PDRacer.com     Cheap, Creative, and Having Fun On The Water

History of the Puddle Duck Racer

My Sailing History

When I was 6 months old, my mother put me in a laundry basket and took me aboard my grandfather's sailboat and I have been sailing ever since. Growing up, I helped my grandfather work on his boats and every summer my sister and I would go on long cruises with him on the great lakes.

After moving out on my own, I developed a bit of an obsessive compulsive disorder when it comes to sailboats, I have owned over 100 of them in all sizes and shapes, and to this day have never seen a sailboat that I didn't like. I have pulled many boats from the trash and restored them, and have even salvaged a sunken boat.

International Moth Class

The Moth class has been around for a long time, it was started in 1929. They all use the same sail but allow members to build any type of mono hull up to 11 feet long. They have developed and evolved some fascinating concepts of hull shapes in their efforts to win on the race course, especially in the early days. Some built hulls to be a compromise to perform good in all weather conditions and others built hulls that excelled in specific weather conditions and often those hulls were horrible in other conditions which indicate the builder wanted to be a specialist for a certain type of weather.

At one point hydrofoils came into play which were so fast that everything else became obsolete. The moth class stabalized into what is practically a one design fleet where everyone uses the same shaped hull with foils.

I looked to try and get involved with the moth class but moth owners where nowhere near me so I wouldn't be able to race with anyone. Add the huge expense of the equipment needed for a competitive boat and it just wasn't for me. Have always liked the idea of their class and they were a huge inspiration for the concept of our class.
International Moth Class Association

Jim Mickalak's "Secret Guide To Plywood Boat Design"

Jim Michalak is a retired missle design engineer and a world famous plywood boat designer. To learn about designing boats, I started by reading his book: The Secret Guide To Plywood Boat Design. I swear, I am not joking -- back in the day Jim sold a manual about how to design boats and that was the title. That manual explained everything in plain english of how to design boats from scratch and it taught me enough that I could read & understand other more complicated boat design books.

Then I went on a spree of getting and reading as many boat design books as I could find. Some were complicated, some easy to read, some were just a bunch of fluff or data that was not usable for what I was interested in building and sailing. Jim's secret design manual is no longer available, but Jim currently sells a book that has extensive instructions on how to build any type of plywood boat. For more info, see:
Sailboat and Boat Building Books

Mouseboat Group

The Mouseboat group was created by Gavin Atkin who has a definition of what is considered a "mouse". Back when he was creating that definition I had the luck of being part of his discussion group. The final rule Gavin decided on is loose enough that a large variety of hull shapes can be created and be considered a "mouseboat". Gavin produced free plans for different types of mice and encouraged others to do the same. I created a version called the Flats Rat Kayak. Many of the mouse boats designs are included in Gavin's book. See: Sailboat and Boat Building Books

With Gavin's permission, I tried promoting the idea of racing mice, but the idea flopped. Gavin let me know that earlier he had proposed the same thing and it didn't take off then either. The group seemed to be mostly focused on building a variety of boats that are all different from each other (but called the same name), so racing them would be pointless since some hulls are obiously faster than others.

The $50 Sailboat Race

I used to help run Tim Webber's messabout at Lake Conroe, near Houston Texas and dreamed up the $50 Sailboat Race. The sailboat you bring, needs to be built with materials that total $50 or less and you can't use anything from a real sailboat. The race is run by towing all the boats up wind to an anchored boat where everyone holds onto a line. Start the race with everyone letting go and the first to sail (or drift) back to the starting beach wins. We talked about it months in advance, taunting each other on who would be the fastest, who would sink first, hinting at what secret designs we were building.

Nine boats showed up on race day and we finally saw what the others had created. Some where fast designs, some where slow, some where built from only free materials. I made my boat from a junk hot tub shell that I found at the dump. When the race started, I threw water balloons at everyone before they could sail away from me. My boat was so slow, I eventually had to be towed in. I brought trophies for every place and after they were passed out, we all yearned for more.

Having another race was sort of pointless because the results would have been the same - we each built the designs we were excited about, but their performance was so different that they would predictably sail back in the same order again. Pandora's box had been opened: this was incredibly fun in that we could build interesting stuff really cheaply, go play with it on the water together and have a fun time in the form of a sailboat race.

This new club needs to be created

I have belonged to a number of yacht & conventional sailboat racing clubs and never really fit in very well. I like building boats, going to and organizing messabouts, but enjoy racing too and really wanted to combine them. Racing gives purpose to get together and to continually work and improve boats. To keep it fun and light hearted, the boats need to be cheap and easy to build. I looked and a club like that did not exist. I realized that if I didn't do it, then it just wasn't going to happen. So I created the PDRacer club, exactly like the type of club I want to belong to.

Launching the class

When creating a new sailboat class, there are a lot of possibilities for the types of hull shapes that can be used. After a lot of thought to how the boat would be used, a box boat type hull was clearly the best solution. For more info, see design considerations of the PDRacer. In July 2002, I built the flats rat and spent a year a testing it out. For the rat, instead of using the mouseboat rocker, I used design concepts presented in the Moth class to create my own hybrid rocker shape. Later this same type rocker would be used for the PDRacer. In July of 2003, I released the rocker for the Puddle Duck and the first set of rules, there were only 4:

1 - All boats must use the above section for the sides 2 - All boats must be atleast 48" wide across the bottom 3 - All boats must have enough emergency flotation to be self rescued 4 - All boats must have flat parallel sides

First Racing Season

I was still deep in other boat projects, and was going to build the first pdracer, right after finishing a previous boat which was almost done.

My friend Doug Day decided he couldn't wait and built the first PD and announced it was 3D on Jan 8, 2004. I was still finishing up the other boat, tempted to stop and build a PD, but just wanted to finish up the other project first.

Another one of my friends Ken Abrahams saw that Doug built a PD and so Ken built one also, announcing it went 3D on Jan 14, 2004.

Kicking myself for not building the first one and even missing the 2nd hull number, I dropped everything and built hull #3 which went 3D on Feb 5th, 2004.

On Feb 28th, 2004 we had our first puddle duck race at Lake Woodlands Texas, just North of the Lake Woodlands Dr. bridge. The three of us met and our friend Wayne Yeargin brought another boat to act as the committee boat. Starting the race, we happened to cross in the order that the hulls were built. Doug was able to start first, the home page picture (with the big duck on the side of the boat) was taken just as Ken in #2 was crossing the start line. You can just barely see a white spot ahead of the luff of his sail, that is a chlorox bottle. That bottle and Wayne's anchored boat made the start line.

Hearing about the fun we were having, others started building pdracers both locally and long distances away. We had a total of 7 duckers participate locally in that first racing series and held our first world championship at the end of the season which was won by Ken Abrahams.

At the time of our first championship, a total of 16 ducks had been built, most of them were in Texas or Louisiana, but the 16th was built in Ireland making us an international club. Since then duckers have been building our boats around the world and spreading the fun & joy of what we do.

Plans For the Future

The class rules are a simple explanation that defines what our concept is, so we have something that voluntarily binds us together to create fair competitions and pursue our motto. As you can see from above, there were only 4 original rules and today we have more. I have made changes along the way, but if you read our current rules and compare with the original 4 above, hopefully you will agree with me that they mean the same thing. I have added or re-worded rules to clarify what they mean and resolve issues (like the rocker shape cheating) to further protect the original hull shape and concept of our class.

For the direction of the class, my hope is that the compromise of rules that we currently have will accomodate both highly competitive serious competition PLUS accomodate simple / cheap / easy competitions & events at the same time. Most other sailboat classes evolve into expensive and restrictive type clubs, we will avoid this problem because we are different: arms race

There is never going to be a rules committee. A committee would only mess with the rules, change things based on their whim of the day and create restrictions on how we are allowed to play with our boats. I have proven over time that I am very stubborn, hate change and would like to keep our current concept indefinately. When I die, my kid is ready to pickup and carry on the task of defending the rules & simple concept of our class.

My personal goal, would really like to see our membership rise to 10,000+ hulls with matching sailing events and fun activities everywhere. The challenge is figuring a way to fund the maintenance and get additional funds to continue purchasing ads to promote the class to bring in new members. I'd like to keep it a free club & free membership concept like it is today, so the way I raise funds is by selling HIN plates.

Lets Make The Future Happen

Together we can spread the joy of designing, building, then sailing & racing a boat you build yourself and getting friends to do the same and come join us. I could write thousands of words to try and describe what an incredible feeling it is to accomplish this but no matter what I write, it would not accurately convey what it feels like. It is something that can only be experienced first hand. With your help, together we can make these incredibly fun times happen.

David "Shorty" Routh