Building Three Rivers

 

 

 

 

Another Sailing Chapter                                          Ben Ho    Fall 2007

 

Having owned a Marsh Hen, a 17 ft day-sailer, for almost 10 years, I was itching to move on to a slightly larger sailboat with a cabin for overnight trips. I still wanted it to be a trailerable boat, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a boat with sleeping accommodation so that I could just keep going and venture further out, instead of being limited to day trips or having to find suitable anchorages for camping every night! Somewhat surprisingly, after extensive searching, I could not find a suitable boat that matches my criteria: a trailerable sailboat that’s not overly heavy, with a sizable cockpit, affordable, and has good aesthetics. The last item is of course subjective; I am a lover of classical boats who craves the traditional lines of old-fashion sailboats. So in the end I decided to build my own. The design I picked was the Chebacco, a 20 ft cat-yawl designed by Phil Bolger, a designer well-known in the boat-building community. Two year later, after about two thousand hours of mostly enjoyable wood-working labour in my insulated garage, Three River was completed and launched in May 2007. Here are some articles describing the building process.

Major components

Building the hull

Rollover

The Interior, Decking

Cabin & Finishing Touches

Lifting onto the trailer

Building the spars; rigging

Launch!

Boat Offsets

Boat Cost

 

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