Hull Assembly Photographs Uploaded!

I went sailing today, firstly in my Goat Island Skiff, which was absolutely magical in the relatively light conditions, but then of course in the PDRacer which is sitting on the river bank tonight waiting for another swim in the morning. I never cease to amaze myself at how much I like this little boat. It's just sooo responsive and easy to sail that in the confined space of our river I don't think there's another more appropriate vessel on the planet.

Sure the Skiff is bigger, faster, more comfortable, carries more people and is fantastic in every way, but by golly the PDRacer exudes "cool" in the same way a Fiat500 would look cool parked next to a Mazerati, and in terms of manouvreability, there are certain parallels as well, the skiff is sure footed and precise, the PDR is just...well...nimble!

Finally we can report some progress on the content front! Not as much as we'd like, but progress just the same!
We have now three extra pages under the "building" menu, although not currently visible on this page (please go to the "building" page and follow the menu from there.

Presently we have thumbnail photographs of the entire hull building process, and while they are quite clear, they are currently not available in larger size. We expect that most of the text will be completed over the next few days, and by about Wednesday next, all text and large photo pages will be available, adding roughly 60 more pages to this site (phew!)

We hope you enjoy your visit, and come back often, as we have LOTS more information to bring online over the coming weeks and months!

It takes a BIG MAN to sail a little boat

Just when we thought we've got to every bug in our web page template, Blogger announce they are moving to Blogger Beta, and our blog template will need a revamp!
Oh well, to celebrate fixing what we think was the last bug in the rest of our web template, we've released what we think is our best PDRacer range!
Our "BIG MAN" message is for people of all sizes (even girls) and sends exactly the right message when your superyacht owning neighbour pops around for drink.
You'll never be asked to justify your choice in watercraft again!

Can you fish from that thing?

Can you ever!
Yes folks, not only did the Routh family smash the world record for the largest fish ever caught from a Puddleduck Racer, they did it while living in the desert!
Now of course we are biased, but we are certain that a contributing factor to this supreme angling feat was the fact that Routh family (and PDRacer) patriach, Shorty was wearing one of our PDRacerWear 25 Questions Tees!
I think it's fair to say that the answer to question 10 on the shirt "Can you fish from it?" has now been well and truly and unquestionably anwered with a Resounding YES!
The picture above is just the tiddler that Dad caught, click the link button below to check out the real records that are held by Darby and Morgan, and the full delightful story.
Congratulations to all!

Linking to this site

While it doesn't particularly look like much has happened over the last week, we've actually been doing a bit of housekeeping which will result in a site-search facility happening in the next build, something that was one of those "get it done before we get too much stuff up" jobs, and more importantly due entirely to our (my) amateur status as a web master, I'm still changing some of the directories to make future growth of the site more logical.
All of that means, if you are presently linking to our site, please adjust your link to ~http://www.PDRacer.info~ rather than the page address visible at the top of the page. If you do that, you'll always find us!

Site under constant review!

We apologise for the occasional missing graphic, it's a temporary situation, brought about from time to time by a number of tiny tweaks across the site and we fix them as soon as we find them. Please let us know if there are one or two we haven't fixed.

Hopefully it will all be fine now for another week, and we can work on getting more information online!

Building the PDRacer - Another ONE MINUTE GUIDE!

It seems I don't get time to let the ink dry on my computer screen before I get requests to change stuff. So due to popular demand (and in no way to my dodgy java rollovers) I've rehashed the ONE MINUTE GUIDE so all but the most primitive machinery should be able to view it simply.

In the fullness of time, I'll get all the real bumph behind it as well and the clicky links will mean something, but so far I'm halfway through the week, and all I've done is checked spelling (at last!) reformatted everything behind the scenes, redone the menus and the entry page and of course the one minute guide.

For those waiting for instructions on how to actually build... well just keep coming back!

The pic above is probably a bit meaningless to anyone who hasn't snuck back into the garage halfway through the night to check that the work they did during the day is still there, but if you have, you'll understand!

Building the PDRacer - a ONE MINUTE GUIDE

If you are the kind of person who just wants to get in and get out, to cut straight to the chase, have we got a deal for you! Now you can follow your own virtual PDRacer build on our site in one minute (faster if you have a super broadband connection!)

Just follow the links in the building section, (or click the "link" tab below if you really only want to go there, and enjoy yourself!

Apart from the "quicky" we've also completed the "Kits and Bits" pages where we have outlined the services that Duckworks boat Builders Supplies and DuckFlat Wooden Boats can provide to the PDRacer community, and also our first detailed construction page "Marking Out".

If you are one of the people who have purchased plans this week, welcome aboard and please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have. On the other hand, don't forget to send us progress shots, our gallery pages are very very bare at the moment!

Another promise not kept!

We have our state elections happening today, which is probably why I am feeling a bit like a politician! There is an offical political party in the far north who are registered as the fisherman's party, because they think that as fisherman they have the prerequisite skills to be a politician: they are all consumate liars!

Now I wasn't lying when I said I intended to start uploading bits every day or so, but I certainly misjudged the amount of work to get things online! Instead of getting the new stuff online in a half-working state, I've been concentrating on ironing out the glitches, so for the many of you who have been dropping by (thanks greatly to the crew at Duckworks Magazine and their front-page article), your patience should be rewarded this weekend, with a few more additions.

Thus far we have finished Michael's design overview page, and have a whole compendium of construction bits almost ready to go (but probably a few days away).

I'm thinking that a largish weekly update may be a more realistic goal for me in future, rather than several small mid-week ones, so let's try that after next week!

NEWS - Oz PDRacer Boat Plan - cheap, creative having fun on the water.

It's been a series of looooong days and loooooonger nights for me doing the final run to finishing the plans.

I know it has been the same for Peter as far as finishing the website.

But All is running quite nicely - and more content pages will be added over the next few weeks.

In the end we decided to add the sailmaking section to the plans - but the rigging detail - including Peter's ultra low budget homemade fittings will be on the website.

One good thing now the plans are finished - SOME SLEEP.

4.30am bedtimes just don't agree with me.

The iPod Perspective

Today while driving to work I saw a bunch of kids walking and listening to their iPods.

It occurred to me, that the PDRacer planset actually costs about the same as a complete album download, and that was fine until I discovered that I built TWO PDRacers for less than the cost of ONE super dooper top of the line iPod!

It's not beyond the reach of a reasonably handy person to finish a boat at the cost of an iPod Nano, but of course if you buy first quality materials that might stretch to the Nano plus a powered dock with speakers.

So how many kids do you know with an iPod?

They could all afford their own international class sailing yacht, AND if they built one of those instead, they'd lessen their chance of going deaf at an early age too!

Thank-you for your patience

A big thank-you to all who have found us in the few days that we've been "live", we trust that you will have seen enough to make you want to come back! Presently we think we have all the bugs out of the site, and will concentrate on getting more information uploaded within the next week.

Stay tuned for our Free Sail Plans and a complete tutorial on constructing your own dinghy sails from Polytarp. This will be available as an example of the quality of information contained in Michael's $20 planset, which has gone to more than 100 pages by my current count.

Also almost ready for upload are our pages on material selection and tools, including a sharpening how-to for raw beginners as well as some sharpening tips for more experienced builders.

Once we have those pages together we'll work solidly on the buiding construction and boat building hints and tips, until then please amuse yourselves by reading our "live" construction diary which we published on the Australian Woodwork forums. Just click on the link below (after you've visited the rest of our site of course!

As we have previously promised, we'll announce all new content on this blog, so if you don't know how to use the "RSS" link in the address bar above, now would be a really good time to learn!

PDRacer.info is ALIVE!

After what seems like forever, PDRacer.info is up, and while not quite "running" yet, is certainly there at a slow crawl! We've got about 15% of the final content up thus far, and since this is after all a hobby, I think it is safe to say that it won't all happen in a big rush.

It will happen though, and happen regularly. I presently expect to upload new content at least every two days, so check back often, and with each issue, we'll post a synopsis here.