Guillemot Kayaks

I decided to enter my Petrel into this year's Woodenboat Show Concourse d'Elegance. I am pleased to report that I ended receiving a nice 1st place mug in the professionally built manually powered boat group. There were a lot of beautiful boats there so I feel quite honored.

We have received some great free publicity from a variety of magazines and newspapers. Those included below are just a partial list

I recently did a Google search on "WoodenBoat School" I noticed that my Build Your Own Night Heron course at the school came up as the second link after the actual WoodenBoat School site. Reading down the list I found a link to Matt Murphy's blog entry about the WoodenBoat School.

Plans Now Available

I'm heading up to Maine for a bit of paddling and to exhibit at the Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Show in Rockland. I'll be gone from July 28 through August 14. I'll be paddling with friends and thinking up new ideas for boats. If you are in the Rockland Maine area August 11, 12, or 13, please stop in at the show to say hi.

If have any questions I will be out of touch for awhile, so I hope they can wait. Orders will continue to be sent out while I'm gone.

I was talking to John Harris at Chesapeake Light Craft last fall. As the conversation wandered around various boats and projects we were working on, it became apparent that we each had some issues that we might be able help each other with. I had some designs that I had not had the time to develop usable plans and instructions for, and he had a demand for some boats that he didn't have time to develop designs for.

Steve Grant is a writer for the Hartford Courant who tends to write articles about the outdoors and environmental issues. A couple weeks ago he gave me a call to see if I would be a willing subject of an article. Seemed like a good idea to me. I'm not about to pass up free publicity.

The article came out on Sunday.

I want to make the building process as easy as possible. To that end my Book attempts to provide clear and concise instructions in building a strip-built boat building, but it is inevitable that some people are going to end up with questions while building their boat. Feel free to contact me via email or phone. I find email works well for building questions because it provides a written record that avoids memory failures when you get back to the project.

But one of the best resources to help people who are building a small boat is boat building section of my KayakForum discussion group. This site gets thousands of visitors a day, ranging from people who have never built a thing and have lots of questions and experienced, professional builders who have seen it all. Almost any question you have can be answered here quickly and comprehensively.

After a lot of thought, I have decided to increase the prices on my boat plans. I do this reluctantly because I hope to keep the activity of building your own boat affordable, but I have not increased my prices since I started the business in 1993 and the costs of operating keep on going up. This price increase will help me maintain a high level of service for small boat builders with things like the KayakForum and personal technical support.

The price increase will not go into effect until April 1st, 2006, so if you are thinking of purchasing plans this spring, you have a chance to get them before the prices go up.