ferrocement sailboat forum

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The pros and cons of ferrocement boats.

• Thread starter Lloydroberts
• Start date 12 Jan 2015
• 12 Jan 2015

Lloydroberts

I have noticed a few ferrocement yachts for sale at prices that seem very reasonable for size by comparison. These are around 25 years old. Has anyone got any experience of owning such a yacht and any advice on maintenance needs/pitfalls etc. Tia.  

Well-known member

Almost without exception they will be home built and/or home fitted-out. Some (S.Y. Pause) will be superb world-girdlers. Others will not. Watch out for, amongst other things, over-engineered hulls which are just too heavy, particularly at the ends, and corroding metal reinforcing. The stuff can be a mare to drill. Allegedly they are easy to repair. Like glyberfarce, paint is optional. I was on a fairly new 1970's ferro boat which struck the Goodwins in a wave trough. She cracked from gunwale to keel but we were able to motor home, albeit with a blue and orange escort. (I was about ten, so details scant)  

Very heavy, very slow, and if you hit something and crack the hull, it's trash.  

• 13 Jan 2015

LittleSister

Reason for low price is because many are wary of them. Quite a few are poorly built (especially in terms of over-built, as said previously) - you can usually spot these a mile away - but there are some absolute beauties out there (probably most would never know they were ferro), not only, but mainly, the professionally built ones. Yes, overbuilt ones will probably be slow, but they certainly aren't all slow. Contrary to what you would think, a ferro hull is not necessarily all that heavy, but it's a form of construction best suited to big boats (you can't scale down the thickness of the hull too far), and smaller ones do pay a significant weight penalty. (There's even a ferro dinghy in the Norfolk Broads museum, but it's VERY heavy.) If there are not detailed records of the build you may find difficulty getting other than 3rd party insurance without cores being taken and assessed by a surveyor. Yes, very easy to repair. I was in a group of boats setting off from Essex to Holland years ago. As we were settting off from a pontoon in Essex, one of the ferro boats got caught by the tide, impaled on a projecting scaffold pole, and holed just above the waterline. Having checked he was OK, the rest of us headed off for our voyage. He stayed, repaired the hole with epoxy cement, caught us up the next day. Another ferro boat I knew was accidentally grounded, and as the tide went out it lay with the turn of the bilge on the stump of a post or something similar, and holed. Again easily repaired (clearing up the mess from the flooding was the big job). I've happily sailed thousands of miles on ferro boats, and wouldn't rule out owning one, but I'd want to get a good understanding of how well built it was before I parted with my cash.  

SAPurdie said: Almost without exception they will be home built and/or home fitted-out. (If there are not detailed records of the build you may find difficulty getting other than 3rd party insurance without cores being taken and assessed by a surveyor.) What a load of tosh. I have a 1982 Windboat 44 ( Windboats of wroxham built oysters) She is fully comp insured by Yachtmaster Insurance with an agreed valuation,no detailed build records or core sample requested. Surveyed by Martin Evens twice. once 8 years ago when i bought her and again last year as my insurance company want a survey every 7 years, again no core sample required. She is a heavy displacement sea kindly. safe.dry blue water cruiser with a decent turn of speed. There are some very good Ferro Boat websites,one of them is http://www.ferrocement.org/ I would not buy a home built one https://moonshineofmersea.wordpress.com/ Click to expand...

Active member

Lloydroberts said: I have noticed a few ferrocement yachts for sale at prices that seem very reasonable for size by comparison. These are around 25 years old. Has anyone got any experience of owning such a yacht and any advice on maintenance needs/pitfalls etc. Tia. Click to expand...

Not so easy to repair if running into something underwater, the mesh armature means one cannot stuff something in the hole ! I've read here that insurance is tricky on home built ones.  

Seven Spades

My question is why, why would you want to bug a boat that is slow and heavy? I assume it is because it fits your budget but with a bit of imagination you could get a really nice fibreglass boat like this for next to nothing. http://www.yachtworld.co.uk/boats/1...aft-Apache-2663685/United-States#.VLTLjsZrY9Q  

I owned a 52 foot ferro boat for two weeks. We (wife and I) were sailing in Yugoslavia when the guns started blazing. Most sensible yacht owners were fleeing out of there. We were planning to when we saw a 52 foot boat built in OZ for a ridiculous price because the Ozzy owner was desperate to get out of there. By air. So I bought it. Wife took the overland route back to Sweden while I planned to follow after I decided what to do about my now TWO boats. While still dithering after two weeks I was surprised to see a Norwegian guy aboard my new 52 footer. After an exchange of words h showed me a bill of sail for the boat which he bought cheap from a woman (my wife as it turned out) he met on the ferry to Sweden. So I owned one for two weeks. My wife rejoined me later during a lull in the fighting and we sailed our boat through the NATO blockade to Italy. By that time my ex 52 footer had a one meter diameter hole in her starboard side. My grateful thanks to my sensible wife for getting me out of that folly.  

Bobc said: Very heavy, very slow, and if you hit something and crack the hull, it's trash. Click to expand...

LittleSister said: Reason for low price is because many are wary of them. Quite a few are poorly built (especially in terms of over-built, as said previously) - you can usually spot these a mile away - but there are some absolute beauties out there (probably most would never know they were ferro), not only, but mainly, the professionally built ones. Yes, overbuilt ones will probably be slow, but they certainly aren't all slow. Contrary to what you would think, a ferro hull is not necessarily all that heavy, but it's a form of construction best suited to big boats (you can't scale down the thickness of the hull too far), and smaller ones do pay a significant weight penalty. (There's even a ferro dinghy in the Norfolk Broads museum, but it's VERY heavy.) If there are not detailed records of the build you may find difficulty getting other than 3rd party insurance without cores being taken and assessed by a surveyor. Yes, very easy to repair. I was in a group of boats setting off from Essex to Holland years ago. As we were settting off from a pontoon in Essex, one of the ferro boats got caught by the tide, impaled on a projecting scaffold pole, and holed just above the waterline. Having checked he was OK, the rest of us headed off for our voyage. He stayed, repaired the hole with epoxy cement, caught us up the next day. Another ferro boat I knew was accidentally grounded, and as the tide went out it lay with the turn of the bilge on the stump of a post or something similar, and holed. Again easily repaired (clearing up the mess from the flooding was the big job). I've happily sailed thousands of miles on ferro boats, and wouldn't rule out owning one, but I'd want to get a good understanding of how well built it was before I parted with my cash. Click to expand...

>What a load of tosh. I have a 1982 Windboat 44 ( Windboats of wroxham built oysters) She is fully comp insured by Yachtmaster Insurance with an agreed valuation,no detailed build records or core sample requested. Surveyed by Martin Evens twice. once 8 years ago when i bought her and again last year as my insurance company want a survey every 7 years, again no core sample required. She is a heavy displacement sea kindly. safe.dry blue water cruiser with a decent turn of speed. There are some very good Ferro Boat websites,one of them is http://www.ferrocement.org/ I would not buy a home built one I agree, we know a Kiwi couple who circumnavigated in a professionally built Ferro boat with no problems.  

duncan99210

The problem with ferro boats is that they were and remain something of a niche, off the main track of GRP or metal hulls. As has been said, there are some very good ones out there, well made and maintained that will represent a bargain as the prejudice against the material leads to lower selling prices than you'd expect for a similar sized yacht. The downside is that it might well be difficult to shift the boat when you come to sell. I've never owned a ferro boat but I've seen some horrors out there. I recall looking at one in Greece. At first glance, it was a lovely looking boat but if you got close to the hull and looked along it, you could see the irregularities in the surface. The hull was very thick and when we left the yard, it was still sitting there awaiting a buyer, despite being quite well priced. So what? If you can find the right boat at the right price then ferro is a good as any other material but do get a good survey and check with a few insurers that you can get the level of cover you require.  

LittleSister said: If there are not detailed records of the build you may find difficulty getting other than 3rd party insurance without cores being taken and assessed by a surveyor. Click to expand...

ferroboat said: What a load of tosh. I have a 1982 Windboat 44 ( Windboats of wroxham built oysters) She is fully comp insured by Yachtmaster Insurance with an agreed valuation,no detailed build records or core sample requested. Click to expand...

duncan99210 said: I've never owned a ferro boat but I've seen some horrors out there. I recall looking at one in Greece. At first glance, it was a lovely looking boat but if you got close to the hull and looked along it, you could see the irregularities in the surface. The hull was very thick and when we left the yard, it was still sitting there awaiting a buyer, despite being quite well priced. Click to expand...

JumbleDuck said: I suspect that "built by Windboats" is quite detailed enough. It would only be for "built in his back yard by a bloke whose plasterer mate helped out" efforts that more detail would be useful. Click to expand...

snowleopard

As can be seen from this thread, there is a huge amount of prejudice against ferro so you can buy them very cheaply. In the early 70s it was the new wonder material and loads of people built boats that were far too big because they didn't appreciate that if you got a 50 ft hull for £1,000 it would cost as much to fit out as e.g. a wooden hull costing £10,000. The real horrors are the ones where the home builders thought they'd save a few hundred by plastering them themselves. I recall seeing one in a shed in the Surrey docks that was an average of 2" thick and looked like a swallow's nest. Good ones are very good and are often assumed to be GRP because of the finish. They have several big advantages, not least that they can be repaired anywhere in the world.  

There is a very good reason for the prejudice against ferro. The example I owned was pro built by a world class designer. She was a sister ship to the "floating footpath" that circumnavigated the Antarctic by Griffiths. She came complete with a pro filming documentary kit to celebrate the Australian centennial. Her name was actually centennial. Dive bottles the lot for a give away price. The n Norwegian got a bargain because I left all equipment on board. I don't know what caused the damage whether it was a direct hit or a glancing rebound but the damage was over a very large area an substantial but repairable with the right materials epoxy, cement, and mesh. I never even slept aboard because I was living on our GRP boat about a hundred yards away. The main failure as far as I am concerned is the apparant low abrasion resistance. I heard of two ferro boats that sank after being abraded y coral in benign conditions. One of them dragged gently onto a reef with no swell but the keel wore through in hours an the boat became a total loss. OK at sea though. Ie stay away from the tropics and that pesky coral.  

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Repairing ferro-cement question

• Thread starter Capt Jim24025
• Start date Oct 26, 2005
• Forums for All Owners
• Ask All Sailors

Capt Jim24025

A friend asked me about repairing damage to a ferro-cement hull. He was looking at a boat for sale that had some hull damage below the waterlevel.Since I know nothing about this kind of material, I said I would ask on the website.Your comments will be appreciated.Thanks, Jim  

THE problem with ferro-cement is that there is NO way to analyze the condition of the underlayment steel armature. If the hull is compromised below the water line and corrosion has begun to penetrate along the steel armature there is NO means to assay the condition. Tell your friend to RUN not walk away from a used ferro boat especially one that has obvious below the waterline damage. Just ask yourself how many concrete highways built using the same methods of steel reinforcement last more than 15 years and then need to be totally ripped apart and totally rebuilt ... and they are not submerged or immersed ALL the time.  

cement hulls in addition to run away as sugggested in the previous post it is very unlikely that your friend will find any insurance company willing to write insurance of a cement hull for the exact reasons suggested be Rich H. I'm surprized that they are trying to sell that boat instead they would be better to give it away !  

If God meant concrete to float..... Forget repairing a concrete boat. There are plenty of dirt cheap fiberglass boats around that can be restored for less, with greater confidence,and be something you can be proud of when you are done  

JC on Bainbridge

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Buying a Ferro Cement Boat

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Condition is not the only concern There is a very nice ferro-cement 40' in our club that has been for sale for a couple of years for a good price. It is owned by an older couple (he is close to 80 I think) who keep very good care of the boat. Several people have wanted to buy the boat but backed off because they could not get insurance coverage. It is a shame because it is a lot of boat for the money.  

I've considered ferrocement boats in the past, and insurance is an issue, mainly because most surveyors won't or can't give a good hull survey. That boat appears to be in good shape, but I've seen it on craigslist before and as I recall he's asking too much for it; somewhere around 20K and the engine needs machine shop work? I don't know...  

I have heard it said that that only one in ten ferros are worth owing, but that one will likely outlive the owner and will be the best boat bargain going. I looked briefly at them for world cruising as a couple of authors I like have had them. But in the end I realized that the skill of the builders of ferros in the '70s and '80s was too dodgy and irregular to risk not only my boat kitty, but my safety. Good luck, but the fact is that I see more ferros being jackhammered into rubble these days than I've ever seen on the water.  

Try here for info and links to ferro owners and builders: http://cruisingresources.com/Ferrocement_Construction  

Don't fall in love with the first boat you find. Here are some 1970s 40 foot boats recently from eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1973...0QQihZ008QQcategoryZ63731QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Didn't sell at $6500 http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/40-A...2QQihZ013QQcategoryZ63731QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Sold for $10K http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Morg...3QQihZ002QQcategoryZ63731QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Sold for $12.6K http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1986...7QQihZ013QQcategoryZ63731QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Didn't sell at $12K If beam is 12 feet or under you can get a boat trucked to you for about $3 per mile. (Wider costs more.) There are lots of projects out there. Don't pay too much for yours. A fiberglass boat as a few advantages over ferrocement. They're much lighter, so they're more fun to sail. They're lighter so you use smaller sails, rigging, winches, etc., for a given size of boat. Surveyors can inspect them so insurance companies can write you a policy. And, when you're done with it, there's a much bigger pool of potential buyers out there. Have fun, Tim  

Not many surveyors have a good background in ferrocement construction, and many can not adequately survey a ferro boat. Insurance is a problem, especially with the home-built ones. Also, maintenance is higher from what I have seen...and any moisture ingress into the hull will cause the steel wire or mesh to corrode, which causes it to expand, and damage the surrounding cement.  

Personally - I like the good ones a lot, but there are unique issues associated with owning one. Insurance, survey, repair, finishing, grounding... If you get lucky and find a sound hull, you will get the strongest, most durable craft around. Determining whether or not it's a sound hull is so expensive that you can probably find something comparable in GRP for the same outlay. Re-sale will be a big problem. If there was a decent market for them - Hartley and Samson would still be building them. http://www.ferrocement.org/  

Altair Hello, I am the owner of the boat mentioned at the start of this thread. PM me should you wish further details. Edited/Cam  

It has been writen in a lot of cruising articals that when entering a distant exotic location the writer was surprised by the large number of ferro boats . Insurance is not a big issue as many cruisers do not have full insurance. Good luck and enjoy your ferro boat.  

Nicolas..advertising one's boat within the forum is not permitted. I have edited your post accordingly. Anyone who is interested can PM you for details. Good luck!  

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Top Contributors this Month

Hi Colin; Great site! I was wondering if you or anyone reading this knows of any cruising catamarans that have been built in ferro? If not, then why? I am intrigued by the possibilities. Also, what would be the average cost to build, say, a 25 foot sailboat in ferro-cement? Thanks;

Dr.Rick [email protected]

Hi Doc, cruising catamaran's have very few points on the plus side, primary being they are relatively fast compared to monohulls. They have many minus's however. The major ones are a/ They are very unstable in a heavy seaway and require constant attention to avoid a capsize. b/Very difficult to tack in narrow channels, often not coming through the wind unless carrying a considerable amount of way on, sometimes even having to wear-sail to change tack. c/Will only carry small loads compared to a monohull. A catamaran's performance changes dramatically with only small variations on it's designed waterline. The principle of the multihull only works effectively with light displacement vessels. Ferro-cement construction is not really suitable for a multihull unless special construction techniques are used. The standard truss web frame technique in my opinion would be too heavy. Regards

Colin [email protected]

Want to know more about ferrocement, the information and comments given on this 'world of ferroboats', website are based on first-hand experience gained by the contributors over many years of use, designing, surveying, building and repairing ferro-cement boats..