PT Watercraft

August 8, 2010 is now marked on the calender as the first PT Skiff rendezvous. PT Watercraft and “Pika” met in Puget Sound and compared boats and notes and each took turns at the wheel of the other. Paul Bieker and family happened to be Seattle bound on their boat which provided a great photo platform and we were able to get some video. The PT Skiff Rendezvous 2010

Pictured here you will see the “Pika” powered with Evinrude’s E-Tec 25hp. We are working on a fuel consumption study and comparison for the two boats to be published soon.

“Pika” has her driver’s seat and grates held snug with velcro to great effect. Furthermore, the builder opted for a larger forward hatch. He also kept the side decks clear finished and the wood grain looks really nice next to her “20 feet of Bahama water”-blue hull paint.

Of his return trip, the owner of PIKA wrote:

“Not sure if you guys noticed the large Hapag Loyd container coming down the sound as we split. He was running at 20 kn and I took his stern by about 100 yards and got on his east side a bit north of Point-no-Point. He had an awesome wake and I ended up surfing and carving sweet bottom turns for 5.5 miles until I had to bail out for Edmonds. Now, THAT is more fun than you are allowed to have in a powerboat! Truly the surfing was just brilliant. Everything came together perfectly, flat water, lot’s of space, and a big ass container ship running at 20 kn in the right direction. Who knew the skiff would bottom turn like my 9′6″ longboard, over, and over, and over again. I am still grinning!”

Hello to all,

After 8500 miles, many weeks on the road with the PT Skiff and meeting so many and yet not all of you, we are back at work in Port Townsend. We will highlight the trip on our blog soon. The boat logged some good sea miles, some in extreme conditions and performed very well. Lots of people took the wheel, from friends and their children, to designers, boat builders and critics, and all clearly enjoyed the boat and expressed very positive opinions and reviews.

We spent 3 days in Brooklyn Maine at the Wooden Boat Magazine headquarters and Aaron Porter has posted a review of our boat alongside Graham Byrnes’ “Marrissa”.
See http://proboat.com/design-challengers.html

While we were away, the first kit sold was completed and launched in Seattle. See photos of ‘PIKA’ on the photo album page of our site. The builder also wrote on the forum. 25HP was used on this boat with impressive results.

We would have liked to make several other stops along the way but we simply ran out of time. We hope we will see many of you at the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend in September.
We are currently accepting orders for kits to be cut in August. The sooner the better for getting your order confirmed, as knowing our quantities will expedite shipping.

We look forward to hearing from you.  A&R

July 6th…Geee…a lot has happened since we last posted. This trip has been a whirlwind of driving, arriving, busy busy, camp and drive again..  The Wooden Boat Show in Mystic was a lot of fun and we want to thank everyone for their enthusiasm about the PT Skiff.

In Mystic CT

Everyone we met was super nice and we really enjoyed it.  We have had the boat in the water a few times; on the Chesapeake in Virginia, in Rhode Island,

Headed for Block Island from Point Judith, RI

En-route to Newport from Block Island

Buzzard’s Bay and Martha’s Vinyard, Rockland, Camden and now Brooklin, Maine.  All in all we have had some great outings from calm to steep 6 footers and 25knots…(you guessed it…Buzzard’s Bay…)  I will keep adding pictures soon.

Cheers.

A few pictures along the way…

The PT Skiff in Virginia City Montana

The PT Skiff in Montana

Yellowstone Park in June

Yellowstone Lake was still icy and thus closed to boating so we continued on to the east coast.

We are on the road to the east coast and somehow these photos did not upload right on the website so I am posting them here. When we get back I will be able to make such updates from the main computer. Here is the windshield photo and a photo of a hatch with the watertight gasket and custom machined turn-dogs installed. These photos relate to the kit details page linked from the PT Skiff page of the website (or click on the photo here in) and are options available in addition to the base kit. Thank you for your patience! Best to all, Ashlyn & Russell.

Plexiglass windshield with adjustable height on a welded stainless bar.

Installed watertight hatch

Launched the boat in May with a Yamaha 20 HP.

Our skiff is almost complete!
We are waiting on the new adjustable height windshield & mount, but besides that we only need to install the motor and cables and a few other small things.
We were pulled off skiff building for a good part of the spring, filling orders for our other business, PT Foils, but now we are full speed finishing our skiff and getting ready for a cross country tour.  We are going to the Wooden Boat show in Mystic, Connecticut ( http://www.thewoodenboatshow.com/ ) in late June and then touring New England. E-mail us if you want to see the boat.
We have also scheduled having our boat tested by the Coast Guard at their testing facility in Maryland. This testing involves filling the boat with water and testing for flotation and stability when flooded, among other things. The testing we are doing is voluntary but seems important on a boat we are promoting for it’s seaworthiness.

There are many details on the skiff since the last blog post, but soon it will be out of the shop and we will be able to take good photographs. Our shop has 7’ ceilings and while it is easy to heat, the light for photos is not so good.

In other news, we just sold a kit to Tim Smyth. Tim was one of the two lead builders of the BMW Oracle trimaran that just won the America’s cup. Tim’s
P T Skiff kit is on it’s way to New Zealand.

We weighed our boat recently. 340 pounds without the engine and some other things.
This is about the same as the first prototype.
We chose the same engine that the first prototype had, a Yamaha 20.
Our first kit buyer, J. Brandt chose the Evinrude E-TEC 25. Comparing performance will be very interesting.

Following are a few photos of the boat as it looks right now.

PT Skiff painted with mahogany rub rail