From The Editor

March 2019

Standing Water

Swell on the Adriatic Sea coming from two directions and rebounding off the cliffs of an island off the Croatian coast created a chaotic sea and an unusual phenomenon—spike waves.

February 2019

Testing One’s Metal

If you’ve set yourself up for a building a boat and invested in woodworking tools, but opt to purchase the metal parts a boat requires, you may be missing out on some very satisfying projects. Our editor recounts his serendipitous drift into metalsmithing.

January 2019

Caring for Tools

A tool that gets handed down from a friend or a family member is likely to have a special place in the shop. More important than its usefulness is the story comes with it, linking the user to someone remembered fondly. Do other tools also have stories to tell?

December 2018

Wagner Education Center

Seattle’s Center for Wooden Boats has nearly completed a long-awaited expansion of their facilities on Lake Union. We tour the Wagner Education Center, named in honor of the Center’s founders, Dick and Colleen Wagner.

November 2018

Phil Thiel’s Workshop

Phil Thiel designed many intriguing small boats, but he was also a professor, naval architect, artist, urban designer, community activist, and author. He passed away in 2014, but his basement shop, still very much as he left it, offers a glimpse of his work and his boats.

October 2018

Steamed

Steam-driven piston engines are a relic of the past, and while few practical uses remain for them, they are fascinating and appealing in ways that no internal combustion engine can match. We take a slow ride up a meandering slough, content to be going nowhere fast.

September 2018

The Blind Side

When small boats mingle with larger and more powerful boats, the former have to contend with the wakes of the latter. The trick is to take the shaking without getting rattled.

August 2018

Bandsawn

Do tools make the man? Bandsaws are very useful, if not essential, tools for building boats. They can shape wood and might just have the potential to shape lives. Our editor recalls the bandsaws in his life.

July 2018

Getting Out of Line

Masts, centerboards, and rudders don’t all have to line up right down a boat’s middle. Putting them to one side or the other can get them out of the way without noticeably affecting sailing performance, and reclaiming the best real estate in the cockpit can make a boat a much more pleasant place for the people aboard.

June 2018

Fatherhood, Childhood, and Boats

With Father’s Day coming up, our editor muses about a deep connection with boats and how it might be passed down from one generation to the next. Could the process begin before birth? His own kids seem to indicate a prenatal influence.

May 2018

Treasured

Seattle has, for now, an extraordinary hardware store that has been in business since 1932. It has a vast array tools and hardware that would still serve its Depression-era customers as well as it does today’s do-it yourselfers. Unfortunately, rising property taxes are driving the store out of business after three generations of service.

April 2018

Stretcher Steering

I’ve been rowing my Whitehall a lot, leaving the sailing rig and the rudder at home, but I decided that I could put the rudder to good use by making it possible to steer with my feet. Now I can devote my stroke to power instead of holding a course.

March 2018

Imprinted

A Herreshoff in my childhood

Our editor recalls his father's Herreshoff Amphi-craft, a 13' sailing, rowing, and motoring dinghy designed by Captain Nat's eldest son, Sidney, and built during the Great Depression. The Herreshoff shop built only 17 of them and two of them were delivered to Everett, Washington. One of those two made a lasting impression on three young children.

February 2018

I’ve got a not-so-peaceful, uneasy feelin’

Motivated by the thought of spending two tranquil nights under a starlit sky, our editor invested a lot of time, expense, and effort in shopping, packing, and getting the boat ready for a long weekend cruise, but after spending less than an hour on the water, something wasn't right; he turned around and went home.

January 2018

A Man of Means by No Means

Arthur Dennan was not “King of the Road” as the song goes, but he was, at least by his own account, King of Lafayette Square in Savannah. His home in the Georgia marsh was an upturned aluminum johnboat, its bow propped up and walled in with weathered plywood. He owned little, but didn’t hesitate to share what he had with strangers.

December 2017

Coming in from the Cold

The “fo'c's'le” of the family canal boat was converted into a pilothouse so the skipper can come in out of the weather, join the conversation of the guests, and enjoy the heat of the woodstove. Sticks and strings provide remote control of the tiller and the outboard’s throttle and kill switch.

November 2017

All-Terrain Roller

Experimenting with fenders

With my roller carts, I can move my boats over both hard and soft ground but I have to strap the cart to the boat, roller down, for pavement and then set it on the ground, roller up, for sand. I’ve been experimenting with an inflatable fender as an all-terrain roller that stays on my rowing canoe across both parking lot and beach.

October 2017

Surviving Hurricane Harvey

On August 25, Port Aransas took a direct hit from Hurricane Harvey. The high winds and storm surge damaged many buildings including the workshop and storage sheds of the Farley Boat Works.

September 2017

A Leeboard for a Motorboat

In the wind, our canal boat, BONZO, wanders like an off-leash dog. I thought a leeboard, something you don’t often see on powerboats, might help. A little more lateral resistance would both keep BONZO on course in the wind and provide a pivot point for turning. I got some confirmation of the notion of improving steering just a few days before I started the project when I saw a Boston Whaler equipped with two large leeboards.

August 2017

Looking Back at What’s Ahead

A few years ago I adapted my W.P. Stevens-designed lapstrake decked canoe for sliding-seat rowing. The canoe has taken well to oars and outriggers and now makes better speed than with a pair of paddles, but it’s no longer so easy to see where I’m going. Out on open water I can look over my shoulder occasionally and not worry about running into something, but I prefer getting my exercise on the flat protected waters of Seattle’s ship canal where I have to keep an eye out for tugs, barges, pleasure craft, and racing shells, as well as often erratic rental kayaks and electric launches.

July 2017

Drifting Off

My last moments of wakefulness in bed would be colored by the failures I’d experienced during my day in the workshop. At some point I shifted my thinking as I drifted off to sleep and focused on the work ahead rather than behind. Anticipating and solving boatbuilding problems became my nighttime routine and a very reliable way to fall pleasantly asleep no matter what distressing things might have happened during the day.

June 2017

Whittling Away

My father passed away three years ago at the age of 91, and I certainly won’t need Father’s Day this month as a reminder to think about him. My home is filled with things that he made; the ones I value most he whittled from bits of wood.

May 2017

Dick Wagner

On April 20, 2017, Dick Wagner passed away at home at the age of 84. I first met Dick in 1976 or 1977 at The Old Boathouse, a small-boat livery he and his wife Colleen were running out of their floating home on northwest corner of Seattle’s Lake Union. In their watery “back yard” Dick had a handful of pulling boats; I rented a White Bear skiff a few times to take a girlfriend out rowing on the lake. 

April 2017

Freya Hoffmeister, Circumnavigator

When I began writing this, there was a boat standing bolt-upright on its bow, held in place by a rope wrapped around its stern and pinched in a window sash on one of my upstairs bedrooms.

March 2017

Harlan and Anna Hubbard: Life after Shantyboat

When I was planning for my rowing trip down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in the early 1980s, I read as many books as I could find on traveling those waterways in small boats. Four Months in a Sneak Box by Nathaniel Bishop was my main guide, as it was his trip that I was going to duplicate. I also read Mississippi Solo by Eddy Harris and Old Glory by Jonathan Raban, both good reads, but Shantyboat: A River Way of Life by Harlan Hubbard was my favorite and most inspiring.