Help us vote for the best photos of the year! The Goat Island Skiff group on Facebook puts out a calendar and we have 160 brilliant photos. Your votes will select the shortlist for the 12 or 14 we will put in the Calendar.
Sailing and handling the steering and sail together can be confusing. But racing dinghy sailors have some techniques that will make sailing smoother and safer for more leisure oriented sailing. Your hands will be happier and probably your head too!
How do I get nice looking intervals for the inwale spacers on my boat? Photos. How many expensive clamps do I need for the job?
Dennis, in Sydney, has been blitzing around in his beautifully built Beth sailing canoe for well over a decade. He now has to reluctantly let go of this lovely looking boat. It really is for experienced dinghy sailors, but is rewarding to sail and easier on the bod than a Laser!
A particularly beautiful BETH sailing Canoe Kanangra Launched in South Australia. Also some lug sail setup information
All our lug rig information on one page. We have seen the change from the balance lug being almost forgotten to becoming the predominant rig for small self built wooden boat. This was the situation a hundred years ago. We can still use the cheapness and effectiveness of this rig to create boats with very quick and pleasant sailing characteristic.
How we discovered our box boat designs were good … and how they (or any other boat can reach its potential for very small extra effort. It is mostly in the thinking!
I’ve written about the stupid statements that get put on the net elsewhere. Here someone took the wrong advice “that you can stretch or shrink a boat a percentage” and applied it to one of my Goat Island Skiff plans. It wasn’t OK … the boat was useless after.
More photos of Fenwick Williams Catboat built in Strip Plank by David Wilson at Duckflat, Adelaide
A collection of some of our fun projects. Often collaborations. Some turned into production designs and others gave us significant learning!
The problem with design is that it is relatively cheap. Sometimes fixed price. But it is not realised what successive design iterations are doing to the boat.
In the end Chris was unable to complete the boat. Partially because the hull turned out to be in much worse condition than expected. But also despite some nice positives coming in terms of usable space below, other things just seemed to get more and more complex.
Who is Foiling and who is Faking. Where is the real technical development? First a glimpse of history before we see who is foiling and how the Moth group solved all the problems. Yes … all of them. America’s cup just leaches off this amazing technical success. It is Trickle Up … not Trickle Down.
The AMAZING steam canoe project. I designed the hullshape and Roger Baker built it. Strip planked with American Oak trim. One of the most striking boats on the Lower Murray River – or anywhere!
Industrial grade materials but the use of traditional bamboo raft tech have resulted in a huge variety of vessels in Taiwan. All still lashed together. Ranging from two oar single person fishing boats to trawlers 60 to 80ft long. Just lashed together. The truly surprising thing is just how fast they go together.
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.
“My keel has fallen off” – Ray’s voice on the phone. So he dropped his sails and motored home. He asked me to design a new keel that he could build himself. This article goes through the process of turning a deep keeled boat into a competitive shoal shallow draft boat in a way one builder working by themselves can do.
The story of how a financial success didn’t quite come off as a result of a natural disaster
The “Orange Boat” was unbelievably heavy and just about fell over if anyone stepped aboard and it is a keeboat! The vendor couldn’t sell it. So Ted bought it cheap and asked me what he could do. So we simplified and modded everything to state of the art but constrained to using “normal” materials to keep the cost down. Would it be competitive with quick trailer sailors, sports boats and the classic Restricted 22 class with their big sails. Seems small, light and simple can be very fast.
How useful are Solar and Electric boats anyhow? The large Solar Electric Mundoo 3 was one of the more interesting projects I’ve been involved in. It was the brainchild of Robert Ayliffe, then at Duck Flat Wooden Boats and Ted Dexter. This liveaboard boat was featured on the cover of WoodenBoat magazine at the time and was a tremendous success for the owners who found it fitted their needs perfectly.
Ran into some great photos and information on sailing a real Vietnamese Junk. I’ve seen plenty of half hearted replicas in HK, but this one is the real deal from Ken Preston. A traditionally built boat that is being restored with no intention to put a motor in it. Ken has one of the best blogs about South East Asia and Boats.