Reprint of an article I wrote a few years ago for Watercraft magazine in the UK.
The article points out why I think most of the discussion about boat design being a “compromise” is rubbish and taking that point of view means that the design is sure to be compromised.
What happens if we don’t accept the compromise?
Exciting News, John and David Goodman finished the Texas200 event in their lime green Goat Island skiff.
Five days and 200 miles up the Texas coast dodging huge barges and commercial traffic.
They had a great time and are very happy with the performance of the Goat
Bruce in New South Wales, Australia has launched his Goat Island Skiff plywood sailing dinghy at Port Stephens.
They had a nice day sailing around but capsized the boat by accident when someone tripped up. Ooops.
I am still not sure who is to blame!
We are still waiting for launch day pics to be retrieved from the waterlogged camera.
Bobwes has been using his Goat Island Skiff over the last weeks.
It is brightly coloured and looks pretty great.
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!
Clinton Chase in Portland Maine has just delivered a precut kit for the Goat Island Skiff to John in Texas who is building the boat.
The kit arrived in a big box.
This little article tells how his kids are involved in the boatbuilding starting with attaching the framing to the accurately cut plywood. He knows the rule that it is more important what the kids learn and experience than it is to minimise the use of wood!
This is a list of the latest posts on the Storerboats Forum.
It has information about building, discussions about design, photos of buildings and launchings and much more.
A main interest is tweaking the best possible performance out of traditional looking boats.
Tom has built his MSD Rowboat in Brisbane.
I met up with him recently and we drove down to the coast towing the rowboat to the river at Nudgee. A bit of wind and a lot of current because of all the rain.
Tom has trimmed down the skeg to get the boat to balance nicely in all directions. Before the modification the bow used to blow around – now it behaves nicely.
I took quite a few pictures.
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.
Peter Hyndman has made some PDRacer wallpapers that you can download for your iPhone and some other devices.
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 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 Al Zuger in Brooklyn, NY who is extending the envelope of operating his PDRacer. So I finally took my little ducky out in a real bay yesterday. I went down to the south shore of long island about an hour out of the big city, and man was it ever nice! Up until now read more →
I am please to say that we moved the two PD Racers into the Brisbane Timber and Working with wood show last night. One of the members of the Wooden Boat association has a mostly complete Eureka Canoe on the stand as well. I will be available for questions the whole weekend and the much read more → I’ll be on the Boatcraft Pacific/Queensland Wooden Boat Association stand at the “Timber and Working with Wood Show” Brisbane – RNA Showgrounds – Fortitude Valley Friday 20 April through to Sunday 22 April. Info about all the Working with Wood Shows around Australia are here woodshow We will have a couple of PD Racers on read more →
At the moment I am in Sydney for a couple of weeks. Not a lot of boating stuff happening apart from work I’m doing on developing a lighter mast and tabernacle (so the mast will swing up into position easily) for a San Francisco Bay Pelican. But the main point of this post is to read more →
No Story about the DuckFlat Spring School is complete without a bit of a spiel about the first of the Mk2 OZ PDRacers being built. It was only one among the 12 different projects – but, hey, it is MY Design!!! (My other designs can be seen by clicking the links in the left column.) read more →
I was asked by the people at Duck Flat Wooden Boats whether I would be interested in teaching at their Spring School. It is their first one for a few years and has the purpose of “getting people excited about boatbuilding”. I must admit that was pretty well how it went. 12 different projects and read more →
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