Flying Carpet was designed by Bernard Rhodes, using mainly locally grown or re-cycled timber. 11.5 metres long, her unique free-standing biplane rig is of advanced aerodynamic design using robust, traditional-style rigging for reliability.

Experts will appreciate it's finer points, while non-sailors enjoy the easy motion, wide decks and roomy, comfortable interior.

Flying Carpet is outstandingly safe and well-proven, with an ocean voyage of 14,000 miles through the Pacific Islands to Japan and back under her keels. She is licensed to carry up to 24 passengers by day or 9 overnight. Your hosts are the Rhodes family - Bernard, wife Yachiyo, sons Andrew and Ken. There are plenty of stories to share!

Ocean voyages
Bernard grew up living on the shore of Lake Windermere, in Northern England. At age 23 he 'retired', and sailed his self-designed and built trimaran Klis across the Atlantic Ocean in record time, and on through the Pacific Islands to New Zealand.

More adventures included serving on the Fri, a traditional wooden Baltic Trader, during protests against atomic testing at Moruroa and on a Peace Odyssey through the Pacific. In Japan he met Yachiyo, they married and settled on Waiheke Island.

Flying Carpet was designed using a lifetime's study of the ways of a ship in the midst of the sea. An eco-friendly ocean-going family home, a vehicle for education, a test-bed for new ideas, she has achieved all of these. The voyage to Japan and back spanned 3 years from 1991 - 94, via Tahiti, the Cook Islands, Samoa, Kiribati, Micronesia and Guam.

The return trip was via the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia, and included surviving a typhoon. At the beginning of the voyage, Andrew was 14 and Ken was 11. They studied through The Correspondence School, and also became fully competent and reliable seamen. Andrew is currently Managing Director and skipper of Flying Carpet.