Donald Healey: Sports Cars and Sport Boats
In 1952, the Austin Healey 100 BN1 became an archetypal British roadster of the postwar era. A few years later, Donald Healey, who was also a keen water skier, dashed… Read more »
Recent Posts
Meade’s Trove of NASA Wood Fatigue Data
The two pages of compression-fatigue data shown here, along with secondary properties, represent the heart of an expensive, years-long study of lab samples and full-scale specimens—of wood/epoxy construction for composite… Read more »
R2O at Viking
In the early days of composite boatbuilding before glass fibers, the pioneers experimented with natural reinforcement materials such as palm fronds and sisal. And once glass fibers were employed, builders… Read more »
The High End of High Speed
A six-year-old Dutch builder of large, high-speed, ax-bow motoryachts recently introduced its latest model, the VQ54 (16.5m). It joins the VQ32, VQ43 MK2, VQ48 and VQ48DC (9.8m, 13.1m, and 14.6m),… Read more »
Reverso Air: Stackable, packable, sailable
Just when we thought all prayers for a chic and functional nesting dinghy were answered with the kit of the adorable PT 11 by Port Townsend Watercraft , here come… Read more »
Ray McLeod Jr: 1932–2018
Last February we lost Ray McLeod Jr., who told me many years ago while I was researching a history of fiberglass boatbuilding, that he joined his father’s modest boatbuilding and… Read more »
Diesel Fuel Additives, Part 2: Lubricity Facts and Fictions
Lately, there’s been a lot of publicity, some would say hype, about diesel fuel’s lubricity—its slipperiness component. Worry about the decrease in sulfur mandated for on-road diesel, which began in… Read more »
Hydrofoils: Past and Renaissance
In Part 1 of our foiling story in Professional Boatbuilder No. 172 we take a look a the history of this technology, from the pioneers in the early days of… Read more »
A Bénéteau with Foils
Followers of extreme sailing may know of Bénéteau’s several-year program to develop a production monohull with foils. Well, let’s qualify the term foils. The new 32‘ (9.75m) Figaro Bénéteau 3… Read more »
Remembering Ian Farrier
New Zealand multihull designer and builder Ian Lindsay Farrier, 70, died suddenly in San Francisco, California, on December 8, 2017, culminating a career that began in 1973 in Australia. While… Read more »
