CHEERS poster benefit
Russell Brown at Port Townsend Watercraft is now offering posters of CHEERS to benefit the Newick family. It is a painting by Bruce Alderson depicting the proa in action, racing singlehanded across the North Atlantic in 1968. This is my favorite image of the most famous modern proa in history. The posters belonged to the late Richard C. Newick, and are in limited supply. Find out more here.
Proa File forums spring update
Spring is in the air here in the northern latitudes - the ice is melting, trees are budding, and the forums are becoming more active. Some recent threads of interest:
Bionic Broomstick: Skip launched his 14’ proa on March 13 at Lake Somerville, Texas, for a successful first sail (nothing broke!). The boat is highly experimental and features a buoyant “floil”, stem mounted rudders and a cambered panel staysail. The…
Proa File forums winter update
The Proafile Forum has some interesting threads we’d like to point you toward if you are so inclined. This is just a teaser, head to the forums to check it all out.
Skylark: A Dymaxion Yacht. Your editor asks the question: “What would Bucky Do?” and finds an enclosed teardrop, aluminum, wingsailed proa in the answer.
Wingsails on Proas! Inspired by the circular cam of Peter Worsley’s wingsails, members are hard at work adopting the…
Wind Powered Food Truck
Not multihull or America’s Cup, but probably the most inspiring sailing story of the year:
“…Seeking a more sustainable way to get his grain to market, the Vermont farmer Erik Andrus conceived the Vermont Sail Freight Project to find out if this model could work again today. In April, he raised more than $15,000 on Kickstarter to build a 39-foot-long plywood sail barge named Ceres (after the Roman goddess of agriculture)...
The boat,…
RIP Richard Newick
Last night, Richard C. Newick, one of the great multihull pioneers, passed away. The father of so many brilliant designs, but to a proa obsessed mind, he stands apart because of CHEERS, the “giant slaying” proa of the 1968 OSTAR.
Dick often talked about how in a previous life he must have been a Polynesian outrigger canoe designer, and perhaps that is the best explanation for his gifts. We can only imagine what sort of vessels he…
The Need 4 Speed
VESTAS Sailrocket 2 with Paul Larsen helming has just smashed the world speed sailing record with a 59 knot average speed over 500 metres! All still to be confirmed and ratified, but this is such a deserved record! ~Mark Jardine
That’s it, we’ve smashed the arse off it! One small step for proa, one giant leap for proa-kind!
A nice write up by Brian Hancock: The Rocket that is a Sailrocket
Zeppy 3 - Across the Med by Wind Powered Airship
Preparations are underway for a 150 mile journey from southern France to Corsica in a sail balloon. High flyer Stéphane Rousson is planning to pilot Zeppy 3 across a stretch of Mediterranean waters using only the power of the wind and a curved carbon foil based on the chien de mer by Didier Costes.
The 65.6 feet long and 16.4 feet wide Zeppy 3 recently on display at Le Bourget in Paris is filled with 200 cubic meters of helium. An…
Green washing
There’s a great rant over on Sailing Anarchy about the continuing use of wind energy and sailing in various vaporware investment schemes that make little sense except as tools to separate fools from their money. B9 Shipping is SA’s well deserved target, which perhaps should have replaced the 9 with an S? To counter that, here’s a little green lesson from the past:
1978: Sunburst (formerly Bits ’n Pieces) was built in St. Maarten, from…
Bernard Smith, 1910-2010
Bernard Smith passed away on Feb. 12, three months short of his 100th birthday. He invented a radical sailboat called the aerohydrofoil that had neither a “sail” nor a “boat”, and he outlined his design in his 1963 book, “The 40-Knot Sailboat” . I must have checked that book out of my local library about 20 times! Thanks to Paul Dunlop for the news.
The passing of sailing’s true rocket scientist | Mr. Smith’s Amazing Sailboats
Phil Bolger, 1927-2009
Philip Bolger took his life yesterday, and poor as I am at eulogies, Philip was a man worth eulogizing. Perhaps the most influential small boat designer in the world, Phil encouraged and inspired a host of would be builders and designers to pick up pencil and paper, plywood and epoxy, and get to work on their dreams. His design attention ranged across the board, and even though his boats were sometimes called homely, it is perhaps only…
