I built a lot of boats when I was a kid. Most of them were scale models that couldn't actually sail, but I did make a few that could, more or less. I even built a small boat or raft that was 10 feet long. I did this with a few friends, and it was a lot of fun to sail on the river nearby. It didn't really keep water out, so while one person was rowing, the others had to make sure they got rid of water faster than it was getting in.
Then, sadly, we failed one day. We were in the middle of the river and I was rowing when it became clear that we were going down. I stopped rowing to help with the hosing, but that didn't stop the boat from sinking. It just slowed it down. So I started rowing again to get us to land before we sank and keep us from having to swim to safety.
And guess what? We got there! We were able to jump off the boat just before it started to sink. Here, we watched as our boat, which we were very proud of, slowly sank to the bottom of the river. Then we realised we were on the wrong side of the river, which made things hard for us. We could either walk 10 kilometres upstream to the nearest bridge, which would have taken 20 kilometres, or swim across the river.
We chose to go swimming. We didn't see anyone else around, so we quickly took off our clothes and swam back to our side of the river, holding our clothes above the water with one hand. Just as we were struggling to get out of the water, a group of girls from our own school walked by, and I can tell you that we were not happy.
All of this happened a long time ago, and I've thought about building a boat again a few times in my life. I've spent a lot of time looking at plans for building boats, but size does matter when it comes to boats.
I usually looked at boats that were between 30 and 40 feet long, but the amount of work involved has always stopped me from building a boat.
I've decided to start out small. I'm going to build a Grand Banks dory that is 16 feet long and will have a small outboard motor. I bought the boat-building plans and a place to work, and I might already be done by the time you read this.
Who knows, maybe in the future I'll build a 40-foot cabin cruiser and pull my Grand Banks dory behind it. Then, if my cabin cruises sinks, I can always row to safety in my Grand Banks dory, dry and with my clothes on.
