruising) trimaran, so if one were to copy that thing exactly, there would probably be minimal hull volume. More like a bunch of gigantic kayaks than anything else.

I'm currently finishing up a small skiff- cheap, and I've learned a lot about the process. If you want to start boatbuilding/sailing, there's a lot of nice options. When I was doing my research, I somehow got a PDF of Gavin Atkin's Ultrasimple Boatbuilding, and would recommend.

With regards to having space, there's a bunch of designs under 8ft that would fit indoors, and I've seen some people simply add shelves in winter.

Also, one of the simplest 8ft boats I've seen is the PDRacer (or OzRacer). Looks like a box, but teaches the skills, and apparently sails astoundingly well for its looks.

I highly recommend Devlins boatbuilding easy to read and understand with loads of really good info that will help you realise your plans. http://www.amazon.com/Devlins-Boatbuilding-Build-Stitch---Glue/dp/0071579907/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462641662&sr=8-1&keywords=Devlin+boatbuilding

I recently picked this up and have found it interesting. Although really, if you already understand cabinetry, you have all the right understanding already: http://www.amazon.com/Boat-Joinery-Cabinet-Making-Simplified/dp/0070053073

As pointed out, "This Old Boat" also has some great inspiration.

This is a good one for a first time builder.

It doesn't really take a weekend, more like a week (40 hours) or three weekends-ish. But it's only $20 for the book, which has very good step-by-step building details and a couple of different variations.

> Building a Strip Canoe by Gil Gilpatrick

This one is excellent for strip canoes.

Also The Aleutian Kayak by Wolfgang Brinck, if you want a nice sea kayak.

try the six-hour canoe. It's a stable little vessel, easy to understand the construction, and very little spiling needed to lay it out. Built one when I was 13 for my first boat, and I still have it (31 now)

Buehler's Backyard Boatbuilding (Amazon Link) -- apparently there's an updated version coming out later this year.

Grab it from the library and give it a read; he has some interesting thoughts on boatbuilding, including interiors.

He has a few websites as well - this is his main. Web design is not one of his talents, but it's more than made up for with his designs.

Don't do that to yourself.

If it's a sailboat , get Lars Larssen's "principles of yacht design" https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Yacht-Design-Lars-Larsson/dp/0071826408

Or look for it in a local library.

It has everything, hull, sails, even how to make it so that it fits on a trailer.

In any case, if you will build a boat, you're going to buy a lot of material. Invest in a good book.

The first boat I built in high school was the weekend skiff . A simple boat which turned out nice and the directions were easy to follow.

I also built some simple open, single person, kayaks with a group of kids for a summer camp that was from two sheets of plywood. I don't have the plans anymore but those were really simple and the basic boat could be made in a week course with teenagers.

If I can't find the right mount I'll do this.

For the evinrude I'm going to buy a condensor, points breaker kit, and a new plug wire. If that works I'll do the carb and water pump.

If that doesn't I was thinking of grabbing one of these 3.5hp 2 strokes

Link to the book

You may also peruse his blog where he talked about his project.

>maybe use sail track and sliders

If you do this, the guy who built the boat might cry. It sounds like a very traditionally built boat. A sail track certainly isn't traditional.

If you look closely at the picture you linked, there is a thumb cleat right where you described. The thumb cleat is used to secure block for the jib halyard. The jib is flown without a stay.

The mainsail should be laced to both the mast and the boom, as shown in the picture. To strike the sail, you fold the boom up to the mast.

This is all described in extensive detail in John Gardner's Dory Book. I would bet a large sum of money that the builder used that book as his reference.