The Road to Goolwa

There’s been an awful lot of water under the bridge in the past four or five months, the least of them being the creation of a new grandson for yours truly, but back to business and the South Australian Wooden boat festival is a mere five weeks away, so we’ve been frantically finishing the boats and getting ready for a 5,000 k road trip to the first Australian PDRacer Nationals!

New paint, or to be really truthful, paint (we never did get beyond the primer coat) and new sails are underway. We’ve even started a new pair of masts to match the new Mk II PDRacer plans. With well over a hundred plansets in existence we are hopeful that we’ll see more launchings in the coming months!

The ONE MINUTE GUIDE

While progress on the PDRacer.info website has been uncomfortably slow, at least the navigation is pretty(!), and we have now completed our ONE MINUTE GUIDE, a construction photo-essay which will server to entertain until we can get more of the construction process documented in detail.

Plans for the Oz PDRacer have been in strong demand thanks to the articles in Duckworks Magazine and to the efforts of DuckFlat Wooden Boats both of whom coincidentally are great supporters of the Puddleduck movement.

The picture attached to this post isn’t in the ONE MINUTE GUIDE, but it will be part of our construction discussion, and shows Michael deftly taping a chine, protected by nought but a bit of barrier cream. I wish I knew how he can work all day with epoxy and not have as much as a dollop of sticky stuff on his person. I start off covered from head to toe in protective clothing, and seem to manage to get glue INSIDE it all.

PDRacer.info launched!

After six months of procrastination and let’s face it, a little bit of work there as well, we can finally say we are at a point where we can unleash the beta version of PDRacer.info on an unsuspecting world!

So here goes the spam! Is it spam if it’s written on my own blog and you come to visit me?

PDRacer info is for all interested in the Puddleduck Racer phenomena, with a special emphasis on the Oz PDRacer designed by Michael Storer,it is franky the simplest, cheapest most effective international class sailing yacht the world has seen to date!

No home should be without one.

We’ll use this blog to provide updates from time to time, but from Monday 4 September 2006 feel free to poke around in PDRacer world!

The Oz PDRacer

The Oz PDRacer is the first fully documented planset for the Puddleduck racer enabling a first time builder to produce a well performing sailboat without the need for experimentation.

Comprehensive plans and instructions will shortly be available from Storer Boat Plans and a number of other online suppliers, for around $15.00 (US) which makes them almost free! See more information at Michael’s webpages, or shortly at PDRacer.info