A wooden ship would make more sense.
You might also want to actually put your boat in the water to test it before you start a 500 mile journey into open ocean.
http://www.wedigboats.org/Thaikkal.htm
The Kadakkarapally Boat,(The Thaikkal Find)
An Ancient Sailing Barge in India
This is a collaborative project between INA and the State Institute of Archaeology, Art History, Conservation, and Museology (SIAACM) of Kerala, India
Director: Dr. M.V. Nair- (SIAACM)
Associate Director (hull recording): Dr. Ralph K. Pedersen- (INA)
Preliminary information:
Located in a coconut grove at Kadakkarapally, near Chertala in Kerala, India.
The hull has been carbon-dated by Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany, Luchnow, India to 1010 years before present. Further testing conducted by Beta Analytics, Florida, USA has yielded at date of AD 1020 to 1270, the lower end of which reinforces the date from the lab in luchnow. There are no associated artifacts with the wreck that can aid in the determination of the ship's age.
Two maststeps, one amidships, and one double-socketed in the bow, indicate that this was a sailing barge. Its hull is divided into sections by bulkheads that either served to separate cargo or to stablize it. The bulkheads were not watertight.
Hull constructed primarily of anjili (aini) wood (Artocarpus hirsuta), a local hardwood.
The boat is flat-bottomed, hard-chined, and has little freeboard. It exhibits a combination of constructional features unique to the current corpus of nautical archaeology.
This is a project of SIAACM, at whose invitation Dr. Pedersen and INA are collaborating.