Other Pinoy boat builders
It’s been a while.
Circumstances beyond my control have prevented me from accessing friendster. (stupid company firewalls) 
anyways looks like our firewall is down so I better take advantage of this.
I’ve found other Pinoy boat builders or should I say one of them found me and I found others as well.
The guy who found me was Mr. Rolly. He’s been building and sailing his own boats since I was a toddler. He current project is a 19′ Stevenson Weekender. Here’s a link to his site showing his current progress.
<==== A very nice Stevenson Weekender
A very nice choice I should say, hundreds of weekenders have been put together all over the world. Rolly’s progress has been slow and steady and now on its second year. Most of the hard part has already been done and only the tedious details remain. He’s imparted to me a lot of his boat building knowledge and inspired me to start my own build. (later on that) Rolly lives less than 15 minutes drive away from my place, so it’s good to know that good boat building advice is not far away.
I was also able to find a discussion forum on sailing in the Philippines, it’s a relatively new site that started only in last month and incidentally enough there is portion there dedicated to boat building. Here’s where I found more boat builders. One of the most active posters is Louis. He got bitten by the boat building bug only this year and he’s been bit bad. Only a month after his epiphany, he’s already purchased several plans and started his build of a Bateau Corsair 13, here’s a link to his blog.
Now, My boat
Was finally able to purchase the plans for the Nesting Spindrift I’ve been lusting for last December. Since the plans were hitching a ride with my friend’s mother in law from the states, I also went on to order most of the sailing hardware as well. The plans arrived in good condition but the accompanying CD of pictures of the building process got damaged in transit. but B and B promptly replaced it.
With the plans in hand, I was raring to go and build, however I didn’t have the money for materials, as all of what I saved up went to the purchase of the plans. Piping gigs have picked up for the first quarter of the year and by late Feb. I had enough to go shopping. One of the first materials I purchased was epoxy resin, this didn’t come from Republic chem though, this is the same stuff the Rolly uses for his projects. it’s a more expensive but I think it’s better. Louis was nice enough to procure it for me since the place that sells the stuff is closer to his place than mine.
After buying the epoxy, my next trip was to Manila for brass screws and stainless steel nuts and bolts for the nesting joint as well as cable ties for stitching, I also went back to Polymer Products to buy 2 kilos fiberglass cloth.
The next week, I was able to borrow David’s L300 and went off to various lumber yards to buy the necessary wood. I got four sheets of double faced marine ply, and several pieces of solid stock.
I had an initial problem of where to build as I didn’t think I had enough space where I lived, but eventually decided to build the thing in my own front yard. It’s just more convenient and I wouldn’t be away from my wife and kid as much, since I’d be doing all of the building at home.
Last Saturday, I cut in half one sheet of ply and joined the two halves with two other sheets of with a butt join reinforced with fiberglass. and this week I hope to finish marking out the hull shapes. and start cutting out the panels this weekend.
