The Crazy_Proa is back!

 Time did come and the Crazy_Proa is back and alive. I am conducting sea trails and making necessary adjustments and reinforcements, but the boat is back to water. It looks a bit weathered but that can be fixed later.

https://youtu.be/XHuWcjmHufM

Shark tooth.

I need a

longer string. It’s getiing hard to fit all teeth on the single string.

EC2019 - checkpoint 1

I of course failed to update my blog during the challenge.
Here is a pic from checkpoint one, I stealed it from Facebook watertribe page.

EC2019. Prestart preps

I got to the campground four days prior to Challenge, assembled the boat and fit and tested oars

Everglades Challenge 2019

I decided to go back to my roots and build a new folding inflatable catamaran. Well. I had it built. Thanks to Ukrainian firm L&K. Over last two years we were talking and designing and redesigning things and the boat is born.
I’m going to test it in Everglades Challenge.

This is a map of my position.

Unfortunately, I had to shelve the proa project. I just don’t have time and space to continue at this time. The boat is properly stored and I’m pretty sure I will get back to it when time comes

Isn't carbon fiber on a boat like mascara on a girl?

Getting there

Shaping up

Unfortunately, holidays season proved to be too tough on my mind and body and my work on the boat slowed down somewhat. But I'm trying to build some steam up again.

Why the Proa?

There are several reasons. Probably, the first one – because Proa didn’t do well in watertribe events.  I know my strong points – I can make things happen, eventually, however I’m not the fastest one around.

I figure out that I can make it working, to plow the road for the next generation.

The second reason – I believe proa can be a sound platform for watertribe events.  After all it is a canoe – easy to paddle thing, shallow draft etc.

The third reason – it can be made light. All the rhetoric is there – lesser loads on akas (crossbeams), the main hull (vaka) is taking all loads, there are very little torque loads on entire structure. Also I have sailed and raced beach catamarans (I owned A-class and Nacra F17 catamarans) and I believe that two hulls configuration is safer than three or one hull in big seas.

Proa, besides inefficient hull(for its length), suffer from a steering problem. It is very hard to design efficient foils instead of old fashioned paddles used by Polynesians. At least I’m trying to solve this problem. Let’s see how the things play out. I think I nailed it. But I didn’t test the boat yet J

So those are reasons.

Good news! I can get her out of my apartment! So, No need to convert her into book shelf.
I took main hull to my friend's backyard to do some heavy duty sanding. I'm trying to keep my neighbors happy and use hand tools at home.