Life hasn't been all beer and skittles in the last week. In between terrifically enjoyable bouts of sanding, priming, filling, sanding and painting, and while the PDRacers are out of action, Michael has been forcing himself out on Peter's now 12 year old but as beautiful as ever Goat Island Skiff, "Gruff".
The Goat Island Skiff is a perfect adjunct to any self respecting PDRacer's fleet! For more information click the "link" link, or visit Michael's home page at Storer Boat Plans
Our boats are in the final stages of getting their pretty bits done in time for the Goolwa wooden boat festival and PDRacer "Australian Nationals", thankfully Michael has arrived with paint brush in hand, and the poor little things are getting their gleaming yellow at last!
More news as it happens, but suffice to say a trailer rebuild is in order before we travel 2500 miles each way to play boats!
Michael has arrived at the home of the bitingmidge, and hopefully that means we'll have a few weeks of PDRacer fun and games. Maybe not to the same extent as last year, which resulted in all of this, but who knows?
In the meantime Peter Sutherland from Canberra has forwarded pictures of his lovely boat, even more credible as it is his first attempt at boat building. Peter is hoping to get to Goolwa as well, and I think as it's only a mere 1000 k's for him, he's got no excuses!
In the meantime we are making our own plans for the 5,000 k return journey, hampered a little by the absence of both a trailer and a suitable towing vehicle, but I'm sure something will sort itself out!
Hopefully we'll have our two boats resplendent in their duckling yellow livery on the start!
Howdy All,
Well, the good news is that I have written the rigging guide for the OZ PD Racer.
It wasn't really my intention - I have a big paying job that I'm working madly on but I was contacted by Iain Johnson who has finished the hull and just about all the other bits and needed a rigging guide for the fittings kit he received from Duck Flat.
He seems to be steaming along quite quickly and needed some sort of written guide to tell him where all the bits went and what is to be used where. The pictures right are the ones Iain sent me.
You can get a copy simply by emailing me at my email address but we will be putting it up on the www.pdracer.info website soon so people can download it directly also (I'll announce it here and tell you where to go).
I will be back up in OZ PDRacer territory in a couple of weeks and we will
be doing a big pictorial of rigging - the photos will make it even better - but I've drawn up diagrams of most parts of the rigging.
The other projects are to:
1/ paint the 2 Mk1 boats their final yellow
2/ build a couple of new masts to the Mk2 plan
3/ maybe build a couple of new sails out of the new cloth
4/ set some new PDRacer Records
5/ take lots of pics and film clips of sailing so show what the boats can do.
6 update the website with all that information.
Did I say I was just going up there for a couple of weeks!!!!!!!!!!
By the way, while we were developing the OZ PDRACERS last year we had a number of vigourous debates on the worldwide PDRacer forum
I ended up grabbing most of the interesting material from there and putting it in a FAQ devoted to our development of the Mk1 and Mk2 OZ PDRacer.
The OZ PDRacer FAQ is here storerboatplans PDR FAQ - if that is not too many acronyms for you!
It covers a lot of the thinking behind the boat - how we made it light and strong and the decisions that were made with most components. It also covers the initial sailing trials and some general PDRacer sailing advice as we started to understand the boat's performance
Howdy,
This won't be new information and pictures for those who have purchased the OZ PDRacer plans but might be useful to other visitors who are considering building a PD or other boat.
I have just updated my FAQ with some "How To" sections on different methods of using fiberglass.
Storerboatplans FAQ
These sections are taken directly from the OZ PDRacer plans and might give some idea of the detail the plans provide.
The FAQ covers the different methods for small areas and large areas and also a method for getting glass to lie flat over complex curved surfaces.
There are good photos for some of the sections to make the methods clear.
For experienced builders there will be little new here - but the snap lock bag method (though I can't take the credit) of mixing and spreading glue with little mess might be new to many.
The picture right is to counter those who say "you can't get a good finish on epoxy". I can get a better finish with paint or varnish certainly but the basic epoxy finish need not be too bad - and after a sand and final paint and/or varnish an epoxy boat can look like a real goldplater.
The FAQ also contains a lot of other information useful for general boatbuilding
Best wishes
MIK
