The Bunyip
A newly designed 10-paddler boat for young and old.
For many years the Wooden Boat Centre built and maintained Dragon Boats. With the general adoption of a Chinese built standard boat our activities with Dragon Boats has declined to a minor maintenance role.
But as is often the case, a new direction suggested itself. Over the years we had often be asked about a 10-paddler boat (a standard Dragon Boat has 20 paddlers). There was interest in a small boat for training, for use with school groups and camps and generally for a second level boat that was light, could be easily trailered and stored.
To answer this challenge we had a boat drawn by our naval architect, (for stability and safety) and digitised by an engineer (for ease of production and economical building).
The prototype has been built and extensivel tested and we have confidence that it is the boat we hoped it would be.
We are calling this boat "Bunyip" to ensure that there is no confusion between this boat and a 20-paddler Dragon Boat. The Bunyips are an epoxy/plywood/glass construction which results in a very light, stiff boat with a long maintenance-free life.
With minimal instruction the Bunyips can be managed by young or old. The light weight means that launching and recovery are a simple process and they can be transported on a light, very basic trailer.
They will lend themselves to school or local competitions, even with only 2 boats. Racing over a short sprint courses and changing over crews, 6 or 8 teams could take part in a regatta that would provide exciting racing and a great spectacle. Of course this is the pattern of racing with 20-paddler boats. A limited number of boats are shared between teams to make a great day out.
We are presently building a boat to provide photographs for a "how-to-build" manual. This manual will be progressively added to this site so you can keep in touch with our progress.
Also in development are the heads and tails that are such a feature of Dragon Boats. We are putting together a "Dragon head" and a "Bunyip" head. We feel however that there is a great deal of scope for local or regional version of the heads. This will be a great opportunity for creativity and personalisation of the individual boats.
The boats are available as kits or as finished boats. The kits essentially use stitch-and-glue technology with all the parts, and the holes for the stitches, provided in 7 sheets of marine plywood. A specially designed finger-joint system makes joining the sheets fool-proof and enables the boats to be built in very few hours.
The heads are still in development, check back soon.
The "How to Manual" is beening finalized and will be added shortly.