IMPACT! How hard is your boat going to hit something. For most of us it won’t be very hard at all. So it is better to save weight. For expeditioners they may require a lot more from their boats. What are the strategies one can think about?
We first started to see Paulownia becoming available from Plantations in Australia around 2004. Well before the current boom in its use for framing and hulls of dinghies, yachts and other boats. Paulownia is a very lightweight timber from China that provides one way of building lightweight boards and boats. How to overcome its weaknesses and make use of its strengths.
Fittings list for the Goat Island Skiff and other Lug rigged sailboats. Two suppliers who can ship full package.
One recurring problem with plywood foils, centreboards, leeboards and rudders is that over time they tend to break unexpectedly.
By simplifying the design, you simplify the build. By eliminating or simplifying processes the build is further simplified. Examples that will make your boat simpler, lighter and better at what it is meant to do.
A 12lb canoe. The idea was to build a Rushton Wee Lassie in balsa strip with very light glass. The boat ended up being fairly durable despite not being interested in durability. As far as I was concerned I was going to be happy if it lasted a couple of years before being chucked into a dumpster somewhere. But five years later it was still beautiful despite good use.
A whole bunch of strategies for lightweighting a plywood stitch and glue canoe. In this case a Storer Boat Plans Eureka Canoe. Standard build is around 44lbs. Ten lbs were saved to bring the weight down to 34 or 15k
How sailing and paddling canoe shapes differ.
How traditional canoe designs work really well and a lot of modern ones don’t.
Building a canoe – is ply or cedar strip better?
How to build a lightweight canoe – selection of materials – ply vs strip plank and timber species
Books for canoebuilding.
Ultralight strip planked boats using Paulownia, Balsa and Western Red Cedar. Superlight Eureka Canoe and Goat Island Skiff and the amazing 12lb balsa canoe
OK … I decided to keep the old racing dinghy and fix it up. How do I put my effort in the right places to get the maximum results? A grab bag of methods for joining plywood, working out sizes, making centreboards and rudders and more.
The Oz Goose is multipurpose. It can hit speeds of 13 knots, is an excellent trainer and teaching boat with three adults aboard or a family sailer with two adults and a bunch of kids. It is lighter than a Laser Dinghy and a fraction of the cost
A two and a half week project – The Taal Stand Up Paddleboard is very different from the majority of SUPs out there.
Light stable and quick with much less effort than the normal surfboard shapes used.
This shows the building method to help those who have purchased plans.
A new design for a “Stand Up Paddleboard”. It is designed for excellent travelling speeds for less effort but retains the stability of a beginner/intermediate board. It can be built much lighter than the standard weight of 12 to 14kg (28lbs). Strategies for major weight saving are in the plan
OK … it IS a rant. But it was prompted by the very legitimate question about why have a mizzen sail.
But sadly I descend into a rant about how expense is a really poor predictor of performance.
I am currently helping at a boatbuilding school in Adelaide.
There are boats designed by me, Oughtred, CLC Kayaks, Joel White and Woodenboat.
People are from Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Perth.
The conservative viewpoint is that traditional rigs are not very efficient. However allied to efficient hulls and set up correctly, lug and sprit rigs can be very efficient indeed – not too much slower than “modern” rigs, particularly when the same lessons are applied to trad sails and way cheaper.
This is a WIKI drawn from the group on the Storerboats forum discussions on setting up lug and sprit rigs for best performance building on the information in my webpage.
Our epoxy timber boatbuilding FAQ. It has been built up over time to cover a huge range of topics for building restoring and repairing wood and timber boats – whether traditional or modern building methods
The OzRacer 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.
Peter Hyndman has been building his Eureka Canoe forever. I think it is still not finished – however he did document it beautifully
