Our designs are spreading far and wide. By May this year we had boats being built in 60 countries on all continents aside from Antarctica. We have a Cape Cutter 19 being built inside the Arctic Circle, so maybe the Antarctic Circle will be next.

Dudley will be at the Southampton Boat Show for a few days. He will be on the Cape Cutter 19 stand, under the banner of Honor Marine, the afternoon of Friday 19th September until the end of the show on Sunday 22nd. Feel free to visit for a chat if you are there at the time.

The first Didi 26 to get wet belongs to owner builder, Ake Unander, who lives in the land of snow, reindeer and the midnight sun. He launched his yellow Didi 26 "Butterfly" in June and is very happy with performance and handling.

The first of the two Didi Minis built by CKD Boats in Cape Town is nearing completion and will be launched about the end of August. This one, owned by Warlock racing, has a fixed keel. Her sistership is "Running with Scissors" and has a Canting keel.

We have a section of our website that is dedicated to this project, with over 70 photographs of the construction process. This is a great resource for builders of the Didi Mini and others of our radius chine plywood design range, who can reference the photographs throughout their own projects.

Mike O'Neill, owner of Warlock racing, put up a complete plywood kit for a Didi Mini in a competition that was open only to young South African Sailors. Entrants were required to provide to Mike a "business plan" showing their program and intentions for completing and campaigning their boat. The kit was won by two junior sailors from Hout Bay, Ruben Donne and Shane Elliott. The competition was also supported by donations of product from North Sails, CKD Boats and ourselves.

In June we introduced a canting keel design for the Didi Mini. Both the fixed and canting keels now form part of the stock plan design. The canting keel can also be retro-fitted to boats that started construction for the fixed keel.

Sanderson Marine in Cape Town are starting tooling for the Sanderson 34, as a grp production boat. This is a development of the Cruiser Racer 33, with modifications to stern, keel and rig.

The Cape Cutter 19 has proven to be a very successful little cruiser, with 60 GRP boats sold in two years. Until now they have been built in South Africa and shipped to UK in containers. Cape Cutter Yachts has been bought by Honor Marine in UK and the 19 will be built in their UK plant from early in 2004. As part of this process, the plywood kits for the 19 have been withdrawn and will no longer be available. Plans will still be available for one-off construction by amateurs.

Frans Walschots in Australia commissioned a bigger sister to the Cape Cutter 19. She is the Cape Henry 21 and a larger version of the same concept as the 19. She is currently available as plans and a kit of all plywood components for hull, deck and bulkheads will soon be available. Her kit will be the replacement for the withdrawn Cape Cutter 19 kit.

Earlier this year we introduced a cold moulded timber version of the Vickers 45AC. The hull is skinned with three diagonal veneers over strip plank. Deck and superstructure are plywood. The first boat is to be built by Kristoffer Ravndal in Norway.

Since our last newsletter we have introduced full size panel patterns for the Argie 10, Argie 15 and 20ft workboat. We are also able to supply full size bulkhead patterns for all of our Didi radius chine plywood designs.

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