my new boat

Plywood kits for Canada

I have good news for our supporters in Canada who would like to build one of our plywood boats. We have appointed a supplier in Nova Scotia, who will be able to supply kits for our designs. They will be cut in Nova Scotia and shipped to to wherever needed. The new kit supplier is Big Pond Boat Shop, located in Mahone Bay. Owner Keith Nelder is South African, like me, but left there long before I did. He and his shop will be available to supply kits for any of our range of plywood kits.

The first kit on offer will be for the Paper Jet. This is a versatile training boat for juniors than can be progressively upgraded from a very simple and basic Lite version with free-standing una rig that is forgiving of errors, through a sloop version to a powerful high-performance Turbo version that can be very exciting and challenging to sail.

This is all done by exchanging rig components rather than replacing the boat, so is an economical route for upgrading. It has the added advantage that when there is too much wind for the big rig, it is quick and easy to depower down to a smaller rig to suit the conditions. That extends the use of the boat into a very wide range of conditions so that it spends more time on the water instead of lying on the shore waiting for the right breeze.

Rigs and layout of Paper Jet

All of the rigs shown above use the same mast up to the hounds and the same boom. Above the hounds two different topmast lengths allow changes in overall mast height to suit the mainsail that will be used, the topmasts sliding into a socket at the top of the lower mast. The una rig has the mast free-standing in the forward mast partners and the others have it stayed in the aft partners. I also intend to add a junior mainsail option, which will have a very short topmast and be more suited to smaller juniors.

For more info and photos go to http://dixdesign.com/paperjet.htm.
To see our full range of designs, go to http://dixdesign.com/ .