Do it yourself Cherub kit

The new kit Cherub at the RYA Dinghy Sailing Show © Cherub Class

The Cherub class is very pleased to announce another builder offering off the shelf cherubs. Dave Low Boats has developed an off the shelf kit Cherub. A true innovation, maybe even a world first in true high performance dinghies.

'The basic idea of the Kit Cherub is similar to the way that you could buy a kit fireball or mirror back in the 70's and 80's. It didn't take a huge amount of boat building skill to put one of those together. What we are doing is producing the same sort of thing but using hi tech materials.' Says Dave Low, Managing Director of DL Boats.

Dave went on to say 'Essentially you buy the major components of the boat: hull, deck, bulkheads and fore-deck. They are all ready made vacuum bagged carbon foam sandwich components. Then you simply follow the instructions supplied to put them together to complete the hull.' We even offer a package including foils, tubes, spin pole, etc.'

DL Boats feel this kit process has several advantages, the difficult parts involving large lay-ups and expensive vacuum pumps and consumables are done by the professional. The rest of the laminating can be done using hand lay up without affecting the overall weight. The final fairing is done by the amateur resulting in a significant cost saving.

I then asked Dave about future plans for his kits, he explained that, 'The company will eventually offer two designs, the first is based on the "easy-one" design and uses a female mould. The other which is still on the drawing board will be built from a series of fixed curvature panels and would not be too different in concept to the current championship winning Bloodaxe Boats P7. The advantage of this will be that the whole kit can be flat packed and sent any were in the world.'

All in all this represents another great step forward for the class which is going from strength to strength. For anyone who has been thinking about self building a dinghy, this could be the kit for you. And if you have been hankering after the thrills of a Cherub but felt you couldn't afford one, well this looks like it's got your name on it.