Boat Profile

May 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.

May 2015

ROSINA MAY

A Thames River Skiff

Within the pages of Eric McKee’s book on British working boats there are drawings of a 24’ Thames skiff attributed to W.A.B. Hobbs at Henley-on-Thames in the very early part of the 20th century. Thames skiffs were an evolution of the wherries used to transport cargoes and passengers up, down and across the Thames for many years before bridges and other forms of transport put them out of business. Although the vast majority of skiffs have been used for leisure purposes many of them have earned a living by being hired out.

April 2015

The Escargot canal cruiser

As a wooden boat, the Escargot is an unlikely charmer. It has a hull like a shoebox, only one curve to speak of, and is entirely bereft of brightwork and brass. Nonetheless, it has an ineluctable appeal inside and out. The cabin with its arched roof and stovepipe has the look of a gypsy wagon and the lure of running away from it all, in comfort. My father said of it: “The moment I step aboard, I’ve arrived.”

April 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.

March 2015

The International 12-Foot Dinghy

100 Years as a Class

In 1913 England’s Boat Racing Association, a small club of sailing enthusiasts, called for a design to comply with the following requirements: length 12’, beam 4’8”, and a single 100-sq-ft sail with no battens; she should be a capable rowing boat as well as a good sailing craft, suitable as a tender for larger yachts. The winning design was submitted by an amateur designer named George Cockshott.

March 2015

The Færder Snekke

A racing workboat from Norway

“I first encountered a lone Færder snekke at a maritime festival in Oslo. She was small and open, but did not fit in with the similarly scaled, rough, and hardy oiled workboat from the north. On the other hand, the boat had shadows of an appealing older working aesthetic that didn’t fit in with the larger, yachty Meter boats or varnished cruisers, either.”

February 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.

February 2015

The MerryMac

A Cat-Rigged Sharpie

The MerryMac catboat tends to make the blood hum with a sense of adventure and challenge. Its owners claim that it has always been so since the first of about 200 MerryMacs sprouted wings on the banks of New Hampshire’s Great Bay back in the early 1950s. And MerryMac lovers will tell you that the sense of adventure and challenge root in both the boat itself and her designer/builder Ned “Mac” McIntosh.

January 2015

The Willis Boats of Maine’s Dark Harbor

The enduring legacy of Willis Rossiter

The legacy of the Rossiter Skiff outshines that of even its most popular fiberglass counterparts. The family of skiffs that evolved on the mid-coast island of Islesboro, Maine, has been around for decades, and summer residents and local fishermen alike continue to use these boats more than a half-century after the design’s debut. Some of the boats have become family heirlooms.

January 2015

John Welsford’s Sweet Pea

A Lightweight Cruiser/Racer

Sweet Pea offers sport cruising on a budget: a fairly fast shallow-water cruiser for those who prefer the comforts of a cabin and a portable toilet to a tent and a trowel. The boat could even be a contender in adventure races, where a place for the off-watch crew to rest is more of an advantage than speed.

December 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.

December 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.

November 2014

The Friendship Catboat

A 21st-century makeover for an early-20th-century design

In boating circles, the word friendship brings to mind the classic Maine-built sloop from which pre-internal-combustion lobstermen tended their traps. For Richard Armstrong, however, the word conjures up a different image—a small catboat designed for the burgeoning summer community of Friendship, Maine, in the beginning of the 20th century.

November 2014

Pinguino 145 and 145 4PD

Two comfortable sea kayaks

The Pinguino 145 and 145 4PD are versatile kayaks, even though they are a couple of feet shorter than most standard touring kayaks. It’s a well-mannered design with a respectable cruising speed and a good amount of cargo space.

October 2014

The Golant Ketch

A daydream turned real

The Golant Ketch is a 20′ hard-chined camp-cruiser designed by Roger Dongray. Dongray is perhaps best known for his Cornish Shrimper, which he designed in 1976 with the intention of building only one in plywood, for himself. But after various friends showed an interest, 10 more plywood boats were built, and in 1979 Cornish Crabbers started building them in fiberglass and have now delivered 1,132 of them. At first glance the Ketch and the Shrimper seem to have similar hull shapes, but this is perhaps only because the eye is distracted by their wide-plank clinker-effect construction.

October 2014

The Penobscot Wherry

A nicely mannered rowboat

The Penobscot Wherry from Cottrell Boatbuilding of Searsport, Maine, is based on the Lincolnville salmon wherry, a beamy high-volume boat used to remove salmon from weirs in the days when there was a commercial salmon run on Maine’s Penobscot River. “Wherry” is a nebulous term generally used to describe a relatively light rowboat. This particular wherry has a narrow, flat bottom with lapstrake sides, making it a specialized type of round-bottomed dory.

September 2014

Outrigger Junior

A modern form of an old idea

Long before Europeans ventured to the new world, sailing dugout canoes fitted with outriggers sailed the waters in Southeast Asia and were used for migration throughout the Pacific region. The obvious seaworthiness of these boats was demonstrated by their ability to undertake remarkable voyages. Their twin-hulled form gave them stability, and the slender hulls gave them speed and seakeeping qualities that the western world could only dream of. Today, the recreational market offers many two- and three-hulled vessels for voyaging or daysailing. The Outrigger Junior is a modern adaptation of these early outriggers designed for beach sailing and fast spins around the bay.

September 2014

Sam Crocker’s Small Outboard Skiff

A 1950s design still relevant today

Here’s a boat type one doesn’t see too often these days. It’s a modest-sized outboard designed not as a center-console but instead with a small cabin that will accommodate the adventurous camp-cruiser. For the less ambitious, it’s a boat that offers a place to have a nap, use the head in privacy, or take friends and family to a favorite beach, island, or fishing spot. Given its varnished cabin sides and shapely hull, it’s just the sort of craft that stops dock strollers in their tracks as they say: “Now what is that!”