[From the SCA archives]
“I don’t want to build a Laguna, Chuck,” I whined. “It’s a great looking boat, but this was my last Texas200; I’m not coming back. And I don’t need a boat like that for the rivers and ponds back home.”
Undaunted—and quite possibly undauntable—Chuck gently pressed his case, “Last Texas200? Isn’t that what you said last year? Jim Michalak designed the Laguna to be just like a Puddle Duck Racer, only for grownups. It’s cheap and easy to build and it looks like it’ll go fast.”
Chuck had poked me where I was most vulnerable. I’ve built several PDRs, was the 2008 Pan-Galactic, Inter-Dimensional World PDR Champion, and had sailed them in the Texas200 for two years running. “A Laguna is 23 feet long! I don’t want a boat like this. I have no place for it.“
“You can sell it!” Chuck is always ready with a solution. “There’ll be lots of folks who’ll be interested in it.”
“That won’t work. I’m a terrible builder—more enthusiastic than skilled. I can’t bring myself to charge money for a boat I’d built.”
“So give it away. I’m sure someone will want it.” Chuck is persistent if nothing else.
“Give it to someone who’ll use it once then drag it around back and let it rot with the rest of their boats? Or what if he sells it, pockets the cash, then blames me when something goes wrong. No way. The only way I’d build that boat is if I could come down here, sail it in the Texas200, then burn it on the beach at the end.”
“That’s great!” Chuck laughed. “This is Texas—we can have bonfires on the beach!” He stuffed the envelope of plans into my hands, clapped me on the back, and walked off.
Back at home in Oregon, I started thinking about the Laguna in earnest. I decided to make this into a stunt—a spectacle to generate interest in the Laguna sailboat design: easy to build, looks great, sails like greased lightning, and cheap cheap cheap. My solution was to do a beach build. Show up, slap it together, sail it for 200 miles, then burn it on the other end. It’d be like a real life Super Bowl commercial.
I’d done “instant builds” at boat shows before, and they aren’t easy. I’d have to dry-assemble the entire boat, make the sails, masts, spars, mast partners and steps, rudder, rudder head, tiller, leeboard mount, leeboard, keel, and plan the rigging. Anticipating the logistics of a beach build is a herculean effort.
The winter of 2009/2010 was long, wet, and miserable, and I spent it assembling the boat in an unheated barn. I didn’t work very hard on her, maybe an hour or two here and there, and I was amazed at how quickly and easily she came together. The plans were clear and concise and everything just sort of went together—almost like Jim Michalak knows how to design a boat.
In April of 2010, I took the bare hull to the Depoe Bay Wooden Boat Show. Sitting in the parking lot, covered in white primer paint, the Laguna didn’t look all that impressive. It’s hard to show how easy a boat is to build when it is sitting on a trailer.
After the boat show, I finished out the Laguna. To make sure she caught the eye, I painted her bright, shocking pink (not just pink, pink!) As June 2010 rolled around, I took her all apart, packed her onto a trailer, joined up with Jon Kowitz, a fellow PDR enthusiast, and headed to Texas.
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