Early Cat Racing in California

Before Steve and Linda Dashew became famous for their innovative blue water cruising yachts, both power and sail, they raced catamarans at the center of the growing multihull movement - Southern California in the early 60’s. Steve has put up a page at Set Sail with some great archival images of the catamaran racing scene back in the day. Rudy Choy, Warren Seaman, Bob Reese, Mickey Munoz, Phil Edwards, they knew and raced them all. Go check it out.

Blackout

Proafile will be blacked out on January 18 in protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. We’re also supposed to be getting a huge snow storm in Seattle tonight, so if Proafile is not back online by Jan 19, you’ll know why!

The Golden Gate - Mini Camper

I found this electric-powered mini-camper by architect Jay Nelson at Tiny House Blog. I like the faceted, polyhedron style, all done up in plywood, plexiglass and epoxy. See more of his work at JayNelsonArt.com

Santa’s New Sled

Well look at that, Santa’s got a new sled! Hope everyone got the present they really wanted this year… *checking stocking* nope, just more coal. Ah well… hope yours was a merry Xmas, and happy new year!

Santa pic straight from the horse’s mouth.

The Life Pneumatic

I have a longstanding interest in pneumatic (pressurized) engineering structures. Blame it on Jacques Cousteau and his Zodiacs making a strong impression at an early age. For boats, inflatable hulls make all kinds of sense, being unusually light, strong, tough, and repairable. I even made a concept sketch of an inflatable hulled proa.

Here is Kurt Heiligenmann’s design for an inflatable beach cat - the Smartkat. Hate the name (I always hated the Smart Car because it implied that whoever purchased it was also “smart” and conversely, those of us who didn’t were less so), but this boat really IS brilliant. A 14’, 93 lb. rocket that fits into two canvas bags - store your beach cat in the closet, under the bed, or take it on your next flight to Ibiza.

Dugout Road Canoe

If “canoe” means a vessel for traveling, then it fits. From Tiny House Blog.

Zol Fox emailed me an interesting article showing some of the logging history of the Northwest and included in the email a couple of pictures of tiny houses built from hollowed out logs. The size of the trees that were taken down in the Northwest 150 years ago is something impressive. We are not likely to see anything like this in this area ever again.

Imagine the mighty proa you could build from that!

Viking XX - the Solar Proa

I’ll bet you didn’t know a proa won second place in the first solar race ever held in the United States! Originally called Sunrayce USA, the first race was organized and sponsored by General Motors in 1990 in an effort to promote automotive engineering and solar energy among college students. The original, 1,800 mi (2,900 km) Sunrayce USA route started at Disney World in Orlando, Florida and ended at the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan.