Prolific English designer Paul Fisher at Selway Fisher has some new stock canoe designs of interest to Proafile readers:
18’ stitch and tape Waka Ama (Hawaiian outrigger canoe) LOA 18’ (5.49m); Main hull beam 1’7” (0.49m); Overall beam 5’11” (1.8m) Approx. wht 140 lbs (64kg) in 6mm ply.
Tikopian 24 - based on the 18’ Waka Ama and uses the same stitch and tape plywood construction process. She has 4 seats plus stowage compartments…
Le Breton Yachts is promoting an interesting project: the SIG 45 performance cruising catamaran. Interesting to me, because it is one of the first legit multihull attempts to play in the Wally sector: very refined, very stylish, very fast, and very expensive. The design guns are high calibre: Van Peteghem Lauriot Prevost (VPLP), Bjorn Johansson for the interior, and even Bruno Peyron as technical consultant. The impetus or the yard…
Chris Luomanen describes the world’s first and only proa on wheels!
The land proa was a mad last minute dash to the finish for 2 quarters worth of thesis work I did around "Joy Rides". The idea was to create unexpected experiences—things you had to try to understand. All of these were developed as working prototypes. The projects included:
Centipede Board: a skateboard with 11 fixed roller blade wheels on the bottom that you turned…
Sam Frosh’s practical sailing experience leads him to believe that the tacking proa is not a realistic or sensible design when used in higher winds.
In September I had my contribution appear in Proafile regarding the design and construction of my tacking proa or more correctly, outrigger sailing craft. Since that article I have sailed my boat in the strongest wind conditions that I had taken it out thus far, around 18 to 20 knots.…
Sam Frosh reports on the design and construction of an outrigger Moth!
After more than two decades sailing, designing and building sailboards including a six metre long tandem I decided to go back to my sailing roots, that is a Moth dinghy. However I needed a craft for two as my son has accompanied me on my sailing journey for the last 20 years. The other problem was that when I last sailed Australian Moths they were 1.3 metre wide…
Tim Anderson has posted another canoe sailing adventure - this time from New Zealand. As usual, he nearly dies a few times (infection and hypothermia), lives on snails and oatmeal, experiences altered states of consciousness, camps where he shouldn’t, meets interesting locals, and returns home with stomach parasites. Hard not to envy him. This time he sails Gary Dierking’s Ulua, which is practically a yacht compared to his previous…
Frank Russell found this 1963 vintage C/S/K catamaran at a California dock in 2003 - in need of some love. He took it home to Long Island, and undertook a complete restoration - the fine result was relaunched June 2005, and christened Hula Kai. Read about the project here.
Check out the new pics of Wharram’s latest - launched in Indonesia. The yacht will most likely sail to Europe around the Cape of Good Hope, to be used for charter in the Mediterranean and/or Caribbean. It reminds me of a double-hulled Turkish gulet or Arab dhow. James Wharram Designs
My husband, Barry, and I enjoy independent and isolated nomadic living. So we really thought we had it made 11 years ago when we bought a 40-foot ketch and began island hopping up and down the West Indies. Eight years later, however, we’d both had had our fill. The ketch was a constant expense and every safe anchorage for a boat of that size, we’d found, was too populated by curious natives and/or other ships and yachts for our tastes.…
An appreciation of the catamarans designed and built by the firm of C/S/K—or Rudy Choy, Warren Seaman and Alfred Kumalae.
The yacht design partnership of C/S/K was responsible for some of the finest ocean sailing catamarans ever built. The firm was active in the 1960’s - a decade of creative innovation everywhere - but especially in the amped up cultural milieu that was California.
They rode a remarkable wave of opportunity that…
