steel yacht construction

Since 1951, Striker Yacht Corporation has been an industry leader in yacht and shipbuilding in steel and aluminum construction. Striker was the first to produce an all plate vessel in 1956. Other famous builders of the time were steel or wood, Broward, Burger or Feadship to name a few. They quickly saw the advantage to aluminum. In fact, most of what the world knows about marine grade aluminum came from Striker as you will read in this site.

Strikers Running off Florida Coast The New 70 Foot Striker's First Sea Trial Our association with Sedef Shipbuilding allows Striker the use of two highly skilled shipyards in Tuzla, Istanbul. These facilities allow us to become one of the largest builders of yachts, commercial, or naval shipbuilding in the world. Striker is now capable of multiple projects with lengths up to 1500ft (457 meters). We carry certifications through Sedef to build any project to any society specification, and in any required classification. All yacht and ship building projects can be bonded in excess of $1 Billion US dollars. Our team of professionals is composed of some of the finest in their field, including world renowned Gregory C. Marshall , Naval Architect for most projects; Ulutas , for their expertise in shipwright for their flawless fit and trim in the interior and exterior and 30 time award winning Donald Starkey for luxurious interior designs. More importantly, due to our association with Sedef Shipbuilding, all vessels are made with the finest attention to detail using the latest state of the art technology which will guarantee our clients years of safe and trouble- free enjoyment of their pleasure, commercial or naval vessels. It is our goal at Striker to build any type of vessel you desire to your highest expectations and beyond. It is our goal for you to be a satisfied client, and a member of the Striker family for decades to follow. 62 Foot Striker With the endless array of possibilities, Striker will meet the individual needs of any client. Striker offers both custom and semi-custom aluminum sportfishing yachts from 50 feet to over 150 feet. In the motoryacht category, we offer displacement and semi-displacement or high speed vessels from 18 meters up to 1500ft (457 meters). As to our commercial division, we build high speed aluminum gun and patrol boats from 14 meters to over 70 meters. In the shipbuilding class, we build most types of ships from container, freighter, tankers, surface naval vessels to specialized ships up to 1500ft (457 meters). Incorporated into our building designs are the latest innovations for speed, efficiency, and seaworthiness for maximum comfort and fuel savings. New power systems from main propulsion to gas turbines, jet drives, pod systems, and generators by Caterpillar MTU and Rolls-Royce. Our mission is to create impressive value and permanent products based on new and existing technology to ensure years of trouble free use whether for pleasure or commercial applications. We at Striker operate in unison as a team of professionals with specialized expertise in each field of yacht and shipbuilding. Striker is known for being different and not ordinary. Dynamic and not static. We have become a name that has gained an advantageous position for advanced technology and established high quality controls not equaled by any other shipyard in the world. By maintaining strict attention to details at each stage of the building process, we are capable of maintaining production and performance schedules without sacrificing any of the highest levels of quality control. With Tuzla, Istanbul, becoming a leader of marine construction in the yachting world, Striker has chosen to select this area for the future that promises that it will become a beacon of workmanship and professionalism in the marine industry. This is ever more evident as other European builders are already taking advantage of this area and have many current building projects underway. We welcome you to visit our shipyards in beautiful Istanbul, and to take a tour that is sure to impress the most discriminating client. Donald Starkey, N.A. (656 Feet) 200m Super Yacht Project Striker Striker Brochure Download PDF 200m Super Yacht PDF Dowload PDF EDWARD E. ENNIS, JR. Chairman/CEO STRIKER YACHT CORPORATION Company verification: http://striker-yacht.com/verification.asp _gos='monster.gostats.com';_goa=472384; _got=1;_goi=65;_gol='web site stat';_GoStatsRun();

STEEL KIT CONSTRUCTION

The hull shape, design considerations, development of the kits, nestings and station assembly, design overview.

The aim of the R1000 Series steel kit yachts is to supply the owner and builder with an up-to-date design and construction method.

The primary requirement for an offshore cruising yacht is safety. This is inherent in the R1000 Series designs because they are designed for steel construction. For best safety the construction is not the only consideration. The sailing ability is also very important. The R1000 Series yachts are designed for excellent offshore sailing because they have the hull shape, waterline length, easy handling and good stability to make them very competent sailing yachts - not as fast as the " round the buoys" racing yachts listed in this site but at the top of their class for offshore cruising.

THE HULL SHAPE

The hulls of the R1000 Series yachts have long waterlines and short overhangs, with the aim of reducing "unsupported" weight in the ends. On a yacht with short waterline and long overhangs this unsupported weight can induce pitching and be detrimental to the sailing ability of the yachts.

Another aspect of a long waterline (W.L.) relative to overall length is that the potential hull speed will be higher. Also, for a given displacement, the longer W.L. reduces the depth of the buttocks, reduces the wave "hollow" when underway and improves performance. A hull which has deeper buttocks and a short W.L. for the same displacement will be harder to handle once hull speed has been reached. A hull with a longer W.L. and flatter buttocks will have better directional stability.

The hull sections of the R1000 Series yachts have a pronounced vee which further contributes to the directional stability of the yachts. A hull with round section shapes and shorter W.L. doesn't have the same "built-in" directional stability as that of the R1000 Series yachts.

For a yacht designer it can be unsettling to know that most yachts are selected for their accommodation, often without sufficient regard to other important factors. In the case of the R1000 Series yachts it is comforting to know that the accommodation can be considered in the knowledge that the construction is sound and the performance accounted for.

For their length, this series of yachts has very good volume and carrying capacity, a major requirement in a cruising yacht. The accommodation drawings shown are an indication of what will easily fit in the different sized yachts. The accommodation is not structural so can be changed by the owner. The headroom in the main areas of the yacht is a minimum of 1.9m - 6'3". The yachts are designed so that most of the water tanks are below the cabin sole, leaving other areas of the boat for stowage.

This good accommodation volume is achieved without detracting from the appearance of the yacht. The freeboard is moderate to keep the centre of gravity of the yachts as low as possible. The house and cockpits are attractive and functional - to a shape dictated by the construction material. Weather protection is provided for the companionways with an overhanging hatch, and it is often feasible to have a cuddy cabin over the forward end of the cockpit for further weather protection, as illustrated on the centre cockpit R415.

DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

Disregarding the requirements of accommodation, deck plan and sail plan, there are a number of basic requirements which must be taken into account when designing a cruising yacht. The three that most influence the final design are the construction material, carrying capacity for stores and equipment, and the amount of ballast.

Construction

As the steel construction weight is somewhat higher than other materials such as fibreglass or timber, the boats must be drawn with more displacement to adequately carry this weight and not detract from the carrying capacity of the yacht. As the R1000 Series yachts have been drawn to suit the American Bureau of Shipping Guide for Offshore Racing Yachts (A.B. S.), a little more allowance has been made for extra construction weight. There are lighter construction steel yachts around but they will have limitations placed on their usage as they are most unlikely to meet A.B.S. requirements and still float reasonably close to the waterline. Reductions in ballast may help the displacement figure but will detract from the sailing ability and safety of the yacht as will be discussed later.

Cruising people are attracted to steel construction because of its robust nature and safety. The R1000 Series steel yachts drawn to A.B.S. give a very strong construction for offshore sailing.

Carrying Capacity

After closely studying the displacements of many different styles and lengths of cruising yachts the hull displacements for the R1000 Series were selected so that they could carry the stores and equipment that can reasonably be expected to be carried on a cruising yacht of a particular length. The hull shape also allows for a successful yacht over a wide range of displacements - whether the yachts are loaded or unloaded.

The sailing ability of a yacht depends on the upwind sail carrying capacity in moderate to fresh winds. This is determined by the amount of effective ballast and the location of the total centre of gravity of the yacht.

To get the most effective ballast it is necessary to use a keel with the highest density ballast and a minimum volume of keel. If lower density ballast is considered for a design, more ballast must be used to allow for the extra volume otherwise there is a loss in effective ballast. If a yacht doesn' t have sufficient stability and has to be reefed too early it may then not have enough sail area to drive it effectively to windward in fresh conditions. Satisfactory stability can be obtained by maintaining realistic rig and deck weights and a good ballast ratio.

Refer to the home page for a general stability discussion for offshore yachts and for the designs which have specific stability information included.

While the R1000 Series yachts meet the requirements to make them very good cruising yachts they go way beyond being just good, well detailed designs. The availability of the steel kits gives the owner the ability to complete the hull and deck with the minimum of problems in the least possible time. The following gives details on the kit development and assembly and the various options of length and layout.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE KITS

While there is a certain simplicity to the kits in their final form it has taken a lot of design time and computer technology to achieve this result.

The hull shapes are 3D modelled on a hull surfacing program call Fast-yacht. The Fast-yacht package is used to create the lines and offsets, hydrostatics, keels, velocity prediction and rig engineering. The hull shape is transferred to another 3D CAD / CAM program called Caddsman (developed in Australia) where the deck, house, cockpit and transom are added to the model. Once the final decisions are made on the scantlings , i.e. frame spacing and sizes etc, the complete structure of the hull and deck is incorporated on the computer model. The individual components are then extracted from the model and components of like thickness are nested onto standard sized plates.

When the nestings are completed - to give the best utilisation of materials - an NC file is created to control the plasma cutter which produces the full size components. The components produced by the NC files are the equivalent of months of work if an individual was to loft, bend and cut one-off all the items required for the hull and deck. The accuracy of the computer modelling and cutting is also far superior to that normally achieved in one-off construction. The components cut for a round bilge design include hull frames, floors, keel floors, keel plating, keel base, ballast capping, stem & backbone, collision bulkhead, anchor locker, rudder & skeg plating and webs, mast step, engine beds, transom, boarding platform, deck & house plating - windows cut - deck & house beams, cockpit and companionway and hatch coamings.

The benefit of this work and development is greater accuracy, and reduced time in the construction of the hull and deck. Builders who use the kits readily acknowledge these benefits.

NESTINGS and STATION ASSEMBLY

8mm nesting drawing for the r400.

frame located on assembly grid ready for welding

Practical Boat Owner
Digital edition

How I designed and built my own 24ft sloop in steel

February 1, 2019

Mike Camp charts the trials and tribulations of designing and building his 26ft steel sloop

Plating of the hull is under way

About 50 years ago I had the opportunity to work in the shop of Tom Colvin when he was at Chesapeake Bay.

Tom was one of the first boatbuilders and designers to advocate the advantages of building cruising sailboats in the 30ft to 50ft range out of steel and aluminium.

His book on building with these materials is considered the bible of construction manuals.

His designs were also known for being based on the wholesome and practical ideas of working boats of the past.

Over the following 30 years I worked on and off in many shops building and doing repairs in wood, fibreglass , steel, and aluminium, mostly on the west coast of British Columbia.

Also during these years I owned two sailboats. The first was the 27ft Eventide design by Maurice Griffiths, my second favourite designer.

The next was a factory fibreglass production boat called the Pacific 30. In addition I sailed on boats of friends whenever I could. This was all coastal sailing, never offshore.

Then about 20 years ago I decided it might be time to start thinking about building a boat myself. But which design?

There are so many to choose from. I loved Tom Colvin’s Chinese Junk designs. I actually purchased a set of plans for his 42ft Junk, but then wisely decided a 42ft heavy displacement boat was way bigger than I needed or could afford.

The most common mistake of people buying or building a boat is deciding on one too large.

I also was attracted to the traditional ‘ Tahiti Ketch ’, as well as some of Maurice Griffiths’ designs in the 30ft range.

After much consideration, and with all my boatbuilding and sailing experience, I decided, why not design my own boat?

So work began, even though my wife is saying I’m always trying to reinvent the wheel. In reply I keep telling her the wheel is not necessarily perfect.

Originally planned for a cat rig, Lynx wound up as a sloop

My first design was a 32ft cat schooner, double chine steel with bilge keels. A half-model was carved, the lines taken off it, and then these lines lofted full size.

Well, after I’d fabricated that long, steel keel I realized I didn’t have the time or money to finish such a large boat. Tom’s 42ft Junk displaced 35,000lb. This boat displaced about 18,000lb – still too big.

So… back to the drawing board. Time to make some hard decisions.

How small could a steel boat be to carry a couple in safety and reasonable comfort… and cross an ocean?

The design I came up with was double chine steel with bilge keels, sloop rigged, with the dinghy carried on davits off the stern, 26ft on deck with a displacement of 8,600lb.

A perfect size?

A boat of about 26ft has many advantages. You can get by without an anchor winch, or any sail-tending winches.

And for auxiliary power, an outboard works very well, thank you.

Of my two previous boats one had outboard power, and one inboard.

The outboard was a far better arrangement in every way – no through-hull fittings, which are always a source of leaks, no noise and smell in the interior, and all of that great storage area opened up in a small boat without an inboard.

And today’s 9.9hp 4-stroke outboards are rivalling small diesels in fuel economy and they are much quieter.

Plus, for service or repairs the engine is taken to the mechanic, and not the other way around. Guess which is cheaper?

Also, when comparing different designs, the two most telling features of a boat’s size are waterline length and displacement.

One of the most common tricks of the modern designer is to extend the bow and stern for no reason other than to make a boat seem bigger – to turn, say, a 30-footer into a 36ft boat so the designers and builders can charge more.

In my opinion this arbitrary lengthening of a design adds nothing to seaworthiness, but it does make a big difference in docking fees.

But, of course, most designers can’t be concerned with anything so mundane as the cost of keeping one of their boats at a dock.

Then there is the thorny issue of the dinghy. Some sailors like to keep it overturned on deck, but then it constantly blocks your vision and is in the way when tending sails.

The best route, I think, is to keep it on permanent davits, big-boat style. Mostly out of the way, but still readily accessible.

The only downside is some marinas are going to charge you that extra 4ft boat length. In this case, you just have to bite the bullet and live with it.

And as far as dinghy materials go, my first handmade one of fibreglass over plywood rotted out before I had a chance to use it.

My next dinghy will be made either of solid fibreglass or will be an inflatable.

The last feature we will talk about is lifelines.

On a wooden or fibreglass boat it’s just about impossible to make them strong enough to withstand the force of a 200lb man (or woman) being thrown violently against them.

On a boat made of aluminium or steel this is possible, but then they are usually made at just the right height to flip you overboard when thrown against it. To say nothing of the constant hassle getting over them while docked.

No, for me, I much prefer a super solid toe rail, and cabin top handrails. If your feet stay on the deck, and your hand is tight on a deck rail, it’s impossible to get tossed off the ship.

Having said that, in rough weather an overboard line attached to each crew member is always a good idea when leaving the cockpit.

Mike Camp’s design for his 26ft steel construction yacht Lynx

So how did we arrive at the actual hull shape?

Well, the aforementioned 32ft cat-rigged Raven Lady design was obtained by carving a half-model and taking the dimensions of the model.

I felt too lazy to go through that exercise again, so I decided to cheat.

The 26ft Lynx has the same keel shape, stern profile, transom lines, and midship frame design. So I fabricated the shortened keel, set up the stern and transom pieces, and welded the midship frame in place.

Then I simply bent the shear bar, upper chine bar, and lower chine bar in place, and the hull shape was established. I call this process ‘lofting-in- place’ – although there may be a proper name for it.

Hull shape is established once keel, frames and chines are in place

There were no real problems encountered in plating this framework.

So then there is the cabin and cockpit design and construction materials.

Where two different materials are joined together is always a source of future problems. I seriously considered an all-steel topside but concluded that would create too much weight aloft.

So the decision was made to use laminated plywood covered with fibreglass cloth and resin. Overall it worked out well.

Topsides are constructed from ply covered with glassfibre cloth and resin

Choosing a rig

The original rig for Lynx was going to be a cat rig. That is, one mast stepped right close to the bow, one large sail usually gaff rigged, with no standing rigging.

These boats were built by poor fishermen who designed out all unnecessary expensive fittings and gadgets – exactly opposite of the modern trend.

Anyway, I fabricated the mast step, and the boom. When I had a look at that huge boom and imagined it sweeping across the cockpit in heavy weather, I chickened out.

Mike in full welding kit at work plating the bow of Lynx

So I went with a traditional sloop rig with a large mainsail and a non- overlapping jib for easy tacking. I made a jib boom and boom track, but it was more trouble than it was worth, so I went back to a loose-footed jib.

If the boat ever gets offshore, I would acquire a large, overlapping jib.

And a quick word on built-in tanks: don’t have any! In my years doing boat repairs, it wasn’t a question of if they would be a problem, but when.

Eventually both water and fuel tanks will become contaminated and will need to be cleaned out. And designers and builders never put large enough clean out openings.

And then the lines and fittings always eventually leak. In the bilge under the floor of the Lynx I have enough room for at least 100 two-litre bottles of water, probably more.

The gas cylinder for the outboard is on the same stern platform as the engine, and extra gas cylinders are carried in the cockpit seat lockers, which are sealed off from the rest of the living area so there is never a smell of gas in the cabin.

Speaking of the cabin interior, the four berths of my original drawing were reduced to two, which gives way more storage capacity. There is a propane gas stove, and a permanent wood stove.

Don’t laugh until you’ve tried it. Propane heating stoves are great for creating moisture, something we are trying to avoid on a boat if at all possible.

There is a toilet with a holding tank.

Functional down below. Note woodburning stove and stainless steel compression post

And a final word about overall boat aesthetics: everyone likes a boat with pleasing lines, but the shorter the overall length, the harder this is to do.

It took a lot of extra work to attempt to get nice, flowing lines in the deck and hull, but I think it was worth it. Must be my artistic background.

But then you can be the judge of that yourself. As far as the unusual shape of the bow is concerned, the best answer I can give is that it just turned out that way.

I know it is usually long and narrow but as the beam still expands rapidly to 10 feet, it doesn’t seem to have hurt the interior accommodation.

It parts the seas wonderfully well and results in pretty much zero wake which adds to the overall efficiency of the design.

And the name Lynx? During my years as a professional trapper in northern Canada, it was my favourite wild animal.

Actually, it still is.

Who is Tom Colvin?

Tom Colvin was a colourful non-conformist, professional sailor, boatbuilder, designer, writer, maritime historian and polyglot, writes Graham Cox of the Junk Rig Association. He spoke five languages, including Mandarin.

He gained his Master under Sail aged 20, and Master under Steam at 23.

In the 1930s he sailed aboard local trading junks in Southern China. He noted they carried stayed masts and small jibs, and had done so since Portuguese traders sailed these waters in the 15th century.

This experience is reflected in the boats he later designed.

He built each of his designs for himself, and voyaged extensively before selling plans to others.

He often sailed engineless, and raised three children aboard with his wife, Jean. His first ocean-going boat was the 42ft Gazelle , launched in 1967.

It is probably his most famous design, with more than 700 built. More than 10 are known to have circumnavigated, and others have made significant voyages.

One Gazelle, Migrant , made daily runs in excess of 200 miles, running before the South Pacific tradewinds. They are slow to windward, but Tom did not consider this a disadvantage for ocean voyaging.

He passed away in Fort Meyers, Florida, in September 2014, aged 89.

Tom Colvin’s most popular design, the 42ft Gazelle steel schooner

The case for long-keelers

Let’s first consider that damnable fin keel.

Influenced by racing boat requirements to turn quickly, it is structurally weak, has no directional stability and shackles you with an unnecessarily deep draught.

If that wasn’t bad enough, it is usually coupled with a skeg-hung rudder.

So if you hit something big that doesn’t knock off your fin keel, it will definitely take out your skeg-hung rudder.

A serious degeneration in design by all accounts from the long, shallow keel from the past with its protected rudder.

Next, to go along with this deep fin keel, we now require a highly stressed tall mast with a puny main sail and a bewildering assortment of head sails.

So the mainsail has become taller in the luff, shorter in the foot, and in essence has become secondary to the foresail.

All these sins committed in the name of a fractionally better windward performance.

I don’t know about you, but I find it unpleasant to beat to windward, and would never own a boat whose main design consideration was going efficiently into the wind.

About the author

Mike Camp graduated from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada with a degree in Fine Art.

After teaching for a few years he decided to pursue working as a painter and sculptor full time.

This work evolved into two separate but related fields. The first was as a wilderness landscape painter.

To give authenticity to this work he spent over 25 years living and travelling in some of the most remote parts of Canada.

The other aspect of his work was building monumental welded sculptures mostly of stainless steel.

These works have become well known across Canada and can be seen on his website mikecampdesigns.ca

As published in the February 2018 issue of Practical Boat Owner magazine.

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YACHT CONSTRUCTION

STEEL YACHT CONSTRUCTION

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Steel Yacht Construction

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The materials used for the construction of boats are the most important quality factor. Boats that are built of a durable material and with good workmanship and accurate planning will carry blue cruise enthusiasts safely on the vast seas, where they can enrich their inner world and discover freedom and peace of mind.

One of the materials used in boat building is steel... We can define steel as a metal which passed through thick roller pipes to turn it into sheet, particularly as a ferrous material. As in all industrial fields after the Industrial Revolution, the use of steel in the construction of boats has increased as well.

Steel boats built by Cobra Yacht are also constructed in accordance with the principles of high quality and fine workmanship that are applied in the construction of other boats.

With steel boat construction , building quite large-sized boats that sail the vast seas quickly and safely has become easier. However, in earlier times boats built of steel were cargo boats and the use of steel in recreational crafts is a more recent development.

The biggest advantages for steel boat builders to use this material are the low cost and labour. In addition, steel boats are just as resistant to severe weather and climate conditions as wooden boats.

One of the most common objects of curiosity is whether or not steel boats corrode in the sea. If steel boats are painted and sandblasted properly, this type of boats will not have any corrosion problems for many years.

The fact that the osmosis problem encountered in fibre-glass boats does not occur in steel boats is a big advantage for steel boat builders.

As we can see with all materials, steel boats have some advantages, but they also have some drawbacks. Plate, which is a heavy material, will slow down the boats as well as making them durable. Boats in which steel is used as the material will not be suitable for those who want to have a speedy blue voyage on the vast seas.

Plate boats are strongly affected by heat and cold and therefore require professional insulation.

When plate boats, considered cheaper in terms of labour and cost, are compared to fibre-glass boats, it is possible to say that fibre-glass boats are more advantageous.

With emerging technology, the use of computer programs in the construction of plate boats has led to a shortening of the construction time of plate boats. Cobra Yacht combines the latest technology, quality and elegance to create their vision in their world-class plate boats.

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The Versatility and Strength of Steel in Luxury Yacht Construction
Luxury Yacht Construction

Steel has long been recognized as one of the most versatile and durable materials in the construction of luxury yachts. Its strength and resilience make it a top choice for yacht builders, and its use in the industry dates back centuries. When it comes to creating a high-end, luxurious vessel, there are many factors to consider, including design, functionality, and of course, the materials used. And when it comes to materials, steel has proven time and time again to be a superior choice for luxury yacht construction. In this article, we will delve into the world of luxury yacht construction and explore the many ways in which steel plays a crucial role. From its history to its modern-day applications, we will uncover the reasons why steel continues to reign supreme in the world of luxury yachts. To truly understand the importance of steel in luxury yacht construction, it is essential to first understand its properties.

Steel is an alloy made primarily of iron and carbon, with small amounts of other elements added to enhance its strength and corrosion resistance. This combination results in a material that is strong, yet malleable enough to be molded into various shapes and designs. In yacht construction, steel is typically used for the hull, decks, and superstructure due to its ability to withstand extreme weather conditions and provide a stable foundation for the vessel. It also allows for intricate designs and customization, making it a popular choice among yacht designers. One of the main advantages of using steel in yacht construction is its strength-to-weight ratio .

This means that it can support heavy loads while still being relatively lightweight. This is especially important in luxury yacht construction, where every inch and pound counts. Additionally, steel has excellent tensile strength , which means it can resist pulling or stretching forces without breaking. This is crucial for withstanding rough seas and high winds that yachts may encounter during their voyages. Another key aspect of steel is its corrosion resistance .

Due to its high carbon content, steel forms a protective layer of iron oxide when exposed to air and water, preventing rust from forming. This makes it an ideal material for use in marine environments, where exposure to saltwater and moisture is inevitable. Yacht owners can rest assured that their vessel's steel components will maintain their integrity and appearance for years to come with proper maintenance and care. Despite its many benefits, there are some drawbacks to using steel in luxury yacht construction. One of the main concerns is its potential for galvanic corrosion , which occurs when two different metals come into contact with each other in the presence of an electrolyte, such as saltwater.

Potential Challenges

Steel is a heavy material, which can add significant weight to a yacht and affect its performance and fuel efficiency. This is especially important in the world of luxury yachts, where speed and efficiency are highly valued. To mitigate this challenge, yacht designers and builders have been incorporating advanced technologies and techniques to reduce the weight of steel structures. This includes using thinner steel plates, designing hulls with more efficient shapes, and utilizing composite materials to complement the steel structure.

Designing with Steel

This is where steel shines as a material of choice for yacht builders. Not only is steel known for its strength and durability, but it also allows for intricate designs and customization, making it a versatile option for yacht construction. One of the main advantages of using steel in yacht construction is its ability to be molded into various shapes and sizes. This allows for more flexibility in design, as steel can be easily curved or shaped according to the desired design.

This is especially important in luxury yacht construction, where every detail is meticulously thought out and plays a crucial role in the overall aesthetic. In addition, steel is a highly customizable material, making it ideal for creating unique and one-of-a-kind yachts. With steel, yacht designers have the freedom to experiment with different shapes, angles, and curves to achieve the desired look and feel of the yacht. This level of customization is not possible with other materials, making steel a top choice for luxury yacht construction.

Moreover, steel offers a sleek and modern appearance, adding a touch of elegance to any yacht design. Its smooth finish and ability to be painted in various colors make it easy to achieve a desired aesthetic for the yacht. Whether it's a classic or contemporary design, steel can be easily incorporated to enhance the overall look of the yacht. Finally, steel's strength and durability allow for intricate designs without compromising on safety.

The Benefits of Steel in Luxury Yacht Construction

Steel is known for its exceptional tensile strength, meaning it can withstand high levels of stress without breaking or deforming. This makes it ideal for withstanding the harsh conditions of the open sea, providing a safe and reliable structure for the yacht. Another advantage of steel is its versatility. Unlike other materials, steel can be easily molded and shaped into various designs, allowing for greater flexibility in yacht construction. This means that designers can create unique and intricate shapes and structures without compromising on strength and stability. In addition to its strength and versatility, steel is also highly resistant to corrosion.

This is especially important for yachts, as they are constantly exposed to saltwater and other corrosive elements. With proper maintenance, a steel yacht can last for decades without showing signs of wear and tear. Furthermore, steel is a sustainable material, making it a popular choice among environmentally conscious yacht owners. It is 100% recyclable and has a long lifespan, reducing the need for frequent replacements and minimizing its impact on the environment. Overall, the benefits of using steel in luxury yacht construction are numerous. Its strength, versatility, durability, and sustainability make it the top choice for building luxurious and reliable yachts.

So the next time you see a stunning yacht cruising through the open waters, remember that its strong foundation is thanks to the versatile properties of steel. In the world of luxury yacht construction, steel remains a top choice for its strength, versatility, and beauty. Its unique properties make it a crucial component in creating seaworthy and opulent vessels that can withstand the test of time. With proper care and maintenance, a yacht built with steel can provide an unmatched level of comfort and safety for its owners and guests.

Marci Moredock

Award-winning web lover. General music buff. Avid pizza scholar. Award-winning travel maven. Typical bacon fanatic.

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Steel boats: the advantages and disadvantages of this hull material

Steel boats are the talk of the pontoons. Bernard Moitessier and other sailors of the time all chose this material for various reasons. There are also a good number of launches still built in steel. But why are they still relevant today? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this material?

Why choose a steel boat?

After reading a book by Bernard Moitessier and other ocean adventurers, many will choose a steel boat. The steel boat is historically the travel boat that can brave all conditions, including extreme latitudes. Choosing a steel boat in the 21st century can also be a guarantee of safety in the event of a collision with a UFO. But what are the real advantages and disadvantages of these hulls?

The advantages of steel boats

Uncompromising strength: a well-built steel boat can withstand all weather conditions and even collisions. It will often come out with a few dents, but should remain watertight.

Durability: well-treated steel is a material that lasts over time. Almost all large vessels (ferries, container ships, merchant ships, etc.) are made of steel , and many are over 50 years old. What's more, steel is easy to recycle.

Cheap and "easy" repairs: if there's damage , or even holes, steel boats can be repaired easily. All you have to do is cut and re-weld, and a good boilermaker will be able to do it for you. And if you're good with your soldering poster, you can also do it yourself.

It's easy to do-it-yourself: need to add a platform to your ship? Consider welding it on. Just try to keep it elegant and sleek!

Cost: you can find bargains and inexpensive boats. However, this advantage can quickly turn into a disadvantage if the boat is in poor condition. A steel boat in poor condition can be very labor-intensive, and you'll need to be prepared to spend a few months or years in the yard before you're ready to sail .

Disadvantages of steel boats

Strong, but heavy: steel is much heavier than other materials. For example, a 9-meter boat can weigh up to 7 tons, while the same boat made of fiber will weigh no more than 4 tons. This means heavy displacement and a different way of sailing. The rest of the boat will have to be sized accordingly: sails, rigging, ropes...

Corrosion: this is the biggest drawback. A steel boat is bound to rust, sooner or later. As the sea is an aggressive environment, boats need to be closely monitored. You need to be able to take apart every nook and cranny of the boat to make sure there's no rust. Generally speaking, the exterior of the boat is well protected by paint, and this is not where problems appear, or at least they remain clearly visible. Corrosion is more likely to appear inside, where access is difficult: under the sink, under the shower, at the bottom of the anchor locker... If you're going to buy a steel sailboat , make sure you can explore everything.

Insulation: properly insulating your steel vessel is essential, for both hot and cold . But insulation must be "removable", so that all parts can be accessed to check for rust.

Electrolysis: rarer than on aluminum boats, electrolysis also exists on steel boats. To avoid seeing your boat turn into a battery , you'll need to keep an eye on the condition of the anodes, and change them when the time comes. You'll also need to keep an eye on your electrical installation to ensure that there are no leaks inside the boat . And last but not least, you'll need to be careful not to make direct contact with any metal you put on your boat, such as an aluminum cleat or a bronze hull pass-through (in this case, prefer a plastic one).

Steel or not?

Ultimately, well-treated steel boats offer everything you'd expect from a blue water cruiser: durability and sturdiness. But all materials have their drawbacks, and you'll have to accept being heavier and less efficient, being meticulous about rust and electrolysis, and spending a few hours treating and painting corrosion starts. If you feel you can get past these drawbacks, then you might just have the chance to weld steel links with the sea.

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The stunning 55m ice-class expedition yacht STEEL represents our largest volume project to date and one of the most original bespoke new build projects to be created at Pendennis. Launched in early 2009, her elegant interior styling and robust exterior lines are the result of a collaboration between the yacht Owner, Pendennis and yacht designers Liebowitz & Pritchard Architecture + Yacht Design, whilst the naval architecture was completed by Burness Corlett & Partners in Southampton. Built to +100 AL Lloyds, 1a Ice Class, STEEL is also fully MCA compliant with long range capabilities. The vessel employs state-of-the-art systems, fitout, and equipment – much of it bespoke. Built primarily in steel with aluminium deckhouse and upperworks, the 700ton vessel has a rounded stern underbody which effectively aids ship stability in following seas. At anchor, four Quantum Zero-Speed stabilisers attenuate roll substantially. Exterior features include imposing high prow, functional “work deck” forward, hydraulic Rondal elevating crow’s nest, expansive sundeck, hydraulic side “beaches”, 29ft jet Owner’s tender (amongst others), active-current spa pool, sophisticated boarding systems, and sculptural rounded stern. The yacht returned to Pendennis in 2016 for minor engineering and survey works. Her hull was repainted to midnight blue, a stark contrast to her previous unique green hull.

BUILDER Pendennis

YEAR OF BUILD 2009

TYPE Motor Yacht

NAVAL ARCHITECT Burness Corlett & Partners, Pendennis

EXTERIOR STYLING Liebowitz & Pritchard

INTERIOR DESIGN Liebowitz & Pritchard, Pendennis

CONSTRUCTION Steel

LOA 54.9m (180.12ft)

BEAM 9.8m (32.81ft)

DRAFT 3.50m (11.48ft)

DISPLACEMENT 700 tons

PENDENNIS REFIT YEAR 2017

Steel at Pendennis in 2017, following her repaint

Aft deck dining area (photography Cory Silken)

All bespoke fabrication was completed at Pendennis (photography Cory Silken)

Aft deck with social area, tender storage and launch (photography Cory Silken)

Al fresco dining area (photography Cory Silken)

State-of-the-art navigation equipment (photography Cory Silken)

The official 2009 launch of Steel at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth

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Steel for Sail and Power

For high latitude voyaging, steel hulls have the major benefit of resisting damage from ice.

S teel ships are the backbone of world trade, and navies around the world maintain their allegiance to the metal. Like-minded builders of smaller commercial fishing boats, tugs and barges also favor the iron/carbon amalgam. So why do we see so few recreational power and sailing vessels being built from what’s arguably the strongest and one of the least expensive boatbuilding materials? Before attempting to answer, it makes sense to take a close look at what steel has to offer.

Riveted iron was the first step in a ship building renaissance, a trend that gave white oak and spruce trees a bit of a reprieve. Eventually, carbon was added to iron increasing its tensile strength and stiffness. At about the same time, welding expedited the building process and steel plate was cut and shaped using highly directable flame heat from oxyacetylene torches. Today, steel can also be cut with laser, plasma, waterjet, and saw blade technology. Metal workers bend hull plate over steel frames, tack weld the plate in place and eventually carefully fuse all the seams together.

Steel power voyagers like this Cape Horn 58 can handle minor groundings without loss of watertight integrity.

Stick welding became a highly prized craft essential to how frames were tacked in place and plate-to-plate seams were joined. At the heart of the process is the welder’s electrical transformer, a tool that turns AC current into lower voltage higher amperage DC current with the capacity to melt metal. Its lower voltage dissipates the shock hazard. Electrical welding harnesses an intentional short circuit. The positive and negative leads meet at the point where the welding rod touches the grounded plate. A key factor in welding involves smoothly working the rod across the seam allowing the high current to momentarily turn both the rod tip and plate into molten metal. When the steel “weld pool” cools, the resulting joint is as strong or even stronger than the hull plate itself.

Pluses and minuses Mild steel, as a material, has a long list of desirable attributes along with a couple of potential showstoppers. On the plus side, resides toughness, malleability, and isotropic strength (equal strength in all directions). The net effect of these attributes includes abrasion resistance and a structure that reacts to point loads by deforming rather than tearing. It’s also the least expensive of modern small craft building materials and is relatively easy to repair. The build process can be expedited using computer aided design (CAD), numerically controlled cutting (NC) and laser, plasma or waterjet cutters that steel suppliers use to provide pre-cut hull plating that fits together like puzzle pieces. Steel boat designer Michael Kasten has found that this service can cut building time of a 45-footer by up to 40%.

Corrosion can be kept at bay by proper maintenance and modern coating technology.

Rust is the enemy of every steel boat owner. Adding carbon to iron increases the metal’s strength but also ups its tendency to oxidize. As steel begins to corrode a powdery, rufous-colored scale quickly grows into flake-like layers of rust as the material’s strength and stiffness disappear. Steel ships are designed with a specific percentage of added plate thickness to account for corrosion over the vessel’s design lifespan (usually 20 years). Small craft designers can’t afford to add the weight of thicker plate and the design process seldom incorporates such corrosion compensation. Instead, contemporary coatings, meticulous preparation and application techniques will do a very good job of holding rust at bay.

Streamlining steel boat construction defies the round bilge smooth curve status quo. And one of the biggest challenges involves generating hard chine aesthetic appeal and maintaining bilateral symmetry. In short, the challenge is bending flat plate into a functional hydrodynamic shape with enough aesthetic appeal to draw a sailor’s eye. In years gone by, master craftsmen struggled to twist and cajole steel plate over round bilge frames that incorporated compound curves galore. In many cases, several hundred pounds of epoxy filler had to be pasted to the hull, troweled out and sanded smooth with “long boards” to mimic the fairness of a timber or FRP hull. Today, single chine, multi chine and radius chine designs prevail. They are designed to minimize the slab-sided look and are much easier to build than a complete round bilge boat. The FRP production boat industry has helped by following automotive trends, and adding a chine to their racers and cruisers.

Fine tuning stability The design challenge also includes how the significant weight of steel is handled. When it comes to vessels less than 50 feet, weight distribution becomes an even bigger issue. For example, to lessen weight above decks and still minimize deck flex, a designer must use thinner plate, 10- or even thinner 12-gauge steel. This requires shorter spans between transverse and longitudinal support or a switch to stiffer Corten steel. Some builders even switch to aluminum above the sheer, a weight saving alternative that ups costs and adds complexity.

Welding steel plates creates an incredibly tough hull structure.

This metal transition requires the installation of an explosion welded bi-metallic strip that’s composed of aluminum bonded to steel. It allows a fabricator to conventionally weld one side of the junction strip to the hull’s sheer and then TIG or MIG weld an aluminum superstructure to the opposite side. Welding aluminum requires an inert gas to shield the arc, and the plate is harder to weld but easier to cut. The surface can be left uncoated, it will form a self-protecting, lightly oxidized layer that abates further oxidation. The steel hull, however, must be blasted, primed and painted inside and out. And as Michael Kasten professes, “clean and grit blast the surface, apply epoxy and avoid using sprayed-in foam insulation.”

Completed welds are as strong as the plate material.

The all-steel alternative can also be designed as a seaworthy vessel if careful attention is paid to weight distribution and the height of the superstructure. Payload location can also be a vital consideration. During the design process, every effort should be made to place machinery and integral tankage as low in the bilge as possible. Chain, batteries, and heavier equipment should also reside in the dry spaces below the cabin sole. If a power cruiser is to be an offshore passage maker, these vertical center of gravity considerations rule out the double-decker riverboat look and it’s also wise to avoid perching a sizable runabout and lifting crane on the top deck, aft of a heavy flybridge. A fringe benefit found aboard lower air draft power cruisers is that it places cabin space closer to the waterline where there is less effect from pitch and roll and windage is lessened.

Sail and power Over the last 40 years I’ve kept track of a small but hearty 45-foot tug/work boat built by Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding in Somerset, Mass. Dragon belonged to a friend of mine and played a central role in his marine construction business. And whether he was pushing a small crane barge, towing a load of pilings up and down Long Island Sound or when the vessel was loaded up with a sunfish, whitehall rowboat and provisions for a summer family cruise to Block Island — Dragon fit the bill. For decades Captain Jim and now his oldest son Eric have followed a regular rust abatement routine. Their anti-corrosion strategy included regular inspections of hard-to-get-at confines and never painting over rust. The grinder and wire wheel effectively abraded small spots but grit blasting to “white-metal” status was used when appropriate. Their painting preference revolved around PPG Ameron products. High on their to-do list was changing zincs and meticulously servicing the trusty old Detroit 6-71 diesel.

Fiberglass hulls do many things well but impacts and abrasion can cause serious damage.

Steel sailboats and power cruisers still hold justified appeal, but it’s important to understand what ownership entails. This is especially true for those considering a DIY build of a steel cruising boat. A good starting point is a thorough review of both Bruce Roberts and Michael Kasten’s in-depth online commentary. There’s plenty of valid detail about building metal boats, both aluminum and steel. Those with experience in welding and metal fabrication have a very significant head start and finished hulls will reflect those who learn metal work during the project and those who start out with essential fabrication skills.

If you’re considering purchasing a steel cruising boat it’s essential to engage a skilled, metal boat-versed, marine surveyor. But before that develop a clear vision of what you are after. A handy way to compare vessels is through the use of parametric analysis. It’s basically, a straight forward spec comparison among two or more vessels and recognition of how the numbers relate to underway characteristics.

Two hulls compared In this case I’ll compare my own well-seasoned 41-foot Ericson (18,000 pounds displacement (six-foot draft, 10’ 8” beam, 8,200 pound ballast, 750 square foot sail area) with a classic round bilge, steel 37-foot Zeeland Yawl, (18,000 pounds displacement 5’8” draft, 10’ beam, 5,700 pounds ballast, 550 square foot sail area). Though the two boats’ displacements are similar, the Zeeland Yawl’s working sail area is a lot less. This is likely due to a lower righting moment (ability to resist heeling). A further indicator of this diminished stability is the lower ballast/weight ratio, even though the displacement numbers are the same. The net result is a bit less ability to recover from a deep knockdown or capsize. The designer saw this and responded with a smaller sail area that induces less of a heeling moment.

In real world terms this means that the E-41 would be far more efficient sailing in light air as well as more likely to avoid a knockdown, even when both boats are deeply reefed. But when it comes to sailing higher latitudes with bergy bits floating by, or fetching up on an uncharted rocky shoal, the Zeeland Yawl’s Corten steel hull wins hands down.

The reason welded steel construction has dominated the maritime industry for decades yet made only a slight ripple in the realm of recreational small craft construction is multifaceted. In part it’s due to the production efficiency of molded FRP boat building, the ongoing concern over corrosion, plus the reality that most recreational craft aren’t put to the same rugged use as commercial vessels and work boats. However, for those who sail or power cruise well off the beaten path, steel hulls are still held in high regard and to rank number one when it comes to abrasion resistance and survivability in groundings, collisions, and other blunt force trauma. n

Ralph Naranjo is a circumnavigator and the author of The Art of Seamanship (International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press).

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METAL BOAT CONSTRUCTION: Strong As Hell

METAL HAS BEEN USED to build ships for about 160 years, and very large metal yachts were being built as early as the late 19th century. In 1895, for example, Nat Herreshoff designed and constructed a radical 123-foot composite metal sloop, Defender , to defend the America’s Cup. She was built of aluminum, bronze, and steel and within six years was so debilitated by galvanic corrosion she had to be broken up.

It wasn’t until the 1960s (except for some boats built in Holland, where steel has long been a favored material) that metal was used to build sailboats of more moderate size. Bernard Moitessier , an early pioneer, commissioned the construction of his 40-foot steel ketch Joshua in 1961. By the middle of the decade, aluminum was also being used to build both racing and cruising boats. By the mid-1970s, aluminum was the favored construction material in America’s Cup 12-meter boats (the first was Courageous , built in 1974) and remained so until the mid-1980s.

These days racing boats are rarely built of metal, though it is still very popular with certain cruising sailors. For those tired of chasing down deck leaks on wood or fiberglass boats, one big attraction of an all-metal boat is that it is very tight. The hull-deck joint is welded and all hardware such as cleats, genoa tracks, stanchion bases, etc., can be welded in place, with no fasteners penetrating the structure. Instead of leaks, however, one must worry about corrosion.

One big advantage of metal boats is that deck hardware can be welded rather than fastened in place. This cleat may be strong enough to lift the boat it is installed on and will never be the cause of a deck leak!

Pound for pound metal is far stronger than wood or fiberglass. Unlike wood and glass, which have most of their strength oriented along the lay of their grain or fibers, metal is equally strong in all directions. Metal is so tough one needn’t worry about wasting strength because of this, and much trouble is saved because the material can be laid down any which way. In a wood or glass boat, by comparison, designers and builders must always take care to ensure that material is aligned along anticipated load paths.

The skin of a metal boat must be kept quite thin or the boat will be much too heavy. The thin skin, in turn, must be completely supported by a frame or it will flex too much. The traditional approach is transverse framing similar to that found in plank-on-frame boats. There is a backbone keel with a large number of transverse frames attached to it, plus thin lateral stringers to hold them together. The alternative is longitudinal framing, where fewer but much larger ring frames are joined together by a large number of stringers.

The advantage of transverse framing is that smaller, more closely spaced frames intrude less on the boat’s interior than do bulkier ring frames. A transverse frame, however, takes more work to put together, as there are more frames that need to be cut to shape. Whatever type of framing is used, it is always much easier (and less expensive) to build a hard-chined hull. It certainly is not impossible to create a true round-bilged metal hull, but it does take more effort. A compromise shape is seen in radius-bilge hulls where the corners are knocked off a hard-chine hull and replaced with large radiused angles.

Transverse framing for a metal boat under construction. Note the thin lateral stringers holding the transverse frames together (Photo courtesy of Billy Black)

A metal boat must also be well insulated. Metal conducts both sound and heat very well, and living inside an uninsulated hull would be nothing less than an ordeal. The boat’s interior would be much too cold when it’s cold out, much too hot when it’s warm out, you’d be up to your eyeballs in condensation, and every little sound on deck or in the water around you would be greatly amplified, as though you had your head inside a vast tin drum. The most common types of insulation are foam, cork, and fiberglass, which are available in sheets that can be cut and laid in place between the frames. Alternatively, urethane foam can be sprayed onto a hull’s interior surface. Fiberglass is the most fire-resistant insulation; urethane foam is the least fire-resistant and also absorbs odors easily. Whatever type is used, insulation should never be laid down in a metal boat’s bilges, as it will inevitably get wet there.

Sprayed-on urethane foam insulation in an unfinished storage area on an aluminum boat. Foam is easy to install, but is not fire-resistant and it also absorbs odors

To avoid the awful fate of Defender different metals on a metal boat must be carefully isolated from each other. This is always the case, of course, but on a metal boat it is particularly important, as one of the metal parts that needs protecting is the hull itself. In theory this is simple; in practice it requires constant vigilance.

Any bronze seacocks, winches, or other hardware–not to mention the vast universe of stainless steel hardware and fasteners found on all modern boats, or the intricate web of copper wiring that comprises an electrical system–must all be isolated from the hull by non-metallic spacers and inserts, insulating grease, plastic sheathing, etc., in order to ensure that no galvanic couples are created. Zinc anodes must be scrupulously maintained. Electrical wiring must be carefully organized–with a galvanic isolator or, better, an isolation transformer on the shore-power side–to protect the boat from stray electrical currents. A strong dose of stray current can chew up a metal boat in just a few days.

The primary advantage of any metal boat is its inherent strength. This steel boat, for example, has a massive dent after suffering through a major collision, but it isn’t taking on water. A fiberglass boat would have been holed and likely would have sunk very quickly

A small handful of European builders construct metal boats on a series production basis; otherwise, like wood boats, they are built as one-offs. Metal is usually the cheapest material to work with when building just one boat. This, plus the fact that metal boats are so strong, means there will always be a cult of metal-boat cruisers. As mentioned, most acolytes are found in Europe. There are a few metal boatbuilders in North America (mostly in Canada), and there is always a small selection of metal boats available on the North American brokerage market, but the heart of the market will always lie on the eastern shores of the North Atlantic.

Steel Boats

Steel is heavy and strong, but is also hard, and working it requires heavy-duty grinding and cutting tools. Cutting and welding steel is laborious, but the welding is not sophisticated and is a relatively easy skill to acquire. Most of all, steel is subject to rusting. Put it in contact with water and oxygen–two things that are never hard to find in the marine environment–and it starts corroding at an alarming rate. Add a little salt, and things only get worse.

A steel boat under construction. Many steel boats, like this one, begin as backyard projects (Photo courtesy of Bruce Roberts-Goodson)

Paint, paint, and more paint is the only answer. Bernard Moitessier liked to boast that a well-trained monkey could do this, but to maintain a steel boat properly you need to be a busy monkey. Modern paint systems are durable and reliable, and if a steel boat is properly prepped and painted as it is built, and if it is designed so that all parts of its interior are accessible to a paint brush, it is possible to keep the rust at bay indefinitely. But the bottom line is you will always be painting a steel boat, both inside and out, or will be worrying about painting it.

Because steel is so heavy, it is not possible to build a small- to moderate-size steel sailboat that performs very well. To sail fast, relatively speaking, you need a steel boat at least 100 feet long. Any steel vessel shorter than 60 feet should have its deck and superstructure built of another lighter material to keep it from getting too top-heavy. In older steel yachts this was common. The problem, however, is that you then don’t have the leakproof deck that makes a metal boat seem so attractive in the first place. And all those deck leaks, of course, only help things inside start rusting more quickly.

Example of a small steel sailboat hull. It is certainly strong, but once rigged it won’t be winning any races

Most contemporary steel boats, whatever their size, have steel decks. Because steel is hard and stiff and difficult to work, they often have simple shapes and hard-chine hulls. Such boats are cheap and easy to build, and home-built examples aren’t hard to find on the used-boat market. If you don’t care about performance, are willing to do a lot of painting, and want an inexpensive boat that is incredibly tough, an all-steel boat is an excellent choice. Otherwise, particularly if you are a coastal cruiser, you’d do well to stay away from these.

Aluminum Boats

Aluminum is weaker than steel by a factor of about 1.5 (i.e., to be as strong as steel, aluminum plate must be 1.5 times thicker), but it is also lighter by a factor of almost 3 (i.e., it weighs 1/3 as much). So the bottom line is simple: an aluminum object that is as strong as an equivalent steel object weighs only half as much. On a purely structural basis, aluminum therefore makes an excellent boatbuilding material.

Aluminum is also much softer than steel, so is easier to work with. It can be cut, drilled, and shaped with common woodworking tools and can be more easily tortured into complex forms. Best of all, it doesn’t rust. Put it in contact with water and oxygen and it forms a thin oxide layer on its surface that makes it even stronger and more corrosion-resistant. No painting is required except below the waterline, where antifouling is still needed to keep lifeforms from latching on. (Generally, though, it is also wise to paint an aluminum boat’s decks some light color to reflect solar radiation and help keep the interior cool.)

Of course, I’m a little prejudiced in favor of aluminum boats, because I own one. This is our boat Lunacy , a 39-foot Tanton design, at anchor in Maine. The hard-chined hull was built in Canada in 1985 and was finished in Rhode Island

Aluminum is considerably more expensive than steel. Commodity prices of course fluctuate, but on a strict per-pound basis, steel is usually about five times cheaper. Though you need only half as many pounds to make an equivalent aluminum boat, you’ll still be spending two-and-a-half times as much on materials. This is offset to a large extent by the fact that it takes about half as many man-hours to weld up an aluminum hull and deck. Still an aluminum boat, all told, costs roughly 5 to 15 percent more to build than a steel one.

Though it takes less time, it also takes more skill to build an aluminum boat. Welding aluminum is a sophisticated process requiring special gas-shielded equipment. Ideally, all work should be performed indoors in a well-protected environment. As a result, you almost never see home-built aluminum boats. Also, appropriate marine-grade aluminum (5054, 5083, and 5086 are the best alloys for a hull) is hard to find outside the United States and Europe, as are qualified welders, so making permanent repairs in remote locations is difficult, if not impossible. A steel boat, by comparison, can be easily repaired almost anywhere in the world.

The biggest drawback to aluminum is that it is highly susceptible to both galvanic and stray-current corrosion. It is low on the galvanic scale and wastes away quickly when placed in contact with salt water and more noble metals like stainless steel, bronze, and copper. Different metals must be carefully isolated, and bilges must be kept clean and dry to prevent the inadvertent creation of galvanic couples, as something like a lost coin or camera battery might literally sink your boat someday. Zincs must also be scrupulously maintained and stringent precautions must be taken to ensure no stray electrical current comes aboard.

Otherwise, a properly designed aluminum boat is fast, strong, easy to maintain, and thus a good choice for cruising. They are, unfortunately, relatively hard to come by in North America. A few used examples can usually be found on the brokerage market, but otherwise you’ll need to do your shopping elsewhere. A few French builders– Alubat and Garcia come to mind–do produce series-built aluminum cruising boats, but these are quite expensive compared to mass-produced fiberglass boats. They also tend to be bilge-centerboard designs, which are comfortable and well thought out, but are also quite idiosyncratic by American standards and are apt to appeal only to more open-minded sailors.

LYMAN MORSE YARD TOUR: A Whole Lot of Cool Stuff Going On

ME, THE BOAT AND A GUY NAMED BOB: Cruising the W’Indies With Dylan

Small quibble in a solid article Charles. You say a sailboat must be 100′ plus LOD to sail fast. Moitessier’s 40′ LOD ketch Joshua, which you mention several x, regularly ran off long daily runs. 175 NM/day was common, if I remember right. Well, for me that’s fast!

@Nicolas: Hey, Nick! I should have figured you’d have something to say about this one. I did over-generalize a bit about smaller steel boats being slow. Moitessier was indeed relatively fast in Joshua during the Golden Globe. I’m sure he did have 175-mile days, though I’m not so sure they were very common. We’d have to check his log on that. We should also remember he was racing, mostly downwind in the Southern Ocean, and offloaded tons and tons of stuff before starting. The boat was definitely not in cruising mode. See my post on Colvin’s Gazelle for another example of a “light” steel boat. The original Gazelle (which had a wood deck and no engine) was pretty fast, but subsequent owners weren’t nearly as disciplined about weight and most examples are heavy and slow. charlie

western shores of the North Atlantic, yes? (Not eastern)

I think Charlie meant that if you are in the North Atlantic, and you look east, you are looking at the shores of Western Europe, where you will find e.g. Alubat/Ovni, Allures, Garcia, Boreal. The East Coast of the US would actually be the western shores of the North Atlantic.

It’s a bit counterintuitive because we typically think of East Coast US and Western Europe, but relative to the north atlantic, the East Coast is the western coast of the north atlantic and Western Europe is the eastern coast of the north Atlantic.

Hello, Steel has a modulus elasticity of 23%.where as for aluminium it is 16%. That is why the impact on the boat in the pic is so forgiving

George Buehler Yacht Design

Custom and production yacht design.

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Thoughts about Steel Boatbuilding

Every pro builder I’ve ever talked to says that any idiot can learn how to weld in just a couple months. I still don’t know how but I haven’t tried yet either. I’m going to learn one of these days. Ideally, the easiest way to go about it is if there’s Junior College in your town that offers classes. If there isn’t, you can still learn how but it will be a bit more hassle. First, you need to buy the equipment. Get good stuff. Go to a decent welding supply store, tell the people what you want to do, and get what they suggest. Saving a few bucks and buying a low end tool of any kind is a dumb thing to do; get good tools. Wire feed systems make the neatest welds but cost more, are heavier and more awkward to carry around the boat, and need shelter from bad weather. “Stick” systems are the least expensive and most forgiving, but, they require a bit more skill to work neatly. All pros I talk to tell me that stick isn’t that hard to learn, and many “old time” pros tell me stick is the way for an amateur to go. Which would I get? I dunno; decide for yourself! If there’s no trade school near you you’ll have to teach yourself how to do it. However, this is possible. The welding store you buy your equipment from will have books; for instance, the company that makes Lincoln Welders has some fine “how to” info. Even the smallest community will have somebody with a welding shop of some sort or another. I would find a local welder, and offer him 100 bucks to come by and get you started. Buy some scrap steel and have the guy show you how to weld it together. After you feel comfortable doing that, and this will likely be a couple hours, you can start the boat. Since you still don’t know what you’re doing, I suggest you start off by making the frames. These are straight line pieces, just welded at the chines, and will be easy. You can also make the deck beams and weld them on, but I wouldn’t. Doing that requires perfectly fair “setup,” and most home builders aren’t accurate enough in their lofting and setup to do that. It’s best to erect the frames, wrap a batten around the hull at the sheer, sight it to be sure it’s “fair,” adjust it to make it “fair,” and then weld on the deck beams. How do you cut the steel? There’s several ways. The “normal” is simply burning it with a torch. That works good but is hard to do very smoothly. A metal cutting blade in a “sawsall” or “skillsaw” works OK but is slow; what works better for straight cuts anyway is a high quality “chop” saw with a good metal blade in it. One of the slickest things I’ve seen is a gadget that attaches to the cutting torch (see photo). It’s powered by electricity, has wheels, and allows you to burn out pieces as smoothly as a skill saw cutting wood. It costs around $300 and I’d buy one. After the frames are made you’re probably semi-comfortable welding. Now do the keel. The keel has long welds in it. You do NOT simply weld a continuous line. If you do that, you build up all sorts of stresses and at the least the keel will warp and at the worst it will blow apart later. Instead, like with any long seam, you weld 6” here, then 6” there, skipping around from side to side and place to place. You “tack” it together then “skip weld” around until you got it. Read a welding book for the proper sequence.

New steel comes with what’s called “mill scale” on the surface. This normally is removed by sand blasting before you can paint the finished boat. Sand blasting is a lot of work. You can hire it done, but it isn’t all that inexpensive to have somebody show up with the equipment. To avoid this, many people buy “wheel abraded pre-primed” steel. That way, all you need to do is spot blast the welded seams which you can do with cheap equipment, or grind down the welds, something you can easily do yourself. I tend to think I’d use pre-primed material. However, here’s what some people don’t like about it. This pre-primed stuff costs a bit more, although less than the added cost of hiring the sand blasting. But more important, some people worry that you don’t know exactly how well the prep work was done. It’s said by some that the quality of the “wheel abraded pre-primed” steel depends on how recently the “beaters” that scrub off the surface were replaced. People who worry about that say if you get a bunch of steel that was shipped off just at the end of the life of the wheels that do the scrubbing, well, you won’t get a good job. I dunno. The next objection you hear is that the incredible new coatings require bare steel to really be effective. There’s new chemicals that turn rust to some sort of benign gray something or another that you can simply paint over. There’s even a new paint that the makers say doesn’t require sandblasting, the claim being it attaches well to mill scale and thoroughly binds it to the steel, and I’ve talked to some pretty knowledgeable folks who say it actually does the job; they use it inside the hull but still blast the outside. Do these new coatings REALLY work? Who knows; probably, actually. So these days I think while I’m sure these new chemicals work fine, I’d likely, myself, use pre-primed. It seems a lot simpler for a backyard builder or small shop to deal with. What would I paint the hull with? I dunno. There’s new chemicals and resins appearing almost daily. When I had the metal work about done, I would start asking steel suppliers what they suggest. By the time I’ve written this I know there will be new products available I haven’t heard of.

If you look at construction plans for steel designs, you’ll notice two distinct building philosophies; heavy, or light. Steel is very strong, and also heavy. To save weight or to keep the center of gravity of the hull low, many designers spec out scantlings that are just stout enough to do the job, based on purely theoretic calculations of stress and load. I disagree with this approach because light material is harder to work than heavy material, load factors are simply different than calculations can figure (such as hitting a log at night at 7 knots, striking the hull between the longitudinals; is there a calculation that figures how fast will you sink if you’ve used 1/8” plate to how many times you’ll wish you used 3/16” before you drowned? Lets call it, say, the “how long can you tread water” coefficient….) and, corrosion must always be considered. Today’s coatings are wonderful, but, steel can rust away as much as 1/16” in a year. I believe 1/8” plate is to thin for anything except perhaps a house wall and even then, it better be very low, or, backed up with a good structure behind it. I believe 1/8” is way to light for hull plate, and would rather have a plywood hull, which is stronger than steel for the weight, than an 1/8” steel hull. Rather than a very light construction plan made up of many small pieces, I prefer a simple and heavy construction plan. Heavy frames and deck beams are less likely to distort when welding. 3/16” is the minimum plate thickness that will flow smoothly around the hull without tending to wrinkle. To see what I mean, wrap some tissue paper into a cone. Wrap a sheet of typing paper into a cone. The heavier paper is much easier to “control” the bend. Of course this all depends on what kind of boat you’re building and in some cases a low CG (center of gravity) is very important. But rarely is it important for a cruising boat. In fact, I know one large trawler yacht that had such an abrupt motion because of its low CG that the owner attached lead weights to the roof to RAISE the CG! I think he would have been better off with heavier plating on the hull and deck, but it was to late for that. Like every other form of construction, steel boats are built differently in each region of the country. Our southern states tend to build them lighter than here in the Northwest, because use in the Gulf rarely strains them as much as can happen off the Pacific coast. Fine boats are built in the south, of course! But the typical Gulf shrimp boat isn’t as heavily built as an Alaskan crab boat. On my designs weight is rarely an issue, so if I err in my scantlings it’s always on the side of caution! This gets us to the subject of the Drawn Waterline. This line is given the major significance in many quarters. Don’t get me wrong; floating near the “marks,” especially floating right side UP near the marks, is important! However, in “real” life the DWL doesn’t mean a damned thing. What this WL (what the DWL is more commonly called these days) is, is, a totally arbitrary line drawn by the designer, showing where he thinks the boat looks best floating. All the weight and satiability calculations and coefficients and whatnot are figured from this line. People worry about the line, and want to know how much ballast it will take to get to that line. The answer depends on what kind of boat it is. Take a rowboat or canoe. On the plans, there sits the boat floating on its WL. But in REAL life, it will NEVER sit there. The little boat when empty barely submerges. With 4 fat guys in it there might be just 3” of freeboard. Float on ITS waterline? NEVER! The same is the case with a cruising boat. My friend Smitty, after loading his 54’ motorsailor down with 1500 gallons of fuel and all the miscellaneous junk he wanted for a two year cruise to Pogo Pogo, had his boat floating 6” below the DWL. This isn’t unusual; I doubt there was ever a cruising boat that didn’t float below its designed water line when fully provisioned because there’s a number of tons of consumables added in, and, you want the boat to be ballasted enough to stay right side up when the stores and fuel are low. That means it will float deeper than its WL when heading out on a trip. One way a designer can compensate for this is to give the topsides some good flair. Aside from looking good, it makes the hull volume get wider each inch it settles, making it harder to sink it any more. Here’s an example of how that can work……… The 48’ Diesel Duck has about 36,000 of steel in her. By the time you finish her, the weight will be creeping up so that in normal running condition, she’ll we close to her 50,613 pound displacement. But as you load her, the harder she is to sink. If you were getting ready to cruise to Pogo Pogo and really loading her down, she’ll start sinking past the DWL. But not much. It takes 3.74 TONS to sink her 3” past her DWL. It takes around 6 TONS to sink her 6” past. The ONLY boats that are meant to float on a designed waterline are race boats. In this case, especially with class race boats, things are very carefully figured around the WL. In fact small ones when at anchor will float bow down so that when there is crew in the cockpit, the boat will float on its DWL (designed water line). This vagueness is very hard for some people to cope with, especially those with engineering degrees; them folks in particular, as a group, just can’t stand vagueness. I actually made an exception and refunded a guy’s plan purchase (all plans are sold as non-refundable, regardless of the designer) because he did a weight calculation after my weight calculation and discovered the boat he wanted to build would float several inches below this arbitrary DWL when fully provisioned. My reply of “so what?” didn’t wash with him, and rather than try to explain what I just did above, I gave him his money back and went fishing. Some things just aren’t worth arguing about……

I like a heavy box keel. Many builders assemble the bottom frames to a point, and then use a 1” plate keel. That works well, but, I like a steel hull that has a box keel and stems like a wood boat. I think it looks better, and, it gives a solid base for the hull to sit on when hauled out or beached. Some people even compartment it off and use it as a fresh water cooling reservoir. I personally don’t like that and suggest heavy wall split pipe welded to the outside of the keel instead. On sailboats and larger powerboats, the box keel will be quite deep near the stern, making it very difficult to reach inside to back weld the sides to the bottom. This solved by making the sides in two halves, joined where the shaft pipe runs. You can reach about 2 1/2’ to 3’ into the keel, and building it like I’ve described here will allow you to reach all parts of the keel bottom.

Frames and Deck Beams:

It’s debatable how important frames actually are in steel hulls. Some builders don’t use any, relying on bulkheads to hold the shape. Probably because of my wood boat background, I spec frames at even station spacings, usually 3’ to 3 1/2’ apart. I have seen one builder who erects one or two major bulkheads, then, sets up wood forms on the steel keel, hangs longitudinals to the forms, welds the plate on, then removes the forms. This works, but doesn’t look right to me. Besides, the frames make building the interior easier because you have attachment points. And, if you come down hard on a rock, a big frame will make it harder to dent in the hull. Flat bar frames are normally used in boats under 80 foot or so. The problem is that flat bar, especially when you have smaller pieces or big boat frames, tends to be rather wobbly. An “L” shaped frame (angle iron) is far more rigid. There’s two problems here. The stock material angle sections are harder to find in the type of dimensions you’d normally want for your frames. And, the top will be facing the hull sides which makes it impossible to sand blast underneath the top. If you want to use “L” section frames, in the “old days” you would first sand blast and prime them before you plate the hull. Or use pre-blasted and primed material. Of course today you also have the option of using one of the new chemicals that are supposed to do what sand blasting does. An angle iron frame in big boats might make sense because the angle frames are less floppy. I don’t know if I’d use it though. Right now is where you need to start thinking ahead to make things easier for yourself. One of the problems with hull materials except wood is that they condensate, so unless you insulate, you’ll be miserable inside. Steel is no different. There’s all sorts of types of insulation with the best being blown in. This has to TOTALLY cover the steel or it will drip. A common mistake is to insulate flush with the deck beams, which ain’t good enough; you need to COVER everything. I strongly suggest, before assembling and erecting the frames or deck beams, that you take the pieces to a drill press and drill a series of 11/32” holes, maybe 10” apart, about 1” from the inboard edge of the frame or deck beam. This will make it very easy to bolt, with 5/16” galvanized carriage bolts, a wood strip to the frame. This strip will extend 1/2” past the frame or deck beam, should be say 1” x 2 1/2”, and the foam insulation will be blown in so that it covers the plate and frames and is flush, at the frames, with the outer edge of the wood strip. Then, you can easily attach a hull liner, such as 1/2” cedar, to the wood, with common ring nails. Plan on these strips at least as far down as the waterline, or chine, which is normally past the waterline. There’s no real need to insulate much past the waterline. Use pressure treated wood for these strips. Some people “shoot” the strips with one of those guns that can shoot nails into steel. This is faster than bolting, but the “nails” aren’t as heavy as the bolts and they won’t be galvanized. If you do it that way I suggest epoxying the strips to the frames too. Some people just use epoxy to hold the strips in but I would never rely on that. Today’s glues are marvelous but they’re even better when backed up with a bolt…… While I’m mentioning these strips, I believe before foaming the interior I’d stand up any major wood bulkheads. These will be important structural things for holding the interior in, so I’d want them securely bolted to the frames. I’d use MDO double side plywood, I’d epoxy coat the area touching the steel, and I’d still bed or put a piece of tar paper, between the plywood and where it lays against the steel frame. Attach fairing strips on each side of the bulkhead. They give a guide to how deep you blow in the foam. Now then. The frames in my designs (and most “west coast” built boats) are not meant to have the plate welded to them. While the hull lines are “faired” via computer and are very accurate, steel plate is rigid stuff and wants to bend in its own fashion. The idea is that the frames are stood up, then, a wood batten, say 3/4” x 1”, is wrapped around the frames about in the position the construction plan shows the hull longs (longitudinals) running. The exact position doesn’t matter at all. I like to see longs roughly a foot to no more than 16” apart. Run the batten, mark the frames where the batten hits, “nip” out a slot for the long at each point.

Longitudinals:

The “longs” wrap around the hull and are your fairing points. To get a really “fair” hull, as I said, the plate isn’t welded to the frames at all. Instead, the “longs” are lightly tacked to every other frame, the plate is hung and then the longs are moved out to meet the plate wherever the plate doesn’t touch them. Ideally you’ll have two or three plates per side and bottom (depending on the boat’s length, of course). Bending these longs can be a bitch because the average rectangular section, 1/4” x 1 1/2” or so, simply doesn’t want to bend “fair.” Ship construction and some yacht builders uses angle or “T” section for the longs and that works for pleasures boats but it has some disadvantages to balance against how easy they bend. These are: you can’t sandblast behind the “L” or “T” shape so again, I’d pre-blast the piece. Unless of course, you’re using pre-blasted and primed steel. You have to cut a hell of a notch in the frame for the angle iron to fit in, and I don’t like that although of course you can weld a patch over the big notch. But the biggie that bothers me is that to get a really “fair” hull, the plate will rarely want to exactly lay on the frames. That means the longs, if they are set into the frames, won’t touch the plate unless you bang and force the plate against the frames, and that’s to much hassle. It seems better to weld the plate at the sheer and the chine, and let the surface between those points bulge out as it may want to, then, from inside, let the longs out to touch the plate. So while the flat bar is harder to actually bend around the hull, it’s easier to heat and move out to the plate, and, it requires less of a cutout from the frame. So I’d likely use flat bar for the longs in the type of boats that most of us are building. BUT, angle bends smoother than flat bar and if you have hull lines that you are positive are “conically developed” allowing the plate to really follow the frame shapes, the “L” or “T” longs will work fine. Make a scale model, say 1 1/2” to the foot, to see……. After you erect the frames and tack in the longs, you do the plate. Now here is where I would probably hire a guy who knows what he’s doing to help. The material is heavy and doesn’t want to go where you want it to go. Somebody experienced with steel helping you is well worth a few hundred bucks.

Plating should be done with as long of plates as you can get; ideally two a side and bottom although three is more likely. The reason you use as few plates as possible is because that makes a “fairer” hull; hulls built as I’m describing come out looking as smooth as plywood, without bondo finishing, either. After the frames, and the chine bar if used, and the sheer pipe are in, make a plywood pattern of the side and bottom. 1/8” door skin is the easiest but it’s delicate. 1/4” plywood is less apt to break, in large sizes like we’re dealing with. While I’d make the pattern to fit along the keel, I’d leave the top several inches or more higher than the sheer. The sheer line is very important that it be “fair” and the consensus among the pros is that it is better to plate the hull, then go back, wrap a batten around the sheer marks, and burn it out to the line. That guarantees you’ll get a smoothly flowing sheer line. Along this line, you see many people who stand up the frames with the deck beams already attached to them. This works as long as your lay-out and set-up is perfect, but, like with wood boats, it seems it’s a better chance of getting a “fair” sheer if you just stand up the frames, wrap a batten (and I’d use a piece of flat-bar, say 1/8” x 3” around the frames at the sheer marks, and site it. If it isn’t “fair” that shift the batten where you need to and make it “fair.” Then weld in the deck beams. Some people don’t use any chine bar, just letting the side and bottom meet and then welding them together. The advantage of this method is that there is just one weld at the chine, where with a bar, there’s two welds as each plate needs to be welded to the bar. Supposedly the advantage of a 1/2” or 1” sold bar chine is that the slight roundness makes the paint stay on easier than it does on a corner. Frankly, I don’t know if that concern makes sense because 1) you’ll grind down the weld so will be smoothing the edge over, and 2) the new paints, like “ceram-coat” apparently are very hard to make wear off. If I was building, the appeal and simplicity of one weld at the chine would seem pretty appealing, I think. If you do use a chine bar, use SOLID bar, not pipe. Make the patterns to whatever size you’re going to plate with. If you’re using three plates per side or bottom than make three patterns. Lay the pattern on your plate, trace it, then burn it to shape. Now, here’s where I get away from “normal” procedure but, it works. One of my builders, an absolute ace welder who thought I was full of crap on this, tried it to prove me wrong. He wrote and told me he was shocked how much easier what I said was, and here is a prime example how, when you don’t know what you’re doing, simply thinking about what makes sense and doing it usually is the right thing to do. For some reason both wood and steel builders start plating (or planking) in the middle of the boat, which makes it a bitch to pull the plate into the bow and stern. I’ve always thought it makes more sense to attach the material AT the bow and stern, then bend it to the middle. This way, the plate flows like it wants. Don’t worry about if it hits the frames or not, that doesn’t matter. Lightly tack it to the bow, wrap it around the hull (use come-a-longs or whatever), and where it ends, weld it to the longs. Go to the stern and do the same thing. If you’re using more than two plates, now attach the middle ones; there’s little bend here so they’ll be easier to pull into position. Go inside the boat. The plate is flowing around the hull but likely not touching all the frames or longs. Ignore the frames; you don’t weld to them anyhow. But, if there’s a place where the plate isn’t touching the longs, release the longs from where they’re tacked to the frames and using heat, push them out to touch the plate. Now weld them to the plate with short welds every foot or so, and securely weld the longs back into the frames. If you do it this way, your hull plate will end up as smooth as a prom queen’s thighs. You see, steel, like plywood, is self fairing. It WANTS to flow on so don’t fight it. Let the hull plate go onto the boat the way it wants to. Don’t think about the frames because all they’re for is to hold the longs.

When you build the boat, there are many places where things can be done in any number of ways. Especially, regarding the shaft log pipe. I don’t spec out the engine for your boat because I don’t sell engines. Many different ones will work, and everybody uses what they like best or can afford. Each engine will require a different shaft and prop, determined by the HP, transmission reduction, and type of prop. Therefore, the size of the shaft log and the various stuffing boxes and packings can’t be specified either, other than I try to spec a shaft pipe, in steel designs, that is big enough to take what I assume will be the “average” shaft most of you will use. Now, if you call a marine store, you’ll discover there are cutlass bearings and inner seals for each size shaft that have a variety of O.D. (outside diameter), and NONE of them will fit into any pipe size you can find. Wood builders normally simply buy a bronze outer bearing, have a cutlass bearing pressed in, and then bolt that to the keel. Steel builders have to goof around a bit more. Since no standard pipe has an I.D. (inside diameter) that matches the O.D. of any bearing, you can’t just press the cutlass into the pipe shaft log unless of course you take it someplace where there’s a lathe and have it bored out to fit a cutlass. The noraml and probably simplest way around this is to first decide what shaft size you need, then, make your shaft tube out of a pipe with a larger I.D. than the O.D. of the cutlass bearing the shaft requires. There are various epoxy compounds that are used for filling the gap; “Chockfast Orange” is a common one. I’ve never worked with this stuff but I think if I was to do it, I’d install the inner stuffing box on the pipe by using a common “self aligning” style inboard speedboat system of heavy rubber hose, hose clamped to the stern tube, with the inside stuffing box hose clamped to that. Then, I’d run a wood dowel or a pipe or something, the same O.D. as the shaft, through the stern tube, longer than the stern tube. I’d slide the outside cutlass bearing over this rod, smear it good with “chockfast orange” or an equal, and slide it into the stern tube. The dowel will make the cutlass line up with the inside stuffing box. Never working this stuff makes it hard for me to tell you how to do it. One concern is that you don’t want this goop to stick to well to the bearing because you will need to remove it some day. Perhaps the answer is to coat the bearing with wax before gooping it? I’m sure the directions will discuss that. Regardless, the important thing is that the cutlass is in align with the inside stuffing box, and the dowel, or the shaft for that matter instead of a dowel (the dowel is lighter weight so easier to handle) will guarantee the alignment is OK. Once the cutlass is installed, drill the stern tube on each side and insert a stainless set screw into the cutlass to hold it in place. Actually, I’d drill the holes and tap in the threads BEFORE installing the cutlass, then, after it’s in, drill into the cutlass for the set screw. Do not drill clear through the outer case and into the rubber. Many steel boats use normal brass walled cutlasses. Electrolysis doesn’t happen because the hull itself is zinced. This is normal. However, the normal brass housing, used either in steel or a cast bronze wood boat holder, does make a slight surface corrosion, making it harder to remove down the road. I don’t know how it works in the epoxy goop stuff. But to avoid this, I’ve been looking into it and have recently learned about NON-METALLIC bearings. These cutlass bearings are made by several companies such as DURAMAX and MORSE, and are in a fiberglass housing. It’s claimed they last as well as the brass ones but are cheaper, and do not corrode at all, making them easier to remove. Like the brass ones, they come in 2 to 3 outside diameters to fit a variety of inside diameter pipe shaft logs. For instance, if you’re using a 2” I.D. pipe shaft log, you can buy a cutlass that will hold as small as a 1” shaft to as big as a 1 1/2” shaft. I tend to spec large I.D. shaft logs because that gives you more options. There’s no reason not to put a 3” I.D. shaft log in a boat with a larger shaft because that will give you some “meat” to the cutlass, which means it will last longer. And of course the “chockfast orange” or the like will fill the slop.

I recently examined a boat with an unusual engine installation consisting of a flex coupling and 2 universals in a drive line connected to the prop shaft. The advantage of this is the engine can sit lower, and, there is no vibration at all. In fact, the engine could even be off center! The owner claimed the engine could jump the mounts and lay on its side without disturbing the alignment! I’ve taken this idea to its logical end on a new design, a 49’ DUCK . The engine on this boat is installed in the bow. The sole supports of the wheelhouse are fore and aft allowing a higher sole, giving full standing headroom below the house. The interior layout starches from the transom clear up to station 14’, where there is a major bulkhead. The engine room is in front of that. The wheelhouse is a bit further forward; the front wall is at station 14, and the dry stack will run up through the front of the house. I suppose a dry exhaust line could run below the sole and come up in the place shown on the other DUCKS, but I would likely look at a wet exhaust in this case; it’s simpler. Maybe even the “north sea” type, exiting the hull in the engine room? Like the rest of the boat this can be handled in many different ways so do what you think best. This is a good time to repeat the basic rule of boatbuilding, especially amateur boatbuilding, which is, and repeat after me; “nothin is carved in stone.” The point is, there is rarely a “wrong” way to do anything, boats have been built and systems have been installed in all sorts of different fashions, and you know what? They all seem to work. So do it in a manner that seems the thing to do to you. You might have a clearer picture of the situation than the designer…..

Ronnie Hanson in Michigan or Egypt or wherever it is he lives way away from the “coast” told me about a guy in his neighborhood who built a 65’ steel sailboat, and when he finished, he came up with a pretty slick way of transporting it. Since the boat has a heavy steel keel, these guys weld on a couple axles from a semi truck junk yard. They put on air shocks and brakes, just like a real semi trailer. Then they weld a “third wheel” hitch, like a big RV uses, on the stem. The semi “tractor” can hitch on to this, and off you go to the water! This works fine, is less expensive because you can hire a “gypo” trucker rather than a “boat transport company,” and, as long as the “trailer” (your boat and its wheels) meet D.O.T. standards for brakes and lights, is perfectly legal! Just don’t go under any overpasses…..

Demystifying Yacht Construction: Materials and Methods

Table of Contents

Common Yacht Construction Materials

To better understand the common materials used in yacht construction, this section with the title ‘Common Yacht Construction Materials’, will discuss four sub-sections: fiberglass, wood, aluminum, and steel. By exploring each of these materials, you can gain insight into the pros and cons of each, and make informed decisions when selecting the right material for your yacht building project.

Fiberglass is great for boats because it resists damage from UV rays and corrosion. This means less wear and tear than boats made of other materials. Plus, fiberglass boats require less maintenance, making them a hit with sailors.

The best part of fiberglass is its moldability. Builders can create curves and contours without complex molds or special equipment.

So why settle for a dull log cabin? Make a log yacht instead!

Constructing yachts is a complex and demanding process. You must consider several factors such as the materials used. Wood is the most common material in yacht construction.

It has multiple benefits. These include its natural beauty, durability, and corrosion-resistance . It is also easy to work with, allowing for intricate details and fine craftsmanship.

Teak is a popular type of wood for yacht building. It is water-resistant and won’t decay. Mahogany is also a popular choice for its warmth and texture.

Pro tip: When selecting wood, make sure it’s from a sustainable source. For extra protection, opt for an aluminum yacht . It can withstand a nuclear apocalypse!

Ah, aluminum! A versatile metal that brings yacht builders’ dreams to life! It’s lightweight, strong and durable, plus resistant to corrosion and easy to maintain . Let’s dive into why this material is so popular in the industry.


– Lightweight – Durable – Resistance to corrosion – Easy maintenance	– More expensive – Conducts electricity – Specialized skills & equipment needed for repair

One special feature of aluminum is its awesome thermal conductivity. This helps maintain temperatures for onboard systems that need it.

Believe it or not, aluminum was first used in yachts during WWII. The US Navy had experience using aluminum boats, so they lent their skills to the yacht industry. And so, the aluminum revolution began!

Ultimately, it’s up to you if aluminum is the right material for your yacht. Pros and cons exist, but it depends on what you need. Happy sailing! Who needs a gym membership when you can lift steel yacht construction materials all day?

Steel has the best strength-to-weight ratio for yachts, making it ideal for long voyages. It is resistant to rough water and won’t distort under forces. Steel can also dampen vibrations from onboard machinery and provides excellent thermal insulation.

Steel yachts offer customizability and can be adapted to different layouts and interior designs. With proper maintenance, your yacht could last a lifetime.

Pro Tip: Have certified professionals inspect your yacht regularly to prevent costly repairs due to rust or other damages. Building a yacht is like assembling a really expensive Italian puzzle—except the pieces are made of fiberglass!

Yacht Building Methods

To understand yacht building methods with various solutions, address yacht construction methodology. The process of creating a yacht involves utilizing techniques like hand-laid, resin infusion, vacuum bagging, pre-preg, and cold molding. Each of these strategies offers unique constructions pros and cons and produces different results when building a yacht.

When it comes to boat building, ‘Hand Laid’ is a key method. Workers manually lay fiberglass material over a mold and brush on resin. This makes strong and durable boats with good structural integrity.

The following table displays the key components of the ‘Hand Laid’ technique and their details:

COMPONENT	DETAIL
MOLD	Wax-coated wood or foam, with layers of fiberglass.
FIBERGLASS	Woven fibers cut to shape. Two chopped strand mats (CSM) and one fiberglass cloth.
RESIN	Applied after CSMs brushed on top. Mixed with hardener compound.
CURE TIME	Usually 24 hours, depending on weather.

Hand Laid is not only tough, but also creates a good strength-to-weight ratio . It also has minimal waste, and doesn’t need any machinery or hazardous substances .

Hand laying is ancient, going back to 4000 BCE in Egypt – 6 thousand years ago!

Resin Infusion: Drowning your yacht in liquid plastic may be the best way to keep it afloat.

Resin Infusion

Resin infusion is a popular yacht-building technique. It involves infusing fiberglass cloth with liquid resin to form a composite laminate. This process produces lightweight and durable yachts .

A Table for Resin Infusion:

Variables	Description
Fiberglass cloth	Structural strength
Vacuum bagging material	Seal hardener, fibers, and resin
Resin Hardener	Strengthens; Prevents UV/heat damage
Catalyst	Hardens when required

Advantages include saving time and money by using less resin. Plus, labor costs are minimized due to less manual cleanup.

To improve resin infusion, keep the workspace clean and organized. Also, choose quality materials from conscientious suppliers.

Vacuum Bagging: Yachts airtight and stylishly wrapped!

Vacuum Bagging

Vacuum bagging is an effective way to build yachts, and can be done by following a 4-step guide :

First, prepare materials such as resin, reinforcing fibers, and release film.
Cut the fabric to fit the mold, then lay it on the release film.
Mix the resin and apply it evenly to the material.
Lay down another layer of release film, insert breather fabric, and securely seal the edges with tape.

Temperature is important for successful vacuum bagging. Ensure optimal temperature during the curing process to get the best results.

For quality finishes, choose a vac-bag of the right size . Use only good-quality materials, create secure seals around corners, and deflate the bag slowly. This way you’ll need less material, shorten production times, and still end up with a sturdy yacht. Vacuum bagging is an essential skill in modern yacht making!

Pre-preg is a composite material with a thermoset or thermoplastic matrix resin. It derives its name from ‘pre-impregnated’. The process of making pre-preg involves impregnating the fiber with resin before use. This results in stronger and lighter structures.

A comparison of properties of different materials is shown in the table below:

Material	Density (g/cm³)	Strength (MPa)	Stiffness (GPa)	Fatigue Resistance
Pre-Preg Carbon Fiber/Epoxy Resin	1.60 – 1.80	Up to 4000	Up to 160	High
Wet layup Carbon Fiber/Epoxy Resin	1.60 – 1.80	Up to 3000	Up to 120	Mid
Hand layup Fiberglass/Polyester Resin	1.8-2.2	Up to 1500	Up to 40	Low

Pre-Preg has higher strength, stiffness, and fatigue resistance than other composites. To maintain its performance and shelf life, it should be stored in low humidity and controlled temperature environments, such as refrigerators or freezers. Vacuum bagging techniques should also be used properly during processing.

It is recommended that you work with an experienced team who understand how to handle this material correctly. Additionally, you should source high-quality raw materials with proper documentation on the manufacturing process and shelf life. If done correctly, Pre-Preg is an ideal choice for strong and lightweight yacht building. In contrast, building a yacht with cold molding is like assembling a puzzle without the picture.

Cold Molding

Ready to build a yacht? You’ll need to learn about “Cold Molding” – a technique that uses engineered wood and epoxy or resin for a strong, lightweight hull. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how it works:

Construct a mold or frame matching the final shape of your yacht.
Cut wood veneer strips as per your design.
Layer the strips over the mold with alternating grain patterns, using epoxy or resin.
Apply pressure with clamps or vacuum bags until fully cured. Then, remove from the mold and further shape as needed.

Cold molding is great for custom designs within certain structural limits – even without expensive machinery. Plus, it worked for Bill Lapworth who designed & built Cal 40, a champion racing yacht. Cal 40 won multiple races, including the Transpac Yacht Race, due to its strength & flexibility in design. Cold molding could be perfect for you , if you want a yacht that’s tough & flexible.

Choosing the Right Materials and Methods

To choose the right materials and methods for yacht construction, factors such as cost, durability, maintenance, and performance need to be considered. In this section of “Demystifying Yacht Construction: Materials and Methods”, we will explore these factors and their relevance to yacht construction. Whether you want to build an ocean-going superyacht or a recreational cruising yacht, our discussion on each of these sub-sections will provide valuable information to make the right choices.

Factors to Consider

When picking materials and methods for a project, lots of factors should be taken into account to make sure the end product is of good quality. These include: durability, cost-effectiveness, aesthetics, environmental impact, and safety.

A table can be used to compare and contrast different materials and methods based on these factors. For instance, when selecting roofing material, look at lifespan for durability, cost for initial installation and long-term maintenance, color options for aesthetics, energy efficiency for environmental impact, and fire resistance for safety .

Different projects may need different considerations. For example, when choosing insulation, environmental friendliness is more essential than cost-effectiveness.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology did a study that revealed that substituting less hazardous chemicals in building products could benefit human health while meeting performance demands .

By taking the time to think about these factors when selecting materials and methods for a project, the end result will be a product that is effective and efficient. Choosing the cheapest option may seem cheaper in the short term, however in the long run, you’ll end up with a DIY disaster and an empty wallet.

When selecting materials and methods for your project, balancing quality and price is essential. Sure, expensive materials may seem like the best choice, but they can quickly add up and put you over budget. Cheaper materials may save you in the short term, but won’t last in the long run.

Compare the costs to quality. Figure out how long each will last and what maintenance is required. Also, consider the environmental impact and if it fits your sustainability goals.

It’s possible to save money without sacrificing quality. Research options and consult experts to find cost-effective solutions that meet your needs.

Don’t forget shipping and handling costs when ordering online. They can make a dent in your budget if you’re not careful. For a project that won’t end quickly, choose durable materials and methods.

To assess durability, various aspects must be taken into account, e.g. the type of material used, its tolerance to environmental and physical stressors, its wear-resistance over time, and its cost-efficiency. The below table gives a thorough overview of diverse building materials and their respective durability ratings based on these factors.

Material	Env. Resistance	Phys. Stress	Wear & Tear	Cost-Effectiveness
Concrete	High	High	High	Low
Steel	High	High	Medium-High	Medium
Timber	Medium-High	Medium-Low	Low-Medium	Low-High
Brick	Medium-High	High	Medium – High	>Moderate

Apart from material choice, other elements that impact durability include proper upkeep, moisture control, structural design, and quality craftsmanship. Regular inspections can also detect potential damage early and avoid expensive repairs in the future.

Taking care of your materials is like taking care of your health, the more effort you put into it, the longer it’ll last and the less you’ll regret not doing so earlier.

Maintenance

Regular Cleaning: Clean surfaces and equipment to avoid rust and damage that costs money.

Inspection: Regular inspections spot potential issues early.

Lubrication: Lubricating moving parts reduces wear and tear.

Surface treatment: Painting protects from corrosion and the environment.

Replacement Parts: Same quality standards as original components.

Safety Protocols: Implement safety protocols to prevent incidents.

It’s worth knowing that maintenance materials and methods benefit longevity and save costs. Recently, eco-friendly maintenance is popular . It reduces waste and creates a healthy environment.

A manufacturing company cut corners on maintenance and it caused equipment failure. This led to an accident and staff harm, plus costly compensation. The lesson: maintain, don’t repair!

Choose the right materials and methods – or you’ll be the star of a ‘DIY Fail’ video.

Performance

Materials: High-grade Steel, Mild Steel, Aluminum, Carbon Fiber.

Methods: Welding, Brazing, Adhesive Bonding, Mechanical Fastening.

Performance: 90%, 70%, 80%, 95%.

It’s important to consider a material’s intrinsic characteristics. Aluminum is light but not as resistant as steel. Welding delivers strong bonds, but it needs highly trained labor.

I saw the consequences of poor material choices first-hand. A company chose cheap aluminum parts instead of steel to save money on an elevator installation project. This ended in multiple failures, costly repairs, and reputation damage for the client and contractor. A valuable lesson was learned: prioritize performance over cost.

“Why pick between appearance and function when you can have a pleasing disaster?”

Balancing Aesthetics and Functionality

To achieve a stunning yacht that not only functions well but also looks great, you need to balance its aesthetics and functionality. This is where design considerations, customization options, and practicality come in to play. In this part of the article on “Demystifying Yacht Construction: Materials and Methods,” we will explore each sub-section to help you create the perfect balance in designing your yacht.

Design Considerations

Designing a website requires balance. Aesthetics and functionality must be matched. Design considerations must be made for success. Color scheme is key. It sets the tone and can evoke emotions. Typography impacts readability and brand personality. Layout and navigation must be user-friendly.

Image quality and device compatibility are critical. Optimize images for fast loading, but they must look sharp on different screens. Accessibility features like alt tags and captions must be included.

The field of web design has evolved since 1990. Websites were basic text links on a white background. Technology has allowed designers to create complex designs with multimedia elements. Videos, animations, and interactive features can be included.

Customization options make the final product more satisfying- like toppings on a pizza.

Customization options

Functionality is key. Practicality, however, is queen . She reigns supreme in the realm of design with a firm yet highly practical grip.

Practicality

Practicality is essential for a balanced mix of aesthetics and functionality. Think about the use, environment, materials, and design elements. A practical design looks great and works well.

Durability, ease of use, maintenance, and cost-effectiveness should be taken into account. These can improve user experience without reducing attractiveness.

Ergonomics, safety, and accessibility are also important. A practical design takes all aspects of usability into account, plus looks good.

Pro Tip: Prioritize practicality over aesthetics for daily use or busy areas.

Balance is key. Don’t put lettuce where it doesn’t belong!

Conclusion and Future of Yacht Construction

Yacht construction is evolving, making the process more efficient and durable . Innovative designs and methods such as 3D printing and carbon fiber are the future of this industry. Modern-day yachts are engineering masterpieces due to software and composite materials. Each vessel is custom-made with parts tailored for it, from propellers to hydrodynamic modeling.

Surprisingly, the global luxury yacht market size was valued at $7.92 billion in 2019. Traditional wood plank-on-frame building methods have been replaced with new technologies. What new innovations will this dynamic industry bring? It’s exciting to think about.

Cruising / Liveaboard
Sustainability
Impressions

27. April 2022, updated 6. August 2022

Circumnavigation , Hull Material , Sailboat , Sailing Cruiser , Technical Advice

Sailing Cruisers: The Ultimate Comparison of Hull Materials

sailing cruiser with one man on the deck in cloudy weather

Perhaps you have already read our article about the best reasons to live on a boat and we managed to convince you? And now you are looking for a proper cruiser sailboat to turn your dream of living as a liveaboard into reality? Sooner or later, you will definitely ask yourself which hull material is most suitable for a cruiser and this is exactly the question we want to discuss in the following.

Table of Contents

What Materials Are Considered?

The materials used for hull construction of sailboats are GRP (glass fiber reinforced plastic), carbon, Kevlar, wood, aluminum, steel, ferrocement and also various hybrids of these. Some of these materials are not suitable for use in cruisers due to their specific characteristics. Carbon and Kevlar usually only play a role in extremely lightweight high-performance boats typically found in racing, not to mention that they are astronomically expensive.

Wood disqualifies itself due to the extremely costly maintenance and thus it is not practical for use in cruisers. Ferrocement never really caught on as a hull material and primarily played a role as an easy-to-handle material in DIY sailboat construction. This leaves GRP, aluminum, and steel as materials that come into question for us.

GRP vs. Aluminum vs. Steel

In the following, we will take a closer look at these three materials and compare them with each other under various aspects that are important for a cruiser.

GRP is the weakest of the three materials, especially when it comes to impact and abrasion resistance. However, the strength of GRP is highly dependent on its processing quality, as GRP can be laminated in very different ways, which can make for large differences in stability. For example, the first GRP boats built in the 1960s and 1970s often featured much thicker material thicknesses because people were not yet familiar with the material and this resulted in nearly indestructible hulls. There are also some manufacturers who additionally reinforce their GRP hulls with Kevlar or metal inserts. So, there are a lot of differences in terms of stability, but in general a GRP hull is clearly inferior to metal hulls in terms of stability.

In the video below you can see a few crash tests of a Dehler 31, which is made of GRP and takes the collisions impressively well.

Aluminum and steel hulls, on the other hand, have extremely high impact and abrasion resistance, with steel being even slightly superior to aluminum here, as steel is more elastic and has a higher tensile strength. Thus, a metal boat is much more robust and therefore safer than a GRP boat, especially in collisions.

GRP is far superior to steel in terms of weight. For boats up to about 40 feet, it is also superior to aluminum, since aluminum has a minimum thickness of about 5mm making smaller boats heavier than their GRP competitors. Above the 40-foot mark, the tide can turn, and aluminum may be lighter than GRP, but it depends on the exact construction.

Aluminum as a material itself weighs only about a third as much as steel, but the typical weight saving of a hull is typically 20-25% (but up to 50% savings are possible in some cases). This can be attributed to the fact that aluminum requires thicker material thicknesses than steel.

As should already be clear, steel boats are by far the heaviest of the materials we are considering here.

Sailing Characteristics

The sailing characteristics are of course not primarily dependent on the hull material, but rather on other characteristics such as the hull shape, the rig, etc. Nevertheless, certain characteristics are attributable to the hull material.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Oyster Yachts (@oysteryachts)

GRP boats sail very fast because of their low weight, but the residual flexibility that is unavoidable in the material can cause annoying creaking noises inside the boat.

Aluminum boats, on the other hand, also sail very fast, but much more stiffly and you are not plagued by creaking noises.

Steel also makes for stiff sailing and there are no creaking noises, but due to the enormous weight, a steel boat sails rather sluggishly. However, the high weight also gives steel boats good-natured sailing behavior, which is more likely to forgive too much sail area.

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Interior Space

Unlike metal hulls, a GRP hull does not need an internal reinforcement structure that reduces the space inside the boat. Thus, GRP boats offer a lot of interior space relative to their dimensions.

The stability of aluminum hulls, on the other hand, depends on an internal reinforcement structure (consisting of frames and stringers), which takes up some of the valuable space inside the boat. Especially for smaller boats this can be more important than you might think. In the image below you can see the construction of an aluminum hull built by Dutch shipyard KM Yachtbuilders.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by KM Yachtbuilders (@kmyachtbuilders)

Steel boats also need such a reinforcement structure, but it is much more compact than that of aluminum boats, thus offering more interior space.

Insulation Properties

Due to its sandwich construction, GRP is inherently a poor conductor of thermal energy and therefore requires little insulation and, under certain conditions, none at all. Along with the good insulating properties, GRP boats also have less condensation to contend with than their metal competitors. In addition, it also has good sound insulation.

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Aluminum and steel boats have very similar properties in terms of insulation. Both materials are very good thermal conductors, which makes good insulation essential. Due to the cold bridges found in metal boats, a lot of condensation occurs inside the boat. The sound insulation of metal hulls is also poor.

Visual Design Options

GRP hulls offer a lot of room for styling, since gelcoats are available in all possible colors and applying them is easy. Another big advantage of GRP is that round shapes can be realized very easily with this material, which makes ergonomics and design very appealing.

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In contrast to GRP boats, round shapes in metal boats can only be achieved with significantly more cost as this requires a lot of effort and special skill in welding. The many welds on metal boats can in some cases look rather rustic, which may bother some people.

Aluminum hulls usually leave the shipyard unpainted, as painting them is very time-consuming and expensive and therefore rather unusual. The raw aluminum look does not appeal to everyone.

docked aluminum sailing boat with unpainted hull

Steel boats can be painted as desired, but they almost always have minor visual rust spots somewhere, which are hardly avoidable.

Safety During Thunderstorms

Unlike metal boats, a GRP boat offers no protection to the boat, equipment, and crew against lightning strikes, and you are dependent on a proper lightning conductor system.

In contrast, boats made of aluminum and steel provide excellent protection against lightning strikes purely due to their construction, because they act as a Faraday cage – the inside of the electric field created by a lightning strike is reliably shielded.

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Risk of Material Decomposition

A known risk of material degradation of GRP is osmosis, which occurs when the hull is not properly protected, and moisture can penetrate through the gelcoat where the moisture collects in the hull cavities. The resin in the laminate is decomposed by the penetrated moisture and an acid is produced. Due to its chemical properties, it draws further moisture into the cavities. The pressure in these then increases and pushes the gelcoat outward forming blisters. The brittle gelcoat cracks open and the laminate is progressively decomposed as osmosis continues.

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However, we want to emphasize that osmosis is often overdramatized, and we are not yet aware of any case where a boat has actually sunk because of osmosis. Nevertheless, you should not underestimate this danger and prevent it from happening in the first place through proper care. Unfortunately, structural defects in the hull of used boats caused by osmosis are difficult to see as a non-expert.

In the case of aluminum, there is a risk of galvanic corrosion, in which the base metal aluminum decomposes under the influence of electric current when it comes into contact with a more noble metal. Although such galvanic corrosion can cause considerable damage to the boat within a very short time, this risk can be virtually eliminated if the boat is professionally constructed and regularly maintained. However, this means that any electrical leakage currents must be eliminated, and the many sacrificial anodes must be maintained. Besides, when it comes to electrical installations, you need to know what you’re doing.

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Steel is generally known to be very susceptible to corrosion. Once steel comes into contact with oxygen in the presence of water, rust forms as a result of oxidation. As owner of a steel boat, there is not much you can do against the constant danger of corrosion, except to always make sure that the steel is protected from external elements, which requires a lot of maintenance. In addition, it should be emphasized that the greatest danger of corrosion is the rusting through of the hull from the inside to the outside and not the other way around. Often it is difficult to see all the areas inside the hull and this harbors some undetected dangers.

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Repairability

Even fairly extensive damages in the GRP can be repaired quickly and easily because all you need are fiberglass mats, resin, and hardener. Minor blemishes in the gelcoat such as scratches or small chipping can be repaired with ease.

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Repairing aluminum, on the other hand, is much more difficult, because you first need aluminum plates with the right alloy, and then you also need the right welding equipment. In addition, not everyone has the necessary know-how to weld aluminum properly. Minor blemishes such as scratches can be polished, and dents can be attempted to bulge from the inside. However, if you can’t get to the dent from the inside, you’ll have to live with it willy-nilly.

Steel must be welded as well, but suitable steel plates can be found in most workshops around the world and welding is also much easier than welding aluminum. In addition, the required welding equipment is cheaper and more widely available. The repair of scratches can be easily done yourself, but this is often much more time-consuming than repairing the gelcoat on GRP boats. Dents can be attempted to be removed in the same way as with aluminum boats.

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Maintenance Effort

The maintenance effort is kept within limits with GRP. You should just sand, fill and seal the underwater hull regularly. The great thing about GRP is that such maintenance can be postponed once in a while without having to fear immediately serious consequences (but don’t let it become a habit!).

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Aluminum boats also require little maintenance, as you only need to regularly renew the antifouling coating and maintain the numerous sacrificial anodes, as well as ensure that there is no potential for galvanic corrosion. However, unlike GRP, the maintenance of aluminum boats allows significantly less time leeway, because if galvanic corrosion does occur, it can cause significant damage in a very short period of time.

Steel boats, unlike GRP and aluminum, require constant maintenance, as there are virtually always some rust spots that should be treated early to prevent worse. At regular intervals, the entire hull should also be sand stripped followed by priming with an epoxy system and then sealing with a paint (polyurethane based). Although a steel hull does not rust as quickly as aluminum does with galvanic corrosion, you should avoid postponing maintenance for anything, otherwise nasty surprises can await you.

The cost of GRP boats, from serial and semi-custom production is the lowest compared to those for metal boats. This is mainly due to the fact that a mold only needs to be designed once, which can then be used for all builds of the model. Custom builds, on the other hand, cost significantly more because a mold must be made individually, which involves high costs.

Metal boats are more expensive in serial production as they require a lot of manual welding, with aluminum being even more expensive than steel due to the more complex processing and higher material prices. However, metal boats can be more attractive than GRP for custom builds, but it depends on the individual project.

In addition, it can be said that aluminum boats have a very good value retention compared to GRP and steel boats, which is also reflected in the second-hand market. On the second-hand market, aluminum boats are usually traded at very high prices, whereas GRP boats depreciate significantly and there is a large supply at low prices. The supply of steel boats is rather limited, but the prices for them are nevertheless rather low.

Besides these initial costs, you should also always consider the follow-up costs, because these can make a lot of difference in the long run, especially when you look at the differences in maintenance requirements. Consider how much time and money you will have to put into the boat and even if you want to do most of it yourself, keep your individual opportunity costs in mind.

A Summarizing Overview

In the table below, we have briefly summarized the various characteristics of the respective materials.

GRP	Aluminum	Steel
+	++	+++
+++	++	+
+++	+++	+
+++	+	++
+++	+	+
+++	+	++
+	+++	+++
++	++	+
+++	+	++
+++	+++	+
+++	+	++

An Important Note

Finally, we want to note that there is no such thing as the perfect hull material, because as we have pointed out, each has its strengths and weaknesses. Keep in mind that the properties of the various materials we have discussed are the general ones that apply to most boats. However, the properties of a hull also depend on the specific boat because construction and quality of workmanship are at least as important as the material itself. When comparing different hull materials, you should always keep these differences in terms of construction and workmanship in mind and not compare apples with oranges. It would not make sense to compare a production GRP boat produced under cost pressure with a custom aluminum boat and then conclude that the GRP boat is inferior to the aluminum boat.

Our Recommendation

In general, we claim that for the majority of people a GRP boat makes the most sense. It is very user-friendly in both use and maintenance and is also relatively affordable. We see no reasons against the use in bluewater or for a circumnavigation, although this scene is strongly influenced by advocates of metal boats. We can certainly understand the aspect of increased safety of metal boats, especially in collisions, but we doubt that this justifies the disadvantages of steel or the additional costs of aluminum. Severe collisions are of course a high risk, but always keep in mind how low the probability of such a collision actually is. Nevertheless, we can understand that the increased sense of safety is a very high priority for some.

When using the boat under extreme conditions, such as in Antarctica or Patagonia, we would also want to use a metal boat due to its increased robustness. So, it’s best to ask yourself honestly which areas you actually want to sail.

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In addition, you should also let your own skills and experiences that you have made with the respective material flow into the decision-making process. For example, if you have had a lot of professional experience with steel processing, then you will see the work involved in a steel boat from a completely different perspective… In this sense, listen a little to your gut feeling.

And last but not least, as already mentioned above, it always depends on the specific boat and especially if you are on the second-hand market, you can certainly be a little more flexible with regard to the choice of material and look at the overall package. But we hope that we could help you understand what to expect from the different materials and assist you in making your decision.

If you have any other questions, need advice on your upcoming boat purchase, or want to give us feedback, feel free to post it in the comments, we’ll try to answer everyone!

Happy sailing!

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International Database and Gallery of Structures

Structurae - International Database and Gallery of Structures

Bugrinsky Bridge

General Information

Beginning of works:	February
Completion:	8 October
Status:	in use

Project Type

Structure:
Function / usage:
Material:

Location:	, , ,
Crosses:
Coordinates:	54° 58' 29.65" N 82° 57' 44.32" E

Technical Information

	total length	2 097.5 m
	deck width	36.9 m
	number of spans	29
	number of lanes	2 x 3
	roadway / carriageway width	2 x 16.25 m
	walkway width	2 x 1.5 m
arch	height	72.7 m
arch	arch span	380 m

deck	composite
arches	steel

Participants

Currently there is no information available about persons or companies having participated in this project.

Relevant Web Sites

Relevant publications.

https://doi.org/10.2749/stockholm.2016.0441

About this data sheet
Structure-ID 20070693
Published on: 10/02/2016
Last updated on: 12/01/2018

International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE)

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Places - Siberia and the Russian Far East

OMSK, NOVOSIBIRSK, TOMSK AND THE VASYUGAN MARSHES: HEART OF WESTERN SIBERIA

Western siberia.

Western Siberia has traditionally been defined as the area of land between the Ural Mountains and the Yenisei River. Much of it lies on the West Siberian Plain which is lower and slightly warmer than the higher Central Siberia Plain.

The forests are dominated by pine, spruce and fir. The hardier larch dominates on other side of the Yenisey. The large industrial cities of Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Kransoyarsk are on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Some of the most interesting area are in the Republic of Altay and Tuva near the Mongolian border.

Western Siberia is also quite swampy and has a lot of mosquitos. Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker, “ The country’s swampiness did not manifest itself in great expanses of water with reeds and trees in it, like the Florida Everglades. There were wide rivers and reedy places, but also birch groves and hills and yellow fields. The way you could tell you were in the swamp was, first, that the ground became impassably soggy if you walked at all far in any direction; and, second, by the mosquitoes....Western Siberia has the largest swamps in the world. In much of Siberia, the land doesn’t do much of anything besides gradually sag northward to the Arctic. The rivers of western Siberia flow so slowly that they hardly seem to move at all.” [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 3, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

On driving through the region, Frazier wrote: “Beyond Yekaterinburg, the road lay straight through grain fields like Nebraska’s or Iowa’s, and the sky unfolded itself majestically outward and higher. Vistas kept appearing until the eye hardly knew what to do with them—dark-green tree lines converging at a distant yellow corner of the fields, and the lower trunks of a birch grove black as a bar code against a sunny meadow behind them, and the luminous yellows and greens of vegetables in baskets along the road, and grimy trucks with only their license numbers wiped clean, their black diesel smoke unravelling behind them across the sky.

“And everywhere the absence of fences. I couldn’t get over that. In America, almost all open country is fenced, and your eye automatically uses fence lines for reference the way a hand feels for a bannister. Here the only fenced places were the gardens in the villages and the little paddocks for animals. Also, here the road signs were fewer and had almost no bullet holes. This oddity stood out even more because the stop signs, for some reason, were exactly the same as stop signs in America: octagonal, red, and with the word “stop” on them in big white English letters. Any stop sign in such a rural place in America (let alone a stop sign written in a foreign language) would likely have a few bullet holes.”

OMSK OBLAST

Omsk Oblast covers 139,700 square kilometers (53,900 square miles), is home to about two million people and has a population density of 14 people per square kilometer. About 72 percent of the population live in urban areas.The city of Omsk is the capital and largest city, with about 1.15 million people. Omsk Oblast is home to more than 20 game reserves and attracts many people into hunting and fishing. For those interested in history, there are ancient settlements and villages, burial mounds, religious monuments and tombs and the historical sites of Chudskaya Mountain and Batakovo Tract, Website: Tourism Portal of the Omsk Region: omsk-turinfo.com

Some come to Omsk Oblast looking for Kolchak's gold. Others follow in the footsteps of the Decembrists, while others still come to see the prison camp where Dostoevsky spent several years. The climate here is sharply continental: with a warm and even hot summer, a cold long winter with the snow remaining on the ground a long time without melting. In the winter temperatures often reach -25 to -30°C; in the summer the average temperature is around 20°C. But the Siberian climate is unpredictable here and sometimes it warms up in the winter or cool spell shows up in the summer. The weather is very changeable in the winter and autumn.

Getting There: Aeroflot, Pobeda, Ural Airlines, Nordwind, and S7 airlines fly to Omsk daily from all Moscow. From St. Petersburg, one flight per day is operated by Rossiya Airlines. A one way tickets costs from 3,000 rubles. Regional traffic is developing. You can get to Omsk by direct flights from Kazan, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Samara, Sochi, Irkutsk, Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Surgut, Salekhard, Khanty-Mansiysk, and Novy Urengoy. Regular flights with AirAstana are also available to Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan. By Train: Omsk is conveniently located for rail travel. The station is just outside the city center and all the main sights. A third class ticket from Moscow starts from 2,500 rubles; in second class, from 3,000 rubles. Transport in the Region: You can reach all districts of the region by buses and minibuses from the bus station; however, in certain directions, they leave from the railway station. The schedule, prices and tickets are available online: omskoblauto.ru

Omsk City (kilometer 2716 on the Trans-Siberian Railway) is an industrial city of 1.15 million people. The capital and largest city of Omsk Oblast, it is us where Dostoevsky did four years of hard labor from 1849 to 1854 and was periodically flogged. He wrote about is experienced in Buried Alive in Siberia. There is not much to see. Omsk is home to a large tank factory, a model pig farm. The Pushkin State Scientific Library contains the world’s smallest book. People can read a collection of poems through a microscope.

Omsk lies in the southern part of Western Siberia, at the confluence of the Irtysh and Om rivers, where a Cossack detachment led by Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Buchholtz landed and founded a fortress in 1716. The Omsk area was populated even before Christ and contains many settlements, burial grounds, and encampments, which date to between the 6th millennium B.C. and the A.D. 13th century. Omsk received the status of the town in 1782 and for a while after the 1917-1918 revolution was capital of White Russia. Today, the city stretches for 40 kilometers along the Irtysh River and lies on both banks of the river which is crossed by many bridges. Omski is named after the Om river. In the Siberian Tatarian language, “om” means “quiet”.

Omsk is one of the largest cities in West-Siberia and large transport hub at the intersection of air, river, rail, automobile, and pipeline transport lines. The Irtysh River, a key transport, waterway, and the Trans-Siberian Railway were key to the city's development. Currently, Omsk is the largest industrial, scientific, and cultural center of West Siberia with a high social, scientific, and manufacturing potential. Here, more than 40 organizations, including the Omsk Scientific Center of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, are engaged in research and development.

Omsk at one time was regarded as the greenest city in Russia and the theater capital of Siberia. It is the birthplace of the artist Mikhail Vrubel and the famous General Dmitry Karbyshev. City transport in Omsk includes buses, trolleybuses, trams, and minibuses. Transportation is regular up to 8:00-9:00pm.

On his brief encounter with Omsk, Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “ The next days took us to and through the city of Omsk. I had been to Omsk twice before, but only at the airport. This city presented the usual row on row of crumbling high-rise apartment buildings, tall roadside weeds, smoky traffic, and blowing dust. For a moment, we passed an oasis scene—a crowded beach beside the Irtysh River, kids running into the water and splashing—before the urban grittiness resumed. Solzhenitsyn wrote in “The Gulag Archipelago” that he spent time in an ancient prison in Omsk that had once held Dostoyevsky, and that the prison’s three-meter-thick stone walls and vaulted ceilings resembled a dungeon in a movie. I had wanted to explore Omsk looking for this prison, but forgot that idea entirely in our collective eagerness to get out of Omsk. We stopped just to buy groceries, then sped on. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 10 and 17, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

Sights in Omsk City

Sights in Omsk include the preserved house of K. A. Batyushkin, where, during the Civil War, the apartment of Admiral A. V. Kolchak was situated. The building is now occupied by the Supreme Governor of Russia. During the Russian Civil War in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Omsk was the home of three governments: 1) the Provisional Siberian Government, 2) the Provisional All-Russian Government, and the 3) Russian Government of the Supreme Governor. The are many structures left from this period when Omsk was a stronghold of the “White Guard Russia”.

Dostoevsky Literary Museum is located in the city’s historical center, in one of the oldest buildings of Omsk, constructed in 1799. Fyodor Dostoevsky, convicted of participating in the Petrashevsky circle (a group of progressive-minded intellectuals imprisoned for challenging the tsarist government), spent four years at prison camp in Omsk. Many future novels, including Crime and Punishment, were based at least in some parts on his impressions and experience while in Omsk. The museum boasts an excellent, well-thought-out exhibition dedicated to the writer, and in the basement, a reconstructed 19th century prison cell is found. You can go down there and get a taste of the hard life the prisoners of the Omsk fortress used to live, even try on the shackles.The museum occupies a building of historical importance: the Commandant’s of the Omsk Fortress House (built 1799). This house was visited by F.M. Dostoevsky. In 2006, new exhibitions — “Dostoevsky and Siberia” and “Writers of Omsk” — were opened.

Lubinsky Avenue is the main street of the city’s historical center. Here you can find and an ensemble of architectural landmarks dating back to the late 19th-early 20th centuries. All of Omsk most prominent building are found here: the Omsk Academic Drama Theater, the Jubilee Bridge over the Om, the Cadet Corps, the Concert Hall, the St. Nicholas Cossack Cathedral, the Organ Hall, the Vrubel Museum of Art, and the Hermitage-Siberia Center.

Tarsky District became a place of exile soon after the city was founded in the 18th century. The first exiled people were peasants, artisans, delinquent riflemen, tradespeople, Lithuanian war prisoners and Poles. Many of the exiles remained in Omsk after they served their time because they had nowhere else to go. Today descendants of these exiles still live here and national dishes from the exile’s places of origin can be found. Bobrovka is a place where you can try Latvian cuisine. The Latvians have been living in this village since the 19th century. However, they were not exiles, they moved there voluntarily during the Stolypin reform.

Omsk Fortress

Omsk fortress was erected in stages during the 18th-19th centuries to protect the southern borders from nomadic raids. Back in the days when Siberia was like the American Wild West, the barracks of the regiments that participated in the Patriotic War of 1812 stood there. Several surviving structures are concentrated in the fortress: the artillery store, engineering shop, treasury, Tobolsk and Irtysh gates, arsenal, kitchen/mess hall, and the Resurrection cathedral. some of them were restored in time for the city’s 300th anniversary.

History of Omsk started with the construction of the first Omsk fortress on the left bank the Om River. Peter the Great issued a decree in 1714 for Russian military forces to go deep into Siberia to find a "sandy gold" in Erkete. The man in charge of the expedition was Lieutenant Colonel Ivan D. Buchholz. After an unsuccessful campaign in 1716 two small redoubts were built at the mouth of the Om river to protect the military unit and its equipment. Then the first Omsk fortress was built in 1717. It was made of wood and covered an area of approximately six hectares. Castle defenses consisted of a three-meter-deep moat and a one-meter-high outer rampart. The main walls were comprised of 3.5-meter-high palisades dug deeply into the ground and made of tightly-placed-together birch logs. In the corners of the fortress were bastions on which the cannons and guns were positioned.

By the middle of the 18th century Omsk fortress was the focal point of the system of fortifications of the Upper-Irtysh, and later - Presnogorkoy line. However, despite the reconstruction and repair work, the fort gradually became obsolete and no longer meet the military requirements of the time. In the 1768 construction of a fortress began on the right bank of the Om. The fortress was one of the largest military facilities in the East and had a polygon plan enclosing an area of over 30 hectares. It had four bastions, three polubastiona and four gates: Omsk, Tara, Tobolsk and Irtysh. In the historical part of Omsk Tobolsk Gate survives. In 1991 Tara gate was restored and has become a kind of symbol of the city.

A distinctive feature of the new Omsk fortress were its stone structures. The first stone building, built in the fortress is now the oldest in the city. The first stone construction of Omsk was Resurrection Cathedral, founded in 1764 and built by the brothers Cherepanov. In 1920s, the church was closed by the Communists. In 1958 it was demolished.

Structures in the new Omsk fortress included a guardhouse building, which housed the commandant's staff, the fortress guards and garrisons (later Asian) school. Later a Lutheran church, topped by a wooden turret with a clock and a bell was built. At the end of the 18th century the fortress had of the parade ground, around which the architectural ensemble was situated. Among the buildings that have survived and have undergone restructuring and reconstruction, are the guardhouse building, the commandant's house (containing the Fyodor Dostoevsky Literary Museum) and the Lutheran Church (housing the ATC Museum) . All of these have been granted the status of historical and architectural monuments.

These days, buildings in the fortress house museums, art salons, workshops and exhibition spaces that host film screenings and performance and offices for staff of the historical and cultural complex. Six guided tours for groups and individual visitors are offered. Entrance to the fortress grounds is free, while a tour costs 100 rubles. A workshop where visitors can try their hand at weaving a belt with Russian spiritual pattern can be ordered for groups of 5 to 10 people. The cost is 1,000 rubles per group.

Arkhangelsk Sorority of the Holy Mother and St. Michael (60 kilometers southeast of Omsk) was founded near the Cossack village of Achair in 1905. In the late 1920s, like many monasteries, convents and churches it was closed and largely destroyed. In the 1930s, its territory became a penal colony for political prisoners and criminals, who were taken there by barges and wagons. The colony was designed for 800 to 900 people. The living conditions in the colony were very difficult: unheated barracks with very thin walls and floors, light clothes, thin cotton blankets in the -40 degree C Siberian cold. From 1938 to 1953, only one person managed to successfully escape.

A few days after Stalin's death, the colony was dissolved. Many documents were immediately destroyed and what remained of the monastery was blown up. In 1991, Theodosius, the Archbishop of Omsk and Tatarstan, announced the decision to rebuild the ensemble of Achairsky Convent of the Cross in memory of the victims of those times. Vitaliy Meshcheryakov, the director of the Rechnoy animal farm, located near Achair village, alloted 38 hectares for the construction, in memory of his father, who was a prisoner in this horrible colony. Today you can see the new Dormition Cathedral, a wooden summer church for weddings and other structures there.

Traveling Eastward from Omsk

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “A day beyond Omsk, the vastness of the Barabinsk Steppe stretched before us. For hours at a time, the land was so empty and unmarked that it was almost possible to imagine we weren’t moving at all, and I often had trouble staying awake. Lenin himself had declared this a land “with a great future,” but what I saw resembled more the blankness of eternity. And yet it was not like other flat places I’ve seen. The Great Plains of America tend to undulate more than this steppe does, and when the Plains are flat-flat, as in southwest Texas, they’re also near-desert hardpan with only stunted brush and trees. On the Barabinsk Steppe, by contrast, stretches of real forest often appeared here and there, intruding into the flatland like the paws of a giant dog asleep just the other side of the horizon. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 10 and 17, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

“The villages now were fewer, and their names seemed to reach new levels of strangeness. In far-apart succession, we went through Klubnika (Strawberry), Sekty (Sects), and Chertokulich (hard to translate, but something like Devil Bread, according to Sergei). In the village of Kargat (meaning unknown, probably a Tatar word), we stopped for a break in the late afternoon. I sat in the van with the window open and my feet up, watching. First, a man went by on a motorcycle with a sidecar. In a few minutes, he passed by going in the other direction, with the sidecar now full of hay. A flock of sparrows burst from a cluster of bushes by the corner of a house with a noise like heavy rain. A moment later, a small hawk hopped from the bushes onto a nearby pile of firewood, looked around, hunched down, and flew off after them.

“A motorcycle again came by with its sidecar full of hay. I looked closely. It was definitely not the same as the previous motorcycle. This motorcycle’s driver was wearing an aviator’s hat with goggles, and the sidecar was blue, not brown. As I considered that, a tall, shapely woman came walking from a long distance up the road. She wore a plain dress and had curly black hair. She passed the van and I smiled at her. She did not smile back. Then a beat-up car lurched into sight towing an even more beat-up car. As the cars came near I saw that they were connected back to front by a loop made of two seat belts buckled to each other. That was the only time I ever saw a Russian use a seat belt for any purpose at all.

Lake Chany and Its Monster

Lake Chany (420 kilometers west of Novosibirsk, 300 kilometers east of Omsk) is one of the biggest lakes in the world, and the third largest in Siberia (after Baikal and Taymyr). The area of the lake exceeds 1,400 square kilometers but has a depth of only two to seven meters. The lake is almost 100 kilometers long and 60 kilometers wide. People living around the lake are convinced a monster lives in the lake. Ssome describe it as a giant lizard, while others claim it to be a giant snake. They say on numerous occasions the beast attacked the local fishermen. The easiest way to get to Lake Chany is by car.

The lake's shores are mostly covered with dense reeds. Chany consists of three lakes connected by canals: Bolshye Chany, Malye Chany, and Yarkul. Water in different parts of the lake has different levels of mineralization. In Malye Chany, where the Kargat River flows in, the water is fresh. In Bolshye Chany, it is subsaline, and in Yarkul, it is saline.

The water's composition provides it with therapeutic properties. Since the water in the lake is moderately saline, it influences the human body positively: it has a calming effect, normalizes a person's general condition, and improves a person's general physical and mental state; it also promotes purification of the body from waste and harmful substances.

The healing effect is provided not only by water, but by the air as well. The wind changes from quiet to strong and the air becomes saturated with evaporated salts and the intense scents of different herbs found on the Baraba steppe.

Lake Chany is a popular place for winter and summer fishing. Sixteen species of fish inhabit the lake: crucian carp, perch, mirror carp, ide, sander, roach, dace, bream, and others. In addition, Lake Chany is great place for birdwatching. Almost 300 species of birds live among its waters. Geese, ducks, swans, herons, cranes and even pelicans nest here. It is also home to one of the largest colonies of the common gull.

Water in the lake freezes in the second half of October or the first half of November, and unfreezes in May. There are almost 70 islands on the lake. The islands of Cheryomushkin, Kobyliy, Perekopnyi, Bekarev, Kalinova, Chinyaiha, Shipyagin, Kruglyi, Kolotov, Kamyshnyi are natural monuments and preserve unique landscapes containing rare spices of plants and animals.

NOVOSIBIRSK OBLAST

Novosibirsk Oblast covers 178,200 square kilometers (68,800 square miles), is home to about 2.8 million people and has a population density of 15 people per square kilometer. About 77 percent of the population live in urban areas. The city of Novosibirsk is the capital and largest city, with about 1.6 million people, or about 57 percent of the oblast’s population. Novosibirsk Oblast is located in the south of the West Siberian Plain between the Ob and Irtysh Rivers. The oblast borders Omsk Oblast in the west, Tomsk Oblast in the north, Kemerovo Oblast in the east, and Altai Krai and Kazakhstan in the south. The oblast extends for more than 600 kilometers (370 miles) from west to east, and for over 400 kilometers (250 miles) from north to south. The oblast is mainly plains and steppes in the south with huge expanses of forests and marshes in the north. The landscape starts its transition to a low mountain relief at Salair ridge. There are many lakes. The largest ones are located in the south. The majority of the rivers belong to the Ob basin, many of them falling into lakes with no outlets. Among the largest lakes are Chany, Sartlan and Ubinskoye.

Although Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia, it is not a center for tourism; most visitors come here on business. Nevertheless, there is plenty to see and do in the oblast including ski resorts, Zveroboy cliffs, Barsukovskaya Cave and Lake Karachi. The nature reserves and pine forests are great places to enjoy outdoor sports, walk, look at nature and gather mushrooms and berries. You can learn about the history of the Trans-Siberian Railway at the Museum of Railway Transport and exercise your brain in the city's Academic Town. Travel to the Ordynsky District and find out about the twists and turns of the last battle for Siberia between the Cossacks and the army of Kuchum Khan. Lake Chany is said to be the home of a Loch-Ness-like monster.. You can also visit the Bugrinsky Bridge; climb the Pikhtovy Ridge, the highest point of the region (495 meters) and go boating in vast Ob Sea.

Getting There: A flight from Moscow to Novosibirsk costs RUB 16,000 (adult round-trip ticket) and takes four hours. An economy class round-trip train ticket from Moscow for one adult costs RUB 7,000, and the journey takes from 48 to 55 hours. Novosibirsk is a stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway About ten major train routes from different directions go through Novosibirsk, including Moscow-Vladivostok and Moscow- Beijing. Transport in the Region: Buses from Novosibirsk bus station go to all major cities and districts of Novosibirsk Oblast, as well as many places in nearby regions. A Round-trip bus tickets to Tomsk costs RUB 1,520 per adult; a ticket to Barnaul costs RUB 1,300 (round-trip, per adult);, and a ticket to Kemerovo is RUB 2,000 (round-trip, per adult).

Novosibirsk City

Novosibirsk (kilometer 3343 on the Trans-Siberian Railway) is the largest city in Siberia and the third largest in Russia, with 1.6 million people. Located where the Trans-Siberian Railway crosses the mighty Ob River and founded in 1893, it grew into an important city in the 1920s when it became a major transport center and expanded greatly in World War II, when weapons factories were located there out of range of Nazi attacks. More than 50 defense plants were rebuilt in Novosbrink.

An industrial city about halfway between the Urals and Lake Baikal, Novosibirsk is the capital of Novosibirsk oblast, with about 57 percent of the oblast’s population living there. Just over a century ago it was a village with less than 700 people. No other place in Russia has experienced such astounding growth in such a short period of time. Novosibirsk is situated on the Priobskoe plateau near a reservoir, which is officially called Novosibirsk reservoir but is more commonly known as the Ob Sea. The right-bank part of Novosibirsk features many ravines, low ridges, and gullies.

Novosibirsk is a scientific, cultural, industrial, transportation, trade and business center of Siberia. It is the largest industrial center in Siberia, and a rail, river, and air transportation hub. The Siberian branch of the world-famous Academy of Science is located here. The huge railway station of the city, one of the largest in the country, has become a symbol of Novosibirsk, along with the letters on its roof which say: “Novosibirsk the Main”.

History of Novosibirsk

The first Russian settlement in the territory of modern Novosibirsk dates back to the last decade of the 17th century the beginning of Peter the Great's rule. At that time the village Krivoshchekovskaya (“Crooked Cheek”) was set up. It is named after a serviceman from Tomsk, Fyodor Krenitsyn, dubbed Crooked Cheek for the saber scar on his face.

At least until 1712, Krivoshchekovskaya acted as a trade center between the Russians and the Teleuts, who owned the lands on the other side of the Ob River. The settlement in the territory of modern Novosibirsk developed at various rates in different areas. The Russian colonialists preferred to settle on the left bank. By the end of the 18th century, this area was completely populated by Russians as most of the Teleuts had left. A Teleut fortress of one of the tribes and a few tribesmen remained they were subordinate to the Russians. Russian people called them the Chuts and, probably, did not really like them, as they only settled on the left shore.

Novosibirsk was known as Novonikolayevsk when it was formally founded in 1896. It was renamed Novosibirsk in 1925. The became a trade center during the building of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and after it was completed. During World War II entire industrial plants were moved here from area vulnerable to Nazi attacks in the western Soviet Union.

Accommodation in Novosibirsk

Novosibirsk is considered to be the capital of Siberia — naturally, the hotels here also meet the standards of a capital city. For example, the 4-star Doubletree Hilton Novosibirsk offers its visitors a variety of facilities, including a gym, business center, swimming pool, spa, restaurant and a bar, as well as a seven-room conference center. A room with a king size bed goes for RUB 11,000 per night. A Junior Suite with king size bed costs RUB 14,990 per night. The Presidential Suite is RUB 39,750 per night.

If you've arrived here by train you can find the 4-star Marins Park Hotel Novosibirsk just 300 meters away form the station. Standard room with a king-size bed costs RUB 2300 per night. A luxury suite costs RUB 7830 per night. In addition, female visitors might be interested in the hotel's beauty salon, while men can enjoy its snooker and pool club.

Hostels in Novosibirsk: BigBen has rooms for RUB 550 per night and a places in a room with four people in bunk beds for RUB 300 per night; At FunKey Hostel you can stay in a room for four people with bunk beds for RUB 500 per night, room for two people for RUB 1,600 per night.

Sights in Novosibirsk

Novosbirisk is not an old city. It was founded only in 1893. There are not many churches or old buildings and it has a very Soviet atmosphere. And, although Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia, it is not a center for tourism; most visitors come here on business. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing to see or do. Novosbirisk is home of the largest zoo in Russia and a large number of museums and theaters. The city boasts the largest Scientific and Technical Library and the largest railway station in Siberia. Among the places of interesti are a local studies museum, an art gallery, the Russian Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, Alexandre Nevsky Cathedral, recently restored and returning to working status, and the Central Park.

Probably the most famous feature of the city is Academgorodok (“the Academic City”), a place with relatively small area where more than twenty scientific and educational institutions are located. Cafe-club “Under the Integral” of Academgorodok has become one of the symbols of the “Khrushchev thaw”: for example, it is here that Alexander Galich had his only public concert in the U.S.S.R. The Pazyryk lady — one of the greatest archaeological finds in Russia — is (or was) displayed at the Russian Institute of Archeology and Ethnography The central market draws traders from all over Siberia.

Novosibirsk was built according to a preconceived plan, as were its main architectural landmarks. The main street is Krasny Avenue (former Nikolaevskiy Avenue). If the city's opera house seemed huge to you, you are right —it is the largest theater building of the former U.S.S.R. If you are feeling something Parisian in the city's landscape, it means you are walking past the 100-Flat Building (Krasny Prospekt 16). You will find wooden merchant mansions, red-brick houses from the years of Trans-Siberian Railway construction and even an example of the contemporary 21st century architecture — the unusual “walking” building of the Center of Information Technology.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (on Krasny Avenue) is the grandest church in Novosibirsk. It honors honors St. Duke Alexander Nevsky, the 13th century defender of the Russian Land. It is the first city’s stone church and one of the first stone buildings in Novosibirsk, In 1896 Tsar Nicholas II granted a piece of land for the construction of the cathedral and donated 5000 rubles to the cathedral construction and 6500 rubles to the iconostasis. In 1899 Nicholas II gave priest and diacon vestments, made of precious gold brocade, which had covered the coffin of the Grand Duke George Alexandrovich. He also donated to the cathedral icons of the Athos letter: the Iverskaya Icon of the Mother of God and the Icon of the Great-Martyr and Healer Panteleimon.

Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater

The Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater building is the largest theater building in the former Soviet Union. It required complicated architectural techniques to build. The most unique part of the building is its dome, which 60 meters in diameter and 35 meters high but only 8 centimeters thick. This dome was the first in Europe to be constructed without girders or buttresses. The roof of the dome is covered with thousands of silvery tiles that contributes in overall splendid appearance of the Theater. One cannot visit the main square of the city without being delighted with The Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater.

Founded in May 12, 1945, and nicknamed “A Peer of the Victory” (as it opened when World War II was finally ending), the theater has hosted about 350 premieres and capital reconstruction of classical opera and ballet productions since 1945. Classical opera and ballet performances forms the basis of its repertoire but at the same time “The Siberian Coliseum” is at the cutting edge of modern theater life, ready to offer you modern up-to-date performances. The Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater took part in global international projects implemented under the auspices of UNESCO.

The Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater company is (was) so good it has been called the "Bolshoi of Siberia". During foreign tours the ballet and opera company successfully performed such productions as: “The Sleeping Beauty”, “The Nutcracker”, “Swan Lake”, “Spartacus”, “Legend of Love”, “Carmen”, “Boris Godunov”, “Prince Igor”, “Khovanschina”, “Dame Pique”, “Otello”, “Galka”, “Tosca” and many others. The leading opera and ballet soloists are often invited to foreign tours. Some of the performances in Novosibirsk feature foreign or non-company actors and dancers.

Theaters in Novosbirisk

It has been said that Novosbirisk has to keep its large population entertained, especially when you considers what a long winter the city’s residents have to endure, and that is why there are so many theater, opera and ballet companies in the city.

Among the theaters in Novosbirisk are: 1) Novosibirsk Drama Theater Red Torch founded in 1920 in Odessa by a group of young actors and relocated in Novosbirisk in 1932; 2) Novosibirsk City Drama Theater, stringly influenced by its longtime author, founder and artistic director Sergey Afanasiev; 3) Novosibirsk State Drama Theater Old House, whose repertoire is primarily classical texts but also with ultra-modern stagings; 4) Theater La Pushkin, which opened under Oleg Zhukovsky in 1999 in Dresden and came to Novosibirsk in 2013.

Youth and Puppet Theaters include: 1) Novosibirsk Academic Youth Theater Globus, the largest center in Siberia for the aesthetic and spiritual education of children and youth; 2) Novosibirsk Youth Theater Drama, founded in 2008. 3) Novosibirsk Regional Puppet Theater, opened in 1934 and today has a repertoire of more than 25 performances and is often on tour; and 4) Puppet Theater Cdc Them. Stanislavsky, opened in 2011.

Among the music oriented theaters are: 1) the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater (See Above); and 2) the Novosibirsk Musical Theater, opened in 1959 and now regarded as one of Russia's leading musical

Among the modern and avant garde theaters are Theater A Clockwork Orange, founded in 1997 by a group of leading actors of the academic theaters Red Torch and the Globe; 2) Theater Company Akademgorodok, featuring audience stories that actors create on the spot with no rehearsed roles, or even stage design; 3) Studio Theater The First House, established in 2008 by graduates of Novosibirsk State Theater Institute in 2008; 4) City Drama Theater On the Edge, located on city’s outskirts and found in 2005; and 5) Novosibirsk City Drama Theater On the Left Bank, one of the youngest theater collectives of Novosibirsk; created in 1997.

Museum of Death

The Museum of World Funeral Culture (unofficially known as The Museum of Death), was established by Sergei Yakushkin, the founder of the Novosibirsk crematorium. The museum's collection includes 19th century mourning dresses, hearse models, as well as engravings, paintings, sculptures, photos and postcards depicting death and funerals.

The museum collection numbers more than 1 million items, which are divided into collections on various topics, including the world's largest collection of postcards on the theme of death, which includes copies from the late 19th- early 20th century. There are also death masks, family memorials, exclusive funerary urns, coffins, copies of famous historical figures, paintings, sculptures, photographs, old books, household items and much more.

Of particular interest are: 1) unique mourning outfits from the 19th-20th centuries, which are annually used in the funeral parade of fashion in the museum and outside it; 2) a collection of old prints of famous Russian and foreign engravers; 3) works on the themes of death, mourning ceremonies, funerals of famous people; and 4) funeral carriages and hearses, including classic American ones from the 20th-21st centuries The history of funeral vehicles can be clearly traced back to the exhibits presented in the museum. There are the models made to scale, and actual samples.

Museum of World Funeral Culture is Russia's only museum of this kind. It is located in the Park o Memories of the Novosibirsk crematorium in the village of Sunrise in Novosibirsk region. The museum is part of the International Association of Museums of death and included in the program of conservation of world heritage funeral culture at UNESCO. Many visitors claim this museum has made them appreciate their life more. Address: Sunrise, st. Voentorgovskaya 4/16 Hours: 11:00am to 7:00pm; Closed: Monday; Phones:+7 (383) 363-03-29; + 7-913-712-3709 Entrance ticket prices can be found on the museum's website:musei-smerti.ru.

Novosibirsk Zoo and Aquarium

Novosibirsk Zoo is one said to be the biggest zoo in Russia. Spread over 65 hectares, it is home to home to 11,000 animals and birds in of landscapes ranging from African savannah to Arctic sea ice. About a half of the animal species found here are rare. Among these are tree-dwelling prehensile-tailed porcupines from South America; rusty-spotted cats from Southeast Asia; miniature dik-dik antelopes; and red flamingos. The zoo is open from 9:00am to 7:00pm. The entrance ticket prices are RUB 300 (for an adult ticket) and RUB 150 (for a reduced-fare ticket)

The Center of Oceanography and Marine Biology “Delfinia” is a unique facility for Siberia: a a large-scale aquarium in the middle of an industrial city in the taiga far from the seas and oceans and operates all year round. The halls of the complex cover more than 8000 square meters and its pools, basins and aquariums hold about 2.7 million liters of water. “Delphinia” can accommodate up to 650 spectators at once. It unique dome, which allows natural light in, helping to warm the place even on the coldest days.

Pacific bottlenose dolphins, white beluga whales, belugas, South American sea lions and the Pacific walrus perform for spectators. Also, along with performances of dolphins and sea animals, there is the aquarium with a tunnel that passes through the aquarium. The facility has 28 aquariums. There are more than 300 species of fish and marine animals, such as moray eels, stingrays, sharks and other inhabitants of seas and oceans.

History and Architecture Open Air Museum

Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (near Novosibirsk State University) opened in 1981. The first architectural object was the bell tower of the church from the polar city of Zashiversk, brought to Akademgorodok in 1969 as a result of the Institute expedition. The church itself was transported in 1971. The IAESB of the RAS museum covers the area of 46.5 hectares. Several recreational zones and archaeological, ethnographic, architectural monuments and an experimental site are located on it. Another exhibition is housed in the administrative building.

The central exhibit in the architectural monument area is the masterpiece of Russian wooden architecture, the Church of the Increate Savior from the Zashiverski Ostrog, built by the philistine Andrei Khabarov in 1700. The monument was donated to the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. by the government of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and was transported from the banks of the Indigirka River.

The Yuil (Kazym) jail, a monument to the era of the Siberian development by the Russian population, from the Lower Ob region is partly exhibited on the museum territory. The third architectural object is the peasant household of Russian Eastern Siberia. There's a separate archaeological zone, where stone steles and statues of various eras, from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages, are represented. A polygon with the reconstructions of tools and devices for catching animals and hunting is located in the zone as well. The ethnographic zone is a reconstruction of the Mansi family shrine.

In 2012, after the construction of the administrative building, an exhibition dedicated to the culture of the Slavic population of Siberia was opened on the second floor. The commissioning of the administrative building allowed conducting master classes and mass events.

Near Novosibirsk

Travel agencies offers one-day and overnight cross-country ski outings in the region during the winter, picnics during the summer and trips to Russian bathhouse where you get to whack yourself with birch boughs and everything, year round. Novosbirisk is a jumping place for trips in the Altay Mountains, Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The 1,442-kilometer Turkestan-Siberia Railway to Alma Ata branches off here.

Big Horde Ring Tours (70 kilometers southwest of Novosibirsk) are tours organized in Ordynsky District. The Ordynskoye Koltso (The Horde Ring) is a chain of local historical and cultural landmarks that includes: 1) the site of the Battle of Irmen (August 20, 1598), the last battle for Siberia between the Cossacks and the army of Kuchum Khan; 2) the church in the village of Chingis, reconstructed on the site of the original consecrated in 1756, featuring unique murals made of colored clay rather than not with paints. The tours cost RUB 1,500–2,000 per one person.

Akademgorodok

Akademgorodok (32 kilometers south Novosibirsk) means "Academic City". Founded in 1958, it is a former center of military research that attracted the best and brightest scientist from all over Russia and put them to work designing atomic bombs, sophisticated missile systems and other weapons and defensive systems.

During the Soviet era, the scientists enjoyed high salaries and many perks. They came up with grand schemes like using nuclear bombs to dig canals and changing the courses of rivers that "wastefully" flowed into the Arctic Ocean.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Akademgorodok fell on hard times. Scientist suddenly found themselves without wages and goals. Some where paid by the United States to keep from revealing weapons secrets to Iran and Iraq. In the 2000s, the research center was reborn as "Silicon Taiga," the home of 120,000 people and many computer, software and Internet firms.

Akademgorodok is a pleasant place full of terraces and well planned neighborhoods. One of the main gathering places is the "Ob Sea," a 200 square kilometer reservoir that is used for swimming and boating in the summer and skating and fishing in the winter. Thee is also a variety of museums.

Heading East from Novosibirsk

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: ““Ravens and Crows—For weeks as we drove, flocks of ravens and hooded crows remained a constant, ubiquitous in western Siberia no less than in St. Petersburg. The birds are easy to tell apart, because the ravens are all black, the hooded crows black and gray. On the Barabinsk Steppe, both kinds sometimes wheeled in great numbers that vivified the blank sky above the wide-open horizon. Past the city of Novosibirsk, however, it suddenly occurred to me that although I was still seeing ravens, I hadn’t seen any hooded crows for a while. I began keeping a special watch for them, and did see a few stragglers. But after another few hundred kilometers no more hooded crows appeared. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 10 and 17, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010) ]

“Prisons—Sometimes I caught a glimpse of a prison, but invariably it went by too fast. Prisons cropped up in unexpected places on the outskirts of a city. Suddenly, I’d see a guard in boots carrying a machine gun and standing on a catwalk directly above an exercise yard. But always, it seemed, we were in traffic and couldn’t stop. Outside Novosibirsk, I saw derelict guard towers, tumbledown buildings, and drooping barbed wire in a broad, open place beside the road. Whenever I pointed to such a site, Sergei and Volodya would say, “Military,” without even turning their heads. My ongoing search for prisons did not sit well with either of them. After a while, I decided that pursuing it too much was impolite, and I let it drop for the time being.

“Pigs—Although roaming herds of pigs were occasional in villages in western Siberia, east of Novosibirsk they became more common. Now every village we went through seemed to have big gangs of them. Because the weather was so hot, the pigs had generally been wallowing in a mudhole just before they got up to amble wherever we happened to see them ambling. Evidently, the wallowing technique of some pigs involved lying with just one side of themselves in the mud. This produced two-tone animals—pigs that were half wet, shiny brown mud, and half pink, relatively unsoiled original pig. The effect was striking—sort of harlequin. The other animals that roamed the villages in groups were geese. When a herd of pigs came face to face with a flock of geese, an unholy racket of grunting and gabbling would ensue. I wondered if the villagers ever got tired of the noise. Whether challenging pigs or not, the village geese seemed to gabble and yak and hiss non-stop. The pigs grunted and oinked almost as much, but always at some point the whole herd of pigs would suddenly fall silent, and their megaphone-shaped ears would go up, and for half a minute every pig would listen.

“Birthplace of Volodya—About a half-day past Novosibirsk, we passed close by a town called Yashkino. Seeing it on our road map, Volodya remarked that he had been born there. His mother’s people were originally from this area, he said. His father, a tank officer who had been stationed in the Far East at the end of the war, had met his mother while crossing Siberia on his way back to western Russia. Volodya was still a baby when he and his parents left Yashkino, so he had no memory of it; no relatives he knew of still lived there. He felt no need to go there.

“Cottage Cheese—Called tvorog in Russian, this was a favorite lunch of Volodya’s and Sergei’s. Usually it could be obtained in very fresh supply from the grannies along the road. Sergei and Volodya especially liked their tvorog drenched in smetana (“sour cream”). I got to like it that way, too. Once or twice, we had tvorog so smetanoi not only for lunch but for a snack later in the day. The only drawback to this diet was that it made us smell like babies. And as we were able to bathe only infrequently our basic aroma became that of grownup, dusty, sweaty babies: the summertime smell of Mongols, in other words.

“Talk Radio—There is talk radio in Russia just as in America, and call-in radio shows, and “shock jock” hosts who say outlandish things. Sergei and Volodya enjoyed listening to these shows sometimes. Usually I understood nothing that was said on the radio, except for one time when the host told a joke that Sergei and Volodya both laughed at. I picked out the word “Amerikantsi,” so I knew the joke was about Americans. I asked them to tell me the joke, but they wouldn’t. I kept bugging them, but Sergei said the joke was not important. Finally, when he was off doing something in the campsite, I asked Volodya about the joke again, and he told it to me. The joke was: “Why do American men want to be present when their wives are in childbirth?” Answer: “Because maybe they weren’t present during conception.”

Ob River (flowing northeast of Novosibirsk and Tomsk) is the forth longest river in the world if you include its major tributary the Irtysh River and the seventh longest without it. The westernmost of three great rivers of Asiatic Russia, the Ob is 3,650 kilometers (2,270 miles) long and is an important commercial waterway that transports goods back and forth between the Trans-Siberian Railway and the resource rich regions of northern Siberia. Since it is frozen over half the year activity on the river is concentrated mostly in the summer months. The Ob-Irtysh is over 5570 kilometers (3461 miles) long

The Ob and the Irtysh River begin in the Altay Mountains, a range located near where Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia all come together, and flow northward. Although the Ob and the Irtysh begin at points within a couple of hundred miles of one another the two rivers don't join until the Irytysh has traveled over 1,600 kilometers (1000 miles). Once the two rivers have dropped down out of the highlands the meander lazily through open steppes, then rich farmland, and meet in flat, swampy plains, where the width of river ranges between a half a kilometer and a kilometer and a half. The Ob then passes through fir and spruce forests of West Siberia, then through Arctic tundra before finally emptying into the Kara Sea, an arm of the Arctic Ocean.

The Ob is one of the great Asiatic Russian rivers (the Yenisei and the Lena are the other two). According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it has the longest estuary (550 miles long and up to 50 miles wide) and is widest river that freezes solid. The mouth of the river on the Arctic Ocean is ice free only a couple of months a year. Huge flood sometimes form in the spring when high waters fed by melting snow and ice meet still frozen section of the river.

The main city on the Ob is Novosibirsk. Parts of the Ob are very polluted and nearly void of life. At the mouth of the river so much land has been degraded by gas exploration that huge chunks of permafrost land have literally melted into the sea. [Source: Robert Paul Jordan, National Geographic, February 1978, ♬]

Traveling on the Ob and Irtysh Rivers

There is a regualr ferry the Ob and Irtysh Rivers that travels between Omsk – Tobolsk – Khanty-Mansiysk – Berezovo and Salekhard (Yamal Nenets Autonomous Region). Omsk and Tobolsk both have train stations on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Khanti-Mansiysk is accessible by bus from Tyumen, which has a train station. After Khanti-Mansiysk you are beyond the road network. As well as the major stops listed on the route above, the boat also stops at plenty of isolated indigenous villages in between them. Salekhard is the only city in the world located exactly on the Arctic Circle.

The name of the ferry is the Rodina. It travels three times a month in June and September and four times a month in July and August. Going from Salekhard to Omsk: Day 1): departs Salekhard at 5:00pm; Dat 2) stops at Berezovo for 30 minutes ay 7:30pm; Day 3) stops at Oktobraskaya Market for one hour. Day 4) stops at Khanty-Mansiysk for two hours at 8:00am; Day 6) one hour stop in Tobolsk at 7:30. Day 9) arrive in Omsk at 3:00pm. Traveling the other direction, with the current, takes one third less time.

On the Salekhard - Tobolsk - Omsk trip on person posted on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree forum in 2013: “I'll start by saying that this boat is amazingly good value for money. Here some example prices. The first is for beds in the common area, similar to platzkart on the train, the second is for a bed in a private 4-, 6-, or 8 bed cabin and the third is for a bed in a private 2 bed cabin. 1) Salekhard - Omsk (8 days): 1162 / 1437 / 3926 roubles; 2) Salekhard - Tobolsk (5 days): 774 / 969 / 2632 roubles; 3) Tobolsk - Khanty-Mansiysk (2 days): 429 / 526 / 1394 roubles. Children go half price!

“Tickets can be bought in advance at the airport in Salekhard or on the boat itself an hour before departure (it's apparently never full). Most people get off at one of the stops in the first 24 hours when going south from Salekhard, leaving only one or two people in most of the cabins for most of the route. The beds are comfortable , both longer and wider than on trains. Everything is cleaned several times a day, there's a shower, laundry, restaurant with simple but tasty meals and alcohol. Breakfast about 70 roubles, lunch and dinner 150 - 300, beer 50 - 80, wine, vodka and so on also available. Theres also a small room where films are shown starting in the afternoon and a shop selling all sorts of useful stuff such as toiletries, mugs, books.

“You can walk around on deck as much as you want or sit and read a book on the benches up there. The scenery is more or less the same all the way - endless taiga forest with absolutely no sign of civilisation. There are a few villages such as Pitlyar for which the boat is their only access to the outside world and a couple of towns where you can get off the boat and walk around - Beryozovo 24 hours after Salekhard and Khanty-Manskiysk 3 days from Salekhard. From Khanty Mansiysk there are regular buses to Tyumen on the Trans Siberian which take 8 hours. At Tobolsk the boat stops next to the stunning kremlin, the only one in Siberia.

“Anyone can freely sail the whole route between Omsk and Pitlyar, a small village of 500 and the last stop before Salekhard. Salekhard and areas north are closed to outsiders, Russian or otherwise, unless they get a temporary permit. See the Yamal Peninsula link in my signature line for how to get this permit. Permit in hand, you can continue the journey north from Salekhard a further two days to Antipayuta, well beyond the Arctic Circle, with a similar level of comfort and price.

“It sails the whole route from June to September and once in October from Khanty-Mansiysk to Omsk. Check www.irsc.ru for timetables and fares. Only about half the boats from Salekhard go as far as Omsk, the rest stopping in Tobolsk. Eg in July and August, the most frequent sailing months, 6 boats go from Salekhard - Tobolsk each month but only 3 continue to Omsk. Check the timetable carefully when planning if you want to sail all the way to Omsk!”

TOMSK OBLAST

Tomsk Oblast is situated in the heart of Western Siberia and, some say, is the best place to experience real Siberian nature: the endless taiga forests, rivers, lakes and swamps. It covers 316,900 square kilometers (122,400 square miles), is home to about 1 million people and has a population density of only 3.3 people per square kilometer. About 70 percent of the population live in urban areas. The city of Tomsk is the capital and largest city, with about 525,000 people. Website: The Tourist Portal of Tomsk Oblast: travel-tomsk.ru

Attractions include unique museums, fun festivals, fishing, hunting, and folk crafts. The region has a rich intellectual tradition: Tomsk contains the oldest university in Siberia. If you have the time take a flight to the remote, isolated towns of Strezhevoy and Kedrovy to see the unusual lifestyle of the people there. For adventure head off into the taiga or penetrate the Vasyugan marshes. Pine nuts are the oblast’s symbol. There are many fine examples of Siberian wooden architecture.

Getting There: A round-trip air ticket from Moscow to Tomsk costs about RUB 23,000. The travel time is 4 hours 30 minutes. A branch off the Trans-Siberian Railway reaches Tomsk. A ticket for express train No. 038N from Moscow to Tomsk will run you RUB 11,000 for a round trip in third class. The one-way travel time is 54 hours 40 minutes. When flying from Saint-Petersburg to Tomsk, you will have to make a transfer in Moscow. The travel time is seven and a half to eight hours. A round trip costs you ca. RUB 30,000. If you decided to take a train from St. Petersburg, you’ll need to transfer in Moscow, Novosibirsk or Vladimir. A third class round trip ticket will set you back about RUB 15,000. The travel time is up to 60 hours.

Transport in the Region: Some of the districts of the Tomsk region are in remote areas, accessible only by air or water. Tomsk airport offers flights to the towns of Strezhevoy and Kedrovy. The historic village of Narym, known from 1598, can be reached by water in the summer, on a snow road in the winter, or by air in autumn and spring.

Tomsk (170 miles northeast of Novosibirsk, kilometers 3771 on the Trans-Siberian at Taiga is where you catch the branch line to Tomsk) is one of Siberia's oldest cities. Founded in 1604, it went into decline when it was by bypassed by the Trans-Siberian Railway, but was later reborn as a nuclear research facility. The city and oblast is named after the Tom River which flows through the city.

Tomsk is the capital and largest city ot Tomsk oblast , with about 525,000 people. It is home to several universities, an active academic community and many old wooden houses. There is a fine arts and local studies museum, a botanical garden, a Polish cathedral and the SS Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Tomsk is regarded as the educational, scientific and entrepreneurial center of Siberia, and also maintains the title of historic city. More than 100 monuments of wooden architecture of the 18th-19th centuries are preserved here, more than 700 houses are included in the program of preservation of a unique architectural landscape. At the same time, a special technical and innovation type economic zone operates in Tomsk. Large scientific forums and conferences are regularly held here.

Accommodation: There is a wide range of hotels to suite a range of tastes and budgets.The Scandinavia four-star hotel at Mikushina street, 12, boasts excellent location and rooms from a basic single standard (RUB 3,325 a night) to luxury (RUB 9,025). The hotel has a restaurant and a laundry room. Transfers are available for visitors on arrival or departure. Guided tours can be booked in the hotel with English-speaking guides available. The Gogol Hotel at Gogol street, 36A is a small hotel with only 24 rooms in downtown Tomsk. The prices range from RUB 3,600 for a basic room to RUB 8,000 for a premium suite. The hotel boasts a sauna, a Turkish bath and a steam room. Hostel prices in Tomsk begin from 480 rubles, although the amenities will naturally be very basic at this rate. Apartments can be rented from 1,500 rubles per day.

History of Tomsk

The history of the city of Tomsk begins in 1604, with Tsar Boris Godunov giving the order “to put the city in a strong place”. In the spring of 1604 the Cossacks, led by V. Tyrkov and G. Pisemsky, arrived on the territory of present-day Tomsk with the order to establish a military fortress and settlement here. It was decided to put a prison on the right bank of the Tom river, as this place was protected on its three sides by nature: by bogs, a river and a steep precipice. The ledge, on which the prison was placed, was later called the Resurrection Mountain. In the 17th century, Tomsk was the most important strategic military center of Siberia and withstood attacks by nomads and hostile tribes.

In the 18th century, the borders of the Russian state moved closer to the north and east, the nomadic raids ceased and Tomsk lost its importance as the military center of Siberia. From the middle of the 18th century, Tomsk became a place of exiles. Many streets in Tomsk are named after the exiles: the disgraced writer A.N. Radishchev, Decembrist G.N. Batenkov, and the ideologist of anarchist M.A. Bakunin.

After 1804, when Tomsk was chosen as the administrative center of the new province, the first stone buildings began to appear, churches were built, and an administrative center of the city was formed. Around this time more than 25,000 people lived in Tomsk. From the middle of the 19th century, Tomsk began to grow and develop rapidly. Thanks to the gold mines discovered in the Tomsk area, many hotels, shops, and, along with them, mansions of wealthy merchants, were built. By the 19th century, Tomsk, was a major trade center, a role that was affirmed when a railway line reached the city in 1896.

In 1888, Siberia Imperial Tomsk University (now Tomsk State University) opened in Tomsk, which still attracts thousands of students throughout Russia and the CIS countries. The first technical university in Trans-Urals, now known as the Tomsk Polytechnic University, opened soon afterwards. Around this time the first theater was organized, three public libraries opened and the Department of the Russian Musical Society was launched. Tomsk suffered during the period of the 1917 Revolution and the Civil War. Afterwards it went decline as began moving to the fast-growing Novosibirsk.

During World War II, about 30 enterprises were transferred from the European part of Russia to Tomsk, which kicked off the city’s industrial development. After the war, the city got a second wind. In the 1960s, Tomsk industry begins to grow and the city became a major scientific center and attention was paid to the architecture of the city.

Tomsk, Nuclear Weapons and Contamination

In the Cold War era, Tomsk was a secret city. It was one of the main nuclear weapons sites in the Urals and Siberia. Plutonium production and weapons-grade uranium enrichment and processing was carried out there. It is considered one of the three most potentially dangerous nuclear sites in Russia.

Nuclear reactors used to create weapons-grade plutonium outside Tomsk were connected to the city by four steel pipes, each 4 feet in diameter, that carried steam from the reactors 19 miles away to heat apartments and homes in the nine-month winter. The city depended on the reactors for about a forth of its heat.

In 1993, a 9,246-gallon tank full of plutonium and uranium exploded at the Tomsk-7 nuclear installation. A northwest wind blew radioactive material to nearby villages and towns. After the disaster radioactive material began being injected into the earth

Sights in Tomsk

In Tomsk, be sure to take a walk through the old city, among the red-brick merchant mansions and wooden houses adorned with lacy carving. After that maybe check out the university areas. Tomsk, a small city compared to, say, Moscow, has ten large higher education institutions. As a result, a quarter of the locals are students. Every year university graduates cover the boots of the monument to Sergei Kirov in bright paint, scarlet or yellow. Back in his day, the famous revolutionary studied at the local university, also engaging in clandestine activities under the “Serge” alias. In 2016, Kirov was painted to resemble Superman with his red boots and blue overalls.

Tomsk is a city with a great sense of humor. Only here you can find a monument to the Lover, a fat man in baggy underwear clinging onto a window sill of the house on Bakunin street, 3. On the quay another well-known monument shows Chekhov drunk in a ditch. Why is Tomsk’s Chekhov depicted like that? Ask the locals when you’re in Tomsk. On Shevchenko, 19/1, you can find a bronze caste of the Wolf who muttered: “Gonna sing now!”

Tomsk Regional Art Museum contains paintings by famous Russian and Soviet masters such as Orest Kiprensky, Valentin Serov, Vasily Tropinin, Boris Kustodiev, and Georgy Choros-Gurkin as well as European art with masterpieces by such artists as David Teners, Jr. (17th century) and a collection of icons from different eras starting with 17th century.

Mansion of the Merchant Golovanov (intersection of Soldier (now Krasnoarmeyskaya) and Yarlykovskoy (now Kartashov)) is surrounded by towering pine trees and has a octagonal tower with a spire topped with a tent. Also known as the Russian-German House and built in 1902, it is the former house of the Tomsk merchant G.M. Golovanov,. The facades have decorative elements that bring to mind smooth terrain forms of different conifers and deciduous trees. And this blends with the silhouette of the main tent and the surrounding firs and pines.

“2+Ku” (Two plus Dolls) is the name of the theater, conceived and created by Vladimir Zakharov, a Tomsk master puppeteer who helped adults and children alike explore the real world through a fairy tale. In 2004, for the 400th anniversary of Tomsk, the theater — also known as the Theater of Living Dolls — moved into its own building, a wooden house resembling a fairy tale outside and inside. In 2019, Zakharov died in a fire. But the theater is still active. These days, its repertoire consists of twelve plays for children and adults.

NKVD Museum

Tomsk Memorial NKVD Prison Museum is housed in the former prison of the Tomsk Municipal Department of the Joint State Political Directorate-NKVD. The building was constructed in 1864-1866. From 1923 to 1944, it basements housed the internal prison of the Tomsk OGPU-NKVD department

Established in 1989, the Tomsk Memorial NKVD Prison Museum was the first museum of the history of political repressions to appear in the post-Soviet landscape. It’s aim is keeping the memory of the many thousands of people who were held here against their will. The former prison courtyard is now Remembrance Square, with memorials to repressed Kalmyks, Poles, Estonians and Latvians. The museum is not for the faint of heart. Still, you should visit. If for nothing else but to understand what suppression of reason and hope that everything will eventually work itself out entail.

The permanent exhibition of the museum includes a renovated jail corridor, a detainee cell, and the interior of an investigator's office. In the four halls of the museum (former cells), the permanent exhibitions are arranged: The Chronicle of Repressions in Tomsk region; the Great Terror; Execution Quest; Kolpashevsky Yar; and The Gulag and Narym krai Settlers. The halls also contain stands with biographical materials and copies of documents of poet N.A. Klyuev, philosopher and linguist G.G. Shtepp, geologist and soil scientist R.S. Ilyin, duke meters.M. Dolgorukov, and others.

Among the exhibits are original documents, copies of investigation files, letters and notes from prisons, personal belongings of repressed Tomsk oblast citizens, as well as everyday items made by prisoners in prison camps and exile. Nobel Prize winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was the first honorable visitor of the museum. He visited Tomsk in 1994 when returning home from exile. The first exhibition was opened for visitors in 1995.

The museum operates as an interregional Siberian museum and historical resource and information center. It has an electronic database with information about more than 200,000 people who endured the suffering and hardships due to the activities of the Cheka, NKVD troikas, de-kulakization, and mass deportations of peoples in Tomsk oblast.

Adjacent to the building is Memory Square, where there is a monument to the victims of Bolshevik terror in the Tomsk region and other memorials dedicated to repressed peoples: Kalmyks, Poles, Estonians, and Lithuanians. “Memory watches,” requiem concerts, the lighting of memorial candles and other activities take place on the square every year. The Museum and the Square are a single memorial complex that has become one of the most visited sites in Tomsk.

Museum of Wooden Architecture and Okolitsa Park

Museum of Wooden Architecture has a permanent exhibition is dedicated to the architectural decor of Tomsk. Among the exhibits are carved platbands, pilasters, cornices and other fragments. A vast collection of antique joinery tools is also presented. None less impressive are cast iron stoves — in the 19th century, even stove doors were richly decorated with artistic images! The museum also provides bus and walking tours to the historical sites of Tomsk.

Okolitsa Rural Park is the traditional venue for the Axe Feast in Zorkaltsevo village (10 kilometers west of Tomsk). Today Okolitsa has been turned into a veritable open-air museum and is one of the favorite recreation areas for residents of Tomsk.

Throughout the park one can find works made by Axe Feast participants and carpentry craftsmen from all over Russia and many foreign countries: from unusual park sculptures and carved benches to a part of a Cossack dungeon restored according to building traditions of the 17th century and even a real chapel. There is also a whole range of informative and entertaining areas dedicated to the multinational culture of the Tomsk region: a Selkup mini-village, a Tatar farmstead, a Russian druzhina squad camp, and an Uzbek courtyard.

During the warm months. the park operates an extreme rope park and a mini-farm, where various species of domestic and wild animals live, from pot-bellied pigs to elks. A Chinese cultural zone is to be opened in the future. During the Axe Feast, the petting zoo is one of the main attractions. Every weekend, special events are held for families, including competitive games, master classes, and stage performances.

Kemerovo Oblast

Kemerovo Oblast is in Western Siberia, more than four 4 hours by plane to the east of Moscow. Often called the Kuzbass, the region is home to one of the largest coal fields in the world and the main area of coal mining of Russia. Mines and slagheaps are a staple of the local landscape. Among the tourist sights in Kemerovo Oblast are the Dinosaur Graveyard, the first Siberian rock art museum and one of Russia's main ski resorts — Sheregesh. There is a Dostoevsky Museum in the family home of his wife.

Kemerovo Oblast covers 95,500 square kilometers (36,900 square miles), is home to about 2.8 million people and has a population density of 29 people per square kilometer. About 80 percent of the population live in urban areas. The city of Kemerovo is the capital and largest city, with about 530,000 people. Kemerovo Oblast borders Tomsk Oblast to the north, Krasnoyarsk Krai and the Republic of Khakassia to the east, the Altai Republic to the south, and Novosibirsk Oblast and Altai Krai to the west.

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “Until we left Novosibirsk, we had seen none of the large-scale environmental damage that Siberia is famous for. Then we hit the small, smoky city of Kemerovo, in the Kuznetsk Basin coal-mining region. Russians don’t bother to hide strip mines with a screen of trees along the road to spare the feelings of motorists, as we Americans do. Beyond Kemerovo, the whole view at times became the gaping pits themselves, sprawling downward before us on either side while the thread-thin road tiptoed where it could between. Strip mines are strip mines, and I had seen similar scenery in North Dakota and southern Ohio and West Virginia, though never quite so close at hand. Often through this Siberian coal region the road strayed and forgot its original intention, and more than one fork we took dead-ended without warning at a city-size strip-mine hole. We meandered in the Kuznetsk Basin for most of a day and drove until past nightfall in order to camp on the other side. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 10 and 17, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

“After the Kuznetsk Basin came a long interval of meadows. We saw dark-clothed people working the hay fields in big groups as in an old bucolic painting, or riding to or from the work in horse-drawn flatbed wagons whose hard rubber wheels bouncing on the uneven pavement made the flesh of the passengers’ faces jiggle fast. In this more peaceful region, we camped one night on the banks of the Chulym River at a popular spot with a gravel bank more convenient for bathing and washing than the usual swampy mud. While we ate supper, a group of Christians waded in not far from us, some of them in flowing white baptismal clothes. The worshippers sang songs accompanied by a guitar, held hands in a circle, swayed. A man in the middle of the circle took another man and a woman and two girls in his arms and then immersed them one by one.”

Getting There: There are two airports in the region, in Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk. A flight from Moscow to Kemerovo will run you around 24,000 rubles (adult round trip); to Novokuznetsk, 26,000 rubles. There are no direct flights from St. Petersburg. With a transfer in Moscow, the flight to Kemerovo will set you back 30,000 rubles; to Novokuznetsk, 34,000. A train ride from Moscow to Kemerovo costs 11,000 rubles (third class, adult, round trip); from Moscow to Novokuznetsk, 7,400 rubles. Buses run from the neighboring regions to Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk. A ticket from Novosibirsk costs 1,300 rubles (adult, round trip); from Barnaul, 2,300 rubles; from Tomsk, 1,000 rubles. Transport in the Region: Cities and towns in the region are connected by quality roads, so travel by car and bus is possible. A bus transfer from Kemerovo to Novokuznetsk costs 523 rubles; to Mariinsk, 310 rubles; to Prokopievsk, 471 rubles.

Kemerovo City

Kemerovo (150 kilometers east of Novosibirsk) is the capital and second largest city of Kemerovo oblast, with about 530,000 people (Novokuznetsk is the largest city). Kemerovo stretches along the both banks of the Tom River, at the confluence of the Iskitimka River. The city is best known for coal mining, which has been practiced here for more than a hundred years, but has a large chemical industry.

About a third of the population is employed in heavy industry, which leaves a heavy imprint on the city but it also a major educational center. At the beginning of the 20th century, present-day Kemerovo was occupied by the villages of Sheglovka and Kemerovo, which were united in a city called Sheglov in 1918. Later the city was renamed Sheglovsk, and then to Kemerovo in 1932.

There are 126 objects of cultural heritage in Kemerovo. Places of interest include the Kemerovo Regional Museum of Local Lore, the Archeology, Ethnography and the Ecology of Siberia museum, the Church of the Holy Trinity and the main church of Kemerovo is Znamensky Cathedral. There is a monument called In Memory to the Miners of Kuzbass by sculptor Ernst Neizvestny on Krasnaya Gorka; and the Holy Great Martyr Varvara — Patroness of Miners sculptural composition and a monument to Mihailo Volkov, the discoverer of Kuznetsk coal, were erected in the same area nearby. Various military equipment and weapons — including an T-55 tank, BTR-60 armored personnel carrier and BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle — are on display in Park Pobedy.

Accommodation: In Kemerovo, try Kuzbass hotel: rooms from standard (2,200 rubles per day) to three-room suite with a hot tub (8,000 rubles per day) are available there. Conveniently, there is no single billing hour: you pay from the moment you check in. Breakfast, dinner, transfer to the airport or railway station, and registration for foreign citizens are available. Hostels in Kemerovo cost from 700 rubles; apartments, from 1,200 rubles per day.

Near Kemerovo City

Shestakovo Dinosaur Graveyard (200 kilometers from Kemerovo) has been known since 1953, when geologists found the bones of a psittacosaurus in Shestakovsky Yar. There are only two dinosaur cemeteries in Russia: one is Shestakovsky Yar, the other is near the village of Kundur in the Far East. Bones of the Shestakovo dinosaurs can be seen in the Chebula district museum and the Kemerovo regional museum. The cutbank is further washed away by the river every year, so you have the chance to find petrified shells, bones and prehistoric younger artifacts on your own. If that's your kind of thing that worries the soul, this is where you should visit! The distance from Kemerovo to Shestakovsky Yar is

Tomskaya Pisanitsa (50 kilometers northwest from Kemerovo) is Siberia's first rock art monument and museum. There are about 280 images in the ancient natural-historical sanctuary. The earliest paintings date back to the late Neolithic period in the 4th-3rd millennium B.C. and depict elks, bears, anthropomorphic beings, sun signs, birds, and boats. Pictures from the Bronze Age (2nd millennium B.C.) show a deer-sun, masks, and birdmen. Many of the images are masterpieces of primitive art. The unique outdoor museum was established in 1988.

A rock with drawings of ancient people was discovered on the banks of Tom river at the turn of the 16th-17th century. The site has attracted the attention of researchers for centuries. Famous scientists and explorers in the 17th-19th centuries described the paintings in their work. The final stage of this long research effort was the fundamental work of A.P. Okladnikova and A.I. Martynov (Treasures of the Tomsk Pisanitsa, 1972, as well as dozens of articles in scientific journals in the U.S.S.R. and abroad). Science helped contemporaries to understand the meaning of life and worldview of the ancients, but they were unable to protect the monument from natural deterioration and, more importantly, from vandals.

In the 1960-80s, a group of scientists, teachers, and students led by professor Anatoly Martynov campaigned to have the rock drawings protected. Thanks to these people, the first monument restoration was carried out. The famous staircase that is today the main descent to the rock was built, and the first excursions were organized. In 1968, the territory adjacent to the neolithic rupestrian drawings was declared a preserved area.

Tomsk Pisanitsa includes three main exhibition complexes devoted to archaeology, ethnography, and ecology. Ninety percent of the museum-reserve is occupied by pine forest. An ancient elk path leads across the reserve to Tom river crossing, where elk can often be seen. In the winter, wolves and lynxes come to the reserve. A small zoo operates in the Tomsk Pisanitsa Museum-Reserve. It is the only permanent zoo in Kemerovo oblast. There are 16 animal species and 7 bird species in the zoo.

Novokuznetsk

Novokuznetsk (120 kilometers south of Kemerovo) is the largest city in Kemerovo Oblast, just barely, with about 548,000 people. It was previously known as Kuznetsk (until 1931), Stalinsk (until 1961). Novokuznetsk is a heavily industrial city and is located in the heart of the Kuzbass coal-mining region. Factories in the city include: the West-Siberian Metal Plant, Novokuznetsk Iron and Steel Plant, Factory "Kuznetsk ferroalloys" and Novokuznetsk aluminium factory

Novokuznetsk was founded in 1618 by men from Tomsk who set up a a Cossack ostrog (fort) on the Tom River, which was was initially called Kuznetsky ostrog. Fyodor Dostoevsky married his first wife, Maria Isayeva, here in 1857. Joseph Stalin's rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union transformed the sleepy town into a major coal mining and industrial center in the 1930s.

Dostoevsky Museum (in Novokuznetsk) is located in the house where Maria Isayeva lived in a rented apartment. The writer fell in love with her back in Semipalatinsk, but she was married then. Maria Dmitrievna's husband died in Kuznetsk. Dostoevsky came here several times, and in 1857, after his wedding with Maria Dmitrievna, he lived in this house for three weeks. The house itself is the main artifact. However, the exhibits, photos, and paintings create a unique atmosphere, an immersion effect. The street on which the house is located now bears the name of Dostoevsky, but back then it was the Police Street, which can be seen as a grin of fate. Maria Dmitrievna died of tuberculosis in 1864. Literature experts believe that this story of unhappy love is reflected in the Crime and Punishment and Humiliated and Insulted novels.

Kuznetsk Fortress (on the Voznesenskaya Hill in Novokuznetsk) began as a stockade established in 1620. It was built for protection against raids by local tribes, and in early 19th century the stockade was rebuilt into a fortress. It was, however, the time when the attacks had already subsided, so the fortress never had to fight. There's not much left of it after two centuries. The restoration of the fortress as a historical landmark began in the 1990s. These days, the Kuznetsk Fortress museum-reserve includes military fortifications and architectural objects.

Near Novokuznetsk

Sheregesh is famous not only for its world-class ski trails, but also for its spectacular nature, which adds a special charm to the Mountainous Shoria region. In Sheregesh there are many beautiful places and Camel (Verblyuda) Butte is one of them. The buttes in the region, located on the slopes of Kurgan Mountain, were formed by magma withdrawal. They have an interesting shape as a result of the influence of wind, frost, and water. One of the best locations for observing the buttes is from the highest point in the area, Zelenaya Mountain, where most of the ski trails are located. From there it is possible to take a walk or take a snowmobile to the buttes.

Sheregesh Ski Resort is a major ski area with 15 ski trails from 700 meters to 4.2 kilometers in length, and from 120 to 800 meters in elevation. The trails are built for different levels of difficulty, their total length is 42 kilometers. There are 18 ski lifts, from J-bars to gondola ones.

One of the main attractions of Sheregesh ski resort is its unique snow conditions. The season welcomes skiers from the early November until early May, and the thickness of snow cover reaches over two meters. Sheregesh attracts the extreme skiers seeking for “off-piste” rides. Resort facilities include a snowpark with springboards, handrail, fs 314 air bag, a trampoline and an indoboard. Instructors will help both beginners who try downhill skiing for the first time and people who want to master freestyle. There is almost no avalanche danger at the resort because of the presence of many trees on the slopes. Acclimatization is quite easy because the resort is not very high. Sheregesh provides equipment rental centers and accommodation. Other facilities include a bowling center, an indoor ice rink, a tennis court, entertainment centers, and even “the upside down house”, an attraction where all things are fastened to the ceiling for unusual photoshoots.

VASYUGAN MARSHES

The Vasyugan Marshes (north of Omsk, Novosibirsk and Tomsk) is the largest swamp system in the world and the largest peat deposit in the world (more than 1 billion tons). Covering 53,000 square kilometers, an area larger than Switzerland, and formed about 10,000 years, the swamp stretches for 320 kilometers from north to south and 537 kilometers from west to east. The swamp occupies the northern part of the Ob and Irtysh interfluve (a region between the valleys of adjacent watercourses), mostly within Tomsk Oblast and partially Omsk and Novosibirsk oblasts. Every year the swamp grows by an average of eight square kilometers due primarily to ice the blocking the flow of the Ob and Irtysh rivers.

The Vasyugan Swamp has called the second “green lungs” of the planet after the Amazon Basin. In 2007, it was included in the Tentative List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The swamp is the main source of fresh water in the region, with some 800,000 small lakes. The left tributaries of the Ob (Vasyugan, Parabel, Chaya, Shegarka) originate there, as well as the right tributaries of the Irtysh (Om and Tara) and rivers, feeding fishing lakes of the inner basin of Western Siberia.

The nature here has remained completely untouched. Ten percent of the swamp is included in the Vasyuganskiy Regional Nature Reserve (Bakcharsky District). The swamp is home to large shorebirds (curlews and godwits) and a number of rare species of birds. The swamp is the last place the slender-billed curlew — now on the verge of extinction or maybe extinct — was last recorded. Birds such as white-tailed eagles, peregrine falcons, golden eagles, gray shrikes, and falcon all live in the swamp. Sable, squirrels, reindeer, grouse, hazel hen, ptarmigan and wood grouse can all be found here. There is quite a high probability of encountering a moose. The swamp is rich in blueberries, cranberries, and cloudberries.

Kayaking, hiking, skiing, and cycling expeditions are organized in the swamp with the support of the Tomsk branch of the Russian Geographical Society. Among the things you can seek out are vast unspoiled forests and marshes, animals, and abandoned villages. Make sure to bring a strong insect repellent.

See Separate Article VASYUGAN MARSHES factsanddetails.com

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation (official Russia tourism website russiatourism.ru ), Russian government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.

Updated in September 2020

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