Atta boy Ben. Very, very, very entertaining build. Music, humor, craftsmanship, narration, editing. No complaints from these quarters, You got the skills.

after building a boat it still amazes me how much time all the little things take to get done. Fun series to watch!

Nice to see a little of Molly-the-boat-builder !

I am not a structural engineer, but I believe your boat is unbreakable!!!

Blimey Ben these episodes are oddly gripping who knew building a dingy could be.! Brilliant keep them coming please.

Wonderful job Ben. Very impressive. Can't wait to see Molly singlehand her. Thanks for sharing.

Again: great soundtrack! ... and of course, great work!

Man that's what I call straight to the business 😮

Looking good Ben! Your attention to the details insures a great finished product not found in today's mass produced stuff! Nice to see Molly and Tambi too!

Ben, I’m more and more impressed with your craftsmanship with every episode!

Always good music👍the "dagger board " I've always called a "centerboard" . Guess it's maybe where you're from!

You are amazeballs Ben. Keep on sniffing those fumes. Can’t wait for the launch.

Looks like a mirror dinghy . Well done

Nice job. Looks like a very versatile design. Andy UK

Thumbs up as usual Ben thanks and best from HKG 🇭🇰

I've enjoyed the sailing down time with this dinghy build...I'm impressed with your workmanship. Of course, the actual coup de grace will be the launch and I cannot wait for that!

Thank you so much for sharing, I would have had no idea so much would go into build a small boat like this,,, Thank you and your wood working is great

Hey Ben, The dink is looking great. Watching your workmanship makes me want to build another Chameleon.... nah not really, but its a beauty. I'm glad that sail is being put to good use instead of gathering dust in my garage. I can't wait for the maiden voyage. I'm currently in Deltaville, VA getting Contigo squared away for the spring. I pulled all the chain plates today.... what a crappy job that is. Hopefully we can catch up with you guys in some anchorage this Fall. Ed.

Love your style man!

I think you're doing a fabulous job - Thanks for the videos

New respect!!!! Floggin Molly, nice.

Looking good & keep on rockin👍😀🎸🎸

went from "how come I'm watching a dinghy being built" to "when's the next episode coming out?" Great job Ben

Doing a great job. 1o times better than I could

I have enjoyed everyone of these videos! You are doing a great job!

A great tutorial some of your ideas are well thought out. Filling the holes first with epoxy is something we have been doing for years. and should be standard for all under waterline screw holes.

love your music selection!!!

Sublime 👌 Nice boat too mate 😉

Stumbled on your channel a few days ago. I love it! Great content and I am considering a similar dinghy build in a year or so and you are very encouraging. And you have excellent taste in music! Keep them coming!

You look way more healthy with hair on your head. Good job on the dinghy.

Your hard work and attention to detail will result in an impressively strong dinghy. I have two reservations based on my experiences. The first is that the dagger board will float up out of the slot without a restraint. The second is that your solid rudder without a lifting blade will be very vulnerable. The first time you strike an obstruction or the bottom at any speed, the rudder fastenings will be ripped off the transom. Nice work Ben.

Dinghy is coming out great! As do all your projects. Here's a thought. Drill a small hole in your keel and run a rod through it, then attach two hard plastic wheels. Then you can lift it from the bow and it will role up on most surfaces. We used 3 inch wide inflatable wheels after the initail set worked out so well and they even workout out on a sandy beach. Just a thought! Of course you'll have to fit them so they nest still works out, but I do not think that will be a problem for you. Good Luck!

Ben you do good work.

Air guitar bonus at the end. Will be interesting to see where the water line actually is on this.

Just bing watched from ep1 To this. Took me 24 hours. Now searching or a boat.

Круто! Мне нравится ваша работа. Про таких говорят руки растут от куда надо

Nice work on the boat. Woohoo. When I moored my 15 ft Sailboat on the lake for the summer I installed big I-bolts like you did. Oops, when I gibed my mainsheet would some times hang up on the I-bolts and that led to some unexpected excitement. I found out that the experienced sailors didn't have I-bolts or if they did they mounted them vertically. I always wanted to carve a block of wood to temporarily mount and prevent the hang-ups but instead when I was racing I would cover them with duct tape (aka. speed-tape) for the day/weekend. Keep up the good work and fair winds . . . JerryK

Love the daft punk cover!

Built like a tank!

Loud music and epoxy fumes......”rock on” boat builder dude!!! Kidding aside, nice job Ben......and thanks for sharing.

Hi Ben, smart trick cutting the cloth on a Bias or 45 deg so it goes in or over corners better. Prehaps the skeg could have been a piece of solid wood as it might have helped with abrasion but you have enough epoxy that I don't think it will be a problem! I like you strong U-bolt , but I would still attach the tow line to the back eye bolts too! Enjoy Warren

dinghy is looking great....how much could you sell such a sailing/nesting dinghy for? because if a ben person can do that, everybody can, right? nah...i couldn't, great job! also, the new haircut suits you, looks much better than everything shaved off.

Mr. Ben the ship wright ....... She looking go............. :)

Totally fine and a lot cheaper.

Cool work! I'm liking the result. When you finish you can come to the UK and help finish mine hehe, I may have one or two bits of wood for you to work on if you start missing it ;)

Very good

Damn fine job you're doing there ...I can't think of a thing I would do different ..in fact... I will be trying my best to copy you . lol ... Cheers

Just found your channel. I hit Subscribe before, Jet and Crue, and Van Halen! Ha. Good stuff

Shakin my head in awe of your skills Ben! Again, awesome job at your first boat build. A thought on the skeg: I think you did a great job making it deep. I had a real tracking issue because I went with a shallow skeg. I had to increase it's depth to improve my dinghy, so I think you'll benefit from that decision by better tracking performance (rowing, motoring). Can't wait to see you using it in the Bahamas!

Thank you for solving that problem I was wondering about. I mean it was in front of me the whole time but at least now I can see I have the option to make my own round poles should I be unable to find suitable ones to cut out of the forest. And the more I think about it, the more I think rounded octagons would be better for my application anyway.

We want Paint, paint, paint!! "Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do". Edgar Degas

Number 1 yahoo. good job

Probably a bit late to mention this, but you can use a couple dots of hot glue to hold pieces while the epoxy sets. It's really handy for backing blocks and stuff that's hard to get a clamp on.

Ben looks amazing, if you ever want to build a big boat like that I will build the motors for you lol I’m not good with carpentry

Great stuff! Great taste in music!

Your sound track reminds me of some great house parties up north in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada.

Hi Ben. Nice mast hole. I like it. I am also not used to seeing you with your hair growing. Finally, you got me on the "air guitar". 👌

Your Millennial club membership has been revoked !👋

A word to the wise -- if water can infiltrate -- it will destroy the wood composite through different means (freezing, saturation, etc). When dealing with end-grain wood (ala. that front eye-bolt mount), always drill and fill with "thicken epoxy" for water proofing, then use sealant as a secondary (tape, putty, etc) barrier. Best regards

You should watch Sail Life where you'll learn everything you need to know about epoxy and glorious glorious sanding.

Over size your unbolt holes and fill them with epoxy. Then install them so the wood don’t rot around the bolts. Epoxy the inside of those bouncy cabinets if you haven’t already. Done so. Looks get!

"Mast Hole" Good One! The CRUE.

Ben, you're an inspiration to us all... Well, you're an entertainment to us all... OK, I can't speak for anyone else; I personally have been deeply enjoying your videos & they rival those from any of my other favourite channels. You building this dinghy is the best thing I've had the pleasure to watch, in a long time - Tambi & Molly must be very proud of you. I am reminded of the lore of the 60's Mirror Dinghy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_(dinghy) - something which I am too young to really remember, except seeing many of them around Mudeford Sandbank, where I spent many holidays as a kid.

Outstanding music selection

Thanks

Love the Daft Punk cover! Only you could make a sailing channel interesting while not actually sailing. Still my favorite channel, keep them coming. Looking forward to finding out if you decide to upgrade to a larger boat and if so, what kind. I'm currently shopping for heavy 36 to 40 footers in the Bob Perry design category (or possibly Hans Christian.) Anyways, love the vids and I'm looking forward to seeing you guys back on the water. - Evvy Thomas

Don't forget to allow a bit of room for paint and expansion for the wood and your daggerboard slot. It will expand some.

Great work dude! Something like this on my todo-list soon. One thing though about the finishing paint; make sure the paint protects from UV as epoxy won’t stand UV exposure. So you have to paint it carefully and also paint/varnish the mast..?

Really enjoying this series! Besides keeping track of your hours, are you keeping track of how much epoxy mix and fabric you're using? Would be curious as to what your material usage has been!! Keep up the great work! (also really like your music choices, BTW!)

Ben you are building a masterpiece, looking forward to seeing it in the water. My only question is how you plan to secure it to the dinghy dock? I've watched several horror stories of going ashore to do some shopping and coming back to discover their dinghy is gone. Great videos and great music.

Love the tunes and video as always but we're missing Molly and Tambi... Maybe a cameo were they bring you lemonade??? Nice job on the dinghy, should be a lot of fun and a great aid to teach Molly with.

Is the next video when you install the hydra-foils? With a V-8 in that puppy I bet you could make it back to the Bahamas in 15 minutes.

Perfect, I wouldn't do one thing differently. Very impressive. Btw, shouldn't the bow U-bolt be mounted vertically? :):):) Fair winds

Eye bolts should be mounted parallel to the load you plan on putting on them, you have mounted them perpendicular, ie. horizontal for both the bow and stern in your application. The eye bolt on the bow will be especially weak as their will be a lot of shock loading of it as it is towed. The tow rope will apply a lot of leverage to it as it "jerks" the dinghy along behind your sailboat.

Great job on the boat and the video! I am just curious why your eye bolts are installed horizontally instead of the customary vertical orientation? An aluminum (or stainless) backing plate on them may have spread the load better. Cracking of the hole area could encourage water penetration.

Can you explain to me how you get to play all this great music on your channel when most other KZfaqrs are having to use the free generic copyright free music. Loving your music choice.

Love the music!

small hint....if you ever have to work with resin again, put it in a small freezer bag and cut off a corner like an cake decorator's piping bag for filling holes and making fillits you wont have near as much sanding and cleanup. nice looking dingy :) did you find the plans online or buy them from someone?

I hope you cut those round holes on PI day 3.14 (march 14th) you talk about Tambi having eclectic musical taste... your's is pretty expansive you should maybe point you over drill then epoxy so the wood won't rot around the screws (I'm here for you - call me Capt. Oblivious)

Crue, Van Halen and Ozzy!! Hell yeah!! What's next? Steel Panther, Metallica, Preast? FYI, Any Docken or Whitesnake, and I will unsubscribe Faster than a laser bullet, Louder than an atom bomb. ;-) Love ur vids. Keep on rocking in the free world.

Also very much too late to mention, but mixing graphite with the epoxy for the inside of the daggerboard case gives it a much more abrasion resistant surface, that also resists UV better. Epoxy really hates sunlight.

Great project, but are you shure you used enough epoxy. I stil can see a hint of wood ;-)

I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be able to adjust the rake on these boats. The mast foot on most sailboats is not actually permanently fixed. Usually sitting in a track going fore to aft. Then something is used to keep it in place. My Sabot sits literally on a rake with several slots for pegs on the sides of the mast foot to drop into. It looks like yours but it’s 8’ and a single piece. Hope everything went well and you don’t have to tear all that out.

Wow he did an amazing job at making that wood a cyclical but why didn’t he just buy a piece of wood already like that ??

maybe i'm wrong but with the bow hook (the boat's nose piercing) installed where it is, whenever you tie a line to that hook and lift the boat out of the water, the line is gonna chafe on the top of the bow, now?! maybe the nose piercing should have been a little higher? or is that hook not for lifting the boat out?

SV Emerald Steel mounted two retracting wheels on the stern.

Great mast hole and excellent music selection. So guessing you just said screw the pennies that youtube gives by all the music you're using? Or have you found a way around the copyright. I challenge anybody to build a better dingy!! Experienced or not.

Given the air guitar at the end, I am beginning to think that you weren't playing the baritone level last week at all - just faking it.

Did you just cover your spars with unthickened epoxy or did you cover with varnish or both?

Looks great but next time you are going to be running power tools on youtube, let me know so I can put my hearing protection in lol. Just kidding, awesome video!

will you have to register that dingy when its finished? im guessing either way it would be a good idea for proof of ownership but didnt know if it was required by law, so far im impressed with the build, you do some pretty good wood work, when it comes to building stuff, wood is my least favorite, i prefer play dough personally :)

I think I'm seeing some pine. Strong enough ?

Wondering why you didn't make that bow eye vertical like most boats?

Ben, have you kept a record of the material cost? in terms of labor time, what is the last count? Thanks

Was that a de-tuned Les Paul you were playing there or one of those rare Baritone Gibson Explorers?

Where did you get the skeg guard metal ?

Hi Ben, If you get tired of working on that wooden boat and want to do a small passage on our boat let me know. I'm leaving Fl. the middle of April bound for NC. My wife sent you a message on FB.

What kind of epoxy did you use?

It doesn’t seem like you over drilled and epoxied the holes for those tow loops.

What kind of plywood did you use?