Boat Profile

Small Boats Annual 2007

The Tolman Skiff

A boat for all seasons

Renn Tolman designed his eponymous skiff as a workhorse for rugged Alaskan environs. The boat has proven to be adaptable to a wide range of locales—and to a wide range of configurations.

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Small Boats Annual 2022April 2021

Surf Crabskiff

A Bolger Instant Boat

Dynamite Payson, champion of Instant Boats, wrote that Bolger’s Surf “is my favorite and it seems to me about as perfect a blend of overall proportions I could ever expect to see in so simple a shape.”

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Small Boats Annual 2022April 2021

Marissa 18

An economical center console outboard from B&B Yacht Designs

Marissa, an 18’ center-console plywood skiff from B&B Yacht Designs, was the winner of a WoodenBoat design contest titled The Pursuit of Pleasure at Two Gallons per Hour.

Small Boats Annual 2007

RASCAL

A playful runabout

RASCAL sped across the riffled waters of Long Island Sound. Her mahogany foredeck glowed from the depths of its varnish, and her stainless-steel cutwater sparkled through drops of water streamlining into mist. Driver and passenger sat low on a simple rolled leather seat, legs stretched out nearly parallel to the cockpit sole. A tall person could reach over the side…

Small Boats Annual 2007

Stir Ven

A good sense of balance

With his Stir Ven design, a 22' LOA center- boarder, François Vivier took first place in the “neo-traditional” category of a 1997 design competition organized by the French magazine Le Chasse-Marée. His main design objective was to balance the aesthetics and appeal of a purely traditional sailboat with a modern hull’s efficiency of construction, maintenance, and overall performance. Nine years…

Small Boats Annual 2007

Skylark

A beautiful and practical daysailer

Skylark was designed by Paul Gartside for day-sailing in the sporty estuary and ocean waters off the Oregon coast. With a 14' length and a 5'8" beam and tipping the scales at 550 lbs, Skylark is one big, little boat with plenty of freeboard and stability.

Small Boats Annual 2007

The West Pointer 18

From workboat roots, a solid recreational boat

Six River Marine based this tough and shapely skiff on a highly regarded workboat designed and built by Alton Wallace. Chip Miller gave the new boat more freeboard, less flare, greater breadth, and slightly increased length.

Small Boats Annual 2007

PETITELISA

A simple girl

PETITELISA is a synthesis of Gilles Montaubin’s long experience with sail-and-oar boats. Unlike many boats of this type, she is not reminiscent of any traditional working boat type. Instead, she incorporates some very contemporary features. Montaubin, for example, has intensively tested the use of water ballast on many boat designs, and its use on PETITELISA allows her displacement to be…

Small Boats Annual 2007

Blackbird

A striking outboard cruiser

Conceived in the early 1980s by Ken Bassett, Onion River Boat Works, and massaged into her final form by Phil Bolger, BLACKBIRD embodies the spirit of carefree mobility found in the lyrics of the Mort Dixon/Ray Henderson song “Bye Bye Blackbird,” “Pack up all my cares and woe, here I go, singin’ low, bye bye blackbird.” BLACKBIRD evolved on the…

Small Boats Annual 2007

The Flatfish

An inspired daysailer

Every sailor has his own vision of the perfect daysailer. For many, this ideal boat is based on the Herreshoff 12 1⁄2, Nathanael G. Herreshoff’s iconic daysailer, which debuted in the summer of 1915. For others, it’s the larger Fish class or the still-larger Alerion—two more masterworks from the hand of Herreshoff. These boats have been the subject of imitation…

Small Boats Annual 2007

Coho 17

Elegant and able home-built kayak

People are always drawn to the warmth and the visual texture of a varnished wood kayak, but the beauty of a plywood kayak can and should be more than skin deep. Not only do the sweeping curves of the Coho 17’s multichined hull and beveled deck offer up an elegance that sets a kayak like the Coho apart from main-…

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Small Boats Annual 2022March 2021

Down East Workboat

Blending seakeeping ability with speed

John Gardner’s Down East Workboat is an 18’ version of a type that has proved useful on the Maine coast for vessels in many sizes up to 30’. With a 25-hp outboard at one-third throttle, it planes easily at 12 knots.

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Small Boats Annual 2022March 2021

The Crawford Melonseed Skiff

From a 19th-century gunning skiff to a classic sailer in fiberglass

Roger Crawford was once asked to repair an aging wooden sailing skiff and was so impressed by its sailing abilities when he had it afloat again that he used it as a mold to produce the boat in fiberglass. Decades later, his Melonseed Skiff is a classic.

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.…