From The Editor

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.

February 2017

Driftwood and Windfalls

Sawing driftwood for my review of the Silky Bigboy in the February issue struck a chord that has resonated deeply through most of my life. My father used to take me to the beach near our home in Edmonds, Washington, to gather red cedar driftwood for a fence that would eventually surround our 1/3-acre lot.

January 2017

Roller Carts

Like Ben Fuller, I have more boats than trailers to haul them, so when I read his article on the roller cart he built with Joe Liener, I was convinced that I needed one or two to shuffle my boats.

December 2016

Topsails, Jibs, and Tarps

My 14′ Marblehead skiff started out with a sprit main and a jib and that was enough when there was a decent breeze, but sailing during the midsummer doldrums wasn’t much fun. I added a bowsprit and an outer jib and they helped a little, but if I was going to catch more wind, I needed to raise the rig.

November 2016

A Line in the Sand

Many of the coves along the northern British Columbia coast and the Alaskan panhandle were narrow, rocky, and steep-sided, so anchoring or dragging the boat ashore were out of the question. That’s when one of the variations on the Pythagorean mooring system that Hartmann describes, came in handy.

October 2016

Blind-splined mitered knees

I started building boats in 1978, and only once was I able to collect enough crooks for a boat, a New York Whitehall. Its breasthook is apple, the six thwart knees and the bookmatched pair of quarter knees are cherry, and the transom knee is Alaskan yellow cedar.

September 2016

Gimme Shelter

In 2004, my kids, then 14 and 11, and I decided a Caledonia yawl was the boat we needed for cruising. While I was building the hull I revised the plans to make the interior as comfortable as possible for them.

August 2016

A Little Big Horn

As I was working on our review of sound signaling devices in our August 2016 issue, I took a look on the web for homemade foghorns. I found quite a number of websites and videos that showed how to make foghorns and train horns out of common plastic pipe and fittings.

July 2016

The Inside Passage

When I read Quill Goodman’s account of his Race to Alaska in 2015, I was amazed at how difficult the conditions were. He, Dylan, and Mitch were always working against headwinds and often sitting out storms. I’ve been up the Inside Passage twice, and my two experiences were so different from each other and from Quill’s that you wouldn’t guess it was the same place.

June 2016

Air lift

I needed to pull the centerboard out of my Whitehall and make it a bit thinner so it would operate more smoothly. I wasn’t looking forward to dragging the boat off the trailer, setting it on the lawn, and rolling it on its side to get at the centerboard. That job really needs one person handling the boat and another managing the trailer.

May 2016

The Mast and the Music Stand

When I made the spars for my Caledonia yawl in 2005, I decided to lighten the largest of them by making them hollow and give the bird’s-mouth method a try. It was a lot of work milling eight staves for the two masts and the yard and the boom for the lug main spar, but I was pleased with the results. They were quite light, most notably the mainmast, which I had to lift high to slip though the foredeck—it was a cinch to step.

December 2015

Joshua Slocum

I trust Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World needs no introduction here. I have three copies of it: the paperback volume I read in seventh grade, my father’s 1950 hardback, and a 1905 edition I received as a gift from my friend Paul Thomas. Every time I pick up that oldest book, I think of the hands that opened the cover over a century ago to sign it.