Cliff and PJ live in Warm Queensland and Wintry Tasmania. However they both like to go the the yearly (June) wooden boat festival in tropical Far North Queensland.
This year they decided to build one of my Quick Canoes. They started on Saturday and finished including putting the canoe on the car roof by the following thursday.
They are experienced woodworkers so added some very nice details.
Christophe has launched his Goat Island Skiff in New Hampshire. A very nice looking boat.
Perttu took his recently built “Quick Canoe” on a trip down a river in Finland.
We don’t have rivers like this in Australia! To see them is quite exciting.
The Quick Canoe is designed to be very cheap and easy to build, but still work OK.
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.
Winter has been really harsh in North America.
It has even been snowing in Texas – and not just a little bit.
Kenny and family (more north than Texas) are really active on the PDRacer front but like many others are getting cabin fever from being icebound inside their houses.
So during one of the better days … there was boating to be done – but not boating as we know it, Jim.
Fast building was part of the aim of this plan! Also to keep the expense down. Rick surprised me – I was thinking it would take a couple of weekends. The Quick canoe is very simple to build and comes out of three plywood sheets. A very simple plywood canoe It has been designed to be as easy to build as possible while keeping some of the qualities of a good paddling canoe – in particular the ability to track.
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.
A little bit of writing how form in boat design seldom follows function in terms of what “looks good”. It was prompted by a discussion about whether the PDR is good looking or not.
My Podcasts on design also cover this idea to a greater depth – they are in the menu at the top of each page.
Juan Carlos has been building his Goat Island Skiff for about a year.
He has just put up a photo series of his boat launching.
The rest of the words and pictures are from Juan Carlos.
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.
A nice little article by Jackie Monies who is turning into the writer in residence for the PDRacers.
It posits the idea that because of its cheapness, ease of building and the creativity in the group that it qualifies as the “All American Boat”.
Actually I think it is the perfect boat for places that are water rich and cash poor. Anyone can afford to go sailing in these cool little sailing boats. The options of material and design solutions allow the boats to be built of local material just about anywhere. Very cheaply.
I was sitting in Chuck’s car as we were driving to the Lake Conroe Messabout. I knew that he had some plans for the Texas 200 event – to extend the concept and starting a new small boat festival on the Texas coast in a couple of years.
This is a podcast of that interview.
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 is the second of my talks in the USA. It focuses a bit more on construction and some of the methods that can be used to keep a boat light and simple, but very strong and stiff.
It also discusses how there is a “creep” in boatbuilding and design that increases the weight of boats way over what is really needed for a strong structure.
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.
Ralph Gersson in Holland got a very nice mail from Michael McNamara from mcNamara sails UK. He made a nice sail for Richard Harvey’s GIS “Blanche” and Ralph has decided to order.
Michael, a racing sailor with a lot of background talks about the experience of sailing the Goat Island Skiff.
It is the highest I have ever sailed by far – about 2500 to 3000ft above sea level.
A very nice bunch of folks. And got to meet BobWes (from my forum), John Kohnen (the author of the “mother of all nautical links”), Jon Kowitz and Andrew Linn (puddle duckers that sailed in the Texas 200 so triumphantly) David Luckhardt (who I missed in S.F.) and a whole bunch of other boat people and a swag of interesting boats.
