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 Posted on October 29th,2011I came across this piece in the Stamford Advocate on the Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory’s Boat,Build and Sail program. An excerpt:
 Posted on October 2nd,2011I wanted to get these pictures of the 2011 Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival up right away;I’ll be adding captions soon. [UPDATE] Captions are now on there. I encourage you to browse through. There were some AMAZING AMAZING boats there. I’d highlight the sailing canoe SEVEN STARS,the Melonseeds,the sailing canoe in pictures 4 and 31,and,of course,the Coquina. Posted on October 1st,2011
For those scoring at home,your 2011 Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival sailing race winner was a Sunfish. A non-traditional,plastic boat –kinda violates my sensibilities. But well done. I am eager to get going with the paddling race as it is COLD here in St. Michael’s,MD. [UPDATE] It was me and four kayaks. I got shallaced…again. Time to get my double paddle working with this boat (tried once and I could get my position right). At least the race committee noted I was the only single paddle and called me my own class. So they gave me recognition. Posted on October 1st,2011
Posted on October 1st,2011
It’s a chilly,breezy day here,but a kayak with amas and a bat-wing sail is out on the water and a few other folks and getting their boats ready. Getting ready to do a serious tour. Posted on September 30th,2011For the next 24-odd hours Chine bLog is reporting LIVE from the 2011 Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michael’s,MD. As I type on my smart phone,a lovely folk trio is playing in the background while folks eat and mingle. A whole fleet of amazing boats is already here,and I’ll be sharing some in the AM. The biggest news,from our perspective,is that the skin-on-frame outrigger canoe AL DEMANY CHIMAN finally got under sail today. That was the afternoon’s goal and we got it done. As you may recall,“DEMANY”means “sail”,so she has fully taken her name. Results? Well,winds were light,but we completed several tacks and had no catastrophic issues. That said,we have some work to do. The leeboard is not behaving well at all and was minimally useful. Design flaw there. The configuration of steering vs. sheet will also take some getting used to. All told,though,we’ll call it a success. Stay tuned… [UPDATE] The sailing rig did not fair so well during the blustery next day. While still on land showing off her rig,the yard snapped (building flaw) and the mast partner lashing failed (design flaw). Neither was catastrophic,but we’ll need to deal with these issues before we get back on the water under sail. A guy who was next to the rig when it broke looked at me like my brother just died and said a sincere “I’m sorry.”It was a bummer,yes,but I regard the whole boat as an experiment and a learning experience,particularly the sailing rig. I will learn from this and fix the issues and we will be back. This boat CAN sail –we proved that. Posted on February 25th,2011As a father of a child afflicted with autism and as a avid supporter of boatbuilding and boat adventures I was in love with news in Chesapeake Light Craft’s e-newsletter today of a great new voyage. Neil Calore is a Philadelphia firefighter who built a CLC Northeaster Dory as part of a CLC class last year. He is planning to row and sail it from here in Washington,DC to New York City,a distance of 425 miles. His effort will be a fundraiser for Autism Speaks,a leading autism research and advocacy organization. I don’t know Neil,but I love everything about this project and I hope you will join me in supporting this voyage. Update:Neil has a blog on the voyage we need to follow. Posted on January 13th,2011I confess to an act of embezzlement against my employer,Forum One Communications. In passing through the kitchen a saw a stack of holiday cards and one caught my eye,for obvious reasons,so I pilfered it for my office wall:
The card came from a client of ours,the MacArthur Foundation (of “genius grants”fame) and showcased a pretty interesting grantee of theirs,Blue Ventures,which does ecotourism / voluntourism expeditions to a number of places,including Southwest Madagascar. That area is,apparently,the home port for this boat. A couple things grab me about the boat:
Thoughts,folks? Posted on December 6th,2010A quick note with two well-deserved congratulations to two friends of Chine bLog. The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is sporting a great new design for its main web site. I’d encourage folks to drop by and check it out. It is more attractive than its predecessor,better showcases the museum’s assets and activities (dawdle on the homepage long enough to see the sweet log canoe shot in the feature area),and is easier to navigate. I assume in conjunction with this,the museum launched a new blog (or version of a prior one):Chesapeake Bay Boats. If you have an interest in high-end restoration,this is a place to go (here’s some nice photos of hatch work on a bugeye). On the other side of the Bay,a hearty shout-out is due to John Harris and our friends at Chesapeake Light Craft. Per their Facebook feed,they shipped their 20,000th kit last month. That’s an awesome number of lovely,home-built,traditional wooden boats out there. Here’s to many more! Posted on November 12th,2010Our local wooden boat education and youth development program,the Alexandria Seaport Foundation,is launching an effort to build two Potomac River Dory Boats. The boats will be built by the apprentices and the community and used for a broad array of educational initiatives. Here is a nice introduction (in a somewhat large Flash file). | ||
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