Series

September 2017

Drake Raceboat

Easy speed under oars

The Raceboat is designed “for the greater speeds in race conditions,” but you don’t have to compete to appreciate the boat. It will give you an exhilarating workout and reward improvements in your stamina and technique.

September 2017

The Texas 200

A trial by water

A heavy lump had settled in my gut, and I wondered then if I might have misjudged myself and my boat. I tried to reassure myself that the forecast for the week was favorable, only fair and following winds at 10 to 15 knots. The lump wasn’t going anywhere, though, and I wondered if I should pull the boat out and drive home.

September 2017

Back-Country Baking

Let them eat cake

Fresh baked goods are a treat no matter where you find them, but especially appreciated at camp. We take a look at three ways to bake breads, rolls, and cookies with campfires and camp stoves.

September 2017

A Simple Tiller Tender

Hands-off sailing

It’s cheap, simple, and utterly reliable. It doesn’t need adjustment and there’s nothing to engage or disengage; you can steer the boat normally with the system in place, and whenever you need to let go of the tiller, it stays exactly where you positioned it.

September 2017

Pioneer Swag Tent

Back in the 1890 itinerant laborers in Australia carried their shelters and bedding in a roll called a swag. The Pioneer Swag Tent from Outback Swags is a modern version that combines a one-person canvas tent and a comfortable foam mattress.

September 2017

GYPSY SOUL

A Tennessee cruiser

Scotty Pugh of Sardis, Tennessee, grew up riding dirt bikes and later indulged his passion for motorcycles as he collected vintage Harley-Davidsons. But a ride gone wrong landed him a hospital trauma ward for a week and he was forced to consider something else to focus his interest upon. “Wooden boats,” he thought, “will keep me entertained.”

August 2017

PETIT BATEAU

A boat, boredom, a book, and a baby

With a grandchild on the way, Bruce Holaday built a Joel White-designed Shellback Dinghy. When the boat was finished and launched he was reluctant to leave the project behind so he wrote a book about a boy named Jack whose grandfather built a boat for him.

August 2017

Canned Heat with the Solo Stove

Solo Stove's Titan

People have been staring into the flickering flames since the dawn of humanity and even with all of the comforts we can now bring to our outdoor experiences, a campfire has a special soothing effect. Solo Stoves put campfires in a sophisticated can to prevent scarring the landscape, create heat for cooking from scraps of wood, and still provide a flame worth staring into.

August 2017

Truck-Bed Liner Paint as Interior Finish

A durable non-slip coating

Truck bed liner, when used as the interior finish of a small boat, won’t stop an errant, sharp knife point from puncturing it, but it will hold up to anchors and anchor chain, the bottoms of coolers transferred from a sandy beach, and gravel stuck on the bottom of rubber boots.

August 2017

Mizzen Staysails Add Power

Lovely, Useful Things for Light Wind Sailing

A mizzen staysail is a beautiful, effective, and easily managed addition to a yawl or ketch rig’s quiver. It isn’t meant to be deployed in close quarters or when short tacking, but on a long reach in light air, it is a lovely, useful thing.

August 2017

Drawn to the Islands

A voyage among the Southern Gulf Islands

Bruce Bateau, one of our regular contributors, usually cruises in the company of other small boats, but British Columbia’s Southern Gulf Islands inspired him to sail solo. “My travel would be limited only by the tides and winds and my goal was to shake myself free of electronic leashes, bolt from thoughts that tie my brain in knots, and find my freedom in the present moment.”

August 2017

Tango 13

A twin-tailed transom

The Tango Skiff has interesting hull extensions that create an attention-grabbing geometry aft of the transom. The additional running surface and buoyancy of the extensions appealed because of previous experience in small outboard-powered boats. When operated solo, many of them with a conventional transom will squat under the weight of the motor and the skipper and set the bow pointing skyward.

August 2017

Tenderly Dinghy

An able boat to row, tow, motor, and sail

When John Harris of Chesapeake Light Craft came to WoodenBoat School here in Brooklin to lead a six-day class in building his newly designed Tenderly Dinghy and brought two finished boats with him, there was an opportunity to see the progress on the student-built boats, and to take the finished ones for a spin in Great Cove.

July 2017

IRONBLOOD

Transforming the Traditional

After moving ashore from living aboard a schooner, and acquiring a wife and a small son, Michael Colfer of Bellingham, Washington, needed a smaller boat. He built a Nutshell pram and a Good Little Skiff, but then wanted a boat capable of taking on some more challenging weather in the more exposed areas around the San Juan Islands.

July 2017

Water-based Wood Dye

Rich Color to Dye For

The outboard runabout, WORK OF ART, often stops people in their tracks when they see the deck with its beautiful, natural-looking wood color with sparkling grain highlights. No one has guessed that the wood under the varnish has been dyed.

July 2017

Veritas Cabinet Scraper

Update to a classic

Woodworking raises a lot of dust. I have a collection system hooked up to the machines that create the most dust, but many times I can avoid creating so much dust in the first place by using a scraper instead of sandpaper. If the scraper blade is sharp and burnished to a curl, it will create crepe-like shavings and very little dust.

July 2017

Stay Afloat Leak Plug and Sealant

Quick cure for small leaks

Stay Afloat is soft, sticky wax-like material meant to fix small leaks of the sort I get with my older lapstrake boats. None of my boats has suffered enough damage to let water aboard, but that’s a possibility worth preparing for. To test the effectiveness of Stay Afloat I wasn’t about to poke holes in any of my boats, so I made a gizmo that could simulate leaks.

July 2017

Rowing the North Sea

Norway to Shetland by Faering

In the autumn of 2011 Erik Schouw-Hansen and I were discussing our next adventure. In 2010 we had sailed together to the Shetlands—Erik crewed aboard my 31′ sloop on the first leg of a voyage from Norway to the Caribbean and back. We were both born and raised on the west coast of Norway, so for our next trip it was natural to look westward across the North Sea to the Shetland Islands. We wanted to try something new and settled upon rowing a small, open boat across the North Sea the following summer. We set mid-June as our deadline to be ready for departure, and from that point we would wait for favorable weather conditions.

July 2017

Peeler Skiff

A lightweight fishing and utility skiff

The requirements were simple. The boat had to be light enough to tow behind a four-cylinder SUV, small enough to fit in a garage, and capable of getting two and gear the 50 miles from the south end of Lake Chelan to the north end and back again in the afternoon when the lake gets rough. Although there are many affordable aluminum and fiberglass boats that would serve the purpose, the boat had to be something distinctive.

July 2017

RoG

Microcruiser and Adventure Racer

RoG was designed, in some part, for the 300-mile Everglades Challenge, a Florida thin-water endurance voyage, but for less grueling adventures the RoG is a charming miniature cruiser. It is just 15′ 3-1/2″overall, yet it has a deep, comfortable, private cabin with built-in bookshelves forward, obviously designed for a contemplative sailor. The cabin has sitting headroom and offers a chart-sized nav/dining table that drops down to seat level to form two full-sized berths.

June 2017

Log-Milling Sled

Making a bandsaw a mini-sawmill

Windfalls and driftwood are often a source of woods better than any you can buy. A shop-built sled holds the irregular shapes of found wood securely on the bandsaw so you can more easily put it to good use.

June 2017

Newport Coastal Jacket and Pants

Rainwear from Helly Hansen

Good foul-weather gear can make the difference between cursing the weather and laughing at it. We take a look at a jacket-and-pants offering from Helly Hansen that works well for wet-weather rowing and sailing

June 2017

Penobscot 17

An Arch Davis cruiser for sail and oar

Arch Davis drew the Penobscot 17 with three rigs—gunter sloop, ketch, schooner—and we take a look at his sloop-rigged version. The plywood lapstrake cruiser sails and rows well and is well suited for meandering among small islands and along convoluted coasts.

June 2017

Four Oars and a Sail

A 2,000-mile river voyage through the American Heartland

A young couple with an abiding thirst for adventure built a cedar-strip version of a faering and traveled 2,000 miles under sail and oars from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. Their boat took a bit of a beating along the way and almost sank on the Mississippi River, but the partnership stayed afloat and the bonds between the two only grew stronger.

June 2017

A Bit of Venice on the Thames

An Englishman's S'ciopon

Richard Nissen lives in a houseboat on the Thames and has gathered a collection of small boats. After he visited Venice and learned how to row in the Venetian style, he decided he needed one more, and built a s’ciopon, a small traditional workboat that he could row standing up.