This page compares the two plywood canoes in my range. Both have detailed plans and are simple to build.

The page is to explain the differences and to help potential builders see if one of the boats suits their needs.

Lots of links to pictures, build articles and even videos.

The cla

Cliff and PJ live in Warm Queensland and Wintry Tasmania. However they both like to go the the yearly (June) wooden boat festival in tropical Far North Queensland.

This year they decided to build one of my Quick Canoes. They started on Saturday and finished including putting the canoe on the car roof by the following thursday.

They are experienced woodworkers so added some very nice details.

Melanie in the UK wrote to me. She has just bought an old Mirror dinghy and started sailing for the first time.

Problem is that the boat leaks and she doesn’t want to stop using the boat until the end of the season.

I have a philosophy of keeping older boats on the water and not pulling them off for months on end until you have the time to do the job.

So the article here is useful to see what can be done with an old leaky plywood sailing dinghy to keep it going.

It is perfect sailing weather at the moment in the UK and it is better she is out there learning but with the worst of the leaks gone.

With a disciplined approach she should be able to get all of this done in a week or so. The general leaks fixed permanently and the rotted area reinforced so that the boat won’t break.

The plywood “disposable” canoe (see here) has been renamed the more salubrious “Quick Canoe”. I quite liked the name of “Disposable Canoe” but I agreed with the critique that it hinted at something that was poor quality rather than simple and Easy.

It has been designed to be as easy to build as possible while keeping some of the qualities of a good paddling canoe – in particular the ability to track.

BobWes is a lovely man and has been building his Goat Island Skiff in Sacramento over a few months. He wrote this rather wonderful short piece about what it feels like and what he has learned during the boatbuilding process.

What he has to say about overcoming the limitations of money, time, skills and space is simple but profound.

This podcast/mp3 talks about why Australian (and New Zealand) wooden boatbuilding is different from the rest of the world..

Click to listen to the talk. This is the third of three.

This is the second of my talks in the USA. It focuses a bit more on construction and some of the methods that can be used to keep a boat light and simple, but very strong and stiff.

It also discusses how there is a “creep” in boatbuilding and design that increases the weight of boats way over what is really needed for a strong structure.

From Clinton Chase’s blog clintchaseboatbuilder.blogspot.com

On November 1st I was pleased and honored to introduce Michael Storer, an Australian Boat Designer reputed for his simple, elegant, and approachable boats, to a group of 21 members from the wooden boat community in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Some knew of Storer’s work, others have built his boats, and many knew him as an important name and wanted to learn more about the man and his message.

It is the first boat he has built and Alex is not necessarily taking the quickest way. But he is reporting daily about his building and his ruminations on different subjects. It is a very popular boatbuilding item on the OZ woodwork forum. There have been around 13000 views of his thread already and it [...]

Did you see the slightly modified assembly method we are using now? Just makes the stitching process a bit more controllable. I have some pics of the Eurekas going together in the current Duckflat Autumn school. Which shows how strange the first three panels are when stitched loosely … nothing like a boat … the [...]

It is a bit hard finding information on my forum as the list is not very ordered, so I have attempted to fix this.There is a general building section then each boat is in alphabetical order.To see all the images you may need to become a member, however, they are a good bunch and will [...]

Howdy, Lot of background stuff happening over the last few weeks. Duckflat has been developing up a precut kit for the Goat Island Skiff and the Eureka Canoe. Gosh it has been a steep learning curve. Have been back and forth with the cutting people to get things to work correctly. Computer cutters (the machines) [...]

Six detailed DIY repair methods with discussion. Fast Bottom Replacement Fixing a hole Getting an old boat back on the water quickly Getting an old boat back into good racing trim Fixing lots of minor stone damage and repainting Nonskid non-slip paint or varnish I seem to have written a lot about repairing older plywood [...]

Actually, When Jamie mentioned his goat island skiff building blog I went … oh yeah … another blog … but it is really rather a nice bit of writing. He had a shot at getting one of the Lumber Yard Skiffs from Woodenboat Magazine underway first. His experience was in line with my confustification about [...]

At the Duckflat Autumn Boating School Bob Bauze built himself a Eureka Canoe. We used a few methods a bit different from the plan to speed things up and make some fitting work a bit easier. We used fillets on the inside of the boat instead of glass tape. This method adds a bit more [...]

The first part was up last week. This week we talk about traditional vs modern sailtypes – everyone knows I am a fan of trad rigs because of their low cost – but here I go into the influences on the other side. I love the efficiency of modern rigs so I use all the [...]

INDEX FOR THIS MONSTER EUREKA CANOE THREAD – MILESTONESEven more info at Peter Hyndman’s Eureka Pages Marking out the plywood and cutting Joining up the Prefabricated panels and starting stitching Filleting on the inside of the Eureka Canoethe tidy way Marking out the canoe bulkheads Getting ready to put the decks in place – I [...]

Furled Sails – They call themselves the “World’s First Sailing Podcast” based in North America. Anyway, last week Christy and Noel called me up chatted to me for a couple of hours. So they have an interview with me on their site followed by a part 2 next week. This looks like the permanent linkhttp://www.furledsails.com/article.php3?article=760 [...]