Haunted by boats
A while ago I had reason to count the boats with which I have associated in my life so far. One thing became clear: I have some problems. I am haunted and distracted by watercraft, I have the attention span of a distracted gnat, and I am forgetful.
I lost count at seventeen, and had to start over. So I decided to try and remember them all, and gather their stories in one place, because I loved every one of these humble craft.
Cape Charles plywood sea kayak
This is the first boat I built. Using a jigsaw and hand drill, I put it together with my father's help one December holiday, 1996 if I am not mistaken. I fell in love with Chesapeake Light Craft, and have been an admirer ever since.
The Cape Charles is a lovely boat, it is stable and quick and can carry enough gear for a decent expedition.
I never used it properly, my longest trip was a 36km, two day paddle down the Breede river from Malgas to Witsand. I overnighted on the bank on a farm, after a long afternoon of hard upwind paddling, and finished the trip the next morning. This was before I knew about the large sharks that often swim far upriver, as that would certainly have been on my mind.
The Cape Charles was also used in some time-trialling agains plastic sea kayaks from Three Anchor Bay to Clifton Beach and back. Those poor guys in the heavy rotomolded boats really struggled to keep up........
I gave the boat to a friend, Hildegarde Van Zyl, who is a great artist.(See some of her work here.) Her husband Wynand and I became good friends during my Navy days, and we sometimes sailed Wynand's Hobie 16 from the beach in Fish Hoek. I do not see them nearly often enough.
Kaskazi Duo fiberglass sea kayak
The Kaskazi Duo was my first serious attempt at designing a boat from scratch, somewhere in 1998 or thereabouts.
The boat was conceived by the then owner of Kaskazi, and I handled the design, created the CAD models, and did all the required hydrostatic calculations. The design was done using ProEngineer. A novel concept was the use a cockpit pod, which served to drastically prevent water ingress in the event of a capsize. I am not quite sure that it was worth the extra weight, and I doubt Kaskazi (which has since then changed ownership) uses the concept anymore.
The boat is still in production after twenty years, albeit in its' third iteration. I suspect the hullshape is unchanged, and apparently paddlers really like it. Fast and stable are the terms mostly used.
I suppose I learned more about how to conduct a partnership and human nature than boat design from this one. Every time I see one of these kayaks, I am still angry and sad at the same time, about the little partnership that should have been.
Three in one dinghy
This as yet unnamed design (done in 2000) was an attempt to design a little jack of all trades, and as it turns out, a master of none.
I designed the boat using now defunct software called Plyboats, which was plagued by a serious flaw: The deepest point on the keel and the widest point on the sheer has to lie on the same station. This resulted in a sweet plan view, but a keel profile which is wrong. The boat has its center of buoyancy a little too far aft.
I took it further by building as light as possible, and made many of the fittings myself as well. The structure is not strong enough to handle lots of abuse, and the last sail (in about twenty knots with three people) saw the inwale on one side tearing out completely.
The mast is a rounded hollow hex section with halyards run internally, made from six staves of European Larch. The sprit of the gunter rig is a carbon windsurfer topmast section, and I developed the sail panels using Robert Laine's sail shaping software.
I still have this dinghy around, as it became my oldest daughter's boat. We are currently stripping the guts out and making a pure sailing dinghy out of her (August 2017.)
Plywood sit on top fishing ski
I designed this boat during my final year at Aerodyne Marine. The hull panels were stitched and glassed by my friend Philip Sharp.No, not Phil Sharp the offshore racer, or Phil Sharp the Rampant Rabbi. No, that's Philip Sharp, the difficult, cantankerous and great guy (and experienced boatbuilder.) I digress.
I only finished the boat years later, in about 2010, and fished from it a few times. Then I committed the mortal sin of allowing it to die a slow and painful death in the sun and rain. I will try to recycle some of the hull panels into an ama for the Drifter skiff's sailing version, and hope that this atones for my sin.
Drifter skiff
The Drifter skiff is a small fishing boat that I can easily handle by myself on land and water. A wet deck makes it safe for use in pretty rough conditions, and with the 5hp 2 stroke Yamaha, I get about 11 knots on flat water. This is my latest boat, and was an exercise in reducing the hours to build as much as designing a safe and effective fishing boat. Total man-hours to build was 60, with the help of a CNC router and a few months of agonising over the details in front of a computer.
Plywood canoe
Kaskazi Duo Kayak
Plywood canoe
Kaskazi Duo Kayak
Drifter skiff
i440 Dinghy
