Back in 1992, when I SHOULD have been focusing on my first year of graduate school, I decide that if I don’t decide on a boat design I’ll go crazy. So I purchased a set of plans from quirky, respected, Aussie-now-Scottish boat designer Iain Oughtred. I fell in love with his designs, as did the whole staff at Wooden Boat magazine, because of the 40 or so plans they sold in the 80’s, six were Oughtred’s. Nowadays you can buy plans from his website, Oughtred Boats. If anybody knows how to pronounce his last name, please get in touch!
The Caledonia Yawl is very pretty, and I thought it would be a nice boat to sail around my local waterway (Puget Sound). But love is a fickle thing, and before I found myself a shop I fell in love again…
The second time I fell in love with a design called a Welsford Navigator. See my Building a Navigator blog (in the menu at the top) for a record of that build. Here is a picture of Barrett Faneuf’s Navigator “Yuko” at the 2009 Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival:
