guide to make boat

The 2015 edition of the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, Washington, happens 11-13 September. Organised by the Northwest Maritime Center, it is their premier event of the year, attracting hundreds of wooden boats of all description, a wide array of exhibits and with 120 speaker sessions on boating subjects.

Some of the boats at the 2014 Festival, Didi Cruise-Mini in right foreground.

I will be taking part in three sessions, one on each day of the Festival.

Friday 11th - 2:45pm - Yacht Designers Panel Q&A - six designers to field your questions about boats and designing them. A session like this highlights the variety of opinions held by different designers on boating issues.

Saturday 12th - 2:30pm - Plywood Boatbuilding Methods - PowerPoint presentation showing information and details of the methods for which I design, illustrated with drawings and photos of my own projects and those of amateurs who have built these designs.

Sunday 13th - 1:15pm - Plywood Kits for Larger Boats - PowerPoint presentation about constructing kit boats that are larger than open dinghies and kayaks. This will cover boats from a 21ft lapstrake plywood trailer-sailer through to a 55ft radius chine plywood cruising catamaran.

Paper Jet "Water Rocket" at the 2014 Festival

The Didi Cruise-Mini "Segue" of David Blessing will be there among the on-the-water boats but I don't know yet what other of my boats will be there.

When not involved with other things, I am happy to meet with builders or anyone interested in my designs. If you can't find me then visit the Didi Cruise-Mini. Whoever is in attandance at the boat should know where I am and how to contact me.

If you are in the Pacific Northwest, or able to get there, this is an event worthwhile visiting.

To see our designs, visit our main website or our mobile website.

Bruce Mierke is building a Didi 29 Retro in Murphy, North Carolina. Bruce is a professional boatbuilder, building her for himself and progressing nicely. He has now completed the hull and it will be turned over in a few weeks.

This design is based on the Didi 26, modified to create a more classic image. Carrying a choice of rigs, the squaretop Marconi rig below and two gaff rigs further down the page. It is a radius chine plywood design, round bilge from plywood and can be built from plans or a CNC kit. Although Bruce is a professional builder, I developed this construction method primarily for amateurs and they have built many boats to this range of designs.

Marconi rig of Didi 29 Retro

Here are the latest photos from Bruce, showing the beautiful standard of finish that he has achieved.

Beautiful hull finish.

Two gaff rigs, racing at left and cruising at right.

For more info on this and our other designs, visit http://dixdesign.com/

Yachting Monthly have a very interesting  video of a capsize test on their YouTube Channel. I only became aware of it yesterday when it was highlighted by Scuttlebutt Sailing News.

Many have read the accounts that I have written about our capsize experience on the Didi 38 "Black Cat" in the Cape To Rio Race 2014. It is not possible to visualise what it is like to be there in that situation, even if you sit inside your boat and try to imagine it turning around you but this video goes a long way to help visualise it. It is not fully realistic because the roof stays at the top as the boat rotates, so the world is rotating around the boat rather than the boat rotating within the world around it. To provide better visualisation the camera needs to stay upright while the boat goes upside-down.

Bear in mind that this test is in flat water and the boat is rotated quite slowly from upright to upside-down, then rights itself quickly. Normally a capsize will happen in seas that are large and confused, so it is a much more violent process than seen in the video, with the boat being thrown in confused directions while it capsizes. Despite that, it is worth watching, to see the way that crew, equipment, etc was moved around the cabin and to see just how much water came in even in that still water.

It is not an experience that I would recommend to anyone, yet it is an experience that I am glad to have had and to have survived.

It also validates the toughness of the methods of construction that I have used for these plywood designs, that "Black Cat" came through with minimal damage.

To see our range of designs to carry you across the dam or around the world, please visit http://dixdesign.com/