Tag: apple pie

Christine DeMerchant builds an Apple Pie plywood and epoxy dinghy

Christine DeMerchant builds Chuck Merrell's Applie Pie dinghy

Christine DeMerchant builds Chuck Merrell's Applie Pie plywood dinghy

Christine DeMerchant is having a great time building an Apple Pie plywood and epoxy dinghy from plans drawn up by Chuck Merrell. The aim is to use it as a tender to her sailing cruiser.

Follow her progress here. The plans she’s working from are here, and there’s a nice article explaining how Chuck came to draw the plans here. Merry Christmas everyone – and if you read the last link, you’ll know why I say that.

The Apple Pie is about as small as a boat can go and still be useful, and I think it makes a great quick get-afloat summer project; a couple of winters ago I suggested it would also make a good mid-winter kitchen-table kind of project.

Either way, if you haven’t yet taken the plunge and built your own boat, and don’t know if it’s an activity you would enjoy, this could be the way to go.

PS – Check Christine’s message in the Comments link below. She has completed and launched the boat, and is as pleased as punch with it. There’s a YouTube clip showing just how well it works.

Apple Pie – a project for the mid-winter break?

Apple Pie

Apple Pie

I’ve posted about this little boat in the past, but I think the message is well worth repeating at a time when many of us are thinking about the boats we’d like to build and use during the coming year.

Chuck Merrell’s Apple Pie dinghy is so small and simple, she’s a real kitchen-table boat – that is, she’s small enough to be built on a kitchen table, and simple enough that you may well be able to finish her before anyone complains they can’t do anything useful in the kitchen because there’s a boat in the way.

Seriously, it should be possible to build her in a very short space of time, and with very little in the way of materials. She’s also a clever and useful design and would make a great first boatbuilding project. Here’s the link for Chuck’s free boat plans.

If you do build one of these boats, we’d love to hear about it! Email me at gmatkin@gmail.com.

Dale Austin built one and has kindly allowed me to post a photo of the finished boat (below). Click on the picture for an enlargement.

He has also put up a photo log complete with instructions on his own site:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrwizard/sail/dinghy/dinghy.html

Applie Pie photo

 

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