WOW! What a Wonderful gathering of projects! Mr. Coppenger has been busy...And we are very glad to see the results of his efforts! His selection of projects is a great one: A Weekender, a Mini-Cup, a Vector, and a Kayak! The Weekender is our most popular project for good reason: It's a wonderful boat, and a great size. The Mini-Cup is a personal favorite of mine, and a really good sailer (I know, as spent MANY hours sailing ours when I was about ten years old). The Vector is just amazingly fun — Sailcars are another level of sailing excitement. And the Vector and Mini-Cup share the same rig, which is handy! The Kayak is also a fun project, and it was our first foray into electric boating (the Kayak is designed to mount a trolling motor at the stern for quiet electric boating, and it was our first look at how much more peacful electric boating is! We added electric motors to our Weekenders, and the whole concept led us to build the 36' Valkyrie experimental Solar-Electric sailing catamaran in 1987, and that led to several smaller solar electric catamarans, culminating in the SoleXplor boats! So the Kayak is a special project for us.

We love the light blue and white color choice, and it's Great to see a tarp sail and a Visqueen Lateen rig (clear polyethylene sheet). Those are the original styles these projects had when we designed them. More recently, we've been making our Lateen rig sails from tarp material, but it brings back excellent memories to see the clear sail! Nice touch.

We hope to see more photos from Mr. Coppenger, perhaps more details and a shot of the Mini-Cup! Well, done, Keith!

Mr. Coppenger has modified his Vector a bit: He's using a different steering system. Personally, I think I'd opt for the stock system, as it allows one to hike out on the side wings (which was a large part of the fun, and of the design concept of the Vector.)

Below, one can see the Kayak transome being used to mount fold-up wheels where a trolling motor would usually be mounted (if one wanted to use an electric drive system).

Click on photos for larger versions.

In the photo above, one can see that Mr. Colppenger has opted for a tiller on his Weekender, rather than the steering wheel system. This is a simple modification which a number of our builders chooe. I prefer the steering wheel system, personally, as it takes up less space in the cockpit and is almost as fast and responsive as a tiller (we desgned it more like a wagstaff, almost, rather than the slower-acting wheel systems on larger boats.) This is one of the fun aspects of building your own projects: You get to set them up the way YOU want!