my new boat

In December we moved to a temporary address for home and office. The time has come to move to a permanent spot again. That will happen the last week of August when we move both home and office into a home that we are buying.

There are inevitably disruptions to life and business at such times, so we must expect a few days to maybe a week or two of disruption to our services. It is impossible to forecast how long this will be because it depends on various factors, including how long the cable company takes to set up the connections at the new home.

If you are planning to order plans from us in the next few weeks, please do so sooner rather than later. The sooner that you order, the smaller the chance of being caught in the delay and then waiting for us to catch up with the backlog.

To see our full range of designs go to http://dixdesign.com/. For our mobile site go to http://dixdesign.com/mobile.

The 2015 edition of the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, Washington, happens 11-13 September. Organised by the Northwest Maritime Center, it is their premier event of the year, attracting hundreds of wooden boats of all description, a wide array of exhibits and with 120 speaker sessions on boating subjects.

Some of the boats at the 2014 Festival, Didi Cruise-Mini in right foreground.

I will be taking part in three sessions, one on each day of the Festival.

Friday 11th - 2:45pm - Yacht Designers Panel Q&A - six designers to field your questions about boats and designing them. A session like this highlights the variety of opinions held by different designers on boating issues.

Saturday 12th - 2:30pm - Plywood Boatbuilding Methods - PowerPoint presentation showing information and details of the methods for which I design, illustrated with drawings and photos of my own projects and those of amateurs who have built these designs.

Sunday 13th - 1:15pm - Plywood Kits for Larger Boats - PowerPoint presentation about constructing kit boats that are larger than open dinghies and kayaks. This will cover boats from a 21ft lapstrake plywood trailer-sailer through to a 55ft radius chine plywood cruising catamaran.

Paper Jet "Water Rocket" at the 2014 Festival

The Didi Cruise-Mini "Segue" of David Blessing will be there among the on-the-water boats but I don't know yet what other of my boats will be there.

When not involved with other things, I am happy to meet with builders or anyone interested in my designs. If you can't find me then visit the Didi Cruise-Mini. Whoever is in attandance at the boat should know where I am and how to contact me.

If you are in the Pacific Northwest, or able to get there, this is an event worthwhile visiting.

To see our designs, visit our main website or our mobile website.

Jim Foot launched his Didi Sport 15 (DS15) a few months ago. After initial photos and reports Jim went quiet. I suspect that he busied himself with regular sailing to learn the characteristics of his new boat, to understand how she likes to be handled in a range of conditions.

Today Jim has sent another report, detailing his sailing this past weekend. He sailed on Algoa Bay, off Port Elizabeth, sailing in sportboat mode with the lead bulb on the keel. Starting with light breezes, it rapidly changed to 35-40 knots, as happens pretty regularly in this part of the world. Unperturbed by the gale force conditions, Jim and his crew Thomas Ochabski put in a reef, left the big asymmetrical stowed in its bag and carried on sailing. Jim says that there was a keelboat in attendance in case of mishap, which gave him the bravado to carry on sailing.

DS15 "Bateleur" about to get wet for the first time.

 Here are extracts from Jim's own words about his experience with "Bateleur" in these conditions.

Beat back to harbour (from about 2 nm offshore) and then had a blast reaching around for about an hour or more.   Great fun.   Naah, understatement, awesome, awesome fun!

For the first time really felt that things were a step up on the speed stakes.   When I was building the boat I imagined a mini Volvo 60 with associated responsiveness and upwind speed. And this is what I felt the boat was achieving.

He promises some GoPro video by the end of the week.

And what about light wind speed? More words from Jim.

The other thing, the boat is incredibly fast in very light winds with weight forward. Everyone who has sailed her in light conditions (<6 kts) has remarked about this characteristic.  Thanks Dudley for a great design.

To see more of this and our other designs, visit our main website or  mobile website

In November 1997 we launched our Didi 38 "Black Cat" after 2 years of building, only 2000 hours for an amateur-built ocean-crossing sailboat. That boat launched a whole series of designs and new developments in plywood boat construction.

That was 20 years ago. I had video of the occasion that was recorded off the TV with a VCR. It was bad quality and it was recorded on the PAL system used in South Africa. Attempts to convert to the NTSC format used in USA were pretty disastrous, resulting in unusable files.

Today I have received a good copy of the video, in a usable format. Watching the video now reminds me just how long ago this all happened. I didn't even have much grey hair then, now it is totally silver.
This video shows the shape of "Black Cat" very clearly. So many people came to me at that time and would not believe that this beautifully rounded shape was a plywood boat. Nobody had seen a rounded plywood hull before and they would only believe that it was not fibreglass after going inside to look at the structure.

Now my radius chine plywood designs are well-known and have been built in many countries. "Black Cat" is no longer unique but she remains the leader of an exciting time for plywood boatbuilding.

To see more of our boat designs, visit http://dixdesign.com/ or http://dixdesign.com/mobile

This time last week we were in Connecticut,  participating in the 24th annual Wooden Boat Show at Mystic Seaport. We drove there with two boats in tow, the Paper Jet prototype that we have exhibited the past few years, and the prototype of our new Inlet Runner 16 garvey powerboat design. Sorry, no hyperlink for that one yet, I am still working on the design package.

Paper Jet and Inlet Runner 16 nested for long-distance travels.

The Inlet Runner was built by Kevin Agee and exhibited by him in the "I Built it Myself" section of the show. As a first-time amateur boatbuilder with little woodworking experience, he made such a great job of his project that he took 2nd place in the amateur-built powerboat division, winning the Honourable Mention Award. Congratulations to Kevin for a job well done. I helped out at the end of the project with a bit of sanding but Kevin did everything else himself.

Inlet Runner in the "I Built it Myself" section of the Wooden Boat Show.

The Inlet Runner has my interpretation of a classic garvey hull.

 The Inlet Runner received a lot of interest and we have a few builders waiting for completion of the plans. Also a few requests for both bigger and smaller versions of the same concept. Watch for those on this blog in the next year or two but they must wait in line behind other projects that are currently in progress.

This boat has side seats aft and foredeck with lockers under for stowage, icebox, bait well etc. It also has a self-draining wet deck that can be left clear for fishing space or fitted with a swivel seat for flat-water fishing. We will also offer a Jonboat format with transverse seats and a centre console format on the wet deck.

Deck layout of Inlet Runner, set up for flat water fishing.

Overall, a successful show for us. Thank you Wooden Boat Publications, for organising this show for the benefit of lovers of wooden boats of all types. I look forward to being there again in 2016.

To see our full range of designs, please visit http://dixdesign.com or, for the mobile viewers, http://dixdesign.com/mobile

I designed the Paper Jet to be an exciting junior trainer, capable of taking a young sailor through multiple skill-levels, from a basic free-standing una-rigged dinghy through to a high-performance trapeze skiff with asymmetric spinnaker. This it does without having to spend bundles of money to trade up to another boat, by doing it all on the same hull and adding or swapping rig and hardware components. She is extremely light, with the hull weighing only 94lb, easily manhandled by small crew.

Paper Jet in una-rig Lite format.

It has proven capable of doing all that I intended, although I have used my prototype #001 as a single-hander for myself. I have cruised it in sedate fashion in light breezes, when it reels off the miles. I have also blasted on trapeze at well over 20 knots just clipping the tops of the waves. And between those two extremes she has given me many hours of fun and exhilarating sailing.

Paper Jet in Turbo format, with asymmetrical spinnaker on the foredeck.

But, I have had knee problems since a teenager, from surfing too many hours in icy cold water without a wetsuit. Now, 50 years later, it has caught up with me. My knees won't let me get out on trapeze any more and my left knee dislocated at least 6 times while sailing this past weekend. In the middle of a tack is no time to be manipulating a dislocated knee back to its intended format.

So, the Paper Jet prototype, sail #001, is for sale. She comes with all components for all three rig formats as well as upgrades that I made to the design over the 8 years that I have sailed her. Included are:-

Standard mainsail
Turbo full-batten fathead mainsail
Jib on roller-furler
Asymmetrical spinnaker with sock
Mast with short and long topmasts
Boom
Retracting bowsprit
Daggerboards - three different lengths
Rudders - old and new versions
All deck hardware
All standing & running rigging
Launching dolly

Selling price is $8,000, which is not a lot more than the material cost to build her with all of the sails and bits that she has. She is in good shape, with totally watertight hull, just needing some minor paint and varnish touch-ups. We will have her at the Wooden Boat Show in Mystic CT this coming weekend, from Friday through Sunday. After that she will be back at our base in Virginia Beach VA.

If interested, please contact me.

Summer heat is setting in and minds are turning to activities that can keep us cool. Time for us to get out on the water and go boating.

Time also for the Wooden Boat Show, which takes us north on a 500 mile road trip from the rapidly over-heating Virginia to the somewhat cooler climes of New England, more particularly the very beautiful Mystic Seaport. I must admit that in June/July I think that part of Connecticut must be a great place to live. Then I think about how much I dislike the (much milder) cold of a Virginia winter and know that I was built for much more tropical places.

The Wooden Boat Show  will be 26-28 June and we will once again be exhibiting our bright yellow Paper Jet prototype. Close by, in the "I Built It Myself" section, will be the prototype of our new 16ft garvey design. This is "Inlet Runner", exhibited by amateur builder Kevin Agee of Hampton, Virginia. He is working long hours into the night to get it finished in time for the show. It will be showing off its very fresh paint job. Never having built a boat of any size or type before, he has surprised himself with the high standard of work that he has achieved.

Kevin Agee's "Inlet Runner" 16ft garvey nearing completion.

We are also using this opportunity to do the official launch of my new book "South Atlantic Capsize - Lessons Taught by a Big Ocean Wave". We will have copies on hand at a special show price and you may be able to pin me down long enough to sign your copy. Special show price only to those who visit us at the show.

To see more about our boat designs, please visit our main website or our new mobile website.

Last night we went live with a new section of our website, optimised for mobile devices. You can access it via a link to it on our desktop home page or via the direct address http://dixdesign.com/mobile.

Screenshot of mobile website

This new site is fast and compact, to load pages and information as quickly as possible on mobile systems. It has most of the functionality of our desktop site, from researching designs through to placing an order through our secure order system.

It also gives fast access to our blogs, videos on Youtube, image albums on Flickr and to our social media pages on Facebook and Google Plus.

The boat design links for more information currently go to the design pages on our desktop site, which are best viewed in landscape mode if on a smartphone. Over coming weeks I will build compact pages for all of our designs, for better viewing of core info on mobile devices and linking to the desktop site for more detailed info.

Please visit http://dixdesign.com/mobile and cruise the new site. If you want to offer feedback on it, feel free to email your comments to me via the email links on one of our contact pages. Thanks for visiting.

Most of you will have read here or elsewhere about our adventure in the 2014 Cape to Rio Race on the Didi 38 "Black Cat". I have published a book about it, which can now be ordered from our website. For those who don't know what happened, here is a synopsis of the book, which is titled "South Atlantic Capsize - Lessons Taught by a Big Ocean Wave".

At dusk on 5th January 2014, the Didi 38 "Black Cat" was struck by a massive wave on the second day of the 2014 Cape to Rio Race across the South Atlantic Ocean. The wave capsized her in an instant, flinging crew, equipment and food around the interior and destroying most of the electronics with water that entered through the companion hatch. "Black Cat" recovered very quickly but the electrical damage was done. This is the story about the race, the boat, the crew and what happened on that day.

Front cover of the new book

It also explains the principles of stability that control the safety of monohull sailboats, mostly those characteristics that affect the behaviour of boats in large beam seas that might capsize them and the features needed to quickly return them to upright. It does this in words and terms that can be easily understood by non-technical people.

Back cover.

You will also read the story of the capsize of the 64ft "Sayula II" in the Southern Ocean when sailing between Cape Town and Sydney in the 1973 Whitbread Round the World Race, written by yacht designer Butch Dalrymple-Smith, who was one of the crew. Also what one boat owner has added to his own boat to prepare it and himself in case they are caught by conditions that place them at risk of capsize.

I managed to coerce two of the crew to also put pen to paper, to each write a short piece about his experience. I felt this to be important because we all observe events from our particular points of observation and positions in life. My view from the inverted cabin roof of Sean Collins hanging on for his life in the cockpit and of Adrian Pearson flying like a rag doll around the cabin is very different from that of Sean looking down the steep slope of a monster wave and seeing the masthead spearing into the ocean below, knowing that the boat will follow deck-first.  I would have liked to have had stories from the other two crew as well but they did not feel capable of effectively putting their stories into words.

You can buy the book at http://dixdesign.com/articles.htm. We can ship to you wherever you are, at our normal shipping rates.

To view our range of boat designs, please visit http://dixdesign.com/

Every now and then a boat catches my attention and I think "Hmm, I wouldn't mind owning that boat myself". Such a thought crossed my mind when I saw photos of "Day Dream". She is a Didi 40cr, essentially the same as the Didi 38 "Black Cat" that I built and sailed for so many thousands of miles, but with extended stern and a bit more accommodation space.

Fast as "Black Cat" is, "Day Dream" has the potential to be still faster. She has the same very slippery hull but her extended stern increases her speed potential. She has the same powerful but easily-handled rig, with a bit less draft, for better access to shallower cruising grounds.

"Day Dream" in the slings, showing off her clean lines

She was professionally-built in Antalya, Turkey, with CE certification. She has a radius chine plywood hull with fibreglass deck. She was a custom build, so the builder has made a few styling changes from my design but overall the boat looks really nice. I see European influences and features that are fine for local cruising in the Med. With my own preference for ocean voyages, I would modify the navigation and galley areas to better suit my own needs.

Nicely fitted out, with clean and comfortable saloon

Clean galley, styled for local cruising.

The asking price for "Day Dream" is not much more than the material cost of building such a boat, at US$60,000. If I had the cash available, I would be sorely tempted. If she rattles your cage enough to want to investigate further, contact me by email. I will put you in contact with the owner for more information.

Not the greatest sailing photo but the best that I have.

To view this and our other designs, visit http://dixdesign.com/.

I wrote in January about the 16ft plywood garvey being built by Kevin Agee. Kevin is progressing nicely and benefitting from the very welcome spring that has finally arrived and eased out the rather brutal winter. Now it is easier to do woodwork and epoxy cures much faster, so work progresses more quickly. Epoxy coatings in the sealed spaces are being completed and this weekend the deck will be glued on.

Hull skin completed, interior details being fitted.

Supports for battery box and fuel tank.

Deck stringers going in, test fitting of fuel tank.

Bottom runners serve as stringers and bottom protection.

Dry-fitting deck, ahead of final installation this weekend.

Kevin Agee is doing a nice job of his project and will display it in the "I Built It Myself" section of the Wooden Boat Show at Mystic Seaport at the end of June. If you want to see this boat, that will be the place to do it.

Plans are not yet ready for selling but should be in a month or two. We will offer it as plans and instructions, with options of full-size patterns or a pre-cut plywood kit.

To see our designs for your next amateur project, please visit our website at http://dixdesign.com .

Following on my previous post about a big catamaran, here is the other extreme. This catamaran is only 9ft long and primarily intended for use by children. But read to the end to see an alternative use.

I designed the Oppikat for Nebe Boats a long time ago. They were to build it as a fibreglass production boat but didn't even start to build the moulds before closing their doors. More recently I converted the plans to a combination of plywood and strip cedar construction, to make the design more suitable for amateur builders. We have sold plans for this design to builders in 18 countries but don't know how many are sailing.

A new Oppikat is about to be launched, built by Greg Mitchell in California. She may be launched this weekend.

The newest Oppikat, ready for launch by Greg Mitchell.

Greg built it for his children from a plywood bulkhead kit but built the rest of it from the plans.

Strip planking completed, over plywood bulkheads, ready for plywood side panels.

Greg's daughter had input into the colour scheme for the new boat, choosing the colour of the cross-beams. Greg modified the tone of the blue for the hulls to a colour that would not clash. The result is very eye-catching and definitely has a female touch to it.

Hulls completed and other components assembled, ready for the rig.

This little boat is small enough to be car-topped or lashed to the trampoline of a bigger cat when towed behind the family car.

Oppikat built by Frank Nagel in Germany for his children, sailed here by his son.

Although intended for children, Frank Nagel in Germany told me that it has enough buoyancy to sail with him and two children aboard as well.

The Oppikat can be different things to different users. It fits comfortably onto the foredeck or into the davits of cruising catamarans, to serve as a tender and as a toy for both children and adults when anchored. A pair of them on a charter catamaran will add lots of scope for fun activities.

The red image is an Oppikat on the trampoline of a DH550 cruising catamaran.

For more info on this little boat go to http://dixdesign.com/oppikat.htm and to http://dixdesign.com/ for our full range of boat designs.

Assembly of the prototype Dix 470 plywood kit by Exocetus Yachts in UK is progressing nicely. This is the second hull, with improvements added into the kit since assembly of the first hull. These photos were sent to me by Exocetus.

Exocetus is able to use more advanced methods than would be used by amateur builders but the kit is set up to allow those with more basic facilities to produce comparable quality. Being the developers of the kit, they have cut all of the components themselves on their own CNC equipment. They also have a large press that they use to join multiple sheets of plywood into long panels or other large components, like bulkheads, cabin soles etc.

Sheets being joined into long hull panels by means of a press.

This long outboard hull panel was pre-assembled into one large piece before installation.

Inboard hull side fitted, with horns for major bulkheads projecting into the bridgedeck area.

Bottom panels were fitted installed.

The side panels were glued into longer lengths for convenient assembly with the equipment available to Exocetus. For my own projects and more primitive methods, I prefer to assemble skin panels in single-sheet lengths. This leaves considerably more scope for adjustment during installation to remedy any possible errors that arise due to builder error. The bottom panels were installed in single-sheet lengths, to allow accurate fitment at the centreline joint.

In the last photo above, the jigsaw joint was aligned using a strip of plywood, wrapped in plastic tape, as a temporary butt-strap. A short screw into each lobe of the jigsaw pattern ensured accurate assembly and held the joint securely until the epoxy had set.

For more info on this and our other designs, visit http://dixdesign.com/ . For more info on the kit and options, go to http://exocetus.net/ .

I designed the Sentinel Explorer for Sentinel Boats in 1991. My client was the importer of the Drascombe range of boats built by Honnor Marine but had not been able to sell any of those boats due to the high cost of importing them into South Africa. The brief was to draw my design to a broadly similar concept to the Drascombe Lugger but with sloop gunter rig instead of the yawl gunter rig of the Lugger.

My design was for a much fuller boat, with more volume on less overall length and very different hull section shape, resulting in a boat with more stability and considerably more speed. The UK builders of the Lugger took exception to the design and tried to shut down production, claiming that the moulds for our boat had been made from an existing Lugger hull, which was patently nonsense and no more than bullying the little guy in the playground. It lasted for several years but eventually went away, leaving a very bad taste for the low standard of business ethics displayed by Honnor Marine.

Ironically, Honnor Marine went broke and the company was bought by Bob and Norma Brown. The new iteration of Honnor Marine is now builder of my Cape Cutter 19 design in UK.

Production of the Explorer has been very low key, with small numbers built over the years. I heard a few years ago that there was a fleet of Explorers gathering on Langebaan Lagoon, on the West Coast of South Africa, with owners enthusiastic over their boats. Today I have received photos of this group racing as a one-design fleet in the Sandy Bay Yacht Club Easter Regatta. I have to admit that this is the first time that I have seen more than two Explorers sailing together. The time that I did see two together, I was racing one of them in the Hout Bay Dinghy Regatta, with my late friend Bryan Ferreira as crew.

Explorer start line action. "Dawdle", on the left, won the Easter Regatta.

Explorers dicing to windward in the Easter Regatta.

Explorer #59 being chased by Challenger #20.

It is good to see a smaller sister, the Sentinel Challenger, racing in the same fleet. The Explorer is only built in GRP from moulds but the Challenger can be built from plywood to our plans.

To see more about these and our other designs, please visit http://dixdesign.com/.

The long-awaited day arrived this weekend. Jim Foot, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, launched his self-built DS15 at Algoa Bay Yacht Club. He started with a pre-cut plywood kit supplied by CKD Boats in Cape Town and took approximately 6 months of his spare time from start to launch.

DS15 "Bateleur" about to get wet for the first time.

 Despite the very light wind, they had good sailing and were impressed by performance. Jim's first comments are:-

She sails beautifully and she is fast. Beating into a chop in light wind this am going at about 3,7 kts felt happy. Then was told wind spd 4 kts by passing boat quite amazing.

I have written here before about the versatility of the Argie 15. This week I watched a video posted on YouTube by �zden Ogul, of two couples sailing an amateur-built Argie 15 in Turkey. Normally a 15ft dinghy with four adults aboard is full to the brim with people. This video really brings home the size and comfort of this dinghy as a family fun boat. The winds are light, yet even with this load it is moving along very nicely, with plenty of freeboard to take more.

The crew are spread out in the boat, with one even right up in the bow where you don't normally have someone sit on a boat of this size. It accepts this and carries on sailing. This video highlights how much space there is in this boat.

The Argie 15 is a great camp-cruiser, with a good turn of speed. That also makes it a nice raid boat, capable of taking rough water and covering extended distances.

For more info on this and out other designs, please visit http://dixdesign.com/.

Nick Kulenkampff, of Cape Town, bought plans from us in November 2013 for the Cape Cutter 19, to be built in lapstrake plywood. I only received one question from him and that was on choice of plywood for the build. A few days ago I received another email from him, with launch photos attached. He launched his boat, named "Mimi", at Royal Cape Yacht Club, in February.

In his email, Nick said "thank you for a beautiful design and also for a set of plans that were spot on. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process." From the photos it appears that he made a pretty good job of the build, which was also quicker than most at about 15 months.

This boat is available in GRP from Cape Cutter Yachts in UK. It is the smaller sister to our popular Cape Henry 21 design.

Here are some of Nick's build photos, with explanations

Making bulkheads. These are cut from full-size Mylar patterns, included in the plans.

Transom, laminated from multiple layers of plywood.

Bulkheads and transom set up on building stocks.

Bottom skin going on. Plenty of clamps needed.

Bilge panel gong on. Keel deadwood and wood bilge keels fitted. This bilge keel is to protect the hull when aground, serving purely as a support to keep the hull skin clear of pebbles.

Forward bottom panel. Fitting this panel is the most difficult part of the build, due to the amount of twist in the panel. The twist is what forms the fine bow for good performance.

Hull epoxy-coated, primed and ready for paint.

Building the cockpit. Nick's work is very neat.

Interior, looking forward, built  before fitting the deck.

Interior, looking aft. Painting in progress.

Deck stringers glued into pre-cut slots

Painted and brightwork being done. Almost ready to get wet.

This view shows why these little boats are so quick. That fine bow works vvery well.

Launch day. The yellow boat below the bow is "Black Cat", the Didi 38 that I built.

Afloat and waiting for her rig to be set up.

Thank you, Nick, for the set of photos. She looks good and I am sure you will have many good times sailing her.

To see more of this and out other designs, visit http://dixdesign.com/.