How to Build the Haven 12 1/2-Footer

Rating:
Summary: Boat Building Basics
Review: This book contains some excellent photos of how to build a classic small sailboat, along with a clear step by step procedure for construction. It is, however, lacking in one regard. They fail to mention that you cannot build this boat without ordering the plans from the author. I suppose with a comprehensive experience with lofting you could reverse engineer a fine copy of this boat, but based on the title you would tend to believe that it presents everything you need to reproduce this boat. I still found this book useful in presenting some basic construction techniques, and an orderly process, for constructing this, or a number of similiar boats that utilize a basic plank on frame construction. The other problem this book presents is any sort of detailed instruction for manufacturing some of the parts. For example, how do you construct a form fitting, several hundred pound, lead keel. He has some pictures of the process, but no detailed instructions on how to do this. This is still an interesting book, and I would recommend it to someone who already understands most of the basics of sailboat construction.