I believe that the load times are acceptable.  I have a couple of observations concerning functionality:
Steinar has mostly overcome the Designs sorting links problem. Click the Designs link at the top of a refreshed main page on a 1920x1080 screen zoomed to 150% in Chrome (not a problem in Firefox or IE) and the bottom row of Designs doesn't appear and so won't be sorted by the links.  I haven't tested this issue at other resolutions, but I imagine it will always present a problem at some resolution.  Can't the designs be sorted from a database rather than the images that have appeared on the screen?
On the Building Blogs and Launched Boats page (and the main page), beneath each section it says "Go to all Blogs".  Would be better if the links were differentiated: i.e. "Go to all Build Blogs" "Go to all Launched Boats" as these are distinct pages and the links would match the titles.
My personal opinion is that the (all) Building Blogs and (all) Launched Boats pages are too long - or soon will be as more material is added.  It's a long way down each page to find boats that aren't referenced anywhere else.
Given that there are presently only five build blogs and a manageable number of launched boats, why not menu these at the top of the page or menu them all on the Build Blogs / Launched Boats page?  A slow scroll through means readers would still glance at what they were passing by.  Alternatively / at the same time, substantially shorten each blog with a "read/view more" link at the end of each shortened blog.
Finally, with the exception of the titles on the (all) Building Blogs and (all) Launched Boats pages, all links are easily identified.  These links aren't intuitive and are happened upon by chance and it appears they lead to pages that don't add further material.
Great concept by the way, but I think it makes sense to carry the theme right through the site.

David