Wordsmith,

It took a minute but I remembered seeing the Tred Avon name before and found the boat in an older copy (1995) of 40 Wooden Boats, Plan #115.  The book was published by the Wooden Boat magazine folks.  The write-up sez that it's supposed to come in at about 60 lbs and is suitable for "protected waters".  Sorry, I don't know how that compares to the Chessy, but maybe the info will help.

Not such a weird name, actually.  CLC used to name their boats after bodies of water and points of nautical interest around the Chesapeake.  The Tred Avon is a river which is a major tributary of the Choptank, which itself is a tributary of the Chesapeake.

I've got plans for a Tred Avon but decided before building it to build singles instead (a Ches. 14 and an LT-17, and now working on a Mill Creek 15).  It's been a while since I've looked at the plans, but as I recall it's pretty similar to the Chesapeake Double/Triple, but with less freeboard and less volume.  I think it's relationship to the big Chesapeake is rather similar to the relationship between the Cape Charles singles and the Chesapeake line of singles, i.e., an evolutionary predecessor.

You might want to contact CLC directly and inquire about how the Ches. double/triple differs from the Tred Avon.

I did a little looking on the web, and came across a couple of sites which will tell and show you more about the Tred Avon:

The first is an illustrated series on building a Tred Avon, with text and pictures of the project in progress and finished:http://www.olympus.net/personal/sbaxter/build.htm

The second is a series of photographs documenting the building process, again with pictures of the finished boat, but without text: http://ucsb.piscoweb.org/~will/kayak/kayakpicsframes.html

In addition, the Summer 1994 issue of Sea Kayaker apparently had an article on building a Tred Avon.

thanks, Jim and Jack - I think I'll be suggesting to my mate that he exlores other designs before building to the Tred Avon plans.   I'm sure they are fine, but time moves on...

W