I had the good fortune to visit the site near Courtenay BC where Paul Liebenberg is building his 60 foot junk-rig schooner, not yet named. Paul generously gave up an afternoon of good dry weather, interrupting his work on the mainmast partners, to give me a tour of the boat and show me some of his extensive collection of junk rig images.

The boat is enormous and it's pretty darned impressive that one determined guy (OK, he had mentoring and help along the way, but mostly it's a patient solo effort) has stuck with it for 6 years and achieved this much. Paul has many tales to tell about the early phases of construction, the major oopses, moments of despair, reworkings and modifications; but the boat's looking good -- pretty darned convincing -- and it seems like Paul is well on his way to being the skipper of a notable new junk rig vessel.

Paul has long been a fan of junk rig and was the founder of the still-active Yahoogroups junkrig group, now moderated by Don Taylor (and by me when Don's out of town). He has a great collection of historical and contemporary images of junk rigged boats and it was a treat to hang out with someone even more enthusiastic about the rig than myself.

Paul's boat will have the traditional three masted rig with extreme reverse rake of the foremast, an enormous main sail, and a small balancing sail at the mizzen. This is the same rig as my boat Taz, and I hope to get Taz sailing again in time to make her a useful 'scale model' for Paul to study as he works on his sail plan.

[Photos marked with * are larger than 80K.]