Hola Pedro, I welcome you to our website. The wooden drift boats that we build are designed for easy maneuvering in whitewater rivers. They turn well and the high bows keep most of the water from waves outside the boat when we travel through them. They are designed to carry one passenger in the front and one person rowing the boat.

Because of the great ability to turn rapidly, they do not go in a straight line without much work. There are other designs, commonly longer and with straight lines rather than curved lines for the hull shape that work better on lakes. Are you familiar with what we call rowboats? They are better designed to use on a lake. When I visited your Facebook pages I saw pictures of a big lake. If this is the most common water you will be boating on a more standard rowboat would work better. Also if you have an outboard motor they will move a straight-sided rowboat much better. Drift boats with a motor on the back like to weave back and forth, not good for easy travel on a lake.

Do you have access to what is called plywood in Chile'? We use a "marine" plywood that is certified by the manufacturer to be glued with waterproof glues and there will not be small holes in the plywood where knots existed where branches grew on the trees. Any holes in the inner cores of the plywood cause problems if water gets in the plywood. If water gets trapped in one of these holes then is causes rot to form and can make the layers of wood come apart.

The marine plywood is used in our boats to make the sides and bottoms of our boats because it used to easily available. The Douglas Fir trees, sometimes called Oregon wood has great strength and can be bent to form the bottom and sides of the boats. We have cut down most of the Douglas Fir trees that used to be available. Now we have to import wood from other countries to replace what we used to have.

Another way to build rowboats is to use pieces of wood perhaps .5 cm in thickness cut into long lengths, 5 or 6 meters. With this style of boat an inner framework is made from smaller pieces of wood, perhaps even a hardwood that is resistant to rot, has few knots and will commonly be 1 cm by 4 or 5 cm wide cut from a longer piece of wood. You can find plans to build rowboats online that might be more suitable for the materials available in Chile'. I looked up one link for you to see. http://www.vintageprojects.com/boats/plywood-row.html There are many more links and many, many designs available.

What do the boats that people in Chile' look like? Since they have been using certain boats for many years or perhaps decades the designs fit the materials and tools available. There are reasons that boat design in certain areas designed for specific tasks exist. If you can investigate boat shops in the cities and towns where boats are used you might learn a lot.

Another website that has boats that are more suitable for use on lakes and flat water rivers is:  forum.woodenboat.com  they have thousands of members worldwide with many different types of boats represented. Visit there and see what you can find.

Thank you for joining Wooden Boat People, we enjoy learning about and meeting people from cultures other than the United States.

Regards,

Rick Newman