Nesting Dinghy Activities | Port Townsend Watercraft BLOG

PT Eleven Feature

adminDecember 21, 2011December 21, 2011Leave a comment

It has been weeks since we posted...Russell has been building a new PT Eleven in the shop while ironing out details in the manual. I have been re editing the manual and shuffling photos and chapters around, among other things. In between all this and packing kits, Russell crated up our show boat and we shipped it to the east coast where it has just been christened "Wheels" and launched aboard it's new mother ship, bound for the Caribbean and Pacific via Panama. We are very excited about the adventures yet to come for this boat.

Some of our brave first customers for the PT Eleven have launched into their projects and I look forward to even more posts soon on the PT Eleven Builder's blogspot created just for this purpose.

It was brought to my attention that I had not posted about the current feature in Wooden Boat Magazine's 2012 issue of "Small Boats"! It is a great article by Tom Jackson who came out just before the Boat festival and took the boat out for a "test drive". If you have not checked it out yet, please do! It should be at your local news stand or here online: "2012 Small Boats"

ptwatercraft.com — Check out this latest issue

Self steering on the PT Eleven

adminDecember 5, 2011Leave a comment

On a recent cold day, we drove the PT Eleven over to Mystery Bay and sailed it up into the next bay about a mile to our boat, Jzerro. The seagulls had made a real mess on deck and we had some general maintenance to do. On our sail back to the launch ramp, we remembered to snap a couple of pictures of the "Self steering" on the PT Eleven nesting dinghy... The hiking stick is cut to the right length, and tucks into the transom corner. It gave us a chance to warm our hands in our pockets until we tacked.

Also..have you seen the latest sailing video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0dMkZcmKu8&feature=player_embedded

Stacks of kits

adminOctober 21, 2011Leave a comment

I walked into the shop yesterday to see stacks of PT Eleven kits! Our first run finally cut. In the process of making this boat the best it can be and still buildable even for amateurs, it turns out that there are 5 different thicknesses of ply wood and some parts are cut in 3D, such as the stems. ( pictured fanned out..Russell did that.. )

It brings to point why building the PT 11 from plans would not be practical. The boat is mostly from 6mm plywood but there are various parts from 12mm, 15mm, 18mm and 24mm. Nobody would want to buy a whole sheet of each of those just to use a small part of them. There would be some costly waste involved. I do not want to say that there will never be plans or patterns for our kits but I should say that our priority is to get a line of our dinghies available as kits first and foremost. We have a few years of work on our our agenda to accomplish just that.

The first run of kits will answer many questions. The pictured stacks represent several base kits currently on order. There are lots of other things that will go into the boxes before delivery. It is a bit of an adrenalin rush and as more things arrive, and the boxes get packed, we will start breathing again and be able to review lessons learned.

Sailing the PT Eleven in the San Juans

adminOctober 7, 2011Leave a comment

I finally pieced together some clips of our brief sailing opportunity in the San Juans. The breeze just did not want to pick up but it was still a lot of fun. The video is on our video's page and on our ptwatercraft channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXVLKDag95Q&feature=player_profilepage

One of these days we will have a waterproof camera and by then I might be a little better at taking video! Cheers..

Back from BC

adminOctober 2, 2011Leave a comment

We have returned from our trip to BC feeling generally refreshed. Our main goal of getting good video of the nesting dinghy was largely thwarted by successive gales and torrential rains! However, we did get a few light winds clips on our last day in the San Juans and we had some time on our trip to simply chill. Today I will post a few photos. It will take me a bit longer to sort through the video clips and put something together. One thing was for certain on this trip; wherever we went, the PT Eleven attracted enthusiastic interest. This is very exciting for us!
For those of you who have ordered your kits already, our CNC shop is scheduling a session for the plywood parts, and the connective hardware, gaskets, and other stuff are on order to complete the packages. Russell is working on the adjustments to the manual. More updates to come soon! The PT Eleven nested on the trampoline of Jzerro Vito Dumas sailed with us for most of the trip to Desolation sound. Russell and I having a leisurely sail. A row around the bay with Peter. Alex, an avid “SUP (stand up) board guy” sailing the PT Eleven. Watmo Bay.

A great time at the festival

adminSeptember 15, 2011September 15, 2011Leave a comment

Well!!...we are recovering from a super weekend at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. We want to thank all of you who came by to see us. We were surrounded the entire time and absolutely loved it. The positive feedback was overwhelming and we thank you all. Also, being in the tent with WEST SYSTEM worked out wonderfully as people's epoxy questions could also be so expertly answered. I am posting a few images from the festival especially for those of you who did not make it and also to show the PT Eleven that was nested on a 33ft boat in the festival.

Russell & I will be away until the end of the month on an R&D trip. We will be trying the nesting dinghy out in all kinds of conditions and taking pictures and video. We will post this on the site when we return. There will be someone “in-office” to take phone calls, answer emails, and to take deposits for those of you who would like to be in line for a kit. Kits will be cut in order of deposits received and there are a few in line already. Shipping/pick-up starting mid October. Cheers, everybody! Ashlyn & Russell Brown

Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival 2011

adminSeptember 9, 2011Leave a comment

We are at the Festival. We have a booth next to the presentation stand out on the point. The PT Skiff is in the water at the dock. We hope some of you can make it over the weekend! We will be accepting orders for both kits for shipping in October. The PT Eleven will be having a few file adjustments and these need to be reflected in the manual.

I will post a couple of sailing pictures with the new rig up. We just got one chance to try it out yesterday. Worked great! Also there is all new info on the website. Still some blank spots but it will be filling in soon. Cheers to all..

The New PT Eleven Launch

adminAugust 20, 2011Leave a comment

Monday August 15th, we put the new PT Eleven in the water for the first time. The launch committee included the major contributors to the development of the boat. Everyone took a turn rowing the boat. Here are a few of the pictures from the day.. Since we have been working on safe loading calculations that have come out to the odd number of 3.9 people or 518.78 LBS, we got 4 of these guys to get into the dinghy and take a row. Each of them admitted to weighing 180LBS and possibly more so we casually demonstrate here where the boat sits with at least 720LBS and rowing at a fair clip. This demonstration was not about safety but simply to see how much free-board would be left. We could have tried to load the boat to near submersion but that will be a test for another day.Everyone present was thrilled with the boat, “a delightful boat to row..” and impressed with the ease with which it assembled and disassembled.
As a footnote to the day...We brought the boat back to our shop where Russell pulled it out of the back of our Toyota truck and rinsed off the 2 halves. We had friends visiting from Canada and while Russell was deep in conversation with them, I jumped into the truck to run an urgent errand. I had seen the boat in the shop. In fact, I had seen the aft half on its stand, and felt confident to back the truck out. Confident, that is until I heard a loud 'pop!'. My heart stopped and thankfully I had the presence of mind to stop the truck. Completely out of my field of vision, near the front right wheel, the forward half of the boat had been on the ground. I had rolled onto the corner of it with the front wheel of the truck. Distraught, I ran into the shop for Russell. We freed the boat and Russell studied the damage. He tells me today that it is pretty amazing that it was not worse. A little epoxy and a touch up on the paint completed the repair but he could see by the tire track that a great deal of weight had been applied to the hull and that it had withstood it. The loud ‘pop’, was the sound of the corner of the gunwhale giving way.

I share this embarrassing tale because...well...because this kind of thing happens sometimes and while I still feel pretty bad about not making sure the entire boat was inside the shop, I count our good fortune that it was not worse. We came very close to not having a boat for the upcoming festival!

PT Eleven; prototype nested

adminAugust 10, 2011August 10, 2011Leave a comment

I recently sent someone to this page to see pictures of the last prototype nested. After a search, I found out that I never posted them! oops... I will post them here but I do admit they are not the best pictures by far. (that might be why I neglected to post them...) New ones with the new boat will be posted soon. Also, thanks to Carl Cramer for including the PT Eleven on his blog..www.woodenboat.com/boat and for Howard's and others' comments on the wooden boat forum. Cheers, PTW

General update:PT Eleven

adminJuly 28, 2011August 7, 2011Leave a comment

Russell and I want to let everyone know that we are much closer to having the PT Eleven nesting dinghy done.

The final prototype is very close to completion. All the hardware (some recently posted on the blog) and most parts of the kit have been developed for production.

Writing the manual is progressing daily and formatting it is not far behind.

We will be able to cut kits for the PT Eleven after we finish this boat and the manual.

We are aware that it has been a long wait for some of you and you may have moved on to other ideas. We have had some pretty impressive charachters view this boat and their critiques have been extremely positive. The PT Eleven is a very highly developed kit boat and will be complete before putting it on the market.

Pricing update: We still think we can sell this kit for $1,500.00 including the glass kit.

Options including rig and foils kits, water tight hatch kit and other small parts will be priced when fully developed. (Some of these have been posted on the blog)

We are working on a very well developed sailing rig.

The foils (daggerboard & kick-up rudder) are CNC cut from Okoume plywood and finished by the builder.

The mast is a 2 piece tapered carbon tube that fits into a sleeve in the hull. The boom is a tapered carbon tube as well.

The sail is a smaller version of the one in the videos, about 60 square feet. The design is complete and beng made locally. Prices for these will be announced.

We apologize to those who have been waiting for awhile. This has been a far more involved process than we expected, but we believe that the extra time spent has been time well spent.

This show model of the PT ELeven, as well as the PT SKiff will be at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival on the weekend of September 9-11. Port Townsend Watercraft will have a booth with Gougeon/West System Epoxy.

Feedback and questions are welcome. If those of you who plan to buy a PT Eleven kit this year would like to reply and let us know, it would help us a lot in our scheduling.

Best regards to all,

Ashlyn & Russell Brown