Boat Plans Bolger | Ive been out having little adventures

Boat Plans Bolger

Last week I took the ship out up to Kawau Island, about 2 hours away by sea, visited friends their then went to meet up with the beginning of the Kiwi Raid at Sandspit.

I was the “baggage barge” for the first day, baggage including camping gear for about 30 people was a good sized cargo but there is plenty of space in the covered cockpit aft so apart from needing four loads in the inflatable to get it all ashore at Martins Bay where they were to spend 3 nights at the motor camp while exploring the river at Mahurangi and the islands in the area, it was no problem at all.

I had the pleasure of the company of Roz for a couple of days, she is the organiser behind the Taweh Nugganah raid in Tasmania, those people being the bulk of the participants in our raid here.  Nice to meet you Roz, thanks for the pleasant time, you’re a great “deckhand”.

Raid progress reports here, I wish I could have stayed longer,  next year!

http://nzcoastalrowing.org/page/2/

More Kiwi participants too, this is a fabulous event, well organised, well supported with escort boats, the campsites all arranged, food provided, well done all the organising team.

From there, it was Mahurangi Regatta time, the annual event for classic yachts held in the entrance of the Mahurangi River,  there are usually between 250 and 300 boats there and while I’m primarily interested in the small boats, and admit to being biased and wanting pics of some my own designs, this is a fabulous event and one that I hate missing. 

This time, with the aid of Denny on the helm I was able to get around the fleet, hopefully not inconveniencing any of the racers, and got some very good shots.

Waiting near the beach, this is Carlotta Ann, soon to be renamed Kairos, I dont have any connection to the original name and she was an opportunity not to be missed.  Shes my most of the time home, big, comfortable and capable. I still have five other boats two of them with sails so Ive not defected from the small boat fold.

Breeze, 65 ft on deck, operated by an Auckland Maritime Museum volunteer group, a lovely sight at the Mahurangi Regatta, she sails the course with all of the racers and adds much to the spectacle. Yes Ive been up on that yard, while shes not a big ship its still a long way down.

Four of the St Ayles skiffs from the raid, all Tasmanian crews. Thanks for coming over people, great to meet you.

A sloop rigged Pathfinder,   http://www.jwboatdesigns.co.nz/plans/pathfinder/index.htm 

At this stage of the race  lying second to a boat that has won the event multiple times, local knowledge makes a huge difference on this course.

Rogue, slim, easily moved by that big sail. She finished second, well done. 

http://www.jwboatdesigns.co.nz/plans/rogue/index.htm

Saturday Night Special, designed to be a really quick and easy build for events such as the Texas 200, while not at her best in the very light winds ( the T200 is a notoriously windy event, there is an alternative larger sail area rig) she more than held her own among a fleet of very competitive small racers.   http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/jw/sns/index.htm

No excuses for just chasing pics of my own designs, the opportunity does not come up very often so I take it where it happens.  But Ive more pics and will post again.

We took the ship up the river to Warkworth, the town at the head of the navigable part of the river, being a midday tide and a holiday weekend, plus the Raid boats were up there with John Dory their escort,  it was way too crowded and no space at the dock so I managed to turn us around in the smallest space imaginable without touching anyone else, a maneuver that I was very proud of, tied up at the kayak jetty ( not being used at the time) for an hour then headed back out.

Perfect weather, light winds, just enough to move the boats, sunny and calm, itrs a lovely venue and ideal for boatwatchers, birdwatchers as well, there was a big flock of Fluttering Shearwaters resting just off the point as we came in.

I’m back at my home dock now, have a few jobs to do before I catch the bus into the airport and fly across the Pacific to Santiago to meet up with Howard Rice to help prepare the way for his planned Southern Ocean adventure with his SCAMP.

Check it out here.   http://www.below40south.com

The fundraiser is to make a movie so everyone can share the adventure. The cameras are organised, the filming planned, it’s the production costs that we need to cover, even ten dollars will help.  Please.

I’ve not been to Chile before, New Zealand has strong trade ties with that country and quite a few Chileans live here, but this is a first on that continent for me.

I’m very much looking forward to it.

Watch this space for reports.

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Small Boat Plans And Kits | Bill Tripps fast and beautiful boats

Small Boat Plans And Kits

Hinkley Bermuda 40

In the last two decades of the Cruising Club of America (CCA) rating rule, William H. Tripp Jr. designed  fast, beautiful and innovative sailing yachts. He became known for winning and weatherly centrerboard yawls like the Block Island 40, the Bermuda 40 and the Mercer 44. Many sailors and yacht designers consider them some of the most beautiful boats ever built in fiberglass. They continue to captivate sailors and command high prices in the used boat market today.

Mercer 44

"The Mercer 44, arguably one of the best-looking stock boats ever built," wrote Seattle yacht designer Bob Perry. "You can still find Mercer 44s cruising and racing today. They are a marvel of balanced proportions and look as good today as they did in 1959."

Tripp was a self-taught designer who came up through the ranks working for other designers, including Sparkman & Stevens and Phil Rhodes.

He was a prolific designer. In addition to providing custom racing and cruising designs for many clients he designed production boats for Seafarer, Hinckley, Pearson, Columbia and others. An early advocate of fiberglass, he became known for flush-deck race boats with his distinctive gun-turret dog houses.

As a teenager in the 1960s, Bob Perry considered Tripp to be his favorite designer, along with Phillip Rhodes.

"Tripp’s boats had a very distinctive look, with proud sweeping spoon bows, bold sheer springs, long concave counters terminating in almost vertical transoms, and sexy and svelte cabin trunks," Perry wrote in the Nov./Dec. 2011 issue of Good Old Boat Magazine. "You would never mistake a Tripp design for an S&S design. They just seemed to my young eye to have a strength and boldness, kind of an in your face quality. Plus, his boats were consistent race winners."

Pearson Invicta 37

Burgoo, the Tripp-designed Pearson 37-footer, won the Bermuda race in 1964. At that time it was the smallest fiberglass boat to ever win the race.

"[I]t had all the Tripp trademark design features and it was a very sexy-looking little boat," Perry wrote. "In fact, and I could be wrong, this may be the first Tripp design to have the “gun turret” cabin trunk."

"Bill was the first to put portlights in the topsides as well as opening ports in cockpit sides to improve air circulation and communication below," said Ted Jones, who worked with Tripp before becoming a boating magazine editor. "He popularized flush decks on small boats (Galaxy, Medalist, Invicta, Mercer 44), and set high standards in hull and rigging scantlings that have been proven over time. He designed boats to stay together under the most difficult circumstances. I cannot recall one of his designs ever being dismasted or suffering structural damage at sea."

By the mid-1960s, Columbia, Americas leading builder of fiberglass yachts at the time, approached Tripp to design a fifty footer. He produced the first of the Columbia bubble-topped high-sided boats that are still easily recognizable. In the next six years, he produced thirteen Columbias, including the Columbia 26 MkII, Columbia 34, Columbia 39, Columbia 43, Columbia 45, Columbia 50, and the Columbia 57. The boats are vintage Tripp, but with fin keels and spade rudders.

The C-50 attracted a strong following that still has an active owners association.

Columbia 50

"The Columbia 50 was a big elegant-looking boat with the same bubble house and long flush deck (of many other Tripp designs)," Perry wrote. "It was a very good-looking boat and it was fast. Seattle’s racing scene was dominated for years by a Columbia 50 called Six Pack while the smallest class was dominated by a Columbia 26 called Miller’s High Life."

In 1969, Columbia was the worlds largest fiberglass sailboat manufacturer and Tripp designed a 57 footer named Concerto, which became the largest production fiberglass boat. It displayed several of Tripps trademark features: an unusually-long and effective waterline, high-aspect ratio sail plan, dual-surface steering system with a keel-mounted trim tab as well as a balanced spade rudder aft. Speed was derived partially from an absolute minimum of wetted surface area, and from the high prismatic coefficient hull design.

In 1971, the racing community adopted the International Offshore Rule (IOR), effectively making every CCA yacht obsolete. Tripp fought hard against the change, but designed a 52-foot IOR boat for Columbia and was looking forward to developing more of his ideas on the new rule. A few months later, a drunk driver lost control of his car, hurtled over the divider on the Connecticut Turnpike and smashed into Tripps Jaguar, killing him instantly. He was 51.

While we usually focus on just one design, I wanted to look closer at a designer first, then at one of his designs in more depth. Stay tuned.

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Boat Plans Building | On the metaphorical road again heading for more small boat sailing adventures

Boat Plans Building

The brotherhood of the travelling boots.

Its occurred to me that the hikers boots that I’m wearing have been to seven different countries so far, they’re good friends the two of them, get along well even though they’re almost twins. One of course is a lefty and the other a righty but even so they seem able to co operate and generally arrive wherever it is that they’re going at about the same time.

I’m on my way again, this time to Chile,  will arrive in Santiago in about 18 hours.

Right now I’m sitting in Auckland International airport, within a few metres of the Percival Gull aircraft that Jean Batten flew from England to New Zealand in 1936, setting a number of aviation records on the way.  That flight took 11 days and 45 minutes to cover a bit more than 14000 miles. 

I’m going to be travelling in an aircraft that barely resembles that tiny single engined spruce and canvas plane.  In fact it would be no real problem to fit the “Gull” into the cargo hold of the big Boeing that I’ll be imprisoned within for the 13 ½ hour flight across the Southern Pacific Ocean. We’ll be travelling at around 590 nautical miles per hour, how different it is from Jean in her little light plane t125 mph.  I bet she didn’t complain about the cabin service in her tiny cockpit .

Jean Battens Percival Gull airplane, as I write this Im sitting about 2metres away from the wingtip on the left of the picture, its a graceful little thing, but a real reminder of how much aviation has progressed since then, remember too that Jean Batten was with us until 1982, so most of this amazing progress has happened within the space of a long lifetime.

This trip I’m making is by the way the longest uninterrupted stretch of ocean that there is north of the five great capes about twice the distance that it is across the North Atlantic from USA to UK.

Which brings me to why I’m travelling.  I’m to meet up with friend and co teacher Howard Rice, and we’re going to be setting up for the big voyage of exploration that he is undertaking next southern summer.

That voyage, in a modified SCAMP, all of 11 ft 11 in long ( 3.575M ) will leave from Punta Arenas in the Straights of Magellan, carry him out through the channels and straights into the Pacific where he’ll turn left, and head south toward Cape Horn.

That latter is not necessarily the objective of the voyage, but rounding “The Horn” is a possibility.  The real purpose of the voyage is to explore the least populated and most rugged coastline on the planet,  riven with steep sided fjords, many with glaciers at their heads, backed by mountains, many un named as yet, and battered by the incessant gale force winds of the Roaring 40s this is an extraordinary place, and one which Howard will be exploring, and documenting.

There will be cameras on the boat, as well as within his support crew back at Punta Arenas, there is already some video “in the can” and the intention is to make a comprehensive video of the voyage, a video which will be available to anyone wishing to see the grandeur of the wildest place on the planet from the viewpoint of a small boat sailor.

There is more on the boat and the voyage in Howards Facebook page here

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=howard%20rices

Yes it costs by the way, and if you’d like to support this, check out the directors website here. http://www.below40south.com.  There is also a lot of information on the voyage there.

  Any donations would be very gratefully received, we’re covered for the actual filming but the production costs will be significant and even a small amount would help to get what will be one of the great small boat adventures out where people can share it.

So I’m sitting here in Auckland airport with several hours to wait until the big silver bird roars down the runway and turns out eastward over the sea.

Its not boring, I’m in a quiet corner upstairs, this is one of the better airports that I travel through, and I’m alongside a glass wall where I can watch the people flow like a gently stirred anthill.  It’s the arrivals area just below me, and there are friends, parents, siblings and visitors arriving, it’s heart warming watching the enthusiasm and emotion with which they are being welcomed.

But I’m going the other way, I’ll be among that crowd downstairs in 20 days.

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Pontoon Boat Plans | Barnacle Bill magazine

Pontoon Boat Plans

 A subscription wont break your bank and youll get exceptional value for money. There is a good team of contributors and an enthusiastic and knowledgeable editor so its going to be a good read.  Its on topic for us small boat fans, this deserves support.  ( Plus its cheap while this deal is running).

50% off Digital Subscription for 2016!
12 issues for £12
Offer valid until midnight 24th December 2015

http://barnacle-bill-magazine.myshopify.com/…/barnacle-bill…

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