family boatbuilding Archives - Small Boats Magazine

You wouldn’t know from its good looks, but the Salt Bay Skiff is a quick-and-dirty boat to build. I discovered the skiff through the Willamette Sailing Club (WSC) in Portland, Oregon, where RiversWest Small Craft Center hosts an annual family boat-build on a summer weekend. For the past ten years, each participating family builds their own Salt Bay Skiff. Chuck Stuckey, one of the founding members of event, said, “We picked it because we believe it to be a real boat, not a 12′ toy.”

In 2017, my brother and I, with two of our friends, joined in the largest group to date, with 16 families packed into the club’s modest boat-parking lot. We started on a Saturday morning and the next afternoon rowed the unpainted hull across the Willamette River. With four adults aboard, it rode pretty low in the water but it did not swamp. With a rated capacity of 300 lbs for passengers and gear, the 500-or-so lbs we had aboard was, admittedly, pushing it.

Photographs and video by Jay Hideki Horita of Outdoor Asian

On the starboard side, amidships, you can see the tongue that holds the leeboard in place. The chine logs, on the outside of the hull, simplify and speed construction.

Designer Chris Franklin set out with the intention to create a simple, sturdy boat. It was introduced in Getting Started in Boats, Volumes 7 and 8, supplements to issues of WoodenBoat in the winter of 2007-08. These issues were specifically geared toward building boats with kids. Thanks to the simple design and ease of construction, there is plenty of flexibility for personal modifications. Most Salt Bay skiffs are built as rowboats, but some build them as driftboats by omitting the keel and skeg. The skiffs can be sailed, and the plans include dimensions and drawings for adding a leeboard, a rudder, a gunter rig with boom, and jib. Some builders have rigged the boat with the gunter without the boom, or without the jib, or with a lug sail instead of a gunter.

I decided on a sprit rig, for greater sail area aloft for the 9′4″ mast height, and included a boom for better downwind performance. I wanted a camp cruiser that I could sleep in, so I stayed with the leeboard to preserve cockpit space that would be taken up if I opted to install a daggerboard trunk. With a 12′ overall length and a 4′ beam, there’s not much extra room. A sprit rig and a leeboard may not be best for sailing upwind, but if I ever needed to travel against the breeze I figured I would simply strike sail, pull the board, and row.

The boat requires two 4′ by 8′ sheets of marine plywood: one 1/4″ sheet for the sides, and one 3/8” sheet for the bottom. A half sheet of 3/4″ plywood provides the transom, rudder and leeboard. Add to that a few boards of pine for the seats, quarter knees, breasthook, keel, and frames, and some strips for the gunnels, chine, and stem, and all that’s left to buy are glue, screws, and paint. At the family boatbuilding event, we used marine-grade polyurethane glue in place of the epoxy recommended in the instructions, as the two-day event couldn’t afford the time it takes epoxy to cure.

The volunteers who prepare the kits each year spend about two months of weekends and evenings for 12 to 16 boats, giving builders at the weekend event a head start. If you begin with nothing but a pile of wood and a bucket of screws, getting to a finished, painted boat rigged for sail can easily be done in the span of a summer.

The author’s sprit rig is a departure from the gunter rig in the plans.

The sail is where I diverged most from the original Salt Bay plans. Drawing upon the information in David Nichols’ book, The Working Guide to Traditional Small-Boat Sails, I determined the dimensions of the spritsail that would best fit my boat and my weight: 6′8″ luff, 7′7″ foot, 9′5″ leech, and 4′2″ head. I aimed to keep the mast height low to preserve stability by reducing weight aloft, and that led to the short luff. The boom could also only be so long before it extended beyond the transom, resulting in a shorter foot. Even with these limitations, the spritsail carried more area than the gunter main, while still meeting the constraints of the spars. The longer leech and head make up for the shorter luff and foot. The Salt Bay Skiff works with a variety of sails in the range of 30 to 50 square feet. My sail is 44 square feet.

I made the spars from spare lumber I scavenged from the RiversWest shop—primarily cedar, Douglas fir, and white oak. Though I made the spars lighter than the ones in the plans, they have held up to 15-knot breezes well enough in my opinion, and suggest the originals are more than stout enough.

The instructions don’t mention what material to use for the sails. The low-budget option is to make one from polytarp or Tyvek house wrap, and I considered this at first, but decided against it because the sails I had seen made with these materials appeared to stretch too easily. Luckily, another builder in the shared RiversWest workshop had an old genoa, and I reused its fabric for my own sail. The Dacron sailcloth was a little wrinkled, but to me looked much nicer than tarp or Tyvek.

The plans specify an one-piece plywood rudder. The author made his rudder with a kick-up blade for sailing shallow waters.

The only changes I made to the leeboard were for aesthetics rather than improved performance. I made the rudder with a pivoting blade, rather than fixed, to make for easier beaching, and added an extension to the tiller. The rudder is a bit large for this size of boat, but that is useful when navigating at low speeds, not to mention sculling through lulls by wigwagging the tiller. A leather guard across the transom is important to protect both the tiller and the transom from abrading each other. The leeboard is symmetrical around its vertical axis and can be mounted on either side of the boat, and switched at any time. The tongue that slips inside of the gunwale fits nicely between the mid-frame and aft oarlock mounts.

The designer recommends 7′ spruce oars for rowing and a pair of 5′ oars as auxiliary power when sailing. The shorter oars will take up less room in the cockpit when under sail.

For a boat that you can practically make with spare change and scrap lumber, the Salt Bay holds its own on the water. No one would expect it to break speed records, or to endure the ravages of estuary bars and whitewater rapids, but for having fun with friends or kids on a calm summer’s afternoon it does quite nicely. I found on my 100-mile voyage on the Columbia River that it can also serve as a cozy camp cruiser for protected waters.

For voyaging, the boat is really best suited for one adult. When messing about and traveling short distances, two adults or an adult and two kids is a comfortable occupancy.

The skiff has great secondary stability. When sailing, I have sometimes heeled the boat until the gunwale is inches from the water. This has also proved useful when I want to pool water along the chine for bailing. My friend John modified a Salt Bay by installing airtight tanks along the sides to provide flotation in the event of a capsize or swamping. Closed-cell foam blocks, tied down between the frames or under the thwarts would also keep the boat afloat.

Chances are, if someone is in a Salt Bay, it’s not going to be for clocking speed. Indeed, I haven’t myself. I’d estimate I row it at a steady 2-knot pace, with sprints just over 3 knots. Sailing downwind in a good breeze is the fastest way to go, topping out between 4 and 5 knots. What really matters is that it moves fast enough to feel like I can get somewhere.

The cost for my boat, including the sail, rigging, trailer, and cover, came in at just over $1,000. Keep in mind that much of it was bought secondhand or salvaged. For one who wants only to build the boat and has no need for a trailer or cover, the cost would certainly come in under $500.

The Salt Bay Skiff was easy to build, inexpensive, and car-toppable, but is also pleasing to the eye, and impressively functional. Taken in the context of the boating world at large, it’s a humble boat. But for those who own one, it often represents a first step into boatbuilding and boating. I could not think of a better companion for such a milestone.

Torin Lee lives in Portland, Oregon, and wears a few hats at a local solar installation company. On summer weekends he teaches at the Willamette Sailing Club. He learned to sail in college, racing Flying Junior dinghies. He still enjoys racing with the club fleets, and got the boatbuilding bug from the folks at Portland’s RiversWest Small Craft Center.

Salt Bay Skiff Particulars

[table]

Length/12′1″

Beam/4′4″

Sail area, main/38 sq ft

Sail area, jib/13 sq ft

Weight/ under 100 lbs

[/table]

The full-sized printed plans mentioned in the articles are available for $50 from designer Chris Franklin at [email protected]. Plans and instructions for the Salt Bay Skiff are available as digital downloads of Getting Started #7 and Getting Started #8, available from The WoodenBoat Store for $1.95 each.

Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats Magazine readers would enjoy? Please email us!

Boatbuilding is in Nick Blake’s blood. He’s the fifth generation of Blakes to build at least one boat since the Blakes settled in Mississippi in the 1830s. Not long after he launched his 16′ Whitehall, CURLEW, he began mulling over building another boat. He and an old high-school friend had chartered a boat to go fishing off the Gulf Coast. The trip rekindled his interest in fishing—in his teen years he’d fished the Florida coast in OTTER, a 16′ flatiron skiff that he and his father, Daniel, had built from pine boards. It was powered by a 5-hp Johnson outboard, which provided enough speed to get to and from the fishing ground faster and more reliably than sailing or rowing could. CURLEW wasn’t well suited to outboard power, so a new boat was in order.

The bottom was planked foe-and-aft with seams backed up by battens.

Nick set his sights on a larger version of OTTER, long and slender, easily driven, capable of cruising at 10 knots while carrying 600 lbs. He enlisted his father, who had many more boats to his credit, to help design HERON, as the new boat would be called. The two spent the summer of 2017 studying flat-bottomed skiff designs for inspiration and borrowed elements from Pete Culler’s Long John and William Atkin’s Ration and XLNC. With the shape they wanted in mind, Nick and Daniel got to work, starting with a quarter-scale lofting of what would be a 20′6″ skiff.

HERON was built upside down, but instead of building the hull around molds supported on a ladder frame, the Blakes made the permanent frames long and fastened their ends to the shop floor. All of the lumber for the boat came from trees grown on their land and was sawn into flitches with their bandsaw mill. Most of the boat was sassafras; the shoe protecting the bottom was done with locust for its durability, and the stem and trim were walnut for its rich color.

Patrick and Andrew take a critical look at the work done by their elders.

The sides were done in lapstrake on jogged frames. The bottom was planked fore-and-aft with batten seams, as Atkin had indicated for his Ration. Nick and Daniel had done plywood and cross-planked bottoms with previous boats, and Nick remembered that OTTER, with her cross-planked bottom, leaked after spending time out of the water and he had to soak the boat for a few hours to get the seams closed up before launching. Plywood bottoms, of course, eliminated the seams, but would be best protected by fiberglass and epoxy, materials Nick preferred to avoid. The batten-seam construction promised a watertight, traditional hull.

Nick and Daniel install trim as the boat nears completion in the shop that father and son share.

Nick also remembered that OTTER was never in good trim when he took her out alone. Without a passenger in the bow to counter his weight and that of the motor in its narrow stern, the boat would squat and lift the bow out of the water. A wider transom would have helped, but “fat transoms,” Nick says, “are a curse of outboard motorboats, and their owners for that matter.” HERON was built with a well to bring the motor’s weight forward. To use a narrow stern and keep the buoyancy surrounding the motor as high as possible, Nick built the slot aft of the well quite narrow, wide enough for the motor’s lower unit to kick up, but too slim to allow steering with the motor. A rudder built into the aft end of the well would take care of the steering. The rudderpost runs inside the transom and is capped with a quadrant that takes the steering lines.

The longer lever is the whipstaff for steering; the shorter one is the throttle. Coming up through the thwart is a knob for the shifter. The arrangement takes up much less space than a wheel mounted on a console.

Placing the helm at the center thwart moved the pilot’s weight forward, a second measure to keep the boat in trim. The steering lines from the rudder are connected to a whipstaff, a similar smaller lever controls the throttle, and a knob set in the thwart controls the shifter.

The rudder occupies the aft end of the motor well. This particular iteration didn't work as expected. The sixth iteration did.

Nick and the boys get HERON up and running on the oxbow lake near their home.

All of the Blake-built boats get their first trials on a small oxbow lake near the family home. During HERON’s first outing, it quickly became clear that the rudder wasn’t up to the demands of the boat. The hard chines at the stern and the immersed edges in the motor-well were great for tracking, but they resisted turning. Nick tried a half dozen different rudder blades, varying both size and shape. The ones that worked best were the ones that extended the deepest, but that made them vulnerable to submerged objects. The solution was to make a long blade that could pivot over obstructions. The first one he tried had a lead weight to keep it extended, but when HERON was at speed, it would swing to horizontal and lose its grip on the water. The second relied on friction to hold it down. Two lock washers created enough spring-like compression on the blade to hold it down, even at speed, but allowed the blade to pivot. Soon after he equipped HERON with this version, Nick ran the boat over a submerged log, and both motor and rudder kicked up, neither damaged.

Hand on the whipstaff, Nick takes HERON out for a solo trial.

On a later outing, Nick, his wife, and sons Andrew and Patrick took HERON out on a backwater slough. All was going well as the boat motored along until fish started jumping around them. Two 10-lb grass carp leaped up out of the water and landed in the boat. Flopping wildly, they splattered mud, scales, and blood everywhere. Andrew, the younger son, wasn’t at all happy to have the uninvited guests aboard.

HERON kept busy with family and friends on a vacation stay on the shores of an Arkansas lake.

Nick, his wife, and their two sons took a vacation and trailered HERON to Greer’s Ferry Lake in Arkansas. Nick took the boat out for several trials: outings with his family and fishing trips with friends. When he was the only person aboard, HERON did almost 14 knots; with three adults aboard with fishing and picnic gear, she cruised at about 11 knots. At times, the wind kicked up a bit of a chop, but HERON’s narrow bottom didn’t pound against the waves. At the end of the vacation she had logged 5 hours of running time and had sipped only 3 gallons of fuel. She was, Nick concluded, “well behaved, made decent speed and was stable and burdensome—a worthy successor to OTTER.” And Andrew is happy to get aboard HERON as long as there are no carp.

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Article Tag: family boatbuilding

Salt Bay Skiff

Salt Bay Skiff Particulars

Flat-Bottomed Skiff HERON