Georgetown Wooden Boat Show takes place on Front Street, in the waterside tourist area of the very quaint Georgetown, South Carolina. We exhibited the Paper Jet there in 2009 and won the Special Award because of the innovative features of the new design that hadnt been seen in those parts before. Our very modern little yellow boat stood out in the midst of traditional wooden craft.
Paper Jet set up and waiting for the 2009 show to open.
We are going to be there again this year and we will have company. Two local Paper Jet builders will have their boats on the show also. This is a great opportunity for those who are interested in building this design to see the boats in the flesh, look at the details and discuss the building process. Or just to come along and look at what has proven to be a very eye-catching and interesting design. It never fails to draw crowds wherever we show it. The PJ is very different from any other boats that are normally seen on wooden boat shows.
At the time of our last appearance in Georgetown the Paper Jet sail numbers had just reached 35. Now we are at more than twice that number, with numbers 77 & 78 supplied in the past few weeks. We now have 13 PJs on the water or being built on the US East Coast and those numbers will continue to grow.
Kits are now available through our office, cut for us by Chesapeake Light Craft (CLC) in Annapolis MD. Dont try to order from them, they will not sell it to you. You must order from us, via our USA plywood kits page . CLC have cut 6 kits for this design in the past year and delivered very high quality along with excellent service. You can order just the plans to build with your own materials or you can order a plywood kit that has all plywood components accurately cut on a CNC machine, packaged and shipped to your door ready for you to start building. You can also order a kit of epoxy, fibreglass and consumables needed to build the PJ.
Our East Coast PJ numbers are now growing to where we can start arranging regattas. We have a tentative arrangement in place to hold the first Paper Jet East Coast Championships in 2014, as part of the WOOD Regatta on Charleston Harbor. With enough support, that can become an annual event.
To see more about this and our other designs, please visit http://dixdesign.com/ and please also come visit us at the Georgetown Wooden Boat Show if you are in that area.
The 36th annual Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival was magnificent. Port Townsends Wooden Boat Festival is the most education-packed and inspiring wooden boat event in the world. Featuring more than 300 wooden vessels, dozens of indoor and outdoor presentations and demonstrations, a whos who of wooden boat experts and thousands of wooden boat enthusiasts, theres something to do, someone to meet, or a boat to board at every turn. Expanded a little each year, the festival honors its traditions while inviting energetic debate and demonstration about the latest innovations in boatbuilding, equipment, skills, and adventures.
On Thursday, the busy setup day before Fridays start of the festival, I met Jay Thorpe and family with their lovely Pathfinder Gunvor at the boat launch at Boat Haven marina. Jay brought Gunvor up from Klamath Falls, Oregon, where he sails her on Klamath lake.
After launching, we sailed together for a few hours while awaiting our turn to enter the festival marina. The idyllic sailing conditions gave me a perfect opportunity to capture how majestic she looks under sail.
After we eventually tied up at our assigned slips, I ran into "Doryman" Mike Bogoger and we took a closer look at Gunvor.
Jay Thorpe and "Doryman" Mike Bogoger discussing Gunvor
I headed over to sign up for a rowing/sailing trip aboard the longboats. These longboats are replicas of the longboats used by Captain George Vancouver to explore the Puget Sound region in 1792. Ive been wanting to take a tour on them for years, but havent been able to until now because they were either full or there were too many other things to see and do. There are so many things to do at the festival there is no way to do them all.
These 26 replica longboats are used by the Northwest Maritime Center School Programs. They are each equipped with 8 rowing stations and 3 dipping lug sails. They are used to teach youth teambuilding, problem solving, and maritime skills. Teenagers attend intensive 2-5 day programs of discovery and exploration where they learn to row, sail, learn navigation, compass use, knots, marine biology, history and more. They are also used in the Pacific Challenge.
Fortunately, we had several of these teenage students aboard to help us learn to row in sync and teach us how to tack the three sails on our dipping lug rig.
The first lesson we learned was "Crab!". "Crab!" is what you yell out when the rowers get out of sync and get their oars all tangled up, which usually brings all four rowers on that side to a halt.
To prevent Crabs, one rower is designated as the pace setter. From the rowers point of view, its the rower on their right and all the way up front. The rowers are all facing aft of course, so that would make him the aft-most port-side rower. Anyway, the rower to his immediate left is supposed to row in sync with him. The rest of the rowers are all supposed to keep in sync with the rower seated immediately in front of them. Sounds simple, right? We had lots of Crabs. All it takes to create a Crab is for one rower to lose focus for a second or two.
Tacking the dipping lug rig involved a complex sequence of tacking the halyard, the sail tack, tacking the sheets, lowering the sail and dipping the yard, that I still dont fully understand. It was unlike anything Id ever done before and required about 3 or 4 people on each sail. I loved it! I wish I were a teenager so I could sign up for these programs. I also have a new found respect for the crew of these longboats. After only a half hour of rowing, my hands were numb and my back started to ache. Vancouvers explorers often rowed for hours upon hours exploring and charting the miles of coastlines here. Heres a bit of video. Its not very good. These are working boats. Youre always rowing or sailing, or trying to stay out of the way of other boats. There is very little opportunity for filming.
I have been trying for years to get to the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, WA, but have somehow never managed to put it together. The 2014 event will be the 38th rendition of the annual festival, which grows each year in size and what it offers. It is organised by the Wooden Boat Foundation under the umbrella of the Northwest Maritime Center. In 2014 the Festival will run from Friday 5th to Sunday 7th September.
This year I am finally going to make it to the Wooden Boat Festival. I expect to be there all three days and will be a speaker as well. I am scheduled to present on the subject "Plywood Boatbuilding Methods" from 10h45 to 11h45 on Friday 5th September, in the Discovery Classroom.
The Wooden Boat Festival boasts over 300 boats on display, some in the water and others on land. There are also about 150 presentations and demos, covering a wide range of subjects about every imaginable subject either directly or indirectly related to wooden boats.
Poster for 2014 Wooden Boat Festival
There are many wooden boats of my design in the Pacific Northwest. If you have built one of our wooden boats in the area or know someone who has, it would be great to get a bunch of those boats to the show to exhibit. I always enjoy seeing the completed boats, meeting the owners and chatting to them about building and sailing their boats. Owners generally enjoy meeting other builders and swapping ideas and experiences. This can be a great occasion to do just that. I cant arrange for the boats to be exhibited, that must be arranged with the organisers through their website.
Even if you dont have one of our boats to exhibit, I would be pleased to chat at the show. You can catch my presentation at the time and place given above and there will be time to chat afterwards. Closer to the start of the show I hope to be able to pass on info about where to find me at other times as well. Keep tabs on this blog for updates closer to the time.
Paper Jet built by Jim Phoenix, just one of a bunch of them in WA & OR.
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
Dawn, Saturday, the busiest day of the Festival, had arrived. I spent most of the day aboard Ellie, answering questions, but occasionally sneaking off to watch presentations and view the other boats.
The Main Attraction today, for us Welsford fans anyway, was Scamp. Howard Rice did an amazing talk. I wish I could have recorded it. The adventures Howard had taken aboard small boats are jaw dropping. He has gone around Cape Horn, both ways, in a sailing canoe, which ranks as one of the most epic journeys ever undertaken in a small boat. No, hes not crazy. Just the opposite. He trains Navy Seals in small boat handling. Small Craft Advisor magazine did a series of interviews with Howard in issues 58 through 63. In his presentation, Howard talked about his past and about the tests he had done aboard Scamp. Howard was having a microcruiser designed for him by a French designer, but replaced it with Scamp hull #3.
John Welsford did another outstanding talk later that day entitled "The Designers Role: More Than Just Drawing". This time I brought my camera and recorded the talk. Unfortunately the room was packed. My seat was near the back of the room, too far away to make a video, and the audio is not the greatest quality either. But if you crank up the volume, it is well worth listening to. John talks about the Designers role, which is turning your dreams into reality, and about how he designed Scamp to fulfill the specified design criteria.
I missed the majestic Schooner Cup races this year. I was at Johns talk instead. There are so many things to see and do at the festival that its impossible to see them all. Here is a little bit of the race.
Ive been toying with the idea of building a cedar-stripped kayak or canoe. I know next to nothing about kayaks, but the cedar strip kayaks at the festival are just so beautiful, and they look like they would be a lot of fun to build. I went to Joe Greenleys Cedar Strip Canoe & Kayak building demonstration. I went away from the presentation thinking they didnt look too difficult. A typical kayak uses a quarter mile of cedar strips!
The musical entertainment at the festival is fun. There is live music at Bar Harbor all day long. Here is a sample from "The Whateverly Brothers". Many people play their instruments on their boats and they are quite good and a lot of fun to listen to.
These boats are replicas of the longboats that Capt Vancouver used to explore Puget Sound in 1792. Every year I kick myself for not signing up early enough to go out for a rowing and sailing tour aboard them. Next year for sure!
Remember Captain Kirk Gresham, inventor of the home-made roller furler?
Heres his latest contraption he built for his Devlin cutter Eider. It keeps his full-keeled Eider comfortably upright on the beach while the tide is out. They say the tide waits for no man. Well, Kirk waits for no tide!
Here are a few more photos that I took of a few of the boats. This is a tiny, tiny fraction of the boats at the festival, which number in the hundreds. I really wish the festival was a week long instead of only three days!
