So who am I, and what am I doing?
My name is Jason
Folkers. I'm originally from Florida, but have been living in the Canadian prairies near Calgary since 2003. I caught the sailing and cruising bug from some of my friends back and Florida, and now have dreams of sailing over blue water to a distant island paradise.
Don't we all?
The reality, though, is that boats that can make journeys like that are relatively pricey, and living in the middle of the prairies doesn't lend itself well to learning blue-water sailing skills. As a result, I started looking around for something a little smaller that I could use on local lakes. At the same time, though, I wanted a boat that I could potentially tow out to the British Columbia coast and sail around the islands.
In my search I came across quite a few smaller boats that would do this, but my eye was caught by a design for an open wooden cruising dinghy by Kiwi
designer John
Welsford. The
Pathfinder was designed to be a slightly larger version of his very successful Navigator design. At 17' long, it's short enough to build in my garage, yet long enough to spend significant time on should I have a few weeks off to sail in BC. It has a relatively low-tech, low-stress rig, great load-bearing capacity, and can handle pretty serious weather. It also only weighs about 600 pounds, so I should be able to tow it behind a normal car, with a simple trailer. Building the boat myself allows me to spread the cost out over the build time, and gives me something to tinker with and improve my woodworking skills.
So, that's the intro. Where am I on the build progress? Well, just yesterday I picked up my plywood that I had ordered in from
Westwind Hardwood in BC. They carry the
Hydrotek brand of
Meranti plywood. This plywood is supposedly lighter and more abrasion resistant than the
Okoume ply I could get locally, and was significantly less expensive, even including the $300 shipping from BC to Calgary. The sheets were packaged well and arrived swiftly... I wouldn't hesitate to order from
Westwind again.
Next steps are to loft the frames from the drawings onto the plywood, and start cutting them out! I also need to order silicon-bronze screws and assorted hardware, order in a few more tools, and get my first load of epoxy. Pics will come as soon as I start doing anything worth seeing. :)
