Links:
The original version of this page said in its introduction: "Happily, I anticipate this being a short list. Joe Oster has for a long time maintained a useful list of proa-related links here."
That's still true. However, a kind soul has pointed me to Eric Wolfram's How To Score Higher in Google Search Engine (and why Google is saving the web) page, which seems to me to indicate that I should in fact link to things I think are useful, in order to help people find me out here in the great wildness of the Web. So, without trying to duplicate what Joe has done, I'm going to copy my list of personal proa links here, then add to them as the urge hits me. If you're a wikiproa member please feel free to add your favorites.
Proa-centric web pages and personal proa pages (pages about proas for which plans are not offered):
Joe Oster's proa links; of particular interest to me are the many articles and pictures of Russell Brown's boats. There are also many links to pictures of and articles on historical and modern proas, and a summary of Joe's side of his proa design disagreements with Rob Denney, the Australian proa designer.
Michael Schacht's Proafile web page, including a proa glossary, a blog which usually points me to something I'm glad to have seen, and lots of other interesting stuff.
Gary Dierking's outrigger blog. Kites, outriggers, paddle and sail, always something interesting. And a pointer to our Texas 200 wiki page. Thanks Gary!
Harmen Hielkema's blog "Canoes of Oceana", which tells about his boat Toroa and quite a bit more besides. Very interesting history of rigs on the boat, ending with the current crab claw. Harmen builds boats without epoxy, due allergy problems. His blog is good reading anyway, but is really interesting if you suffer from the same affliction and would still like to work on boats.
14' crab claw proa with a pvc ama, built by someone named Matt. I couldn't glean a last name from the page. Interesting page with a summary of design, construction and modification decisions and lots of pictures.
Tim Anderson's page, which includes some fascinating and moderately insane proa and outrigger sailing stories, good writing and nice pictures. Excellent uncluttered web design, the attraction is in the content, an idea I wish more people would adopt.
Wade Tarzia's proa page; if you're interested in Wade's proa adventures you can search for his name and the term "sailing report" in the yahoo proa_file group, you'll get a series of informative and funny adventure stories. Wade has sailed his boat for several years now and has developed a good bit of expertise, he's not one of these "built boat, sailed once, claimed it worked great, then vanished" cases we see all too often, for some reason, in the proa community. If you're interested in sailing a crab claw proa of minimal size you should take the time to dig up and read his stories carefully.
Wade's tacking outrigger page. This boat is the successor to the proa, above. I hope for many interesting adventures and the subsequent stories from Wade's adventures with her, too.
Harvey Golden's Fijian Thamakau Project, an interesting skin on frame crabclaw proa, 14' 6" long. Harvey is an expert on Greenland style skin on frame kayaks.
Fog and Thunder, a skin on frame tacking outrigger canoe by Brian Schultz.
S. Fishwick's Nimanoa, a15' proa. Interesting development, and good summary of lessons learned at the end of the page.
Craig O'Donnell's American Proas page, including some very interesting history of some early (1880!) versions of American copies of Micronesian ideas, and some old magazine articles on proas. Well worth perusing, lots of scanned it text not available elsewhere on the net.
Craig O'Donnell's main site, The Cheap Pages, which include some proa links and historical scans. Sadly, some of his internal links seem to be dead. I hope he's just moving, rather than shutting down.
Jeremie Fisher's Equilibre page. In French and English. An excellent example of a modern, good sized crab claw proa. Even includes a game to introduce you to steering a crab claw boat! Wow! Somewhat fancy web page, may cause some trouble on older or slower machines or dial up connections.
Des Jours Meilleurs, a large (63 feet!) French proa with two Atlantic crossings to her credit. Impressive big boat, very functional. Particularly interesting to me, since I ended up with the same rig she carries, a schooner with a jib, though I didn't know it until I'd settled on the rig. Parallel evolution, I guess. Also includes an appendix on a "baby proa" tender.
Dave Culp's speedsailing page. I'm not sure it belongs here in the 'Personal Proas' section, but I don't think he offers plans either. Dave sails highly powered kite proas in sanctioned speedsailing competitions. Neat stuff, and lots of history of proas, kite powered and otherwise. Particularly interesting to me is his page on Slingshot and Crossbow.
Timothy Kingman's K-Proa page, a force-balanced proa based on the work of Bernard Smith.
Building a Ndrua in one day, on the Instructables site. Good pictures.
Micromegas 3, a 6,5 m lug schooner tacking outrigger. They crossed the Atlantic on this. They've got to be nuts.
Proa designs, by professional designers and others:
I want to emphisize that no judgement is made on suitability, design evaluation or anything like that by inclusion in this list. I'm not qualified to make such an evaluation; I'm not sure anyone is, at this point. If it's a boat, it's an outrigger of some sort, the designer is selling plans or kits or entire boats, and there's a web page for it, I'm putting it here. Some of these have had prototypes built, some have not. Some shunt and some are tacking outriggers. Caveat shunter and all that.
Rob Denney's Harryproa page. Harryproas are a modern take on the classic proa idea. Very nice boats, very fast and interesting, and Rob has an admirable openness with regard to how his boats work, and when things have gone less than well as well as when they've gone well.
Dick Newick's famous Atlantic proa Cheers. Still stunning after all these years, the boat that took third in the 1968 OSTAR transatlantic race.
Gary Dierking's proas and tacking outriggers including his Tarawa, T2, Ulua and Wa'apa designs. Elegant, simple and functional boats.
Malcolm Tennant's Disco Volante 60' ocean racing proa design
John Slattbo's Raptor 16 foil stableized tacking outrigger
Kurt Hughes' 26' aerorig proa. The site has one picture of the design sailing, and says that one was built in Finland. Very sexy.
Mal Smith's Mi6 proa; which features an unstayed balestron rig with a variation on the boom I've never seen before, Atlantic configuration, and a host of other features. The web page says it was an entry into a 1993 design contest, and it still looks cutting edge all these years later.
CLC Boats' proa Mbuli. I sailed behind the first Mbuli in the first Watertribe race, across Tampa Bay. She had some outrageous amount of area just in the wing masts, and went smoking off across the bay with no (soft) sail up at all. Doing great, until she broke a rudder on a sand bar. Very sad. Since then there's been at least two more built, one in Chicago and one in Australia.
A neat blog by an Mbuli builder in New Zealand. Text, pics and videos, very nice.
James Wharram's Melanesia, a 16' tacking outrigger by the fameous catamaran designer.
Joe Henry's Flaquita page; Flaquita is a trailerable tacking outrigger, not a proa, but is a pretty thing of admirable simplicity and elegance. Had there been plans for her available when I first wanted to build a boat I might well have bought them and built one, and I think I would have been very happy with her, she's a really nice little design.
Ted Warren's Tiny Dancer. The first Tiny Dancer was launched in 1997. I've since heard rumours of a second, at least.
Salamba, a 6 meter French proa (English language main page). Salamba looks to me to be a lot like Mbuli in hull shape, with a Gibbons/Dierking rig. Sadly, the pictures on the English page seem at this point (July 2008) to be gone. Happily there is a French/English Salamba blog where the pictures are still up. The last entry in the blog is from 2004, just after the boat's first sail.
James Francis Boats has two proas shown, a Mk I and a Mk II. The Mk II looks (again) a bit like an Mbuli in hull shape, but from the one picture under sail seems to have a battened catamaran style una rig. Last update in "New" section is from 2003.
Twissmate 4,96 meter sailing proa.
Fritz Roth's Vector Fin proa designs
Jim Michalak's Gizmo, plans for a 20' lateen (not crab claw, more like a Sunfish sail) rigged proa. I'm not aware of any of these having been built.
The Virus Proa. Despite its name, this is a tacking outrigger rather than a proa, with a trimaran option. The site has a nice short clip of one in outrigger configuration flying a hull for a few seconds.
Maora tacking outrigger, a 3 m long tacking outrigger, also with a trimaran option. Good pictures, interesting two part curved mast. Neat little boat.
Bedlam, winner of the SCA/Duckworks design contest #7 for an Everglades Challenge boat.
P-52, Skip Johnson's entry in the same SCA/Duckworks design contest. Skip has a wikiproa page here.
Doug Taylor's Port Madison Proa, an entry in the Duckworks Design contest #6.
General boating links:
Mark Balogh's kayak sail kits. Very well built expedition style outriggers and sail kits.
Duckworks Magazine is an excellent online boating ezine. The have published quite a few proa stories, and I hope will continue to. Search for "proa," I got 87 hits in December 2007.
Trilobyte series of ultra-simple monohulls Whacky and cool, very fast to build, interesting stuff.
Kris Seluga's crab claw catamaran. Homemade carbon spars and an A-frame crab claw rig, neat and attractive wood hulls, something of a low aspect ratio beach cat intended to be an easier boat to sail than a Nacra. Last updated in 2004.
Ray Aldridge's Slidercat, a 15' 10" sprit rigged catamaran. Nice little design, dory style hulls and moderate sail area. There are too few simple minimal cruising multihulls like this, it seems like as soon as someone decides to build a cat or a tri or a proa they also decide it has to do 25 knots and have a square top main and fly two thousand square feet of sail downwind.
Openboat, primarily monohull sailing pictures that are so stunning they will make you want to move to New Zealand. Seriously.
Canoe sailing e-zine. Covers all sorts of canoe sailing. Registration required.
Raid Boats: Contenders – Victors & Wannabes PDF article by Thom Vetromile on monohull rowing/sailing boats suitable for traditional boat raids.
Small boat sailing raids and multi-day races:
The Watertribe. The Everglades challenge is the best known of the WT races, but there are several others listed. Also an active forum and records of previous events. Big, well organized small boat raid. The first Everglades challenge was in 2001.
The Texas 200, a five day 200 mile raid up the Texas coast in June. The first Texas 200 was in 2008.
The Great Texas Catamaran Race, also called the Great Texas 300. A beachcat stage race held every June in Texas.
The Worrell 1000, a large, well known beachcat stage race once run up the east coast from Miami Beach to Virginia Beach. Last race was, I think, in 2000.
The Tybee 500 is, I think, the successor to the Worrell 1000.
Sail Caledonia, The Scottish Raid. "A unique challenge for small sail and oar boats"
The Shipyard School Raid, "An Annual 7 Day Sailing and Rowing Race for Traditional Small Boats" in British Columbia.
The Archipelago Raid, held in the Scandinavian islands, raced on F-18 catamarans.
Raid Finland, "Raid Finland is a yearly week long distance adventure race for 4.5-7.5m traditional and classic open craft powered by sail and oar. Raid Finland is fully catered and sails a new route every year."
Proa Discussion:
The yahoo proa_file discussion group. If you're new to the group it's a good idea to read (with the assistance of the search engine, keywords, and a list of your interests) through the many thousands of archived messages before you post questions. Not that the group will flame you, much, about such repetition, but it's hard to start a discussion on something that everyone else considers settled.
There are also overflow image and file storage groups with URLs of the form http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proa_fileN/, where N is a number starting with 2 and up to, as of July 2008, 6.
Harryproa Yahoo group, " This is the place for Harryproa design ideas, building questions and tips, queries, challenges, quandaries, and comments."
General sailing and small boat discussion:
Bolger Yahoo group, for discussion of Phil Bolger designs. Very active.
Duckworks Yahoo group, "All subjects even remotely related to Duckworks or boatbuilding are OK." Very active.
Michalak Yahoo group, "Discussing the small-boat designs of Jim Michalak and similar craft by other designers, as well as builder-designed boats."
Books:
I will list the books below on Amazon when possible, but you should also check ABE, the Advanced Book Exchange. 13,500 booksellers list there. They often beat Amazon's prices.
Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes, Gary Dierking's excellent book. Also available as a download for Kindle, if you're into that sort of thing. Lots of good pictures and clear thinking, three designs included.
East is a Big Bird, by Thomas Gladwin
Wangka: Austronesian Canoe Origins, by Edwin B. Doran
Call It Courage, by Armstrong Sperry. I read this when I was eleven or twelve and had just gone for a few sails on a catamaran. I was hooked.
Video:
These are links to youtube, video.google and other videos of proas sailing. I think it's a bit rude to embed other people's videos in my wiki, so I'm just listing links here. The links are in no particular order, just how I found them on the sites. They're listed by the name used as the youtube or google video signin.
Youtube videos:
Vakaman:
SammyF70:
Equilibre 2007 in weak wind condition
EandMBerque:
9mn extracts of Inside Outside, incredible ocean crossing
"Three little boats" (Trois petits bateaux)
Miamiproas:
Pacific Proa sailing from Key Biscayne
oj1jo:
proadotde:
Early sailing tests of the JB628 proa, 1998
KSONeill:
Proactivation:
Myspace videos:
Google videos:
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