There’s always another boat, “Believe me my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” So says Ratty to Mole in wind of the willows. Even now with 5 decent boatbuilding projects behind me I hear the siren song of a 12 m catamaran calling my name. This is the story of the next boat that I built, I will put a little proviso here that in many respects looking back I wish I had just laid down the money and bought a boat as at the time this would have enabled me to cultivate my relationship with my kids differently, I don’t regret building any of my boats as the experience has been very rewarding and they have certainly cost far less to build than to buy.

however they are a significant time investment and the reality is that you never get back the time that you did not spend with your kids. Don’t get me wrong I am a very adventurous person and my kids went topaz mining, skiing, holidaying in other countries, we camped and went 4wd’ing we fished and dived but things could have been different if i had continued to invest the time in them rather than building a boat.

Anyway I wanted to pass on my love of the ocean to my kids and so I built an 8.5m Powercat after purchasing some plans off designer Peter Kerr for a highly efficient displaning catamaran. This boat would be 8.5 m long 2.8m wide trailer able and do 22 knots with 2 60hp motors with up to 10 people on board making it extremely economic to run and use. Photo’s will be updated as they are located.