A “Kotik” Trailer-Sailer being Built by Ian Milne

Having sold my “Eun na Mara” canoe yawl Islesburgh (the red one) in 2014, and built the open Shetland-style “Sooty Tern” Trondra, I decided to build a “Kotik”, inspired by photos of one on the WoodenBoat Forum. These designs are all by Iain Oughtred, who lives on the Isle of Skye.  The Kotik design dates from 2010.

Kotik is Iain’s “Wee Seal Mk II”, stretched from 18’6” to 21’ 7” long, and 7’3” wide. The word “kotik” is Russian for seal pup, or “wee seal”, as it was a Russian, Mikhael Markov of Moscow, who instigated it. The plans are for the Wee Seal Mk II with three extra sheets for the Kotik conversion.  It can be rigged as a sloop or a yawl.  I like a yawl.  Both versions have a gunter-rigged mainsail, and no bowsprit. The yawl has a jib-headed mizzen sheeted to the rudder, and can have a Norwegian tiller, like Trondra’s, or a laminated tiller around one or both sides of the mizzen mast. The interior has a separate forward cabin with V-berth.

I started on 29th April 2016 by getting the Sooty Tern’s building frame down from the ceiling of my workshop.  The hull is now the right way up on its trailer, and the interior is complete.  I have a thread on the WoodenBoat Forum about it, here (or Google it): 
http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?207955-Kotik-Kotik-Kotik!

Still to come: 

• Complete the deck framing, including fore-hatch and Samson post
• Cabin house and cockpit coamings
• Electrical work
• Decks
• Tabernacle
• Cabin roof, with hatch and hand-rails
• Masts and spars
• Sails and rigging (the sails are being made now, by Southern Sails, Nelson)
• Squabs (being made by Alison);
• etc., etc. 

We hope to have her finished this summer and bring her to the Canterbury Classic Boats event at Lake Hood in March 2019. 
Ian and Alison Milne
Dunedin