That's a good question, and it comes up repeatedly. I think there are many
who would like to build one. Unfortunately I haven't heard of any plans
being available. Perhaps someone in the UK could do some research to find
what happened to the plans for the original Stanley Smith design. His
company was called West Wight Plycraft.
More recently (1995) Martin Pook was manufacturing the plywood West Wight
Potter AX in the UK. I understand he dropped out of the manufacturing
business, but perhaps he would be interested in marketing his plans or
kits. And perhaps he had acquired the manufacturing rights from the
successors to Stanley Smith.
As another option, a skilled and experienced boatbuilder could reproduce a
plywood Potter based on the U.S.-built fiberglass design. That might
require the permission of International Marine if IM has the U.S.
manufacturing exclusive rights, especially if someone were to build plywood
Potters for resale, thus competing with IM.
The first generation U.S-built gunter-rigged Potter like mine is much
closer to the original Smith plywood design. It has a wooden internal
structure and no fiberglass liner, so it should be relatively easy to
regress the design to all-wood. An all-wood Potter built using modern
epoxy saturation techniques should be a pretty tough boat. Actually I guess
that is what the Potter AX was. If I remember right, Martin Pook stopped
making the AX because of health concerns about working with the epoxy.
I believe our man in the UK, Bruce Longstaff, has a plywood WWP AX.
Perhaps he will contribute some thoughts on this subject.
Harry Gordon
P14 #234, Manatee
Mountain View, CA