my new boat

The Wooden Boat Show is to be held at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut again this year. This is the 22nd running of this annual show, which has settled comfortably into this beautiful location as an apparent permanent venue. Mystic Seaport is a wonderful place for a family day filled with a mixture of boats and maritime history. If you have not been there before, this is your opportunity to experience boats of today as well as how they were built and operated hundreds of years ago. Mystic Seaport is a living museum of the sea, so much of the shoreside support infrastructure and industry that went along with boatbuilding, trading, fishing etc. is represented there for visitors to experience.

Our inside exhibit at the 2012 Wooden Boat Show

 We will be there again this year. We have exhibited out Paper Jet prototype (Sail #001) on this show every year since 2007. We have booth 4B in Tent A on the Village Green, where you can see a display of a selection of our designs and buy plans or a copy of my book "Shaped by Wind & Wave". We can also take your order for a pre-cut plywood kit for many of our plywood designs. The first time that we exhibited the Paper Jet it received the "Outstanding Innovation Award" on the Concourse D'elegance. Paper Jet will be on the lawn outside Tent A and will occasionally be out sailing.
?

Outstanding Innovation Award 2007

Come to Mystic Seaport to see a wide range of wooden boats, ranging from my modern little skiff to beautifully built modern classics or even to take a ride on an old steam-driven ferry. You won't be sorry that you took the time out to visit this place of yesteryear.

P.S. I hoped that we would have the prototype of the DS15  at the show as well but it will not happen this year. The builder is not yet ready to show his boat.

Visit our website at http://dixdesign.com/ .

The Shearwaters are boats of which I feel proud. They are very pretty, they are capable in all weather conditions and they are fast. The Shearwater 39 has an enviable reputation as one of the most seaworthy designs ever to come out of South Africa, a country that is known to have some of the most severe sailing waters in the world. These boats turn heads wherever they go, partly because they are so pretty and partly because they sail past many boats that look faster.

Shearwater 39 "Shoestring III" on launch day.

The Shearwater 45 grew naturally out of the reputation that was earned by the 39 and was developed out of the moulds of the 39. It has more length with no freeboard increase and with very little extra beam. The resulting boat is very sleek and gracious to look at and it gained a surprising boost of speed that allows it to outsail most boats of equal size and many that are up to 25% longer. In gaining that speed it has lost nothing of the seaworthy characteristics of the smaller sister. What it did gain is greater responsiveness and fingertip steering due to the change from a semi-balanced transom-hung rudder to a balanced spade rudder.

Shearwater 45 sailing on Chesapeake Bay.

We have good examples of both of these designs available on our brokerage pages. The most recent to come available is the gorgeous 45 "Maggy May". She is lying in the Caribbean and is fully equipped, maintained in top condition and ready to cruise to anywhere that you care to go. She is only being sold due to serious illness of the owner. To view "Maggy May" and the other Shearwaters that we have listed, go to http://dixdesign.com/brokerdd.htm.

Please visit our website at http://dixdesign.com/.

In late 1988 I was commissioned by Nebe Boats in Cape Town to design a 19ft trailer-sailer of very modern image and capable of handling the very robust sailing conditions common to the Cape of Good Hope. The result was the TLC 19, a speedy and capable little boat with fractional rig, fine bow, long waterline and scoop stern. It also had transom-hung rudder and swing keel or fixed wing keel options.

TLC 19 sailing on False Bay

The TLC 19 hull plug later became the hull for Anthony Steward's boat for his circumnavigation. Anthony's epic voyage was completed in 1993 and to this day nobody else has accomplished his feat of sailing an open boat around the world. The endurance required to sail that distance and for that length of time in a tiny boat without cabin, sailing through whatever conditions nature could throw at him, is incredible to even consider.

Anthony Steward arrives home after circumnavigating.

Another version of the TLC 19 is being built in Italy and can be home-built from strip-wood construction methods. It has been developed by Christian Pilo and uses our hull but a different deck, rig and interior. It is named the Idea 19 and has proven to be a speedy and capable little cruiser/racer. More information is also available on the website of Nautikit, our Italian agents.

Idea 19 sailing in Italy.

 To see more of our designs, please visit our main website at  http://dixdesign.com/ 
or our mobile website at http://m.dixdesign.com/ .