Hello All,.. I am back at work after 3 weeks out of the country. I was visiting family and snowed in up in the black mountains of southern France… far from boats…but I also spent time investigating the logistics of making our kits easily available to our European followers.  I am a little bit closer to a viable solution. With our limited budget, it all takes real figuring and coordination.  One thing that is clear, is that in order to keep shipping costs low, being able to ship at least 2 PT Skiff kits or 5 PT Eleven kits at once reduces the cost for each buyer dramatically. Ocean freight is calculated with a minimum volume so shipping one kit or 5 is nearly the same price.  Import duties and clearance fees are being checked into in France and should provide a basic idea for most of Europe.      There have been discussions about having kits cut in Europe but we find this to be more complex. It simply is not possible at this stage to have someone in Europe make all of the parts. Besides the fact that our kits have parts cut from 5 different thickness of plywood, there are lumber, carbon, fiberglass, and stainless steel specialty parts. We will avoid any kind of fractured production ideas. Our quality expectation is very high and it will be a good while before we have all the glitches worked out so that someone else could reproduce our kits to our standards.

On another note, we will have a PT Eleven on display at the NW Maritime center symposium happening here in Port Townsend on March 16, 17, & 18th.  This cruising theme event has a limited number of tickets available so if you think you would like to attend, follow this link and get more information. The presenters scheduled promise to make this a very interesting weekend. We are nearing completion of the current PT Eleven nesting dinghy, which has been a bit on the back burner. Russell has had other projects demanding his attention. Symposium participants will be able to take it out for a row at various times over the weekend.

We have lots of posts in preparation so we hope you will stay tuned. 🙂

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

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..

Fillet stick set now available. Arrives as 4 sticks connected. You separate them and bevel edges to end up with 8 sizes ranging from 1/2inch to 2 inches.

$10 + postage.  See our site for details.  We are including a chisel stick in our set since it is essential for clean filleting!

We now have the option with some nice drawings for making the PT Skiff self bailing. Follow this link to see it! http://ptwatercraft.com/ptwatercraft/PT_Skiff_self_bailing.html