After considering quite a few designs, the Flint seemed the best for the environment at Bicheno, primarily an efficient boat under oars, being relatively narrow, but with a modern look and sufficient consideration of stability and safety for open-water use, such as on the East Coast at Bicheno.
The Flint is a relatively simple stitch-and-glue construction, as such its a good project for amateurs, but at the same time it takes that approach to its maximum application in the way the bottom panels are twisted at the bow to give as long a waterline length as possible. This does give the Flint a great capacity to cut through chop and make progress under oars in difficult conditions (the origins of the design), but at the same time makes getting the panels tied together a little 'hair-raising'. Paying for high quality marine plywood is probably mandatory to get a good result.
The Flint primarily a single person rowing boat, but at the same time its got the capabilty to carry passengers and take a small 2hp motor. As such I think it would make an excellent tender for a larger boat, it would probably tow very well too. It also has a sister design, the Fleet, which is optimised for efficient powered use and so can take a somewhat larger outboard.
The plans and instructions provided by Ross Lillistone, for a quite modest fee, are excellent, and the design also has the capability to be sailed too, also described in the plans.
On the first launch the boat lived up to expectations as an excellent rowing boat.
Ross Lillistone has other very nice but more complex designs with more of a focus on sailing, but I think the Flint deserves to be better known. It certainly fits within my interests at Huon-Ply Boats of making good use of the properties of plywood to build modern small boats.
One final comment, if you build such a light-weight boat, always keep it secure, they can take off in strong winds, more on that later!
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