Our USA visit has come and gone. Unfortunately the Canadian and Turkish legs had to be postponed until later. This visit resulted in various relationships being initiated with companies from both the East and West Coasts, primarily working toward having many of our designs available as kits for owner or professional assembly. These will eventually cover most of our metal and plywood design ranges.

The Annapolis Sailboat Show was a highlight of the trip. Every day of the show, people from all over USA were dropping in to say hello. Thanks to all of you for your warmth and friendliness, a good contrast to the wet and very cold weather.

The US Dollar has been rampant on world currency markets for awhile. Our international sales are all in US Dollars, so we have taken this opportunity to lower our stock plan international prices by approximately 20%. For those of you outside USA, the prices are back down to the levels of before the US$ started to take us all for a wild ride. For those of you inside USA, this comes to you as a bonus. See our international pricelist for the new prices.

This new design, the Liberté 65 is a development of the Hout Bay 70, shrunk to fit within the USCG rules. The first boat is in build in Norfolk VA and is to be rigged as a 3-masted marconi schooner. She will operate out of Annapolis MD, with USCG Subchapter T 49 passenger certification. A sistership will start build soon, rigged as a 2-masted gaff schooner, to operate out of northern Long Island NY.

I have been trying to start the Mini-Transat design for a long time and have received many enquiries about it. Having cleared the backlog, this new little radius chine plywood high performance design is finally into the design phase. Watch this space for progress.

The Shearwater 45 exhibited by Shearwater Yachts and Wagner Stevens, was very well received. She can rightfully be claimed to be one of the finest examples of quality custom boatbuilding on the show this year. She was nominated as a candidate for the Boat of the Year competition, for which we eagerly await the results. Congratulations to both Richard Acheson of Shearwater Yachts and the staff of Wagner Stevens for a job well done.

Sabbatical II, the 50ft aluminum cruiser was beautifully built by Howdy Bailey in Norfolk, Virginia. She is one of the yachts featured in the 2000 edition of "American Yacht Review". This publication, from Ocean Navigator magazine, documents the major custom boatbuilding projects of North America each year.

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 plan to introduce her to the market at the Istanbul Boat Show in January. The show runs from 19th to 28th January and Dudley will be there, on the Marintek stand, from 19-22nd January.

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 progressing well at Bongers Marine in Somerset West, near to Cape Town.

The first two Inspiration 19s are nearing completion and are to be launched in Gordon's Bay toward the end of December.

We continue to expand our international market. Those who frequently visit out website will have seen that we now have boats being built in 42 countries spread all over the globe. Our next target is 45 countries, which we hope to reach early in the new year.

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.

The first design that entered our kit program was the Pratique 35. That development work is now almost complete and all that remains is to design the building cradle and write the building instructions. This one is for building by the frameless fairing method. Also in the works is the kit for the Dix 38 and the Dix 43 Pilot will be the next to start. These two are both radius chine designs, to be built by more conventional methods.

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. The next step in the process will be the development of a bulkhead and interior kit for the Didi 26.

Two new websites have gone on line for amateur projects involving our designs. If you have a similar site or know of one, please let us have the address so that we can link to it from the dixdesign.com website.

"Albacore" is a Hout Bay 30, being built in Pasadena, California. It seems that she has 3 builders of equal standing. They are the owner Dan Knapp, a white fluffy dog named "Bingo" and his evil alter-ego named "Ognib", who controls the building schedule. You can follow the progress of their building project by visiting the "Albacore" website.

Eirik Naese of Finland is building a Didi 26 with a difference. He has increased freeboard by 200mm (8") to make her more suitable for cruising. He is building his boat in an exceptionally cold climate, so it is inside a very restricting workshop and has required ingenious solutions to some problems. Follow progress of this project by visiting Eirik's website.

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 at dixdesign.com..

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. If he has no website, please send us what info you have and some project photos so that we can build a page for him at dixdesign.com.

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