“To one who has turned lifeless materials into a thing alive and forced it to do his bidding against the resisting forces of nature in silence, without fuel and without defiling air or water, there can never be anything more wonderful than the sailboat. “The sailboat never offends the senses of fish, fowl or man. To make it move faster is to make it more a thing of freedom and beauty.”
—Bernard Smith, “The 40-Knot Sailboat,” 1963
When…
A considerable amount of credit/blame for my love of small boats goes to L. Francis Herreshoff and his book ‘The Compleat Cruiser’. I fell in love with his ideas about a simple yet refined cruising lifestyle, epitomized by Mr. Weldon and his whaleboat type ketch - Rozinante. Rozinante is beautiful, fast, seaworthy and handy, and I was musing recently about how a proa version of Rozinante might work out.
Rozinante Il is a mono-proa - a…
My buddy Lee picked up this ancient artifact for me recently: How to Build 20 BOATS, a Fawcett 50 cent publication from 1943. It’s reprinted material from Mechanix Illustrated, and it happens to include the PLYWOOD PROA by Hi Sibley. Aside from the historical value (nearly equivalent to King Tut’s Tomb) I find it interesting that:
1. In all the years since then, plywood is still the preferred construction material for amateur boat…
A working hapa model has finally been accomplished by Frenchman Luc Armant. It is the realization of the theoretically perfect sailboat: an airfoil and hydrofoil, tied together by a single line in tension. The massless sailboat has long been the dream of sailing pioneers from Bernard Smith’s aerohydrofoil to D. Costes’ chien de mer (seadog) to the hapas of J. Hagedoorn. The achievement cannot really be overstated, IMHO. Well done, Mr.…
I’ve just read Sealand, over at Creed O’Hanlon’s blog: Tiki in Thailand, and I highly recommend it. It’s a great article - exploring the utopian ideal called “Seasteading” . Seasteading is the creation of autonomous floating villages on the sea, either legal or piratical, depending on the political leanings of the villagers. Seasteading is the natural reaction to civilization, as was homesteading 200 years ago.
Human civilization, no…
The slider is the best pitch in baseball.—Ted Williams
Changeup is a riff on Ray Aldridge’s brilliant beach cruising cat, Slider. I hesitated to publish these drawings at first, since they are an obvious take-off on Ray’s design, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I hope Ray takes them in the spirit intended, which is one of respectful admiration.
Slider answers almost every single desire of my beach cruiser…
A French West Indies Proa
Jeremy Fischer designed, built and sails his 40’ proa Equilibre out of Martinique. Everything about this boat is virtually perfect: the strong Micronesian heritage, the huge crab claw sail, the time and cost sensitive construction/fit-out, even the color (probably the result of the can being on clearance at the local chandlery). Equilibre helps me think about balance, not only with wind and tide, but with the…
The proa designs of Australian designer J. S. Taylor have been the subject of many an interesting discussion on the proa_file list over the years. Taylor, an East European immigrant to Oz in the 50’s, had several of his provocative articles published in the yachting press of the day, both locally and internationally. Taylor was one of the first to advocate the proa as a serious yachting alternative, and his imperious tone combined with…
The boys in the lab have been working overtime on a new invention, and I wanted to give you a sneak peak. Internally we call it the spinnaclaw, however marketing is still testing the final brand name with focus groups.
As the name implies, it is a cross between a crab claw sail and a spinnaker, sort of a Scandinavian/Polynesian hybrid. The idea is to mount the crab claw boom to a spinnaker pole, and shunt the sail like a big…
The Sixteen Foot Beach Cruiser Catamaran
Multihull beach cruisers are something I spend a little too much of my time thinking about, and it’s nice to discover kindred spirits. Ray Aldridge of Florida has progressed considerably beyond the thinking stage and built one of the sweetest little beach cruisers I’ve ever seen. Slider is well named, squeezing between the fantasy island of sailing nirvana and the rocks of economic/bureaucratic…
