Capt. R.D. “Pete” Culler designed this 24′ outboard-powered launch in lengths ranging from 15′ to 30′; Bill Perkins adapted the construction and cabin design for his particular purposes, and built this example.
Bill Perkins is a tall, soft-spoken man with an easy Southern grace. The man knows boats, so when he needed one to transport supplies and people from the Atlantic coast of Georgia to his old family house on Cumberland Island, he looked around pretty hard before settling on Pete Culler’s 24′ Fast Outboard Launch. Capt. Culler designed a whole series of these boats, ranging from 16′ to 30′, all with that signature Culler sheer and stem, and all based upon the design and construction practices of the old Chesapeake Bay working skiffs.
The boats of this series were drawn, as their name implies, with outboard power in mind. This is an important distinction: For long-term reliability and economy, I prefer an inboard diesel on a boat this size, but if your particular situation calls for convenience, shallow draft, and a better power-to-weight ratio than an inboard diesel affords, it is hard to beat a modern four-stroke outboard. Boats must be designed for where the weight will be concentrated, though, and to simply slap a big, heavy outboard motor on the stern of a boat intended to carry an inboard engine amidships is bad form. Considering that this series of boats has such a traditional pedigree, being designed from the outset for outboards makes these launches distinctive.
Culler’s plans call for conventional plank-on-frame Chesapeake construction: caulked herringbone bottom planking, and massive backbone pieces and transom. But Bill’s needs dictated that he come up with something different: OTTER is stored in a shed, and her hull is supported by just two rails—though, with the boat’s 425-lb motor hanging from the stern, Bill requested a ground-floor berth “so I could support the transom with blocks.” The boat is transported by forklift from the shed to water, and this requires additional strength. “I made a conversion,” said Bill, “to glued-up construction that has proven itself over the past few years in rough water and rough handling ashore.”
Bill began construction by setting up the molds on 3′ centers, and then placed topside frames at 18″ on center. Structural plywood bulkheads, thick floor timbers, and a robust keel help hold the shape.
The bottom is composed of a 1″ × 4″ Western red cedar herringbone-pattern inner layer, and 1⁄2″ fir plywood — laid as diagonal plank opposite to the first layer — on the outside. Bill reports that, working forward from the stern in this high-chined hull, the twist required in the cross planking becomes unworkable in about the forward third of the boat as the chine curves up. From there the planks are gotten out of thicker stock, with the required twist planed in before bringing them down to the correct thickness (an electric plane is a key tool)—a process covered in Howard Chapelle’s Boatbuilding and in various writings of Pete Culler. “The amount of shape this technique produces in the bow is surprising,” says Bill. “I think aspiring builders might like to know about this alternative to sheet ply.”
Starting from the stern, the second bottom layer was laid down in epoxy on an opposing diagonal to the raked herringbone first layer, so the after two-thirds of the bottom is double-diagonal construction until the required twist in the planking again becomes too much. The remaining forward portion was then cold-molded in two 1⁄4″ layers, the laminates glued and stapled to the faired first layer. The finished interior shows the traditional herringbone planking. The cedar bottom is sheathed in two layers of Xynol on the outside and one layer of 6-oz ’glass on the inside so the inner face of the planking may be finished bright. “I watch carefully for deflection or damage of the planking,” says Bill of the boat’s rugged treatment and equally rugged construction, “but can see no problem. The boat has never made a sound when being handled by the forklift.”
Corky Gallo
OTTER, Bill Perkins’s Culler launch, displays her nimble handling (left). Perkins beefed up OTTER’s hull construction to accommodate the rigors of dry-stack storage and forklift transport (right).
OTTER’s topsides are of 5⁄8″ glued-lap okoume plywood—an effort to keep weight low in the boat. No lap bevels are required for this hull shape, though gains must be cut at the bow and stern. The sheerstake was hung with the boat right-side up. “When it was dry-fit to my liking,” say Bill, “I followed a note on the drawing and twisted the aft end a bit to produce some tumblehome there. This looked good, so, again following Culler’s note, I cut a flat in the transom to receive the sheerstrake, then twisted 1 1/2″ over the 3′ from the last mold. It adds a nice bit of shape to the quarters.”
OTTER’s hull is fair. I got the chance to see the boat picked from its storage rack and launched, and can also vouch for the strength of Bill’s construction. It is a startling thing to see the boat, stern-to on the huge forklift with over half of its length hanging there unsupported, being trundled to the dock. These are demanding conditions, indeed. I also appreciate Bill’s efforts to remain loyal to the herringbone, or so-called “file” bottom planking, despite his need for a tight, glued construction. That bright planking inside the cabin just looks right.
“…shallow draft, impeccable manners off plane, and an imperceptible shift onto plane.”
Bill designed and built the cabin and interior, and got the proportions and details dead-on, to my eye. The only aesthetic complaint I can make is that the 115-hp engine appears a bit oversized to me. But that’s an aesthetic bias. Bill has a 15-mile commute in the boat, often with it heavily loaded. His feeling is that the extra speed he can get in the right conditions justifies the engine choice. In different circumstances, I think the boat would be perfectly happy with a 70-hp engine, maybe even less. That should be plenty to drive the boat on plane, and its proportions would be much better.
Reading Bill’s description of the construction and scantlings of OTTER, the reader will not be surprised to learn that this boat feels big, solid, and substantial on the water. She handles waves and chop well. Although like any planing hull she will slap in the right conditions, there is never any impression of fragility. The trade-off for that slight tendency to pound is shallow draft, impeccable manners off plane, and an imperceptible shift onto plane.
As a displacement boat, OTTER has a comfortable motion and good speed, and is easily controlled — even with the extra weight of that big motor. Cutting some of that excess weight in the stern would only improve the fine low-speed manners of the boat. Bill took her up to her 30-knot maximum speed for me, and while zipping through marshes was thrilling and I can certainly see the advantages of top speed on his long commute, I think I am most impressed with the boat just pooting around at idle. In my opinion, far too many powerboat designers seem to be completely unconcerned with the low-speed performance of their boats, while my experience leads me to believe that low speed is more important than top speed. Judging by OTTER’s behavior, I suspect Pete Culler felt the same.
The bays and estuaries of the east coast of Georgia are famous, or infamous, for oysters, strong tidal flows, and the tendency to develop a heavy, short, wicked chop in the right conditions. To be successful here, boats need shallow draft and fine entries. That Chesapeake style of bow with the thick staves planed to shape allows for a much sharper entry than sheet ply would, which let Culler leave the stem a little less raked, and improves the boat’s ability to breast that chop, especially running into the backs of the waves. She didn’t display any tendency to root or broach.
I’ve never spent any time on the Chesapeake Bay, but judging by how well Pete Culler’s design adapts to Bill Perkins’s stomping grounds, I’d suspect that the conditions there must be mighty similar to those in Georgia. In any event, the compromises that Culler chose to make in designing OTTER and those that Bill made in building her have resulted in a wonderfully successful marriage of boat and conditions. Bill still has his molds, and I got the distinct impression that he would love the opportunity to refine his methods, if there is anyone out there who feels the need for a similar set of compromises.
OTTER Particulars
R.D. "Pete" Culler
OTTER’s lines and cross-planked, or so-called file-bottom, construction are endemic to Chesapeake Bay; designer Culler popularized this form and construction technique in New England. This drawing shows Culler’s addition of a “Rhode Island box” shelter to the original design.
Plans for this launch — and other designs by Capt. Pete Culler — are available from Mystic Seaport, 75 Greenmanville Ave., P.O. Box 6000, Mystic, CT 06355–0990; 860–572–5315
The two boats featured in our profiles this month could not be more different: the Gorran Haven crabber, a 16′ yawl built to traditional working-boat lines; and the Optimist Dinghy, a spritsail pram just 7′ 9″ in length. Yet, despite their clear differences these two boats have something in common: they have withstood the passage of time.
In the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine, among exhibits that tell the stories of the region’s early maritime and later shipbuilding history, there are two original boats that, like the crabber and Optimist, have survived while countless others of their types have vanished without a trace. The 14′ 7″ Rangeley Lakes guideboat, built by Charles W. Barrett in around 1915, is one of a style that first emerged in Maine’s Rangeley Lakes region in 1869, designed and built for fly-fishing. Flat-bottomed and shallow-drafted, with their maximum beam carried well into the ends, the type was roomy enough to accommodate a sportsman and his guide, stable enough for one or both men to stand up in their endeavor to hook and net fish, and shallow enough to maneuver through shoal waters. In its original form, the Barrett guideboat would have been double-ended, but sometime after 1930 it was modified to accommodate an outboard motor. Indeed, so successful was the type that as outboards became more popular, later models were simply adapted and built with transom sterns. Even though guideboats were designed and built with utility in mind, there is beauty in this example’s functionality, the closely spaced frames and narrow, carefully lined-off planks accentuating a sweeping sheer that rises to the high straight stem. Rangeley Lakes guideboats are still in use in parts of Maine, and new examples are built every year.
Photographs by the author
When built, c.1915, this Rangeley Lakes guideboat was a double-ender. Despite the alteration to a transom stern made after 1930, presumably to accommodate an outboard motor, the boat retains its sweeping lines, accentuated by the carefully lined-off narrow planks.
The guideboat is not the oldest boat in the museum. That distinction goes to a Wabanaki birchbark canoe, thought to have been built around 1745. Its bark has been carbon-dated to between 1729 and 1780, likely establishing it as the oldest birchbark canoe anywhere in the world. The construction of the canoe, from harvesting the bark to fashioning the wooden pegs used as fastenings, to shaping the frames and splitting and shaving the spruce roots used to bind the gunwales and tie in the bark, would have taken hundreds of hours. But even more remarkable than the labor required is the beauty of the workmanship, the care seen in precise measurements repeated over and over and mirrored end to end and side to side.
Despite the vast differences in age, and the materials and tools used, the guideboat and the canoe share a distinct quality: beauty. For those taking more than a passing glance, beauty is evident in the boats’ fair curves, their symmetry, and the uniformity in their details from bow to sterns. Is it beauty, then, that has given them both longevity far beyond the purpose for which each was built to serve?
The Wabanaki canoe, on loan to the Maine Maritime Museum from Pejepscot History Center in Brunswick, Maine, is thought to have been built around the middle of the 18th century. Its length would have been between 19’ and 20’ overall but now, missing one of its ends, it measures 17’ 6”. Construction details such as wide ribs, edge-to-edge planking, and significant tumblehome were typical of Wabanaki-made canoes. The method of attaching the thwarts to the gunwales is unusual—commonly the thwarts would have been mortised into the gunwale, but here they are inserted into controlled splits. Conservation work on the canoe was carried out by Steve Cayard, a non-native builder who has worked with native communities to revive birch-bark canoe building.
The Gorran Haven crabber traces its story back 150 years to a sloping Cornish beach once busy with working fishermen. Like the canoe and the guideboat, the crabbers were not built to last for decades; indeed, most had short lives. Nor were they built to be beautiful. Yet, with their long shallow keels, raked transoms, slender ends, and balanced rigs they were undeniably pleasing to the eye, well beyond what their use required. The new crabbers being built today in Cornwall, U.K., continue in that pursuit of beauty.
But what of the Optimist Dinghy? There are few who would describe the Optimist as beautiful. Indeed, even its designer, Clark Mills, described it as looking “kinda funny.” And yet the Optimist has not only survived since its creation in 1947, it has thrived—growing from a simple plywood pram sailed by a bunch of kids in Florida to a still-simple fiberglass dinghy that has been sailed by millions of kids around the world. It has done so not because it is a beautiful boat, but because it serves its purpose exceptionally well. And while it may seem that its utility has won the day, perhaps its beauty is in the experience it offers and the lifelong memories it can create.
The small village of Gorran Haven lies on the south coast of Cornwall, U.K., and has an east-facing drying harbor partly protected by a seawall. Gorran Haven crabbers, the traditional working craft of the harbor, were small boats, usually between 16′ and 18′ long. They were worked by two men, or a man and a boy, and even singlehanded at times, for both crabbing and conventional fishing. They were typically straight-stemmed, with a long keel with much less draft forward to suit the slope of the Gorran Haven beach, hollow waterlines, maximum beam just aft of amidships, and a steeply raked wineglass transom. According to a mid-Victorian letter quoted by Cornish historian James Whetter, “The crab boats of St Gorran Haven are superior to any of the kind in the country, perhaps in the world.”
Debbie Purser, co-founder of Classic Sailing in St. Mawes, Cornwall, for several years has owned the 17′ Gorran Haven crabber OUTDOOR GIRL, a 2008 replica of ELLEN, built in 1882 by Dick Pill in Gorran Haven. ELLEN was reputed to be the fastest Gorran Haven crabber ever built and is now owned by the Cornish Maritime Trust. Debbie uses OUTDOOR GIRL commercially, taking guests on sailing and wild-camping trips—complementing the charters she offers on her 44′ LOD pilot cutter TALLULAH. When she decided that a second crabber, to be named WILD BOY, would be a welcome addition to Classic Sailing’s fleet, she was inspired to build a replica of CUCKOO, built by John Pill in 1881.
Photographs by the author
The seams in the traditionally planked carvel hull were caulked with linseed putty and red lead. The jib is hanked to the forestay with traditional bronze spring-clip hanks, and the forestay is shackled to the stemhead while the two shrouds are attached with simple lashings.
In his book Spritsails and Lugsails, naval architect and maritime historian John Leather described the CUCKOO as being “16′ 5″ long × 5′ 9″ beam by 2′ 6″ moulded depth, [with] a plumb stem and small, well-raked transom. She was undecked, built for rowing as well as sailing, with well rounded sections and steep rise of floor, which resulted in very fine waterlines at the ends […] Although centreboards were not used, the [crabbers] went well to windward due to the sharp bottom and large staysail though they needed reefing early in freshening winds.” The original CUCKOO no longer exists, but her lines were taken some years ago by Philip J. Oke and are now kept at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. They were also published in Inshore Craft—Traditional Working Vessels of the British Isles, by Basil Greenhill and Julian Mannering.
Debbie took the idea of building a new CUCKOO to Mike Broome, course tutor at the Boat Building Academy (BBA) in Lyme Regis, U.K., who says he “tweaked the lines to produce a fair set of lines and offsets,” and digitized them.
A second crabber is under construction at the Boat Building Academy. In this second build the planking is of yellow cedar and additional, larger frames were fitted to give the hull better strength. In all other details the two hulls are the same. The long keel, with its depth astern acting like a skeg, gives the boat good directional stability with minimal draft. The foot of the rudder is angled up from the keel so that it will not touch bottom if the boat is grounded.
Construction started with the full-sized lofting and building the molds. Then came the backbone—keel, hog, inner and outer stem, and sternpost, as well as knees for the stem and sternpost; all in solid sapele—which was set right-side up on a temporary framework a couple of feet off the ground. The seven molds and the 1 1⁄4″-thick oak transom were fixed to the centerline, the former temporarily, and the latter permanently at an angle of 29° off the vertical. Ribbands were temporarily fixed to the outer edges of the transom, molds, and stem, and then the frames—7⁄8″ × 5⁄8″ at 8″ centers—were steam-bent inside the ribbands. (After WILD BOY was finished and taken home to sit on a beach supported by legs, a handful of the frames broke; in a subsequent build of a second Gorran Haven crabber at the BBA, the frames were sized up to 7⁄8″ × 3⁄4″ centered at 6 3⁄16″.)
With the frame complete, work began on the carvel planking. The sheerstrake was fashioned of oak, for its extra strength and resistance to wear, while the rest of the boat was planked in Siberian larch. There are 11 planks per side, with an additional stealer plank immediately above the garboard in the aft 7′ of the hull. The planks were cut from 10″-wide boards and, other than the garboards and stealers, all had to be scarfed and steamed to take the curves and twists at the bow and stern. The finished thickness of the planking is 5⁄8″, but to allow for the backing-out of the interior face of the planks, particularly at the turn of the bilge, some had to come from 7⁄8″ stock. The planking process started with the garboards and then the sheerstrakes. Thereafter, planks were fitted alternately—up and down—finishing each side with a shutter plank. The V-shaped seams—created by the beveling of the plank edges—were caulked with linseed putty and red lead.
The build process continued with the fit-out of the hull. Nine 1 1⁄4″-thick oak floors were fitted with their top edges level so they could also act as bearers for the sapele sole boards. The risers for the four 1″ oak thwarts are 2″ × 1″ oak. The aft thwart serves as a helm seat; forward of that is a removable rowing thwart, then the mast thwart, and finally a thwart in the bow for strength. The oak inwales and outwales are both 1 1⁄2″ x 1 1⁄4″ with a 4″-wide × 1⁄2″-thick oak cap with two scarf joints. The rudder is of 1 1⁄2″-thick solid oak, its blade made up of four biscuit-jointed pieces.
For the singlehanded sailor, the yawl rig with jib can seem daunting at first, but Debbie has her crabber set up so that all the running lines are close to hand. If the mizzen sail is sheeted in, it will act as a steadying sail, holding the boat up to the wind and allowing the crew to go forward to raise or lower the other sails.
The CUCKOO drawings in Inshore Craft do not include details for a rig other than showing short stumps to indicate the two mast positions, so Mike drew a spritsail-lug rig similar to the rig on OUTDOOR GIRL. All the spars are solid Douglas fir, with the 3 1⁄2″-diameter mainmast made from two pieces assembled longitudinally with opposing grain for stability. All the spars fit easily inside the boat except for the mainmast, which lays atop the boat from stem to rudderstock. While it is possible for a tall, strong person to step the mainmast singlehandedly, it is much easier for two people. Once the mast is upright, the bronze gate in the mast thwart holds it steady so that the shrouds can be lashed to the shroud plates; the forestay is shackled to a stemhead fitting. The mizzenmast and bumkin can both be easily stepped and rigged by one person.
On the day that Debbie and I went for a sail the winds were very light, but she was able to tell me about her experiences of sailing the boat. “She goes to windward amazingly well considering she hasn’t got a centerboard or [deep] keel,” Debbie said. “She points better than some other boats with centerboards, although in strong winds she makes a bit of leeway, and when tacking it is often necessary to back the jib to make sure the bow gets through the wind. We once managed to do 7 knots on a reach in quite a lot of wind with two people on board.”
There is plenty of room on board for a crew of three (or more if they are prepared to be close to each other) but the boat is also set up for singlehanded sailing, which Debbie takes advantage of quite often. The rotating jam cleats for the jibsheets are positioned so the helmsperson can reach them, and there is a bungee dampening system for the tiller so that Debbie can move forward to drop or hoist the sails; the bungees also can center the helm while she is rowing. In stronger winds—around 15 knots or more—she has found that she cannot hike out enough to make much difference to the heel and that the boat does make a bit of leeway as a result.
The crabber’s traditional pedigree is instantly recognizable from the wineglass transom to the capped gunwales, wooden thole and belaying pins, wooden blocks and spars.
Debbie has two rows of reefpoints in WILD BOY’s mainsail but finds that deploying the second reef is impractical as the bottom of the sprit is then too low and would need to be replaced by a shorter sprit. Nor has she found that brailing up the leech is practical as “there is still a lot of sail up. But it is great in no wind when you just want to get it out of the way to row.” (Because of its limited use, Debbie doesn’t always rig up the brailing line, especially if she’s going out for a short sail.) Although the boat weighs about half a ton with ballast and a crew of two on board, Debbie finds it surprisingly easy to row in light winds, and says that with the deep skeg aft, it tracks well. On one occasion, she comfortably rowed the crabber for about a mile in a flat calm.
Although Debbie has found it handy to be able to sail off a beach with just the jib and mizzen raised and then to hoist the mainsail when under way, she says that the overall performance with just those two smaller sails isn’t very good, especially to windward, “but it works [if I’m] taking inexperienced sailors out in a blow and [don’t want] to scare them.” With a draft of about 8″ forward and 15″ aft, Debbie particularly likes the ease with which the boat can be taken into a beach to offload gear, and she has found it relatively easy to get the boat on and off a trailer.
In light airs and with the sails trimmed, the crabber tracks well and, at times, will sail itself.
While clearly suited to day-sailing, the removable middle thwart and absence of a centerboard also means that the crabber offers plenty of space for overnight accommodation, when the sprit can be set up between the two masts as a ridgepole for a cockpit tent. There is no enclosed storage space or built-in flotation, but a foredeck could be added forward of the mainmast and buoyancy bags could be attached on the underside of the fixed thwarts.
With plenty of capacity for people and expedition gear, the Gorran Haven crabber is well suited to coastal exploration. The hull is seaworthy and can easily be trailered, and the traditional construction—while not for the inexperienced builder—isn’t particularly complicated.
Nigel Sharp is a lifelong sailor and a freelance marine writer and photographer. He spent 35 years in managerial roles in the boatbuilding and repair industry and has logged thousands of miles in boats big and small, from schooners to dinghies.
Digital plans for the Gorran Haven Crabber are available from Mike Broome for £165.
Both Inshore Craft: Traditional Working Vessels of the British Isles and Spritsails and Lugsails are available used from multiple book dealers; Inshore Craft is also available as a Kindle from Amazon.
In August 1947, Cliff McKay Jr. was 12 years old and living in Clearwater, Florida. He and his friends spent most of their free time in and on the water, swimming, playing in rowboats, and fishing. For a year and a half, he had also been sailing after being invited by a couple of young men to sail on their Snipe. As the sailing bug took hold, Cliff’s father, Major Clifford A. McKay, had an idea. “Dad wanted every kid in Clearwater to have the fun and excitement I was having,” says Cliff. “He decided we needed to come up with a boat that would cost no more than $50 and get local merchants to sponsor them. It would lead to kids gaining independence, responsibility, and self-confidence.”
Major McKay took his idea to the Clearwater Optimist Club, a newly formed branch of Optimist International, a youth service association founded in 1919. “Dad was a promoter, in a good way: he could take an idea and make it happen, and everyone would be happy.” And McKay didn’t think small. At his first meeting with the Optimist club, he not only proposed the sailboat but suggested it could lead to “a sailboat competition for Juniors leading to a national competition or regatta in Clearwater.” The members asked McKay to find a designer. He went straight to Clark Mills, a local boatbuilder known to all as “Clarkie.”
Courtesy of Cliff McKay Jr.
In 1947, Cliff McKay Jr., then aged 12, sea-trialed the prototype Optimist pram in Clearwater, Florida, and declared it to be “really great.”
McKay’s design brief for Mills was for a boat that could be built from two sheets of 4 × 8 plywood, use a bedsheet for a sail, and cost no more than $50. “Dad was no sailor, and Clarkie told me later that he talked Dad out of the bedsheet,” says Cliff, “but it may have given him the idea for the shape of the sail.” Writing of the experience many years later, Mills said it took him a couple of nights to come up with the design. “I drew lots of sailboats,” he wrote. “The problem […] was the price. Every time I had a nice little sailing skiff drawn, it figured out [to] too much cost. I finally cut the bow off, making it a butt-headed pram.”
In less than a week Mills had built a prototype. “I hauled it down to Haven Street Dock in Clearwater,” he said, “and Cliff McKay Jr. got in and took off in about a 20-mph breeze. He scooted out into the bay on the wind, off the wind, across, and then reached back to the dock. He landed saying, ‘That was really great!’”
Cliff recalls, “It was lively and accelerated smartly as the sail filled. It turned sharply when I put the tiller over. The bow didn’t dig in. It seemed to lift and skip across the water. The low sprit rig and generous beam gave it good stability. It was fun and easy to sail. The Snipe I’d been sailing was challenging, but the pram responded more quickly and was more fun.”
McKay and Mills took the boat to the next Optimist Club meeting. Fifteen sponsors signed up that night and the number was quickly doubled. In November 1947, the first official race was held with a fleet of eight competing off the Clearwater Yacht Club basin. By the following spring the club was hosting weekly races for boys and girls.
Jenny Bennett
Today’s International Optimist Dinghy has a sail shape modified from the original, is typically built of fiberglass, and rigged with aluminum spars, but the boat is still instantly recognizable as Clark Mills’s Optimist pram.
By 1949, there were more than 30 Optimist Prams. Then disaster struck. On the night of April 20, the old fish processing factory behind the yacht club, which had long served as the boat-storage shed, burned down; 29 of the prams were lost. Cliff says, “the fun and excitement of a year and a half vanished overnight. When the ashes cooled a few days later, I poked around looking for metal fittings from my boat. All I found were melted blobs.”
What might have been a tragedy was perhaps the savior of the Optimist class. The local radio newscaster ran a piece asking listeners to come forward to sponsor new boats. “In less than two hours,” Cliff recalls, “generous merchants and friends had pledged funds for 43 new boats, and $5,000 in building materials.”
News of the fire and the community response spread, and the Optimist Pram spread with it. According to Cliff, within seven years there were more than 1,000 Optimists racing in Florida. The class also grew quickly in Europe when, in 1954, Axel Damgaard took one of the prams to Denmark, made some modifications—most noticeably to the sail shape—and promoted it locally as the Optimist Dinghy. By 1965, the International Optimist Dinghy Association (IODA) had been founded with Austria, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, and the U.S. being the first members, joined shortly by West Germany and Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe). The first World Championships were held in the U.S. in 1966—less than 20 years after McKay had presented his idea in Clearwater.
Jenny Bennett
The early prams carried no additional flotation, but when fiberglass models were introduced, some were built with buoyancy tanks. Today’s standardized boats carry three buoyancy bags—two forward and one in the stern.
The Optimist Dinghy is a phenomenon in the sailing world. This simple sprit-rigged 8′ pram is thought to be the most numerous one-design boat ever. More than 100 national sailing associations belong to the IODA, and in 2000, 59 nations took part in the World Championships—believed to be a record for any Class Championship. It has been the starter boat for millions of children around the world and continues to be the most popular of all kids’ sail-training dinghies. And, while there are currently more than 150,000 registered boats, it is believed that well over 400,000 have been built.
As designed by Clark Mills, the Optimist Pram could not have been simpler: 7′ 8″ long, 3′ 8″ wide with a slight rocker to the underwater shape, transom bow and stern, a daggerboard, a rudder and tiller, mast, sprit, and boom, all of which fit within the length of the boat, and a 35-sq-ft sail. Maximum draft, with the daggerboard down, was 2′ 6″. There were no thwarts but a single frame aft of the daggerboard trunk, and a mast bench 11″ aft of the bow transom provided athwartship stiffness. Longitudinally, a 3⁄4″ × 3 1⁄2″ keel, along with chine logs, inwales, and two stringers either side of the keel, all 3⁄4″ × 1 1⁄2″, provided strength.
Until the late 1960s the dinghies were built exclusively in plywood, but in 1970 the IODA officially approved the manufacture of a fiberglass hull provided it was not “inferior to a wooden boat in regard to safety, strength, and buoyancy.” Multiple variations appeared on the scene around the world and while the IODA made numerous attempts to standardize the weight and number of laminates of the fiberglass hulls, the struggle to retain control of construction and design plagued the association for years. Wooden boats continued to be competitive, but among training programs, the fiberglass hulls quickly gained popularity for their affordability and apparent indestructability.
Jenny Bennett
The one-design rules lead to large fleets of nearly identical boats. Variations are essentially limited to boat names and color of buoyancy bags and sail numbers.
In 1983, the IODA took a stand and announced that in order to create and protect a truly one-design class, the technical committee had chosen “a single-walled hull with a double bottom.” The official design was based on the “Winner Optimist” developed by Henning Wind, a Danish competitive sailor turned small-boat manufacturer, and introduced buoyancy with two bags placed either side in the forward half of the boat, and a third against the stern transom.
Within a decade the wooden boats had been surpassed and in today’s global fleets there remain few wooden hulls, and none take part in the competitive circuit. Today’s boats are, however, little changed from Mills’s Optimists. Overall length has grown by 1″, the draft has increased by 3″, and the sail shape has changed to include more roach requiring two battens—the sail area is still officially 35 sq ft. But the boat remains instantly recognizable as the pram from Clearwater. “My wife and I have visited harbors across the world,” says Cliff, “and there they are. You can’t miss them. We cruised into Madeira and almost the first thing I saw when we went ashore was a rack of Optimist Dinghies. One time we came into Miami and there was an Optimist regatta underway. There were so many dinghies, you couldn’t even see the shore.”
For Cliff, the appeal of the boat was always about its performance. “From that first day,” he says, “I was impressed by how quickly it responded and how lively it was. And it’s pretty stable—that sprit rig keeps the center of effort low, and the beam is almost half the length of the boat. I don’t think I ever capsized a pram when I wasn’t intending to. Sailing at a young age,” he continues, “is a little scary at first, but once you get accustomed to it, it’s unique. It’s multifaceted: wind, current, strategy, and everything’s changing constantly. Optimists have allowed millions of children to experience the challenge and fun of that.”
Laura Harrington
As sailors grow in experience and confidence, the Optimist continues to challenge. Hadden Brinegar, 13, has been sailing Optimists since she was 9, and was on Team USA in the Optimist class at Nieuwpoortweek 2024 in Belgium. She says she loves Optis “because I’m forced to be independent and rely on my own instincts and decisions. If something goes wrong or you have a bad day, you have no one to blame but yourself. But if you win, you get 100% of the glory!”
For today’s young sailors, not much has changed since the early days. The boats weigh just 77 lbs and children as young as six or seven working together can wheel a boat down a modest ramp and launch it without adult assistance. Rigging the boat is kept as simple as possible, and the setup brings a level of independence unfamiliar in most childhood activities; children rig their own fleets, helping each other where needed, the more experienced directing the less so, often with little or no adult supervision. Pushing off from a ramp or dock, a skipper will be seen, typically head down, making final adjustments, even while pulling in the mainsheet so that the little boat picks up speed, heels, and skims away across the water.
Daphne Walsh, Maine State Optimist champion in 2021 and 2022, has an obvious affection for the boat. “They’re really fun,” she says, “especially when the wind picks up. For taller kids in light airs they’re tough, and when you’re young in a boat by yourself it can be scary, but it’s good.” Now an instructor, Walsh also loves them as a teaching boat. Just about anyone, she says, can sail an Optimist: they’re simple, stable, and quick to respond, so kids pick up the basics fast. But as a sailor becomes more proficient, the boat becomes more challenging. “There’s so much to teach,” she says; “there’s rigging techniques, tuning, balance, trim…you can really get down to the nitty-gritty with an Opti.”
Jenny Bennett
The stability and responsiveness of the Optimist dinghy combine to make it a reliable boat for sail training. Children learn by doing simple drills like follow-the-leader or tacking “on the whistle,” and by sailing in fleets of mixed ages and abilities, newcomers learn by watching and copying their more experienced peers.
The worldwide success of his concept went largely unnoticed by Major McKay but, says Cliff Jr., “he was just so happy to see the kids all getting the opportunity to sail.” Occasionally the universal appeal would be hard to ignore. “During the Munich Olympics,” Cliff recalls, “they had a parade of tall ships. And swarming around them were 400 Optimist Dinghies. I was watching it on TV and called Dad to make sure he saw it. That was a special moment for us to share.”
Clark Mills once told Cliff Jr. that his famous design “looked kinda funny, but it sailed real good.” For nearly 75 years, Mills’s contribution to sailing has been much praised, yet he always maintained he was just the guy that Major McKay came to with an idea. It was an idea that not only introduced millions of children to sailing but also spawned many of sailing’s top competitors: at the 2012 Olympics it was recorded that 80% of skippers across the eight classes were former Optimist sailors.
Clark Mills, inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2017, once described the Optimist as looking like a horse trough. Daphne Walsh likens it to a bathtub, but surely no other small boat has introduced more people to the joys of sailing than the Optimist Dinghy.
The original Optimist pram as drawn by Clark Mills.
The modern one-design International Optimist Dinghy
With thanks to Cliff McKay Jr. for his memories, and to Michael Jones who provided a wealth of historical background.
In the U.S. a McLaughlin Optimist club racer starts at $3,835. Secondhand boats can be found for less than $1,000. For more information about the Optimist class, visit the International Optimist Dinghy Association.Plans are available from multiple sources including the IODA ([email protected]); ODTPlans, offering full plans with instruction booklet and drawings for the auxiliary jig and temporary frames;andthe Cleveland Amateur Boatbuilding and Boating Society (CABBS), offering plans for amateur building redrawn from plans published in the 1950s.
The water was glassy calm as SCHERZO slid off her trailer into a muddy low tide in Porpoise Bay at the head of Sechelt Inlet on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, an 85-mile stretch of mainland northwest of Vancouver. With Howe Sound to the southeast, Desolation Sound to the northwest, Georgia Strait to the west, and the rugged Coast Range mountains to the north and east, the Sunshine Coast is essentially an island. It is bisected by Sechelt Inlet, a narrow body of water that extends 18 1⁄2 nautical miles south from Jervis Inlet to Porpoise Bay and the town of Sechelt, on the traditional and ancestral lands of the Sechelt (shíshálh) First Nation. At its widest point the inlet is just over 1 nautical mile across, more than 900′ deep, and framed by richly forested mountains rising to 4,000′ on either side. Just south of the inlet’s mouth are the Skookumchuck Narrows, and south of the narrows are the Sechelt Rapids, locally referred to as the Skookumchuck (“strong water” in the Chinook trade language) or, simply, the Chuck. Four times a day, 200-billion gallons of water pour through the Chuck reaching speeds of 17 knots, making it one of the fastest tidal rapids in the world. The rapids, 16 nautical miles to the north of us, were to be the first destination in our four-day trip.
Alex Johnson
Porpoise Bay is a busy seaplane hub. We launched near one of the floats but were careful to avoid the designated take-off and landing area when we left the harbor.
SCHERZO is a 14′ by 6′ Pacific power dory. I built her in my back yard in Santa Cruz, California, between 2010 and 2015. Her flat-bottomed plywood hull, sheathed in two layers of fiberglass cloth and epoxy, is built to the Seneca design by the late Jeff Spira. I designed her interior around a 14″-diameter wooden ship’s wheel that I found in an antique shop on Long Island, New York. She is outfitted for day cruising with a helm-seat cooler, an Anchor Buddy and 100′ bow line for beaching, waterproof USB charging ports for an iPad, a waterproof caddy for paper charts, nav lights in case we stay out too late, and 15 gallons of gasoline—good for about 15 hours of cruising. Powered by a 20-hp Yamaha outboard, with three adults sitting amidships, she cruises at an easy 10 knots at 5,200 rpm.
I had timed our departure from Porpoise Bay to arrive at the Skookumchuck at or near slack water at about 7 that evening. We had plenty of time to get there. I had been joined for the adventure by Alex Johnson, an engineer highly capable in all things mechanical and electrical, and his wife, Allison Gong, a marine biologist, published nature photographer, and college professor who was eager to see what was living beneath the surface of Sechelt Inlet’s chilly waters.
Roger Siebert
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Away from the launch ramp, we idled our way through 20 or 30 anchored boats, many of them with failing paint, rust-stained hulls, and tangled rigging. Porpoise Bay is a water aerodrome, with five scheduled incoming and outgoing flights daily plus sightseeing tours and the occasional private seaplane. We steered to the west of Poise Island to avoid the designated landing and take-off area on the east side, but there was no air traffic as we motored out and the morning was still and quiet.
Past the island I throttled up to cruising speed. The forested hillsides to either side of us were dotted with summer cabins, year-round homes, and even a couple of small marinas. But as we motored beyond the settlement of Tuwanek, some 4 nautical miles down the inlet, all signs of human encroachment disappeared, the mountainsides grew steeper, and we found ourselves gliding between high dark-green walls of cedar and Douglas fir that loomed over the sea. The mountains that frame Sechelt Inlet rise straight up from the water. Except where the shoreline is interrupted by steep granite bluffs, the trees grow so close to the water’s edge that overhanging branches touch the surface at high tide and at low create a perfectly straight line paralleling the water. Ahead of us, for as far as we could see, point after point of land reached into the inlet from both sides.
Allison Gong
Our first stop was at Kunechin Point. The weather was perfect: little wind, clear skies directly overhead, and balmy temperatures. Everywhere in Sechelt Inlet the waters are crystal clear, which makes coming ashore easier as you can see the shoals and hazards.
Passing Nine Mile Point to starboard, we motored across the mouth of Salmon Inlet, headed for Kunechin Point. It was getting on for lunchtime and the chart showed a provincial campsite here. Kunechin Point is a granite outcropping, perhaps 100′ across, extending out 100′ from the edge of the forest, its top about 40′ above the water. Its rocky dome hosts a few scraggly trees, lichen, moss, and some patches of tall grass. From the picnic table, the views up Salmon Inlet and across to the Kunechin Islets are breathtaking. The campsite is a water-access-only provincial park. Sometimes such parks have dinghy docks, but at Kunechin Point there was no such amenity.
On the east side of the point, a small cove with a beach barely 50′ across afforded a good landing spot, and we decided to beach and then anchor SCHERZO off with the Anchor Buddy. Like many beaches on this coast, this one was covered with large shingle and sharp rocks, many the size of grapefruit, some as large as a volleyball, all of which, below the tideline, bristled with giant jagged barnacles.
Allison Gong
As we left Kunechin Point we passed some seals basking in the sun. Only the pup seemed interested in us.
A 50′ walk across the sharp rubble brought us to a granite ledge about 2′ high against which several 1′-and 2′-diameter logs had been strewn by winter storms. Fifty years ago, I would have danced across the tangled logs like a mountain goat, but today I envisioned myself lying between them with a broken leg, so I chose each footstep with great care. Once off the beach we followed a 2′-wide trail along uneven, moss-covered granite for 100′ or so, climbing up to a point where we ate lunch overlooking the inlet. Except for an aluminum workboat that skimmed lightly across the still water leaving a long sugar-white wake, and a seaplane flying noisily down the inlet, there was not another soul in sight.
The overcast sky that had umbrellaed our morning had slowly given way to a blue sky with patches of cloud sitting over the mountains but rarely directly above us. The air was calm and pleasantly warm.
Back in the boat after lunch, we went a short way up Salmon Inlet but, ever mindful of our need to be at the Chuck by 7 p.m., we soon turned back to continue our northward journey. We passed Kunechin Point where a harbor seal pup was resting with its mother and other seals lounged on the rocks.
Murray Walker
We went through the Tzoonie Narrows on a gentle flood tide. Water marks on the rocks revealed that some of the trees’ lowest branches must be resting on or even under the water at extreme high tides.
We turned north into Sechelt Inlet for the 5-nautical-mile run up to the Tzoonie Narrows where the channel is reduced to 280′ and modest tidal currents of up to 4 knots occur. We landed briefly at Tzoonie Narrows Provincial Park, a disused logging site, now a water-access-only wilderness campground below mountainsides where verdant new growth conceals decades-old logging scars. Back on the boat we motored out into the narrows, cut the motor, and allowed the flood tide to carry us a half mile up Narrows Inlet. All was quiet, save for the gentle swish of the moving water.
Before long we were again heading back to Sechelt. I studied the chart; there was one rock that I had to avoid. I soon saw it: a 2′-high rock, visible between us and the shore. We were well clear. Then, at the last moment, I realized I was wrong…the charted rock was dead ahead, beneath the water, evidenced only by the gentle turbulence on the surface. I swung the helm, and we passed by unharmed, disaster averted just in time.
We were early for slack water at the Skookumchuck, so we nipped across the inlet to Doriston where, on an uncharacteristically level few acres, there had once been a year-round community of three or four families who made a living from fishing, logging, boatbuilding, and growing vegetables. Gunnar Gjerdin, once known as the Mayor of Doriston, had arrived here from Sweden in 1924, at age 10, with his parents and two siblings. He never left, living in the same house until his death in 2003. His only connection with the outside world was on his occasional runs through the Skookumchuck to Egmont, the village on the other side of the rapids, to pick up mail and provisions. Doriston remains private property, so we did not land. Scattered across a wide, green lawn there were half a dozen houses, some clapboard, some shingle, some bright with new paint, some unpainted, most with green metal roofs. Two docks were tucked behind a low tree-covered breakwater, and there was an old boathouse with a launching rail. There was no sign of life.
Murray Walker
As we neared the Skookumchuck heading north, we took our time to get a sense for the flow of water. Even though we were nearly at slack tide, we could make out swirls and eddies on the surface.
It was just after 6 p.m. and the time had come to head to the Chuck, about 15 minutes away. We anticipated navigable water for about 30 minutes on either side of high tide. About a quarter mile south of the rapids, with the Sechelt Islets light in view, we stopped the boat, got a sense of the water’s flow, and reviewed our course on the chart one more time. We would steer to the west of Sechelt Islets but keep clear of Roland Point, which can be deadly on the flood. The current was still flowing toward us and the surface of the water was laced with lively swirls, but there were no serious whirlpools or whitewater.
At 6:25 I put SCHERZO’s motor in gear and moved cautiously ahead. We were alone in the gap: there were no visible obstacles ahead of us, no other boats, no one on the rocks on either side. I clutched the steering wheel and braced myself for the current. There was a slight pull to the left, toward Roland Point, but I kept close to Sechelt Islets, and we passed through more easily than I’d expected. The GPS readout showed that we were cruising at 10 knots through the water but making 7 knots over the ground. By 6:35 p.m. we were through and zipping away into the warm summer evening. In a few short minutes we had reached Egmont, our final destination for the day. We tied up to the dock below our rental cabin and, saving the exploration of the village for another day, settled in for the night.
The morning dawned mild and still under a mostly overcast sky with promising patches of blue. Alex and I headed out to explore Hotham Sound. We passed the tree-covered Captain Island on its east side and from there it was an easy run across the lower reaches of Jervis Inlet, where the water is more than 2,100′ deep, some of the deepest water on the coast.
Murray Walker
We saw several sites like this abandoned log dump in Hotham Sound, where dirt roads, created during times of commercial logging, came right to the water’s edge so that logs could be rolled directly into the sound.
Until the middle of the last century, several families made their homes year-round along the wooded shoreline of Hotham Sound or lived in floating cabins tied into protected bays tucked along its 16 miles of shoreline. Dotting the verges of the sound are alluvial fans, where creeks flowing out of valleys have built up rocky beaches. They provided ideal locations for logging operations, and some still hold scattered remnants from that era: a rusting piece of machinery near the trees, a length of heavy cable thrusting out of the ground. As we passed by, we spotted several logging roads that emerged from the woods and ended abruptly in bulkheads where logs could be rolled into the salt chuck for sorting and booming. The trucks and logs are gone, for now. As Alex and I motored by, the only signs of human life we saw were two boats tucked into a tiny cove.
Along the east side of the sound, we stopped at Freil Falls, also known as Harmony Falls. A narrow stream flowing out of Freil Lake at the top of the mountain cascades down a vertical rock face for about 1,000′ to a ledge where the water is redirected toward the ocean. From there it falls a final 450′ to a tree-covered flat at sea level. We brought the boat close inshore and cut the motor. We could hear the muffled sound of the falls but could see no sign of them—they were hidden somewhere among the trees.
Murray Walker
In Jervis Inlet we came within a few hundred yards of a group of humpback whales breaching, rounding out, and fluke-diving. We killed the motor and stayed to watch for about 30 minutes.
Soon we were passing the Harmony Islands Marine Park, a cluster of three tree-covered islands, each about 50′ high, that parallels the eastern mainland shore of Hotham Sound for about a mile. At high tide the northernmost island becomes two islands as the rocky isthmus between them disappears under water. There are no public facilities on the islands and no good landing sites except a parcel of private property where there are some buildings and a dock. However, for cruisers on their way up Jervis Inlet to Princess Louisa Inlet the islands offer a convenient overnight anchorage.
Just beyond the Harmony Islands, on the mainland shore, was a rocky beach where we pulled in for lunch. As we ate, we watched the sculpins darting in the crystal-clear waters and saw purple sea stars wrapped around oysters.
After a slow circle around the shores of Hotham Sound we set our course back across the calm waters of Jervis Inlet, aiming for Agnew Passage on the west side of Captain Island. Misty-white whale spouts appeared off the starboard bow barely a quarter mile away. As we drew closer, several humpbacks, in two or three groups, leapt and dove. One lay on its back slapping its pectoral fins forcefully against the water’s surface. Captivated, we killed the motor to watch and listen for almost 30 minutes.
Allison Gong
Allison introduced us to marine wildlife that we might otherwise have missed. These two hooded nudibranchs (photographed at night) were crawling on algae beneath the Egmont dock.
We arrived back in Egmont in time to hike the 2½-mile forest trail to the Skookumchuck’s south viewing area at Roland Point where the trail descends right to the water’s edge. Our timing was perfect, the current was running at more than 11 knots. A dozen or so kayakers were riding the 5′ standing waves created by the rush of water pressing against the shore. In mid-channel a powerboat was pushing its way steadily against the current and through the rapids.
That evening we ran the boat a mile down the inlet to the Backeddy Marina for dinner at the Backeddy Pub, on the edge of Skookumchuck Narrows. We returned in the near dark and, back at our cabin, took our flashlights out to the dock to view the sea life clinging to the submerged surfaces of the float and piles. When Alex stirred the water vigorously with a paddle, a bright cloud of bioluminescence lit up the blackness.
Murray Walker
A kayaker rides the standing wave in the Skookumchuck at full flood.
We had big plans for our third day, so we got an early start. Our first goal was Pender Harbour, 15 nautical miles south down Agamemnon Channel, between the Sechelt Peninsula and Nelson Island. Hidden behind a narrow entrance, Pender Harbour is a 3-mile-long inlet that boasts 40 miles of coastline with multiple bays and islands. Its shoreline is a riot of docks, boathouses, primitive summer cabins, fancy new summer homes, multiple marinas, a public dock, a grocery store, and a fuel dock.
The morning was gray with a suggestion of rain. Our run down Agamemnon Channel was chilly and calm, but as we neared the south end of the channel, we encountered a few raindrops and a light southerly chop coming toward us.
At Pender Harbour we topped up our fuel at one of the marinas and found lunch at a local eatery.
The morning’s threatened rain did not materialize, and as we left Pender Harbour for Ballet Bay, 10 1⁄2 nautical miles up the west side of Nelson Island, the sky was brighter. But the light southerly chop had built to a moderate southerly slop, so for a more sheltered route, we decided to retrace our route up Agamemnon Channel, and then around the top of Nelson Island, through the ¼-mile-wide Telescope Passage, between Hardy Island and Nelson Island, across Blind Bay, and finally sneak into Ballet Bay through its narrow, reef-bound eastern entrance. By the time we arrived, the overcast sky had become mostly clear.
Murray Walker
Ballet Bay is a popular anchorage for cruisers as it is well-protected in most weather conditions. Thanks to the Anchor Buddy we were able to bring SCHERZO into the granite ledges and step ashore dry-shod.
Ballet Bay is really a bay within a bay. A cluster of rocky islets on the south side of Blind Bay creates a body of water a half-nautical-mile-long, that lies roughly east–west with narrow entrances at either end. It is well-protected in any weather and is a popular anchorage for cruisers heading up the coast; on this day there were eight or ten boats anchored. There is no settlement or public dock, just a few fancy summer homes with high-performance powerboats and an occasional float plane tied to the private docks, and plenty of No Trespassing signs.
Ballet Bay was named by longtime residents Harry and Midge Thomas in honor of their daughter, Audree, who had a successful career as a professional ballerina under the stage name Anna Istomina. The Thomases’ cabin, now 80 years old, still stands on the western point of the bay. We anchored SCHERZO and climbed up a rocky promontory to photograph the two bronze plaques mounted in memory of Harry and Midge, and Audree.
Leaving Ballet Bay by the west entrance, we squinted into the afternoon sun to see a tugboat pulling a boom of logs. We crossed Blind Bay to the western end of Hardy Island, where a bend to the south creates a bay on its east side, about a half nautical mile across, with several small coves within it—Hardy Island Marine Park. Multiple stern-tie rings have been set into the granite shoreline, and it is a favored anchorage among larger cruisers. We had the bay to ourselves and found a tranquil spot between Hardy and Musket islands where a granite outcropping supported a few skinny trees, some salal bushes, and sparse dry grass. The water was clear and the color of emeralds. We dropped the anchor with the Anchor Buddy as its rode and tied SCHERZO’s bow to a log. We went ashore and, for a half hour or so, Allison and I sat and enjoyed the quiet and beauty while the more adventurous Alex, taking advantage of the low tide, clambered across the exposed rocky isthmus to Musket Island. Too soon it was time to begin our journey back to Egmont.
Allison Gong
As we made our way south on our last day, we stopped briefly and anchored SCHERZO off Halfway Beach, across the inlet from the mouth of Salmon Inlet.
The tugboat we had seen before our stop had also turned into Blind Bay, and as we headed east across the bay, we were surprised to see an active logging operation on the southeast corner of Hardy Island. We retraced our way through Telescope Passage, along the south shore of Jervis Inlet and through Agnew Passage to Egmont in still air and warm rays of the evening sun.
For our last day we would again pass through the Skookumchuck. Slack water was around 1:30 p.m. so we had the morning free to stroll around Egmont.
The village is home to a few hundred year-round residents whose houses are scattered among the trees along a mile of shoreline on the west side of Skookumchuck Narrows. Most of the commercial activity is centered around Secret Bay where there is a small marina, a general store, one or two marine businesses, and a government dock. Red-painted federal government docks were built along the British Columbia Coast at the beginning of the 20th century and today are reminders of a time when these remote places relied on steamship services for all their transportation needs. While most of the docks on the Sunshine Coast are now administered by local authorities, the dock at Egmont is an exception, wearing its red paint proudly.
At 12:30 p.m. we were back in SCHERZO and headed for the Chuck. The tide was changing from ebb to flood, so we would once more be going against the current. The tidal range was larger today and there was more surface turbulence when we started through the rapids, but there were still no whirlpools or overfalls, and despite the force of the current against us, we passed through safely.
Murray Walker
For our final run south from Halfway Beach, back to Porpoise Bay, the water remained smooth, the sky blue. It was a fitting end to the trip.
A short distance farther on we dropped the anchor close to the steep shoreline and ate lunch in the boat. Beneath us, for about 6′ down through the clear water, we could see an abundance of underwater plants and animals, including fat, white-spotted, purple sea cucumbers, clinging to the rocks.
Underway again, we cruised up the inlet in tranquil water under a blue sky. We stopped briefly at Halfway Beach Provincial Park, another former logging site taken over by the B.C. government to be used as a water-access-only campground, but we had a ferry to catch and couldn’t dally. We ran up the last few miles to Porpoise Bay, pulled SCHERZO out of the water and onto her trailer, and parked her at a nearby marina. I was already looking forward to my planned return in a few days with my grandchildren.
Murray Walker is a native of Vancouver, British Columbia, who spent much of his early life up on the B.C. coast. He has lived in Santa Cruz, California, since 1986 and is retired from a nearly 40-year career teaching music in high school. He and his wife, Carol, think about returning to Vancouver but, says Murray, “There is always that Vancouver weather!”
If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
It’s a natural impulse to protect our boats when they sit idle through the winter. We may not have the same affection for the trailers they rest on, but they also need attention while they wait for spring. Their tires, especially, benefit from protection from outdoor exposure.
Photographs by the author
Any jack can lift a trailer carrying a small boat, but some jacks are not well suited to the work. A bottle jack (left) has a small base that’s prone to tipping. A floor jack (center) is more stable but doesn’t lend itself to being blocked up to get its arm within reach of the trailer, and the pivoting motion of the lifting arm makes the bearing pad prone to slipping out of place. The farm jack (right) has an exceptional range of adjustment and can quickly be set to contact a trailer frame before lifting begins. The upper clamp jaw can be removed to provide more clearance between the jack and the load.
Boat trailer tires don’t typically wear out. They don’t get anywhere near the same miles as a car or truck, and the time they spend out on the road doesn’t shorten their life, but rather, prolongs it: While on the road, a tire flexes, distributing the oils and other chemical compounds that are mixed into its rubber to keep it flexible and to protect it from ozone and ultraviolet light.
There are different degrees of protection for trailer tires. First is to get them up off the ground by elevating the trailer. Contact with moisture in pavement or soil can lead to dry rot in a tire’s rubber, and weight can create bulges in the sidewalls and flat spots in the tread.
A short jackstand set under the axle can hold the tire off the ground. While the jackstand is much easier to use than a stack of cinder blocks and timbers, working while under the trailer poses an element of risk that is best avoided by using jackstands that you can set beneath the trailer frame without having to crawl under it. Note the wooden shim used to keep the stand plumb on the sloped pavement and the chocks to prevent the wheel from rolling if the trailer drops.
Lifting a loaded trailer requires a jack. I started with a hydraulic bottle jack, but it only had a 3″ lift, hardly enough to raise the frame as high as I needed—as you lift a trailer, both the leaf springs and the tires decompress, effectively lowering the tires to the ground even as you’re raising the trailer. To use the jack, I had to crawl under the trailer to set it on blocks—for extra height—under the axle. After doing the lift, a precarious job at best, I dragged an assortment of blocks beneath the axle to support it so that I could remove the jack.
If the wheel is left on the trailer, a bag can be slipped over the elevated tire. To cinch the open end of the bag over the axle, tie a bowline in a length of cord. Hold the bowline on the right side of the tire and the cord on the left, then slip the cord over and behind the wheel. Circle the bowline end 360° clockwise around the tire while holding the other end stationary, paying out cord as it wraps around the axle. Slip the cord, or a bight of it, from the left through the bowline on the right, draw tight, and secure with a couple of half hitches. The red farm jack here is a 33″ version.
I switched to a floor jack, which has a long handle so I can operate it without crawling under the trailer. It has a 10″ lift but most of that range is needed just to get up to the axle, so it was not much better than the bottle jack. The arm of the floor jack pivots as it lifts and often slipped out of place. Both jacks made the chore of lifting the trailer unpleasant and risky.
The best points for lifting my largest trailer are at its back end, but they are inaccessible in its confined parking place. I trimmed a short length of 4×4 to fit inside one of the trailer’s crossbeams to provide a lifting point with clearance for the farm jack.
A farm jack makes the job much easier, safer, and faster. They’re inexpensive and come in a range of sizes. I found that a 33″ version is more than tall enough for all my trailers. With a farm jack I can quickly slide the ratcheting runner assembly under the bottom side of the trailer frame and then pump the handle to make the lift, all without crawling under the trailer. The runner’s ratchet is reversible so the trailer can be lowered with good control. However, once the pressure is off the runner, it drops to the base. I learned to keep a hand on the jack when that happens to keep it from falling over.
Taking the wheel off the trailer is the best way to protect the tire during the winter. With the wheels and tires removed, the adjustable jackstands supporting the trailer frame can be set to their lowest position for maximum stability.
Once the trailer is raised, you need to keep it raised. In the past, my trailer has overwintered on stacks of concrete and wood, but I’ve now replaced those with ratcheting jackstands. They are rated for 2 tons and their height is adjustable. If the trailer is on soft ground, I put the stands on a plywood base for a firmer footing; on my sloped driveway, I use shims to plumb the stands. Even with this finessing, setting up the stands is much easier than piling up the old cinder blocks and lumber offcuts.
With the trailer and tires elevated, you can add further protection by covering each tire with a purpose-made plastic bag and tightly sealing its opening around the axle (and the spare’s mount). This will reduce the effects of sunlight and precipitation and again slow the evaporation of the tires’ oils and antiozonants.
After the wheels have been removed, a heavy-duty plastic bag, secured to the axle with a zip tie, protects the hub and bearing from rain and snow.
A final measure is to remove the wheels, clean and dry the tires, including the spare, and store them indoors where they can be protected from temperature fluctuations and cold. Removing the wheels also provides an opportunity to inspect the wheel bearings and repack them if necessary.
Even with indoor storage, putting each clean, dry tire in a tightly sealed bag is a good anti-aging measure to take. However, when storing inside, caution is needed: tire rubber is adversely affected by ozone, and my local tire store advises keeping the tires away from “generators, compressors, furnaces, switches, sump pumps, and central vacuum cleaners”; the list could also include woodshop power tools, as their brushed motors can create the sparks that generate ozone.
After taking them off the trailer, I wrapped each of the tires in bags and used a compact electric air pump to pull air out of the bags before tying them closed with a cord. To elevate the stack of tires I made a plywood stand of interlocking rectangles and a disc to support the wheel just inside its rim.
Bagged tires can be stacked for storage. Be sure that they are inflated to their recommended pressure. To keep the bottom tire off the cold concrete floor, I made simple plywood stands to support the tires; if you have the space, you can also use a wooden pallet.
As the next boating season approaches, I’ll be eager to get my trailered boats back on the water. The farm jack and the jackstands will ease the transition, and the well-cared-for tires will have lots of life in them and give me peace of mind on the highway.
Christopher Cunningham is Small Boats’ editor-at-large.
Farm jacks and jackstands are available from a wide variety of hardware and automotive retailers. I bought a 48″ jack from a local auto-parts store for $95, and the 33″ version online for $69. Jackstands, sold in pairs, cost around $30. I bought a package of eight Wheel Connect tire storage bags for $16. There are 55-gallon contractor trash bags that have the same 38″ width to fit tires with a diameter-plus-width of less than 37″.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats readers by sending us an email.
From time to time the mighty internet advertising algorithms deliver, presenting me with something I never knew existed but immediately know I must have. Somehow, a few weeks ago, those algorithms found out that in the distant past I was a surfer and that then, as now, I owned neoprene garments, which have to be dried after use. Most of those garments can be carried in a gear bag, even when damp, but booties, if simply tossed into a bag or car when just removed from your feet, will smell really foul. The odor is truly horrible, and lingers long after the offending items have been removed.
Photographs by the author
The C-Monsta is available in orange or gray. The sturdy molded plastic hanger is strong enough to support up to 55 lbs, with dedicated stands for drying gloves and booties, and a crossbar for draping larger items. At either end of the crossbar, the hook can be used to hang miscellaneous gear.
I have always been pretty careful to keep wet-and-worn booties away from my nose by leaving them in my kayak up on the roof rack or putting them into the back of the pickup truck. Once home, I rinse the booties and the rest of my neoprene gear in fresh water as soon as possible. Then there is the challenge of how to dry them out. Wetsuits need to be hung to dry, which is relatively straightforward with a clothes hanger and a washing line, although you do need a wide coat hanger to avoid distorting the shoulders. But booties and gloves need to have their openings facing down to drain and dry, otherwise they collapse in on themselves, trapping the moisture, which slows the drying…and leads to that delightful smell!
Enter the C-Monsta. Designed by a Scottish surfer and marketed to fellow surfers, the C-Monsta is an all-in-one hanger for booties, gloves, and wetsuit. When it first popped up in my internet feed I immediately thought, “paddling gear.” And, as it was modestly priced, I bought one.
It is better for neoprene wetsuits to be draped over a crossbar for drying rather than suspended by their shoulders. The bootie and glove posts not only hold the items upside down for better draining, but also prevent them from collapsing in on themselves and thereby trapping moisture inside. The hanging strap offers height adjustment and allows the hanger to twist so that it can be hung in a doorway.
When I unpacked the C-Monsta, I was impressed by the sturdy plastic—I had owned something similar decades ago, but the plastic had quickly broken down and failed. The molded projections off the top of the C-Monsta are shaped for airing and drying booties and gloves upside down, the crossbar is designed to take a draped wetsuit, and at each end of the bar is another hook for hanging miscellaneous items. The manufacturers say that the hanger can hold up to 25kg (approximately 55 lbs), and I quickly saw that I could use it to dry other bits of kit: I can hang my PFD and my kayak’s spray skirt, and those extra hooks are just right for the lanyards of a radio and a handheld GPS, or a hat. The diameter and opening of the hanger’s hook are large enough to fit over a basement cold-water pipe as well as a clothesline, and the strap between the hook and the hanger is height adjustable and allows the hanger to twist so that it can be hung from a door frame.
During paddling season, I keep a dunk tank of fresh water next to my kayak storage rack so that everything salty can go straight in and get rinsed off. Next to that is the clothesline on which, come spring, will now be my C-Monsta.
Ben Fuller, curator emeritus of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has been messing about in small boats for a very long time. He is owned by a dozen or more boats: kayaks, canoes, a skiff, a ducker, and a sail-and-oar boat.
The C-Monsta V2 hanger is available from C-Monsta. Priced at $35 plus shipping and tax, it’s available in either gray or orange. In the U.K. there is also a limited-edition sage-green version made from recycled ocean plastic recovered from U.K. shores, priced at £40 including shipping.
Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising, or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.
Boats are the stuff that dreams are made of—sometimes of dreams recaptured, in places unexpected. Such is the case with the Sea Knight, a graceful 17′ retro cabin cruiser, a boat that Bill White claims, “anyone comfortable with basic tools can build in the space of a two-car garage.” He completed his boat in less than two years with a materials cost of approximately $6,000.
For Bill, the Sea Knight’s creation was truly a dream reborn and rebuilt. He had once owned, loved, and lost a nearly identical boat back in the ’60s: a 1956 Scottie Craft cruiser. While towing the boat on a trailer, a nasty jolt from a sneaky bad patch of roadway “hammered a trailer roller through the hull,” Bill said. She sank upon launching at a local boat ramp. This painful image would remain with him and, in 2008, become the catalyst for his looking for a way to replace her. Bill would fill the void by completing the Sea Knight, a design first featured in Popular Mechanics magazine in 1957 and now offered by Glen-L.
Chuck Black
With a 17′ length overall (LOA) and a 7′ 2″ beam, the Glen-L Sea Knight is ideal for trailering. She has plenty of freeboard and a modified 30-degree V-hull capable of high-speed planing and dealing with moderate seas. She packs in a lot in a small amount of space.
I got my first glimpse of the Sea Knight after driving inland from the South Carolina coast. Bill’s adopted hometown of Edgefield is in the middle of the state near Lake Strom Thurmond, a huge reservoir with 1,200 miles of shoreline. As I made my way to their house, Bill and his wife, Hazeline, greeted me heartily. There in the driveway sat the Sea Knight—her fresh paint glistening. A little kissing cousin to the Chris-Craft cabin cruisers of the late 1950s, she brought back memories of my own youth.
The Sea Knight has attractive ’57-vintage curves. The design buzzword of that period was “streamlining.” At the time, the nation was fascinated with the curves and fins found on rockets, and these were emulated and applied to boats as well as cars.
While Glen-L’s plans for the Sea Knight are comprehensive, not every builder will be able to attain the standard seen here. Bill is a professional restorer of vintage cars, a skill he learned from his father. His remarkable workmanship is evident in the Sea Knight’s construction and finish.
As we started to walk around her, I noticed that she has lights mounted in recessed, sealed housings on both sides that are reminiscent of car headlights from the 1950s. Bill had recycled them from another boat. I was also grabbed by the polished aluminum bow rail and chromed brass deck fittings. He had acquired these via eBay.
Bill’s finishwork throughout the Sea Knight is ultra-smooth. To achieve it he used a professional automotive paint sprayer to apply a two-part polyurethane enamel of white and light yellow in a two-tone, curved pattern. He prefers a two-part automotive polyurethane because he feels that it has the same integrity as marine enamels while being less expensive.
The light yellow finish that continues on to the deck and cabintop looks just like textured paint—but isn’t. Based on his years of experience with autos, Bill tinted a spray-on material called Raptor Liner, which is similar to a pickup truck bed liner. The result is a thin coating that appears as a painted surface, yet has incredible wear and traction characteristics.
Chuck Black
The modest cabin has 4′ 7″ of headroom. It can sleep two in comfort or provide quick refuge from a squall. Like many amenities on board, the helmsman’s chair is compact and easy to stow.
The cabin is topped with a beautiful mahogany wind-shield. The windowpanes, including those of the sliding windows on the cabinhouse sides, are of Plexiglas. Aft of each of these two windows is a Sea Knight nameplate. Bill carefully researched the proper font for the stylized letters to ensure they were appropriate to the period, then cut the nameplates from ¼″ aluminum plate. This extraordinary finishwork suggests an equally well-built hull structure and interior—and I was hungry for a look below. While Bill outfitted the boat with a lot of personal accoutrements, he stuck to the plans when building the hull.
After putting together the strongback and frame setup, he cut hull and cabin panels from 4′ × 8′ sheets of 3⁄8″ meranti marine plywood, and the bulkheads from 3⁄4″ sheets of the same material. All of the pan-els were secured to their bulkheads with stainless-steel screws and strengthened with epoxy fillets. The entire hull was then sheathed inside and out with epoxy and fiberglass for waterproofing and added strength. This results in a hull that is extremely strong and relatively light, at 700 lbs gross weight.
When it came to outfitting the interior, the plans provided good guidance but left room for Bill’s imagination. The plans call for bunks that provide room for storage below. Bill made the bunk cushions himself. Glen-L claims that it is possible to install a small head and galley stove as well, but Bill believes they would have really cramped the cabin. He decided against both appliances, but if this were my boat, I think I would add a portable stove and portapotti.
Chuck Black
The helm is decked out in period gauges, switches, signage and chrome, much of it found through Internet searches.
In the cockpit, Bill installed a chromed steering wheel, and a mahogany panel for the instruments and chromed pull switches with their engraved black-and-white labels. There’s also a chromed gear shift and throttle lever.
At the aft end of the cockpit there is plenty of storage space on each side of the motorwell for the outboard. Bill told me that the Sea Knight was capable of utilizing a range of outboards from 20 hp on up to 85; he has a selection of outboards to run on the Sea Knight. For our ride on the lake he chose a 1972 Homelite 85, which he had rebuilt himself.
Sea Knight’s arrangement plan shows a large cockpit (relative to her size) with the helm to port and a folding table to starboard and a minimal overnight cabin below. Her outboard profile is reminiscent of automobile styling from the 1950s.
Lake Strom Thurmond, where we launched Bill’s Sea Knight, is part of a waterway that runs from the northern border of South Carolina all the way south to the Savannah River, which terminates at the Atlantic Ocean at the South Carolina–Georgia border.
We launched the Sea Knight from her trailer at one of the lake’s many yacht clubs and found ourselves in a haven of runabouts and houseboats, nearly all of them fiber-glass. Viewing a wooden boat launching in these parts is a rare sight and a real treat to the locals, too.
On my test ride, the Sea Knight quickly got up on plane. The boat is capable and feels stable—even in tight turns. On a straight course at half throttle she cruised comfortably at 20 knots. At full throttle she skimmed the surface at 40. She is equipped with a 10-gallon built-in fuel tank to help her go the distance.
The Sea Knight is a success, being a stylish pocket cabin cruiser for inland waters. She is an affordable, nimble, and eye-pleasing weekender. Her plans are comprehensive, making her relatively simple to build. All in all, she’s a great craft for family adventures, or, as Bill might say, she’s “the stuff that dreams are made of.”
Plans for the Sea Knight are available from Glen-L Marine: 562–630–6258.
Check Out These Other Glen-L Boat Profiles
From powerboats like the Sea Knight to a handsome daysailer, here are a few other boats from Glen-L profiled by Small Boats.
We get thirsty when we are out on the water, and have tried more than a few drinking mugs and bottles over the years. Our current favorite is RTIC’s 20-oz Road Trip Travel Mug.
We came across the mug while browsing online in The WoodenBoat Store. We were looking for something with a handle, both to hold onto and as a way to secure the mug to the boat or a bag. We ordered two. With a capacity of 20 oz, the mug seemed a good compromise between hydration needs and weight for our short trips (especially when hiking rather than boating). The mug stands 8 1⁄4″ tall and has an untapered diameter of 4 1⁄2″, which fits a standard cupholder. The handle stands out from the mug by 1 1⁄2″, is 4″ top to bottom, and the space between the mug and the inside of the handle is 1″. It is 7⁄8″ wide and the inner edges are rounded, all of which adds up to a comfortable, secure grip— even for larger hands. The outer shell is 18/8 stainless steel with a powder-coat finish. Both mug and lid are BPA-free.
We have had the mugs for a year and have used them extensively. They have consistently kept hot drinks hot through a morning sail, and cold drinks cold through a long hot day. They have stood up well, and the outside finish on each is neither chipped nor worn.
Photographs by the author
One of our two much-loved original RTIC travel mugs with the WoodenBoat logo. The rugged quality that has kept those mugs looking like new after a year of hard use is one of the reasons we decided to order new ones.
Pleased with the 2023 RTIC mugs and wanting to add to our collection, I recently decided to buy a new mug for Audrey in her favorite color and with her initials on the outside. Before ordering, we were made aware that RTIC had recently changed the internal lining of the mug from the stainless-steel of our originals to a ceramic liner, which RTIC says “prevents altered or metallic taste and smell, so drinks taste better and it’s easy to clean.” The company does caution that metallic straws and utensils should not be used as they can scrape the ceramic. Undeterred, I ordered a mug.
We were happy to find that, with the exception of the ceramic liner, the new mug is essentially the same as our beloved originals. The double-walled vacuum-sealed construction greatly reduces heat transference in either direction. We have tested the mug with both hot and cold drinks and have found that after an hour a hot drink is still too hot to drink, and in cold drinks remnants of ice cubes remain after 24 hours. Even after drinks have been standing in the mug for several hours, they have tasted good. The inside corners of the handle are less sharp than on the original, which has made an already-comfortable handle even more so. And a new silicone “coaster” base prevents the mug from sliding on a smooth surface. The powder-coat exterior of the mug resists condensation and gets neither hot nor cold to the touch.
The new RTIC travel mug is the same as the original in all essentials except for the interior, which has a ceramic liner rather than the original metal. The mug comes in a range of colors and can be personalized; for Audrey’s we chose Dusty Rose with her initials.
The translucent cap can be screwed on from two locations in the cup’s threaded circumference, so the handle and flip tab are user-friendly for both left- and right-handed drinkers. The lid’s seal is tight and, while this does mean a little effort is required to open the flip tab, we’ve detected no leaks or movement in the lid, even when we’ve filled the mug and inverted it.
The mug comes in a 16-oz or 20-oz size and in a wide range of colors—Skipper’s, seen here, is “Dusty Rose”—and RTIC offers personalization both front and back for a nominal cost. When I can decide on the color, I’ll doubtless be ordering another for myself.
Audrey and Kent Lewis stay hydrated while messing about in the Tidewater Region of Virginia. Their adventures are logged at smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com.
The RTIC Road Trip Travel Mug is available from RTIC for $16.99 (16 oz) and $19.99 (20 oz); personalization starts at $4.99. The new-style 20-oz RTIC is also available with the WoodenBoat logo from The WoodenBoat Store (the original version is available in limited colors).
Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising, or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.
The Newfound Rangeley is a strip-planked interpretation of a well-known western Maine guideboat.
The Rangeley Lakes boat, adapted for modern wood-strip construction by Newfound Woodworks, is ideal for fixed-seat recreational rowing. It moves easily through the water thanks to its slender bow and tapered stern, and its generously flared hull amidships lends great stability. The historical use of this boat was for sport fishing, where standing up in the boat was a common practice. In the decades before reliable outboard-motor power, builders of these boats developed a design that performed exceptionally well under oar power and had the stability that customers demanded. Newfound Woodworks has preserved the essential performance qualities of the original Rangeleys while allowing the 21st-century builder to achieve the smoothly rounded contours characteristic of a wood-strip boat.
The classic Rangeley Lakes boat was lapstrake planked on light bent frames. John Gardner, widely regarded as the dean of American small craft, describes the Rangeley’s history and construction in detail in his book Building Classic Small Craft. His narrative is entertaining and informative, and prospective builders who want to re-create the Rangeley Lakes boat in its lapstrake form will enjoy his chapter on the type. Historically, the construction of these boats was fairly standardized and simple. For builders unfamiliar with spiling planks for lap joints, or who just prefer the look of a wood-strip hull, Newfound’s wood-strip/epoxy adaptation offers a sound and easily maintained alternative.
Michael Vermouth was helping a friend renovate his family’s camp in the Rangeley Lakes region during the winter of 1989–90 when the pair discovered an old boat that had been left outside under snow. The bottom of the boat had been hogged by then, and advanced decay was evident. The relic was soaked through and through, and weighed about 200 lbs. However, Michael, a cedar-strip canoe builder, was intrigued by the fine lines of this boat: It had clearly been a high-quality rowing boat in its day. He wondered if it could be reproduced in wood-strip form. With the permission of his friend’s family, he hauled it back to his shop for further inspection.
Upon perusing Building Classic Small Craft and other books, Michael determined that he had the remains of a Rangeley Lakes boat. The old boat was too misshapen to have its lines taken, so Michael approached boat designer Tony Dias to adapt the offsets in Gardner’s book for wood-strip construction. He then built a wood-strip prototype of the Rangeley from those plans. It proved to be a joy to row, and Michael was convinced that this wood-strip edition would be perfect for recreational use.
Today, Michael Vermouth is the proprietor of Newfound Woodworks, which supplies plans, kits, materials, tools, and instructions for the wood-strip boat builder. The company offers plans for a variety of boats, including a nice selection of rowing craft. Several years ago, when he converted his production process from hand-cutting to CNC, Michael and his staff went back to John Gardner’s original offsets and started from scratch to create a digital file of the lines. In the process Newfound developed digital plans for a several models of Rangeley boats: a 15-footer, a 16 1⁄2-footer, and a 17-footer. Most have a transom stern, but a double-ender is available. The 17′ model is 2″ wider than the 15′ and 16 1⁄2′ models—which are each 46″ in beam. Aside from being refaired (checked for accuracy and corrected as needed), Newfound’s Rangeley lines are faithful to those found in Gardner’s book.
The Newfound Woodworks
Newfound Woodworks offers its Rangeleys in three lengths: 15′, 16′ 6″, and 17′. The company also offers a 17′ double-ender.
Building a Newfound Rangeley Boat
Newfound offers a variety of options to those desiring a Rangeley Boat—or any of its fleet of small craft. You can simply purchase the plans ($110), and build from scratch; you can purchase the CNC-cut molds ($250) and mill your own strips, and buy your own fiberglass, epoxy, and hardware; or you can purchase a complete kit ($2,695) containing everything you need.
Twenty years ago, when I began working on my first boat, I was a rather tentative builder. I was quickly hooked, though, and continued building wood-strip canoes, trying a different design with each new project. Eventually, I began displaying my work at shows and woodcraft demonstrations. Back then, there were few strip-built rowboats at the events I attended. I wondered about their absence, because it was obvious to me that this method of construction would be suitable for just about any small, lightweight craft. Later on, when a couple of wood-strip rowboat plans appeared on the market, I noticed the shapely lines of the Rangeley Lakes boat. Thinking that this was an especially pretty boat, I contacted Michael at The Newfound Wood- works, and settled on the 15′ model.
I started building my Rangeley Lakes boat in October 2004, and completed it, except for the last coats of varnish, a year later. I named my boat CRYSTAL EMBER for the way she glows on the water in low-angle light. A pair of 7 1⁄2′ spruce oars from Shaw & Tenney finished her off perfectly.
Although some folks are able to build strip boats in a couple of months, mine took longer because I worked intermittently on the project. I used CNC-cut stations from Newfound Woodworks. They came with clamping grooves milled into the edges, which eliminated the need for blemish-inducing staples. For those who plan to paint their strip boat, I recommend stapling because it is a much faster way to assemble the hull over the mold.
I sawed my own strips from salvaged wood. About two-thirds of the strips were cut from cedar tongue-and-groove siding salvaged from a building in Olympia, Washington. About one-third of the strips were cut from a cedar log found drifting in the Columbia River. I made feature strips for the hull sides using cedar scraps left over from earlier boat projects. CRYSTAL EMBER’s transom is built of marine plywood sandwiched between 1⁄4″-thick pieces of cherry. The outwales are ash, which is renowned for its strength and abrasion resistance. I chose cherry for the inwales, deck, quarter knees, and oarlock blocks. The seats and seat risers are of Douglas-fir.
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The hull is sheathed in 6-oz fiberglass cloth, which is standard for a boat of this size. Two lengths of cloth were overlapped by 6″ on each side of the flat plank on the bottom of the hull, inside and out. This provides greater strength where it is most needed. The decorative feature strips on the hull of my boat have a band of 4-oz fiberglass cloth bonded to the inside surface for reinforcement.
Rangeley boats are fast, responsive, and stable; thus they are well suited to pleasure rowing. They can handle choppy water, and in fact are appreciated on their native lakes for safely negotiating storm-tossed waters when unanticipated weather rolls in. I am very impressed with my Rangeley Lakes boat, and although I originally thought I might enjoy the boat for a while and then maybe offer it for sale, I would have a very difficult time letting such a fine boat go.
Although the 15′ Rangeley is a fairly small, light boat, it is too broad-beamed for most people to load by hand onto the top of a vehicle without risking injury to the boat or themselves. I transport mine using a lightweight aluminum trailer or a boat cart. Also, despite the design’s flat transom, the fine stern that contributes so much to the excellent rowing qualities of the boat make it unsuitable for supporting a lot of weight back there. The transom can accept a lightweight motor; I would recommend a small electric one, with a long tiller that allows the operator to sit on the middle seat. If too much weight is moved into the boat’s fine bow, the Rangeley may capsize. Finally, it would be good to see foot braces added as an optional feature in the plans for the Rangeley, as braces really improve the oarsman’s ability to apply power.
The outstanding performance and beauty of Newfound’s Rangeley boat has reaffirmed the place of this design as the quintessential sportfishing and pleasure-rowing boat. With Newfound’s support in the form of detailed building instructions (including videos) for the amateur builder, as well as materials and tools, the Rangeley design should have great appeal to a strip-boat builder in search of a fine rowboat.
FOPA: A Reader Built Rangeley
Need some inspiration before building your own Newfound Rangeley boat? Read about FOPA, a Rangeley lake boat built by one of our readers.
Order plans for the Newfound Rangeley from Newfound Woodworks, Inc., 67 Danforth Brook Rd., Bristol, NH 03222; 603–744–6872.
In 1960, John Conrad of Sacramento, California, built an 8′ Paddle Wheel Boat from plans published in Mechanix Illustrated. The boat was described as “a barrel of fun for the kids and you can build it for less than $35.” He built it for his grandchildren, and they used it for many years on lakes and rivers around the Sacramento area. One of those grandchildren, Davi Rodrigues, who has just turned 70, held on to the memories of that boat and all the outings he and his siblings, cousins, and friends enjoyed in it, and “always missed it.”
The magazine that started it all: Davi’s grandfather, John Conrad, used this March 1960 issue of Mechanix Illustrated to build the family’s original Paddle Wheel Boat. Six decades later, Davi referred to the same magazine when he built his updated version, GUAM ROSE.
John Conrad died in 2002 at the age of 100. “My siblings and I owed him and my grandmother a lot. They were very stable, and full of old-world knowledge, which they taught us. I traveled a lot with them, hunting, fishing, and foraging in several western states, British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. I learned woodworking from him, and other crafting from her.” Among his grandfather’s belongings Davi found the original plans for the Paddle Wheel Boat. “They were drawn up by Hal Kelly, who has several old boat plans floating around the internet, but the paddle-wheeler isn’t among them, so I’m happy my grandfather kept a lot of things.” Davi held on to the plans and 20 years later decided to build his own paddle-wheel boat.
Davi is not a boatbuilder, but he is a woodworker and a maker. “I’m always building things. The past few years it’s been sheds—three for us and one for each of our two kids. I also built a lot of planters. I try to use space carefully, so some of the planters are built up off the ground and we use the space below to store firewood. One planter is 8′ high built on top of a compost bin. Water from the planter drains down to keep the compost moist.” He also mills much of his own wood and stores planks for later use. Recently he built a solar kiln to speed up the wood seasoning.
Photographs by Davi Rodrigues
The two side panels and the center frame have the same dimensions and bottom curve. Davi was able to clamp them together and plane all three at the same time.
For Davi, the paddle-wheel boat was a straightforward project. It is, essentially, a shallow rectangular box with a rockered bottom, a center longitudinal frame that adds strength and supports the crankshaft for the wheels, and two seat platforms, one at either end. “It’s 8′ long by 4′ wide, and I built it of okoume plywood on pine.” The hull is 11 1⁄2″ deep amidship, decreasing to 7″ in the ends. The original plans called for the side panels and framing to be of 3⁄4″ cedar, spruce, or mahogany, and the bottom panel to be a single 8′ × 4′ sheet of 1⁄4″ exterior plywood. “I used 3⁄8″ exterior plywood salvaged from an old walk-in box refrigerator for the paddle-wheel faces, and the seat platforms where I also added two low-cost stadium seats. For the side panels, frames, and paddle scoops I used 15⁄16″ yellow pine that I’d milled from a tree that was felled in front of a neighbor’s property, and for the paddle-wheel center gussets that house the crankshaft, I used some oak that I’d milled from a tree that came down in a recent windstorm on another neighbor’s property. I did buy a single sheet of ¼″ okoume plywood for the bottom…it was one of the few things in the project that I bought new.”
The sides and ends come together in right-angled joints, which Davi epoxied and through-fasted with marine-grade bronze screws.
The connection with Davi’s grandfather didn’t stop with the plans. “I used several tools that my grandfather had used when he built the first one: his old router, his tablesaw dado stack, his antique hand planes, and his ancient stick welder. I also used my own Shopsmith, which is an extremely versatile piece of equipment, especially if you’re strapped for space. Reviewing the pictures in Mechanix Illustrated, it looks like that’s what was used in Hal Kelly’s shop when he wrote the article.”
Davi fashioned the cranks from ½” black iron pipe, threaded together and welded at the joints. He cut the pedals from some scrap polypropylene cutting board, drilled through to accept the crankshaft, and then drilled grease holes so that he can keep the pedals well-lubricated and rotating smoothly.
Davi didn’t exactly replicate his grandfather’s boat. The original version, as designed by Kelly, included hand-cranked paddles—ideal for accommodating crew of varying ages and sizes—but Davi decided he wanted pedaled propulsion. “I’m much older now, and appreciate the upright, slightly reclined, position for leisurely cruising as opposed to being bent over for the trip.” He built the crankshafts of 1⁄2″ black-iron pipe assembled with 1⁄2″ elbow joints welded at the threads. Through the wheel hubs and center gussets he fit 3⁄4″ pipe into which the 1⁄2″ crankshaft would slide, to be held in place by a keeper pin. “I wanted the wheels to be easily removed and installed—you don’t want to be fidgeting with hardware while you’re standing on rocks or in mud surrounded by other boaters wanting access to the ramp.” However, the external and internal diameters of the two pipes didn’t quite fit, and he had to sand the interior face of the larger pipe to get them to slide into one another. He fashioned the foot pedals out of “some scrap white polypropylene cutting board material with tiny holes drilled through for applying grease, and some scrap angle iron for the crank’s mounting hardware.”
Having changed the propulsion system from hand to pedal cranks, Davi also added some inexpensive stadium seats for the operators.
Finally, he fashioned a simple helm, using more 1⁄2″ pipe for the tiller and scrap pine and metal for the rudder. “The paddle cranks can work together or independently (by removing the keeper pin that connects them) so you can steer by pedaling both wheels separately, but if there’s only one person aboard, you can work with one wheel and the rudder.”
Davi applied two coats of epoxy to the hull, and after construction was completed, he finished everything with two coats of marine topside paint.
The carrying handles—two on each end—are featured in the original design and greatly assist when moving the boat around on land. For transporting the boat in his pickup, Davi takes the paddle wheels off by removing the locking pins that hold them in place on the crankshaft.
The build took Davi a while, but only because, he says, “I worked on it sporadically, as time permitted. Sometimes it would go fast, other times I just did a little cutting and stopped.” But by the end of June 2024, the boat was ready to go. Davi had decided on the name, GUAM ROSE. “My wife, Elaine, is Chamorro, a native of the Northern Marianas Islands, in particular Guam. She’s tolerated my boat habits since we met in 1984. I remember her tucked below in the cabin of our 18′ sailboat with our firstborn son, then aged two, pounding to weather in a blow in Tomales Bay. GUAM ROSE (I got the name from the rice Elaine likes) seemed to fit the current need for a relaxing boat outing in comfort. She likes it.”
Elaine Rodrigues
For a touch of glamor and to provide some shade for the pedalers, Davi—seen here sporting his grandfather’s cap—installed a flagpole holder for an umbrella. He also made a rudder out of some scrap pine, and a simple tiller out of ½” black iron pipe.
Together, Davi and Elaine took GUAM ROSE to Lake Natoma, east of Sacramento, for the grand launching. “We chose it because there’s a 5-mph speed limit so it’s quiet. We loaded the boat into the back of the pickup [Davi estimates the boat weighs around 100 lbs or less and that the paddles, which are disconnected for transportation, add another 20 lbs], and offloaded it with no fuss. We were underway in minutes and were soon paddling effortlessly across the lake. The alteration from hand to foot propulsion did change the weight distribution slightly as you have a tendency to lean back when pedaling, but I’m in the process of making new seats, which will help with that.”
On their first outing, Davi and Elaine sat back and enjoyed the ride. “Many people took an interest, asked questions, gave compliments, and we even had a lot of thumbs-up from passers-by in kayaks or on paddleboards.” And Davi brought his grandfather’s memory along with them: “I wore his ancient captain’s cap, as he always did when he was piloting his boats.”
Jenny Bennett is editor of Small Boats.
Do you have a boat with an interesting story? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats readers.
While she was originally intended for the pursuit of striped bass and bluefish in the choppy waters of Block Island Sound and the Gulf of Mexico, Ninigret is well suited to a wide range of uses including family outings and picnics, weekend cruising, or any other activity that benefits from quiet, economical operation, lots of room, and a smooth ride.
Roeboats
While John Atkin designed Ninigret for fishing the choppy waters of Block Island Sound, the boat also makes a superb camp-cruiser. Irish boatbuilder Tiernan Roe built the fine example in the photograph above.
An easily driven hull allows Ninigret to use a relatively small outboard of around 25 hp, though she can handle as much as 60 hp. With a 30-hp four-stroke Honda outboard she has been shown to burn less than a gallon of fuel per hour at 15–20 knots depending on how she is loaded. Thus the initial expense of the motor is about as little as it could be for a boat this size, and her operating costs are likewise near the minimum. It stands to reason that a boat that is cheap to run will be run more often.
Unlike the short, heavy, high-powered boats that have been so popular in recent years, Ninigret planes easily at moderate speeds without much change in trim and without making big waves at any point in her speed range. In really rough water she can be slowed down, and she will still handle well and be safe and comfortable. This easy feel in a wide range of conditions is part of her agreeable personality.
“Designer John Atkin had a particular talent for creating “timeless” designs, and Ninigret is a prime example.”
Designer John Atkin had a particular talent for creating “timeless” designs, and Ninigret is a prime example. Introduced in 1963, she still has a fresh and contemporary look today, and we expect that decades hence, people will have the same reaction. At the same time, all who love the emotion in well-drawn traditional lines will find her easy on the eyes. Ninigret became one of John’s most popular designs, with more being built every year almost a half-century after she was drawn.
Roeboats
The motor on Tiernan Roe’s Ninigret is concealed by a hatch.
One of the weak points of many outboard-powered boats is a vulnerability to seas approaching the boat from behind, when the boat is stopped. Normally the transom of an outboard boat is plumb or nearly so, and the weight of the motor is all at the extreme aft end of the boat.
When a large sea comes from that direction, the stern of the boat has little tendency to lift to it, and commonly water pours around the motor and over the top of the transom, leaving the boat dependent on whatever defenses are inboard of the motor, if any. When outboard boats lose power they typically turn away from the wind, and many otherwise good boats are lost each year because they could not cope with seas impacting the boat from behind. In Ninigret, the motorwell arrangement allows a flaring transom, plus freeboard and buoyancy aft that are more typical of an inboard-powered boat—a major improvement in safety.
Timm Schleiff
Timm Schleiff’s motor sits handsomely in an exposed well.
While today’s outboards are not very susceptible to stalling as a result of wave impacts, there is obviously still a limit to how deeply they can be immersed in a wave without trouble. Ninigret’s outboard is almost completely protected from waves and also from collision. While we hate to think it is a problem one has to consider, we should note that its location in the well makes the motor much less likely to be stolen.
The outboard’s location also makes possible effective soundproofing of the motor. Few things improve a day on the water as much as simple peace and quiet, and a four-stroke outboard with good sound insulation is the about the quietest option available today, short of an electric motor.
Timm Schleiff
Boatbuilder Timm Schleiff (see WoodenBoat No. 215) built this glued-lapstrake plywood Ninigret in his West Virginia shop.
Compared to an inboard engine, the outboard saves considerably on installation costs, and when it is time to replace the engine, this, too, can happen quickly and at minimal cost, even if the motor is a different make. The aft engine location eliminates the usual ’midships engine box or elevated cockpit sole, leaving Ninigret’s cockpit sole low, level, and unobstructed.
Ninigret’s cockpit is large enough for many activities, and because it is well centered in the boat fore-and-aft, she is able to carry considerable weight without being thrown too far out of trim. Numerous arrangements are possible due to the lack of obstructions or level changes.
Roeboats
John Atkin recommended a 30–45-hp outboard for Ninigret; the corresponding top speed with this power reportedly ranges from 18 to 25 knots. Tiernan Roe’s Ninigret is powered by a 30-hp Honda.
The other very notable feature of this design is her small, canvas-roofed cabin forward. In most motor-boats, a small cabin like this is a seldom-used after- thought, but in Ninigret it is a real plus, adding much to a wide range of uses. For one thing it is an excellent storage area for anything you need to keep dry. Everyone enjoys a day boat more if there is a private place to use the head. Beyond this, it is plenty big enough to sleep in, and one can sit upright on the berths and see out the large windows, which make the cabin cheery and open feeling. Thus Ninigret is a perfectly feasible little cruising boat, and numerous options for cockpit tents or awnings could add much to that potential.
The cabin features a removable canvas roof. The roof will keep the rain out just fine, but when it is removed the entire cabin area becomes a comfortable place for open-air seating and lounging, considerably protected from spray and wind by the cabin sides and windows. As such it is a great place to grab a nap away from the activities in the cockpit, or to ride in comfort with good forward visibility, and it would be a particularly good spot for small children to be safe while they can still see what is going on.
If one wanted, one could make a screen that covered the entire roof area, at which point the cabin would be about the perfect place to sleep on a hot summer night, under the stars. Despite its many contributions, the cabin trunk is relatively low, and taken as a whole the boat has minimal windage that is reasonably well distributed fore and aft. She will not become unmanageable in a strong crosswind, as a result.
Roeboats
Roe’s boat includes seating for six and accommo-dations that include berths for two and a head.
Ninigret’s hull lines show a boat that is long, lean, and light—everything that an efficient powerboat should be. There will be no big “hump” to climb over to get onto a plane, and indeed the hull will essentially be planing at all speeds because the underwater lines are so shallow and straight. The efficiency of the hull is partly proven by the very small size of the waves it will generate, in motion. The hull is what is called a “warped V” shape, flat under the transom for easy planing and good stability, moderately V’d amidships for minimal pounding, and with a sharp V shape forward, for a soft ride.
Flaring topsides all around make for a dry boat, with lots of reserve buoyancy and stability. The design is well known for a smooth ride at speed, and makes relatively flat, comfortable turns. While she has ample stability, she has a bit slower motion in a beam sea than most boats, which will be much appreciated especially when she is stopped.
Building Atkin’s Ninigret
Ninigret’s sharp forefoot transitions to flat after sections, amounting to quick planing and a dry ride.
Plywood construction is ideal for this type of boat, combining light weight, rigidity, and somewhat reduced maintenance. It will go well with epoxy glue and light fiberglass-and-epoxy sheathing, which will form a good foundation for long-lived two-part paint, if desired. If the amount of varnish is held down to a minimum and two-part paints are used where they are practical, maintenance requirements will be close to the minimum possible.
Builders should not think they are doing the boat any favor by increasing any of the scantlings— relatively light weight is one of the reasons Ninigret is so good at what she does, and the Atkins had vast experience in the priorities of construction. The hull is 3⁄8″ plywood over 5⁄8″ × 2 1⁄2″ white-oak frames. Some examples have been finished plainly while others have been done up yacht fashion. The boat will look great with an all-paint finish or with lots of varnish. Modify this boat with great caution. Seemingly minor changes could throw the whole look and function off, and we highly recommend trusting the famously competent and artistically gifted designer to have gotten it right the first time.
Atkin & Company designed over 800 boats, many of them motorboats, and many design themes similar to Ninigret were returned to and refined again and again over the course of many years. Perhaps there can be no greater recommendation for this design than to point out that she is the boat John Atkin chose for his own use in his retirement. He and his wife, Pat, enjoyed countless picnics and cruises in Ninigret, in Long Island Sound.
Numerous examples of Ninigret have been built in recent years, partly due to increasing interest in fuel economy and in wooden boats in general, but also from a simple desire for great-looking boats that do their jobs really well.
The Northeaster Dory is a glued-lapstrake-plywood interpretation of the Banks dory. It is available in kit form from Annapolis, Maryland-based Chesapeake Light Craft.
The Northeaster Dory from Chesapeake Light Craft is a contemporary interpretation of the classic Banks dory, a boat of great load-carrying capacity that’s initially tender, but stable when rolled to one side or the other. There is a wide range of dory types, from the husky Banks models that traveled on the decks of fishing schooners and were used to handline for cod; to the sleek, round-sided recreational type used for racing on Massachusetts’ North Shore; and on to the transom-sterned, outboard-powered models that shed some of the type’s signature characteristics but retain unmistakable lineage.
John Gardner recorded the history of the dory in his The Dory Book in 1978, tracing it back to murky origins nearly 500 years ago. This is the definitive work on the dory type, and in it Gardner states with clarity that it is materials and methods, and not hull form, that makes a dory a dory: “The dory,” he writes, “…is a wide-board type. And if it is not the only wide-board type, it is among the foremost, for dory construction is one of the easiest, quickest, and cheapest methods yet devised for utilizing wide-board lumber in building boats for a wide variety of uses. It should be well understood that it is the dory’s special mode of construction, not the hull shape, that sets it and its related sub-types apart from other boats.” After a short, pithy first part covering history, The Dory Book presents us with a primer on construction, and then a series of chapters presenting plans, histories, and descriptions of several different dories.
Chesapeake Light Craft
Chesapeake Light Craft invented and patented the LapStitch method of boatbuilding, whereby a rabbeted plank seam (visible here) replaces the standard bevel of lapstrake construction. The panels are wired together, and epoxy fills the resulting long gap.
The Dory Book provided a point of departure for designer John Harris, proprietor of the Annapolis, Maryland–based Chesapeake Light Craft (CLC). CLC is a purveyor of plywood and strip-planked kit boats, with an ever-expanding range of offerings. Harris was seeking a simply built, quick-to-rig daysailer to add to his product line. “It looks like a Banks dory,” Harris says— though the historical type was high-sided when lightly loaded, as it was meant to carry a great weight of fish. “I dialed out a lot of sheer because the Banks dory can be a bear in a cross wind.
“I had John Gardner’s book open in my lap when I designed it,” Harris says. “The rig came from the Beachcomber-Alpha.”
The Beachcomber-Alpha was a purely racing dory developed for the Massachusetts North Shore. Its rig is a leg-o’-mutton affair—a simple setup whose details and history Gardner describes in vivid detail over four pages of another of his books, Building Classic Small Craft. He traces the rig’s development from a primitive, unstayed pole carrying a main-sail and jib, to a relatively sophisticated affair with standing rigging, turnbuckles, and sail track. “The rig was no longer capable of being lifted out at the end of a day’s sailing to be carried home on the skipper’s shoulder; now the sails were furled and left on the boat. The boat was no longer rowed any more with the rig down, as was the lobsterman’s dory from whence it evolved.”
In the Northeaster Dory, Harris has retained the basic proportions of the Beachcomber-Alpha sail plan, and he’s kept the standing rigging and the sail track. But, rather than using turnbuckles, he attaches his shrouds to chainplates using simple snaphooks. These allow for quick rigging and downrigging. There is also a lug-rig option, which can be rowed with the rig stowed in the boat. While the marriage of dory hull and lug rig has no recorded historical precedent, it’s a practical hybrid that deserves careful consideration.
Chesapeake Light Craft
The Northeaster Dory is a kit boat, and so its strakes arrive in sections, for shipping purposes. These sections are joined by means of a puzzle joint, which ensures perfect alignment.
Building the Northeaster Dory
The Northeaster Dory is a kit boat, and it’s built in CLC’s patented LapStitch method. This technique yields a boat that appears to be of typical glued-lapstrake construction, but that goes together far more simply. It works like this: In lieu of the common changing bevels that occur along the plank edges of a conventional lapstrake boat, LapStitch uses what is, essentially, a long rabbet into which a neighboring plank nests and is wired to its neighbor—the stitching phase of stitch-and-glue. The joint does develop a gap, which would be unacceptable in a traditionally planked boat, but which is fine in one built of glued-together plywood, for that gap will be filled with thickened epoxy during the gluing stage of the operation.
Because of the limits of stock-plywood lengths, and the costs of over-the-road shipping, the plywood planks supplied in the kit do not arrive full length, and so their sections must be joined together by means of a precisely machined finger joint, which all but guarantees correct alignment. There are three thwarts, and each of these has glued to its bottom a piece of once-blue construction foam, tooled to its proper size and shape. I say “once blue,” because, in a nod to the boat’s aesthetics, CLC coats these pieces in epoxy and paints them black to mask their lumberyard origins. The resulting boat weighs 105 lbs, without the rig, and its maximum payload is 800 lbs—which is ample for two adults and their gear, or a crowd of four for a short sail.
Chesapeake Light Craft
The Northeaster Dory carries a leg-o’-mutton rig—a direct descendant of the Banks dory’s cousin, the Beachcomber-Alpha.
The boat has a removable rowing thwart and a sliding-seat option for more athletic rowing. It is steered by means of a push-pull tiller—a convenience in narrow-sterned boats whose hull forms don’t allow ample swinging room for a conventional tiller. It works like this: To a short crank fixed on the starboard rudderhead is attached the articulating long tiller. Push the tiller aft, and the boat steers to port; pull it forward, and you go to starboard. It takes a bit of getting used to, but becomes second nature within a short time. If one wished for less hardware and clutter, a continuous loop of line run through blocks could be substituted. This arrangement has gained recent notice with the popularity of the N.G. Herreshoff’s cat-yawl Coquina, which uses it to good effect.
With its relatively light weight and modest sail area, the Northeaster Dory accelerates admirably—even in the light airs in which I tested it. It has a slight tendency to pound when sailed bolt upright. But a dory isn’t meant to be sailed upright, and a 10-degree angle of heel introduces a chine to the waves, smoothing the ride noticeably. The handkerchief of a jib is integral to the boat’s performance, as it directs air over the low-aspect mainsail. “Take the jib down right now, and the boat goes dead,” said John Harris as we discussed the rig’s dynamics.
The boat we tested was fitted with a pair of Harken swivel-cam cleats for the jibsheets. These are convenient but optional; the standard kit, in addition to the precut hull panels, includes all mechanical fastenings, epoxy, fiberglass, and copper wire. There’s also one set of oarlocks included, though another could be added for a second rower. The basic kit costs $1,299. To get the boat sailing, one must purchase the optional sailing kit, including the mast and boom blanks, which must be shaped to their finished dimensions; Dacron mainsail and jib; rudder; daggerboard, and daggerboard trunk; shrouds; and hardware. The additional cost of the sailing kit is $1,099.
Chesapeake Light Craft
Because of the Northeaster Dory’s narrow stern, there’s no room to swing a conventional tiller. Therefore, steering is by means of a push-pull tiller.
Many years ago, the great simple-boat guru Phil Bolger designed an enchanting plywood dory called the Gloucester Light Dory. It’s roundly considered to be a study in perfection in plywood, as it combines grace, beauty, performance, and ease of construction in a single design. That performance, however, comes at a price: The Gloucester Light Dory predates the stitch-and-glue revolution, and so building it requires a materials- intensive construction jig that goes to the burn pile after construction. The boat was also meant for rowing only and, if I recall correctly, Bolger, who died last year, expressed safety concerns over queries regarding sailing rigs for this boat. John Harris is well familiar with the Gloucester Light Dory. In fact, he calls it a “nearly perfect boat.”
“If I was going to design a dory,” he said, “it had to be something completely different.” The Northeaster Dory is, indeed, a different breed of boat from the Gloucester Light Dory. It’s stiffer and carries more passengers, and it sails. It’s a bigger boat, and its method of construction is simpler as it requires no ladder frame or molds. The result is a thoroughly modern daysailer standing on the shoulders of the Gloucester Light Dory—and on the long and obscure dory tradition that came before.
The Northeaster is flatter-sheered and sleeker than her Banks Dory forebears, but the lineage is unmistakable. Three rowing stations allow for solo and double rowing.
The International Fireball is a development class of racing sailboats that allows builders to incorporate new technology and a variety of rigging options (such as the trapeze shown in use), enabling sailors to stretch the limits of their abilities.
The International Fireball and its friendly network of members have earned the class a reputation for being competitive—but without losing its sense of fun. This two-man high-performance racing sloop (16′ 2″ LOA, 4′ 6″ beam) excels in wind conditions of 15–20 mph, conditions that make some other small-boat classes take shelter.
In 1962, Peter Milne designed the International Fireball to be an exciting and responsive one-design that could be built by an amateur woodworker. In this age of high-cost building composites, the Fireball remains one of the few high-performance one-designs that allow the builder to construct a hull from scratch using wood (prefabricated fiberglass hulls are also available). Over 15,000 boats and 50 years later, the class is everything the designer could have hoped for.
While the Fireball is still technically a one-design (a sailboat class that requires all boats to be built to the same specifications, with a few variables), some factions of it have also evolved into a development class (a class that allows the incorporation of some technical advancements). The design can take advantage of updated building and rigging adaptations, such as laminate sails and adjustable, bendable masts that give greater control of the rig while underway.
This boat is not well suited to the beginning sailor but appeals to racers and non-racers alike; anyone interested in the sheer fun of sailing a fast sailboat will love the Fireball. There are many husband-wife, boyfriend-girlfriend, parent-child, and sibling teams sailing the type. Almost all levels of competition, from the local club venue to international events hosted at exotic locations around the world, are available to racers. Many Fireballers who have explored other designs have returned to the Fireball with renewed interest, rekindling friendships and mentoring younger members.
Tom Gruitt
Father-and-son team, Duncan and Graham Schaefer built their boat and enjoy racing together. Their home port is Chardon, Ohio, but since the boat is easy to haul on a lightweight trailer or by cartop, they can race anywhere within driving distance.
The sail plan is large enough to drive the hull in light winds yet small enough that the average size crew of two men, approximately 165 lbs each, can hold the boat upright by hiking out on the trapeze in a stiff wind. (A trapeze is a wire that runs from the masthead that enables a crew member to extend his body out from the hull to provide outboard ballast.)
The hull is held to a minimum weight of 175 lbs and has a combined sail area between main and jib of 123 sq ft. It can easily plane upwind in 15–20-mph winds. When the boat rounds the weather mark and heads off on a beam reach, and the crew hoists the 140-sq-ft spinnaker, the Fireball can make 20 knots or more. But the original design had a problem with the boat burying its bow in these conditions.
During the 1980s a group of inventive builders began to experiment with the non-measured sections of the forward area of the hull to solve this problem. They found that by adding more volume to the forward sections, the resulting hull could be handled more aggressively in moderate wind and waves. Working within stated tolerances allowed by the class rules at the time, they developed a boat with less rocker (the fore-and-aft sweep of the boat’s bottom) and added a set of bilge panels that would enable the boat to plane sooner and in lighter winds. This modified design provided a clear advantage over the standard design Fireballs that were being built up to that point. This altered configuration became known as the wide-bow design. Although the class association will not change the original design to reflect these alterations, it does allow the wide-bow design to compete in regattas, as long as the hull passes the standard measurer’s exam for certification as an International Fireball, as outlined in the rulebook.
Building the International Fireball
From 1998 through 2006, I oversaw a boatbuilding program in my woodshop classes at Jefferson-Morgan High School in southwestern Pennsylvania. We built Fireballs during the school year and then learned how to sail and race them against other schools with similar programs. During that time, we worked closely with Fireball International and the Winder Boat Company in England, considered by many to be the ultimate builders of the wide-bow Fireball. They shared some key measurements that enabled us to build a wide-bow Fireball that resembled their hulls. We discovered that many of their altered measurements pushed tolerances to the outermost bounds of the class rules.
After discussion with Fireball International’s secretary about possible problems that might occur by pushing measurements to the edge, we decided to institute a 5mm rule to our building process. Simply stated, we would not exceed 5mm where 8mm of tolerance was allowed. Were we to push measurements to their maximum tolerances, we would not leave any room for error; even sanding and finishing the completed hull could cause a variance of as much as a few millimeters. Because the altered dimensions left so little room for error, we built a male construction form—an idea that came to us from the chairman of Fireball International’s technical committee.
David White
Students in David White’s shop class build the wide-bow Fireball on a setup of male molds, which help the builders remain faithful to the hull’s intended shape.
The male form holds the hull in a rigid state, giving better control during construction and ultimately providing uniformity among hulls. The form took the better part of a school year to design and build, but when we pulled our first hull off it we realized that it had taken less time than previous builds had, so we think the extra effort was worthwhile. We designed the form to be easily assembled and disassembled, as we sometimes lend out the form to like-minded programs and schools.
When we built our second hull, we gained a greater appreciation for the form’s stability. We were able to pre-measure all areas of the hull before its permanent assembly. The finished hull passed a measurer’s exam, even though we had decided to alter the dimensions of the lumber we used to keep her weight down, using 4mm-thick plywood for the bow plate and transom instead of the 15mm solid lumber as called for in the plans.
We also used a ’glass-taping method of construction between the bottom and sides to eliminate chine logs. Epoxy fillets replaced support pieces of solid lumber that were to outline the bulkheads and tank sides. The finished hull weighed 150 lbs before fittings. We documented everything and completed a set of building instructions based on our research. Our instructions cover the essential steps in building the male form and explain the ’glass-tape construction method we used to build our hulls.
Being a development class, the Fireball offers racers a wide array of rigging options. The Fireball association regularly reviews and revises their rules, allowing the class to evolve with changes in building technology and advancements in rigging, such as the introduction of spinnakers and trapezes. The Fireball became an international class in 1970 and, as a result, the hulls became more uniform due to tightened tolerances of measurements.
Tom Gruitt
With 15,000 or more boats in existence, International Fireball regattas around the world draw great crowds of friendly yet competitive racers.
If you’re hoping for a high-performance sailing dinghy that offers great competition at all levels of racing, backed by a friendly social group, then the Fireball may be the boat you’re looking for. If, in addition to that, you want to build your own boat and have the satisfaction of racing something that you created, the Fireball is definitely the boat for you.
The International Fireball’s sail plan, with its 123 square feet of measured sail area promises very lively performance for the 175-lb hull. The full-length top batten was ahead of its time when this boat was designed nearly 50 years ago. Within the dimensional limits shown, the sailmaker is free to experiment.
The Schooner 18 is an iconoclastic camp-cruiser from Shell Boats of St. Albans, Vermont. Her aft cabin offers several advantages over the more typical forward-placed cabin—including good forward visibility. This arrangement, however, requires remote steering in the form of a pedestal-mounted wheel.
BIG SWIFTY is an 18′ schooner from Shell Boats of St. Albans, Vermont. Her design is called the Schooner 18, and is the largest in proprietor Fred Shell’s Swifty line, whose basic hull form and techniques range from the 7′ Leif up to the boat featured here. The evolution of these boats has coursed over the past 25 or so years, and was inspired by a synthesis of Dutch and Norwegian hull forms and construction methods, as well as the Joel White-designed Nutshell pram. The Swifty moniker was given in honor of a legendary musician, whose identity we’ll return to after considering some of this boat’s attributes.
Fred Shell sails more than any builder I know. He’s the first on the lake in the spring, and the last off in the fall. He copes with the hard-water season on Lake Champlain by tinkering with iceboats. Since, like most of us, he doesn’t live on the waterfront, feeding his habit requires boats that are easily trailered, launched, and rigged. Fred fills these needs by designing and building a variety of imaginative designs, making them available as kits or finished boats. Shell boats’ hallmarks are low cost, simple construction, economical materials, light weight, and good performance.
For the moment, let’s leave aside the fact that Fred’s Schooner 18, with its aft-placed cabin, appears to be sailing backwards, and contemplate the hull and its construction. The basics are these: The boat has a flat 3⁄8″ plywood bottom and ¼″ lapstrake topsides. The chine seam is fiberglass-taped and the laps are epoxy-glued. Rather than complicate life with a centerboard and trunk, Shell has fitted the Schooner 18 with bilge keels and a skeg. These appendages provide lateral resistance, and metal shoes mounted on these “feet” allow the boat to beach and trailer with alacrity, as she perches in a solid, three-point stance. This configuration also protects the lightweight bottom of the boat and eliminates the need, weight, and cost of fiberglass sheathing.
Shell Boats
For trailering and storage, the Schooner 18’s rig stows in a crutch forward and on permanent gallows on the cabintop.
The cockpit sole is a false bottom, incorporating three flotation chambers. The splash-well structure aft for the motor and tank includes flotation as well. The stem is a stitch-and-glue technique epoxy fillet, strong and simple. The 5⁄8″ plywood decks are simply butted to the sheer, with the joint backed by an epoxy fillet after gluing and screwing it. The dramatic raked coaming stiffens the deck structure while keeping the cockpit dry. The low, short cabin is built with simple joinery, primarily of lightweight plywood, with a few stringers and beams here and there.
The deck arrangement is well worth our contemplation. The Schooner 18’s appearance strikes me as Venetian, or maybe even Venutian, but after a spirited Saturday morning sail I will heartily endorse the concepts embodied in this aft-cabin, forward-cockpit layout. It’s an iconoclastic concept to a contemporary American eye, though we’ll find it on traditional Norwegian rowing and sailboats. It works well: sailing visibility is completely unencumbered. The outboard motor and gas tank are screened from noise and view by the cabin. The bridge deck offers majestic seating for a crew of two, especially when equipped with folding cushions. The huge padded cockpit bay offers copious sprawling and lounging space, cleverly made more gracious by a footwell and the raked coaming. One can sit comfortably almost anywhere, as dictated by trim or social needs.
“BIG SWIFTY sails very well. She is quick to handle and accelerate, with a nice turn of speed for such a small boat.”
One of the idiosyncrasies necessitated by the Schooner 18’s aft cabin is remote steering. Rather than invoking Rube Goldberg, Shell has addressed this challenge with a simple, well-executed scheme. He has mounted an off-the-shelf cable helm unit in a combination mast partner–steering pedestal. This puts the 10″ wooden wheel within easy reach of the bridge deck seats, and also of a skipper sitting one notch forward and outboard as necessary.
The helm is coupled to a skeg-mounted rudder with a tiller arm sized to give one turn of the wheel, stop to stop. The resulting steering is easy, quick, and positive. There is no “feedback” as with a tiller, and that can leave experienced small-boat sailors feeling a bit empty, but I found it very manageable and felt comfortable at the helm within minutes. The overriding triumph is the space saving afforded by the helm. Tillers, of whatever configuration, restrict the use of space within their arc and thus they dominate many small boats.
The Schooner 18’s rig is just about as simple as could be hoped for. One hundred eighteen square feet of sail are almost evenly divided between sprit-boomed, leg-o’-mutton fore and main. The sails are luff-sleeved and live on their tapered spruce masts. The foresail is trimmed by a single sheet running to a swivel cam cleat mounted on the steering pedestal.
The main has a double sheet run to cam cleats on either side of the companionway, leaving the hatch free, and puts the sheet within the helmsman’s reach on either tack. The rotating masts, set in tubes with plastic bushings, allow roller furling or reefing when needed. When the sails are reefed, one simply strikes the sprit-booms as the reduced sails are small enough to set well without them. The rig stows and trailers in a crutch forward and on a gallows on the aft cabin top. This wide, arcing gallows allows the spars to be set to either side to free the companionway for traffic.
The cabin offers lounging headroom, a 6′ 6″ flat, and many convenient nooks, shelves, and cubbies. The very compact space is made habitable by large deadlights along the cabin sides, a full-width sliding hatch aft, and the very generously proportioned companionway. Any number of screen and canopy schemes could enhance the cruising comforts for one or two.
Shell Boats
The Schooner 18 carries 50 sq ft in her foresail, and 68 sq ft in her main. Sleeved luffs and sprit booms make setup and reefing as simple as can be.
The Schooner 18 is definitely not for the classicists among us. But the sailors among us must take note. The Schooner 18 sails very well. She is quick to handle and accelerate, with a nice turn of speed for such a small boat. She is stiff and dry, and reasonably rigged in terms of sail area, requiring the crew to trim the boat, but no heroic hiking is involved. The boat is light enough to be easily managed under oars, which, by the way, stow either forward under the side decks or in their sockets with blades cleated to the cabin sides in a sort of ready position.
This boat’s unusual configuration lends itself readily to the use of an outboard auxiliary. Indeed, it is a far happier auxiliary than most boats its size. Shell’s normal setup utilizes a 3.5-hp engine with an integral gas tank, a rig that provide hull speed—about 5 knots—and 12 miles of cruising on a tank of gas. A spare gas can stowed in the splash well extends the range by about 100 miles. On the day I sailed with him, Shell was experimenting with a 6-hp engine from another of his designs. He rigs the engines for semi-remote operation, extending the starter pull cord and the engine tilt cord over the cabin roof, and the shifter and twist-throttle handles forward through the cabin. Thus, once the engine is started, the helmsman steering with the wheel has engine controls within reach.
Shell Boats kits include sails, shaped spars, and all the plywood parts cut to shape and fit. The materials are basic and inexpensive, though always reasonable choices. Shell preassembles each kit, so that not only are hardware and screws included, but so are the pilot holes for the screws. He’ll include an optional epoxy kit if you so desire, and requires only that a customer pro-vide tools and consumables such as paint, sandpaper, brushes, and rags. He even builds his owns sails for the kits. His boats are not high-gloss, heavily detailed show-pieces. They are honest and useful, good performers with character. They are unmatched when judged by cost to usefulness. And, after all, any boat named for a Frank Zappa song must be way cool!
The Schooner 18’s shape suggests simple construction. Twin bilge keels will allow the boat to sit bolt upright on the beach, and provide lateral stability. The boat is available in either finished or kit form.
For more information, contact Shell Boats LLC, 561 Polly Hubbard Rd., St. Albans, VT 05478; 802–524–9645.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
When James Kealey built a boat so his sons could learn about perseverance and independence, he gave them something priceless: immersion in an activity at so young an age that they won’t remember learning what to do on a boat, they will just know how to do it. As children, we learn without questioning, and if we’re lucky enough to learn in an unthreatening environment that is patient and encouraging, we learn without inhibition or fear of getting it wrong.
By the time I was 16, I had no memory of a time when I couldn’t sail; it was just a part of life, like walking or talking. I could remember learning some of the finer details, but that was about mastering anticipation—What was the wind going to do? Where was that other boat going to go? It was never about where I should be sitting or how my sails should be set, those were things that just happened.
Then I started teaching at the local sailing school, and for the first time not only did I have to think about the process of moving a boat under sail, I had to explain it. I was at a loss…how do you explain something innate? Fortunately, my students were young, and as is the way with small children, they didn’t seek explanation. When I showed them what to do—push the tiller this way, and the boat will turn that way—they didn’t ask why, they simply followed my lead. A few years later, I graduated to adult students and was faced with a new reality. These learners wanted to understand the whys and the hows.
For me, a still-young instructor, the adults were frustrating: How could they not get this? How could they sit firmly to windward with their boat heeled toward them, even as they subconsciously leaned their bodies into the center of the boat in search of level comfort? How could they not know where the wind was coming from? Or see how the tidal current was affecting their progress? Or not be infuriated by that flapping jib?… And what was with the incessant questioning?
Then, one winter when I was in my mid-20s, I was invited to take downhill skiing lessons, and I became an adult beginner, riddled with insecurity and doubt. Eight-year-olds flashed past me, whooping and hollering with delight as I snow-plowed across the piste like an oversized Bambi on ice; my teacher made effortless, graceful turns as I, unable to get my skis to change direction, again and again came to an abrupt halt in the ungroomed snow at the side of the slope. I didn’t get it, any of it. And the more I struggled, the more I questioned and internally screamed for the hows and the whys. In one of my catching-my-breath moments lying crumpled in a snowbank staring up at the bright alpine sky, I had a sudden flash of admiration for all those mature sailing students I’d known. They had been dropped into an alien environment where their only tool was a ridiculous adult brain that kept getting in the way. And yet, despite that, many of them had actually gotten it and become excellent sailors.
Learning a new skill as an adult is not the easy, unconscious journey that learning to sail will likely be for James Kealey’s sons. Some of us shy away from the challenge, annoyed by the well-meaning but mildly condescending acquaintance who tells us “You’re never too old to learn”; succumbing instead to the inner voice that cautions “You’re too old, you’ll look a fool.” Yet, there are those who prove that it really is never too late. Gary Carbocci graduated from high school in 1969 and launched his first boat in 2024. He’d been thinking about building it for 50 years before he finally decided, seven years ago, that the time had come. He’d never before built a boat, any boat. But he didn’t start with an easy project; instead, he stepped right into the deep end and built a traditionally planked, 16′ Adirondack guideboat with intricate curves and delicate joints. He worked alone, without a mentor or instructor, just a couple of well-written books. But Gary had a desire and a self-confidence that told him “You’re never too old.”
This compact and easy-to-build canoe from designer Warren Jordan is a fine choice for a first-time builder who wants a lightweight craft for exploring shallow inlets, streams, and other calm waters.
Inexpensive, fun, and easy to build, this single-occupancy explorer canoe combines the sleek lines of a conventional canoe with the efficient paddling propulsion and minor draft constraints of a center-cockpit kayak. At 11′ 3″ LOA and 30″ beam and just under 40 lbs, NEWT is one of the handiest new canoes on the water.
Warren Jordan of South Beach, Oregon, designed NEWT with the desire to create a small craft that would not intimidate an inexperienced woodworker. He wanted her to be a size and weight that is easy to carry, able to accommodate a normal-sized adult, and still provide room for enough gear for a day trip. She loads and launches with ease: one can load NEWT on cartop roof racks or simply slide her into the back of a pickup, with the option of stacking two boats.
In addition to serving the individual builder, NEWT is a perfect fit for community boatbuilding workshops, where groups are usually looking to create a simple yet beautiful and useful craft in a short amount of time.
Warren Jordan is a man who refuses to let the sawdust settle. Most recognized for his cradle boat, Baby Tender, which he first designed and built in the late 1980s—a design that is still in demand—Jordan has since designed 25 other boats and has built over 50, all to a high professional standard.
Warren Jordan
“Marine plywood panels (1⁄4″ or 6mm thick) make up the sides, and then chine logs (long strips along the boat’s bottom) are attached to the outside of the hull. A plywood bottom will cap the assembly.”
I arranged to meet Jordan at his home. It was a moody spring Saturday, typical for the Oregon coast. In learning about him, I was immediately attracted to his ideal of no-waste wooden boat building. After deciding on a style of boat to design and build, he spends hours calculating how best to achieve the desired result with the hopes of leaving only sawdust on his shop floor as excess waste. With the growing awareness of the Earth’s limited natural resources, his minimalist approach to boatbuilding is gaining more widespread acceptance. Jordan said of NEWT, “If I have a sheet and a half of plywood, I try and get every piece of the boat out of that, including the paddles, with nothing left over, utilizing everything.” With a hull of plywood, paddle blades of plywood attached to an 8′ piece of closet rod, and remaining pieces that can be found at any local hardware store, NEWT runs about $200 in cost of materials.
After touring Warren’s modest and well-organized garage shop, snacking on treats prepared by his wife, Rita, and meeting their friends, Ashley and Yasmina, we set out for Ona Beach State Park for our trials. Ashley launched the boat; the rest of us walked along the shore, watching her as she glided effortlessly downstream. NEWT turned on a dime and seemed to react with ease. The water depth was no more than a few inches deep, yet Ashley kept her momentum. “You can paddle it in a puddle,” she said. That about sums it up.
James Holzgraf
Weighing less than 40 lbs, she is a cinch to carry in the back of a pickup truck or on top of almost any car.
Next, Yasmina had a turn. I decided to challenge her by putting her 50-lb chocolate Lab, Mojave, in the back to see if they could hold their balance. Mojave looked a little nervous, but nobody got wet and NEWT performed well under the added weight and altered load. But the real test of breaking strength came when I took my turn; I stand 6′ 8″ and weigh 230 lbs. I climbed in and shoved off, and NEWT took me gracefully along the bank. I was amazed at the boat’s stability as I paddled along. Even paddlers with significantly different body weights and proportions can enjoy a comfortable ride, mostly due to Jordan’s careful placement of the folding chair that is fixed amidships. This is an ordinary camp chair with adjustable reclining straps. The placement of the chair on the boat’s sole positions the paddler so that he or she can maneuver the double feathering paddle with ease. The chair doesn’t slide forward or aft because it is screwed to the ’midship frame and a shim that is mounted to the floor. A slight adjustment of the straps can give added com- fort and help to trim the boat. Until I felt NEWT in action I couldn’t fully appreciate the comfort that the seating arrangement offered. Even my legs—and I’m all legs—could rest fully extended rather than being bent. This allows for many more hours of comfortable cruising. For those who prefer a foot brace, the forward frame might suffice—or could be used to prop up a customized one.
James Holzgraf
Warren Jordan secured a camp seat just aft of center to place the paddler’s weight right where it will do the most good to keep the boat stable underway.
As mentioned earlier, NEWT’s flat-bottomed hull enables the user to maneuver her in a mere 8″–9″ of water. This makes her an optimum craft for paddling shallow estuaries and creeks. An ability to hold trim is essential for maintaining directional stability (the boat’s ability to track on course or to easily correct to get back on course). With every paddle stroke some sideways momentum accompanies forward movement. Without the correct amount of rocker (the longitudinal sweep of the boat’s bottom) and an accurate estimate of the location of the boat’s center of gravity, its efficiency would have been compromised. NEWT has no skeg, and her center of gravity is just aft of center; this adds just enough drag in the stern to preserve the desired directional stability.
The paddle blades are oriented on the loom at 90 degrees to one another. This keeps the non-working blade from facing the wind and slowing the boat while the stroke blade is underwater. To help prevent water from reaching the paddler as it drips inboard from the blades, Jordan has tied Turk’s Head knots a few inches inboard from each blade; this seems to do a good job of keeping both boat and paddler dry.
James Holzgraf
NEWT can carry a surprising variety of weights and loads without incident—even though Mojave the Lab seems a bit concerned.
Another advantage to the floor-seating arrangement is the increased level of intimacy with the waterway that it provides. For me, it conjures childhood memories of floating the rivers by raft and leaning over the edge—my nose just barely out of the water—wondering at the plants and rocks below as I make my way downstream. In a typical canoe, leaning over to touch the water or to grab something puts you at risk of capsizing. With NEWT, you feel less of that separation from the water. While a kayak brings you close to the water, NEWT makes you feel even closer because there is no deck fencing you in. This gives a whole new perspective and adds an important dimension to the experience, I think.
NEWT offers even the novice builder an empty canvas for experimentation and exploration. Once the basic boat is constructed, there is ample opportunity to outfit the boat to suit individual needs. With plenty of room for tie-down hooks, straps, or framing mounts for a cooler or gear bin, NEWT is spacious—and poised for fun.
Plans for Newt are available from Jordan Wood Boats, P.O. Box 194, South Beach, Oregon 97366, 541-867-3141.
Warren Jordan
NEWT’s frames are set up on its modest strongback and are used to shape the hull. Every piece of the NEWT canoe is dimensioned, and many details—from breasthooks to paddle blades—are provided at full scale on the plans. Additionally, there are well-organized and thorough instructions on the plans to take you through every step of construction.
Paul Gartside, designer of the 10′ sailing pram Spitfire, says that he drew it with “youngsters in mind.” He describes it as a “neat little boat to learn to sail in and hopefully one that might instill the magic of a real wooden boat at an impressionable age. From the builder’s perspective [it’s] a great place to hone traditional skills.” A small transom-bowed lapstrake dinghy, Spitfire is a fun sail-and-oar boat for two people—adults as well as “youngsters.”
Before building the Spitfire, we had tackled a few other builds and were glad to have the experience—construction of this small boat is sufficiently complex that it would tax a beginner. Indeed, Gartside says of the design, “this [is] real boatbuilding. It doesn’t get much more challenging, regardless of size.”
Fani Skoulikidi
Thanks to the warm dry weather on Syros, we were able to build the boat outside beneath a simple shade awning. We built the Spitfire upside down on a strongback, planking it in spruce because cedar is hard to come by in Greece. Once the hull was fully planked, we turned it upright for fitting out and decking, first painting the interior—the ends would never again be so easily accessed.
The hull, which requires lofting, is of traditional lapstrake construction with 10 planks per side on steam-bent frames. The four sheets of plans are detailed and provide the necessary information for an experienced builder, but there are no step-by-step instructions. The first sheet includes the lines and a table of offsets from which to loft the boat full size. The second provides details of the construction including the recommended types of wood, the thicknesses, the number and type of fastenings, the 10 lbs of lead to weight the centerboard, and other small details. The third sheet describes the setup of the strongback, and the fourth is the sail plan.
The Spitfire is built upside down on a strongback. We used pine for the centerboard, centerboard trunk, gunwales, carlin, floor timbers, deckbeams, deck, and rudder (which we built with a fixed blade, as we typically sail in deeper waters; Gartside’s plans detail a rudder with a kick-up blade). We used spruce for the planking and floorboards and also for the spars and oars. Gartside suggests Atlantic white cedar, 5⁄16″ for the planking and 3⁄8″ floorboards, but in Greece, where we live and built the boat, cedar is hard to come by. We used oak, as specified, for the keel plank, frames, transoms, rubbing strakes, coaming, tiller, and cleats. The plans note the hanging knees as being laminated, but do not specify the wood type; we made ours of solid oak. We also made our own blocks out of elm. For fastenings, we used copper nails and roves, and used silicon-bronze screws and bolts where needed. The deck is two layers of 5⁄16″ pine covered with 4-oz fiberglass cloth and epoxy.
To achieve the necessary curves, we steamed all the frames and the coaming. In the bow we wrapped some of the plank ends and applied boiling water to help bend them into the transom. As they cooled, we clamped them between curved blocks to help maintain their shape. We planed the ends of the planks to a feathered edge to bring them flush to the transoms.
Fani Skoulikidi
The ends of the planks are planed to a feather edge to bring them flush into the transoms. From this angle, the Spitfire’s jaunty sheer is apparent; in a chop that high bow helps keep the boat and crew dry.
The designer estimates the build time of the Spitfire to be about 300 hours. For us, the project was slowed because we were not working on it full-time, and we were often forced to wait for weeks for materials to arrive from abroad. From beginning to end it took us roughly four months.
For its size, the dinghy is remarkably spacious. There is room for two adults and their gear. The plans indicate the placement for oarlocks but do not include seats, so a rower must sit on the centerboard trunk, which is a good position for the oarlocks but not the most comfortable; or, if the mast is not stepped, on the foredeck, which is more comfortable but something of a stretch. In either position there is still room for a second person to sit in the stern and steer.
Working from the plans we built 7′ 9″ straight-bladed oars with sewn leathers, and while these can be stowed in the boat mostly under the deck, occupying very little cockpit space, we find that when sailing with two people on board it’s better to leave them in the oarlocks lying on the sidedeck, where they are in easy reach should we need them.
Fani Skoulikidi
Paul Gartside’s plans call for a kick-up rudder but as we typically don’t sail in shoal waters and rarely require the rudder to lift, we went with a fixed blade. Both transoms rise above deck level. In the stern it allows for a sculling notch (partially hidden here by the rudder). The oars can be stowed in the boat, but we like to keep them in the oarlocks so they are out of the way but readily to hand when needed.
The finished boat weighs around 200 lbs, so a small trailer is best for easy transportation, and while it can be dragged down a sand beach—the keelband and half-rounds fitted along the first four plank lands protect the wood from damage—to carry it does require two or three people. It is far easier to find a launching ramp and launch straight from the trailer; the boat slides off and on the trailer with ease.
We live on Syros, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. There are many deepwater gulfs and bays within easy access, and we have been happy with the boat’s performance. It is stable and feels safe when climbing aboard and moving around, even with two of us on board. When we are together, one of us sits forward and manages the sail (or rows) while the other sits aft, leaning forward to avoid the arc of the tiller when tacking or jibing.
Under oars, the boat tracks well, even when rowing into a choppy sea and light to moderate headwind. We have even rowed in a wind gusting 20 knots and the boat performed well, unhampered by weathercocking. In all conditions it is responsive to the helm or to a change in pressure to an oar, and rowing is a pleasure—although if you wanted to row for any distance, you would want to build a wider seat.
Clement Kalliambetsos
On launching day, we rigged the boat on the beach and blessed it with a splash of local wine. The sailplan shows the sail loose-footed, but we added lacing. The single deep reef means this small boat can be sailed in stronger winds, although we would recommend a top wind strength of around 16 knots.
The boat’s rig is an unstayed mast with a 45-sq-ft spritsail. We have the sail permanently laced to the mast and boom, and we can be off the trailer and sailing in about 10 minutes. When sailing singlehanded, the helmsperson can sit on the floorboards or, if preferred, the aft deck (although here your body does impede the swing of the tiller, and you must duck down into the cockpit to avoid the boom when tacking or jibing). Sitting on the floorboards, it is comfortable to lean against the cockpit coaming, and there is plenty of room to get forward of the tiller and to change sides with ease. Thus seated, there is good visibility in all directions, and the mainsheet, run through a double block secured to a simple pad-eye mounted on the after end of the centerboard trunk, is within easy reach.
Sailing with two people is a little more cramped, and with the forward crewmember seated alongside the centerboard trunk, it is often easiest not to change sides when tacking or jibing.
The Spitfire is responsive to the helm, and we have found that trimming the pivoting centerboard helps to improve performance on all points of sail except closehauled when we keep it all the way down. The boat does well through jibes and tacks, finding its new course and picking up speed quickly, but on the rare occasion when we have been caught in irons, we’ve been able to quickly restore control with a couple of strokes of an oar. We haven’t measured our speed under sail, but being close to the water it feels fast.
Clement Kalliambetsos
For a 10′ dinghy the Spitfire is surprisingly roomy. When the rig is up, the rower can sit atop the centerboard trunk but if the rig is down, they can sit on the foredeck, which is more of a stretch to the oars, but also more comfortable as a seat. In either circumstance there is plenty of room for two adults.
Like any small boat, the Spitfire has its limitations. We would recommend sailing it in protected waters and winds up to about 16 knots. Our local sailmaker followed the designer’s recommendation of a single line of reefpoints in the sail, and it is certainly comforting to have that one reef if the wind picks up suddenly. Fully rigged and with two people on board, seated low on the floorboards, the stability is good. The marked rise in the sheer forward, coupled with the raked transom bow, helps to keep the boat dry even in a stiff breeze and steep waves.
From building to sailing to rowing, we have been very happy with the boat, which we have named Φαφαφηνα (FAFAFINA). Not only does the design live up to Paul Gartside’s promise of being suitable for younger sailors, but also it has proved enjoyable for all ages whether sailing alone or with company.
Ioanna Moutousidi and Giannis Bormpantonakis are boatbuilders from Greece. They studied traditional wooden boat building at Aprendiztegi (the Lance Lee International Boatbuilding School) in Basque Country. After completing their three-year apprenticeship, they returned to Greece where they run a workshop for building small boats and work in shipyards around the Greek islands.
Plans for the Spitfire, Design #177, are available from Paul Gartside Boatbuilder and Designer. Digital study plans are $20; printed study plans are $40 including shipping. A full set of digital plans is $150. The Spitfire is described by the designer in his book Plans & Dreams, Volume 1.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
Newfound Woodworks of Bristol, New Hampshire, specializes in strip-built canoes and kayaks. Their Sea Wolf kayak, designed by Hans Friedel of Sweden, has stability that would put novice paddlers at ease and provide a reassuring platform for fishing or photography. For more ambitious endeavors, it is the company’s “best expedition-style kayak.”
The Sea Wolf can be built from plans or a kit.
For scratch builders, the plans set consists of eight sheets. Six are printed with full-sized patterns for the 16 station molds, bow and stern end-forms, hatch spacers and lips, and the two bulkheads. The remaining two pages are overall views, one indicating the placement of the molds on the strongback, the other showing the placement of all the fittings on the finished kayak. Included with the plans is a 30-page manual of detailed step-by-step instructions illustrated with color photographs.
Christopher Cunningham
The Sea Wolf has a generous volume both for larger paddlers and cruising cargo. The low profile of the recessed coaming keeps it from interfering with paddling and rescue techniques.
The kit includes all the materials for building and outfitting the Sea Wolf kayak, from the molds and a precut sectional strongback, to cedar strips and epoxy, to deck hardware and cockpit accommodations: seat, backband, and foot braces. The printed plans for the kit are a five-page set that includes assembly instructions for the interlocking pieces of the strongback. For those new to such a project, an optional Pre-Kit package has a booklet describing the building process, and DVDs on strip-building and fiberglassing.
The Sea Wolf I paddled was built by Newfound Woodworks as a demo kayak, and the workmanship is first rate. While the bead-and-cove strips fit neatly together (as I expected, without gaps), there are many joints between the deck strips that surely required careful work to make them tight. Throughout the kayak, each strip showed tiny dark marks where staples had secured them to the molds while the glue in the seams cured. Using staples speeds the building process as there is no limit to the number of strips that can be applied in one session. The resulting staple marks can be avoided by using the grooves milled in the kit’s molds. These make it possible to use spring clamps and tape to hold the strips, but fewer strips can be applied during each gluing session.
Christopher Cunningham
The forward end of the cockpit has plenty of room for size 13 (even size 14) booties. SEA-LECT Designs foot braces provide a solid connection with the kayak.
The bulkheads at each end of the cockpit are plywood and are fixed into the hull with thickened epoxy fillets and to the deck with an adhesive caulking. The hatches are cut from the deck, a task that must be done accurately the first time: there is no straightening the sides or smoothing the corner curves later. The hatch openings are large enough for loading good-sized dry bags without having to squeeze them through. Even an uncompressed sleeping bag would be easy to stow. A soft neoprene gasket seals each hatch, and its cover is held down by a pair of straps with buckles and blocks attached on the underside to apply direct pressure to the cover’s sides. The resulting seal is nearly watertight. The rear compartment took on only about half a cup of water during my several capsizes, rolls, and self-rescues. The forward compartment took on more as a block was missing from beneath one of the straps.
There are rectangles of bungees laced through low-profile fittings through-bolted on deck. These provide places to stow gear needed while underway and also serve as a means of anchoring a paddle blade during a paddle-float-outrigger self-rescue. I would also add non-stretch deck lines on the ends of the kayak to serve as handholds for self- and assisted rescues.
The ends do have grab loops made in the manner of square-knot paracord bracelets. They offer a comfortable grip and don’t make the annoying noise that hard plastic toggles do.
Weighing just 44 lbs, the Sea Wolf is light enough for a solo carry and for lifting to roof racks. The coaming, without protruding thigh-brace flanges, has nothing to make a shoulder-carry uncomfortable.
Alan Mann
The Sea Wolf is light enough that the bow can be easily lifted to drain the cockpit after a capsize and a wet exit.
Getting aboard the Sea Wolf seat-first is easy. I am 6′ tall and the cockpit opening has plenty of room—both in its length and in the broad curve at its forward end—to bring my legs in after I am planted on the seat. The foot braces, made of fiberglass-reinforced nylon by SEA-LECT designs, are adjustable over a range of 10″ and are hand-locked in place with a twist of a rod that extends aft from each brace fixture. The pedals are non-slip, have a large surface area for comfort, and provide a solid connection with the kayak. At the forward end of the cockpit there is enough space between the foot braces and the deck for my size-13 feet in neoprene booties.
The molded plastic seat has deep, comfortable contours and its integral hip braces kept me centered in the cockpit while edging for turns or rolling. The fabric-faced compressed-foam backband spans the distance between the seat and the back of the coaming. It provides excellent lower-back support and didn’t hamper my torso rotation while paddling or rolling.
The cockpit coaming is recessed to lower its profile and keep it at deck level. Its aft end doesn’t impede re-entry maneuvers, and its forward end is well below my knuckles when I’m paddling.
Alan Mann
While the plans and the kit for the Sea Wolf include thigh-brace flanges at the forward end of the cockpit coaming, their absence in the test kayak didn’t compromise edging or rolling.
The Sea Wolf’s initial stability put me at ease while I had my hands off the paddle to take notes or check my GPS-measured speed. The kayak could easily lend itself to fishing and photography. The secondary stability was excellent. I could edge the kayak to get the coaming to the water’s edge before the stability dropped off. This was without cargo aboard; the weight of any gear in the cargo compartments would make the stability even better.
The speed was also very good. At a relaxed paddling pace, I averaged 4.5 knots while at an aerobic-exercise pace I could hold 5.8 knots. In a short sprint I made 6.7 knots, an excellent top end for a cruising kayak.
Tracking was outstanding at any speed. The Sea Wolf went where I aimed it, and the bow yawed very little between strokes. Turning at speed was made easier by edging, although the bow would swing around during the stroke and not continue to carve through a turn between strokes made on the outside of the turn. Achieving a 360° spin took 25 strokes, pulling on one side and backing on the other. That is on the high side for a kayak of this size and type and confirms that the Sea Wolf was designed to hold a course while making long passages.
Alan Mann
Stability, both initial and secondary, are strong points for the Sea Wolf, and bring confidence to aggressive maneuvers.
In self-rescue techniques, the Sea Wolf performed well. To do a wet exit after a capsize, I could easily drop out of the cockpit. I didn’t have to grip the coaming with my hands to push myself aft in order to free my legs. After the capsize I swam to the bow and lifted it to drain the cockpit. The aft bulkhead is close to the aft end of the cockpit so most of the water drained before the kayak turned upright. The cowboy self-rescue—climbing over the stern of the kayak, crawling forward, and dropping seat-first into the cockpit—went well with only a little bracing with the paddle to steady myself as I brought my legs aboard. The Sea Wolf’s stability kept me upright throughout the process.
There was no spray skirt available for my sea trials, but I can roll a sea kayak easily without one and had no trouble rolling the Sea Wolf. The seat and hip braces kept me centered and the backband didn’t restrict my layback. While the plans indicate knee braces as part of the coaming structure, this Sea Wolf was built without them, but the recess for the coaming creates a contour that allowed me to keep my legs well braced. Even for a re-entry and roll—where I capsize, exit the kayak, duck underwater, and slip back aboard upside down—I was able to get locked in quickly and roll up without difficulty.
Alan Mann
The Sea Wolf’s strong tracking and easily driven hull would be well suited for quick passagemaking on coastal cruises.
When I paddled the Sea Wolf, the conditions were calm, so I couldn’t assess its performance in wind and waves. However, judging by the photos taken of the kayak with me aboard, there is plenty of volume and freeboard forward to take on waves without having them wash over the deck. In a crosswind, the shape and depth of the stern below the waterline would have the effect of a skeg and minimize weathercocking.
Newfound Woodworks notes that “the extra capacity that this design has can also facilitate gear storage for extended trips,” and a photo of Alan Mann, one of the co-owners of Newfound Woodworks, shows the Sea Wolf supporting his 6′ 5″, 300-lb frame with plenty of freeboard to spare. The kayak could easily manage my weight with upwards of 100 lbs of cruising gear and supplies aboard.
I was impressed with the performance of the Sea Wolf. For a kayak with generous carrying capacity and first-rate stability, it has surprisingly good speed. I think the pleasure I took in paddling it in mild conditions would extend into multi-day, even weeklong, cruising.
Christopher Cunningham is Small Boat’s editor-at-large.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
When my wife and I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, I felt I had arrived in paradise: mild weather, great food, plenty to do in the glorious outdoors. But when I became a father in the Bay Area, I began to wonder if paradise might be a challenging place to raise well-rounded adults. For one thing: how would our children learn patience, perseverance, independence, and resilience without challenges like the truly awful summers of my youth in California’s Central Valley? I remembered a fellow teenage camper on a hike in the Marble Mountains who collapsed mid-hike under a not-that-heavy backpack, wailing that the 80° heat was too much for him as he was “from Marin County.” I didn’t want to intentionally subject my kids to suffering, but I didn’t want them to have it too easy, either.
What was needed was a mildly demanding system of real rewards and consequences, accessible to very young participants; a way to introduce incidental hardship in the guise of pure fun. What was needed was a boat.
Thomas Schwei
“Fair winds, following seas, and safe returns!” It had been a few years since we last sprayed champagne, and our skills had suffered from disuse. But TOTORO was launched, most of the bubbly got on the boat, and the supervisor was none the worse for the sprinkling.
We chose François Vivier’s Seil, an 18′ sail-and-oar cruiser. As best I could tell, it would be the right compromise: large enough for the four of us, small enough to be rowed by one person; stable and forgiving, but capable of thrilling sail performance; and plenty of storage room for gear, without sacrificing carefully designed and tested built-in flotation along with the ability to self-rescue after a capsize. I anticipated that the build would take at least three years so, wanting to occupy the smallest possible footprint for as long as possible, I began not with the hull but with all the rest: the sails, spars, oars, and foils.
I started when our younger boy was seven months old, young enough to watch me shape oars with chisels and hand planes for an hour without demanding much beyond the occasional ash shaving to chew. His way of thoughtfully overseeing fit so nicely into the home workshop that we took to calling him the “supervisor.”
His older brother was then three, old enough to come to the project with ideas of his own and a passionate commitment to directing his father’s efforts. He quickly earned the title “manager,” and when, after a few weeks of intermittent work sewing the sail, he stopped calling it “Dada’s sailboat” and started calling it “our sailboat,” I felt we already had our money’s worth.
Forty friends and family came to the naming party, and the boys showed every one of them the many parts they had built. Their descriptions of smoothing the hull led their grandfather to declare them “boat sanders, first class.” He still occasionally calls them this, even in unrelated landlocked gatherings, where the title confuses everyone else but pinks his grandsons’ cheeks with pride.
Photographs by the author
In our first summer we quickly came to appreciate TOTORO’s size—large enough for each boy to have a space of his own, even when we were loaded for camping. A small deeply curved section in the bow cradled the manager at all angles of heel until he lost his fear of the leaning boat. Airtight buoyancy compartments under the side benches held up to five sleeping bags, most of our sleeping mats, and warm dry clothing for us all.
We named the boat TOTORO after the eponymous forest spirit of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 animated film, My Neighbor Totoro. We can’t agree on how we came to it—everyone is pretty sure someone else said it first—but we all agree it fits. The cinematic Totoro is a powerful, gentle, protective creature, visible only to the very young, useful in a crisis if you can rouse him, but preferring to spend his day napping in the dappled sunshine nestled in a bed of wildflowers. What more could we want?
In that first summer, TOTORO proved more able and better suited to our needs than we had dared hope. We camped for weeks in lovely, quiet spots accessible only from the water. The boys, by then three and six years old, loved riding in the boat and were loosely interested in its workings, but didn’t seek further responsibility. I’d suggest that the manager might like to helm, and he’d agreeably hold the tiller, but I couldn’t convince him to keep his eyes out of the boat and off his book. They were delighted to be out there, but a bit surprised when any action, like crossing the boat in a tack, was required. We figured they’d come to it when they were ready.
By the next summer, the manager was ready.
Roger Siebert
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"Wow Dad. Even you got enough boating today.”
The manager and I were finally settled in for the evening. Vegan sausages sizzled over a beach fire as wind blew through the cottonwood trees above our tent. The Sacramento River loped by, strong and loud, the exact color of school-lunch chocolate milk. Bats pirouetted in the remains of a sherbet sunset; herons winged overhead, every bit as sharply shaped as their pterodactyl ancestors; everything was going somewhere and doing something fast except, finally, us. The growing dark and glowing embers and promise of many roasted marshmallows to come lit the manager’s face, not too badly burned by our long day under the sun. With 20 miles of river covered through a wicked headwind, there hadn’t been much time to unwind.
That morning, the manager and I had launched TOTORO on the river in Butte City, where dusty façades hinted at a past that must have seemed destined for a more expansive future. A store grandly called the Butte City Emporium stood vacated, red-tagged, and barred. The only saloon in town had burned to its foundation years ago, and now there wasn’t even a place for a seven-year-old and his dad to pick up a cold soda and some local conversation. I guessed that, like a lot of valley towns, Butte City’s heyday coincided with the peak of commercial transport on the Sacramento River, when there were livings to be made in the places where farm goods met barges. Now, about all that remained was a good county boat ramp and a not-too-dangerously-rotten dock.
We encountered our first hazard almost as soon as we left Butte City. I looked downstream with mild trepidation; the manager was unmoved.
Our plan was to ride the river south from Butte City to Colusa, where we would meet my wife and the supervisor the next morning. We knew next to nothing about the river. I hoped it would give us a view into the backyards and remaining wild spaces of a landscape that showed none of its secrets to the straight-line highways we usually traveled. We took advantage of a large family vacation and arranged a car shuttle to allow a one-way float downstream—freeing us, I hoped, of any real need for the motor we didn’t have. Our local extended family said that while they’d never heard of anyone sailing this stretch of the Sacramento, we couldn’t go too far wrong. It was mid-May; snow melting in the mountains would make for high river flow. Anything floating in the stream would move along at 2 or 3 knots. The estimate was reinforced by an excellent, though perhaps dated, float-time map published by the California State Parks service, which suggested, by dint of its existence, that a non-motorized boat might not be a bad way to see the Sacramento River.
The momentum provided by the current was important. This would be the longest boat journey the manager had ever taken. We had carefully eased the boys into onboard life via short, sweet jaunts, with plenty of distractions in the boat, plenty of food, and plenty of stops ashore. Now the manager and I were launching into a current too strong to row against and aiming for a destination far downstream; it was a commitment to a considerably greater journey. The manager’s frequent natural wish for variety would have to be weighed against a real need to cover river miles. He’d be asked to practice patience all day long.
We set off with the rig down and, minutes later, came to three tightly spaced bridges, really three iterations of the same bridge: one antiquated, one currently in use, and one under construction. If there had been time or space I would have mused aloud on the role of the bridges, roads, and rails in changing the local economy and demographics of the valley towns, their past, present, and future. We were spared the lecture by the need to find and transit a tight gap in the bridge construction. We looked up at cranes laying steel, and workers grinding and welding, then ahead at the current swirling up around closely spaced pilings, and I wondered, briefly, what I had signed us up for. Then we were through, clearing the clamor with room to spare, my doubts left behind.
The family tent is so large and heavy that its storage bag has built-in backpack straps. Lashed against the side of the boat, it provided a good backrest for a devoted reader. The manager required a quantity of books roughly equal to his own weight, but the payoff (a happily occupied crew) was entirely worth it.
Beyond the bridges, I shipped the oars. The Sacramento River lay broad and silty under the spring sun, braiding through a shallow, wide, gravelly cut in the vast working plain. Row crops and orchards abutted the banks. It was only May, and we’d had a rare wet winter, yet already everything once green had turned to tan, another shade on the continuum of browns that encompassed our surroundings: dirty clay banks, dried dead grasses, dust clouds raised by tractors and the gusty wind, the river itself, and with time under this sun, our own tanned arms and faces. Already visible downstream were the rising riparian jungles we had come to explore—ahead lay green.
With no independent movement over the water, TOTORO spun slowly in the current, nosing at times into swift sinews of brown water on the outside of the river bends, drifting at others with the wind into slower eddies. We needed some kind of speed to maintain steerage, but I was the boat’s primary engine and was feeling lazy, under-caffeinated, and disinclined to row.
“If only we could have launched yesterday,” I said. “We would have had a tailwind that just wouldn’t quit.”
“You could have taken me out of school yesterday!” came the swift reply. “That would have been fine.”
“Well, we could sail now. We’d just need to tack often.”
“That sounds OK.”
“The wind is strong. I’ll tuck in two reefs, but the boat will still heel. Is that OK?”
“Um… OK? I don’t know.”
“Well let’s try it. You can always tell me if you don’t like it.”
With two reefs, a 3-knot current behind, and a headwind gusting in the low 20s, TOTORO picked up her skirts and ran for the riverbank. If we were to sail in these conditions I was going to have to learn a lot of river piloting very quickly.
Hot, Hot, HOT! We tucked into a back eddy around the downriver tip of an island to sample life ashore, but the sunbaked sand was too hot to stand on barefoot. We didn’t linger, but soon pushed off in search of new landings.
Jerry MacMullen, historian of Sacramento River paddle-wheel steamers, wrote “River seamanship is an art in itself, and any of the salt-water brethren who are inclined to look down their noses at river pilots are invited to try it themselves sometime, preferably with a vessel of no great value. The river pilot must know all the answers, and know them right now.”
That afternoon I had none of the answers, but I slowly gained confidence in my guesses. Rarely more than 600′ wide and seemingly never configured the same way twice, the river required constant tacking and provided endless variation. Some courses were threatened by shallows and visible riffles; some by downed trees straining in the fast-moving water; some by long branches dangling overhead, sticky traps ready to grab our mast. Deciding where to point the boat, guessing where the sum of the variable current and TOTORO’s own movement would take us, hedging against the unpredictable blows that came tearing through the trees at the worst times, and recognizing the last moment in which to tack safely: this was to be my all-consuming work for the afternoon. The alternative was to take ignominiously to the oars.
The manager was an excellent crew. He kept himself shaded from the hot sun, properly fed, and well watered. He exercised TOTORO’s library, working through most of the collected comic strips of Calvin and Hobbes and a good deal of the Dog Man oeuvre. His initial hesitance about the heeling boat was relieved when I showed him how quickly we popped upright with an eased mainsheet, and how the sheet was always in my hand. He asked for—and mostly got—many stops to explore the sandbanks and islands that dotted the banks every mile or so, and was perfectly understanding when we had to press on.
From time to time the wind would ease off and the reef seemed excessive, but then we would round a bend and be hit by another gust, and I was glad I’d not been tempted to shake it out.
My pre-trip investigation of the route had shown me that there really were no opportunities for getting lost: so long as the water beneath us was moving, we were in the right place. So, we hardly looked at the few charts we had brought. At any given moment we were somewhere between Butte City and Colusa, just as we had been all day, and just as we would be until tomorrow morning’s rendezvous. I wondered if not knowing our precise location made it easier for us to enjoy being there and not fuss about what came next. Lying on hot sand for a brief bit of relaxation in the mid-afternoon, we traced verdant wild grape vines far up into the tops of tall overhanging cottonwoods and oaks. Dense willow, poison oak, and thorny blackberries formed a foreboding understory. We agreed we had lucked into the right way to see and transit the river jungle.
Late afternoon found us still sailing, tired but proud, a hundred successful tacks behind us and not a scratch on the boat. We approached an aluminum outboard fishing boat, anchored midstream with a crew of two retirement-aged men. We saw our own novelty—and perhaps the beauty of our boat—reflected in the slow back-and-forth motion of their white beards, white hair, and dark visors as they followed our tacks down the river toward them. We must have been quite a sight racing back and forth, our pale green hull contrasting with the muddy stream, the cream-colored sail above stark against a cloudless valley sky.
As I put in a final insouciant tack to pass upstream of the fishermen, their countenances changed from passive admiration to active concern. I registered their feeling but did not share it. Could they really think we would hit them? I enjoyed a moment of bemused condescension—motorboaters, no possible sense of the glory of sailing—before my error became clear even to me. We were about to collide. I threw us into a tack and shouted at the manager far forward in the bow.
Large cottonwoods, like these, have a reputation for losing limbs in high winds. The tent site, to windward of the trees, seemed safe enough when we wanted shade, but not quite so risk-free when I was lying awake in the night listening to the wind.
“Get down and stay low!”
“Got it! Down and low!”
The tack was too late: the current, relentless as ever, brought us down on their sharp metal bow. I sprang forward just in time to fend off, narrowly dodging hull-to-hull contact.
“I am so sorry! This is my fault,” I cried out, as though our victims had not personally witnessed my very recent and very obvious stupidity, and as though we were not near enough to shake hands. They responded with remarkable kindness.
“Well! That big sail must really catch the wind. It pushes you around.”
“No!” I hollered, adding absurd denial to my sins. “We were doing great before. I am so sorry. My fault.”
We drifted apart, undamaged, to the sound of four relieved sighs. Better, perhaps, to be lucky than good. The manager picked himself up from the floorboards, dusted himself off, and reached for a book.
I was about to offer the fishermen a compensatory beer at some downstream bar when, hearing a new zinging sound, we all turned to see several of their fishing lines dragging loudly across TOTORO’s mast. Thick fishing lines, ending no doubt in large, sharp hooks. We were gathering them up rapidly as the boats diverged in the current.
Even in my fear I felt glowing pride at the speed with which the manager again dropped to the bottom of the boat, repeating “Down and low!” as he went. When the hooks, sharp and finger-sized, finally came aboard and snagged the mast at the thwart he was safely away aft. The lines stretched and snapped, and we were free. The poor fishermen’s hooks, now firmly embedded in the leather of the mastgate, came downriver with us.
I grabbed the tiller and the sheet and got us pointed back downstream. Without comment, the manager returned to his book, as though there was nothing unusual about ramming boats that were in our way. The fishermen receded upriver and into the past, their white beards and dark visors again gently swaying side-to-side, perhaps no longer tracking our course but simply shaking their heads at the follies of youth.
François Vivier’s description of the Seil notes that the “fore rocking facilitates embarking on the strand.” I read that comment at least five times and thought I understood, but I only fully appreciated it the first time I sent a child forward alone to step over the transom bow and onto dry land. TOTORO’s weighted centerboard, kick-up rudder, and shallow draft make beaching effortless—a good feature for a restless crew.
The approaching riverbank demanded a tack. I went for it, and botched it, audibly skidding the centerboard over gravel. Self-doubt set in, and for the rest of the afternoon I could do nothing right.
Later that evening, camped under the cottonwoods next to the river, our appetites whetted by the smell of a fire-roasting dinner, our heads filled with memories of a long day afloat, the manager kindly said that he thought we had picked a great campsite and built a great fire. I told him how impressed I was by his quick reflexes during the crash: no questions, no backtalk, just great reactions. All-day patience practice had become all-day sailing practice had become a lesson in paternal humility, or perhaps paternal hypocrisy. I gazed into the embers and told my son of a long-ago family road trip across the desert when my father and cousin, two self-reported terrific drivers, pulled into a turnout to confer, and slowly crashed their cars into each other. I can still remember the sound of squealing metal. Our car wore the dents for the rest of my youth. If I had done it, I told the manager, “there would have been hell to pay, but fathers are good at forgiving themselves for sins they’d crucify their sons for.”
The best s’mores, we decided, require strategy, preparation, and intense focus.
“Like getting sand in food?” the manager asked.
“I suppose so. Why?”
“You just dropped a sausage on the beach. It looks gross now.”
“Oh, indeed. I have already forgiven myself. Ready for dinner?”
“Yes. I’ll take the other sausage, please.”
We made one final landfall before our arrival in Colusa. One of my favorite features of the unstayed lug is how easily it can be dropped—a great safety feature and one that eases the fears of a hesitant crew. On the second morning I dropped and packed up the rig before setting out both to reduce windage and make rowing easier, and in preparation for the end of our trip.
The morning smelled of damp reeds and river mud. We had packed minimally, eschewing a stove in favor of last night’s fire, meaning there could be no cooking our usual breakfasts. Instead, we ate oats and raisins soaked overnight in milk we had kept chilled in a thermos. The taste was far superior, we agreed, to gluey cooked oatmeal, and surely a recipe to repeat all summer. When we broke camp, I noticed that for the first time the manager did not need to be asked to haul gear toward the boat.
We shoved off into less wind, easy rowing, and steeper, riprap-lined channels along much of the bank. A short distance downstream on the right bank was a wide nature reserve. Much of it had recently burned, and fire scars ran sometimes close to the low bank, leaving gaunt standing snags. It was dark and eerie under an unseasonably overcast sky.
TOTORO lay alongside at Colusa landing for a few days before we returned with the trailer to retrieve her.
On a bend, as we approached the outskirts of Colusa, we pulled in for one last beach stop and then set off to find the marina by 11 a.m., the appointed hour. We rowed a very slow 100′ upstream along a finger dock to tie up in our reserved space, paid for the few days of dock fees we’d accumulate before we could return to pick up TOTORO, and hauled our gear to the parking lot, just in time for the arrival of my wife and the supervisor, and a joyful reunion. The manager was proud to tell his mother of our feats on the water. I smiled; he had come away from the river a little taller and a little surer than he had come to it.
Weeks later, the manager, the supervisor, and I found ourselves afloat on Spicer Meadows Reservoir, a big blue drop among bone-white granite at 6,600′ in the Sierra Nevada mountains. A brisk upwind sail had occasioned discussion of the term “rail meat,” initially received as an affront but eventually understood as praise of the nimble and accurate movement executed by both boys in every tack. As we arrived at the limit of their patience with the role of movable ballast, I rounded up, dropped the yard, and tentatively suggested that the manager might enjoy sailing us under bare poles back to our friends at the campsite.
The manager—a steady and reliable hand.
He sat up and looked downwind. “You mean that big cliff way down there with the tallest trees on top? I’ll take us right to it!” Sure enough: eyes out of the boat, head on a swivel, arm comfortably over the tiller, no distracting book at hand, he held his course to the right true line. Last summer’s awkward crew had become this year’s reliable hand.
James Kealey is a teacher and avid outdoorsman living in Richmond, California. TOTORO is the second boat he has built; he profiled his first build, a Gentry Shenandoah Whitehall, for this magazine.
If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
Twenty-five years ago, my method of applying paint resulted in a finish that looked like I’d used a mop and bucket. Then I was introduced to the roll-and-tip method, and I have been using it ever since.
To roll and tip is to apply a thin coating with a roller and then go over it lightly with a brush, using just the bristle tips to smooth the coating and remove the bubbles. The coating can be paint, epoxy, or varnish, but for the purpose of this article we’ll focus on paint.
As with any paint job, the key to getting the results you want is good preparation of the surface, good tools, and good materials. And the key to selecting the right tools and materials comes down to the project in hand—we find a low-nap roller cover works well when applying paint, and a foam cover works best with epoxy resin.
Make sure the surface to be coated is smooth, clean, dry, and dust free, and that any fairing compounds and primer used are compatible with the paint system. We brush off excess dust and then vacuum; some folks next run a lint-free tack cloth over the surface to remove the last of the dust. To ensure system compatibility, we stick to one brand of fairing compound, thinner, primer, and paint and follow the manufacturer’s recommendations on its website. If using multiple brands, check the small print on all products (or consult the relevant web pages) to ensure compatibility.
Photographs by the authors
With a smooth-sided hull the paint can be applied either vertically or horizontally. Remember to work only a small area and to apply only light pressure to the roller. Too much pressure will result in bubbles in the paint and ridges forming off the end of the roller.
When applying paint, you want neither too much nor too little. How much is enough? Do you need to thin the paint? Will the paints need to be thinned with brand thinners or mineral spirits, or conditioned with brushing liquid such as Interlux 333 or Penetrol, and what will be the effect of atmospheric conditions? Air temperatures, in particular, can have a marked impact on paint performance: hot temperatures, for example, may cause solvents to evaporate—or flash—before the paint can self-level or be tipped flat. Humidity, too, can make or break a project: high humidity will slow the drying process, which can lead to an uneven finish or, in extreme cases, to the paint never completely curing.
Take time to become familiar with one system of thinner and paint; apply the first few rolls of paint to a test surface. We like to start with a half-quart of strained and possibly thinned paint. While working we leave the can covered so the remaining paint doesn’t lose solvent. We test to see how large an area we can cover before the solvents flash and the leading edge becomes dry. We apply several coats, preferring multiple thinner layers to one overly thick “mop coat.” Our marine carpenter friend Keith likes to apply three coats: a flood coat to get full coverage of a surface, a show coat that “shows” irregularities not visible on the first translucent coat, and then the finish coat.
We use a 4″ roller with a very low nap. There are many options on the market. Our most recent favorite is the Whizz 25003 4″ Velour, which has a lint-free cover with 3⁄16″ nap, and was recommended to us by George Kirby IV at George Kirby Jr. Paint Co. It carries just the right amount of one-part marine-grade paint with minimal thinning, and its covered end works well over seams and in corners and reduces paint ridges on flat surfaces. When choosing a roller cover, it is important to follow the coating manufacturer’s recommendations to be sure it is resistant to whatever solvent is in the paint or resin system (if not, the roller cover can dissolve, which will result in a big mess).
Lightness of touch is everything when it comes to tipping. The goal is not to spread the paint but to smooth out any imperfections such as ridges or bubbles. Remember, even if the paint has been rolled on vertically, when tipping the brush should always follow the line of the planks.
For tipping brushes, we like the Corona Europa 16038 Badger Style Brush, Corona Deck and Trim 3358 Angular, and have also had good success with Purdy’s XL Cub short-handled sash brushes, which come in handy when painting in tight spaces or at awkward angles. As with the roller cover, make sure the brush is compatible with the formula of paint to be used, and be sure to find one with bristles that are soft, not stiff. We prefer the results we get with a bristle brush, but disposable foam brushes can also be used (be aware, however, that some lose their stiffness with solvents).
Be sure not to work on too large an area when rolling the paint. If the leading edge of the freshly painted surface becomes dry, you will not be able to tip out the paint. The size of area to be worked is dependent on the environment in which you are working: for example, when we worked in the humidity and heat of a Florida summer, we would be lucky to roll and tip a 2- to 3-sq-ft area at one time, but in a cool, dry Virginia fall we can cover as much as 6 sq ft before the solvent flashes off and the surface tacks.
When rolling, the goal is to get a smooth coat with as few passes as possible. A light touch is essential—excessive pressure will cause ridges to form off the end of the roller and create bubbles in the paint. How much paint to apply is, again, a matter of testing: too much will require an excess of tipping, and you will have to deal with sags and runs; too little and the paint will dry faster than it can be rolled and tipped.
If a boat is smooth-sided, the paint can be rolled vertically or horizontally. If the hull is lapstrake, we tend to brush-paint the laps before rolling, and then roll horizontally. In all cases, the tipping should be horizontal to follow the line of a plank.
For tipping, use a light touch, passing over just the top layer of paint to smooth any bumps or peaks in the still-wet paint and to take care of any bubbles and ridges. While tipping can be done from either ahead of or behind the leading edge, we prefer to lightly tip from the dry unpainted surface back into the most recently rolled section, across the leading wet edge.
As with all techniques, the more you roll and tip, the better you’ll be at it. Practice and testing are key, as is patience—don’t overwork the paint: roll it, tip it, and then leave it alone to self-level. If you have a choice, work on the side of the boat that’s in the shade rather than full sun—it’s better for the paint and for the painter. If you have a willing friend, ask them to work with you—it’s helpful to have one person roll while the other tips. Don’t worry about whether to paint bow to stern or stern to bow, instead figure out whether you like to work left to right or right to left—you will find one direction gives you better brush control and is less tiring. And finally…don’t be overly self-critical, nobody achieves a perfect paint finish first time out.
Audrey (Skipper) and Kent have been rolling and tipping for 25 years, when not restoring boats or messing about in their menagerie of kayaks, canoe, runabout, and sailboats. Their adventures are logged at smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats readers by sending us an email.
It’s been a long time since I bought new binoculars. For many years I’ve used a pair I inherited that are decades old, but last summer, when I finally tired of the stiffness that had worked into all the moving pieces and the lack of a rubber cup on the left eyepiece, I decided the time had come.
There’s a wide variety of binoculars on the market ranging from very small to very complex, and from not-especially powerful to extraordinary levels of magnification. The price tags also range widely from well under $100 to well over $1,000. For a while I was confused by all the offerings, so I made a shortlist of needs: They must be waterproof, reasonably rugged, have a magnification of no less than 7 and objective lenses no smaller than 40mm; they should be fog-proof, comfortable to hold, no heavier than 2.5 lbs (which is what the old pair weighed), and cost less than $300. It would be nice if they also floated and had a compass.
Photographs by the author
The Hooway 7×50 Marine Binoculars are fully sealed and waterproof. The rubber eyecups can be folded back so that they can be used efficiently if wearing glasses.
The Hooway 7×50 Marine Binoculars ticked all the boxes.
The binoculars come with everything you need: a stiff nylon carrying case with a 1 1⁄2″-wide web shoulder strap and a belt loop on the back; a narrow nylon strap with a 1 3⁄4″ bright-yellow nylon pad to go behind the neck; an eyepiece cap; objective lens caps; a lens cleaning cloth; two replacement batteries (needed for the compass and rangefinder lighting system); and a nine-page instruction manual.
As soon as I lifted the binoculars out of the box, I liked their rugged but comfortable feel. They weigh just under 2 lbs—heavy enough to help with stability in a moving boat, but not so heavy that they are an effort to hold up. From lens cap to lens cap, they are just under 6″ long, and the maximum width ranges from 7 3⁄8″ when closed to 8 1⁄8″ when opened wide. The coating is a smooth black rubber except in the hand grips, which are textured and ridged to reduce slipping when wet and have thumb hollows right where you need them. The grips’ contrasting bright yellow means that the binoculars are easier to locate when they’ve settled in the bottom of a dark locker. The movement when reducing and expanding the body width to adjust for your eye position is satisfyingly stiff but smooth. The eyepieces have rubber eyecups that can be folded down if you are wearing glasses, but when fully extended they fit comfortably around the eyes.
The binoculars have a built-in rangefinder reticle. The calculator dial, seen here above the objective lens to the right, allows you to establish the distance or size of an object without having to do the math. The carrying strap includes a stretch of wider, padded nylon that rests comfortably on your neck.
Each eye lens has its own diopter adjustment ring so that it can be focused independently; there is no center focus. Once in focus the image is remarkably sharp and bright, 3D shapes and shadows appearing more defined than to the naked eye. Within the field of vision is a rangefinder reticle, with a horizontal scale and a vertical scale. The instruction manual devotes two pages to this tool and how to use it, written in clear English. The second of the two pages dives into the math needed to use the scales to estimate size of an object or distance to a known object, but for those with less mathematical inclination, the opening line advises the reader to skip to the next page where there is a description of the binoculars’ calculator dial and how to use it. The calculator has one moving dial with measurements for both view angle and object size, and one static dial for distance. It should be noted that the readings are in meters and kilometers.
The neck strap floats, but even without it the binoculars have sufficient buoyancy to hold them up on the water’s surface. If they’re dropped overboard while you’re underway, the bright yellow of the carrying strap and handgrips makes it easier to spot them.
Below the rangefinder reticle is a compass that reads to magnetic north—a range of 20° is displayed in the view. At times of low light both the compass and the rangefinder reticle can be illuminated red, so that while the binoculars do not offer night vision, they are useful for confirming position at night.
Of all the claims made by Hooway, the one of which I was most skeptical was “floating.” I tested this as soon as I unpacked the binoculars, but not wishing to commit my new purchase to the depths of the harbor, I filled the kitchen sink and lowered them in. They floated horizontally on the surface. I took them down to the town landing to carefully drop them into deeper water, and this time they floated with barely half of the body beneath the water. I was impressed. I recovered them and looked for signs of ingress of water in the lenses, but there was none, and that remains true several weeks later.
Last July, I was in the process of commissioning RAMONA, my Nigel Irens–designed Romilly, which had not been in the water since 2019. At the end of that season, I had rolled the 206-sq-ft fully battened mainsail around its battens to store it in its bag in the covered boat. A couple of years later I hauled the sail out for inspection before sliding it back into the bag, tying it up, and storing it on sawhorses in the boatshed.
Photographs by the author
When I pulled the sail out of the bag, I could hardly believe my eyes. I had put it away clean, but mice had made themselves at home and, as I thought on first inspection, had destroyed an old but perfectly serviceable sail.
This summer, I took the sail up to my deck and unbagged it. I knew I was in trouble the moment I opened the bag and saw some acorn shells. I unzipped and unrolled. Disaster. I’d never seen a sail so discolored with mouse urine. I found a mouse nest, some minor holes, and the luff and leech lines had been chewed. It was a mess. I took some photos and sent them to our local sailmakers. No one wanted to touch it—neither the cleaning, nor the repairing. None of them would be set up for laundering until the fall, and the sail was really nasty. I started to think I would have to buy a new mainsail. This one was two decades old but, like most fully battened sails, it still had its shape. Nevertheless, it was no good; I was done. It was time to add a new sail to the boat budget and put off sailing for another season.
I reported the situation to my partner Marti, who has vast cleaning experience. She recommended trying Nature’s Miracle Urine Destroyer Plus, which she’d initially used to clean up puppy messes, and then found it to be an effective rodent-mess treatment when she rehabbed and repainted her house during the Covid-19 pandemic. The product, she said, would lift the stains, and Folex would be suitable for a follow-up clean. She gave me some of each to try.
I started with the Urine Destroyer and followed up with the Carpet Spot Remover. The results were remarkable.
As advertised on the bottle, Nature’s Miracle enzymatic formula claims to work on all manner of nasty organic problems created by pets: “Guaranteed to work or your money back.” In turn, Folex, an Instant Carpet Spot Remover, claims to remove almost anything from any kind of fabric—no rinsing needed. Neither product cites any green credentials, but online searches have attested to both being nontoxic, not harmful to humans or animals. Safety data listed on the Folex website describes its product as not toxic to plants and animals. Similarly, the Nature’s Miracle product contains no ingredients listed with the EPA, and the Environmental Working Group marks its hazard score as “mid-range.”
As for the wondrous cleaning claims, I was skeptical but had nothing to lose. I spread the sail on the deck and read the instructions on the bottles. For both products the directions were similar: test, spray on, wait, blot. The stains on my sail were too large for blotting; I would have to rinse. I tested the Nature’s Miracle on a corner of the sail. After a very few minutes, the black urine stains began to float off. I rinsed the sail with the hose. It was looking better. Next, I attacked the same spot with the Folex, and more of the stain came off.
Two days of work and the sail was saved! There are still some holes, and the leech and luff lines will have to be replaced, but at least now I can take it to the sailmaker.
Satisfied with my limited test I decided to tackle the whole sail. I worked section by section: apply, wait, rinse, move on. Using a scrub brush, I spread the mix of cleaner and water and was able to work it into the fabric. I scrubbed and rinsed for the best part of a day to complete one side. I hung the sail so that the rinsing water would run down, and the following day I repeated the exercise on the other side of the sail. The result was outstanding.
As the sail dried, I inspected the rest of the damage: there were a few holes; a few inches of light luff line and leech had been chewed; the leech telltales were gone, but it was all fixable. I considered doing a short-term fix with some light line and sail-repair tape, but didn’t have time for the project. Instead, now that the sail is clean, I can send it in for repair and will be out on the water next season.
Ben Fuller, curator emeritus of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has been messing about in small boats for a very long time. He is owned by a dozen or more boats: kayaks, canoes, a skiff, a ducker, and a sail-and-oar boat.
Nature’s Miracle can be found at most pet stores and online retailers, priced between $13 and $17 for a 32-oz spray bottle. Folex can be found at hardware stores and online retailers, priced between $6 and $10 for a 32-oz spray bottle.
Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising, or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.
On Church Pond in New York State’s Adirondacks, the day after their high-school graduation in early June 1969, Gary Carbocci and friend Rich Horehlad were fishing from an old wooden canoe borrowed from Paul Smith College on Lake St. Regis. The day had been a little chilly, but relaxed and uneventful. Then Rich hooked a 30-lb (or so) northern pike. As he strained to land the fish, Gary leapt to assist. “No!” cried Rich, “Don’t touch the line, Gary!” Too late; Gary pulled on the line, Rich lost his rhythm, and the fish swam away with a flick of its tail. Words were spoken, the boys resumed their positions, but there were no more fish that day.
Gary Carbocci has carried the memory of the “one that got away” for “55 years, 3 months, 11 days, and counting.” He felt bad as soon as it happened, and through the months and years that followed, he made and kept a vow: he would build an Adirondack guideboat (“the boat we’d wanted to borrow from the college”) and take Rich out on Church Pond to “claim his prize.”
Gary Carbocci
Each of the frame blanks was laminated in seven layers of spruce. Ultimately the frames would be 3⁄4″ × 5⁄16″. The frames in the ends of the boat (seen here at top) do not overlap and thus required no feet.
Gary had no boatbuilding experience. A professional arborist, he has decades of experience with wood, and for much of his life he’s used small rowing and paddling boats, but he’d never built one. His father, he says, has built museum-quality boat models, but Gary didn’t learn the skill from him. But still he dreamed of building that guideboat, and when a friend gave him Building an Adirondack Guideboat by Michael J. Olivette and John D. Michne, he was hooked. He decided he’d waited long enough. “I’d been thinking about it for almost half a century,” he says. “It was time.”
The book came with offsets but no plans (a second edition does offer downloadable CAD drawings), and Gary spent “countless hours on the drafting table lofting.” He describes the process taking hold of him, “I slipped into a gentle dream [that would ultimately last seven years], and then fell headlong in love with what I was creating.”
Gary Carbocci
The boat was framed, in the traditional manner, while on its side, so Gary had easy access for fastening the overlapping frame feet to the bottom board. Once all the frames were in place, he turned the hull upside down for planking. The notched stock plank—seen here above and behind the frames—was lowered, and the bottom board was centered over it, the frames fitting into the notches.
Olivette and Michne’s book (Gary’s constant companion throughout the build) describes two building methods: traditional planking and strip-planking. Gary decided on the traditional approach. “I wanted it to be historically accurate as far as possible.” His frames would be spruce—laminated in seven layers to 3⁄4″ × 5⁄16″—and the planks 3⁄16″ white pine. He bought 2 1⁄2″-thick pine boards and milled them in his driveway, first to rough-cut planks about 1⁄2″ thick, and then to planed plank stock of 3⁄16″.
Along the way, Gary made many of his own tools, again following recommendations and direction in the book. He made a Grant-lap cutter to fashion the shiplap-style edges of his planks; a scarf-cutting ramp that utilized a router to accurately cut the plank scarfs (with at least one, sometimes two, scarfs per plank), and he made some of Michne’s deep-throat planking clamps, as well as many fast-action clamps based on a design featured in Gordon L. Fisher’s book, Tale of an Historic Adirondack Guideboat and How to Build One.
Gary Carbocci
Spiling the planks was a slow process until Gary found the plastic strips marketed for creating kitchen-countertop templates. He cut the strips into short lengths, which he could glue together along the length of the plank and create a template in half an hour.
Everything was a new experience. He’d made small stuff before, fixed things around the house and yard, but, Gary says, “had never built anything so complicated; it’s all curves, there’s not a straight line on the boat. And every step took a long, long time.” After building the strongback, he moved on to creating the frames. There were a lot of steps—all of which he had to learn—and the 16′ boat has 33 frames, each built in two halves; “that’s a total of 66 pieces to be constructed. And they have to be right…it’s the frames that define the boat’s shape and give it its strength.” Each frame had to be lofted; spruce billets that would make up the laminations had to be ripped, and the billets bent around the forms and then glued up into frame blanks, seven laminates per blank. The blanks then had to be cleaned and shaped, and finally, each blank was sliced into four parts: two pairs of half-frames, one frame for each side of amidships. “At least with the two ends of the boat being mirror images of each other, I only had to build half the number of blanks.”
As with so many at-home boatbuilding projects, space was tight. Gary built the strongback on a wheeled platform so he could move the boat in and out of the garage, to work in the driveway in fine weather. “Assembling the frames was OK,” he says, “because I built it guideboat-style, on its side, but once that was complete, I had to flip it upside down to assemble the stems and the planking, and it was almost impossible to get around it in the garage.”
Gary Carbocci
On fair-weather days, Gary was able to wheel the building jig out into the driveway where there was natural light and more space.
Like the frames, the stems were laminated in spruce. They are also the same in both the bow and the stern so Gary could laminate up a single stem blank and cut it in half, down from a 2″ thickness to 1″. The outer laminate of each stem was a 1⁄4″-thick strip of mahogany. he would fit and hand-shape the outer stems in place after the hull was planked.
From the outset the planking went slowly. The planks, Gary explains, are roughly 6″ wide and over their 16′ length they curve in “every direction imaginable.” Working on his own, constantly second-guessing what he was doing and seeing, it took him three weeks to make the first plank and three more weeks to install it. Nevertheless, he persevered. He moved on to the second plank, another three weeks to make and three weeks to fit. At that rate, he says, “I was looking at a total of 96 weeks, just to complete the planking; and that assumed everything went according to plan.” And things didn’t always go according to plan; in the early stages, Gary “ruined a huge number of hard-earned planks, and wasted hours of time.”
Gary Carbocci
Planking complete, the end was in sight, but there was still a lot to do. Next, Gary would turn his attention to fitting the cherry decks, then the finishing, fashioning the brass stem caps and runners, and installing all the fittings.
Then he found a product that changed everything. “Plastic template strips…they’re long rolls of stiff PVC plastic, made for creating templates for kitchen countertops. I cut them into short lengths, butted and clamped a piece to the Grant lap of the plank above, then grabbed a second piece, laid it down so that it overlapped the first one, butted and clamped it to the plank lap, glued the two template strips together, and moved on, repeating all the way along the plank. It worked like a charm. Suddenly I was able to get a plank shape in half an hour. All I had to do then was take the long plastic template to the board, cut the plank, and mount it.” Theoretically, Gary says, he could have used each template for both sides of the boat, but he played it safe and made one template for each plank on each side.
Four years into the project, Gary had a fully planked boat. He turned it upright and took a moment. “That shape,” he says, “when it was all ribs it looked like some prehistoric skeleton, but planked up, it was so beautiful.”
Philip Simone
On launching day, PRINCESS BRYNN remained bone dry. There was, says Gary, not a single leak.
But he was still a long way from the end: There were the spruce carlins and cherry decks to fashion, the mahogany gunwale made from a single 22′-long piece of mahogany, the cedar floor grate that he made “one year to get me through the winter doldrums, but then was forever underfoot.” And there was the brass: three brass strips on the bottom of the boat to protect it when sliding across the ground or on the trailer, and two brass stem caps. Shaping the caps, Gary says, had seemed daunting, but once more the book helped him. “The authors did such a great job describing the process, it ended up being child’s play. I’d seriously thought about having the bands and caps made, but I’m glad I didn’t.” His only regret, he says, is that he went with 1⁄8″-thick brass, which he believes to be historically correct. “The book recommended 1⁄16″, and I wish I’d done that because I added too much weight. All told, the brass added close to 40 lbs and now the boat’s too heavy for me to pull up onto my shoulders by myself. Once it’s there I can carry it…I just can’t get it there!”
When he had embarked on his build in 2018, Gary had set a launch-date goal for the spring of 2024. As he neared the self-imposed deadline, however, he realized he wasn’t going to make it. “I wanted to make everything, but there was no way I’d be able to do that and get it in the water for 2024.” He decided that, for expedience, he would buy some of the parts from Newfound Woodworks. “I bought the bronze oarlocks, the oars and the paddle, and the three seats. They’re beautiful quality, but I’m still going to make my own at some point.” It bought him time and allowed him to focus on the finish: two coats of epoxy, eight coats of varnish.
Philip Simone
The rower sits on a cherry-framed caned seat suspended on seat cleats fitted on either side. The seat is not fixed and can be moved fore and aft to suit the size and preference of the rower. The carrying yoke, seen here in its cleats forward of the rower, will typically be removed for rowing.
By spring 2024, PRINCESS BRYNN (named for the most recent of Gary’s grandchildren) was ready. But then the plans went awry. “Rich’s daughter in Australia had a baby, so he had to go visit. Then his other daughter had a baby, so he had to go visit her. Then, just as it looked like we might be able to plan an excursion in the summer, Rich had to go in for heart surgery. Turns out, when you get older, it’s not the boat you have to worry about working, it’s yourself!”
Despite Rich being unable to join him, Gary did get PRINCESS BRYNN into the water this year. “She moves like a dream—the 2″ rocker built into the bottom board makes her so maneuverable, she glides over the water like you’re flying. And she’s so stiff, nothing flexes, so all the energy you put into the oars goes into moving the boat forward. The original builders knew what they were doing.”
Philip Simone
Gary Carbocci—proud builder and, for once, happy passenger.
Next summer, Gary says, he and Rich will make it back to Church Pond and they’ll land that fish. “It’ll happen,” he says, “I promised.”
Read More About the Adirondack Guideboat
Did you know this classic rowboat traces its lineage all the way back to the 1840s? Learn about how this design came to be, and how boatbuilders adapted it to the building methods of today.
The Bay Pilot 18, designed by Arch Davis, is a swift cruiser that accommodates up to four adults during day outings, or two for overnight excursions.
NATARA, a Bay Pilot 18 designed by Arch Davis (see WoodenBoat No. 190), is reminiscent of a cabin cruiser from an earlier era as she skims across the sparkling waters of Roberts Bay at Venice, Florida, powered by a quiet, 60-hp four-stroke outboard motor. At 18′ LOA, with a 7′ 3″ beam and 8″ draft, this pocket yacht belies her dimensions, having the look and feel of a larger boat.
Owner and builder Bob Bridges, a retired sales and marketing executive, weighed various designs and was ultimately drawn to the Bay Pilot 18’s traditional look and accommodations. A bottle green hull and brilliant white deck, separated by a Douglas-fir rubrail, add to the boat’s classic appearance.
The modest V-bottomed hull is seakindly in a light chop and leaves a clean wake, though in heavier seas caution should be the watchword, with speed reduced according to conditions. Fishermen will appreciate the boat’s stability. The Bay Pilot 18 is ideal for cruising along saltwater coasts or in the sweet waters of the Great Lakes, rivers, and inland lakes. Davis recommends outboard power ranging between 30 and 60 hp, with either single or twin configurations.
NATARA, named for Bridges’s daughters, Natalie and Tamara, has a sizable open cockpit, with the helm located amidships on a console attached to the forward bulkhead. The console also accommodates electronic instrumentation. A swivel chair secured to the deck next to the throttle offers a comfortable seat for the helmsman. The surprisingly roomy cabin, entered through a step-down companionway, features a V-berth and space for a portable head. The berth is ideal for an afternoon snooze and otherwise is a good place for dry storage.
Bridges eliminated the built-in fore-and-aft seats specified in the drawings, using the space instead for fishing gear—bait boxes, tackle boxes, and poles. Collapsible canvas chairs provide comfortable seating for Bridges’s wife, Laine, and a couple of additional adult passengers.
George D. Jepson
NATARA’s open cockpit features a starboard steering console, which flanks a step-down companionway leading to V-berths below, with space for a portable head.
Although NATARA is trailerable, Bridges prefers the convenience of keeping the boat overboard in a slip. “Just unsnap the cockpit cover, turn the key, throw off the docklines, and you’re ready to go,” he said. Within minutes, he and his wife can be drifting along in the Gulf of Mexico or cruising the Intracoastal Waterway.
At age 75, Bridges launched this 18-month building project in his 21′ × 21′ two-stall attached garage. Family vehicles were banished to the driveway for the duration. By the time NATARA was launched, he had expended over 1,500 hours.
“Positioning the boat catty-corner [diagonally] across the floor gave me plenty of room to work,” Bridges said. “Building in the garage has a lot of advantages. It’s right there if you have a couple of extra hours—and weather is never a factor.”
Fabricating the stem presented a challenge. “It was my first time working directly from plans, and it took some study and interpretation,” he said. “After that it became easier.” Other than the change in seating, Bridges followed Arch Davis’s original plans almost to the letter. He chose to exclude the hard top but retained Davis’s windshield scheme, while modifying the side windows “to look more like a picnic boat.” He added an external mahogany keel 1 3⁄4″ wide by 2″ deep, beginning about 3′ back from the forefoot and ending 3′ from the transom, which improved NATARA’s maneuverability at low speeds.
The boat’s pieces were primarily fabricated from two woods: 3⁄8″ or 3⁄4″ meranti marine plywood (bottom, decks, sides, bulkheads, cockpit, and the cabin sole) and Douglas-fir (stem, keel, frames, stringers, windshield frame, and deckbeams). The bottom was constructed of two layers (3⁄8″ and 1⁄4″) of meranti, and the transom was built of two layers of 3⁄4″ meranti glued together with epoxy.
George D. Jepson
Able to carry single or twin outboards, she has proven herself seaworthy in the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Bridges worked with a variety of tools: a set of chisels, a small hand plane, two cordless electric drills (one for drilling pilot holes and countersinking and one for driving the screws), an 8″ circular saw, a 10″ tablesaw, a 3″ handheld power plane, and a router.
The lapstrake hull was built upside down on a jig. The two full-length stringers held the bulkheads, frames, and temporary molds. Planks were glued and screwed to these longitudinals and frames, which provided additional stiffness to the structure.
A significant challenge was bending plywood to fit the bottom. Bridges treated exterior surfaces of the panels with hot, moist towels to make them bendable, and then clamped them to the chines; this was the only stage of the project that required two sets of hands. Bending Douglas-fir was a simpler matter. An overnight soak in the family swimming pool left the wood pliable for clamping into place.
When the basic hull was completed, the builder faced another knotty problem—turning it over to work on the interior. After much contemplation he arrived at a simple solution: He invited the Venice High School coach and 10 linemen over for pizza and soda. Within 20 minutes, they were able to carry the hull outside, turn it over, bring it back into the garage, and set it on a Styrofoam block cradle.
Arch Davis
The Bay Pilot 18’s midsection shows a boat that is surprisingly roomy, belying her diminutive dimensions. Deadrise angle and flare in the forward sections promise a dry ride, while the wide-bodied aft sections mean that the ride will be comfortable, too.
Every surface on NATARA was sealed in epoxy. The bottom was sheathed with a layer of fiberglass cloth, two coats of epoxy, a coat of primer, and one coat of bottom paint. Topsides were primed and then received three coats of paint. A layer of fiberglass was laid down on the deck, which was primed and finished with topside paint mixed with nonskid compound. Frames in the cockpit, stringers, the cabin bulkhead, and beams were finished with varnish.
On a crisp and sunny Florida morning in February, we stepped aboard NATARA at her dock. The outboard turned over and purred softly. Lines were cast off, and the cruiser slid smoothly down the channel toward Roberts Bay. A slight breeze caressed the open water as the throttle was pressed forward. A trim wake stretched out behind us, as NATARA settled into a steady, comfortable ride at 20 mph, or about 17 1⁄2 knots.
George D. Jepson
NATARA was completed with an open cockpit, providing room for fishing gear, and allowing space for collapsible canvas chairs while cruising. Davis’s design offers permanent seating for four as an alternative.
Steering with the large stainless-steel wheel, I was whisked back to the 1950s and stints at the helm of my grandfather’s 24′ garage-built plywood cruiser on Lake Superior off Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. NATARA responded well and cornered nicely. Her compact size made maneuvering alongside docks effortless.
The Bay Pilot 18—a throwback to the years of Ike, Howdy Doody, Elvis Presley, Ed Sullivan, and the Cold War—is an affordable way to get on the water in a charming wooden boat with a modicum of luxury, whether picnicking, fishing, or overnighting in a secluded cove.
Corky Gallo
Corky Gallo
R.D. "Pete" Culler
