Drift boat plans & building the boat - since the establishment of our guiding service, we have been interested in acquiring a craft specifically designed for river fishing, the drift boat. There are none produced locally, so we decided to do what Kiwi's normally do under these circumstances - build our own drift boat! Information is, like everything else, available on the 'net! The Internet is a great source of information, and we soon had some good examples of ideal craft for our project, to go with our drift boat plans. Drift Boat Screen Saver (20 pics, 1.4mb) The plans for our boat were eventually sourced in Dec 1999 from Glen-L Marine Designs, 9152 Rosecrans Ave, Bellflower, CA 90706-2138, USA. These guys have a comprehensive Web site, with on-line ordering available, and delivery to NZ was very efficient. The full size plans are excellent. We experienced some difficulties with the US terminology, and the construction set-up is completely different to any previous construction we have been involved in. The US dimensions are Imperial - feet and inches - no problem to us older blokes, who are still trying to adjust to the change to metric, some decades on. We discovered that two 8x4 foot sheets must be longer than two 1.2m x 2.4m sheets - necessitating another join on the sides! It's been a while since the garage had been used for a boat-building project, so Ron had to have a big clean-out. Well, more of a re-shuffle, really, as he is not noted for disposing of anything which is even remotely useful. Meticulous construction of the building form was time-consuming, but essential. This boat design does not have internal frames, and the set-up geometry is interesting, to say the least. We have stuck closely to the plans in terms of structure, but have added numerous functional embellishments to suit the use we will put the boat to. Drift Boat Plans & Building Materials are NZ white pine (kahikatea), from Halswell Timber Ltd in Christchurch. Fittings, fastenings etc were supplied by Marine Mail Ltd, Christchurch. Glues, sealers, resins etc are all Epiglass products. [ Up ] [ Drift Boat Building ] [ Drift Boat Links ] | |
