Starting out

I've been wanting a drift boat since starting fly fishing a year ago. I was tempted for a while by a raft, for a while by nice shiny commercial drift boats. Those suckers are expensive, though and I didn't have the cash to plunk down all at once. After digging around, I realized that making my own, while not inexpensive, would get me the boat that I wanted and would be a blast to build as well! Also, I could spread the cost over the life of the project, hopefully making it less daunting. I've got some woodworking experience and really enjoy creating stuff in the shop so this looked like a good project.

I did a ton of reading up online and in the end decided to go with plans from Montana Riverboats for the "Beavertail" fly fishing boat. A big epoxy order, and a bunch of plywood later, I was on my way!

I've found inspiration in other people's boat building experiences, so I thought I'd share my progress online. Hopefully this will help as a reference for others building their first boats. You can learn from what I'm sure will be a bunch of my mistakes!

Here's another boat building blog I've been following: Building a Custom Drift Boat