Instant Boats Message Boards

It's been a long time in coming, but a revamped "modern" version of instantboats.com is only a few months away. Most of the organizational details have been worked out, it's just a matter of re-typing the content pages to be compliant with modern web standards. (For those of you with tiny screens or old computers - don't worry! The new site will still scale very nicely to screens of various sizes, and we are not making much use of horrible "multimedia" features like Flash or javascript. Also, the navigation and layout will remain mostly the same. The main difference is it will be database-driven so that we can make changes more easily, and have much better type-setting/aesthetics and a more consistent look.)

However, there is one big problem: Most of the "media" for the old site is woefully inadequate for a modern site. Many of the old images are just too small, or are poor quality scans from a low-res black & white image in one of Payson's books.

This is where you guys come in! If you have a photo of an instant boat, on land, sailing, or under construction that you think is really good (or heck, even if it's not really good, it might still be better than what we have - which is nothing in many cases) send it as an attachment in an email to wmakley@gmail.com. Or, if you want, post it in this thread for others to comment on.

(Side note: I'm not an expert on much besides web programming. If you could identify the boat pictured your photos, it would be a big help for me.)

Don't worry about scaling it properly for email, since I'd much rather have the highest resolution photos possible, and my gmail account has lots of storage space.

What you get

• Your photograph on instantboats.com! Even if we don't use it for one of the boat pages, the home page will have a rotating photo gallery. (And there might be rotating photo galleries for the boats, too.)
• The photo will be credited to you, so please include your name in the email (or whatever name you want us to use in the credit - if you don't want to be credited, say so)
• A link to your web site. If you have a site, and the content is suitable for children and relevant to boat-building please provide the URL so we can give you a link. The way this will most likely be done is your name in the photo credit will be a hyperlink to your web page.

If you don't have a web site and want the photo credit to provide your email: Please say so. (We will assume that you do not want your email public otherwise.)

By posting a photo in this thread or submitting one via email, you understand that it might be used on instantboats.com. If you want your photo removed in the future for any reason, we will provide a place to request that this be done (and will try to be prompt about handling such requests).

Also, some of you may have read this thread and are wondering about the "Builds" feature. Sadly, I have had to backburner that since, in order to do it right, we will need to able to host submitted images on instantboats.com and our web host simply doesn't provide enough space to allow just anybody to upload an image (even if they will be automatically scaled and optimized).

My photos sent... It ain't pretty!

Alan

Big Tortoise in Delaware

Credit Crazy Doug

Website http://www.doublebad.net

_________________
The beatings will continue until morale improves

Doug - a dog with a 'u'

here are some shots of the folding schooner. use what you like.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10180&id=705579793&l=f076e0a647
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=86585&id=705579793&l=5b83fbbc7f

I'll work on some nicer shots.

Cheers!
Breaux

Hi Breaux, your Folding Schooner is fantastic! Another Texas boy who was once on this forum from East Texas, somewhere in the "woods built one back in '06/'07 thereabouts and sailed her into the rocks on her maiden voyage as I recall. Hope you continue to safely sail yours. A big build for anyone and you did a great job. Did you finish the 200 okay? Saw your pics on Facebook.

Regards,

_________________
LEVI [b][/b]

Levi,

I followed your conversations with General Zod and the build of the baby blue schooner. Well, actually it was a couple of years later, but i enjoyed it thuroughly and it inspired me on my build. I tried to get in touch with him, but was not able.

We made it through the Texas 200 just fine. if you notice on some later photos, there is a crook of a Mesquite tree lashed on for the main boom jaws. if i recall, the General's leeboards snapped on launching. Mine were built too thin and i snapped one 5 minutes out and the other three days in. So we had our challenges, but the schooner's size allowed for a lot of rookie mistakes. we had 25 mph winds most of the time but the schoone is amaxzingly stable. I could walk on the wales when moving fore and aft (balancing with the mast).

I am not sure what convinced me to build a 31 ft folding vessel, but i enjoy this boat every time i take it out.

Breaux

Hello all. My name is Bruce (Tugbruce to you!!!) I built two Elegant Punts way back in 1975. The first was for a friend and my late wife liked it so much, I built the second boat, named REPRINT. I took liberties with REPRINT and added crown to the bow & stern panels. I sent photos to Dynamite Payson and he was kind enough to send a nice letter.

In the passing years, I rowed REPRINT out under the Golden Gate Bridge to scatter ashes, she was the first boat for both my sons, now grown adults and REPRINT has been on every "big" boat I've owned.

The years were not kind to REPRINT... OK, OK... I failed to keep her maintained. Several months ago, it was time to either give her the ax or rebuild her. Everyone said she was a goner!!!!! Everyone........ So I completely rebuilt her (New bow, new transom, new areas of topsides, new seat, new gunwales & inwales). Here are the resulting photos. The little guy rowing her is a family friend... Tugbruce

Hmmmm OK, I can build boats but how to post photos????... HELP.....

Hi TugBruce,

Touching story about your little boats... So very sorry for your loss...

As for posting pictures...

1.) If you can, try to re-size the images to something that doesn't require scrolling. I use the 640 X 480 size .JPG files.
2.) Subscribe to one of the free photo hosting sites like PhotoBucket or Flickr.
3.) Upload your pics there. In doing so, you will be given the link code to the image as well as embed code for the photos.
4.) All that's left is to include the appropriate code here on the forum.

It may seem a little confusing at first, but after that it just gets flat out boring.

Hope this helps,

Holler if you get stuck,

Alan

OK... Did the photo bucket thing. I guess I'm to dumb to figure it out. Created an album there but can't figure out how to display it here... I think you all would REALLY enjoy REPRINT, my E.P., with her plywood lamination seat & her turks heads on the oars, but I'dll be damned if I can get then moved. If one of you wants to give me an email address, I'll send them to you and you can post them here.... ~Tugbruce~
Tugbruce@gmail.com

Hi TugBruce,

It's late (4:38 AM), and the wife is going to kill me, or we could walk through this together... No prob!

Either way I'll post tomorrow, or someone else will jump in before I get up, but either way, we have you covered!!!

Again... No prob!

Alan

Hi,

I'm back... Sorry about that...

OK... We have a couple of choices: A.) We can help you share your uploaded pics, or B.) I can do it for you... I think it would probably be wiser if take a shot at getting you to the point where you can share by yourself, that way you are better equipped to share with friends, etc... So I'll see if I can help make some sense of photobucket, and if that still doesn't work for you, you can just email the shots to me (alan_speakman@hotmail.com)... Alrighty then, here's a screen shot of photobucket...



Basically it's a two-step process (steps are in red numbers)... You upload, and then select and copy the image tag into your post. If the file is already uploaded, you may have to select "Share" first... Quite honestly, it's not difficult, it just takes some exploring. (The toughest part for me was just finding my user name in the upper right - the font is tiny!)

Let us know...

Alan

P.S. Don't feel bad about PhotoBucket... IMHO the interface takes some getting used to...

And here's the Elegant Punt REPRINT from Tugbruce... The builder writes:





















Higher resolution pics are available...

Hey Alan. Thank you for the assistance. You'd think a grown man could figure it out but...oh well. Nice to have new friends like you. ~BRUCE~

No prob!

And superb re-build! Thanks for sharing!!!

Alan

P.S.

Hang in there with PhotoBucket... It just takes some snooping around.