General and broad range of boating news
Some basic questions were asked on my forum about the design of amas.
There are so many permutation of ama length, crossbeam width, ama volume with performance ranging from very poor to very good. But what are some of the basic criteria?
The dot in the bay above is Perttu’s Microcruiser sailboat on a three day trip on the extensive Finnish waterways.
The boat is tiny – 8ft long and is based on my successful OzRacer design (formerly OZ PDRacer)
It is a brilliant concept and sails well upwind and down on inland waters.
Jim Post in the USA sent me a USB drive crammed full of building and launch pics of the OZ Goose design – the Big Brother to the OZ Racer (formerly the OZ PDRacer).
Looking forward to some sailing reports!
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?
Sailing on Lake Eufala, Oklahoma
The wonderful Sail OK event with hosts Jackie and Michael Monies
All wooden boats welcome! Or friends!
Sailing the Goat Island Skiff in the Texas 200 for the first time. The Goodman family boat is now a regular in this 200 mile quite difficult sailing event in often extreme conditions.
A bunch of photos of Robert Hoffman sailing his Beth Canoe.
He built it over winter but now is enjoying Spring.
John in Texas built his Goat Island Skiff from a kit made by Clinton Chase. They are experimenting with a yawl version of the Goat.
They had a launch and a capsize by the dock.
The boat is a great lime green. I used to have a lime green NS14 dinghy that I enjoyed so much some of the design input went into 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 don’t have a car so how can I go canoe touring? Its something I fell in love with in the USA on Lake Powell.
This is an idea for a simple, cheap, almost throwaway (or give away) canoe. I can get the materials shipped to somewhere on a river, build the boat over a couple of days then go for a paddle.
At the end I can give the boat away or store it for the next part of the trip.
More paddling on Lake Powell, Utah, part of the Colorado River.
Remember that I am not a real Canoeist. I have paddled quite a range of different boats at some time or another, I do know basic strokes, I have used canoes to do several day tours (Noosa River, Hawkesbury River) but this trip was to much more remote areas. Closest towns 50 or so kilometres away, we were likely to be pretty well the only people on that area of water after the weekend, we had to carry everything including food as there are no shops.
I am sleeping on rock (using an air bed) but the rock is incredibly beautiful – it is part of the ancient ocean floor even though the elevation here is around 3500ft. Pushed up by volcanic action. There are other patterns in many different places. Boating up the Colorado River in Canoes and other small boats tomorrow
Astoria Maritime Museum – Now the really cool thing happened. Long had organised for us to see the storage sheds across the road.
