If you want to build your own sailboat, and who doesn't, you're going to need some sailboat plans. Now, if you're anything like me, you won't want to pay for them. A full set of sailboat plans can easily set you back several hundred dollars depending on the complexity of the design. Well, I am not expecting my entire boat to cost me more than a thousand bucks so that would be an impossibly large hole in my budget. No, I intend to go down the free sailboat plans route. And just to save you the trouble of doing the same, you can have the benefit of my experience for nothing. See? You are saving money already!

1. Search on the Internet for 'Free sailboat plans'. You won't find any modern boats but, hey, we're going down the free route so we'll have to take what we can get. There are a couple of websites that will allow you to download scanned copies of old 1930's dinghies and the like and small day cruisers that look like they've just been torpedoed by a WWII U-boat. The plans are mostly illegible and sometimes incomplete, but whet the hell... they're free!

2. Begging. Now I certainly wouldn't advocate theft. And anyway I'd probably never get this article published if I did, but begging's got to be OK hasn't it? All you need to do is: either find someone who's already built a boat of exactly the design that you're interested in and go up to them and say 'Look, I know we don't know each other, but I was admiring your boat and I'd be very interested in copying it. Would you do me a big favor and run home and get me the plans. I'd really appreciate it. I'll even name the boat after you!'. I haven't tried this for myself yet but that ought to work, if you're polite and smile nicely.

3. Design it yourself. This is the least interesting in my view. It means I am going to have to buy a bit of software, use my brain to come up with a design I want then spend a few hours honing it to perfection and getting it just the way I want it. I am going to have to let the software do all the hydrostatic and drag calculations automatically. Then, just when I've built my boat to my own exact design, I am going to have lots of people asking me for copies of the plans and offering me money for them. Oh, well maybe that way of getting free sailboat plans doesn't seem so bad after all...