Notice
Port Townsend Watercraft will not be shipping out anything during the month of April, 2024
This includes sailing rig drop shipments, print books, bumper, Delrin turndogs, and fillet sticks. Dinghy kit salesare through Chesapeake Light Craft and not affected by this notice.
Ashlyn, the one who prints the labels and keeps track of it all will be out of town for the month of April. While away, Russell will be building PT 11 sailing rigs along with other projects on the bench. Sailing rigs on order will be shipped starting in May.
If you order our print books or small items from our website after March 29th, they will be delayed. Alternatively, the books are available on other online book sites including Amazon. Wooden Boat Store in Maine carries them as do several outlets in Port Townsend, including Admiral Ship Supply, Edensaw Woods, and Duckworks Boat Building Supplies.
Our friends at Chesapeake Light Craft will soon be heading west for the Madison WI, and Port Townsend, WA boat festivals. This is a great opportunity to save on shipping!
Save a bunch of money on shipping! Give us a call and we'll bring your big, heavy stuff with us for pickup in Madison and Port Townsend. Boat kits, big heavy items like rowing units, oars, even small orders of plywood, stuff that can be difficult (and expensive) to ship. Boat kit orders are due by August 16 so we have time to cut, pack, and stow in the rig. This offer's only good until space runs out. Call us today!
There was a time when we tried to redesign our footbraces for the PT 11 nesting dinghy to be easily removable since our standard footbraces are epoxied in place.
We used a heavy duty velcro type of material from 3M to attach them. It held really well if you pulled up but you could easily sheer them right off when bracing your foot or shoe against them! It was one of those 'oops' moments.
We have been storing a box of these shaped Sapele footbraces that are a little taller than our standard and tapered. We'd like to find good homes for them!
Because of their dimensions, they have to ship in a small priority box for $10. The footbraces themselves are on offer at $15 for a set of 4 or $25 for a set of 8 while supplies last.
The PT 11 uses 8 footbraces intended to allow 2 trim positions for a tall person and a shorter person so if there is usually only one rower, 4 footbraces is enough. The forward and aft positions are to adjust trim based on the load. This is a limited offer and for addresses within the lower 48 United States. If you are local in Port Townsend, contact us for "will call", ie, no shipping.
...any rower/kayaker/dinghy sailor who might be interested in a pair of auto-bailers. I bought them for my Penguin racing dinghy about 60 years ago and never installed them, so they are still like new, with instructions, installation templates, and mounting fasteners as purchased. Here is a link to photos:
Mine were branded "Falcon." Almost exactly the same item is sold by various marine stores, branded "Anderson," for ~$60 to $80 each today. I would like to be paid $60 for my pair, or best offer.
Contact ptwatercraft @ Gmail.com to be connected to the seller located in Davis California.
PT Wooden Boat Festival time again! September 9-12. The PT 11 will be displayed at the Chesapeake Light Craft booth on "THE POINT" near WEST SYSTEM and the Wee Nip. We hope to see you there! AB 😉
Chesapeake Light Craft is offering to bring your PT 11 kit to the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival happening September 9-11, 2022. If you are regional, plan to attend the festival, and have been wanting to get a PT 11 kit but balked at cross country shipping, now is a good opportunity to order.
In case you were not aware, this July 4th, 2022 weekend, Chesapeake Light Craft is having a store wide sale and that includes the PT Eleven nesting dinghy kit. Click image below to learn more.
As previously mentioned, 2020-21 was largely spent reviewing our production process. Another redesign included the PT 11 foils kit. We took our ideas to Paul Bieker of Bieker Boats for his expertise with foil design. The new foils are thinner, using 18mm Birch plywood instead of 24mm Okoume. The Birch plywood is more dense, chosen for its strength at this thickness and not for it's looks. The machined birch plywood is not as handsome for clear coating as the Okoume but we are quite pleased with the overall change.
Modifying the foils kits affected many other parts of the kit, so those changes are are reflected in a total rewrite of the foils manual and changes in the boat itself (the daggerboard trunk is narrower, etc).
Machining the daggerboard and rudder from high-grade plywood is a good way to produce very efficient and relatively light foils. The process is far from easy though. It has taken much trial and error and a very good CNC programmer (Turn Point Design) to come up with the final product. The price of this foils kit reflects quite a lot of machine time for each set.
This first quarter of 2022 has been interesting for Russell and I here at Port Townsend Watercraft.
Chesapeake Light Craft continues successful production of the PT 11 Nesting Dinghy Kit. You can see the details on their page here.
What has changed?
There is a price difference from our previous rates. This was to be expected. For one thing, CLC includes the WEST SYSTEM Epoxy Kit that had been an option on our package. We are happy about this because we have always recommended WEST SYSTEM for this project. Anther big one is that our cost of the connective hardware doubled. They are, however, exquisite thanks to a local machine shop here in PT. The total kit price hike reflects both the inclusion of the epoxy kit and material price increases across the board from plywood to stainless steel. That considered, customer investment has not increased by much because we made efforts to streamline production of certain parts to offset those inevitable material price increases. Russell and I would have been hard pressed to continue production on our own with all this factored in..
CLC also has a well established packing system for their kits. This makes the kit package more manageable than our long and heavy plywood crate.
In our shop in Port Townsend we have finally been touched by the "supply chain delays" talked about in the daily news streams. A lack of sail cloth, delayed our sail production. We finally learned this after several ETA predictions that came and went without sails. We are assured this time that sails are on their way so we can ship out the rigs on order. (Talk about stress!)Russell has been doing a deep dive into the boat building technique referred to as 'Tortured plywood'. One of the 3 foot models (of which there are at least 8 versions), have been translated into 27ft long hulls. This project has been both exciting and frustrating beyond expectation. More to come on that later.
Those who know about Russell's earlier boats, including his windward proas, may have seen our videos of "Jzerro". We sold Jzerro a few years ago and of late, have anxiously followed the new owner Ryan Finn, on his massive journey from New York to San Francisco via Cape Horn. This last week, Ryan rounded Cape Horn successfully and has been flying northward at speeds from 9 to 19MPH on the edges of and through gales and rough seas. You can follow his tracker progress here.
Also see 2 Oceans 1 Rock on FB for descriptions of his journey.
More updates to come soon, including the 2022 Shipwright's Regatta this Saturday (Postponed a month due to a gale in the bay in FEB 26th. (there may be more than one PT 11 this year!) and an update on our new goose-neck design. AEB 😉
Customers launched new boats in 2020 and I am happy to share photos and comments we have received.
"Russell & Ashlyn I wanted to let you know that we finally finished our PT11 dinghy. And although we haven’t sailed it yet in warm water, we have tested it out in CO. My wife has proclaimed rowing it is “oargasmic”. So I am very happy to have built it, and thankful to you for such an awesome design, kit and instructions. " JB