John Welsford Boats

To date i have built 16 boats Designed by John Welsford www.jwboatdesigns.co.nz
3 whaler’s 3 Navigators 2 pathfinders 2 Danuals boats 3 tender behinds 2 Johanser’s a fish hook

Building a jig for the whaler.  I built this first as it is a useful bench to scarf the ply for the bottom board and stringers and any other long timbers needed for the whaler.
Scarfing ply bottom boards using a power plane to remove the bulk of the timber and then hand finish with smoothing plane.
The stem and stern are laminated on jigs made out of 18mm ply and 75×50 pine glued and screwed  to make a ridged former with 6mm bolts to clamp the laminations down tight.
Base has been installed. Centercase and its bulkheads were installed first then the stem, stem and intermediate bulkheads.
All bulkheads are in, now to tie the hole lot to the roof and each other both for and aft and side to side before steaming the gunnels and bottom stringers in.
Stern bulkheads showing the Kwela out board mounting bracket and the bits of ply left in on the last bulkhead to hold it in line untill the bottom stringers and gunnels are installed.
Stringers going on gunnels installed  ready to install planking.
Mast step bulkhead detailers 9mm ply gusset with timber frames
Tank sides are installed seats are going right through bow to stirn cutouts in seats are going to become lockers/storage
Planking underway one row to go check points done on each frame ready to bevel the rest of 
the planks.  
Checking  the bevels are right at each frame.
Planks are dry fitted and scarfing  is done in place with a disk grinder once all three peaces of the plank are all fitted and checked for an even curve along the length of the  boat and good joints they are removed edges dressed then glued and screwed into place.

Fitting seat tops and seat supports to hull ready to fix tops down engine well is almost finished  just have to cove and tape all corners and edges of cut out she is going to be left in the water over summer so every thing has to be well sealed.

  • Excellent boat 
    John Pat will have lots of fun in her.

All painted up on her trailer and ready to sail a two pot paint system was used and decks oil on wood work.

On our first sail we discovered a few little teething problems with the center plate and the rig.
To start of with we had lots of lee helm we looked at raking the rig but this made no difference – so we went back to the drawings to double check our measurements and position of mast all checked out.
I then checked the position of the plate when it was down and found the lifting arm was to short I had to add 200mm to its length this helped a lot but not enough. I Emailed John and asked him to check the position of the rig and he discovered the rig was to far forward I moved it back to the aft edge of the seat what a difference she is now a very well balanced boat and a pleaser to sail . Hull speed 5 – 5.5 Knots  we were getting 6-6.5 Knots on a reach in 10 – 15 Knots of wind I took her out in 15-25 Knots with full sail we had a ball at one point we had the 60kg center plate vibrating and lifting. foam and spray flying every were as we shot down the face of a wave in total control we discovered in those conditions and surfing you need a plug in the engine well as the water surges up onto the seats and you get a wet bum even in those conditions she was a very dry boat and easy to handle I would not hesitate to take her across the straits to the sounds.