NSW
190 posts
Every now and then you see a steel hull yacht up for sail ie Van De Stadt, so I was wondering how a steel yacht preforms, how does maintenace compare to GRP, they seam to be a preferred blue water yacht?
KeithW
NSW
7757 posts
Any steel yacht below 30 feet will be a slug. Steel requires constant maintenance. The virtues of steel yachts touted is that they can be repaired anywhere. The problem when buying is you can never be sure of the plate thickness. Van De Stadt 34's in steel would probably be a good boat, the Dutch like steel yachts though we had a 30' Van De Stadt holed up here for a few weeks and the owners complained how slow it was. Have 3 resident steel yachts here, never seen them sail so hard to comment on how they perform.
Steel is about $80 a ton at the moment.
NSW
2140 posts
Steel as a building material, like any material has its uses and limitations. To build a nice looking boat out of steel is more difficult, especially for the amateur and as Ramona pointed out, below a certain size the material is not viable. The thickness is easily determined and so is not a problem but what is a problem is you don't know what the spec of the steel is or if that that type of steel is even suited to marine use.
The use of the correct quality material in combination with correct design principles will always yield a quality product.
1 posts
You have to compare like with like...eg a prof built steel with a prof built Grp. Most comments from Grp people are based on the chunky home builts that are around.
In performance say like an Adams 40 as long as the builder followed the plans and did not add to it you get a fine performing yacht as good as an equivalent grp boat. We have a prof built steel yacht a Freya 40 it sails great, we had a vagabond 31 prior in grp and have found the maint about the same. In steel it is crucial that the build and paint system were good. All the floors on our boat come up and we can access all parts.
QLD
12365 posts
The Van De Stadt 34 was quite an advancement in smaller steel yacht design by eliminating much of the frame work used in steel hulls.
The hull platework is preformed in a building frame (frameless fairing construction method) and relies on the inherent strength of the formed hull as more than sufficient for the size of the vessel. I believe the design conforms or is accepted by the European Veritas design protocol.
The weight saving of this means the boat will perform well if, as with all smaller yachts, it is not overloaded.
Another advantage of the design is that the common corrosion points between the framing and hull skin have mostly been eliminated.
Most schools of thought seem to agree that mild steel is the best for boat construction as it is the most base of steels (enough alloy for it to be steel not iron) and therefore the lowest electrical potential and therefore less prone to electrolysis.
I met a guy with a 30 foot VDS which is the little sister to the 34 and I did go aboard and was quite impressed with the interior volume of the yacht.
He said it performed really well and was a fast yacht. A light fit out is essential for a small steel yacht to perform well.
