It has been a long time since I have made any new entries on my blog. I hope my excuse is considered a good one. I've just been too busy, not only have I been helping Chesapeake Light Craft get my designs into their kit catalog, but I have been building boats, writing and buying a new house.
I am just now finishing up the boat building projects and will be delivering a microBootlegger out to Cape Cod later this week. I also just finished up a Night Heron and delivered that out to Long Island.
Prior to these boats I built 3 different boats for a new book project. The new book will be called Building Strip-Planked Boats. It is a thorough discussion of all aspects of building small, car-toppable boats using the "strip-planked" or "strip-built" method. I built three very different boats as examples for the book, including a small pram-style dinghy called Coot a extremely light-weight canoe called Nymph and my current favorite sea kayak, Petrel. I have just finished sending the last bit of material off to the editor and the book is scheduled for release this fall (2008).
While working on the book I also fit in a little time to bang out an article for WoodenBoat Magazine on building Nymph.
And while all of this is going on I decided the weak real estate market was an opportunity to buy my own house. I found a great little place in Groton, CT which is much closer to the water. While a nice place, it did not have shop space, so I am currently in the process of getting a garage/shop built. Hopefully in the next few weeks the structure will be up and I can start working on outfitting the shop space.
With all of this going on I have not been able to keep up with my time on the water, so this afternoon I hope to get out to play in some surf off Napatree Point. I hope that as things settle down a bit I will be able to post more on this blog with boat building and paddling information.
