Sailing unstayed Cat Ketches and Cat Yawls safely and efficiently downwind in strong winds

John Goodman and I sailed the immaculate Goat Island Skiff he built from my plan in the Texas 200.

The boat showed itself to be one of the faster in the fleet despite loading up such a short boat with food, water and camping gear for six days with little outside support.

We played with sailing the boat by the lee – a method used by racing boats to gain both speed and control.

I document the method here including a video showing how the angle of heel can be controlled using the mainsheet.

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Nice Goat Island Skiff Videos from John Goodman in Texas

More videos of John Goodman’s Yawl Rigged Goat Island Skiff.

He is trying out some rigging variations to see if we can simplify the building of the yawl rig version.

At the moment this is inconclusive, but wow, he got some good videos

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Storerboats meeting for the Texas 200 “RAID” sailing event June 13-18, 2011

The TEXAS 200 sailing event is on again. A 200 mile sail and camping trip up the Texas coast that runs every year.

I am going to be in town, so would be crazy not to attend. This is a call for all interested storerboats to consider attending.

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A few more pics of the GIS yawl in the Texas 200 Mile event.

Plan info – yawl rig info, please contact me. John and Mark are pretty happy with the Goat Island Skiff Yawl. You can see some of the story here Goat Island Skiff Plywood Boat sails 200 miles up the Texas Coast. There are some more pics Nice woodworking detail in that one above! For much [...]

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An Epic Poem about the PDRacers that sail 200 miles up the Texas coast each year

OZ Racer plan information The PDRacers have a saga published at Duckworks about the Texas 200 (the 200 mile sailing event up the Texas Coast). It is not by a Ducker but by one impressed by them. Extract The Mighty Ducks clung to the port, with all manner and various sort of other craft abeam [...]

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Goat Island Skiff 3rd in the famous Caledonia Raid

From Joost who just sailed his GIS in Scotland… …Raid Caledonia is a “race” from the salt water in the West to the salt water in the East across Scotland on the Great Glen waterway which consists of 3 lakes (called lochs in Scotland) and some canal stretches between the lochs adding up to a [...]

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Brian receives RAID41 Prototype – Pretty Boat!

Gifted Amateur Boatbuilder Chris Perkins has laboured during some of the most difficult boatbuilding weather to produce the prototype of the new RAID41 (this is the building photoset. It is designed as a one person boat for distance cruising. Once I finish the detail plans, of course. Anyway Brian Pearson, the owner of the boat [...]

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Table of Contents for Michael Storer Wooden Boats Forum.

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 [...]

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Playing around with a new design

It is a long weekend here and I have finally commited some time to developing up a boat that builds on the lessons from the PDRacer. We have seen three PDRacers sail 200 miles along the Texas coast fover an 5 day period and this prompted the discussion about what the lessons were. For the [...]

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