My last post was about a sharpie, and I’m reminded that Dale Austin (the man who built the Apple Pie) is in the middle of a project to build a sharpie derived from Commodore Munroe’s famous sharpie-derivative Egret.
Munroe developed his double-ended and narrow-bottomed internally ballasted shallow-draft sharpie for duties around the shallow waters of the Florida coast. It proved to be a successful and capable boat.
Over the years it has acquired mythic status, not least because the original plans were lost in a fire and attempts to reproduce something like the original boat have met with mixed success.
After several years of spare-time work on and off, Dale is well on with his new boat, which he calls Pangur Ban, and it’s an admirable and striking piece of work. And when it’s launched countless sharpie fans will be fascinated to learn how it works on the water.
One issue is that the boat is rather longer than Dale’s garage, so I’ve included the last photo because it made me smile – letting it stick out through the door was an original not to say heroic solution to an age-old DIY-boat builder problem.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrwizard/sail/independence/29.html
He started this vessel a while ago. Did he ever finish. I admire what he is doing.
If you follow the building trail to the end the boat looks very nearly done… But it all goes cold in about 2008. I don’t know what happened, but I do know (i) Dale appears to still be listed as a staff member at the University of Michigan, and (ii) he got into volunteering for disaster relief. I agree – the work he did on the boat looks fabulous
Gavin