1 2 3 4 5 6

Canoe

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.

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.

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.

Light outriggers to add to your canoe for stability. Fast sailing, Fishing or Diving Philippines: storerboatplans.com

Drop in Outriggers – photo and comments from the Philippines

Finally after many years of selling the plan I have a photo of a boat with the outriggers from the drop-in outrigger plan.

Every part of the outrigger is very light. The first one we built had each component under 10lbs.

It can make a canoe or kayak into a killer sailing boat. Or can convert a canoe, kayak or suitable dinghy into a stable fishing or diving platform for paddle or outboard.

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.

“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.

The Paddling on the Colorado River continues.

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.