St Ayles Skiff World Championships – July 8th to 14th 2013

Doryman hopes to take a trip to Scotland in 2013 to enjoy the festivities at the first St. Ayles Skiff World Championships. Hope you can come along!

Heres the invite that came in the mail today:

"The Ullapool Coastal Rowing Club is delighted to announce that Ullapool has been selected by the Scottish Coastal Rowing Association as the venue for the first World Championship for Coastal Rowing using the St Ayles Skiff. With the astonishing growth of St Ayles Skiff building and rowing by communities internationally the time is right to run a Skiffie Worlds to give an opportunity for Rowers from across the Globe to meet in friendly competition."

"Ullapool, on the banks of Loch Broom, a large sheltered sea Loch in the Northwest of Scotland, is an ideal location to host such an event. With an existing infrastructure developed to cater for the needs of visitors and great community experience in running large cultural events SkiifieWorlds will be well within the capacity of the village."

"Ullapool Coastal Rowing Club together with their partner organisations, the Loch Broom Sailing Club, Coigach Community Rowing and the Ullapool Harbour Trustees look forward to welcoming visiting crews to our magnificent waters. A full programme of maritime and landbased activities and entertainment is planned culminating with the Prizegiving followed by a boisterous Ceilidh Dance on Saturday 13th, 2013."



Its hard to pass up an invitation like that. Ive been promised that there will be "loaner" boats available for international guests who cant bring their own Skiffs.

Let the races begin!

Photo courtesy of Chris Perkins.

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Pocket Yacht Palooza 2013

Dont miss the second annual Pocket Yacht Palooza, the largest gathering of small-craft gunkholing designs held in the Northwest, scheduled for July 20-21 at the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend, WA.

The main focus of this event is on design...not on who has the most coats of varnish. While wooden boats tend to dominate the Palooza, fiberglass hulls are welcome and the whole idea is to share information, as well as time on the water, so that participants come away with a deeper understanding of different pocket-cruising designs, whether rowboats, sailboats or traditional motorboats.

The Palooza is organized by the Port Townsend Pocket Yachters group, a loose-knit club with "no officers, no dues, no bylaws or other signs of organization." In other words, they just like to have fun on the water together. Co-sponsors of the Pocket Yacht Palooza include the Northwest Maritime Center, Small Craft Advisor magazine, Sage Marine, the Port Townsend School of Wooden Boatbuilding, the Puget Sound chapter of the Traditional Small Craft Association and the Port Townsend Marine Trades Association.

Saturday, July 20, everyone is invited to the boat show from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with many boats displayed on trailers at the Northwest Maritime Center, and others hauled up on the adjoining saltwater beach. At 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, Peter Guerrero (host of KPTZ-FMs "Boat Talk" program) will lead a waterside discussion of different traditional small-craft sailing rigs--their use, advantages and possible shortcomings. Participants with spritsails, gaff rigs, lugsails, sloop rigs, sliding gunters and others will pull their boats together on the beach to chat about their rigs and how they work. At 6 p.m., there will be a potluck on the beach, followed at 7 p.m. by slide talks in the Maritime Center by Dale McKinnon (who built her own dory and rowed the Inside Passage from Ketchikan to Bellingham), and Kirk Gresham (talking about his years of trailer-sailing a Devlin Eider from California to the Puget Sound area and into the islands of British Columbia).

Sunday, July 21, participating boats will hit the water for a day of rowing, sailing and/or motoring together on Port Townsend Bay, with a picnic lunch on the beach of Rat Island, next to Fort Flagler State Park. The main emphasis of the day will be sharing boats--either boat rides or actual short-term trading of boats so that everyone can experience different designs and their sailing/rowing characteristics. The day of boating will begin at 10 a.m. and end in the late afternoon when many participants will rendezvous on Port Townsend Bay with Native paddlers as they arrive at Fort Worden State Park, their overnight stop, as part of their Tribal Canoe Journey to Quinault, on the outer coast of Washington.

The Palooza is absolutely free to participants and the public--no registration fees, complicated forms or other requirements. Just let organizer Marty Loken know youre coming and include a brief description of your boat when you email him: Norseboater22(at)gmail.com.

For updated details on the Palooza, check the Port Townsend Pocket Yachters website or follow postings on the Port Townsend Small Boats forum.

Hope to see you there!

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St Ayles Skiff World Championships 2013

The first St Ayles Skiff Championships are being held at Ullapool in the North West Highlands of Scotland, on the 8th to13th of July, 2013. Last year this time, I expected to attend and was pretty excited about the prospect. As fate dictates, this will not be for me, this year. Im trying to not be too disappointed and to soothe me, the organizers have sent me a patch for my sweatshirt. Isnt that nice of them? Thank you! Apart from the St Ayles being an incredible boat, its the spirit behind this endeavor that draws me to it. Nice people, those Scots.

If you intend to participate in the first World Championships for the St Ayles Skiff, you have just four days to sign up. You will find all the information you need on the SCRA World Championship "Notice of Race" .

A truly novel entrant will be Sephira, also known as The Musical Ark. Sephira was built collaboratively by students and teachers at Moravian Academy, a pre-kindergarten to 12th grade college preparatory school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The vessel is a seaworthy St. Ayles-style skiff, rigged with eight long piano wires from masthead to stern to make it a sea-going harp. The string length and resonance properties of the hull are designed to play notes in the frequency band of whale song.

A $12,000 fundraising goal is currently underway to ship Sephira across the Atlantic. This figure includes $8,000 for the vessels round-trip across the Atlantic Ocean in a 40 foot-container, as well as $4,000 to support the crew of students with travel and accommodations. The Moravian Academy has asked us to help make this epic voyage possible by supporting this project with a donation. You can help by pledging on the Musical Arks Kickstarter page. 

Follow this link to hear Sephiras Whale Song.



This is an independent trip abroad and is not being offered by Moravian Academy. Any student who goes will be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

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Toledo Oregon Wooden Boat Show 2013

Whew! Just recovering from a long weekend at the annual boat show in my home port. This show happens every third weekend in August and its always a lot of fun in the sun, on the water. Of course there are the boats, many of which were created by their owners. The live music is excellent, the food is very good, there are activities for kids, demonstrations of kayak skills and paper boat races. The last is completely insane. Toledo is a mill town and the paper used in making the boats is a water resistant packing material donated by the mill. The rest is up to the imagination. Im afraid that to get the full effect, you have to visit the show.

My cruising dory, Mistral was in the thick of the action, at her usual mooring and I talked myself hoarse in three days, visiting friends from near and far. Our Teak Lady sailboats were in action, giving rides up and down the slough and the Toledo Community Boathouse provided rowing and paddling craft for free, to all comers.

I asked some friends to help take photos, which you can find on Dorymans Flickr site. You will recognise many boats from previous years as well as newcomers to the fleet (some of us just cant quit building).

Speaking of building, a real highlight of this show is the Family Boat Build. Starting on Friday, each group begins their boat, which was a  kayak this year. By Sunday afternoon, the boats are launched and tested by the proud owners. This little fifteen foot kayak is so appealing, Im going to build one myself. The hull is already begun. It will be the annual winter boat build, here on Doryman, so stay tuned

Electric Tug from doryman on Vimeo.

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Depoe Bay Boat Show and Crab Feed 2013

Doryman just got back from this years Depoe Bay Wooden Boat Show and Crab Feed. Being one of the first local shows of the season, the question on everyones mind is the weather. The participants and visitors to this annual April event are true coastal denizens who know to bring layers of clothing and be prepared for everything from sun to hail to snow.

This year, the weather gods smiled on Depoe Bay and though we felt a few sprinkles, the sun peeked out from behind scattered clouds often enough to keep spirits high. The harbor is a tiny hole in the rocks named for old Chief Depoe, who welcomed white settlers here in the late 1800s. The once thriving commercial fishery has been reduced, but a lively charter service thrives on the local bottom fishery and whale watching. Theres a lot of pride in this little coastal town and the residents pull out the stops to welcome guests with fresh cooked crab and amateur boat builders come from all around to show their craft and get caught up with gossip after a long, wet winter.

As for gossip, Doryman often gets so consumed with visiting, he almost forgets to take pictures to share with all of you. So here are a few, though to see all the boats, youll have to stop in next year yourself. You wont be disappointed, I guarantee it. Dont forget your raincoat and sunscreen!

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The Everglades Challenge 2013

Bill Wright and Gary “Luke” Lukoski of Watertribe will be sailing a Sea Pearl 21 in next summers Everglades Challenge.

Bill and Luke are seasoned sailors preparing for a grueling event and I thought you might be interested in what they do to train; how their boat is equipped for the challenges of handling, safety, weather and navigation.

Excitableboy and Runswithbeers has been added to the live-feed blog-roll on the left sidebar. I encourage you to keep tabs on Luke and Gary for the next few months. Sure to be entertaining and enlightening.

My interest in this duo is their boat. They are each well established racers with several decades of experience and are likely to set up the Sea Pearl 21 for optimum efficiency. This could be a bonus for non-racers as well.

Its been suggested I do the Everglades Challenge myself and must admit it is intriguing until someone points out that two thirds of the contestants never finish.

In Lukes words:

"Those of you who are interested in attempting an EC or some other type of endurance/expedition event in the future may actually learn something or make the decision to stick to tennis or golf. It should be an interesting ride."

If I was going to be in the Everglades Challenge next spring, Id get a fix on these guys and stay as close to them as  I could.

Many thanks to the Small Craft Advisor for suggesting this gem.

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2013 Wooden Boat Show at Mystic

The Wooden Boat Show is to be held at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut again this year. This is the 22nd running of this annual show, which has settled comfortably into this beautiful location as an apparent permanent venue. Mystic Seaport is a wonderful place for a family day filled with a mixture of boats and maritime history. If you have not been there before, this is your opportunity to experience boats of today as well as how they were built and operated hundreds of years ago. Mystic Seaport is a living museum of the sea, so much of the shoreside support infrastructure and industry that went along with boatbuilding, trading, fishing etc. is represented there for visitors to experience.

Our inside exhibit at the 2012 Wooden Boat Show

 We will be there again this year. We have exhibited out Paper Jet prototype (Sail #001) on this show every year since 2007. We have booth 4B in Tent A on the Village Green, where you can see a display of a selection of our designs and buy plans or a copy of my book "Shaped by Wind & Wave". We can also take your order for a pre-cut plywood kit for many of our plywood designs. The first time that we exhibited the Paper Jet it received the "Outstanding Innovation Award" on the Concourse Delegance. Paper Jet will be on the lawn outside Tent A and will occasionally be out sailing.
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Outstanding Innovation Award 2007

Come to Mystic Seaport to see a wide range of wooden boats, ranging from my modern little skiff to beautifully built modern classics or even to take a ride on an old steam-driven ferry. You wont be sorry that you took the time out to visit this place of yesteryear.

P.S. I hoped that we would have the prototype of the DS15  at the show as well but it will not happen this year. The builder is not yet ready to show his boat.

Visit our website at http://dixdesign.com/ .

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Wooden Boat Festival 2013 Port Townsend

The maiden voyage of the Stone Horse, Belle Starr was north from Olympia, Washington to Port Townsend, Washington, on the Salish Sea. What a fabulous week!

This voyage began last Wednesday, in rain and thick fog with occasional lightning and ended yesterday in beautiful blue skies with a downwind run home.

In between was the always satisfying Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. Three days of navigating one hundred nautical miles northward by GPS, with hardly a sight of land, culminated in glorious skies Friday, as Belle Starr set anchor off the Port Townsend wharf.

The festivities had already begun and spirits were high with anticipation of a fine weekend. Belle Starr proved to be in good shape, with few problems and performed as her pedigree predicted. We tried all potential sail combinations and discovered a few rigging shortcomings, but nothing to put a damper on the fun.

Doryman has friends in high places (lucky man) and soon after arrival, Belle Starr was invited to tie-up at the dock inside the Basin and join the Festival, even though that was not her intention. She elected to stay outside, at anchor, the better to spread her wings at a moments notice.

You will discover, therefore, most photos in the Doryman archives are on the water, under full canvas. Shooting while handling a sailboat is not ideal for photography, though looking through the photos might give you the feeling of being there. (Thats my excuse, and Im sticking to it.)

Event Photos:
Dorymans Flickr site
Northwest Maritime Center (facebook)
Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding (facebook)

Thanks to all my good friends for making this a week to remember (you know who you are). Doryman is fortunate indeed, to be a member of such a stellar tribe.

Your happy skipper

Belle Starr on Marristone Island. A happy boat.














  Sleeping Seals on Eagle Island from doryman on Vimeo.

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