Reader Built Boats Articles - Page 4 of 5

The yawl rig has advantages beyond those for sailing. The two masts support a fly that can be set open for shade and a cooling breeze, or...

February 2017

FIRE-DRAKE

A sail-and-oar cruiser

When Alex Zimmerman decided to build a camp-cruising boat for himself, he applied his mechanical engineering training to use and started by crunching numbers. What he ended up with, FIRE-DRAKE, is a lapstrake boat that is as much a work of art as of science.

January 2017

EMZARA

A Jericho Bay Lobster Skiff

John Adamson visited the WoodenBoat campus in the fall of 2009 and was taken by two Jericho Bay Lobster Skiffs: the original plank-on-frame version built by Jimmy Steele in the early 1970s, sitting on a trailer parked in front of the WoodenBoat Store, and a strip-planked version built by Tom Hill, at anchor near the WoodenBoat boathouse. A few years later he built one for himself.

The post at the stern supports two mirrors; the larger one at top provides a good view forward, and the wide-angle mirror below it takes in a broader view. Mirrors are common fixtures on rowing boats used in races in Finland.

December 2016

SULKAVA

A kit-built Savo 650

Tim Murfitt of Norwich, England, has been puttering with small boats, mostly power boats, for more than 40 years and grew weary of their speed and noise. He thought taking to the water with a pair of oars would be a good change of direction for his boating, and although his only experience with rowing was on dry ground with a rowing machine, he felt confident that he’d enjoy rowing. He wasn’t so sure that his wife would.

After launching JANET MARIA it was't lnog before Haynes was back in his garage workshop. He's now building a Mertens-designed 10' pram.

November 2016

All in the Family

A grandfather's Pilot 19

Joe Haynes grew up in Detroit with three brothers and two sisters. Their father, once a tight end for the University of Michigan football team and later an Army sergeant who stormed beaches in the Pacific during World War II, was a very athletic man, but in spite of his best efforts to get his kids involved in sports, none of them showed any interest. The family moved to Algonac, a small town tucked in a bend of the St. Clair River, which flows from Lake Huron to Lake Erie and separates the state of Michigan from the province of Ontario. Surrounded by water, the kids gravitated to boats. The first boat in the family was a derelict wooden boat Joe and his twin brother fished out of the river near their home. They patched the leaks with tar and used the boat to explore the river upstream and down.

Students from the Andrea McCoy Recreation Center constructed the aptly named ANDREA McCOY. McCoy. a New Bedford resident, was among the talented young USA boxers killed in a 1980 plane crash in Poland.

October 2016

Bevin’s Skiffs

Building more than boats

Kids at the Community Boating Center of New Bedford, Massachusetts, built three Bevin's skiffs as part of a program to teach valuable skills through boatbuilding.

Nate was used to sailing a sloop and found that the trimming of the sails on the schooner had more impact on steering than speed.

September 2016

BOB

A Boat on a Budget

Nate Morrison’s Shell Schooner 18, christened BOB for Boat On a Budget, proves that limited skills, limited tools, and unlimited dreams can get you afloat even where water is scarce.

Dave made paddles for the canoe and decorated them with the same insignia he put on the canoe. He and his friend Andy Look won the wooden canoe division of the 13.5-mile Abe's RIver Race on the Sangamon River in Illinois

August 2016

Hope and Memories

A canoe to live for

An Illinois man given a second chance at life decided to recreate some of the best times of his youth by building a canoe. Working side-by-side with his 82-year-old father, he created a vessel for the future he almost lost.

The Candlefish has comfortable seating for the family and plenty of freeboard.

July 2016

LADY LOUISE

A Candlefish 13

Small Boats Monthly reader Scott Rowley read about the Candlefish outboard skiff in our April 2015 issue and decided it not only would be a good tender for his sailboat, but also better suited than his car for taking his family of four, not to mention the dachshund, out to dinner and visiting friends near his South Puget Sound peninsula home.

June 2016

ELLANDELL

After his kids were grown, Elliot Arons had plenty of free time but spent a lot of it planted in front of the TV. A dream of building a sailboat and a Penobscot 17 kit from Arch Davis got him off the couch.

When Sean's friend Robert saw the lines for the little double ender, he said: "We have to build that!" And together they did.

May 2016

SWEET PEA

An idea takes shape

Reader Sean Russel has been designing boats for a long time, at first drawing by hand and then using computer programs. Our Reader Built Boat is SWEET PEA, a peapod-like boat he designed and built to fit in his van.

“That boat is so damned beautiful, it’s making the rest of us look bad.”

April 2016

MOJO

A PT Skiff kit

After 8 months abuilding, a Port Townsend outboard skiff built from a kit as a post-retirement project handles all the conditions she has encountered like she’s been there before.

March 2016

ERGED ON II

A retired electrical engineer combines modern lithium batteries with a 90-year-old runabout design and becomes an electric-boat race champion.

The skiff's concave run is as effective as trim tabs in keeping the bow down at speed.

February 2016

A Lapstrake Jericho Bay Lobster Skiff

Designed for Maine, Built for North Carolina

True to the shape of the original carvel-planked hull, this lapstrake version has an intentionally hogged bottom to get it up on plane quickly and keep the bow down.

January 2016

A Dragonfly Rowing Shell

Speed with a dash of stability

This Steve Killing-designed shell was built by an Arkansas retiree with an interest in learning to row and the patience to plane rolling bevels on every 23’-long strip.

December 2015

From Aerodynamics to Aesthetics

Building Soap Box Derby Racers and Stand Up Paddleboards

A serial stand-up-paddleboard maker got his start doing strip-built construction in an unlikely place—soap-box derby cars—and three decades later shifted his focus to artistic expression in wood.

The deck is strip-built, alternating western red cedar with white pine; the trim is walnut.

November 2015

A Diminutive Fantail Launch

A kayak fisherman's fantasy

Sandy MacKenzie enjoys fishing from kayaks, but putting his fishing rod down to pick up the paddle began to wear on him. He scouted about, without success, for plans for a canoe or a kayak with pedal or electric power that would leave his hands free for fishing. He had built a few kayaks and felt confident in his boatbuilding abilities, so he decided to take a chance on coming up with a design himself, something quite different from anything he’d seen.

The 6mm Vendia planking has four of its five veneers running lengthwise; it easily twisted to meet the stems.

October 2015

WENDY

A Gartside rowing skiff made of an unusual wood

The laminated planking from Finland seemed like the future of lapstrake boatbuilding, but it may have been an idea whose time has not yet come.

September 2015

SAOIRSE

A sharpie skiff

A Reuel Parker sharpie skiff was the realization of a New York boy’s dream to have a boat of his own. For a half century the dream was only a dream, but when a pile of lumber was delivered to his Florida home, it was finally time to do something about it.

August 2015

GOOD’NUFF

A customized Caledonia yawl

Five years in the making, it was part of a Wisconsin man’s 10-year plan to prepare himself for retirement, but before he could get started on the yawl he had to build a bigger garage.

July 2015

PILGRIM

A Karl Stambaugh Redwing 18

Every time she goes out on the water, PILGRIM draws compliments, and equally often the builder's wife says to him, “This is the best thing you have ever built.”

June 2015

A Prospector Ranger 15

A classic Canadian frontier canoe

Undeterred by a lack of experience, difficulty of procuring materials, the cost of the project, and not knowing where or how he would use a canoe, Andy Saunders bought plans and plunged in.

May 2015

DOCKHOUSE QUEEN

A 16’ Electric Mini-Tug

Terry Everman grew up in a Columbia River tugboat family, and after a 30-year career in the shipbuilding industry, he built a tug for himself. It wasn’t big, like the tugs that he’d seen as a boy, but it was the biggest tug he could build in a one-car garage.

April 2015

MA CHERIE, a François Vivier Ebihen 16

Plywood, epoxy, and life lessons

Wind & Oar Boat School is a Portland, Oregon, nonprofit that teaches boatbuilding not only for its own sake, but also to give meaning to math, science, design, and practical problem solving. As part of a workplace readiness program in the summer of 2013, students were tasked with building François Vivier’s Ebihen 16.

Shair Rutz and her granddaughter take a maiden voyage on the Ompompanoosuc River near Norwich, Vermont.

March 2015

PEARL, an Iain Oughtred Wee Rob

A bit of keeping up with the Joneses led Lorenz Rutz to build PEARL, a 12’ Wee Rob canoe designed by Iain Oughtred. His wife Shari enjoyed kayaking but struggled with her 60-lb plastic kayak. Lorenz would help her load the boat on their truck’s canopy roof rack, but she would return with it slid in on the truck bed.

With her centerboard retracted, WHIO can anchor safely in waist-deep water.

February 2015

WHIO, a Welsford pocket cruiser

Ralf Schlothauer first tried to build a boat when he was 6 years old. He scavenged bits of plywood and lumber from the neighborhood and then enlisted the help of his sandbox playmates. The result was not a boat but a collection of even smaller bits of plywood and lumber.