Well, this is the first real post on WordPress and it is about my trip to the USA for the Puddle Duck World titles plus a couple of months of other boating adventures.
I am thinking of moving the whole site over to it in the future. It will be more flexible than the existing system and allow indexing and efficient searches.
Not to mention comments from readers!
I am going to use it initially as a blog for my two month trip in the USA.
The trip has been made possible mostly by the worldwide PDRacer community for which I have drawn up possibly the most comprehensive boat plan in the world – for the OZ Mk2 PDRacer. The plan sells for $20 and guides through the process of building a simple, cheap but very sophisticated little boat.
It sails very well indeed (this is not blow … that is the comment from an ex Australian A-class cat champion as well as the father of a clan of 16ft skiff champs) but also takes care of beginners.
I became interested in PDRacer when Peter Hyndman (on the right) my boatbuilding accomplice pointed out how many new sailors were being attracted to the this class where people make just about everything including their own sails.
Anyway, what has this got to do with my trip?
The worldwide Puddle Duck Racer community working with my US agent Chuck Leinweber of Duckworks have collected enough money in $10, $20 and more or less small amounts to finance most of my trip. See here for itinerary and the story from Chuck’s point of view.
Such a trip is normally unthinkable for me – I live on the smell of an oily rag – but I will be visiting San Francisco, Oregon, Going on a river trip in small boats in Utah, crossing overland to Texas, then to the PDRacer world titles in Georgia, back to Texas, then Florida, up to Maine and finishing in Boston.
My plan is to update this blog as often as possible with all sorts of material, from photos and videos through to interviews. Mostly boat related, but anything is possible.
Tomorrow I have to move some of my stuff into storage, organise some plans for my Australian agents (Duck Flat Wooden Boats) and more.
The pace and pressure is picking up! Cool!
