boat building

This is my catamaran moored in the river.

I started building this boat in early 1999, finished one hull, and overwhelmed by the thought of starting another hull just like it, branched off into several other boats, the last of which was a sharpie designed by Phil Bolger. That boat was stable, convenient, safe and easy to sail, and I made a tour of the local islands with it; but it was too sluggish, and I sold it.

Finally I got up the courage to build the second cat hull, beams, mast and spars and we finished it in August of last year. Sanny and a team of men and boys trolleyed it along the path between the fishponds, shown in the picture below, and we assembled it on the bank and pushed it in at high tide.

I made a suit of sails out of nylon canvas and they work reasonably well. It's fun to sail! This boat could travel around the world.



Here is a native style boat I made about nine years ago, sitting on its raft in a fishpond. Notice the outriggers. It now has an engine, but it was originally driven rather inefficiently by a "crab-claw" type of sail, the usual type here (although sailing craft are rare here.)
The river is beyond and you can just see the back end of another boat I built at the far right behind the bamboo fence. This shows the path between the fishponds where we trolleyed the cat hulls. Children love swimming in the fishpond.