DDYD Calendar 2013

The time is fast approaching to prepare our 2nd annual calendar. Once again, it will feature photos of boats of our design. I have received a few suitable photos during the past few months but still have a long way to go to fill the 12 pages plus cover.

Cover of our 2012 calendar.

So, if you have one of our boats and have some really nice photos of your boat in a great setting, or some nice action photos, please send them along to me by email for consideration. We will not be paying for use of the photos but your boat will be featured in a calendar that you will be able to buy for yourself or for gifts, to show off your pride and joy. Captions on the photos will include info on the boat and owner.

Interesting build photos will also be considered. If you have a photo of your project that has something very aesthetic or appealing about it, that might also make it into the calendar.

This is a build photo from our 2012 calendar. It

shows Brian Russel's aluminium Dix 43 Pilot

project, in a beautiful and very aesthetic photo.

Photos must be clear and of high resolution to be suitable. Preferably in colour but sometimes a good black and white photo looks even better than colour.

Please scour your hard drive, cameras and memory cards to find the best images that you can offer. I look forward to selecting the best for the 2013 calendar. Browse our 2012 calendar on the publisher's website. The 2013 version will probably have a similar format.

Regards to all and happy sailing.

Dudley Dix

Plywood Boat Kits

Most of our plywood boats are well suited to being built from kits and many boats have been built this way to our designs for years. Kits are available from suppliers in countries worldwide. See further down this post for a list of countries and the companies to contact.

We have recently changed our strategy for cutting kits in USA, for reasons that are beyond the scope of this blog. This has involved a change of company to cut the kits, resulting in a change in the way that they are sold.

The company that we have selected to cut our kits in future for USA is Chesapeake Light Craft, also known as CLC. This company has been cutting plywood kits for many years and is well experienced at cutting, packaging and shipping plywood kits, boatbuilding materials and accessories. They have shipped in excess of 20,000 kits to date, which must rank them among the top plywood kit companies worldwide.

Hunter Gall working on his DS15, built from a

plywood kit. This boat is not yet on our website.

CLC market their own kits and don't want to confuse the issue by marketing our kits among theirs. This means that we must market them ourselves and CLC will concentrate on the cutting and shipping. So, from here on, Dudley Dix Yacht Design will be the ones to speak to if you are in USA and want to ask questions about a kit for one of our plywood designs. We will answer your questions, sell plans and take your kit order and payment and provide all backup during construction to our normal level, as shown in our backup policy. We will pass on your order details to Chesapeake Light Craft and they will cut the kit, package and ship to your location. If you have any problems with damage in shipping or other issues, send them to us and we will arrange the remedy with CLC.

Please note that CLC will not sell you a kit for our designs, they will only cut on orders from us. Your order for one of our kits must be placed with us, not CLC.

Chesapeake Light Craft cut their kits from Joubert okoume marine plywood, so you are assured of a high quality kit as a good base from which to start building your new boat project. Starting with a kit will save you the time-consuming step of drawing out your components and cutting them from the plywood sheets. The time saving will vary between designs but you can expect it to be in the range of 10-20% of total building time, depending on the complexity of the boat.

At the moment we only have a few smaller designs shown for supply from CLC but this will increase to the full range as time permits or enquiries dictate. Also, CLC intends to expand their services to include epoxies, glass and solid timbers to those who want them and hope to also offer hardware kits.

Another view of Hunter Gall and his DS15. This

is a small sportboat that is based on our

Didi Mini Mk3 radius chine plywood design.

You can choose to buy a kit from any of the following suppliers, wherever you are in the world. None of them has sole rights to any country but it is likely that the supplier closest to you will be able to supply to you at the lowest price. Be sure to ask what is included in the kit that is being quoted because this may vary between suppliers.

Australia - Cape Boatworks
France - Pidgikit
Germany - Metz Boats
Italy - Nautikit
Norway - MBoats International
Russia - Chava & Boat Kits Russia
South Africa - CKD Boats
Turkey - Ertug
UK - Exocetus Yacht Kits & Jordan Boats
USA - Dudley Dix Yacht Design

Go to the Dudley Dix Yacht Design website to see the full range of our designs for all materials.

CNC Kits for 47ft Plywood Catamaran

There is a tremendous amount of work involved in preparing CNC cutting files for a big boat. When the boat is a catamaran, that preparatory work increases due to the two hulls and bridgedeck structures. A few people have asked about CNC kits for the DH550 catamaran. I have done panel files for the bulkheads but not for the remainder of the boat. That allows bulkheads to be cut by our normal plywood kit suppliers in various countries around the world. You can see the list of plywood kit suppliers on our kits page. For all other panels of the big cat the builder must develop the correct panel shapes by the normal boatbuilding methods then cut them from sheets of plywood.

Until now, this has also been the case for the smaller sister, the Dix 470. However, that is changing. A new company has been formed in UK to supply CNC kits for the Dix 470, available to both amateur and professional boatbuilders. Exocetus Yacht Kits has developed the cutting files in-house and is building the first boat. This gives them the hands-on experience to fully back up builders who choose to buy their kits. If a builder has a problem with any aspect of the construction, Exocetus will have already dealt with that issue and be able to answer the question.

Parts of a bulkhead ready for gluing.

The Exocetus kits use stepped scarph joints to join the parts of each panel, with the joints laid out to a saw-tooth pattern to add strength. This joint pattern can be seen in the photo above. People who build her as a one-off without a kit would do a conventional straight sloping scarph instead of this stepped sawtooth scarph.

Exocetus is keeping a complete photographic record of their build project on-line, which gives an excellent resource for builders to use for reference, as well as for potential builders to see what is involved in building one of these boats. The photo diaries can be accessed at the Dix 47 Catamaran Project .

They are developing various kits for the Dix 470, so that a builder can buy what is needed for the next stage of his construction or to suit his needs.

Stern steps, built from pre-cut components.

For information on this and our other designs and kits, please visit http://dixdesign.com.