C21 Launched in Central Illinois
Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:56 pm
Hello everyone,
We successfully launched our C21 in the Illinois river on June 27th 2007. Here is the link to my gallery and a short story of our build.
http://gallery.bateau2.com/thumbnails.php?album=648
The boat was built by Richard (my 77 year old Dad), Merrich (my 11 year old son), and me, Sam, in a 23'x23' garage in Eureka Illinois. We don't have any center console boats around here (only bass boats or ski boats) but we love to watch "Salt Water Sunday" on ESPN and love the center console boats they use. Last year coming home from Hilton Head, I followed several boats for miles and got to thinking, maybe I could build one of those. I got home and started looking on the internet on how to build a boat, found several boat building sites like Glen L and Bateau. I liked the Bateau designs the best because there were no screws in the hull. Then I told my wife that I was going to build the C19 and she said "19 ft, thats not very big" so I decided on the C21.
My Dad and I built a lot of things together over the years, but nothing like this. We started in August of 2006 making the jig, cutting and assembling the plywood pieces. My Dad is retired and is always looking for something to do or fix, so he was over at 3:00 everyday when I got off work and we worked on it for 2-3 hours a day. By November, we had the hull painted and flipped over. We worked through the winter building with a heater ($3.99/gal karosene), painted it in May, and put the motor on in June.
My Dad and I were regular readers of this forum, so we thank everyone who posted the same questions that we had, and the answers that we needed. We learned so much on this forum and would not have been able to figure it out on our own.
So thanks everyone at E-boat and all the boatbuilders on the forum, we had a great time building this boat and hope to build another in the future (not near future, my wife needs the garage back for a while).
I'd like to here your comments, answer your questions and post some more pictures.
We successfully launched our C21 in the Illinois river on June 27th 2007. Here is the link to my gallery and a short story of our build.
http://gallery.bateau2.com/thumbnails.php?album=648
The boat was built by Richard (my 77 year old Dad), Merrich (my 11 year old son), and me, Sam, in a 23'x23' garage in Eureka Illinois. We don't have any center console boats around here (only bass boats or ski boats) but we love to watch "Salt Water Sunday" on ESPN and love the center console boats they use. Last year coming home from Hilton Head, I followed several boats for miles and got to thinking, maybe I could build one of those. I got home and started looking on the internet on how to build a boat, found several boat building sites like Glen L and Bateau. I liked the Bateau designs the best because there were no screws in the hull. Then I told my wife that I was going to build the C19 and she said "19 ft, thats not very big" so I decided on the C21.
My Dad and I built a lot of things together over the years, but nothing like this. We started in August of 2006 making the jig, cutting and assembling the plywood pieces. My Dad is retired and is always looking for something to do or fix, so he was over at 3:00 everyday when I got off work and we worked on it for 2-3 hours a day. By November, we had the hull painted and flipped over. We worked through the winter building with a heater ($3.99/gal karosene), painted it in May, and put the motor on in June.
My Dad and I were regular readers of this forum, so we thank everyone who posted the same questions that we had, and the answers that we needed. We learned so much on this forum and would not have been able to figure it out on our own.
So thanks everyone at E-boat and all the boatbuilders on the forum, we had a great time building this boat and hope to build another in the future (not near future, my wife needs the garage back for a while).
I'd like to here your comments, answer your questions and post some more pictures.