The Skipper and I launch our small sail-and-oar boats from our beach and dock; coming and going we have to negotiate several obstacles. With the boathook we may pole off the beach, fend off from our beach groins, or push off the dock. We’ll also paddle to and from the dock and in and out of the wind shadow created by the shoreside trees. We like to carry as little gear as possible when sailing, so we created a combination paddle and boathook, which we call a “padook.”
When Kyle and I decided to build our own boat to take on a trip down the Mississippi River, we decided to make, rather than buy, as many of the bits and pieces as possible to save money and make the build and journey on the boat even more meaningful. We needed five blocks for SØLVI’s sailing rig and looked to see what was available on the market. Traditional bronze blocks were beautiful but heavy and expensive. High-tech blocks for dinghy racing, made of stainless steel and fiber-reinforced plastic, were light and smooth-running, but expensive and not in keeping with the classic look we wanted. Our research led us to L. Francis Herreshoff’s Common Sense of Yacht Design, where we found drawings of blocks that we could adapt to meet our requirements.
If you find oars unruly subjects for varnishing, you can get them to behave themselves, as Ben Fuller of Cushing, Maine, does by cantilevering them on a pair of sawhorses. With the leathers resting on one, and the handles tucked under the other—weighted if necessary—nothing is in contact with the areas you’ll varnish. Spring clamps either side of the leathers keep the looms from rolling while you’re varnishing one side and allow you to turn the oar over to brush the other.
e once decided to put a skull and crossbones on a black lateen sail for a Sunfish and, rather than take on the very awkward task running it through the sewing machine, we used adhesive-backed insignia sailcloth. The material was easy to use, and it has held up well in the marine environment and harsh . . .
Many small skiffs would benefit from an extended waterline and increased planing surface. My own 14′ 9″ (4.5m) outboard skiff has deep V-hull shape that makes the ride more comfortable at high speeds in sharp chop, but the hull still weaves from side to side, drags a big wake at in low speeds, and requires a lot of power to get on plane. My boat also has a tendency to hobby-horse at high speeds; while I can stop this by trimming the motor to force the bow down, the remedy reduces top speed and fuel economy.
Imprinted on every tire is a lot of useful information on its size, type, load range, pressure, and date of manufacture. All trailer tires are marked with ST—Special Trailer— and they are not at all like vehicle tires. Trailer tires have strengthened sidewalls that keep the trailer from swaying in turns and allow them to carry the often very heavy combined weight of trailer and its load.
One shot offered a glimpse of what appears to be the leg of a second stand. I guessed that was supporting the oar handle. The oar blade was cantilevered beyond the support, but it stayed put even with Len planing as vigorously, so something had to be holding the loom down. In another shot, Len did his “nervous tic” twice and both times the loom of the oar come to an abrupt stop in the same place, confirming that there was something fixed over the loom. Len had to give a noticeable tug to get the throat back on the stand, so putting a slight bend in the oar was what held it in position. Brilliant.
The traditional approach has been to cover the blade tips with sheet copper. The copper guards look good, take wear well, and make a good do-it-yourself project. I always put copper guards on my spoon-bladed oars. The tips are thin and have cross grain that makes them more fragile than straight-bladed oars; fortunately, the tips are straight across and easy to wrap with copper.
Some of the woodworking tasks we take on in boatbuilding have a lot in common with sculpture, as we carve our way from a block to a purposeful shape. When I started making spoon-bladed oars I used gouges, curved spokeshaves, and my father’s Stanley 100-1/2, a small spoon bottom plane. I later turned to a Makita 125mm disc sander as a quicker way to work concave shapes. It spun at a screaming 4,500 rpm and used stiff resin-fiber discs that cut aggressively. It could shape the power face of a spoon blade when the edge of the disc was set at an appropriate angle to the wood. It made for quick work, albeit dusty and noisy, but the discs didn’t last long and tended to scorch the wood when their grit dulled.
In the eyes of our traditionally minded peers on Maryland’s Eastern Shore my wife Jenny and I tread dangerously close to the gates of hell by sailing a fiberglass boat. Our redemption comes by way of the plywood lapstrake tender we built for it. I had installed a robust length of line along the outwale to provide a nice cushion to protect the mothership, but we needed something more to protect our tender from the dinghy dock and the loitering tenders-of-others.
