24th Annual Metal Boat Festival

The Metal Boat Festival is a gathering of people who are involved with steel and aluminium boats and takes place annually in the Pacific Northwest. It has moved around this beautiful area and this year it takes place at the Cap Sante Boat Haven in the Port of Anacortes Marina from 19-21 August.

This year I will be one of the speakers at the Festival. I have participated four times since 1998 but have not been there for about 5 years. I look forward to returning and renewing old friendships.

On the Friday evening I will be the dinner speaker, with a PowerPoint illustrated talk about growing up as a surfer/sailor/amateur boatbuilder in South Africa, how it affected the development of my career as a yacht designer and the subsequent path that I have taken.

Table Mountain, looking across Table Bay, home

waters for my offshore sailing in Cape Town.

On Saturday afternoon I will talk about developments in boat design through the years. This will be partly historical and partly current trends and will also be a PowerPoint presentation. It will cover such issues as hull, keel, rudder and rig design and the effects that decisions have on the behaviour of the resulting boat.

On Sunday morning I will be one of the panel in the Designers and Builders Forum. This is an open discussion with people from the floor asking questions of the designers and builders on the panel. From past experience, this leads to valuable and very interesting discussion, with the members of the panel offering their solutions to problems posed.

The program includes interesting presentations by boat builders and others from the boating industry on a wide range of subjects related to building, owning, maintaining and cruising boats generally, with a strong leaning toward metal boats. A highlight will be a talk by Charmaine Lingard about their voyages between Canada and Antarctica, over the barbecue dinner on Saturday evening. Their boat is "Vlakvark", built in South Africa to my Vickers 45AC design. See the full festival schedule .

Berthing will be available on the marina for metal boats associated with the Festival. One of them will be the aluminium centre cockpit Dix 43 "Namo", owned by Ian Clark and built by John Dearden in Gibson, BC.

Dix 43 "Namo" on launch day.

So, if you are interested in metal boats, or want to learn more about them, Anacortes could be the best place to be on 19-21 August.