Plans & Kits - Plans by designer - Jim Michalak - Page 1

Sow's Ear Plans

SOW'S EAR, CUDDY POWERBOAT, 15,5' X 6', 600 POUNDS EMPTY Sow's Ear is somewhere between a shantyboat like my Shanteuse and a cuddy power skiff like AF4. It has a lot more room in the cabin than does AF4 but a lot less than Shanteuse. And...

Vireo Plans PDF

LIGHT ROWBOAT, 12' X 45", 60 POUNDS EMPTY Vireo is a very light and simple boat with lines that make for very surprising performance. A while back I built a dink called WeeVee which was the usual 7-1/2' long. It had a V bottom full length and had to be...

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Picara Plans PDF

CABIN SAILBOAT, 18' X 6", 1300 POUNDS EMPTY A while back I presented a design called Fatcat2 which was a 15' x 6' unballasted sailing cuddy catboat. It is still in the prototype catalog, although one was built a few years ago but never used to...

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Normsboat Plans PDF

CABIN SAILBOAT, 18' X 5-1/2", 600 POUNDS EMPTY Normsboat was designed for Norm Wolf of Washington D.C. to join a group of trailer traveling shallow water sailors. He wanted the ability to motor and self rescue in a knockdown. Simplicity of...

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Hapscut Plans PDF

SAILING PRAM, 18' X 6.5', 450 POUNDS EMPTY Hapscut, Sailboat, 18' X 6.5', 450 POUNDS EMPTY In 2010 I was lucky enough to sail the TX200 with Chuck Leinweber in his Caprice. Chuck had me design Laguna just for this event and the Laguna fleet did quite...

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DarcyBryn Plans

CABIN SAILBOAT, 15' X 6', 800 POUNDS EMPTY Darcy Bryn is the new name of the "Billsboat" project that was discussed here a while back (see the November 2009 back issues). The idea was for a solo cruiser with good rough water capabilities. The issue of...

Cormorant Plans PDF

CORMORANT, CABIN SAILBOAT, 32' X 8', 2500 POUNDS EMPTY Cormorant is the largest boat I've ever designed. I always warn folks to think twice and three times before building a big boat because you can buy a good used glass boat for less, maybe a lot less...

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Caroline Plans PDF

SAILBOAT, 18' X 6', 750 POUNDS EMPTY Caroline started as a blend of Philsboat and Frolic2. The idea was for a little more cabin room than Philsboat and hopefully with the same seakeeping ability that Frolic2 has demonstrated. I made it a...

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AF3 Plans PDF

AF3 plans come with two sailplans: the original sharpie spritsail (as seen in the photo below) and a balanced lugsail option. AF3, CUDDY SHARPIE, 16' X 5', 250 POUNDS EMPTY The AF3 (the original design study was called "Alison's Fiddle") prototype was...

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Twister Plans

An AF4 builder might face the difficult choice of maybe building a boat like Twister instead. It's quite a different boat from AF4 but comes out of about the same pile of wood and labor. Twister is a bit smaller and won't go as fast but it...

RB42 Plans PDF

Herb McLeod lives in western Canada and likes to tease the rest of us with photos like the one above. Beautiful! Here is his RB42 out camping with two aboard.RB42 is a row boat for two! The prototype was built by Herb McLeod of Edmonton, Alberta. Look...

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Robote Plans PDF

Robote was designed for Frank Kahr of Rhode Island strictly as a rowing boat, very light and simple and fast and seaworthy. Frank had started a few years back with my WeeVee design shown here:What surprised both Frank and me was that both of our WeeVee's...

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Jon20 Plans PDF

Poor Jon20, he's just a big dumb jonboat. 20 feet long and 6' wide on the bottom, 7.5' wide on the top. It takes a ton to set it 4" down in the water, and I expect the empty hull might weigh 600 pounds. So let's say she weighs about a half ton with a...

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Sportdory Plans PDF

Sportdory is an attempt to improve upon the Bolger/Payson dory I built about 15 years ago. This boat is slightly smaller than my old dory. In particular the bow is lower in hopes of cutting windage. the stern is mostly similar. The center cross section...

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Caprice Plans PDF

BACKGROUND...About 15 years ago I built a Payson Canoe and used it for several years before selling it. I replaced it about 10 years ago with my Toto double paddle canoe. Toto has the same multichine cross section as the Payson Canoe but I tried for a...

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Scram Pram Plans PDF

Scram Pram is an interesting boat that I designed for Wil Gordon of Houston a few years ago. He built the prototype shown above, including making that multicolored sail. Wil had owned some production pocket cruisers and had sailed in Karl James' Jewelbox...

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IMB Plans PDF

IMB features a "Birdwatcher" cabin, full length with panoramic windows and a center walkway slot in the roof. Everyone rides inside. This style of boat was invented by Phil Bolger in the early 1980's.These boats can be self righting with minimal, or no,...

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Vireo 14 Plans PDF

Vireo14 is a 14' version of the original 12' Vireo which was quite popular with all of its builders. In this case the extra length comes from a straight "stretch" of the original design. By that I mean that the same cross sections were used but now...

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Larsboat Plans PDF

buy Trilars plans to make Larsboat into a trimaran Larsboat was built by Lars Hasselgren to replace a Folboat that had finally met its end. Lars wanted capacity for two, plus decking, as with his old boat. I took Toto and...

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Mayfly 12 Plans

Mayfly12 is a small general purpose row/sail skiff based on the lines of the traditional flat iron skiffs of 100 years ago. By that I mean she has a nearly vertical stem, flaring sides from the midsection to the stern, and a raking stern. And she has...

Brucesboat Plans PDF

BRUCESBOAT, POWER SKIFF, 19' X 5', 250 POUNDS EMPTY Bruce was looking for a large powered canoe but couldn't find one for sale. He said they still make them by hand in Maine but he was in California and you couldn't expect to buy one anyway unless you...

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Wooboto Plans PDF

Steve Chambers out in California had built a Roar2 very quickly, in two or three weeks as I recall, and had gone off rowing with it and liked it a lot. He started looking for a design to learn sailing. He was thinking of my old Woobo design but got to...

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AF4 Plans - PDF

AF4 is a simple low powered cuddy cruiser intended for protected waters. Kilburn Adams of St. Louis brought a boat similar in spirit to AF4 to our Midwest Messabouts and it was easy to see what a good idea this is. Kiburn's boat was a modified Sturdee...

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Toots Plans

Toots is a 10' flat iron rowing skiff, about half way between serious skiffs like my QT and the typical pram. Toots will have the capacity to carry two normal size adults because it has enough rocker to float 450 pounds with its ends still well clear of...

Dani Jay Plans

Dani Jay is the chosen name of the project I called Bobsboat in last year's essays. The idea behind it was to have an easily driven seaworthy launch that would take a bunch of adults around in a laid back style. It was not to be a planing boat so big...

Toon2 Plans

Toon2 is in almost every way a multichine version of the AF3. I think these multichine hulls are more like round bilge hulls in that I keep the upper chine above any normal waterline so only the very easy lower chine flows through the water. Other boats...

Raider Plans

Norm Wolfe built his Normsboat to my design so we were acquainted. He visits the Baltic countries regularly and had participated in a "Raid" in Finland and was going to make it a regular thing, maybe with his own boat. A Raid is a pseudo race with boats...

AF4 GRANDE Plans PDF

Af4 Grande is a 20% scaleup of the original AF4. Scaling a design can be interesting. If the design is scaled up by a factor of1.2 as it was here then the areas of all the panels are increased by a factor of 1.2 squared (1.2 times 1.2) which is 1.44...

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Piragua Plans PDF

The photo above is of a Piragua built by Bob Taylor down in Texas. Piragua is a very simple useful boat. I probably get more Piragua photos than of any other boat, an indication that more Piraguas get built. Piragua is made from two sheets of 1/4"...

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Mayfly 14 Plans PDF

Mayfly14 is a straight forward flat bottomed plywood skiff for sailing and rowing. She's easy to build because her planks have no twists. That means that the chine log and wale bevels are constant for all practical purposes and can be presawn before...

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Paddleplank Plans

Can you walk this plank? Actually the request was for a stand up paddle board, sort of like a surf board that is paddled while you stand up like on a real surf board shooting the big waves in Hawaii.I had all sorts of reasons for not designing it, the...

Imresboat plans PDF

Imresboat is a slimmed up version of Larsboat which was designed for Lars Hasselgren to replace a Folboat that had finally met its end. Lars wanted capacity for two, plus decking, as with his old Folboat. But Imre wanted something more slender and...

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Ladybug Plans PDF

Ladybug is a lot like Woobo which was one of my first designs. There was a Woobo near here for a while. I never got to sail it but was told it would really fly. (That boat was made of Lauan plywood from Home Depot which fell to pieces after rainwater...

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Jonsboat Plans Instant Download

Jonsboat is just a jonboat. But where I live that says a lot because most of the boats around here are jonboats and for a good reason. These things will float on dew if the motor is up. This one shows 640 pounds displacement with only 3" of draft. That...

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Woobo Plans PDF

Woobo was designed for the "perfect skiff" competition that Wooden Boat magazine had about ten years ago (hence the name "Woobo"). I didn't win anything and the experience led me to never enter another contest. Although the contest was well conceived I...

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Vector Plans

Every now and then I draw up a sailboat with a centerboard. A boat with a centerboard can have a prettier rig sometimes because the rig does not have to be centered over the hull's widest beam, as it does with a leeboard boat. But the sail area still has...

Skat Plans PDF

Long time readers may recall this design as being in the prototypes section a while back. One was being built and nearly completed when the builder had to put it aside to work on some realities of life, something that happens to all of us from time to...

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Mixer2 Plans PDF

Eventually I tweaked Mixer to have a "through the water" bow. It's the same change that Roar went through to become Roar2. I called the new boat Mixer2 and here are some lines of it.The rest of the boat is identical to Mixer although it appears that I...

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Robbsboat Plans

Robb really probably wanted a Matt Leydon cruiser like Paradox but was put off by the complexity and small size. It has been a while since I saw Paradox plans but I think the "complexity" of the design is mostly in the details that made such a small boat...

AF4 BREVE Plans PDF

"Dear Jim, I've got to tell you - that little AF4b of yours is a marvel.I've logged close to a thousand miles on her so far, through streams,rivers, canals, bays, sounds, and even one unplanned foray intothe wide Atlantic*; in blazing sunshine, driving...

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Vole Plans

Vole evolved from WeeVee. She is a lot less extreme in the deep V department, but more extreme in the beam. In particular Vole should be a lot better as a knockabout sailer.Vole is a large dink. In particular Vole is short enough to be called a dink but...

Jewelbox Plans PDF

Here is a boat that is supposed to be self righting to a great degree without ballast! Jewelbox has the combination proven by Bolger's Birdwatcher of high sides with a thick bottom and low down crew weight to act as ballast. Karl James told me his boat...

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Piccup Squared Plans PDF

Piccup Pram was my first design to get built. Here is a photo of Chris Feller's up Chicago way. She is shown with the original 55 square foot rig. I still have the boat. The sail rig has been experimented with many times but the hull is identical today...

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Toto Plans Instant Download

Toto has been my most successful design. Initially she was an experiment to test a new bow shape - a deep V bow that blends into a multichine well aft. There's a twist in the bow bilge panels and at the time I didn't know how to expand those panels on...

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Musicbox2 Plans

...its the same as Musicbox3 but with a bow transom. Musicbox2 looks a lot like a shallow draft Micro and that's what she's supposed to be. I helped build a Micro a few years back and have spent several hours sailing one in both light and heavy winds...

Vamp Plans PDF

After the success Frank Kahr had with Robote I designed a smaller version with most of the same features. The idea was to get a fast and seaworthy boat that would cartop so easily that you would want to leave it on the car top more or less all the...

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Weevee Plans

I think I built WeeVee in 1993. I still have the original. A DEEP V DINK...I had done several flat bottomed and multichined boats by the time I was thinking of WeeVee and wanted some first hand experience with a V bottom. I decided to go with a small...

OliveOyl Plans PDF

OliveOyl was designed for someone who liked AF3 but wanted more cabin room and comfort, but not more length. So I actually had some AF4breve drawings handy when I drew the lines for the new boat. Although Olive is the same length as AF3 the cabin is...

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Twixt Plans

After using Piccup Squared for a few years, I redid the bow into a warped V entry and called it Twixt. The bow bottom is slit on centerline and twisted on each side about 30 degrees. It's a common shape among aluminum johnboats and William Jackson did a...

Catbox Plans

Note: You can purchase Catbox plans by using the "Add to Cart" button above, or you can download a free PDF file containing the plans by clicking HEREIn recent years I've seen several PDR boats at our Rend Lake meets. Chuck Leinweber asked me to...

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Jim Michalak