In 2009 I went on a huge USA tour for a series of events and talks and I took hundreds of photos of different boats, boatbuilders, messabouts and got access to secret parts of Maritime Museums.

I was partly funded by the sailing community including many of my friends in the wider homebuilt boat community.

It was a great time and learned a lot. Also set up a whole bunch of working relationships with people like Chuck and Sandra Leinweber of Duckworks, David Graybeal of Harbor Boatworks and Clint Chase of Boatkits fame.

And so many more. A brilliant USA tour

In the end the writing got to be too much so I started focussing on the photo albums and making sure they were heavily commented.

Here are all the articles and Photo sets.

Photos are whole photo sets – so you can look through them using the arrows on the photos

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Day 1 – San Francisco walk around the waterfront, town and Chinatown

Day 2 Chinatown, San Francisco Maritime Museum and Chinatown

Day 3 – San Francisco Asian Museum and more walking around the streets

Day 4 – San Francisco to Portland, Oregon by train and preparation for my talk

Day 6 – Columbia River Slough in Portland Oregon with Lon

Day 7,8,9 – Timothy Lake Small Boat Messabout with the Coots

Day 11 – Awesome back room and storage tour of Astoria Maritime Museum. Old outboards, Lifeboats, boats in storage

Day 12 – touring around Central Oregon with Andy Linn. The Oregon Trail, Volcanic Fields and Dams

Day 13 – Salt Lake City quick visit and Lake Powell for the Kokepelli small boat cruise. My first ever real canoe adventure and I like it despite being a sailor

Day 14 – Walk up a Slot Canyon in Colarado. We don’t have these in Australia!

Day 14.5 to 16 – fleet of canoes, rowboats, sailboats and trailer sailers heads down Lake Powell for a camping trip. I meet my first rattlesnake!

Day 20 – Colorado to Texas. Goosenecks and weird museums as promised to my brother. Smokey the Bear and Roswell – which is far more interesting than I thought. What USA tour is complete?

Day 23 to 25 – Resting down home with Chuck and Sandra in Texas hinterland. Looking at the Duckworks fleet of boats. And Chuck’s dad’s Gun Smith workshop

Day 32 – Driving to the Alamo. Meeting home boatbuilding genius St John of Bastock.

Day 32 and 33 – Philosophising with St John, and driving from Texas to Georgia

Day 34 to 36 – Puddleduck Regatta in Georgia. Meet many of my favourite people in the USA. One of the Oz Racers modified to meet the PDRacer rules wins the first of 4 yearly regattas.

Day 37 and 38 – Packing up when tent is flooded at night. Driving back to Texas with John Wright.

Day 39 t0 43 – Lake Conroe home built boat messabout. Visit to boat designer David Nichols’ workshop and on to Dallas by bus.

Day 44 and 45 – Dallas, Staying with Bryan Cull. Sailing the RAID 41 Expedition Sailing Dinghy Prototype – There’s a big story behind this. But found the boat well mannered and fun to sail in light to medium winds

Video of the RAID 41 doing its stuff.

RAID41 home made wooden boat by Michael Storer

Watch this video on YouTube

Day 26 to 48 – Orlando Florida with my cousins

Day 49 – design and construction at NASA Kennedy Space Centre

Day 51 – Museum of Modern Art and a bit of a walk around New York and Brooklyn.

Day 53 – Mystic Seaport Maritime Museum

Day 54 Portland for talk and more with Clint Chase. Find out that a large ship built of broken down pallets probably is not seaworthy. And another small boat messabout with a Yakaboo sailing canoe – Fenger!

Day 55 and 56 – Woodenboat at Maine hosted by Cark Cramer – I’m worn out and it is cold so I spend time in the Woodenboat library. Also see Carl’s 210 and visit some of the boatbulders.

And thence home to Adelaide!

It was kindof an impossible trip – my first USA tour. It was so long, almost 60 days, because of the kindness of my various hosts and the donations by people coming to the lectures or not coming to them.

I learned a huge amount. I hadn’t done any public speaking. The “Coots” group in Portland Oregon broke me in. After talking for 90 minutes I asked them if they wanted me to continue. They said yes which was a surprise.

All the things I had always wanted to say about boats and design came out.

So as they say … a journey of self discovery too.

And almost all of those friendships on the early days of social media turned out to be strong and close in reality … just as they were online.