Boat Profiles - Small Boats Magazine

Small Boats Annual 2007

The Boothbay Harbor One-Design

A fast and wholesome daysailer-racer

The Boothbay Harbor One-Design, a short-ended Burgess, moved to mid-coast Maine and hired Geerd daysailer with a long waterline, is a particularly handsome boat that has proven itself in the choppy waters off Boothbay and Pemaquid, Maine. It’s an easy boat to sail, while being both maneuverable and fast, and its design is the product of some of the best…

Small Boats Annual 2007

The Christmas Wherry

A Maine example of a traditional design

The Christmas Wherry possesses two characteristics that should be critically important to anyone looking for a small boat to use in open waters. It displays classic beauty and, as the boat’s designer, Walt Simmons of Lincolnville, Maine, says, “It will take you out, and bring you back home.”

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Small Boats Annual 2022February 2021

Savo 650D

Fast rowing, Finnish style

Finland has so many lakes that it was inevitable that people living on their shores built fast rowing boats to make a living and get from one place to another. The contemporary Savo 650D is a speedy double with deep roots in the country and the culture.

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Small Boats Annual 2022February 2021

The Wittholz Catboat

A classic adapted for plywood

In the 1960s, Naval architect Charles W. Wittholz drew several catboats including a 17-footer with a classic catboat profile, a beamy single-chine plywood hull, and the option of a marconi or gaff rig.

Small Boats Annual 2008

MARTHA

A soulful little pocket cruiser

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Sam (S.S.) Crocker designed the 19' 9" pocket cruiser Sallee Rover as a yawl in 1953; later, in 1955, he drew the sloop-rigged version seen in the accompanying photographs. Making just a few changes to her for aesthetic purposes, Joel White built this sloop in 1967 for his father, E.B. White, and named…

Small Boats Annual 2008

JOLENA III

An electric-powered “steam” launch

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - "I’ve been the subject of a helluva lot of flattery over the past three days—not to say that I don’t appreciate it,” said Jim Hulm, beaming, while working his fantail launch alongside a floating dock at Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport. It was a Sunday in June, the third day of the 2007 WoodenBoat Show,…

Small Boats Annual 2008

The 18′ 8″ Mackinaw Boat

A mini Lake Michigan workboat

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - This boat is a pint-sized version of a well-known and respected type that worked Lake Michigan from the late 19th century until the beginning of World War I. It’s called a Mackinaw boat—though historically that name applied to a range of boats that have only tenuous family connections.

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January 2021

Sweet Pea

An Instant Boat for oar and sail, with a removable keel

Phil Bolger and Dynamite Payson put their heads together to create an easily built plywood boat that would be at home on the waters of the Maine coast. Crossing elements of a peapod with a light dory led to their 15’ double-ender, Sweet Pea.

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January 2021

Droleen

Long lost, finally found

The Droleen was designed in Ireland in 1896 and enjoyed a few decades as a racing-class boat, but was entirely forgotten in the aftermath of WW I. The plans resurfaced in 1996 and the 12’ lapstrake catboat was given new life.

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Small Boats Annual 2008

The Melonseed Skiff

Daysailer and duckgunner

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - This fine gunning skiff from the bays and coastal lagoons of southern New Jersey might have evolved from the lapstrake beach skiffs that worked the exposed Atlantic beaches of the Garden State. Similarities of line and construction between the beach skiffs and the melonseeds seem too powerful to ignore.

Small Boats Annual 2008

Dad’s Ol’ Outboard Skiff

A dreamboat for the rest of us

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - In a sea of wooden boats that are out of reach for many of us, here is one that offers some respite—Dad’s Ol’ Outboard Skiff. She’s the brainchild of Michigan builder Mike Kiefer, who has been building boats and teaching wooden boat building at the Great Lakes Boatbuilding Company, for well over 20…

Small Boats Annual 2008

The Moosabec Reach Boat

New life for a striking 14-footer from the 19th century

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - I never met John Gardner, but I’ve spent many an afternoon with him. Leafing from one chapter of his books to another, it’s easy to get distracted by the down-to-earth practicality, the enthusiastic descriptions of traditional boats, and the ringing call to action to see these boats built anew and put to use.…

Small Boats Annual 2008

Night Heron

A fast and handsome 18' kayak

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Have you noticed all of those kayaks riding along atop cars and trucks on their way to waterborne adventures? Their owners have seen the light. These slender double-ended boats require little initial investment, not much maintenance, and can be put on the water in seconds. In them we’ll cross open water, and when…

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December 2020

Atlantic 17 Dory

Jon Persson's fast double-ender

Jon Persson’s Atlantic 17 Dory is a 17’ double-ended pulling boat with plenty of speed, the seakeeping qualities of a gunning dory, and very simple plywood-on-frame construction. Christophe Matson reports on the Atlantic 17 he built.

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December 2020

Good Little Skiff

Pete Culler's perfect boat

The Good Little Skiff is Pete Culler’s response to a call in 1970 for rowing enthusiasts to design the perfect boat. Ben Fuller takes a look at the 13’ version of this versatile flat-bottomed skiff for sailing, rowing, and sculling.

Small Boats Annual 2008

Skerry

A Norse-inspired kit boat

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - My penchant for Scandinavian boatbuilding techniques once prompted Matt Murphy at WoodenBoat to tell me that it seemed as though I was trying to “get in touch with my inner Viking.” But when I look around, I see that I am hardly alone. Some aesthetics—think of Japanese architecture, Italian stonework, New England barns—have…

Small Boats Annual 2008

The Long Point

A center-console skiff

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - There’s something nearly archetypal about the Long Point skiff. This 15-footer has high sides and a flat bottom, and is driven by a small four-stroke outboard motor. “It used to be that everyone had one of these things,” said the designer, Tom Hill, as we skipped across a modest chop on Penobscot Bay…

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November 2020

12′ Clinker Dinghy

Paul Gartside's Design No. 130

Paul Gartside designed his 12’ Clinker Dinghy as training exercise in traditional lapstrake construction. The performance it delivers under oars and sail— as well as its visual appeal—make it a project well worth the effort.

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November 2020

RowCruiser

A solo expedition rowboat

Colin Angus drew upon his thousands of miles rowing both open ocean and coastal waters to create the fast and light RowCruiser. A sliding seat and outriggers make it powerful underway and its compact cabin provides a comfortable refuge at anchor.

Small Boats Annual 2007

Endeavour 17

A kayak for just about everybody

The Steve Killing–designed Endeavour 17, a kayak built of cedar strip planks and fiberglass, combines beauty, fast lines, load-carrying capacity, and relatively easy construction. Let’s have a look at each of these points—the last one, ease of construction, in some detail.

Small Boats Annual 2007

The Gloucester Light Dory

A classic design for plywood construction

In the early 1980s, I bought Phil Bolger’s plans for the 15′ 6″ LOA Gloucester Light Dory. I was living in an apartment at the time, and I was intending this boat to be my first built to an “official” design. I had built furniture in my living room, and in those single-man days my dining room table was a…

Small Boats Annual 2007

The Lake Oswego Boat

A small lapstrake gem

Few joys in life are simpler than a morning row. Oars over the shoulder, hollow footsteps along a wood-decked float, the boat quivering with the first step aboard, the sharp ring of the oarlocks as they slip into place, the soft purling of water against lapstrake planks as they leave the first wake of the day...all these seem to require…

Small Boats Annual 2007

Fiddlehead

A solo canoe for double paddle

Harry Bryan, a boatbuilder and designer from New Brunswick, Canada, designed the Fiddlehead, a 10 1⁄2' double-paddle canoe, in 1992 after his sister-in-law introduced him to her Wee Lassie. The Wee Lassie is a small double-paddle canoe designed by J. Henry Rushton around 1893. Bryan had always rowed small boats, rather than paddled them. He had “never faced forward in…

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Small Boats Annual 2022October 2020

The Guider

A capable and comfortable camp-cruiser

John Guider cruised more than 6,000 miles in Chesapeake Light Craft’s Skerry Raid. But when he entered the Race to Alaska, he asked CLC to design a new bigger boat, The Guider, which would be better able to take on whatever the Inside Passage might dish out.

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Small Boats Annual 2022October 2020

Elfyn

Iain Oughtred's other faering

Iain Oughtred’s Elfyn is his adaptation of a traditional Norse hull for glued-lapstrake plywood construction with the same three wide strakes and all of the beauty of its precursors.

The Boothbay Harbor One-Design

The Christmas Wherry

Savo 650D

The Wittholz Catboat

MARTHA

JOLENA III

The 18′ 8″ Mackinaw Boat

Sweet Pea

Droleen

The Melonseed Skiff

Dad’s Ol’ Outboard Skiff

The Moosabec Reach Boat

Night Heron

Atlantic 17 Dory

Good Little Skiff

Skerry

The Long Point

12′ Clinker Dinghy

RowCruiser

Endeavour 17

The Gloucester Light Dory

The Lake Oswego Boat

Fiddlehead

The Guider

Elfyn

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