Sunday, January 3, 2010

16X30 Sailing Canoe; EZ build Gilbert design

I know of several sailboat classes that have been reborn after going bust, but I know of only one where the class is being revived despite most of the existing boats (built pre WWII) being safely ensconced in museums.

John Summers has developed a stitch and glue plywood 16X30 sailing canoe; the 16X30 being the premier American racing sailing canoe that existed up till 1933 when Brits Uffa Fox and Roger DeQuincey thoroughly trounced the Americans on their home waters and the resultant new class rules produced the modern International Canoe class (the International Canoe just recently revised their rules again).

John has taken the lines of a hard chine Gilbert sailing canoe (circa early 1900's) and offers detailed set of plans through Antique Boat Museum . John writes the interesting history of bringing the 16X30 sailing canoe back to modern times over at the online "Canoe Sailing Magazine".

16X30's are being built and John sent me some photos of activity from 2009.












I had a chance to sail the round bilged Tomahawk 16X30 a couple of years ago. An interesting ride but I'll leave that to another post.

A YouTube video on 16X30's sailing and pictures of the original and prototype Gilbert canoe.



3 comments:

John Summers said...

Just to give credit where it's due, the 1st, 3rd and 4th photos that Rod posted were taken by Jim Wilson at the 2009 Wooden Canoe Heritage Association Assembly.

There was a detailed review of the 16-30 in "WoodenBoat Magazine's 2009 Small Boats" [available from http://www.woodenboat.com/wbmag/small-boats.html], and a how-to-build article is in the offing in that magazine for 2010.

Andre said...

Hi John, post some pictures of me upright or I'll splash some around of your maiden voyage at Keuka!
Best,

Andre

John said...

The second picture is my ABM-John Summers 16/30 JONAH (a tribute to Ralph Britton) taken by Wendy Byars at MASCF XXVII and plucked from her SAILOR GIRL blog.