: William,
: The type of strip building that we do is not translatable to something as big
: and as complicated as an 18' sailboat. Sailboats of that size need a lot
: of internal structure to deal with all the dynamics of mast, stays, keel,
: sails etc.
: The folks on the Woodenboat Forum would be better equipted to advise you.
: See;
: http://media5.hypernet.com/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi
: Charlie

While I agree that you need to take these special problems into consideration, I think you could use our method of construction for an 18 foot sailboat. Woodenboat magazine has had issues based on boats like these. I think that the key may be to tie the keel directly into the mast as much as possible, rather than having a mast attached to a boat attached to a keel. Increased hull strength would also be needed, but that could be easily overcome and deck strength would be vastly more important in a sailboat for hull rigidity.

I think you should try it, but be careful you know what you're getting into, it won't be as easy as building a kayak and you won't have as much support as you might on a more traveled path.