I want to build this boat !

[cturner]

Hi folks:

Great forum by the way.. I found this boat (double click on URL below) on this site and fell in love with it immediately. I have decided "come hell or high water" that i am going to build to build her this fall. DOes anyone know who built her. I got the pic from this site. For some reason I think the guy was Australian. Any help is appreciated.... (Nice boat idina!; Newfie dialect!)
[img] http://albums.photopoint.com/j/ViewP...p=53075969&f=0 [/img]

[Art Read]

Ah, yes. Unless memory fails me, she was built by our buddy, Mike Field.

mikefield@woodenboatfittings.com

You have good taste!

[landlocked sailor]

Yep, that's Mike's boat alright. If you like it you should check Rich Kolin's book, "Building Catherine", just released from WB. Rick

[Mike Field]

Yes, that's Aileen Louisa, pulled up in the mud outside my back gate.

I'm very proud of her, and she certainly is beautiful, isn't she? I can only say that, though, because I didn't build her myself, much as I would like to have done. She was built by Tom Whitfield in 1986 to his own design, based on a traditional English pulling boat. Tom is a professional boatwright, originally from Devon in the UK, who now lives in Melbourne.

You can see a few more photos of Aileen Louisa, plus some other stuff, by going to my PhotoPoint site at http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumList?u=1231924 and following the yellow brick road.

Boats like this often weren't built from formal plans, they just took shape as the builder progressed. I think Tom considers himself a builder rather than a designer, but he has taken the trouble to draw up plans of several of his designs -- including Aileen Louisa. About 30 non-sailing versions of this boat were built as a fleet for a rowing-boat hire company on the Yarra River here in Melbourne. (The smallest of Tom's designs is a six-and-a-half-foot praam, and the largest a 36' gaff cutter, the latter being built for our leading boys private school, where Tom was Boat Manager for several years until his retirement. Tom now spends time providing occasional tuition for the Shipwrights Point School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Tasmania.)

Anyone who might be interested in buying Tom's plans for his own use is welcome to channel email enquiries through me. He and I have just started working to produce a catalogue of all the designs he has available, and I'll be posting more information about this in due course.

I'm afraid I know nothing about Catherine in the book Rick mentions, but clearly that's a link worth following up, too.

You should certainly check out Iain Oughtred's designs, as well. Iain's an ex-Aussie, now living in Scotland, who designs wonderful traditional-looking boats for glued construction. Here's a photo of his 8' Auk design -- this particular one is Rick Lapp's Surprise, (which he did build himself.)



I pinched this photo from My Wooden Boat, at http://media18.hypernet.com/mywb/scr...=next&page=11, which also shows another Oughtred design, Norm Messinger's pocket cruiser Prairie Islander, along with a photo of Aileen Louisa under sail.

You have to look very carefully at, say, Auk, before you realise that there are no frames (or rivets, which means a great saving in work,) and that therefore she's not traditional construction.

You can see some more photos of Iain's boats on the Duck Flat site, by following the links from http://www.duckflat-woodenboats.com....ghtred%20index

WoodenBoat sells books of study plans of Iain's designs (as do we and Duck Flat and other people) for around the $30 mark.



[This message has been edited by Mike Field (edited 08-19-2001).]

[wcralle1]

Here is a similar looking boat that I have always liked the look of, and been tempted to build. Davis has plans for a 14 footer and a 17 footer.

Check these plans out from arch davis
http://www.by-the-sea.com/archdavisd...nobscot17.html

[Crip]

What a lovely boat. Reminds me of the A-class dinghies (a Japanese one design) that you can still find out here occasionally. see:
http://www.kisc.co.jp/sshimai/hakata7.JPG
for a great pic (borrowed from a Japanese site).
Actualy, I've been asked if I'm interested in building one this winter, if we can find the lines somewhere that is...

[This message has been edited by Crip (edited 08-21-2001).]