Best Boat Guide

If you've been scouring the internet for free boat plans, you've probably discovered what I discovered a couple of years ago when I was looking for some free plans to build a plywood dinghy for my kids. I'm sorry to have to tell you this but I'm afraid that free boat plans of any real value just don't exist.

They're never quite right

I lost count of the number of sketches and half-completed drawings I downloaded. None of them turned out to be any good in the end. I did find a couple of proper plans, but they weren't exactly what I was looking for. One was far too big for two ten year olds and the other seemed to have such a small freeboard that I was convinced it would fill with water at the first sign of a wave.

The only solution

The only solution was to design the boat myself. A guy at my sailing club told me about the 3d boat design software that had just come on to the market. I didn't really think I had the skill or the experience to design a boat hull from scratch but it turned out that the software was so easy to use that I picked up the basics within an hour. After another couple of hours working with the hydrostatics and resistance calculations, all done by the software as you modify your design, I felt I was really in control of what I was doing.

Easy to use

Since then the software has been updated a few times and is easier to use than ever. I went on to design and build the kids' dinghy. It took about five months from start to finish. It was nothing fancy but the kids love it and it performs well. So well, in fact that two other club members asked me to design boats for them. I didn't want to charge them, but they insisted on giving me something for my efforts. What they paid me more than covered the original one-off cost of the software.

How to get free boat plans

So there you have it, if you want free boat plans, forget it. Buy yourself some boat design software for under forty bucks and let your friends pay for it when you draw up plans for them. That's how to get free boat plans!