Great Houston Boat Tour, pt. 2

Next stop in the boat tour was Laurent’s house. His white proa is an impressive sight. Laurent is a very precise boatbuilder and his hulls look like they came from and aerospace manufacturer. Very nice stuff. He is also a tenacious sailor. For those who were at the 2009 Texas 200, Laurent is the guy who lost his rig halfway through the first day. His mast came out of the step in some chop in the Lower Laguna Madre and he had to let the boat drift to the shore, where miraculously, he re-raised the mast on the beach by himself. This is a 30 foot A Cat rig. I’m still not quite sure how he did it, but he assures me there was lots of yelling and cursing involved. Here is his boat in its current trailering configuration.

But it wasn’t always so. Previously, the boat has several feet more beam, making it too wide to legally trailer. And if it were turned on its side, it would be too tall as well. So Laurent came up with an interesting solution; split the difference!

Yep, that’s the proa turned to 45 degrees for trailering. I've always had visions of Laurent on the side of the highway trying to explain to the Texas State Trooper, in his thick French accent, how this technically complies with state law. (We had a special bail fund set up for him.) But alas, he had reduced the beam and now can trailer it just like a “normal” multihull.

Here is one of the nifty reversible rudders. I won’t try to explain the complexities of rudders on proas here, but I will say this solution, I believe invented by Kevin O’Neill, is pretty damned ingenious.

Even as I write this, Laurent and Kevin have sailed their proas over to Army Hole on Matagorda Island for a couple days of sailing and camping. I got this picture from Kevin last night.

And here is a short video of Laurent and his daughter ghosting along in light winds in Espiritu Santo Bay.

Next up was a trip over to Yves house to see his SportBoat 18. More on that soon.

Also, Goodfoot went 3D this Sunday. I have tons of pictures and am in the process of writing up a post on how the day proceeded. Stay tuned for more. If enough people click the “Follow” button, I will probably feel more pressure to get these posts up quickly. And comments are always welcome.