Johannes Huckschlag is still unsure about the batten tension. "I now have a counter-belly on the top one. I still need to gain some experience, maybe these wooden slats aren't ideal after all." Let's see, listen to tips, try things out, rethink - this method gave rise to an idea, a crack, a hull, a rig, a boat. Above all: his boat. Six weeks ago, the 25-year-old christened his own design, and now he is taking to the waters of Lake Constance off Friedrichshafen-Fischbach in the evening breeze.
The self-builder knots the halyard, jib line and sheet to the gennaker. His girlfriend Marén steers the robinia tiller, "which comes from a 75-square-metre National cruiser". The Michelsen shipyard, where he trained, restored the "Vinga", an A&R construction from 1917. Johannes Huckschlag is a boat builder and started building his own boat during his second year of training. "I shortened the tiller, Marén also did a lot of planing. But it was already there and curved, otherwise I would have had to saw a new one."
That is also interesting:
The Z dinghy "Furie" steers easily, "I pre-balanced the blade by a fifth, a little less would have worked too," he explains critically about the important design detail. The gennaker, which now enables a gurgling wake at a speed of just under five knots, is also a second use, it comes from a 29-foot skiff. Its luff could be half a metre longer. But the main thing is to get out on the water, try out the boat and always keep an eye on the budget! In order to get sailing this summer, Huckschlag had set the christening date early - to put himself into a final spurt during the three-year construction process. It could also have been a cello.
"After leaving school, I didn't know what to do. My older sister signed me up for the Red Cross," he did a voluntary social year and worked as a paramedic for two more. "Craftsmanship is a great thing," he thought of his future plans, "it's what you can do that counts, not what rank you have." He looked for a career in woodworking and also considered violin making. But after two internships at Lake Constance, he decided in favour of the Michelsen shipyard.
Building your own boat from scratch
His father once sailed a plywood dinghy and bravely put the junior on the Opti he had renovated himself, "he said, here, do a bit". Couldn't he bring this towing bird from his parents' house in North Rhine-Westphalia to the shipyard for a refit? The shipyard manager at the time was not enthusiastic. Treasures, ruins, shells and boat equipment of retirement and old age are already stored and loitering on the site. Another building site? Better not. An L-boat had been restored at the shipyard for a customer. And it didn't get much of a run. "The boss bent it so that I could sail the beautiful L 154 for two years. It was an effort to cycle to the mooring in Kressbronn every time, but it was worth it."
When the vocational college in Lübeck introduced a computer design programme, the boatbuilding apprentice was certain that he wanted to build his own boat right from the start. "I went down to the slipway every lunch break." One of the dinghies there is a Fireball. "I was fascinated by the alternative shapes you can conjure up." The Peter Mine design was considered an exotic box in 1962, partly because of the unyacht-like sawn-off bows. The freeboard was saved, but not the sail area: the 13 square metres with a boat weight of only 79 kilograms can be tamed with a trapeze. An inspiring detail.
"I then only used the design programme in a very amateurish way by drawing a line outline." The boatbuilding apprentice was thrilled not to have to erase any more, "drawing a line drawing yourself is a crazy amount of work due to the constant corrections". As none of the current shipyard orders had this type of construction, he decided in favour of Viking-style clinker construction. He weighed up hydrodynamics against appearance: "I already knew what makes a fast boat shape, but I also sacrificed in some places because I thought, no, I want to build something like that one day."
OSB boards mark the start of the project
He is referring to the cross between the wide stern of a special class yacht, the classic gaff rig and modern details such as the gennaker pole and the stays made of high-modulus polyethylene fibres.
He then used the Simpson formula to calculate the buoyancy, "but with the five metre length taken from the Fireball, the calculated 180 kilograms of buoyancy is not enough for the hull and two people, then it would have floated one centimetre too low. So I made the construction longer." Instead of the original grid of 50 centimetres, he placed the frames every 60 centimetres. "I left the width as it was. And I regret that a little now."
The "Furie" is exceptionally stiff for its size, "but I like it when a dinghy like this is wide, I would have preferred that." Building on the shipyard site was still out of the question, "in any case, I had realised by then that it was better not to have everyone looking into my pot and saying, no, stop right now, there's no point, do it differently. In the shaky initial phase, I wanted to have my peace and quiet." Moving to the workshop? "Only when people believe in it." Together with a journeyman, he started building the hull in a garage in Lindau, three towns away.
A car load of roof battens and OSB boards marked the start of his bonsai workshop. "Stupidly OSB wallboards. You can't draw well on them, blockboard would have been better," he says of his first steps. And he enthuses: "It was such a great time when we built it together. Because we kept energising each other and saying, oh come on, we'll make something to eat and then we'll get on with it."
The two find tips in books on how to run the planks into the stern, they think about how the top plank should be flush with the coaming. "When the hull was almost completely planked, we drove it over to the shipyard, with the sheds," the lessor of the shipyard site had a covered corner of his timber yard free. Karsten Timmerherm has been the shipyard manager since then and is full of praise for the result: "Only two out of ten projects like this are completed, he did a really good job."
Build new or repair?
From the move onwards, things continued with Marén's help, the moulds served as frame templates. Now, however, the crack has an almost angular chine. The two of them even had to dampen the Robinia slats, which are only three and a half millimetres thick, before they followed the distinctive hull shape. "There are seven slats each, plus intermediate frames, which will never break."
He noted down calculations and dimensions in his now tattered pocket notebook. Including those of the deck construction, which is intended to compensate for the higher frame weight. "Fir is super light", the delicate deck beams measure just 10 by 80 millimetres, which could rather be called deck battens here. The pleasing shape of the cabin sling was also initially created as a hand drawing during a trip to vocational school.
The same goes for the rig. "I first looked in the classifieds for used cloths that might fit. Because of the approximate dimensions, for example those of an M dinghy, which are very rare, or an H dinghy." He found what he was looking for in a set of sails for a Z dinghy, "I picked it up on the way to vocational school". He also bought the gaff, which was part of the mainsail. "If it fits together, all I have to do now is to make it prettier. But I should have built it from scratch, it would have been three times faster."
He searched in the classified adverts for suitable cloths - which fitted a Z dinghy
Even the spreader turned out to be rotten wood, Huckschlag had to cut half of it in half and shank the nock. "I replaced the problem areas with copper sleeves and hammered and glued them in." Nevertheless, the gaff repair provided experience for future advice to owners on when a repair is more expensive than a new build.
In addition, the gaff did not fit at all. A sailmaker helped to adjust the leech to its bend, but we still need to experiment with the continuous battens. With a little shortening, the genoa of a Flying Dutchman also fits. The sheet angle can be precisely adjusted using the jib barber stays that can be operated from windward.
Trial and error
But until then, he still had to work out the sail plan. "I laid out the sails on the barn floor in my parents' house, and you can take an undistorted photo through the hatch. I could simply insert that into my CAD." The lateral point had to be aligned with that of the hull. "Because I had read about this in a book by Manfred Curry, I wanted to give the rig a forward mast drop." Which he changed after trying it out, "at first it hurts the eye, but that's not good for the headsail tension either. The boat should actually be more luffy now with the slight mast drop, but it works."
The originally attached spreaders are now also back in the timber store. "I really like the vertical upper shrouds, I absolutely wanted that. I had a lot of work with the fact that they are swept upwards, bisecting the angle. Then there's a piece of matching crooked wood that has grown right round a branch in the bend in front of the mast." The spreaders had already been fitted "until I realised that it didn't make sense, it wasn't good, the gaff was in line".
"For the sail plan, I snapped the cloths through the howitzer"
A glued-in stainless steel sleeve bears witness to the original rigging. He approached his mast construction with the requirement that there should not be a single screw in it - too often he had wooden customer rigs on the mast bench in the shipyard, where the screws were the wick for water and later rotten spots. "That's why the soft rigging fits so well. The shrouds run in spliced loops that rest in glued-in robinia cleats."
The mast was also a little too heavy, weighing eleven kilos. The boom vang, a simple cascade with heavy-duty rigging and aluminium rings, was initially planned with a kicker. "I had seen a model made of bent carbon fibre and built a moulded copy of it so that I could put the gaff and boom on it." There had to be a pivot point on deck, because the mast had to remain without holes. "That would have shortened the path when rigging and set the boom a little. But the fitting process is incredibly time-consuming. You need a rail on the boom so that it can't tip over under its own weight alone."
Z dinghy with classic and modern elements
The large tree stems from historical inspiration. The pioneering "Zeeslang" was reworked in the shipyard. Johannes Huckschlag refined the idea of the double T-beam with a pleasing taper at both ends - and with intricately built, weight-saving cut-outs.
He would also like to have them in the mainsail: "You can see almost nothing to leeward", especially from the trapeze. In addition to the many matt black aluminium fittings and the current, continuous brown cordage, it fits in perfectly with the boat in the "modern part" account column.
We head to the slip in the evening light. Marén jumps into the water in neoprene shoes and fetches the slip trolley - Huckschlag: "I found it at the boatyard". He stows the steering gear in a padded schooner that was "also lying around ownerless" and quickly puts the tarpaulin over the boat, "a customised one for a much larger boat. It doesn't fit perfectly, but it was free." The "Furie" is covered within a few minutes.
Technical data of the Z dinghy "Furie"
- Design engineer: Johannes Huckschlag
- Shipyard: Self-build
- Length: 6,27 m
- Width: 1,66 m
- Depth: 1,10 m
- Displacement: 222 kg
- Torso weight: 188 kg
- Mainsail: 15.6 m² (Z dinghy)
- Genoa: 8.4 m² (Flying Dutchman)
- Gennaker: 17.0 m² (29er skiff)
This article was first published in 2021 and has been updated for this online version.
