Tag Archives: PDRacer

February 28, 2015 · 11:32 am

Advantages of a Shanty Boat vs. Sail or Powerboat

I have a very dear friend in Florida who is always trying to convince me to give up the shanty boat idea. “Come up here,” he says, “and get a REAL boat. Then you can sail it back down to Panama if you want.”

Well, there are a lot of reasons I don’t want to do that. One, I don’t really want to go back to the States even to visit. People around here often ask me if I don’t miss my family and friends up north. Well, sure. But if I travel some place I want to go to somewhere I’ve never been before. I don’t need to go visit those people up there. I KNOW what it looks like where they live. They should come down HERE and take part in the adventure of a different country and culture.

But getting back to the theme of this post. One of the big disadvantages of powerboats and sailboats as live aboards is the DRAFT. My lovely Nancy Dawson which I lived on for nearly six years drew 4′ feet.

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That meant that I needed to be in AT LEAST four and a half feet of water and also take into account the tidal range. For instance, over here around Boca Chica where I’d like to be, the tidal range is as much as 19 feet! Take a gander of these sport fishing boats at Boca Chica…(By the way, there are MANY world record catches off the shores in this area).

 

Jolie Aire-Golfe Juan

The boat I ran over in France, after we changed the old, short-weighted wing keel which made the boat dangerously unstable for a spade-type keel drew over TEN FEET!!!

 

DSC08468-sport-fish-weight-station

Because of this great tidal range (it’s only about 3′ over in the Bocas del Toro area) if you’re in a sailboat with a keel or a power boat where the props and rudders hang below the level of the keel, you have to be anchored quite a way from the beach in order to stay afloat or pay an outrageous fee for a dock at a marina.

With a shanty boat you can choose from a couple of options. You could hang around, see where the low tide line is and anchor yourself just off it and walk ashore since your boat will only have a draft of a foot or so. Of course, six hours after you left it will be high tide and you’ll either have to wait for the tide to fall or swim out to your home. OR, if you’ve built your boat sturdy enough, you can go inshore as far as possible and “take the ground” as they say if you’ve found a nice protected spot where there isn’t much wave action to bounce you around as the tide drops.

In either case you’re going to want/need to have a dinghy. I wrote this several years ago…https://onemoregoodadventure.com/2009/04/29/the-boaters-car-of-pickup-truck/

My choice for a dinghy is the Puddle Duck Racer. I’ve written about it before on this blog. http://pdracer.com

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June 25, 2014 · 7:05 am

Too Much Fun?

I’ve written, before, about a neat, DIY boat called the Puddle Duck Racer.

http://www.pdracer.com/

A few years ago I priced it out at less than $200. I’ve also said that I doubt that there’s a group of sailors who have more fun than the Puddle Duckers.

A PDR is a “class” sailboat, just like an Optimist Pram, but those go for as much as a grand plus. A “class” sailboat means that they all meet certain criteria so that they can compete against one another without a handicapping system. The bottom rocker of all Puddle Ducks is exactly the same.

puddle-duck-racer

Other than that, anything goes…

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Thinking about building a shanty boat, I’m going to need to have a dinghy and I’m going to build a PDR, but it WON’T be anything like this one…

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September 12, 2011 · 8:02 am

PDR Ocean Explorer Weekender

You all know I have a soft spot for the PDR (Puddle Duck Racer). Eleven months ago I wrote a post about how a Finn, Perttu Korhonen, modified the standard 8’X4′ PDR into a cool, but tiny, weekender. http://houseboatshantyboatbuilders.wordpress.com/2010/10/ In today’s issue of Duckworks (if you haven’t bookmarked this great blog, do it now) there was this video of Perttu taking a cruise on Lake Konnevesi. The lake is located in the middle of the country and the whole area seems to be covered with lakes. http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=62.613562,26.559448&spn=0.721399,1.774292&z=9&vpsrc=6&output=embed
View Larger Map

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…

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November 10, 2010 · 2:52 pm

Puddle Duck Goose

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:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pdgoose&aq=f

Plans can be downloaded from Duckworks here: http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/storer/pgr/index.htm. A good story with lots of photos on the building of a Goose.


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October 22, 2010 · 9:48 am

Minimalist PDR Cruiser

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.

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February 12, 2010 · 10:55 am

A Good Time Had By All

I found this on the Duckworth site this morning in a post by Paul Cook of Las Cruces, NM.

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November 29, 2009 · 11:15 am

No Group Has More Fun

Anyone who reads my blogs knows I absolutely love the Puddle Duck Racers.  PDRacer.com After all, thier motto is “cheap, creative, and having fun on the water.”

What other sailboat class has a “land speed record” category? So far no one has submitted an entry to this record but I’m sure someone is working on it.

Here are the rules for the land speed record:

1 – Boat does NOT have to be setup in class legal configuration
2 – May use any vertical or horizontal fins, or wheels & attached apparatus such as frame, structures etc. Also the hull may end up only being a cockpit for the land sailor carridge, but that is OK for this challenge.
3 – Skipper must remain in the boat for the entire distance, however all crew may be changed without limitation.
4 – Boat must be propelled by mother nature or human, no motors. Towing with a bicycle is OK, coasting down hill is OK.
5 – For distance record, you may make laps, if you have a GPS that logs distance traveled, you may use that for calculating distance traveled (does not have to be point to point).
6 – For speed record, you can use peak GPS or submit other means that used to calculate speed.
7 – Water must go, or be under the hull at some point in the record attempt. This might be as simple as duct taping a bottle of water under the hull, going over a puddle, or having the final stretch run into the lake.
This record shall be reset at the end of each year.

Rules 4 and 7 are my favorites.

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October 30, 2009 · 11:08 am

2009 Puddleduck Racer World Championships

It’s hard to believe that any sanctioned group of sailors have more fun with their boats than a bunch of Puddleduck Racers.

The Puddleduckracer 2009 World Championships were held recently in Altoona, Georgia, with participants from 11 states and one foreign country entered.

One of the great parts of the fun is that everyone entered must bring a homemade trophy if they are going to participate. This is the championship trophy:

PDR Worlds 146-wr

David (Shorty) Rouse, the creater of the class captured 5th place and copped this trophy:

Shorty with 5th place trophy

Read a complete account of the Championships here:

http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/09/columns/jackie/03/index.htm

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October 15, 2009 · 12:58 am

Ultimate PDRacer?

Jason Nabors is a Texan and a big supporter or the whole PDRacer class of fun small sailboats. Not simply content to build the basic boat, Jason has added a lot to the class with sail furling systems and he has raced his Tenacious Turtle, a “cabin” version of the Puddle Duck in the Texas 200.

Who says you have to spend six figures to have fun with boats on the water?

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