I love the Ocean Explorer but I’m not sure I’d want to have one in Finland. I understand that summers are great there. They had it on a Thursday last year. Take a ride with Perttu in this YouTube video…
As my regular readers know I love the Puddle Duck Racer. It’s an ugly but easily built boat that can get you out on the water for a couple of hundred bucks and a couple of weekends worth of work. The web site proclaims: “The PDRacer is a one designe racing sailboat that is basically a plywood box with a curved bottom, and is the easiest boat in the world to build. Free plans, free club. The rules are aimed at keeping the lower 10″ of all hulls the same, but the rest is up to the builder. A simple hull can be made from 3 sheets of plywood, Titebond II glue and latex house paint. If you work hard for two weekends you can go sailing on the 3rd weekend.”
I doubt there is a group of sailors anywhere in the world that have more fun than the owners of these boats. Many have made some remarkable voyages in the Texas 200 the last couple of years and no matter what kind of boats the other participants of the 200 are sailing it seems everyone pulls for the little guys.
Back on October 22 I wrote about a “cruising” version of the boat and suggested that I thought the PDR Goose would be more suitable for a minimalist, easily built inexpensive boat. I did not, however, explain what the Goose was.
The PDR Goose is a stretched-out 12′ version of the PDR and it’s fast building its own following. The Racer has a Yahoo site for its devotees,http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pdracer the Goose recently formed one, too: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pdgoose/ Unlike the PDRacer, the Goosers (oooooo, that tickles) do not want the boat to become a racing class. They’ll leave that to the one-design class PDRacer. Hey, the boats are cheap and there’s no reason you couldn’t have one of each. The advantage of the larger Goose is that you can more comfortably take along additional crew on your adventures.
This morning in one of my favorite boating blog sites, Duckworks, there was a post in the next-to-last article giving a link to several YouTube videos of a completed Goose under sail. While the Duck is rather clunky having a length to beam ratio of only 2:1 at 4’X8′ but the elongated Goose is 3:1 at 4’X12′. Not only does it look good it seems to sail great as seen here.
And it will get up and plane:
To see more videos of this nice craft underway click this link:
Any regular reader of this blog knows I have a real soft spot in my heart for the Puddle Duck Racer. Naturally it was only a matter of time before someone expanded on the concept and turned one into a minimalist cruising reality. Probably the first to do it was Jason Nabors, who built the Tenacious Turtle which he entered in the epic Texas 200. Not really a race but more of a “cruise” up through the semi-protected waters along the Texas coast.
A bit crude in its execution and jarring to the eyes of anyone who loves classic boat lines as I do, I still thought it was one of the neatest things I’d ever seen.
Of course the Aussies couldn’t leave the simple PDR well enough alone and came up with the OZ PDR which is a bit flashier than the original. Now,Perttu Korhonen, in collaboration with Michael Storer who came up with the OZ design, has come up with the Ocean Explorer. No offense, Jim, but this one really has a chance of taking off.
Plans for building this wonderful little boat are available at Duckworks for $40 US. The set which is downloadable in PDF form from the above link consist of around 95 pages of drawings, photos and text which should provide you snow-bound dreamers with plenty to ponder this winter and hopefully kick-start you to build one yourself. You can get more photos here: www.woodworkforums.com/f169/ultimate-cruising-pdr-120306/
Personally I think I’d want to use these plans as an inspiration for modifying the PDR Goose, the expanded 12′ version of the original 8-footer. It would allow you more room for supplies and, possibly, a companion.
As readers of this blog know, I have featured quite a few of Dylan Winter’s videos of his trip around England in his 19 foot boat. I have also been fortunate to have been in sporadic email correspondence with Mr. Winter who has not only done his bit on the water, but once bought a couple of horses and trekked across much of the western part of the United States with them.
Recently he sent me an email telling me he had a new web site: www.keepturningleft.co.uk. and asked me for my opinion on how it worked. Well, as with everything I’ve seen from this gentleman, it’s superb, and well worth the time for any of my readers to spend their time on clicking and viewing his work.
I especially like the videos that feature the different boats found over there. So many of them reflect the long nautical tradition of England and are either restored working craft of boats patterned after long-established designs.
This is a great place to spend a cold wintry afternoon or an evening when those three hundred channels on the telly have absolutely nothing worth watching. Dylan Winter’s videos certainly are worth the time.
It’s been too long since I’ve posted anything nautical here. I get caught up so easily in the music I love. It’s appropriate that I go back to Dylan Winter and his trip around England in a 19′ sailboat. Here he is taking off for another leg of his trip early on what looks to be a chilly morning. Getting underway is always one of the delightful parts of boating. Cutting loose from the land. Getting the boat back into its natural element and original purpose. The anticipation of the adventures to come, and those adventures don’t have to be high winds and heavy seas. Adventure can come simply and quietly exploring quiet secluded gunkholes and those moments are often the most memorable.
You might notice that as he’s departing the port he’s leaving the red markers to starboard. The Brits don’t use the “red right returning” rule of the U.S. but then again those buggers drive on the wrong side of the road, too.
One of the pieces of gear that I really loved on my Nancy Dawson was the gimbaled Sea Swing stove.
It was great for cooking while bouncing around underway. I always cooked things in my small pressure cooker without the weight. With the cover locked on even if dinner got flung across the cabin you weren’t cleaning up the food all over the bunks and cabin sole. I also used it at anchor and in port when I needed a third burner to supplement my usual stove top.
They go for about a hundred bucks a pop at West Marine.
I recently subscribed to a Yahoo Group called LowCostVoyaging and someone calling themselves Ken V came up with this home made version which is really clever. His post read, “I have a non-gimballed stove in my galley, and needed a stove that would work on passage. I put together a low cost gimballed stove out
of a propane camping stove and a galvanized steel pail. To make the stove, take apart the camp stove and find a way to fit it through a hole in the bottom of the pail, then hang the pail where it can swing. I had no spillage even close hauled into 6 ft breakers.”
There are few people as resourceful as cruisers on a budget.
This is the sixth posting of Dylan Winter’s single-handed trip around England in a 19′ sailboat but it’s his seventh episode. I thought the sixth was rather boring and there weren’t enough shots of other boats in it. Since one of the themes of this blog is boats and sailing I’ve decided that if there aren’t a lot of boats in Dylan’s scene I’m not going to post it. Hey! My blog, my decision. Anyway, if a YouTube post here sparks your interest I hope you’ll have enough initiative on your own to go to YouTube and check things out.
Well, it’s Friday and time for another Dylan Winters episode. I actually thought about skipping this jump of his as it’s not exceptionally interesting except for his observation at the end about a large apartment complex on the water, not unlike how developers have managed to screw up a great deal of the coast line of the eastern US and the Gulf Coast so I opted to include it here.
One More Good Adventure 