Boat Profiles | Small Boats

Boat Profile

A handhold at the board's balance point makes carrying easy.

Small Boats Annual 2016September 2015

The Sand Bar by Tidal Roots

A Maine-built cedar SUP board

Kyle Schaefer and Kent Scovill are avid fly fishermen and four years ago, when a friend left a stand-up paddleboard with Kyle, they immediately used the board to give them a better way to find fish. A light went on: What if they designed a board for stability rather than speed, one that was built in Maine out of local materials, and built it of wood? They now make stand-up-paddle boards in a weathered, three-bedroom house in Eliot, Maine.

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Small Boats Annual 2016June 2015

The Somes Sound 12½

An amateur-friendly update of a Herreshoff classic

A century ago Nathanael Herreshoff designed a 16′ keelboat known widely as the H 12½ after her 12′6″ waterline length. She was intended to handle the steep chop and strong winds of the Eastern Seaboard, and to serve as a sailing trainer. John Brooks, after many requests from his students at WoodenBoat School, drew up plans for a glued-lapstrake version, and in 2002 launched the first Somes Sound 12½.

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Sailed level, the Marsh Cat has very little weather helm and can clip along at 5 to 6 knots.

Small Boats Annual 2016June 2015

The Marsh Cat

Everything from gunkholing to open-water sailing

Simplicity is certainly one of the Marsh Cat's most appealing traits. The single sheet and sail make solo sailing a breeze. There is no interior furniture to get in the way: The sole is the seat and the coaming is the backrest. The Cat can handle heavy loads and stay out when the rest of the fleet is heading for shelter. Its spacious accommodations are a delight when camp-cruising; the rig's reasonable setup time at the ramp isn’t an impediment to frequent use or going sailing on a whim.
For Mary Sack, John's daughter, and her two brothers, rowing has been one of the pleasures visiting the family cabin on Clear Lake.

Small Boats Annual 2016May 2015

A Lapstrake Livery Boat

A Whitehall for quick construction

What was left of the boat rotting in the brambles on the north shore of Clear Lake in Western Washington was once a very fast under oars. Back in the 1930’s John Thomas “could row it across the lake, fill up two gallon jugs with spring water and row halfway back on one cigarette.” When John Sack, Thomas’ nephew, took over the lakeside family cabin in the 1960s the boat had been sitting at the base of the largest pine tree on the property, unused for a decade.

Small Boats Annual 2016April 2015

The Candlefish 13

Three Men in a Boat (to say Nothing of the Moose)

Sam Devlin drew up plans to a customer’s specs and in the process imagined how he might adapt the design the boat for his own use: “a couple of weeks of moose hunting on a far northern lake with my friends Sven and Ollie.” To that end, the Candlefish 13 he’d build for himself would be able to carry three successful hunters and a half ton of moose meat, and still have about a foot of freeboard.
The garboards are built up of three planks joined with flush dory bevels and rivets. The seams between them are visible here with one running out at the transom and the other at the garboard's upper edge. To the far left is one of the butt blocks on the broad strake.

Small Boats Annual 2016February 2015

The Mower Dory

Sailing again after a century in hiding

One day in the early 1990s, a local contractor visited my boatbuilding shop in Marblehead, Massachusetts, telling me he’d been hired to convert an old boatshop into a playhouse. “The museums and antique dealers have been through it,” he said, “Take anything you want or it’s going to the dump.” The building was mostly empty but in the long back room there was a planking bench with odd parts scattered around. Above the bench, tucked under the eave, the blackened end of a tight roll of paper caught my eye. I took the roll down, dusted it off, and put it in the truck. That evening, I unrolled my find.
BUNDUKI, built to John Georgalas’s Deep V 16’ design, is a descendant of WYNN-MILL II, a legendary raceboat that gave rise to the speedboat company Donzi Marine.

Small Boats Annual 2015December 2014

BUNDUKI

In the spirit of a classic Donzi

BUNDUKI is a sport boat built to Australian John Georgalas’s Deep V 16’ design. That boat was raced with great success, including a victory in the six-hour Paris Race. Wynn subsequently collaborated with Walt Walters and Don Aronow on a production version, the Ski Sporter, which was later dubbed, and became much better known as, the Sweet 16. That was the first boat built by Aronow’s company, Donzi Marine, after it was formed in 1964. BUNDUKI, the latest incarnation of the Deep V, is powered by a two-stroke, 130-hp engine harvested from a Kawasaki Jet Ski.
Bevin's Skiff

Small Boats Annual 2015December 2014

Bevin’s Skiff

A study in simplicity

Joe Youcha wants you to build a boat. He and his shop crew had built 100 different boats with members of the community, but none that he considered perfect for introducing the public to the joy of building, and the math that goes along with it. He wanted a boat that could be built anywhere by anyone. He decided on the most unassuming of American traditional small craft forms, the humble flat-bottomed skiff. When he found a design he liked he wanted to name the boat UBIQUITOUS, but the shop crew insisted it be named after the Shop Supervisor: Joe's dog, Bevin.