Chris Waite

[Chris Waite]

Arrived Winter Solstice 1948 and apparently attempted self-baptism by bilge water the very next year.  Subsequently learnt to sail in dinghies at father’s knee and was later obliged to ply the medical trade to occasional, unsuspecting, shore-side patients to support my habit.  A model boat builder since infancy, I properly advanced to designing and building my day-dreams, while spending the 1990’s caring for the Royal Navy of Oman, out in Muscat.

My maxim is “Cut according to the cloth”; that is four by eight foot ply and the blessings of epoxy, which fills holes and holds like no other, allowing me – the average bodger, to hew out any approximation that comes to mind.  I don’t do shiny smart, I do cardboard prototype, fits where it touches, overbuild, round off the edges and roll on 2-pack polyurethane.  However I do like shapely and lovely lines can be created out of simple, rather than compound, curves:



Yum Yum – ten foot dory; 1 ply sheet floor.



Jaembea – thirty-two foot dory, 4 sheets a side.
Tandem gaff-rigs over centre-plates; for a chum.



Too Ticky – twenty-four foot proa.
3 half sheets a side, ‘settee’ rigged.



Tit Willow – sixteen foot, gaff-rigged, pocket cruiser.
2 ply sheets long, three planks a side, with centreplate.
A half scale prototype for one that got away.



Octavia – sixteen foot, two-part, rowing skiff.
2 sheets for the hull producing eight identical
half-planks with negligible waste.

As of Autumn 2010, two of our braver members are actually building CW previously untried designs, one miniscule, two-part, stacking, pram tender based on a single sheet and recently a sixteen foot, 2 sheet, sailing canoe.

The garage is crammed with bits, boats, models and pin-up plans and I am currently busy with a nine foot GRP shell that has only been waiting a quarter of a century.  Mean time, I seem to have advanced to ‘Opinionated Old Goat’

Stop me and try one?