Hi Mike,

Short answer: no, not really.

Longer answer: well, it depends. Most things can be done if one really wants to do them. However, covering a GRP hull with wood planking would, to my mind, rather defeat the purpose. When it come to kits, there are several reasons why a GRP hull might be chosen over a planked one. GRP allows the kit producer to furnish a ready-made basic hull to the customer, and one that can be produced over and over from the same moulds. Also, when appropriate the hull can come with a lot of surface detailing, such as rivets, plate lines, rubbing strakes, planking etc., or inversely, be made slick and smooth if it is that sort of a hull.

In any case, at least part of the interest for the builder of such a kit is that it saves a considerable amount of work and thus time. For some, this makes a GRP-hulled kit more interesting, while others finds it less so; yer pays yer money and yer takes yer choices …

So while some GRP hulls will need some detail added to the outside of the hull — chines for example, or rubbing strakes — I've not yet seen one that was intended to serve as just a base for a complete, external planking of the hull. I would even go so far as to say that I would consider it inadvisable, compared to a conventional plank-on-frame planked hull, as it would be rather more difficult to fasten the planking except with some quite strong and properly waterproof glue — epoxy comes to mind — which would take a long time, and be both pernickety and potentially messy.

Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 16/09/2019 08:58:12

Mike

Can I ask the question why you would want to sheathe a GRP hull with wood?

Tim R

Mike

Maybe your original plan to build a planked model is where your heart is.

Tim R

Mike,

If you'd be happy to scratch build from plans, rather than from a kit, Harold A. Underhill's excellent plans for various schooners are available from Brown, Son & Ferguson (**LINK**). If you put "schooner" into the search box on their website, you'll get the full list. Please note that most of these are multi-sheet plans that are sold as individual sheets.

It should perhaps also be noted that Dave Metcalf's Moonbeam is not really a schooner, but yacht rigged; this does of course not detract from its attractiveness in its own right, but if you explicitly wish to build a schooner, it doesn't quite qualify as such.

Mattias

Tim,

No need to apologise — you are of course quite correct! Yachts can be rigged in many different ways (or not at all, if they are motor yachts), including as a schooner. The OED defines a yacht as

" […] a vessel, usually light and comparatively small, propelled by motive power other than oars, and used for pleasure excursions, cruising, etc., and now esp. one built and rigged for racing".

So while I would certainly say that Moonbeam is a (model of a) yacht (or rather, a replica of a pond yacht, which in its turn would have been a model of a yacht), to call her "yacht rigged", as I did, is fairly meaningless. I was in a bit of a hurry, and, well, nuff said. Mea culpa, and all that. But at least, she is not a schooner-rigged yacht, which was the point I was really trying to make

So thank you very much, Tim, for letting the pedant in you out!

Mattias