Both study plans and full construction plans for the new to our fleet Duckling 17 Sailing version are now available!  The study plans include a few photos taken by the builder, Martin Chlad from the Czech Republic. The new plans for her build feature a boat that separates into two parts for easy transport to and from the water.

LOA:  17′ 3.5″       5.27m   Beam:   3′. 5.75″   1.06m   Draft:   4″   104mm        Weight dry:    215 lbs.    97.52kg  Sail area:   51 square feet

Downloadable study and construction plans and printed plans available here.

Linach 15 information and plans here.

The main feature and advantage of the Linach 15 is the transportation and storing ease of a two part boat.

The Linach 15 is featured in WoodenBoat magazine’s May/June 2022 edition and was designed in collaboration with a client in Utah, who wanted a large two piece “nesting” rowing, sailing, and fishing dinghy for Utah’s mountain lakes.  The design goal was to create the largest possible dinghy that could easily be transported inside any large SUV, minivan, or pickup truck capable of carrying a standard 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood, with each hull section therefore being slightly less than 8’ long.  The nesting concept offered several advantages.  The client wouldn’t need to buy a large trailer to transport the boat, long road trips to various lakes in other states would be simplified, and parking is much easier without having to tow a long trailer.  In addition, the two parts of the dinghy would easily store against the inside walls of his garage during the winter season.  The dinghy would have to row and sail well, carry at least two adults and two children, and be relatively simple and fast to build while still having an attractive hull shape.  This design would be be quite suitable for a pleasant day’s fishing on a local lake.  No other designs on the market met the client’s requirements–either they were too beamy to fit inside his vehicle, or they lacked the length and passenger carrying capability he needed.  A final design criteria was that the dinghy needed to be safe to operate in cold water, with large built-in buoyancy tanks and additional removable foam floatation panels.

Note: This is the first construction plan offered by Devlin Boat that is not a stitch and glue construction build.  Instead, this dinghy is built using the older stringer-frame (or stringer-bulkhead) construction method, which is an alternative method of plywood and cold molded wooden construction that has been used since World War II, not only in the United States, but also in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.  Numerous different designs and thousands of wooden boats of all sizes have been built using the stringer-frame process, especially in conjunction with marine grade plywood. The Linach 15’s building process has now been further simplified by extensively using epoxy resins and fiberglass tape, especially for tying the bulkheads to the hull and in installing later components such as the seats, buoyancy tanks and daggerboard case.  This part of the build is very similar to typical stitch and glue procedures.  The result is a hybridized system that is easy for a solo builder to manage and offers the advantages of both methods.  Most importantly it results in a “fair” and nicely shaped hull shape, especially at the critical hull junction.  The study plans give a detailed overview of the process.

A new 6 minute video shows the new lug rig sailing version of the Linach 15 and takes you from off-loading the boat from an SUV, assembling it, and setting off first for a row and then for a sail.

A just finished 2 minute video shows the ease of righting the boat in case of capsize while sailing.

We offer study plans and construction plans for this design and present them in a new format for us.

The study plans have just recently been updated to reflect the simplified building process and now consist of 11 pages that may be printed out on letter size paper.  It includes numerous photos and detailed text with sample pages and construction drawings from the building guide. Edition 2 of the full construction plans is now available for purchase. Those plans include an expanded 245 page (letter size) detailed building guide and a separate table of offsets which give the dimensions for the overall hull shape as well as the bulkheads, temporary molds, stem and transom.  These dimensions assist the builder in creating the stringer bulkhead framework, to which the plywood hull panels are then attached.