guide to make boat

Ed Mahoney of Orland, Maine, has built a Didi 38 for himself and it looks like he has made a really nice job of it. He launched a few days ago in Belfast.

Beautiful finish on the hull of Ed Mahoney's Didi 38

Waiting for her rig

Ed Mahoney's newly launched Didi 38

Ed plans to take her for her first sail tomorrow. We wish him pleasant sailing. Ed, enjoy the wonderful feelings of bringing to life this boat that you created with your own hands.

See out full range of designs at http://dixdesign.com/

My previous post was about having my Paper Jet at OkoumeFest on Kent Island, near to Annapolis. After that I received requests for the opportunity to sail her with the Turbo rig as well. I have arranged to have another Paper Jet at the event, which will allow us to have both rigs available for sailing. My own boat, the prototype will have the Turbo rig. The 2nd boat is being loaned to me by my friend, boatbuilder Howdy Bailey, and will have the Standard rig.

PJ 007 with Standard rig and PJ 001 with Turbo rig.

The two boats in the photo are the ones that we will have at OkoumeFest. This happens from 10am on Saturday 18th May on the beach at Matapeake State Park on Kent Island, south of the eastern end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on US Route 50.

This is a boating rendezvous, so there will be many CLC boats on the water. If you have one of our plywood boats and live within reach of Kents Island, I am sure that you will be welcome to bring your boat and to join us for a day of sailing.

To see our full range of designs, go to http://dixdesign.com/ .

OkoumeFest is an annual event held by Chesapeake Light Craft in the Annapolis area of Chesapeake Bay. It mixes an Open Day at the Chesapeake Light Craft business premises on the Friday demonstrating products, building procedures etc and a day of opportunities to test a wide range of boats on sheltered water.

CLC recently started cutting our kits in USA and have invited us to bring our Paper Jet prototype to the Saturday part of the 2013 event. This happens on May 18th at the beach of the Matapeake State Park on Kent Island, south of the eastern end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on US Route 50.

Read more about this event and how to participate on the CLC OkoumeFest page .

Paper Jet sailing in light conditions

We will be there, weather permitting. If you want to see it or if you would like to test sail her then please come along. I think that we will have the Standard rig on her, same as in the photo above. That will give more people the opportunity to sail her than if we use the more demanding Turbo rig.

CLC have cut and shipped three Paper Jet kits since taking over cutting. One of them went to South Carolina and two to the Pacific Northwest. This brings the total of these boats in USA to 30, out of 70 world-wide.

To see sailing and build photos for the Paper Jet, go to http://dixdesign.com/paperjet.htm and to see our other designs go to http://dixdesign.com/.

In a post in May 2012 we announced the new Didi 29 Retro design. The first CNC plywood kit for this design was cut in South Africa by CKD Boats and construction will soon be started by the owner/builder.

This boat has a large gaff rig but it is very versatile, able to be reduced to much more compact proportions by sail selection and reefing. Still, it is an imposing rig that is aimed primarily at racing in the Caribbean classic style races. We are accustomed to seeing photos of gaff-riggers carrying very impressive clouds of sail but, for those who are more cruising-oriented, this big rig has way too much sail for comfort. One such builder approached me to ask if it is possible to use a smaller gaff rig on her. I have drawn a cruising gaff rig and that drawing is now included as part of the stock design.

Didi 29 Retro Cruising Gaff Rig

This one is more compact, with shorter spars all round. The inboard foretriangle and the deck hardware layout are the only parts of the rig that are unchanged. The shorter bowsprit and lower masthead have given smaller asymmetrical spinnaker and outboard headsails. These are balanced by a smaller mainsail with shorter foot and head on the same luff length.

Didi 29 Retro Gaff Rigs

For comparison, the racing rig has 24% more area in the main and Genoa, 17% more in the Yankee and 27% more in the asymmetrical. Overall, this will be an easier rig to handle and it will be able to carry each sail combination into stronger winds. That is without sacrificing any of the features and versatility of the bigger rig.

To see more of this design, watch the video of my PechaKucha presentation on how it was developed from the Didi 26 design.

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

I have good news for our supporters in Canada who would like to build one of our plywood boats. We have appointed a supplier in Nova Scotia, who will be able to supply kits for our designs. They will be cut in Nova Scotia and shipped to to wherever needed. The new kit supplier is Big Pond Boat Shop, located in Mahone Bay. Owner Keith Nelder is South African, like me, but left there long before I did. He and his shop will be available to supply kits for any of our range of plywood kits.

The first kit on offer will be for the Paper Jet. This is a versatile training boat for juniors than can be progressively upgraded from a very simple and basic Lite version with free-standing una rig that is forgiving of errors, through a sloop version to a powerful high-performance Turbo version that can be very exciting and challenging to sail.

This is all done by exchanging rig components rather than replacing the boat, so is an economical route for upgrading. It has the added advantage that when there is too much wind for the big rig, it is quick and easy to depower down to a smaller rig to suit the conditions. That extends the use of the boat into a very wide range of conditions so that it spends more time on the water instead of lying on the shore waiting for the right breeze.

Rigs and layout of Paper Jet

All of the rigs shown above use the same mast up to the hounds and the same boom. Above the hounds two different topmast lengths allow changes in overall mast height to suit the mainsail that will be used, the topmasts sliding into a socket at the top of the lower mast. The una rig has the mast free-standing in the forward mast partners and the others have it stayed in the aft partners. I also intend to add a junior mainsail option, which will have a very short topmast and be more suited to smaller juniors.

For more info and photos go to http://dixdesign.com/paperjet.htm.
To see our full range of designs, go to http://dixdesign.com/ .

Today's post is a good follow-on to my post of yesterday about building boats in exotic places. It is also in South America but in Brazil rather than Colombia.

Today I received a link from Eug�nio Herkenhoff in Vitoria, Brazil. He has been building a Cape Henry 21 for awhile and sending me occasional feedback and photos of his progress. Eug�nio is a professional builder but this video shows that he is very different from the professional boatbuilders you will find in most other places.

View into the workshop from the street.

Eug�nio has a very small workshop and it is in a very built-up part of the city. I have seen workshops like this in Rio de Janeiro as well, so they must be common in Brazil. All sorts of businesses operate out of these small facilities, supplying custom woodwork, metalwork, plumbing, electrical etc. But there is only so much that can be done inside the building. In the video at Voiles et Voiliers magazine it is described as "a boat in the streets". That is where Eug�nio builds his boats. The video is narrated in French but you can get the gist of it without understanding the language.

Being in the middle of a densely populated area, he must be considerate of his neighbours, who are very close. So Eug�nio chooses to do most of his work with hand tools rather than electric. That is green boatbuilding with a difference. He also prefers it for better precision and it is less dangerous. Eug�nio says that many people stop to watch and chat, "spreading the boatbuilding virus".

Birdsmouth mast of the Cape Henry 21

Don't think of this as primitive boatbuilding either. We all have to adapt to suit the conditions under which we must work and this is what Eug�nio has done. He is also very accomplished with computers. He occasionally sends me images of CAD drawings that he has prepared for cutting patterns, to ease his work. The upper photo in this post shows two complicated frames that he has built and over which he will laminate the twisted forward bottom panels of the CH21s that he builds. He designed these frames on CAD.

Eug�nio's drawing of the building stocks and frame for rolling the hull.

I feel honoured to be able to work with builders as talented and diverse in their methods as Eug�nio and others like him, wherever they are. Thank you Eug�nio for your work.

I find it amazing that our designs are built in so many exotic places, all over the world. Of course, for the person doing the building their place of building is just "home", with nothing exotic about it at all. It all depends on your perspective what is exotic and what isn't. Exotic is normally somewhere far away, surrounded by exotic birds, lush vegetation and beautiful azure blue oceans.

Here is an example. The photo below was sent to me by the builder a few days ago. It shows a Cape Henry 21 being built by Juan Uribe in a place named Sisga Lake, near to Bogota, Colombia, in South America. It looks like Juan is producing a good standard of work in his workshop.

Juan Uribe's Cape Henry 21 taking shape in his workshop in Colombia.

 In North America we take for granted the ease of buying materials and equipment for our boats. Almost anything that is needed can be ordered from on-line suppliers and will arrive on the doorstep within a few days. I imagine that Europe is not much different. In South Africa, where you might expect it to be difficult to source materials and equipment, it is even easier for the buyer. There are multiple suppliers in the main sailing centres like Cape Town, so one can walk into a shop and walk out soon after with most of what is needed. What they don't have on the shelf can be ordered.

Builders in more remote places, like much of South America, Africa and Asia have a much more difficult task to source what they need to build a boat. When they can get local materials they may not be anything like the quality that one would like them to be. Often imported materials of higher quality are simply not available because of high import costs or the government may not permit them to be imported. Some countries are actually a fairly hostile environment for amateur boatbuilding. It is such an abnormal activity in some places that there just is no support structure for those who do want to build a boat for themselves.

Despite these difficulties, there will always be people who will take on the challenge. They will build a boat and they will enjoy the process. And their friends and neighbours will look at them in wonder, intrigued by the process and by the invisible passion which drives that person to do such strange things.