My Journey Around the World with WEST SYSTEM Epoxy
Spring, 2025
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By Eric Sponberg
In 1978, at 28, my wife Arliss and I sailed our 27′ Bianca, Duprass, from England to California. It was on that trip that I first learned of WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy in the form of an ULDB (ultra light displacement boat) named Circus Maximus. My first hands-on experience mixing WEST SYSTEM Epoxy came shortly after arriving in Ventura, CA, and opening my yacht design business there. A fellow boat designer, Richard Black, and his boat builder, Craig Ashby, taught me the basics of mixing and using WEST SYSTEM Epoxy and fillers to rebuild the cockpit seats on Duprass. Little did I know then how important a role WEST SYSTEM would play in the rest of my career and retirement.
Early Career
A short stint as the technical editor for a major sailing magazine took us east to Newport, RI, in 1979. Though that didn’t last, I soon became a Tillotson-Pearson Inc. (TPI) staff engineer at Warren, RI. They are the builders of Freedom Yachts and J-Boats as well as truck body parts, chemical tanks, fan blades, windmill blades, lightpoles, flagpoles, and composite masts. This job became my crash course in composite engineering. Within a few months, I became chief engineer at TPI for the next year and a half. During that time, I built my first dinghy design, Chula, in my basement out of Luan Mahogany plywood, Teak, Spruce, and WEST SYSTEM.
Independent Design Work
I went on my own designing again in November 1981. In 1983, I wrote the first technical treatise on free-standing mast design and engineering, as well as a lay-person’s version for SAIL magazine. I also developed a DIY method of building wood-epoxy and carbon fiber wing masts using WEST SYSTEM Epoxy. By the time I retired, I had designed 59 different free-standing masts.
I have Meade Gougeon to thank for my first professional yacht design commission. Bill and Marilyn McBain were passionate sailors on the Great Lakes. They wanted to commission a boat with a freestanding rig that would be easier to handle in strong winds than a traditional rig. They did not necessarily want another fiberglass boat. Bill called Meade Gougeon for advice, and Meade said, “Call Eric Sponberg; he can help you.”
At this point, I knew who Meade Gougeon was but had never met him or been to their Bay City, MI, boatbuilding shop. I met Jan Gougeon briefly at a wooden boat show in Newport in the early 1980s and became an avid WEST SYSTEM Epoxy student using their book, The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction. I relied on its design and engineering advice in my consulting work. Long story short, Bill and Marilyn visited me in Newport in September 1984, and we signed a design contract for what became Corroboree, a 35′ wood-epoxy sloop with a free-standing carbon fiber mast, Fig 1.
My First Commission
On the drawings, I specified that the scantlings were engineered to Lloyds Rules and Regulations for the Classification of Yachts and Small Craft and The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction. I left the brand of epoxy to the discretion of the builder, not knowing which they preferred or being able to obtain. Fig. 2.
At the time, Bill was a consultant for a new Ford® car program in Australia. A colleague of Bill’s recommended that he build his new boat in New Zealand. In his opinion, they were the best boat builders in the world.
Corroboree was built by Lloyd Stevenson Yachts in Auckland, NZ, with 25 mm thick Western Red Cedar strip planking and a pair of 4 mm thick double-diagonal layers of Kauri, an indigenous conifer native to NZ which is now a protected species. Corroboree was delivered to the US by container ship in 1987. The carbon fiber mast was built in New Hampshire by another client of mine, and shipped to Michigan. The boat’s name, Corroboree, is an Australian Aboriginal word that means “celebration.” The McBains sailed her on the Great Lakes for the next 27 years.
Expanding My Design Portfolio
Over my career, I have designed sail and power boats in wood-epoxy, composites, steel, and aluminum. Notable designs were Bagatelle, built by Rick Waters, and Saint Barbara, built by Van Dam Custom Boats. My last design in 2015 was Emerson, a 28′ double-ended ocean-going rowboat built by Schooner Creek Boat Works.
Sponberg Yacht Design Inc. became well known internationally for designing carbon fiber free-standing masts and rotating wingmasts. I nearly always specified Gougeon epoxy products for their construction. Over the years, I also engineered and directed complicated boat repairs. Builders and repair yards would hire me to engineer repair procedures and write process and material specifications to rebuild badly damaged boats. I frequently specified Gougeon epoxy products.
Around the World
Fast-forward to July 2014, and Arliss and I were contemplating my retirement and an around-the-world voyage. What boat should we buy? Why not Corroboree? We approached McBains about selling her. Their sailing days were winding down, and they were thrilled that Corroboree just might complete an epic circumnavigation. By October, we had the marine survey done and closed a deal. By early December, Corroboree was under our care and ownership at a boatyard in St. Augustine.
The survey revealed that water had seeped into the Kauri diagonal layers in three places. At the sheer near the stem, under the toe rail starboard aft, and most critically, in about 14 ft2 of the hull bottom on centerline between the keel and the rudder. This last was due to a collision Corroboree had some years before with a submerged container in Lake Erie and subsequent poor repair. We hired shipwright John Lubbehusen to craft repairs for all three spots by replacing the soaked Kauri layers with new African Mahogany layers set in WEST SYSTEM 105 Epoxy Resin® and hardener.
Shortly before launch, we discovered two of the nine bronze keel bolts were broken. It was another consequence of the collision and poor repair. A marine surveyor located the lower ends of the keel bolts in the lead keel casting by thermographic imaging and verified their positions with the construction plans. We replaced the broken bolts with new ones.
Setting Sail
We left St. Augustine in January 2017 and headed down to Grenada. Turning west, we made it through the Panama Canal in March 2018, 40 years after we had gone through with Duprass. Our next leg was the longest voyage, 4,000 miles to the Marquesas. By October 2018, we had sailed 12,000 miles in New Zealand, Corroboree’s birthplace. It was time for a refit and more repairs. So, we hauled out at Norsand Boatyard in Whangarei for six months.
Missed a Spot…
A mysterious weep of sea water into Corroboree’s stern had confounded us since the beginning of the voyage. I suspected it came from the rudder skeg. The rudder skeg is the one area of the boat I had not fully inspected back in Florida. Dropping the rudder is a major undertaking. Well, now we had to do it. Off came the rudder, and there was the culprit: the backside of the rudder skeg was delaminated with open voids. After the repairs, no more weeping sea water ever came back into the boat. Repairs and refits along a voyage are usually pretty expensive, which is why B.O.A.T. stands for “Bring Out Another Thousand.”
Hitting a Reef
We continued westward to Australia in May 2019. While we intended to stay there just one year, COVID ultimately stretched that to three years. In May 2021, we continued up the Great Barrier Reef along the northeast coast of Australia. At Lizard Island, we banged the rudder on a coral reef in a bone-headed maneuver during broad daylight. Upon inspection, it looked like we had damaged the rudder skeg and punched a divot into the bottom of the rudder blade.
I could not dive under the rudder for closer inspection because sharks were swimming around the boat. We were 50 miles from Cooktown, the nearest port of refuge and repair. We wondered aloud if this was the end of our adventure. A boat with a broken rudder would be helpful to no one, so we had to repair it.
We contacted a fisherman from Cooktown who motored up to Lizard Island and towed us 50 miles back. What should we find in the local marine chandlery in this sleepy settlement of under 3,000 people in northeast Queensland? WEST SYSTEM Epoxy—resin, hardener, fillers, and fiberglass fabrics in sufficient supply to carry out our repairs!
Déjà vu
Once on the town’s only slipway, we dropped the rudder and discovered the front lower end of the rudder skeg was badly cracked. Fortunately, through the friendliness of locals eager to help two stranded Americans, we were able to locate a huge stack of 2″ thick Teak flitches that had been harvested and air-dried naturally at a local farm four years previously. We bought a 10′ x 18″ flitch to fashion a new skeg. We cut off the cracked bits and then rough-cut a new Teak plug which we glued into place and anchored with four 8 mm dia. stainless steel threaded rods, pocketing them with WEST SYSTEM Six10® Thickened Epoxy Adhesive.
Happy with our successful repair, we came to realize that Y.A.C.H.T. stands for “Yet Another Catastrophe Handled Today.” For me, engineering and executing repairs during our circumnavigation sometimes seemed like normal work, not retirement.
Tying the Knot
The rudder repair set us behind the tropical weather, so we spent the cyclone season in Darwin, Australia. In May 2022, we continued our trip to and through Indonesia. At one point, we spent an eerie night anchored inside the crater of Krakatoa—the ancient but still active volcano between Java and Sumatra. From Krakatoa, the Indian Ocean crossing was our circumnavigation’s most frustrating and worst weatherwise. On the way across we stopped at the Maldives, Seychelles, and Mayotte before reaching Richard’s Bay, South Africa in November. Then we harbor-hopped in favorable weather windows down around the southern tip of Africa to Cape Town where we arrived on New Year’s Day 2023.
The last legs across the South Atlantic Ocean were relatively easy and quick, thanks to consistent southeast trade winds and northwest-setting currents. We crossed our outbound track to “tie the knot” on our circumnavigation at Grenada in May 2023. Upon arriving in Boca Raton, Florida, in June, we had traveled a total of 31,709 miles over the course of 6.5 years. We are now moored at a marina in Brunswick, GA, and Corroboree is up for sale.
Visiting Gougeon Brothers, Inc.
After many years using WEST SYSTEM products, Arliss and I visited friends in Bay City, MI, this past May 2024.. We decided to visit the Gougeon Brothers headquarters first, which is a bucket list item for me. We were greeted warmly and given a complete tour of the plant by Jenessa Hilger, the editor for Epoxyworks magazine. She was sure to show us the original boatshop where all the history and development of the WEST SYSTEM took place. As we departed, Jenessa invited me to write this article.
I have now tied the knot on my long association with WEST SYSTEM Epoxy and its products. What a ride!
Author’s Note:
Eric Sponberg received his naval architecture degree from the University of Michigan in 1971. He practiced yacht design and consulting naval architecture from 1978 until retirement in 2015. He and his wife, fellow U of M grad and author Arliss Ryan, have done two extended offshore voyages totalling 43,000 miles. Although they have finished sailing, they will continue to travel by air to see more of the world. As Eric is fond of saying, “Nothing goes to windward like a 747!”
For more tips on rudder repair, visit Rudder Repair.
