Design No. 160
Design 160
Preliminary Specification
LOA (inc. bowsprit) 7.670m 25'2"
LoD 7.315m 24'0"
LWL 7.000m 23'0"
Beam 2.530 m 8'4"
Draft 1.000 m 3' 3"
Displacement on dwl 2180kg 4806lbs
Ballast 780kg 1720lbs
Mainsail 15.13m2 163ft2
100% Foretriangle 13.13m2 141ft2
Furling Genoa 16.88m2 182ft2
Headroom – saloon 2.000m 6'6"
Headroom – galley 1.750m 5'9"
Headroom – WC 1.600 m 5' 3"
Headroom – Fo'c'sle 1.500m 4'11"
Yanmar Inboard Engine 6.7kw 9hp
Outboard (in well) 4.5-11.0kw 6-15hp

Design No. 160 – EasyBuild 24: 7.315m (24'0") sloop

Designed with cruising comfort in mind, the EasyBuild 24 can utilize all the benefits of CNC cutting to full advantage. Click the thumbnails below to see more detailed plans – they will open as PDF's in a new window.

The boat is built on nine ring frames which are made sandwich-style from 12mm ply CNC pre-cut parts. The parts are located accurately and easily by short lengths of dowel rod pushed through pre-bored holes. The layers are epoxy-bonded together, easily held down by weights or clamps. This system gives a smooth finish to the inside edges of the frames and a stepped bevel on the outside edge to suit the hull, deck and superstructure angles. The little steps are easily filled by the epoxy bonding the skin panels on.

The main structural longitudinal elements – the backbone, stem and sternpost – are also made and assembled sandwich-style like the frames, from CNC cut plywood components.

The hull skin panels are CNC cut sections and can be joined into full lengths off-the-job using our finger jointing system which ensures accuracy and strength. Alternative CNC files provide for the sections to be butt joined (with a butt strap) or scarphed to each other which can be done section-by-section on the boat, which makes manoeuvring them easier if the builder has limited personnel to help.

Other elements such as deck panels, coamings, the coachroof top, the cockpit sole, sides and seats, engine beds, the interior furniture items, soles and so on, can also be CNC cut, often for sub-assembly off the boat.

Design 160

We have done some modeling this design in 3D, building our virtual boat directly from models of the various components as they are drawn for CNC cutting. Early stages of the modeling process are shown in this slideshow. When it loads it will be on "Pause"; hit "Play" to set it going or move manually backwards and forwards through the slides. When you close the window, it's best to leave the slideshow on Pause else it will still be running in the background

Now let's take a look at some of the principal features of the design:

Comfortable Civilized Accommodation at Sea and in Harbour:

Simplicity, Safety and Stability:

Construction:

The accuracy of the pre-cut parts is the key to assembling the boat quickly and easily. Once the hull is formed, other parts mostly slot into place without a lot of complicated measuring and levelling. Most often, if something fits it is in the right place; if it doesn't, then it's not.

The parts will usually be "nested" by the CNC cutting company. This means that they nest parts together to get the most economical usage out of the material. This is also why we design each boat as far as possible to use one thickness of ply. So when nested, parts are not necessarily arranged in logical groups. Originally we thought this might be a problem, but somewhat surprisingly, it didn't turn out that way – parts are mostly easily recognizable and can be extracted one by one from their sheets of ply as needed. Parts can be labelled by the CNC cutting facility but this is usually quite expensive and we have found it not to be necessary. Our DXF files are arranged in logical groups, so you don't necessarily have to get everything for the whole boat cut at once, which does make part identification easier.

Although intended primarily for construction from CNC cut parts, there is no reason why most of the parts can't be marked out and cut by hand. An exception to this are the parts for the frames, which would be tedious to mark out and cut by hand. We will be providing an alternative set of frames constructed from solid and laminated timber elements. The backbone can also be laminated up from solid timber and then bevelled off to suit the hull angles as with many of our other designs.

Note: This design is currently (Dec 2024) on hold as my colleague who is carrying out the modeling has had to take a break because of a career change. We will be returning to the design as soon as we can.