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Michael Storer

On the "round Australia trip" I found myself employed by a tiny business in Adelaide - Duck Flat Wooden Boats in Adelaide. It was an eye opener - It became clear that one could build a boat for a fraction of the cost of current racing boats. My ideas hinged around high performance, easy building, fun to sail and reasonably cheap Today Storer Boats are built in all countries and we have active groups on Facebook for the following groups Goat Island Skiff Open Goose Storer Boat plans Really Simple Sails

Taking videos on board sailing boats using a boom camera

Cameras, digicams, video cameras are fun on boats, but it is hard to get good pics of yourselves sailing the boat or the boat doing its stuff nicely.

John Goodman and Family built their Goat Island Skiff GIR and sailed it in the Texas 200 event as well as some solo river cruising.

They used a camera boom to great advantage – to move the camera away from the boat. Another alternative is a wide angle lens which can produce dramatic effects for marine photography but the toom seems much more useful. It works well with the steadying of anti-shake electronics.

Video of Quick Canoe in Hungary.

A video of the Quick Canoe in action.

My Agent in Hungary who sells plans in both English and Hungarian has launched the first Quick Canoe in those parts. It is designed as a very simple and easy to build boat. It is not a perfect high performance boat, but the numbers have been worked out to give good performance despite the simple shape. It won’t be as good as the best fibreglass canoe, but it will be better than many average ones. And much cheaper and lighter.

lug sails at very competitive prices - reallysimplesails.com

WIKI setup and tuning Lug Rigs, Spar bends and weights, Sail controls and More

The conservative viewpoint is that traditional rigs are not very efficient. However allied to efficient hulls and set up correctly, lug and sprit rigs can be very efficient indeed – not too much slower than “modern” rigs, particularly when the same lessons are applied to trad sails and way cheaper.

This is a WIKI drawn from the group on the Storerboats forum discussions on setting up lug and sprit rigs for best performance building on the information in my webpage.

Sailboats and canoe hire on the Murray Lakes – an hour from Adelaide.

My friends Rob and Jane Hylton run sailing boat and canoe hire on some of my favourite sailing waters – the lower Murray Lakes – just an hour south of Adelaide.

The boat hire is quite cheap but linked with you overnight staying in the small town of Clayton Bay – on the edge of the Murray River. There are a number of different options. My favourite is a tent or an on site caravan on the river’s edge camping area. But there are classier (?) options as well.

Low season is quite cheap and the days down there can be very beautiful in winter with a good weather report. They also offer sailing lessons which can include a picnic and/or a tour of the fascinating Murray wetlands.

“All boat design is a compromise” – Rubbish

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?