Hi Jon,
Great! Glad its the very thing, for you and your kids. Glad you conquered the BBS connection. I am with you, I am old to boat building, but new to this BBS too. If you get stuck on the BBS again, be sure to e-mail someone, off BBS, who posts here. I got stuck on posting pictures a few weeks ago and got some great help from Roger. If this gang of virtual BBS'ers and reality boat builders is anything, they are incredibly friendly and are fall all over themselves helpful.

I went back through and read the dubber directions. It's actually 2 sheets of plywood. (Sorry for the miss info.) With some left over from the second sheet. So the cost will be more like $16 dollars if ya buy the cheap stuff. There were a few dubbers on the beach at Rendezvous this past year. One was made of Luan board. The onboard floatation is scrap blue board insulation. The fiberglass needed, can be as little as just the tape to do the joints. What is also neat, is that it only takes a week to build one. The designer claims to be able to knock one out in 5 days of part time work.

On the cost thing: The designer (Peter Hunt) I think is too gracious with his plans. 15 dollars will buy a fleet of as many as ya care to make. After meeting him, it is my sense that he is more interested in seeing folks in boats, then on profiting from his efforts. Still, given the grins my kids are going to rip on these things. I am planning to write him a check for 15 bucks for each one I knock out. Just like I would do for any of the other designers licensing fees. Yeah I know he isn't asking for it, However, I figure we gotta keep these design guys in business, and given Mr. Hunt's current pricing I can't see him staying at it for very long. Just a suggestion on my part.

If the dubber is anything; it is adaptable. Some of the ones on the beach last year had centerboards. Some had swing-up rudders. There were singles and doubles. I am sure that with a centerboard on a big dubber it would be pretty easy to figure out how to make a mast and mount for a small sailing rig. The thing, I liked about the dubber most, was that its a great boat to teach young kids the basics of boating. Its a boat they can succeed in instantly and safely, and have fun practicing skills acquired by play. Rather then a new frustration that has to be worked hard to be learned. Its that "I did it! and all by myself!" thing. It keeps the joy in it. Its also a project I think the kids and I can build together.

Dubbers will surely never win a beauty contest. However, as a design they should be given all kinds of awards. If boats are an amalgam of tradeoffs sitting in the water, Dubbers are all function over form. As for stability...Well my kids are 4 and 5 and I let them out on Lake Winepasaukee in NH in October in the dubbers. Calm evening and Dad paddling right behind. Yup I'm planning to knock out a few of them too. It will be a great thing to see all the neighbor kids dubbing on the neighborhood lake!

My biggest challenge at the moment concerning dubbers is, I gave the plans to my kids as a present, and they want to get started imediatly. They keep showing up in the shop with the pictures of the dubbers and reaching for their tool belts and asking me if I am ready yet?....However, we still have 2 GE yaks and a canoe in the shop that we are enjoying. I had some ideas on next projects etc. However, I think once we get these present projects cleared, we are going to take a month and knock out a few dubbers with the kids.

Enjoy!

RUSS