Thread: Oldshoe

I reckon that boat got written up in an early edition of AABB.
Description of the ride was along the lines of:
"just like being in the cockpit of a cruising yacht, minus the cabin and expense."

If recall correctly, there was a problem with the tiller rendering the rudder U/S.
So they went sailing anyway, steering with the sails.

Hello AJ

I seem to remember that article too and think that boat was in Sydney, yes, wonder if it is the same boat? There can't be too many Oldshoes around. The bit about the boat feeling like a much bigger boat is sure true. The Micro (15' 4") feels like a much bigger boat than it is - very stable, solid and steady.

The Newcastle Oldshoe looks like it goes about well, even in quite a light breeze, too.

GregF

That oldshoe in the article was built by Heinrich Rose and had the bow extended to a point.

Article was by... me.

Wonder if it is on my computer still?

Probably not as there have been some disk crashes into the intervening years.

I couldn't find the article.

I liked the boat hugely and would think it is one of the most capable small boats I have ever sailed in.

I do have some of the photos still!

Michael Storer

There's been another Youtube clip posted of the Oldshoe sailing in Newcastle Harbour, the video is all taken from onboard the boat:


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwIcfSNEasU]YouTube - oldshoe[/ame]

GregF

One of the interesting things to me is how well these boats sail.

Part of it is the large sail plan and adequate lateral area. But since the PDR/OzRacer experience I understand something new now.

The stability of the boat can help overcome some small deficiencies in the hullshape. Neither the Ducks or the Micro, Oldshoe or Long Micro have a particularly refined hullshape.

But they all have a large amount of stability for their hull length that allows the carrying of big sails.

The sprit rigs (or carefully set up lugs) have limited sail twist so the sails set powerfully.

This means good speed so that the shallow keel can work well.

Or at least this is how I would interpret these boats now.

There is one orange Micro in Queensland that was built very nicely - light Australian style and it has a pair of carbon masts - just tubes stuck inside each other to get the taper. He asked me about getting a better shape into the keels and we made some mods to the leading and trailing edges in line with the foil design I use for most of my boats.

The owner took it on a Whitsunday cruise in company with the much nicer and more conventional Caledonia Yawl. Whatever the conditions (including swapping skippers) the CY was unable to keep up with the Micro.

I am starting to think that there are two routes in simple boat design. Slender hulls that are lively to sail, or very stable boats with large sails for their size.

Best wishes
Michael

Hello Mik

Well, sounds good! Although the whole thing about boat design is a bit beyond my knowledge & understanding so I bow to your wisdom on the subject.

But I do know that these boats sail very well and the best video I've seen of a Micro sailing was on the "Martha Jane / Micro" video that Duck Flat did many years ago and showed the then, as yet, unpainted Martha Jane of Graham Cheers, Shirley Valentine, from Newcastle, and the wonderfully sailed Micro (pre- Navigator conversion), Paloma Blanca, of the Rev. Roger Keyes, from Adelaide.

So how about using your influence with Duck Flat or Robert Ayliffe and getting their / his permission to put some Micro sailing bits of that video on Youtube!? Please!

The way Paloma Blanca sails in the video is very nice, I never get tired of looking at it, and there's so little Micro/Oldshoe or even Bolger stuff on Youtube.

GregF

Originally Posted by pindimar

Just found a short video of a Phil Bolger Oldshoe on Youtube. This boat in Newcastle, NSW! Oldshoe is a much smaller and open version of Bolger's Micro.

YouTube - Bolger designed "Oldshoe" sailing

GregF

Hi Greg,

This is really funny. I just wanted to send you mail to find out what the nice looking boat in you avatar was, when I came across this.

I guess I know now....

Viktor

Hello Viktor

Ah but, yes but,

The boat in my avatar is a Micro - a bigger version of Oldshoe ...well....it's the other way round actually because Micro came first. There's also a Long Micro which is even bigger than Micro. Many people hate these boats and think that they are crude boxes but I love them and think that they are just PLAIN clever. Why complicate something for its own sake, after all? Not very sensible - or eco-friendly to be trendy!

Now speaking of boats, when are we going to see a picture or two of your Klepper and maybe a story or two?

I'll post a couple of pictures of our Micro, Matilda Jean, and a couple of an Oldshoe at the Sydney Classic & Wooden Boat Festival before last:

GregF

Philip Bolger design

I just attached a few photos! ...at least...thought they'd attached - try again! Oh! ...and please note the expertly set sails! The motor was down and running in this picture in order to beat the rush at the boat ramp at Drummoyne. That motor was great but couldn't be raised as there was not enough clearance but since then we've obtained an old British Seagull with recoil start and clutch!

GregF

This is an Oldshoe at the 2008 Sydney Classic & Wooden Boat Festival:

GregF

one or two more of the Oldshoe: The owner of this boat, Robert Maloney, was a Canadian originally, as I remember.

Originally Posted by pindimar

Hello Viktor

Ah but, yes but,

The boat in my avatar is a Micro - a bigger version of Oldshoe ...well....it's the other way round actually because Micro came first. There's also a Long Micro which is even bigger than Micro. Many people hate these boats and think that they are crude boxes but I love them and think that they are just PLAIN clever. Why complicate something for its own sake, after all? Not very sensible - or eco-friendly to be trendy!

Now speaking of boats, when are we going to see a picture or two of your Klepper and maybe a story or two?

I'll post a couple of pictures of our Micro, Matilda Jean, and a couple of an Oldshoe at the Sydney Classic & Wooden Boat Festival before last:

GregF

Philip Bolger design

Hi Greg,

Micro:
I admit I did originally not like Bolger designs (too boxy, and also the leeboards). But I think you can consider them as an acquired taste. They look so unconventional that they take a bit of getting used to.

For me, a similar example would be Boatmik's GIS. At first it looked a bit weird to me (let's say at that stage I thought a sailing dinghy should really look like a Glen-L-14).
But over time, I not only kept coming back looking at it because it is probably unbeatable in the "The most kick for the buck" category, but also because it kept looking better and better to me (here, I'll admit it: I am an armchair boat builder, someday for real, maybe).

So I can easily imagine that it is the same with the Micro.

Klepper pics and stories:
Are you trying to get me to drift off on a tangent again?
But never mind, we are in the "Misc boat related stuff" category here, so that's probably ok.

Posting pictures is difficult. They all date back from the pre-digital era. I have nothing scanned either (that's also on the long list of thing to be done...one day).

My wife and I bought a secondhand Klepper in 1989, when we lived in Munich (best place for it, the Klepper company is just round the corner). Apart from shorter trips on local lakes and rivers, we used it mainly for kayak-camping holidays in Sweden and Norway, the first in 1988 (that was our first kayaking holiday in a borrowed East German "cheapo" Puch faltboot), and then in 1990 and 1992.

Actually when I think about it now, it seems amazing that there were only three holidays. They are taking such a large place in my "memory bank" that it seems there must have been many more. These were by far the best holidays we ever had. We could comfortably load enough food and camping gear for well over a week into the kayak and off we went. This was in southern Sweden and Norway, so not really wild territories, but it was easy to find place where you were all on your own, brilliant.

A story? Well the weirdest paddling experience I had was in the Geiranger Fjord in Norway. There were four of us; my wife and I in the Klepper and two friends in singles (one of them a very snazzy Klepper T65).

What happened was like an inverted optical illusion.
It is really difficult to explain, but basically my brain was constantly sending "error" messages telling me that what my eyes were seeing couldn't possibly right.

Our friends were paddling in front of us, so I had a good size reference. Now the way we see perspective is partly through our stereo vision, but also and a lot through "cross referencing" with stored memories (which is exploited in many optical illusion tricks). So now my brain was basically refusing to accept that the walls of this fjord were as narrow and as high as they really were.

I am sorry, I am not really explaining this very well, but that's what happened.
Below are two pics I grabbed off the internet somewhere. The size of the cruise ships gives you an idea.

Since then the Klepper has seen little use. We have two daughters and so in the late 90s we bought a Plastic Old Town canoe to get everybody in.

But now the girls are almost grown up and not interested to sit with the oldies in the canoe anymore. So obviously I am thinking of getting the Klepper shipshape again. It must around 40 years old. The frame is is in excellent shape, including the varnish, but we would really need a new skin, which we can't really afford at the moment. So I am thinking about what can be done to squeeze out a few more years of life out the the present skin. But that's another story.

Cheers,

Viktor

P.S. Can we have a few more pictures of your micro then, please? Did you build it yourself?

Thanks for that Viktor, great story! No pictures of you in the Klepper yet, but one can almost imagine those adventures, wonderful!

The portability of the Klepper gives it a special significance, especially to people who live in densely urban areas, I guess. Liberation. . . at least for a short period. You'll just have to get that boat back into operation before long.

Matilda Jean has been getting a bit of TLC lately which has kept her out of the water, but next holidays should see her back in her element. I did not build this boat. it was built by Miles Bore in Newcastle, NSW, and Miles built a Jim Michalak designed Blobster after selling Matilda Jean to us.

The criticism that you mostly hear about the Micro is that its keel makes it difficult to launch & retrieve from a boat ramp and that is true, to some extent. Well, a dedicated ramp is not such a problem, but when launching from a beach, as we mostly do , it is an issue. The tide has to be just right for launching and then retrieving, so that limits the times that the boat can be used, when you only have a weekend, for example.

The real criticism that I have of the boat, however, is the awkward mainmast. Again, many people don't seem to think it is an issue, but I do. Getting the mast up is not so difficult but getting it down is challenging - very easy to topple over, if you are not very careful. People say that one man can do this. . .well, up, maybe. . .but getting it down by yourself? The bigger boat (Long Micro) has the mast in a tabernacle, so that is not a problem. Bolger came up with a re-design called the Micro II which also has the mast in a tabernacle and what he called a "Chinese Gaff" rig - cross between a Chinese lug sail and a gaff. Now, I'm sure that would be very good, but, of course, it is much more complicated and costly, perhaps.

There are at least two Micros here with Carbon Fibre mainmast and that seems a sensible way to go, as long as costs aren't too high, and the mast is not too lightly built. So, what I've been doing is weighing up the difference between converting the boat to Micro II or getting a carbon fibre mainmast. there may be some news on that front before too long.

I did also start to build a Michalak Scram Pram which has a very shallow draft, water ballast tanks and a single leeboard on the starboard side. That build has turned into a real saga due to being lazy, having way too many other commitments and, dwindling motivation. It's not far off completion now but I haven't worked on it for ever, one day it will get done, but for now, the Micro is a priority for revamping!

GregF