Wooden Boat Festival, Port Townsend

The Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend WA ended a week ago. Two days of off-and-on light drizzle washed the smoke from the wild fires out of the air and Sunday turned into a gorgeous day with lots of visitors. There were three boat of our design on display.

The Didi Cruise-Mini "Segue" has been at the Festival many times. Her owners, David and Nancy Blessing, have become good friends of mine over the past few years and hosted me in their beautiful home in Port Ludlow. Their boat was built by the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building in Port Hadlock. The Festival gave me the opportunity to view some of the beautiful boats built by the school and also on display. I also spent a few pleasant hours in the company of Executive Director Betsy Davis and some of the many people who make this school a valuable resource of the boating community. The school may be available to build our smaller designs, up to about 21ft, but the bigger boats would not fit into the requirements of their programs.

Didi Cruise-Mini "Segue".

The Cape Henry 21 "Slough Coot" is owned by Michael and Jody Baccellieri of Portland OR. Their boat attracted an endless stream of visitors to visit aboard and talk about her. Michael and Jody had spent the previous 2 weeks cruising the beautiful islands and anchorages of Puget Sound and were very happy to chat about their capable little vessel.

Michael and Jody aboard their Cape Henry 21 "Slough Coot".

The Didi Mini Mk3 "Voodoo Child" was built by amateur Mark Paterson in Vancouver BC, to an extremely high standard that rivals the best produced by many professional boatyards. Visitors who talked to me after being aboard "Voodoo Child" all spoke of the incredible standard of finish and the many features that Mark built into his boat. She is very well-equipped, including carbon mast, boom and sprit. We took her out to sail in the Friday race, unfortunately into the worst possible conditions for a Mini 650 to show her paces. We had a boat, designed for windy downwind racing and trans-ocean passage-making, in a sometimes windless around-the-cans race where contrary current was at times faster than boat speed. I will have to sail on her another time to experience her speed in her own conditions.

Didi Mini Mk3 "Voodoo Child".

I had flown to the Pacific Northwest via Portland so that I could visit friends in that area. One was the owner of a Lotus Europa similar to my own, to help him to sort out some problems. That done, we took it for a spin on Vancouver WA roads, giving me even more appreciation for my own car, which I had resurrected from a lifeless wreck over a 5-year rebuild. Just a few more jobs to do to complete the total body-off restoration. People wonder when I walk up to this tiny car how a tall guy like me can fit into a car with the roof below waist level. The saying is that you don't get into a Lotus, you put it on like a pair of trousers, one leg at a time. 😊

The roof of my Lotus comes only to the bottom of the windows of my wife's Chev Sonic compact.  Seen here with my Ford Windstar and son-in-law's jacked SUV for contrast with my "toy" car.

To see our full range of boat designs, go to our main website or our mobile website.

Wooden Boat Festival, Port Townsend

That season is coming around again, time for the Wooden Boat Festival in the beautiful little Pacific Northwest town of Port Townsend, WA. This is the 41st edition of one of the most popular wooden boat events in the world, with hundreds of wooden boats on show and dozens of presentations on a wide range of subjects of interest to boating people. Dates are 8th to 10th September 2017. The festival website is not yet fully functional but that will come soon.

Among those many boats will be three of our 21ft plywood sailboats, all different, which can be visited on the docks.

David Blessing's Didi Cruise-Mini "Segue". This is the detuned cruising version of our Didi Mini single-handed trans-Atlantic raceboat.

Michael Baccellieri's Cape Henry 21, "Slough Coot". She was built with some deviations from our design but the current owner is working to get her closer to the original drawings.

Mark Paterson's Didi Mini Mk3 "Voodoo Child". This is the full racing version of our Mini-Transat racer, with the newer hull shape and rig. 

I will also be taking part in the presentations. I will participate in the Designers' Forum, along with other boat designers, moderated by Jay Benford. This is from 12h00 to 13h00 on Friday 8th in the Cascade Room. Bring your boat design and construction questions to this session and observe how diverse the range of opinions and solutions can be among designers with different backgrounds and design styles. This is normally a very interesting gathering.

I will have my own session in the Cascade Room from 09h30 to 10h30 on Sunday 10th. My presentation is titled "Surviving a Capsize on the Ocean". Nobody can guarantee who will survive an ocean capsize but this presentation is aimed at making boaters aware of the many factors that are working together to reduce their chances of escaping alive from a capsized boat. Armed with that knowledge, they will be better prepared to choose the best options if they do ever have the misfortune of being inside or under an inverted boat.

To see our range of boat designs, go to our main website or our mobile website.

Didi Cruise-Mini Across the Atlantic

Tony Hussey built himself a radius chine plywood Didi Cruise-Mini in the UK. We have exchanged communications recently, while he has been en-route from UK to the Caribbean in his little boat. This is a cruising version of the little Didi Mini trans-Atlantic raceboat, so it is in its proper element with a cruise like this.

Tony has said that he is very happy with his little cruiser. He sailed her from UK to Spain and back in 2014. Then last year he sailed UK to the Azores and has now continued to Antigua.

From the Azores Tony wrote "Im not pushing the boat as I'm cruising and can't afford any breakages. I also slow down at night to 5 kts to help sleep. My autopilot doesn't handle the spinnakers very well so can't make good use of the higher speeds but the light wind performance with the big spinnakers is amazing for a small boat. On a beam reach in 6/8 knots apparent I'm up to 6 kts boat speed keeping up with the bigger cruisers motoring with not enough wind. Top speed so far is 12.9 but around 12 I chicken out as I can't trust my autopilot to control the boat when I take down the spinnaker."

Now that he is in Antigua and recovering from a back injury he wrote "So far I've done over 8000 miles singlehanded in the boat and very happy with it, always felt safe but never dry!! Joke. The plan is Panama this summer then out towards Australia through Polynesia."

The Didi Cruise-Mini has the same hull and deck as the Didi Mini but with a bit more headroom, more comfort and a more compact sail plan.

Under sail with big squartop mainsail and Solent jib.

At anchor in the Azores.

"Splinter" - Great name for a small wooden boat.

Seagull's view of a beamy little cruiser.

Hitching a tow from a kayak due to outboard problems.

We wish Tony and "Splinter" happy cruising, looks like they are angling toward a circumnavigation. You can follow their adventures on Tony's blog.

To see more about our designs visit http://dixdesign.com/ or http://dixdesign.com/mobile

Wooden Boat Festival Starts Tomorrow

Today I spent a very pleasant few hours sailing the Didi Cruise-Mini "Segue" on the very beautiful Puget Sound. She was lying on the dock of the NorthWest School of Wooden Boatbuilding at Port Hadlock and we needed to take her the few miles to Port Townsend, venue of the Wooden Boat Festival, which starts tomorrow.

Fine bow and beamy hull of the Didi Cruise-Mini "Segue"

 This was the first time that I had the opportunity to sail one of these little boats and it proved to be a delightfull surprise. It is a cruising version of our Didi Mini Mk2 design, with detuned rig and shallower but heavier lifting keel in place of the deep draft fixed keel. The water was flat and the breeze a very pleasant 10-15 knots. We were towing a 12ft dinghy that is also to be exhibited and which was probably knocking off about 1 knot from our speed. Yet she still sailed at good enough pace and heading to outsail other small cruisers that were heading the same way, both on heading and speed through the water.

Robust rig, with full-width swept spreaders.

 "Segue" was built by the NorthWest School of Wooden Boatbuilding for David Blessing, who completed her from the structure and interior that was supplied. She proved to be very stable, able to carry her generous full sail plan to windward even in the strongest gusts that came our way. I helmed from the leeward side of the cockpit, only moving to windward twice when stronger gusts arrived. She is very forgiving, with light and comfortable helm and just the right amount of weather helm to allow her to round up if the tiller is left unattended. With only two of us on board, she did not demand weight on the rail to give her power and was very easy to helm from leeward, for best view of the jib telltales. She has the feel of a much larger boat, giving a sense of strength and security.

Didi Cruise-mini "Segue" with her tag-along dinghy.

Overall, she showed me that she very aptly fits the fast micro-cruiser role for which she was designed. I would be happy to go coastal cruising on her, with her lifting keel and shallow twin rudders opening up many cruising areas that are totally inaccessible to larger boats. She can tuck into shallow bays, far from the cruising crowds. And when she comes out onto open water she can pick up her skirts and carry her crew to their next destination at better speed than almost any other cruiser of comparable size, as well as many bigger boats.

In company of hundreds of other wooden boats, waiting to show herself.

David Blessing sails her single-handed much of the time and at other times with friends and family. His comments to me have been that she is an amazing little boat and has not disappointed him in any way. I tweaked the rig and his sail setups during and after our delivery sail and am sure that he will find her even better now than before.

To see more about this and our other designs, please go to our main website at http://dixdesign.com .