I had already made a few Footy’s on my own and used Bret’s hulls for a few. I figured what the heck, I could make a Puddle Duck Racer Footy.
I scaled the plans from http://pdracer.com/ down to Footy dimensions and used a foam block, then covered it with cardboard, used the cardboard for a template and cut out 32nd inch plywood to cover the foam. After the plywood was added I used fiberglass to cover the hull, and added a keel box to the center of the boat.
This is very interesting. It sounds like you have some other footys to compare it against. Is it significantly slower because of the hull shape? I suspect that it can carry a lot more sail than a conventional footy hull, because of the very full prow, and am wondering if it might have better performance than a conventional hull if you give it enough sail area, or a strong enough wind?
Right now I’m not using a weighted keel, so I haven’t attempted to put on a big sail yet. I have been messing with balance and trying to get it to point up.
I have moved my mast back to just in front of the keel box and I think I have those issues solved now so I can move onto other things like changing sail designs and trying different things with it.
I have 3 other footys in the shop. Two from NZ and one I’m building is a 1’ long catalina. This is a toy mod I’m working on.
The sail I currently have on the PDracer is about 86sq in, I have a larger lateen sail about 180sq" that I have used on my other boats. If I add some ballast to the keel I think I can go with that.