In 2007, Brian, a customer of ours was approached to undertake a Community Boat Build program for youth at risk in the Forster/ Tuncurry area. The retired teacher and self taught wooden boat builder has since helped with the building of 3 Firebugs in the program and this was followed up with a canoe build program. He has built himself a 7m steamboat and a 5.5m 30's style speedboat...to name only a few of the nearly 60 plywood skiffs, dinghys, canoes and stand up paddle boards with TAFE and high school students. Brian's aim is to provide people of all ages with the skills to build a boatTafe/High school students.

This year, he will supervise the build of 34 plywood canoes with the high school program for the students and canoes built at the Bellingen Summer School. The groups of students Brian has worked with over the years should be highly commended with their fantastic achievement! As they have taken pride & enthusiasm in learning new skills to build their own canoe. Below is some of the canoes made in the Bellingen Summer School program over 5 days with Brian. Hence the name Bellinger was born as Brian believes he has now perfected the design of this neat double chine, easy to build canoe. We at DRIVE Marine have been so impressed with Brians proven design that we are selling the plans complete with detailed instructions.

At Camp Creative this year, 16 of these Bellinger canoes were built over the five days. As seen in the images below this was a great success and if you would like to undertake a canoe build of your own, but dont have the knowledge or are lacking the confidence, Brian is running another Camp Creative canoe build in January! CLICK HERE to get envolved!