Jim Michalak is a designer who took Phil Bolger’s “Instant Boats” to heart and for years has been churning out various designs in the genre. Lots have been built and those using them have been happy.
He’s also written a book “Boatbuilding for Beginners” on building boats of the mainly “Instant” variety which would be right at home with your copies of Payson’s “Instant Boats”, “Build the New Instant Boats”, and “Instant Boatbuilding with Dynamite Payson”.
As it happens, he’s also designed a scow called Boxtop that sorta/kinda falls into the VolksCruiser range…
Designed as a comfortable liveaboard for one, it has certain similarities to the Bolger designed Jessie Cooper (our first Loose Moose) which we built and lived on for four years quite comfortably and liked so much we commissioned Phil Bolger to stretch it out to 38-feet to become our Loose Moose 2…
At 30-feet with an 8-foot beam and only drawing a foot, it makes VolksCruiserish sense and its balanced lug main with leg-of-mutton mizzen is as about as cheap a rig as can be found for the power it provides. In short, the design makes some sense.
From the information I have the design is being offered at a discount until one has been built and tested. For more information you can write to Jim at
Jim Michalak
118 East Randle Street
Lebanon, IL, 62254
USA