These photos of a plywood Cherub build in New Zealand crossed my Facebook feed. A plywood Cherub is a rare beast. As is the fashion these days, most Cherub's are built of more exotic composite materials. New Zealand, the home of the famous Kiwi designer, John Spencer and his Cherub class, has seen a recent revival of the class; the class being moribund since the 1990's. As I've mentioned, buried in an old post; I raced one weekend in an English Cherub regatta in the 1970's. (Back when the design fashion was a deep V carried all the way to the transom.) I've always had a soft spot for these 12' double-handers (the original single wire, wide Cherub, not the two wire, rack version the English cooked up to compete in their Portsmouth handicap racing).
This blog has sprinkled various Cherub antics throughout posts over the years.
This build uses 4mm plywood throughout. Minimum hull weight is 51 kg.
On the jig
Minimum frames, double bottom.
Carbon Tube for Pole Launcher.
Hull complete. Fitting rudder gantry.
Typical flat hull sections of an assymetric-powered skiff.
A modern Cherub upwind in max power conditions.
Addendum April 2022
For a modern day source of Cherub plans, Alan Roper writes:
"In regards to the cherub it depends what you want .Greame Hill has a hull kitset I have designed. ...There is another boat I designed to he built of stitch and tape system and there is another one built of conventional methods. The latter 2 have paper plans.
