A reader sends in his account of repurposing plastic canoe and kayak with hardware store parts to obtain a sailing outrigger. A Home Deproa! Thanks for the submission. -Ed
My name is Mason, I’m 25, and I work as a preschool teacher. I first started sailing at summer camp when I was growing up, and I’ve been looking for a way to enjoy it as an adult ever since. A few years ago I bought a 1978 16’ Hobie Cat catamaran, but I ended up…
A Tepuke sails on the Baltic. This seems like fulfillment of the ancient prophecy “When a crab claws the northern sea then the dreaded Old Ones shall return.” Or something.
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Thanks to Yurek for the submission!
Here’s another cool project from Harryproa:
The mini cargo ferry was designed in response to a need to replace the outboard powered fibreglass skiffs which are ubiquitous in the Pacific. These boats are expensive to run, difficult to maintain and have almost completely destroyed the islanders boat building and sailing skills.
Taking a step back to near stone-age construction materials of plywood/epoxy, the boats are as…
Iain Henehan continues his foiling experiments with an Oz PD Goose, an ultra-simple 12ft (3.5m) plywood club sailing dinghy designed by Michael Storer.
The Goose was introduced as a larger family version of the OzRacer some 6 years ago. But it was overlooked as “just a bigger OzRacer” until three years ago when Ian Henehan in Texas started to put videos of the boat going very fast with one on board (up to 12.9 knots) and sailing well…
This 1987 Crowther Buccaneer 33 is an unusual find for the Pacific Northwest. According to the listing it was built in 1987 of wood/glass/epoxy and stretched two feet to 35.
Spring is here! Just in time for R2AK, you can race to Alaska, and win.
Find it here on Craigslist for $18,500 in Poulsbo, WA. Some assembly required.
Francis Pimmel makes pretty darn gorgeous models of Pacific sailing canoes, from the famous Hawaiian voyaging canoe recreation Hokule’a to flying proas of Micronesia. Order one for your boardroom.
Much thanks to Paul D. for the submission!
UNNAMED PROA is a near 60’ racing design with a crab claw schooner rig! It’s the work of Jeremy Fischer of Martinique, who built the EQUILIBRE some 10 years back. I know little about the design except that it was originally intended to enter the Route du Rhum. The very narrow hull features an extreme wave-piercing bow, no doubt a nod to the submarine like experience of sailing the boat fast in a seaway 😉. A few of the construction pics…
Browsing through Youtube I discovered this charming 5.6m outrigger canoe named QUIQUEC, uploaded and built by Norbert Rettig of Hockenheim, DE. The 12 square meter lug rig is wonderfully old school but the canoe moves very well even so, and the low center of effort would certainly be appreciated with the lovely torpedo-shaped low-volume ama. All the spars, ama and beams fit neatly inside the hull for storage and transport on the roof…
Ian Aitken’s JACKNIFE is “the world’s first 11m, folding, trailerable proa with freestanding wing mast”.
Although inspired by Rob Denney’s Harryproas, the craft was designed and built by Ian and ‘Barn Job Innovations’ of Taranaki, New Zealand. Well named, the craft unfolds like a Swiss Army Knife, only with more moving parts. Read more at Harryproa
LW hull LOA = 11.0 m one of the bows folds back to facilitate…
The Camel of the Sea is a sailing multihull cargo vessel designed for operation by a small crew of 3-6 in areas of steady winds and expensive petroleum. As outlined in The Case for the Cargo Proa, physics favors the proa configuration in the case of widely varying displacement. In this example, the fully laden boat weighs over three times the boat when empty. To recap the argument:
Widely variable displacement on multihulls is a…
