Retired Teacher Gerry Lavoi emailed me with some questions about my Walkabout design. Nothing new in that, I get such enquiries a couple of times a day and try to reply to each and every one. In this case the correspondence went on for a while, detailing what he wanted to achieve with the new boat and some background on himself. That adds a friendly tone to the exchanges and I came to enjoy hearing from him.
It seemed to me that cruising the islands and inlets of British Columbia where he lives was well within the capabilities of both the skipper and the boat, and that building a project like this would be a good way to spend the winter.
But after he bought the plans the frequency of the emails reduced and other than a couple of technical questions I did not hear much from him for a while, and then he wrote to tell me that he had completed the boat, launched her and was carefully evaluating her abilities and characteristics. Gerry is a methodical type, testing and trying the boat, extending his limits slowly rather than heading off into the wild blue yonder in an untried craft with a tyro skipper in charge, and its been wonderful to watch the progression from the first tentative testing of the waters to the first cruises and adventures.
He has a great little webpage here http://gerryl-walkabout.blogspot.com/ .
Enjoy the reading, and do go and check his writings now and again as there are bound to be adventures over the summer.
Watch an informative video of MrArthropode putting his “Walkabout” boat to the test.
John Welsford.
Designer.
