May 2018

LEGOLAS

A great escape

Peter Knape was once stuck behind an office desk in the business district of Arnhem, Holland. He mustered the courage to make a break, sold almost everything he owned, had a Drascombe Longboat Cruiser built, and left home, bound for the Mediterranean.

April 2018

From Father to Son

Five generations of boatbuilders

Nick Blake is a boatbuilder living on a plot of Mississippi land that has been in the family since the 1830s. Nick built a modified version of a Chapelle Whitehall with the help of his father, tools passed down from his grandfather, traditions established by his great-grandfather, and lumber milled from trees grown on his great-great-grandfather’s land.

March 2018

From the Channel to the Med

Rowing the canals and rivers of France

Polly and Mat Hilton left their home in Devon, England, rowing and sailing a lapstrake skiff that Mat had built. Fifty-six days and 870 miles later they had crossed France by river and canal and reached the Mediterranean Sea.

February 2018

Uncertain Ground

Tide flats and sloughs

When you have a canal boat but no canals, sloughs will have to do. Our editor spent three days cruising the tidal waterways that surround Everett, Washington, and took his chances anchoring at night on falling tides in unfamiliar places.

January 2018

A Boat for the Summer

A quick-and-dirty build for a British Columbia cruise

A father and his son took the summer off, built a boat in a month by forgoing the fine finish work, and sailed north with a plan to do little planning, leaving their adventure to chance.

Small Boats Annual 2019December 2017

Wolf Rock Light

Eight miles out to sea in a dinghy

Will Stirling set a goal for himself to sail around every one of Britain’s 50-plus offshore lighthouses. Nic Compton joined him for an 8-mile passage from Land’s End to the Wolf Rock Light. They sailed a 15’ dinghy, anchored near the wave-washed rock, and swam to the lighthouse in dry suits.

November 2017

Back Door to Georgian Bay

A Sail and Oar Journey

Tom Pamperin takes us aboard his newly-built Kurylko-designed Alaska for a shakedown cruise among the islands clustered between Ontario’s North Channel and Georgian Bay. Both the boat and the landscape lived up to his expectations.

October 2017

A Faering for New Zealand

The Craft of Ulf Mikalsen

Two New Zealand filmmakers travelled to Norway and made a short movie about Ulf Mikalsen, a builder of traditional Norwegian boats. Three years later they brought Mikalsen to New Zealand to build a faering for their coastal community.

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September 2017

The Texas 200

A trial by water

A heavy lump had settled in my gut, and I wondered then if I might have misjudged myself and my boat. I tried to reassure myself that the forecast for the week was favorable, only fair and following winds at 10 to 15 knots. The lump wasn’t going anywhere, though, and I wondered if I should pull the boat out and drive home.

August 2017

Drawn to the Islands

A voyage among the Southern Gulf Islands

Bruce Bateau, one of our regular contributors, usually cruises in the company of other small boats, but British Columbia’s Southern Gulf Islands inspired him to sail solo. “My travel would be limited only by the tides and winds and my goal was to shake myself free of electronic leashes, bolt from thoughts that tie my brain in knots, and find my freedom in the present moment.”

July 2017

Rowing the North Sea

Norway to Shetland by Faering

In the autumn of 2011 Erik Schouw-Hansen and I were discussing our next adventure. In 2010 we had sailed together to the Shetlands—Erik crewed aboard my 31′ sloop on the first leg of a voyage from Norway to the Caribbean and back. We were both born and raised on the west coast of Norway, so for our next trip it was natural to look westward across the North Sea to the Shetland Islands. We wanted to try something new and settled upon rowing a small, open boat across the North Sea the following summer. We set mid-June as our deadline to be ready for departure, and from that point we would wait for favorable weather conditions.

Small Boats Annual 2018June 2017

Four Oars and a Sail

A 2,000-mile river voyage through the American Heartland

A young couple with an abiding thirst for adventure built a cedar-strip version of a faering and traveled 2,000 miles under sail and oars from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. Their boat took a bit of a beating along the way and almost sank on the Mississippi River, but the partnership stayed afloat and the bonds between the two only grew stronger.

Small Boats Annual 2018May 2017

Lake Tanganyika

Rowing Africa's Great Lake in a leaky boat

An adventurer in Africa traded his bicycle for a sad-looking wooden boat and set out to explore Lake Tanganyika. With gaps between planks big enough to slip a pencil through, a map bereft of detail, and a remote and unforgiving coast ahead of him, what could possibly go wrong?

April 2017

A Faering on the Inside Passage, Part 2

Alaska

The second half of Editor Chris Cunningham’s story about rowing his replica of the Gokstad faering up the Inside Passage takes us into Alaskan waters for mud, icebergs, bears, and a railway portage.

March 2017

A Faering on the Inside Passage, Part 1

Washington and British Columbia

The Gokstad faering was the smallest of the boats found with a 9th-century Viking ship and in the eyes of our editor, Christopher Cunningham, a boat of unparalleled elegance. In 1986 he decided he had to build one. He tells the first part of the story about rowing his faering 1,000 miles north along the Inside Passage to Alaska.

February 2017

The Wedding Canoe

A grand gift

After Dave MacDonald finished his first boat, a strip-built kayak, he couldn't wait to start another boatbuilding project. With two of his friends getting married in just six months, he started work on the perfect wedding gift for them: a canoe.

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January 2017

A Lakeland Row

A father-and-son circumnavigation

Finland is dotted and laced with thousands of lakes and waterways. The Saimaa area is the country’s largest watershed with 9,300 miles of shoreline, more per square mile than anywhere else in the world. The 14,000 islands in the region add to the complexity of Finland’s vast Lakeland. A father and his 14-year-old son take a tour of Sääminginsalo, Finland’s largest island, circumnavigating it in a restored racing boat.

December 2016

The Sailing Light Challenge

Cruising France's Charente Maritime

The French love sailing, but the big and expensive racing and cruising yachts often get all of the attention. A group of friends got together and organized a new event, called Sailing Light Challenge, an unsupported, 100-mile tour along the Bay of Biscay coast in small boats under sail and oar. This year's participants arrived at the Corps de Garde harbor near Charron, and waited with gear-laden boats for the ebb to provide a favorable current down the Sevre River to its mouth at Aiguillon Bay.

November 2016

A Maine Island Idyll

Circumnavigating Deer Isle

It was a very gentle bump. I’d been sleeping comfortably at anchor after a long day on the water, but I was wide awake in an instant. A few seconds later, it came again—a firm nudge from below interrupting the soft, easy motion of my boat—and this time WAXWING stopped moving. I was aground. I checked my watch—3:30 in the morning, still an hour and a half to go before low tide.

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October 2016

A Man’s Best Friend

No, it's not the dog

While big boats would come and go, Nic Compton’s little plywood skiff was the one boat that stayed with him through thick and thin. He tells the story of how a kit-built Western Skiff wove itself into the fabric of his life and family.

September 2016

Building on Tradition

An American geitbåt

Jay Smith earned a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and English but realized the life of a man of letters was not his calling. He left North Dakota and moved to Norway, the land of his ancestors, and apprenticed himself to a master boatbuilder.

August 2016

Dories Down Under

From the Grand Canyon to the Whanganui River

When a New Zealand guide wanted to offer his clients better boats for rowing the revered Whanganui River, he had two American boatbuilders set up shop in a sheep shed and build a pair of Grand Canyon dories.

July 2016

The Race to Alaska

High Hopes, Dogged Determination

In a race as long and as arduous as the 2015 R2AK, coming in last can be counted as a victory. The weather took a heavy toll on the race fleet—many of the boats withdrew and a few needed to be rescued.

June 2016

Rowing the North Atlantic

Two friends, one old boat

When Australians Peter Fletcher and Tom Hudson decided to row across the North Atlantic, they chose an old wooden boat for the voyage. It had already made the crossing three times and the duo spent 15 months on repairs to make the boat seaworthy enough to get them from New York to England.

Small Boats Annual 2017May 2016

The Isles of Finland

Solo cruising in a Herreshoff Coquina

The Finnish coast is speckled with small forested islands rimmed with glacier-worn granite. A modified Herreshoff Coquina is quite at home here, an ocean away from its native waters.