Comments from the designer: like thousands of others in Europe, I learned sailing aboard a Caravelle. The original Caravelle was a plywood boat with a bow transom, 15'+, designed by the French architect Jean-Jacques Herbulot. They are still used by the famous French sailing school "Les Glenans" and every Club Med has a bunch of them. She is a very pleasant boat: a forgiving trainer with very decent performance and has excellent load carrying capability. She looks somewhat like the D4 and other Sabots but much bigger. In that type of hull shape, there is also the famous Dinghy Mirror, a British design, mother of all stitch and glue boats. In the US, a similar looking boat is the Trifle: very pretty lines. But none of these boats is available in a version larger than 11'6". We designed the Caravelle with features well suited to family sailing: comfortable benches oriented lengthwise and a small cuddy for storage. The best use of 4 sheets of plywood for the hull gave us a length of 14'4".
This is a stayed rig but we kept it simple: no turnbuckles, use lashings instead. The forestay goes to a stem piece epoxy laminated to the bow, the shrouds to eyes in the mid frame. All very simple, strong and economical.

Building method:
This boat is built from flat plywood panels assembled with epoxy-fiberglass tape. The construction method is called "stitch and glue". For a detailed description of the stitch and glue boat building method, see our "How To" section where you will find a complete illustrated tutorial as well as information about epoxy, fiberglass and plywood.
The spars (mast and sprit) are Al tubing but can also be built from wood.

Required Skills:
The Caravelle is easy to build but she will take more much more time and materials than our smaller boats. All parts cut from standard sheets of plywood.

No woodworking skills or special tools are required.

Options:
The spars can be built from wood but we prefer Al tubing as shown on the plans. Some builders have rigged the boat for a spinnaker with one of our custom kits.

Some builders have asked about covering the whole outside of the hull with fiberglass. This is not necessary and adds to the cost and the weight but if you want to do that, you need and extra 11 yards (10m) of fiberglass cloth and 1.5 gallons (6 l) of resin. Contact us if you want a quote for such a custom kit.

Bill Of Materials:
(Excerpts from our BOM)
The BOM list materials based on our standard layout and includes a 15% waste factor for resin and fiberglass. For plywood, we use standard sheets 4' x 8' (122 x 244 cm). Please read the building notes and see the plans for detailed specifications.
This boat can be built from inexpensive exterior plywood since it is completely coated with epoxy resin.

Cost:
The Caravelle can be build for less than US $ 800.00 with a wooden spar and home made sails. As designed, estimated cost is $ 1,100.00 (1999).

We offer an epoxy fiberglass kit with free shipping in the US. Our kit cost less than the same supplies bought locally. See the main page, top left panel.

Labor:
The average construction time for the hull is 80 hours.

More:
Visit our message board, help pages, tutorial pages and read our FAQ: most questions are answered there.

Plans Package List: