Plywood Boat Plans Australia | Cape Henry 21 Launched in Croatia

Plywood Boat Plans Australia

Dean Ivancic lives in Porec, Croatia. He bought plans from us a few years ago for the Cape Henry 21. He has been working steadily on his boat and reported to me today that he launched her in April. He has sent me some rather nice photos of her under sail. She is still incomplete down below but has all that is needed to sail.

She is named "Scintilla", Italian for "spark", also the meaning of "Iskra", the Croatian name of Deans youngest daughter.

We wish Dean and his family lots of fun and adventures in their Cape Henry 21.

"Scintilla" on one of her first outings.

Pretty from any angle.

Dean has done a nice job of building "Scintilla".

The Cape Henry 21 is surprisingly quick and has delightful manners. These boats prove that a boat doesnt have to be ugly to be fast.

For more on this design and others in our range, go to http://dixdesign.com/.

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Boat Plans Building | Americas Cup Race 13 1st Edition

Boat Plans Building

I want to take issue with what has been widely reported on the web about the Americas Cup racing on Friday afternoon last week. That was when Race 13 was run, abandoned then run for a second time.

A syndicated report written by Scott Neuman has appeared on thousands of websites and tells an entirely inaccurate story. It says:-

"They were helped along somewhat by the vagaries of the wind off San Francisco — its been alternately too light or too strong. On Friday in a light-air race, New Zealand crossed the line ahead of USA, but it took them just over 40 minutes, which the race rules said was too long. So the result was thrown out and the defenders lived to sail again."

Either the author was not watching the race himself and published incorrect information supplied by someone else or he didnt understand what he was watching.

I might rile up people who are rooting for Emirates Team NZ but I like to read the truth, whichever side I am supporting. It behoves journalists to publish the truth, not what they want or someone else wants them to say, for whatever reason. Inaccuracies in journalistic reporting become truth in the future unless they are corrected at the time or soon after. This is especially true in the Internet era because what goes onto the Internet will stay on the Internet until there is no longer an Internet (forever? until the end of the world? Who knows?)

In this case the report says that NZ won the race and then the result was thrown out because the race took too long. Absolute nonsense.

Emirates NZ was well ahead at the time that the race was abandoned but they were nowhere near to the finish line. I cant be sure of their exact position when time ran out but I think that they were into the green circle and about to round the last mark when the abandon call came from the race officer. They still had the last leg to sail. There was no result, so how can the result have been thrown out?

You may say that this is pure semantics and it makes no difference. But it does, it makes a very big difference. Emirates Team NZ only needed to win one more race to take the cup back to New Zealand and that was the race that they needed. The report says that they won that race then it was taken away due to the time limit. That is equivalent to saying that they won the cup then it was taken away from them. If the time limit had been 45 minutes instead of 40 minutes then they would have won the race and the cup, no dispute. The fact is that they didnt finish or win that race and didnt win the cup on that day.

Most yacht races have time limits, as do most other sporting events in the world. The 40 minute time limit is one of the many rules of the event. The race committee cannot increase or decrease this limit at whim. You can be sure that the crews of both boats knew long before they even reached the weather mark that there was a good chance that the race would be abandoned for exceeding the allotted 40 minutes, unless the wind increased considerably. The commentators were already talking about it half-way up leg 3 and I am sure that the crews of both boats were watching their very accurate timepieces all the way through. All racing sailors know that in very light breezes there is a chance of missing the time limit so we keep it in mind, we watch the clock and estimate or calculate the speed needed due to the time and distance to go to the finish. We didnt see any looks of astonishment among the crew when the race was abandoned, they knew that they would not finish in time to get a result.

The fact is that the non-completion of that race has forever changed the Americas Cup history from what would have been if the race had been completed. AC34 has dramatically changed from what was a hiding being handed out to Oracle Team USA by Emirates Team New Zealand to what is now an extremely thrilling spectacle, with one of the biggest comebacks ever seen in any sport in the world. With 5 straight wins in races 13 to 17 instead of the final loss that appeared inevitable for race 13, we now have some seriously competitive racing taking place.

By this evening Emirates Team New Zealand may have won that last race that they need and the cup may be in the hands of the New Zealanders. On the other hand, Oracle Team USA may have defied the odds even further and taken it to 6 wins in a row. Whichever way it goes, it has been thrilling to watch and I will watch for as long as it keeps going until one or the other does win that elusive 9th race.

 PS. Whatever time limit is applied to a race, there may be times that it is exceeded. For Race 13 the 40 minutes was too short and 45 minutes would have given a result. But 45 minutes could easily have also been too short, so where does one place a limit? The 40 minute limit was written into the rules and all crews knew that it was there.They are not bitching about it, they are getting on with the job at hand, which is to win "The Cup".

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Boat Plans Bateau | Georgetown Wooden Boat Show

Boat Plans Bateau

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.

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Boat Plans Bartender | New Plywood Dix 43 Launched

Boat Plans Bartender

Back in the late 1990s Roy McBride of Hout Bay, South Africa, asked me if he could build my steel Dix 43 design in plywood. He had been very impressed by my radius chine plywood method that I developed to build my Didi 38 "Black Cat". He built his boat from the steel plan set assisted by some new drawings detailing important aspects that I supplied. The resulting boat was "Flying Cloud", which resides at Hout Bay Yacht Club.

Roy McBrides "Flying Cloud", built to a very nice standard.

I have never added the Dix 43 to our plywood design list because it is not a fully detailed plywood design. But it does make a really nice boat in that material when a builder wants to build from plywood. Another of these boats has been launched in South Africa, this one built by Gert Bruwer of Saldanha Bay on the West Coast. He has built the aft cockpit version, whereas "Flying Cloud" has a customised deck that is a mixture of our centre cockpit and pilothouse versions.

Gert Bruwers Dix 43 "Scylla".

Gert has been a very loyal customer. He has previously built a steel boat to this same design as well as a steel Dix 38 and a plywood Didi 34 . He preferred the radius chine plywood building method, so selected it for this latest boat.

"Scylla" on hull-turning day. Much of the interior is already in.

Galley of "Scylla", traditional finish of white with hardwood trim.

"Scylla" is sailing well but I dont yet have sailing photos of her.

To see our full range of designs, go to http://dixdesign.com/.

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Boat Designs And Plans | Paper Jet flies at Cape Hatteras

Boat Designs And Plans

Two weeks ago I towed my Paper Jet to Cape Hatteras for a few days, for my annual Iguana Surf Club Fathers Day Weekend of surfing/camping/sailing and general soul revival after a very hectic year. We camp next to the water at Frisco Woods Campground, on the shores of Pamlico Sound. When there is surf I spend much time at the beach. When the surf is not good I spend more time sailing.

This year the surf conditions werent great and I only spent half a day surfing when the wind swung into the right direction and there was a good combination of offshore breeze and swell for a few hours. That gave me time to take my Paper Jet on a few outings on the Sound. There were thunder storms in the area part of the weekend, giving some spectacular light shows and heavy downpours, with accompanying gales that arrived very swiftly and dramatically.

The storms gave some dramatic backdrops when I was sailing one evening and Dave Keegan took full advantage to take some interesting photos.

Rigging my Paper Jet on the shore of Pamlico Sound, North Carolina.

Beam-reaching away from the camera in a patch of sunlight.

Very threatening clouds but they were miles away.

Sailing on chocolate wrapper silver paper.

About an hour after these photos were taken a violent storm arrived. I anticipated it and felt it likely to be strong enough to pick up my 50kg boat and cause serious damage. I put her onto her trailer and hitched that to my car both for anchorage and shelter from the expected storm. When it came it had 40-50 knots of wind in it and later in the night there were gusts of 60+ knots recorded. Being anchored to the trailer likely saved her from being cart-wheeled along the shore.

The next evening was much more pleasant and Curtis Watson took these beautiful photos of her in the very pretty sunset.

This is a very photogenic boat.

Relaxed end to a strenuous day.

Please visit our website at http://dixdesign.com/ to see more about this and our other designs.

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Boat Building Plans And Kits | Paper Jet Designed for Junior Sailors

Boat Building Plans And Kits

I designed the Paper Jet primarily to be a training boat for teenagers. The thought to design such a boat started when I was on sailing committees in South Africa. One of the subjects most often discussed was how to keep the juniors in sailing. They are the future of sailing, which is experiencing a gradual ageing of the participants. If we cant keep the youth interested in boats and sailing then they will wander off into more exciting/interesting activities, to the detriment of sailing as a whole.

The problem as I see it is a combination of factors, some inter-connected. There are no-doubt other factors but these are the ones that are apparent to me.

1. Boats that are pushed by clubs and national bodies but are uninspiring to young sailors, in terms of performance and aesthetics. Most of these boats were advanced designs when first developed but are now very dated and unexciting by modern standards.
2. The high cost of acquiring and maintaining competitive boats in the Olympic program. These boats are one-design to reduce costs and maintain level competition. However, they are built to very close tolerances and with top grade hardware, sails, rigs, foils etc, all of which cost a bundle of money when new. Much of that cost is repetitive as well, due to regular replacement to stay competitive. Most families cannot make this level of financial commitment, so the boats become progressively less competitive and the sailors lose interest.
3. The high cost of upgrading performance/excitement/challenge to move into the next class up the ladder of the Olympic track. The need to sell the older boat, probably at a loss, then buy a competitive new boat that would be faster but not necessarily much more exciting, makes this an expensive process.
4. Too much emphasis on winning and too little on getting enjoyment out of boats. This has resulted in very structured sailing activities for the juniors. They do not have enough freedom to use their boats for fun instead of being shepherded by adults in sail-training programs that are designed only to improve racing skills, not to engender a love of boats and boating. Fifty years ago we had much more freedom to sail in the manner that we wanted. In doing that we raced informally (two boats near to each other are always racing), learned how to get the most speed from our boats, how to capsize them, how to right them, how to sail them on the limits of the boats ability and beyond our own limits, which served to push our own limits to the next level. We went onto the lake with only the need to be home for dinner and to take total responsibility for ourselves and our boats until we returned. In the process we developed instinctive sailing abilities that can come only from doing, not from being taught theory or chased around a race course by instructors. There were no rescue boats on duty on weekdays, so we had to learn how to rescue ourselves and our buddies. We became totally self-sufficient, self-reliant and confident in our own abilities. We learned to take responsibility for our own actions in a way that is missing from much of modern society. We also learned to love our boats and sailing so intensely that most of the guys in my group moved on to careers in the boating industry.
5. Too much emphasis on windward-leeward racing. This may be good for emphasising the need for improving technique in slow boats but it produces the most boring type of sailing imaginable, either to participate or to watch. The most fun and exciting experience of sailing happens on reaching courses and the sailing establishment seems to have colluded to remove this from the racing.

What has all this to do with the Paper Jet? The concept of this boat developed in my mind and then in my computer, with these factors in my mind. I was developing a boat to solve some of those problems. No boat can fix everything that is wrong in junior sailing but I wanted to draw a boat that would have the ability to at least help with the problems. It produced a boat with the following characteristics.

1. Very modern and exciting to look at, it looks fast even when standing still. Wherever I take it, people come to admire it and talk about it. Juniors love the aesthetics of this very sexy-looking boat.
2. It can morph from a very basic free-standing una rig for single-handing with minimal strings to pull and understand, through a conventional sloop rig for double-handed sailing with a few more strings, to a powered-up double-handed skiff with fathead mainsail, asymmetrical spinnaker and trapeze, simply by adding or removing components from the modular rig.
3. This happens without changing boats and at moderate cost. One family can sail the same boat in different formats to suit the people who are sailing it. Or the same crew can vary the power of the rig and speed of the boat to suit wind, water and personal mood, from relaxed unpressured cruising through to very challenging maxed-out adrenaline-producing low-flying. It can morph from one rig to another in minutes, then back again.
4. Planing high-performance hull with low drag at all speeds. It accelerates smoothly, with no bow-wave hump to overcome in order to plane at high speed. This means that it can plane in moderate breezes even with the smallest rig.
5. Proportioned for teenagers rather than adults, so that juniors can potentially get more performance from the boat than their larger and heavier parents.
6. Hull and deck weight of under 45kg (100lb), easily manhandled by young crew.
7. Able to be built by amateurs with basic woodworking skills to reduce the cost of getting afloat.
8. Traditional rig details to reduce expensive purchased hardware.

Paper Jet rigs, deck plan & cockpit section. Click to enlarge.

The drawing above shows the overall concept of the Paper Jet. In the plan view, you can see that it has two mast positions, linked by a plywood X-structure that spreads the rig loads into the hull and holds the jib sheet fairleads. The una rig at right has the mast free-standing in the forward mast position, which rakes it aft for good helm balance. The sloop rig at centre has the same mast moved to the upright aft mast position, with only the standing rigging and jib added. The skiff rig at left keeps all of the components of the sloop rig except for the removable topmast (there is a socket with locating bolt at the hounds) and mainsail, which are replaced by a taller topmast, fathead mainsail and spinnaker gear. The retracting bowsprit is linked to the spinnaker halliard so that one line hoists the asymmetrical and pushes out the bowsprit. The other end of the same line retrieves the spinnaker and pulls in the bowsprit.

The cockpit section shows that this boat has a narrow waterline relative to overall beam. That produces a boat that is very responsive and needs fast reactions and agility. It is not a boat for beginners, who should first learn to sail on a Sunfish or other less challenging boat. After that they will have the skills needed to sail this boat with the una rig then progress to the other versions.

Dudley single-handing with skiff rig. Billy Black photo.

The wooden mast that I designed for it is sealed and buoyant. If capsized it lies on its side instead of turning turtle. Most dinghies that lie on their side will blow away from the crew in strong winds if they lose contact with the boat. They cant catch up with the boat when swimming in a lifejacket. Not so with the Paper Jet, which stays right where it capsizes, with the immersed wing serving as a sea-anchor.

Andre Siebert and daughter with sloop rig, saluting the club commodore during the opening cruise.

Dan Siegal sailing with the una rig at Mystic Seaport. Billy Black photo.

Righting from a capsize is not difficult, using the righting lines under the wings. Hanging from the righting line and pushing with feet against the immersed bottom of the hull pulls it upright, generally without a need to get onto the daggerboard.

Two Paper Jets capsized. It lies and waits to be rerighted. Billy Black photo.

The  Paper Jet is well-suited to club use, with boats able to be built by amateur or professional builders, working from plans (supplied with full-size patterns of all plywood components) or from pre-cut plywood kits available from suppliers in various countries (Click for suppliers). That makes it suitable also for club, school and community woodworking projects to build up local fleets.

Two Paper Jets are a compact load on a shared trailer.

I have no aspirations for the  Paper Jet to become an Olympic class. What it can be is an affordable, exciting and versatile part of the training route toward much more costly skiffs like the 49er. For those who dont have aspirations to Olympic skiff sailing, the Paper Jet can be all that they need.

Dudley single-handing with asymmetrical. Dave Baxter photo.

Although intended for junior sailors, this boat has attracted a different type of sailor. It has earned a following of men in their 30s and 40s, sailing both crewed and single-handed. At time of writing, we have sold plans and/or kits for this design to builders in 18 countries, with numbers rising in North America and Europe.

To see our full range of designs, please visit our main website at http://dixdesign.com/.

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