Dudley is again visiting North America this fall. For part of the trip he will be accompanied by Dehlia, wife and business manager in Dudley Dix Yacht Design. With short visits planned to Maine and other states in New England, most of the time will be spent in the Chesapeake Bay area. Dudley will also be making a fleeting visit to Vancouver in Canada and may be returning home via Istanbul in Turkey, if the necessary flights are available.

Shearwater Yachts have delivered a fine example of the Shearwater 45 to East Coast USA, where it is to be exhibited on the Annapolis Show in October. Dudley is planning to be onboard at the show, along with builder Richard Acheson.

Sabbatical II, the 50ft aluminum cruiser built by Global Yachts in Norfolk, Virginia, is in the water and sailing. We received the following sailing report from owners Ann and Scott Ripley of Virginia Beach:-

"Sabbatical sails like a dream. Her simple, yet powerful, ketch rig enables Ann and I to easily handle her in every condition encountered to date. The genoa, jib, main and mizzen are all raised and lowered (furled in and out) from the cockpit by just three electric winches."

"She has a big easy motion that I find much more comfortable than on previous boats that I have owned. She is a nice, stiff boat that enables us to more comfortably walk around below while under sail. Of course her pilothouse extends the sailing season but more importantly it makes the night watches more tolerable."

"Visiting sailors on board comment about how beautifully balanced her rudder is compared to other boats they have sailed. Everyone loves the fixed captain chairs mounted outboard in the cockpit. One seasoned sailor told me that it was the most comfortable sail that she had ever been on in her entire life."

Sounds like Ann and Scott are very happy with "Sabbatical II". I look forward to experiencing her for myself in September.

The Windy 880 is a new production GRP sailboat that was commissioned by Marintek of Istanbul, Turkey. She is a modern little cruiser/racer of good performance, with comfortable accommodation for family cruising. Marintek have the tooling in progress at present and will be introducing her to the market later in the year.

Marintek launched the Windy 580 also designed by us, at the Istanbul Boat Show earlier this year.

The Inspiration 19 is a little trailer sailer that was commissioned by Zen Yachts and is aimed squarely at the UK market. She is very traditional in concept, with lapstrake GRP hull and gaff cutter rig. Her raised sheer/flush deck configuration gives loads of interior volume in a small package, ideal for weekending for a small family. Her tooling is under way at Simon Bongers Boats in Somerset West, near to Cape Town.

We are experiencing good growth in our international market. Those who frequently visit out website will have seen that we now have boats being built in 39 countries spread all over the globe. We look forward to reaching our big Four-Oh in the near future.

Most of our international orders are received through our secure ordering facility. This allows clients to place orders on-line and pay by credit card, with transmission of the details in encrypted form to keep them safe from prying eyes. Our clients are very happy with the system and the safety features which we have incorporated for the protection of both them and ourselves.

We are entering a new expansion phase in what we can offer. This involves going into association with specialists in other parts of the world, to produce the computer data necessary for computer controlled cutting of the parts for our metal designs. The end result will be that we will be able to supply complete kits for those designs on the continents where the development work is being done, currently Canada and UK. The CAD files will then also be available to builders on other continents on a royalty basis, allowing them to buy licences to cut and supply kits without having to do the development work themselves.

The kits will be very comprehensive, including all metal components, from temporary framing, skin panels, tankage, chainplates etc to all that is needed to build the rudder.

First design into the development process is the multi-chine Pratique 35, which will be available for building by the frameless fairing method. Next to start are the trunk cabin version of the Dix 38 and the pilothouse version of the Dix 43, both radius chine designs.

All of our radius chine plywood designs are also planned for inclusion in this program when time permits. We can already supply CAD files for bulkheads and transoms of all of these designs, as well as cabintop panels for the Didi 26 and Mount Gay 30.

We have drawn an inboard rudder option for the radius chine plywood Mount Gay 30. The first one with this rudder is under construction at present in Budapest, Hungary.

"Spoon", the first Didi 34, was launched recently in Saldanha Bay, South Africa. She was beautifully built by West Coast Marine for Gert Bruwer. Sea trials showed her to be stiff, fast and comfortable, a right-size cruiser/racer for most families.

We need your photos please. We have many hundreds of boats out there but very few are represented on our projects pages. If you have built or are building one of our designs, we would love to show it off for you on our website..

Is your boat being built by a professional builder? If he has a website then we would like to put in a builder's link to his site. Please send us the web address so that we can make contact with him.

We have started an FAQ section on our website, to assist you to easily find answers to your questions without having to wait for an email response from us. It is broken up into pages dealing with different methods of boatbuilding and a section dealing with questions about our ordering process.

We will still be available to give quick answers to your email questions when you can't find what you need in those pages.

Our agent in Russia is MK-Design in Vladivostok, Eastern Russia. Owner Andrey Popovich has recently gone on line with his own website advertising our designs in Russian. You can visit it at http://www.farpost.com/mkd/. Andrey is receiving lots of interest in our designs and is having a Hout Bay 40 built for himself at the local Dazel Co Ltd, the experimental division of the 115 year old Dalzevod Shipyard.

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