The Students of St Joseph’s Maritime College built 20 Oz Goose sailboats to commence a boatbuilding and seamanship program for their Seafarer Officer Training course.

Butuan, Mindanao College adds a sailing program to their Cadet Curriculum

The PHBYC (our Philippines internet boatbuilding group) is currently working on their yearly boatbuilding program this year adding 20 Oz Goose sailboat building and sailing program to the college curriculum – this is important as most shipping companies are planning big cuts in carbon emissions and it is possible that sailing might be part of the mix of solutions.

Us and 20 student volunteers are up to our ears in wood shavings and epoxy as fabrication starts on the Oz Goose Sailboats. The Boats have a proven track record of sailing well with 1, 2 or three adults aboard and have a regatta program. There are also groups building in the USA and Hungary. See the Oz Goose facebook group.

20 Boat Kits CNC milled arrive on campus

A few days ago a big empty space with a trailer of precision CNC cut components including the rudder and centreboard foils.

And it rapidly progressed as we trained up the cadets.

Mast Partners and Mast Steps are simple but require extra care to measure and cut them right.

Bicky, one of our group members who has a lot of boat building experience always does the more precision parts of the fabrication. Here the Mast Partners and Steps. They have plywood laminated to the faces to prevent the timber from splitting under load.

Hull Panel Assembly Continues and accumulate in big stacks!

The side panels, hull bottoms and tank faces start building up in piles of 20. Our minimum assembly aim is for 10 boats completed and the cadets all trained up to continue assembly over the next weeks.

Finishing CNC milled centreboard and rudder blanks with fibreglass cloth and epoxy.

One of the complex areas is the foil assembly. The foils are factory CNC milled in 3D. Good glassing produces excellent foils for the boats. It is as important as good and well set sails but often overlooked in home build boats.

Great job by first time fibreglassers – well trained by Job Ferranco one of our boatbuilders from Batangas Province.

Assembling the hollow tapered masts – the highest stress component

The masts are the other highly stressed component that have to be accurately made. It can be a bit of an uphill struggle working with groups to get the consistent quality, but once achieved the results are fantastic.

The masts are hollow and tapered. This saves about 40% of the weight with less risk of a timber defect brining the mast down as in the case of making the spars with a single piece of wood.

This is the fastest and simplest technique for mass producing hollow masts that are light and tapered. Assembly of these “ladder frames” takes about 15 minutes. They are cleaned up and the wider staves are put on the outside.

Trim down the overhang and then round off the corners with a 12mm router bit and the spars are done.

Cadets: “We want to assemble a sailboat” 40 mins later – DONE!

One day ago the Cadets were all excited that we had so many components ready – so they assembled a boat. Oops … forgot to coat the underside of the foredeck before gluing it down … so it had to be pulled apart again and done properly.

This Photo is actually the next day when boat #1 is being glued.

As an example of motivation – some of the Cadets have an exam tomorrow, but they are excited to assemble one boat!

We will have 10 boats (or close to that) sailing by the end of the coming weekend. Tuesday today.

The excitement and Chaos of launching day.

20 Oz Goose sailboats built by Students - Saint Joseph Institute of Technology Maritime Academy

Watch this video on YouTube

A calmer approach in the following weeks and months produced 40 disciplined and capable sailors over the following year. Instead of looking at their seafarer officer training as a meal ticket … they are now totally in love with the sea. That will make all the difference to their professional lives.