Aussie Boats for East Timor

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This story came from John Welsford.

If you fancy Trover, John sells plans from his website.

Products, designs, opinions and concepts on this page have passed the first taste as being worthy of your attention. I cannot however take responsiblity for the eventual outcome of purchasing, using or incorporting any of these.

WOODENBOATS FOR EAST TIMOR

You wouldn't expect a site like woodenboat.net.nz to take a political stance would you? After all a boat is a boat wherever you go and unless it's lobbing shells or missiles in your direction you will have some affinity with that boat over there. East Timor is a different kettle of fish. For a start its getting awfully close to New Zealand and given the high incidence of political instability around the Pacific Basin you cannot turn the other cheek. There is hardly an island nation that is not embroilled in some conflict. Mercifully in most cases it is a sort of Gilbert and Sullivan type farce of the Westminister style of government. Impeachments, votes of no confidence, nepotisim, despotism but without bloodshed. East Timor was different and the thumbnail is something like this; a land governed by tribal laws is "discovered' and claimed by Portugal as one of its colonies then relinquished and annexed by Indonesia who then shipped masses of Indonesians into the country resulting in a conflict that is reputed to have claimed over 200,000 lives. After years of struggle the United Nations declared that East Timor should have independence and then allowed Indonesia to arm a pro-Jakata militia. When Indonesia pulled its military and police withdrew (systematically destroying every building and piece of equipment they has used or occupied) embarked on a campaign of ethnic and economic destruction that has few parallels in recent history. A search on East Timor in your search engine will bring up a wealth of information from very legitimate agencies. In a nutshell the politicians sat on their hands claiming procedures had to be followed before a military intervention force, firstly from Australia and New Zealand and later from the UN moved in to protect the East Timorese. There are not many people in this small country who do not know somebody who has been or is on peace keeping duties in East Timor. As part of this Jakata orchestrated campaign all of the canoes and the fishing vessels of the East Timorese were destroyed by the militia. To cut to the chase, a group of Australians got together and created ABET [Aussie Boats for East Timor] for the design of a boat they turned to John Welsford. Asked to come up with a cheap easily built canoe that could start the rebuilding of their fleet John Welsford developed the Fat Canoe.

John continues the story: I had a phone call from Barry Wicks of ABET ( Aussie Boats for East Timor ) to say that he was on his way up there to introduce the Fat Canoe prototype to the local population. The boat had performed very nicely on the river near Barrys home in Northern New South Wales and had been shipped up to the troubled state complete with fishing nets, paddles and everything else needed to help support a villages fishing needs. Barry has not been anywhere like this before and is pretty excited about the trip and is looking forward to showing off the new boat. During the conversation he dropped on me the news that the UN had just had several hundred 15HP Yamaha outboard motors delivered to Dili, there are of course no boats for them, and (this on Monday) “ I’m leaving on Thursday, and could you draw something that would suit?” O K ! Life gets interesting don’t it. Here we go. 15 HP, two people, short haul coastal fishing, kitsetted in Aussie with very basic tooling and flat packed in a standard container, assembled by unskilled labour using hand tools only, very cheap ( very important), good load carrier, stable, super seaworthy and with good working space for the crew. I got the drawings below done and away, along with the fax about the boat which is also there. They need an awful lot of them and it will be very interesting to see how it goes. A couple of people who have seen the drawings tell me that there could be a very good market for the plans so perhaps they might appear in places other than East Timor. Barry, Meet Trover The name means a gatherer, she takes 6 sheets of 9mm construction ply, 70 lin m of 75x25 dressed treated pine, 1.4m of 200x50, half a dozen cartridges of “No More Nails” and a handful each of galv flathead nails and self tapping ss screws. I recon there would be about $500 in materials if you painted her with plastic paint. There is no twist in the chine or topside panels, most of the pieces of ply are straight rips evenly divided into the 1200 width of a ply sheet. Sides are 400, chines aft are also 400 while the forward chine panel come out two in a sheet width. Transom is 600 high, frames are ex 70x20 ( finished ) simple laps at the corners, the bottom is two 600 wide layers laminated up on a jig to the ski shape and the srtingers bent on and glued. Note that the constant angles mean you should be able to bevel all the stringers and frames on your table saw. I have taken some of the frame heads high to provide tying off points for towing, anchoring, nets or whatever, the gunwale is solidly reinforced by three 70x20 with blocking so she will take some abuse, note also the sacrificial skids at the edge of the bottom panel. Yamaha San sits in his own well, as far forward as I think he can go and still steer the boat, there is a sealed tank each side, a seat each side forward of that, a clear area three frame bays long ( frames are at 600 centres) and a raised “seat” with sealed space under forward of that. I expect there to be enough bouyancy to float her with the motor clear if swamped. She is intended for no faster than 20 kn, will plane on about 10 hp with a couple of people and gear, with the 15hp Yamaha which is a pretty punchy unit she will lift 600 kg onto a soggy plane on a good day but will be quite sprightly with 500 kg . At this speed she will ride OK, but if the teenagers get a hold of her and run her flat out across a decent chop with no load she will shake their teeth out. If I make her so she would ride better I’d lose too much load carrying ability and would need more power. The compromises are consistent with the use we intend her for. She will flat pack well , is intended to be assembled upside down on extensions of the frames on a level surface and if you were not worried about a showroom finish should be able to assembled from a precut kit with built up frames in about 40 man hours including a slap with a brush. I recon she would be pretty useful on the river at your place. I look forward to your comment.