A couple of great small boats and bubbles!

If I were a whole lot younger and wanted to sail away for awhile for the absolute minimum investment, I'm pretty sure my choice of boat would look a lot like this...

Yes, a CAL 20! Lots to be said for the design... it's seaworthy and it's cheap. Not much to change and what you would modify would be pocket change related to a bigger boat. There is an excellent book, "Black Feathers", on making one into a Transpac racer which would also go a long way to showing you how to make it into a minimum long range cruiser as well.

If I had a little more budget and time, I'd seriously consider building a boat like Eric Henseval's most excellent Aviateur design...

Yeah, there might be just a little similarity. You might think of the Aviateur as something of a CAL 20 evolved to 2011 (in point of fact, it's more along the lines of an evolved Muscadet, but unless you are French that won't mean anything to you).

Notice the "bubbles" or domes? They make all kinds of sense and were once the badge of home-built French cruising sailboats everywhere... They have fallen somewhat out of vogue these days but, if I were to come upon a couple for the right price they'd find their way into "So It Goes" in a New York minute! Fact is, they'd look right at home and be smart on a CAL 20 as well...

Aviateur is a kiss shorter than the CAL 20 and beamier, so the boats would more or less have close to the same interior volume. This video of Aviateur shows just how roomy a less than 19-foot boat can be!



If I were refitting a CAL 20 for voyaging I'd spend a lot of time looking at just how the Aviateur is laid out both inside and out!

From the Paris show... Aviateur

Back when we lived in and around Paris the only real must do event in the yearly calendar was doing the boat show... There were always lots to keep a student of crafty ways to build boats and yacht design a very happy camper! One year I even got to share a bus home with Eric Taberly and Daniel Bombigher...

I'm still waiting for various reports on what was hip and hot at this year's show but I'm pretty sure that one of the must see boats is the new Aviateur by Eric Henseval which is making its debut at the show... 

Seriously tasty...

Just in from the most excellent website Nautical Trek a video of Aviateur with the designer and builder!


L'Aviateur 5.7 from Nautical on Vimeo.

An excellent design to check out...

Some photo-shop hijinks, a marina to avoid and in the "politicians take note" department...

I see that Duckworks (an excellent purveyor of needful things) is now selling plans for Eric Henseval's awesome Aviateur design which is a design I'm quite partial to. What can I say but, having lived and built a bunch of boats in France, I do like domes.

Well worth checking out!

By the way, I still think Eric should design a nine or so meter version of his Souriceau/Aviateur so I'd have room for my guitars...

Listening to Aaron Lee Tasjan

So it goes...

Another neat design from the board of Eric Henseval...

Yesterday I got a note from Eric Henseval who had just got back from a 1500-mile sail which took him from Brittany to the Baleric Islands in the Med via way of Gibraltar... You may remember Eric as the designer of the little 4.75 meter Souriceau.

Eric also mentioned that he had a couple new designs up his sleeve (always a good thing) as well as hints of things to come...

While a very cool design, the Souriceau is still a very, very small boat and I am sure that something along the same lines, if just that kiss bigger, would be no bad thing. Eric tells me that Souricea has a big brother, the Aviateur...

While still tiny by most peoples standards at 5.7 meters, the Aviateur is still a lot of boat and more than able to take you anywhere you might care to take it.

Like most of the exciting designs coming out of France these days, the boat is built in plywood and a great example of how to design an easily built hull. Throw in the fact that this minimum go anywhere boat can be put on a trailer and come home when needful... What's not to like?

Short lists and Strat clones...

It's not that I'm paranoid it's just  that I read the news, this will surprise you, and, it would appear, we're in a really bad place...

So, about that short list...

The other day it came to me that current guitar fashion and boat design have an awful lot in common... And yes, the operative word in that sentence is "awful". In the current guitar market there is a cornucopia of guitars but, when you look at them closely, it really boils down to mostly clones of the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul with maybe 10% something a bit different. What that means in real terms is you have a real bugger all chance of any real innovation creeping into the mix.

Been to a boat show lately? Last time I crawled around boats at a show I found myself often wondering what boat I was actually on as they were all so very much of the same design brief you really couldn't tell and the best you could ascertain was that you were on a 30-foot something or other. An experience not unlike going to a guitar store and picking up a Strat clone off the rack and playing it. It might be a very good guitar but, when all is said and done, it is simply a rehashed copy of a guitar that Leo Fender cobbled together in his garage in the 50's...

Which, I guess, is the world we live in.

That said, there are a few exceptions which give me hope like the Souriceau and Aviateur designs by Eric Henseval which seem to be doing quite well both as home buildable designs (there are already finished home built boats sailing and more in the pipeline) or a boat you can buy ready to go at the boat show.

Which brings us around to the short list and the idea of a scow design (bet you thought I'd never get here) because every time I think about the scow in my head, I keep coming back to the interior of the Souriceau.

Which, I expect, is as far away from anything you'd expect if someone whispered scow schooner in your ear...

Listening to Dolapdere Big Gang cover the Animals

So it goes...

some more mini-mini stuff...

Some cogent thoughts on COVID-19, a heartrendingly broken system, and today in the "chickenshit chronicles"...

As it turns out there's another sorta/kinda mini-mini class developing based in Poland.

That said, I've always thought that a sub 6.50 meter one design could be based on the Aviateur 5,70m design by Eric Henseval

Face it I'm a sucker for boats with domes.

Listening to The Band do some covers

So it goes...