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The Plan
For the design of our boat, there was only one person to contact -- Milton "Skip" Johnson. He is a world class designer of racing canoes & kayaks, and happens to be a friend of mine from Texas. People literally spend thousands of dollars on exotic fabrics and resins to build his designs for the most serious of paddling races around the world such as the Texas Water Safari, The Ruta Maya, and many others. The photo to the right is one of the many boats he has designed and built, it was for a $50 sailboat race. In that race, all the boats had to be made with $50 or less of materials. Most of the boats entered in the race were various forms of trash that was duct taped together, leave it to Skip to push it to the max.

About Skip's $50 Boat
Let me digress for a moment - the boat type in the photo is called a "proa". Most sailboats will "tack" in the wind, meaning it will go back and forth as it goes upwind. A proa will "shunt" which means that instead of taking the wind over the other side, it will change directions and sail backwards, so the wind always blows over the same side of the boat. The sail is made of Tyvek that I belive came for free from a construction site dumpster, that was the only thing he got for free. The big hull and the small hull both came from 2 sheets of luan. It looks like they have decking on top, but they really have more tyvek to keep the water out. The cross beam he is sitting on is actually made from cardboard, covered in paper with clear tape. I gently squeezed it at the race, it REALLY IS cardboard. For more info, see the $50 race and messabout page.

About Skip's Design "Cookie Monster"
I explained the cause, and Skip came on board immediately. He came up with some really radical ideas, but because of the gang start, a lot of the exotic stuff had to be tossed out the window. Also since it is his first cardboard design (and my first one to build), we should probably stick with a simple solution. Skip uses special boat designing software and after given the specs, he used computer models of the size and weights of our girls to create made a boat just for them. The boat worked out so well, that it's design is now TOP SECRET. If you are Girl Scouts troop leader, you can contact me thru the council program director with your troop info and I'd be glad to share the design & construction details with you.

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