Todd Bradshaw grew up in the central Illinois corn country, but early on developed a consuming interest in canoes and boats. He began teaching himself canoe building in 1972 and sailmaking in 1978. He currently specializes in custom-built, traditionally-styled sails for canoes and small dinghies. He is the author of the book Canoe Rig - The Essence and the Art published by WoodenBoat Books. A sculpture major in college, he soon discovered that "a lot of sculpture and a lot of boats are made out of the same stuff, yet you can actually do something with a boat!" Half a dozen years as a professional musician and part ownership of a chain of backpacking/canoeing/kayaking retail stores funded his boating adventures for nearly 20 years while building and repairing sails as a sideline. He spent three years flying a hot-air balloon for a living and five years writing a newspaper column. In 1992, he and his wife Marite moved to Madison Wisconsin, which offers canoeing, kayaking and sailing in the summer, and iceboating and skiing in the winter months. He currently builds a limited number of one-off custom canoe and small boat sails. When not out on the water, he spends his time rebuilding their 85 year-old house and "recording bad versions of old songs where I play all the parts myself."

You can contact Todd Bradshaw at: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

His web-closet is a constantly changing mixture of boating and sail photos, music-related odds and ends and whatever else happens to be going on at the time. http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/

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