My wife and I have both enjoyed boating for some years now and had made the usual progression up in size, as our ambitions (and bank balance) grew. However, circumstances change and with a grown up family, who followed their own interests, we finally realised we were "over boated" and decided to go back down in size, helped no doubt by the recession biting into our business as house builders.

The idea of building a boat only crystallised very slowly, even though some 20 years earlier I had built a Percy Blandford double seater canvas canoe followed by a 12' speedboat; I borrowed my friend's and built a boat by simply putting it upside down in the garage, slapping fibreglass all over it and then using this as the hull. The problem was (my wife said) it would take too long and involve lots of time I did not have. Anyway, the idea ticked away in my head for some time, I sent off for various designs, but it was Jeremy Beare's article extolling the virtues of the Roamer dinghy in PBO 289 (Jan/91) that really excited me.

Designed in the early seventies by Eric Coleman, specifically as a cruising dinghy it promised to be just what I was looking for. So I duly sent off the £25 to Eric's widow, who sent me my plans and sail number - 153 - by return. My wife smiled tolerantly when I showed her the complicated mass of instructions and diagrams - obviously thinking I'd wasted another E25. “Don't worry dear” I reassured her, “it all looks straightforward enough; if I start now (just after Christmas) I reckon I'll have the bulk of it done in about 3 or 4 weeks and be finished in plenty of time for an Easter launch”. Talk about famous last words; we finally launched ‘Red Lady’, on August Bank Holiday Saturday! I'm going too fast, there was an awful lot of hard work before that.

Having got used to the relative security of a 26’ Motor Sailer, I decided that one of the things I wanted from a dinghy was higher freeboard than normal, so I decided to re-draw the sheer line of the Roamer to give a more pleasing shape and higher sides as shown in diagram 1A and IB; yet retaining the high level buoyancy which gives her the ability to self right if capsized.

I also wanted a junk rig, having had a Kingfisher 26 with one some years ago and discovered its many virtues. This meant that the mast had to be moved forward to make the centre of effort of the junk sail coincide with that of the original sail plan. As the westernised junk rig has an unstayed mast (unlike most of the Chinese) I decided to form a square box tube of 1/2” ply starting at the keel and protruding through the foredeck to drop the mast into. This was because the foredeck was over a watertight compartment, the integrity of which I did not want to compromise. The original construction method used the technology of its time, i.e. timber to timber joints that fitted, held together with screws and glue. Horrified at the thought of this, I decided to adopt the West System and substituted epoxy fillets for hours of craftsmanship. As a house builder and carpenter with 30 years experience the job wasn't beyond me, but I wanted to go sailing - not spend years boat building. As a consequence I don't suppose there are more than a dozen or so screws left in the boat, although I used hundreds to hold panels together until the resin had set, then removed them with my invaluable electric reversing screwdriver - so useful that.

The Roamer is 13’10” x 5’8” but the effect of altering the sheer line increased her overall size to 14’5” x 6’2”. I was very careful not to alter the original underwater shape, as I did not want to upset her sailing qualities. The only change I made below the water line was to omit the centreboard. They take up so much room in a small boat and anyway, 20 years boating has taught me I don't like sailing to windward.

What I did not want to lose however was the ballast effect of the centreplate, about 80 lbs. in weight. The designer had also called for 2 lumps of lead in the bottom of the boat. Now although a junk sail imparts less heeling force than other types, I wanted my boat to be as stable as possible. Therefore, a little calculation showed that a 4' long hollow steel box section 4" x 2" filled with lead, would equal the combined weight of centreplate and ballast.

The first step in construction was to set out the sections (from the table of offsets in the plans) on to a white painted sheet of ply and make due allowance for my revised sheer line, I made the frames of 2" x 1" deal and then set them upside down onto temporary timbers on my workshop floor. I should add here that although the designer called for mahogany all through, I substituted good quality softwood (deal), not on ecological grounds I am afraid, purely because it was cheaper and I already had a large amount of various sections in my workshop.

So after the frames had been set out at the correct spacings on the workshop floor, I next fitted the hog and the keel. The keel was made of strips of oak laminated with epoxy with the centre section left out to take the steel box. I welded 6” long threaded studs to the steel in order to bolt it through the hog, closed off one end, cut and drilled a piece of 2” flat iron to spread the load on the inside and took the lot to the local galvanisers.

The next step was to fit the skin of the hull. There were some compound curves involved, which is never an easy task with plywood. So I hired a wallpaper stripper and applied the steamer plate to the area concerned and formed the curves without too much difficulty. Generally the hull is made of 10mm ply but this was too thick for the curves involved on the bottom. Eric Coleman suggested 6mm ply plus a 3mm veneer, but as I already had a good sized roll of fibreglass matting and a gallon or two of polyester resin left over from some previous project on my motor sailer, I decided to put this all over the inside of the bottom 6mm ply sheet. With the hull made up, I thought I was home and dry and started wondering where to launch. What a shock I got when I turned her over and started on the inside. That was where the job really began!

As you can see from the photos, I made the fore and aft sections into watertight compartments by decking over full height and fitting with watertight hatches. The sides I also made into completely sealed buoyancy chambers, these went from top of seats up to gunwales and ran for the full length of the cockpit, taking great care with the joints. I formed the seats into cockpit lockers - 3 each side, all sealed off from each other with separate lids, fixed down with Chubb window locks on neoprene draught strip - like the main hatches. This gives me 10 separate sealed air chambers, 4 of them at high level.

A large (211b) fisherman anchor lies under the floorboards, secured to the tops of the keel bolts and so adds to the ballast until needed. Together with 163 lbs. of lead and steel in the keel, I should have a self righting dinghy - though I have yet to put it to the test!

The angle of the sides gives an extremely comfortable back support. I realise it is too high for sitting out on, but sitting out on a dinghy to hold it upright is not exactly uppermost in my mind! In any case, the lack of heel in a Junk sail renders that unnecessary. The floorboards are ordinary 8” x 1” deal, with finger holes in, and I designed the cockpit so they would drop in flush with the top of the seats to form a double bed about 7’ x 5’. My wife made up a boom tent from white calico, which I proofed with clear silicon (as used on damp brick walls).

With the main construction finally finished, I was left with the task of sanding and painting. All surfaces inside received 2 coats of epoxy resin with 3 coats to the outside of the hull. Then ordinary Crown house paint was applied by brush and produced an adequate finish, which while it may not be up to boat show standards, is at least tough and protective of the cheaper far eastern grades of marine ply and deal which I used. I had originally intended to make the trailer as well, but time was against me so I got a good deal (thanks to the recession) on a Hallmark Roller Coaster 1. A super trailer, which really makes launching and recovery easy.

I had bought one of those cantilevered outboard brackets but could not fit it until we were afloat as I was not certain of the actual waterline, so August Bank Holiday Saturday saw me leaning over the transom, battery drill in hand, while gently bobbing up and down in the water!

There had not been enough time to make the proper sail, so I rigged up a 10' x 12' woven polyethylene tarpaulin as a sprit sail. It worked amazingly well and during the glorious weather that weekend, propelled us around Poole harbour at a very reasonable 3 knots (estimated). Work out the optimum hull speed for a 14' boat and you will see that was not bad in a force 2-3.

That weekend proved extremely successful. ‘Red Lady’ handled well under sail and power, proving extremely stable (we can both sit on the gunwale on one side and it is still a long way off the water), she gave us plenty of room to sleep on 2 full size camping airbeds and completely vindicated my decision to build her. What’s more, Anne, my long suffering wife, is as keen on her as I am. What more can a man ask for?

Back home I have started work on the junk sail based on Blondie Haslers original Kingfisher designs. Various members of the Junk Rig Association have developed the chinese sail in subtle ways to make it go to windward better, but as a cruising man, this does not bother me overmuch. Since August we have been down to Poole or the Solent about 6 times, the last in Southampton Water in mid October, when it was cold and wet. This made me decide to build a small cuddy to give some protection from the elements, so I now have a project for this winter!

Next year we hope to take her down to the Med., something we could not have done in our Motor Sailer, so hopefully I will be able to report on our progress there in due course.

For those contemplating a similar project the whole thing so far has cost about £700.00, excluding trailer, but it must be remembered that I had quite a lot of odds and ends in my workshop. Even so, when you compare it with say a Drascombe Scaffie at £3,000 +, we have a lot of boat for the money.

One thing is abundantly clear already; neither my wife nor I would willingly go back to a large boat on a mooring.