Dear Phill,

is the Tornado plan open for everybody or still protected by the copyright?

I gave not enough information in this thread. Yes we are solid and our initative goes into the third round this year. After building four Optimist-Dinghies in the first year and two Thumb 15 in the second, we are going for hot cats now.

Until now, we never had problems to finish our projekts. Our Idea is not to raise money and blow it into the air, nor to sit on the desk working out a big PR Event with every social constitution available and every maritime company.

But we are asking everybody to help a little with a minimum of cost and effort. So we get marine plywood with errors, that can`t be sold anymore and this is shipped together with a delivery for a local boatbuilder. No extra costs for anybody! Lumber from a local sawmill, outdated/ overlayed epoxy and paint, glass from a manufacturer for windpowermills. Sails, either not delivered sails (and with a big logo) from a sailmaker or older trainingsails from professionals, same thing with masts and booms. Hardware and ropes out of the sparepart boxes from a hundred sailors around us.

We dont make expensive high tech projekts, no dealing with sponsors, no big PR Events where everybody who is involved has to go a presentation. No buying expensive things from other peoples money. Our total cashflow was around 200 € for both two years.

Our results are quite fair. We come up with real boats, in a quality of a good used boat two or three years old. The initiative is powered by a team of 4 boatbuilders, spending two evenings every second week in the winter. These boats are built by a group of 10 to 12 youths in their leisure time and then sailed in the following summer. A local yacht club is looking after the youths and boats.
Until now, 11 out of 26 youths from 5 different countries made the total trip and learned to sail, 7 became a sailingclub member and made their sailing licence. Even two of them began a apprenticeship as a boatbuilder. This is better than hanging in the streets, isn`t it?

So, if you have a unused plan of a catamaran (perhaps a blade, that would be a dream) and a licence to build one boat, would you offer one or two hours and make a copy, cut it into A4 Paper sheets, scan it into a PDF and email it to me? Finally, would you send one E-Mail to your designer and tell him that you gave the plans and permission to us, so that we are on the right side of the law.

best wishes from the north sea coast, Michael

P.S. I dont know if my english is ok, please tolerate errors