Kayak Boat Plans | Scrapping being cheap or Eco friendly

Kayak Boat Plans

Building our place over here in the Bahamas can be very expensive if you cannot do all the work yourself. We have done 98% of the work here with only short term day help with a concrete pour or when plastering. The most fun thing for me is collecting drift wood from along the shore line as we go about exploring . This wood is all in pretty good shape. What we do is flip the board over to use its old hidden side and give it a new life. The bonus is most boards come with their own nails !

All this costs us is some labor a little gas and some imagination to where it will all go.

A $30.00 new board or the same thing with a little history behind it for free? What would you do?

Our dinghy can hold up to 1,500 lbs easily. So its just a matter of stacking and the sea state getting back home.

Ok ... Now we need some to go here and over there.

This walk way all  from the shore line.

We collected all the rocks to cover the outside of our house. The dark rocks are from the Azores to the Cape Verde islands from their beaches.

Remember ! All this wood was once floating in the ocean so you better have a strong boat.

Will be looking for you out there scrapping.

 

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Dinghy Boat Plans | Star45 hull being fiberglassed

Dinghy Boat Plans

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Boat Plans Bolger | Bolger Cat Yawl Romp

Boat Plans Bolger

20 years ago my wife Rachel , our young daughters Kalessin, Lillian and I sailed into St Augustine Florida and anchored off the town marina. We had just sailed up from the Bahamas and were looking for a quite town with some nice architecture , a good school and a  place to live at anchor. 20 years ago this was a simple town. The schools were good and for Kalessins first year of school it was a short walk from the anchorage. We could use the marina dock to tie up our dinghy, get showers, do laundry , secure our bycycles and all for $115.00 a month. A nice deal. 

I got a job right away at Luhrs Mainship in their R&D dept building boat plugs. Every thing was within biking distance. This was when I first spotted the Romp in my creek roaming evenings. 

I had watched one of these boats get part way built years before in Key Largo at Blue Fin marina by a guy named John Connelly if I remember right. He got the hull stripped up and the deck on and then the project ended and he and the boat dissapeared.

I have never sailed on a Romp but this hull is similar to Bolgers other design the Mannatee. Both have firm bilges with long straight keels. The Mannatee "Alert" tracked very well . I felt that in going to weather the mizzen played a roll in keeping this boat on course by dialing in the weather helm. I did not like the way Alert felt at sea in tacking and so forth with this long straight keel hull shape. Was kinda like sailing a huge Whitehull dinghy in regard to the bow being deep and no rocker to the long keel.

Of course Jim Melcher sailed the Alert across the North Atlantic to Ireland single handed at the age of 74 and took her through out the canals of Europe  over many years logging over 55,000 miles over there. This does not include the sea miles he put in her sailing in the Pacific , and Caribbean seas.

My guess another 40,000 or so miles. 

It all comes back to... People sail boats , not boats sail people.

So to all you Bolger dreamers .... Heres the Original Romp waiting for you to rescue her and take her away from her most likly death. 

The owner said he wanted $15,000.00 three years ago. Romp has some rot in the deck. The mainmast is made of fiberglass. The hull is cored with Airex or Kledgecell and glassed over well.

The interior is classic Bolger, that means all small single bunks so no sleeping with your better half.

I dont think Bolger was into snuggling.

Lots of open space to fill in with lockers and stuff to go afar.

This is way cheaper than building . The ballast alone is worth a third of the price. 

So someone get going !!!!!

Lots of no trespassing signs and no one in sight so I only got this far last week.

Romp needs you. The name is on the stern. This mizzen was up three years ago.

Good luck !

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Boat Plans Butler | My flats boat early history re posted again!

Boat Plans Butler

I have no idea how it disappeared from my blog but my early history posting- story just dissapeared from this blog. Several followers emailed me to ask to share it with their friends so I emailed my daughter to assist me in reposting it. So its back in its old time slot in June. Here are some photos to go with this story and time frame. 

This is the Sea Witch ketch that I grew up on sailing from California to Florida via the Panama Canal.

We are sailing in the San Blas Islands here. The cost to transit the canal in 1976 was $14.00 !

This boat did not have a winch on her. Every thing was a block and tackle. She really loved the wind in the Carribean sea. Otherwise she was a haystack to sail.

Back then with a wood hull you were always looking to paint your bottom because of ship worms.

The tides in Panama on the Pacific were from 8-24 so this was easy. Iam mixing the paint in the dinghy.

When we were cruising the San Blas islands I talked my dad into letting me sail the islands for 10 days with only a 5 gallon water jug , my spears and some fishing line. I wanted to try and live off the land and sea. I ate a lot of coconuts, lobster, sea urchins, and fish. This little flat bottom Garvey dinghy at 9 long with a loose footed lug sail and a leeboard sailed right along and was very seaworthy with the flair that it had. It rained every night and I would just sleep on the two oars with the sail over me. Iam 17 years old here. The Cuna Indians loved seeing what I was doing.

When we arrived in Florida in 1976 I got a job at Stamas Boats. I worked there for six months and saved enough to buy a nice bycycle and go on a 3,800 mike bike trek through the Pacific Northwest for a summer. This is near the Columbia Ice Fields in Alberta Canada.

On my bike tour I got this Big horn to eat my dried apples out of my hand. I asked him if he would like to have his head on my future house wall and he said not today! Iam 18 years old here. The white things around my ankles are plastic bags that I would wear over my socks to stay warm. It snowed that night. I did this trip averaging 75 miles a day for the trip and living off a $3.00 a day budget. Oh for the good old days!

While working at Stamas boats I bought this French designed and built Corsair sloop for $750.00.

This boat which was built out of plywood I then sailed through out the Exumas and as far south as Long Island in the Bahamas and then out to Conception ,Cat island, Eleuthera,the bight of Abaco, and the east side too coming back to Florida in West palm. My next trip over she hit something at 8:00 at night 18 miles out of Key largo in the Gulf Stream and sank in 10 minutes . Because I had no dinghy I ended up swimming for 20 hours making it back to Biscayne Bay. 

All my boats have been very strong since this episode.

Shes sailing in George Town harbor in the Exumas in 1977 with only 12 boats at anchor in the peak of the season. At the time I was 19 years old and was having the time of my life. I have spent the my time since then trying to recapture the simplicity of that era.

After my little sloop sank I got a job at Glander Boat Works in Key Largo and built myself one of his Prudence hulls from the mold he had. Lawanda and I did most of the building in the water at Lews Marina in Islamorada.

This little sloop was a nice sailor. We did several trips to the Bahamas in her before I got into building flats skiffs. We lived aboard in what is called Little Basin in Islamorada right out front of what is now Bass Pro world Extravaganza whatever. Only 4 other sailboats then and maybe 6 guides.

Sailing in the Bahamas with my dad on his Alben Vega catching up to us.

This is a little bit of what was going on before I met Hal Chittum and got into the flats boat world.

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