Trawler, River Launch, Solar Electric Boat Trawler Books, River Launch Books, Solar Electric Boat Books

Welcome to our website of our boat projects and unique boating designs.

There are three boats featured on this site:


1-Our 1976 Marine Trader-40 trawler that we are totally rebuilding. So far, about 4 1/2 years into it, we are still having fun. This boat, obviously, is a long term project and will be our retirement cruiser at some point.

We have taken hundreds of photos over the years and hope to get them posted in some logical format soon. There are quite a few of these older Taiwan built trawlers that are still roaming around the seas and as for our boat, was heavily chained to a small backwater marina dock near Tampa for 16 years until we found her.

After 2 1/2 years of hard work, we cruised her down, with her original engines to her new homeport in Bradenton, FL.

Free free to contact us with your questions or comments about how we did our repairs.

For details on our Marine Trader trawler, click here:

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Here's a boat that I built when I first moved to Florida in 2004. I had built a couple of them back up near Annapolis, MD as a hobby but thought that I might actually go into the business of converting old centerboard sailboats into pretty 1890's River Launches.

I found out fairly quickly that building boats outside in hot, steamy Florida weather was not the same as building a boat in Maryland summertime. Also, we have billions of creatures called "Lovebugs" that just love to implant themselves in uncured epoxy and fresh varnish.

I built one boat and then moved on to other endevours. The website that I made for my "Quiet Craft" boat is very complete in regard of how to build one of these boats with tons of photos and commintary from the bare hull when we brought the original boat home, to the finished boat.

No I do not not build these boats anymore. At some point I'd like to build, as a hobby, a smaller version, maybe about 12' to 14' but that's for another day and way after our trawler is finished.

Have fun looking at the QuietCraft photos.

For details on our QuietCraft 1890's River Launch, please click here:
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Here's one more fun boat that I built several years ago. I'm in the Photovoltaic (electricity from sunlight) business ( www.photontek.com ) and thought that I might be a good idea to adapt an old Sol-Cat 18' catamaran over to electric trolling motor power, recharged with solar panels.

It was a great idea but we found that the currents, tides and wind in this part of Florida were a bit too strong for this concept to work well on days that were not very smooth and calm.

Nice idea and the design worked well as long as the cruise conditions are good.

For details on our Solar Powered/Recharged Electric Lake Catamaran, please click here:
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