Visit to Duck Flat Wooden Boats in Adelaide.

I used to work at DuckFlat many years ago.

I visited them in Adelaide. Photo and text of a fast plywood trimaran, 40ft steam liveaboard boat, kayak, rowboat and a Hartley Powerboat restoration

Setting up a recovery line to right a leeboard OzRacer or OzGoose sailboat

A problem with a single leeboard is after a capsize there is a 50% chance of it being out of reach. Here is a method of setting up a rope to help right PDRacers and OzRacers when the leeboard is out of reach. The nice thing about the OZ series is that all the boats come up with very little water inside when righted from capsize. Also the wooden mast doesn’t allow the boat to turn completely upside down.

Looking for plans of Rickard Sarby’s Olympic Finn Dinghy in wood

The Finn Dinghy has been one of the most important of the racing classes over the past six decades.

It was always in the forefront of sailing developments.

One fellow contacted asking if there were plans to build a Finn dinghy … and I was able to find a partial answer.

The standard Storer boat plans “kick back” dagger rudder.

The rudderbox design I use has distinct advantages over normal swinging rudder setups. Once you try this design you will never be satisfied with a swinging blade again. But some of the details are important!

Book – “A lighter ton” – New Zealand racing yacht design in the 1970s

In the late 70s as a sailing teenager I drew boats on every available paper surface.

A new book “a lighter ton” describes the exciting development of racing yachts to create newer, lighter, faster and cheaper and FUNNER boats.

Many of the developments were from New Zealand designers such as Bruce Farr, Paul Whiting and Laurie Davidson. A new book by Richard Blakey covers this exciting experimental period in yacht design

Boat designs influenced by rules? History shows us canting keel maxis are stupid

This is an article about how bias in thinking produces weird results in terms of boat designs.

I compare a silly boat design trend of 100 years ago with modern canting keel maxi yachts.

Personally I don’t think they should be allowed to use engines to run the keels and the various systems – if they do then they should be disqualified from the event results. The conventional human powered boats should be listed as the winners of events.

A week fast building two Quick Canoes for touring the Loire in France – Part 1

The above photo was taken on the third day of our Canoeing trip on the Loire River in France. The two black canoes didn’t even exist a week ago.

When I wrote the original article on Disposable Canoeing I had no idea at all what it would lead to me and a bunch of adventurers, wine and cheese connoisseurs. Most of us didn’t even know each other! The picture above is the result of this adventurism, but what happened to make it happen?

What technology was involved to make the boats faster to build than most stitch and glue boats and what weather conditions did we have to overcome to make it all happen.

First Goat Island Skiff in New Zealand

The first New Zealand Goat Island Skiff has been launched by Ian Howeth.

He has taken a year to build it as spare time became available.

It was launched during the Xmas break

Goat Island Skiff going fast downwind with heavy load - Texas 200

Strong wind downwind with unstayed Masts, Cat Ketches and Cat Yawls, more safety and efficiency

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.

Slideshow of boats from the Lake Macquarie Classic Boatfest

AlexN, who is building an Oz Racer and I drove up to Toronto at Lake Macquarie for the Classic Boatfest 2011. I think I will go again in 2012 and try to have a boat to sail around.

Shows on the water are the nicest type and this one has good access for small sailing boats and canoes.

We met up with Bruce (Woodeneye on the storerboats forum) who had is “for sale” Goat Island Skiff.

How much fiberglass will prevent most damage to my ply or timber canoe or sailing dinghy?

How much fibreglass is really necessary to prevent damage to a plywood boat for most users?

For a long time I’ve been suspicious that both designers and builders are in a never ending spiral of more and more heavier fibreglass.

I argue, with data from the Turner designed Jarcat, that the weights of glass are clearly excessive for most uses and users of small boats.

John and Rosa Goodman in the Texas 200 mile sailing event. storerboatplans.com

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