Wooden Boat Site

Dave Perillo’s Open Boat Web Site

If you are keen on John Wellsfords Navigator and also enjoy reading about some open boat voyages then I suggest you take a look at Dave Perillo’s Open Boat Web Site.

Dave is an open boat enthusiast who enjoys living in some of the world’s best open boat cruising waters - Aucklands Hauraki Gulf in New Zealand.

His web site is chock full of really cool photos of his voyages around Auckland and accompanied with some equally great writing which make you want to pack up your tent and head of for a few days of exploring.

Be sure to check out his 5 reasons for open boat sailing and his account of his voyage around the islands of Fiji.

I’d also like to thank him for letting me use some pictures from his site here

D4 Sailing Dinghy

The D4 Sailing Dinghy is a simple Pram type design - a basic and practical 7′ 10″ boat.

It can be built as either a sailing of rowing dinghy as well as being suitable to use with a small outboard.

The great thing about the D4 sailing dinghy is that the basic plans are available for free download - which meant that since it would be the first boat that I would build, the initial outlay of cash would be reduced. I didn’t want to spend a whole heap of money to find out that I did not like sailing or that my boat building skills were non existent!

Details on the D4 can be found at bateau.com, but you will now find that it has been upgraded to the D5. The free plans can be found here.

I can vouch that the D4 has been fairly simple to build. It has no butt joints and all panels can be cut from a single sheet of plywood.

bateau.com reckon it can be built for less that $200. We’ll see

Welcome to my Wooden Boat Web Site

Hello and welcome to my Wooden Boat Web Site.

Withing these pages I aim to document the building of my D4 Sailing Dinghy and bring news of wooden boat topics from around the internet.