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.