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Plywood

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.

The Canon – Tools for thinking about sailing and boat design – Books and Articles

One of the most important things as a designer or sailor is to keep an open mind, but also to be able to analyze things in light of real experience and prior knowledge. These are online and paper resources that force thinking in different ways.

This article, after a bit of a spiel, goes on to give some great resources that “opened my eyes” at different times in my life.

They focus on areas of structural design, sailing, sail aerodynamics and touch on a bit more.

Rules of thumb for boat and yacht design – are they legitimate?

There are lots of tips for building and designing boats on the net.

“Rules of thumb” are often quoted to help with the calculation of how much sail or how much keel or centreboard area or how big a mast is allowed to be and many other areas. Can a boat be stretched or shrunk or lengthened?

But how correct are they? Are they the best guide?

PJ and Cliff show how to build a plywood Quick Canoe in one week

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.

Quick Canoe assembly – Woodworker builds in 4.5 hours (I took 2 weekends)

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.

MSD Rowboat in Brisbane. Built by Tom

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.

“Disposable” Canoeing – building a canoe in a few hours.

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.

Podcast Online – Wooden Boat Construction by Michael Storer – 2 of 3

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.