Hey, I’m a 21 year old computer science student from Germany and Finland (presently living in Germany). I’ve become enormously interested in sailboats, particularly proas, over the course of the last few years, and particularly over the last few months. I’m pretty new to boating; so far my sailing experience mounts up to about 3 separate days in coastal waters on a Moody 346 for a basic sailing course (which I loved). I haven’t done any offshore sailing or sailing in bad weather yet, so those are both things I want to address this year, to see if sailing is something I really want to get into for the long haul or not.

Over the last few months I’ve also built my first boat, a flat-bottom plywood canoe, using some plans I found online. Building that canoe has taken ages with all the university work I’ve had this semester, but now it’s almost done (1 layer of paint to go!). Without that canoe ever having been in the water though, I’m already looking toward doing something a bit more substantial, like a proa for day sailing along the coast. I’m thinking along the lines of one of Gary Dierking’s designs from “Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes” or something in that direction. I might settle for a simple refit of my canoe initially (to gain a bit more experience with rigs and many of the practical aspects of designing and building small proas) before building new one, or then I might just directly go for a fresh build, I guess that depends mainly on how much time and money I have for all that.

Anyways, after having already spent a good deal of time reading some of the threads here, I decided I’d join the conversation, in the hopes of learning a thing or two about designing and building proas here. I’ve already got plenty of questions, so I guess you’ll see my first couple of threads pretty soon. 😊

Marco

Welcome to the forum, Manik.