I built the Quick Canoe in a day and a half. This is way slower than some of my customers.

It is the first time I have been disappointed building a complete boat this quick.

The risk of high expectations!

But a day and a half with the problems I had is pretty good.

Jim Post has built the hull of his PD Goose – a 12ft version of the OZ PDRacer.

He has done a nice job with a couple of nice additions. A seat in the middle and a stylishly angular splashboard on the foredeck. I am dying to hear how it sails!

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.

Fiona Harbison and friends have just launched their new Handy Punt for fishing and family outings.

Fiona is the sister of Helen (hope I have that right) who built a Nutshell pram in a number of the Duck Flat spring or autumn boatbuilding schools.

It is called Farnark, which will strike a chord with Australians and New Zealanders through the work of John Clarke. There is a picture of the boat and a clip of John Clarke reprising his farnarkling spiel.

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.

I don’t have a car so how can I go canoe touring? Its something I fell in love with in the USA on Lake Powell.

This is an idea for a simple, cheap, almost throwaway (or give away) canoe. I can get the materials shipped to somewhere on a river, build the boat over a couple of days then go for a paddle.

At the end I can give the boat away or store it for the next part of the trip.

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.

This talk is the first hour of my exposition on boat building and design. There are two more parts to come. This covers some of the background and design issues. The second is more on the building side and the last is a bit more about why the Australian (and New Zealand) wooden boat tradition is different from the Northern Hemisphere.

You can stream the talks over your internet connection or download them as a podcast.

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.

The first RAID 41 has been on display at the BEALE PARK boating event in the UK. That is the one built beautifully by inspired amateur builder Chris Perkins and is being finished off by the owner Brian Pearson. I am not sure how it works but I believe the show is run by Watercraft [...]

From Koala in Slovenia! He launched his green PDR onto a local river and invited fellow PDR builder Theodor to the launch. Neither of them has sailed before … and they had a great time. Well, we had a launch day on monday!! Beautiful weather, nice wind at first. And it was great. Theodor and [...]

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) [...]

A new local (Adelaide) PDRacer has been on its way for a few months now and is getting very close to being ready. The picture right is what it looked like a few weeks ago. however things have changed. You can click on the pic for a closer look Mike wrote: Bit more progress this [...]

Things are hotting up in Toronto. Norm is on the edge of launching his BETH sailing canoe after a very short time building. He has been able to keep updating his site regularly. It is VERY hard to believe he has only taken 4 weeks to build BETH – which is pretty fast. Experienced builder [...]

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 [...]