Allan Fullerton liked the look of some boat plans he saw on the internet, so he decided to build one.
'I was up in the US a couple of years back and I saw a few of these boats at Newport and really liked them,” says Allan. 'I thought I wouldn't mind having a little fizz boat.”

It's called a zip boat.

That was two and a half years ago. The boat first went into the water two weeks ago. Reassured it would go, he launched it again last weekend in front of a few more witnesses.
'I've never done anything with wood before,” says Allan. 'But the plans were quite good. I have got an engineering background which helped to thing about things in this kind of way.”

Allan also received a lot of advice over the internet. The people he bought the plans off have a discussion site where he was able to get overnight answers, and there are a couple of people in New Zealand who have build Zips, plus a couple of people from the yacht club had a look.
'I've had plenty of free advice,” says Allan, 'Some of it's even been good.”
The 15 foot long retro styled runabout is made of mahogany, and outboard powered.
'It was designed to be home built, and that is a lot easier with an outboard,” says Alan.

The boat was designed to take a 35-40 horsepower motor, but Allan says the modern 30 hp motor he's installed is probably half the weight of the motors available when the Zip was designed.
'It gets along really well. It's really light.”
All framing is mahogany, the deck is mahogany and the hull is ply.