Time for “The Builder’s Eye”
“Tuck’n the Bilges and Put’n in the Run”
--From the Desk of the Project Director

After a hot summer with my high school students working as hard as they could, it’s time to put the blueprints and CAD drawings aside and get down to the artistry of making this puppy hunt.

Our original sketches were converted to a computerized design that produced the “Table of Offsets” that the “Jig” , or full-sized hull templates, were built to last April. The Stem, keel and transom are now in place on the jig with the support of the keen eyes of our JVD32 Design Team of island boatsmen. We are now tuning the hull shape starting with laying some false planking around the jig, to see how she really looks! As all of us know computers have little or no sense of artistic design and how things should look to the eye for the very first JVD 32. It’s time for the ‘Builder’s Eye’ for in this step the builder has to know what she’s going to have in her soul. It may sound like hog wash but, nevertheless every boat builder changes the design in some way, when doing the first hull.

Questions go through my mind over and over. Will she break free off the wind? Will she ease to windward in strong tradewinds and a steep Caribbean Sea? Will she get on her run in light air with a minimal angle of heel and glide along effortlessly? And one of the most important things of all: will the kids that do “Sail Training” aboard be safe? This is no eight hour a day job. For the most part it’s twenty-four/seven thought, that never leaves you.

Thanks to a lot of people that have put their two cents in on the project, it’s moving in the right direction and all of those questions are getting answered in the correct order of priority. This is an Island Sloop you’re going to want to sail, if you love the classics as I do.

Captain Kevin Gray
Project Director