sailing Archives - Small Boats Magazine

Sailing to Denton

It was a Thursday in mid-June when Eric Vance and I brought our Chesapeake Light Craft Autumn Leaves solo cruisers to Cambridge, Maryland, at the mouth of the Choptank River. Our goal was simple: sail from the mouth of one of the bay’s many tributaries up to the farm town at the head of navigation. The weather here in the Chesapeake Bay area can be expected to take a turn to a calm, even sultry mood, and we expected to have leisurely sailing.

Sailing to the towns well upstream on the Bay’s tributaries was once routine. Travel up any of the many rivers that empty into the Chesapeake as far as a cargo schooner can go, and you’ll find a town. And in each of these towns, there are stories of the days when the schooners would sail in frequently, bringing goods from Baltimore and picking up wood, grains, tobacco, and other farm products to be hauled back over these myriad watery roads to the city. But what would it be like to do a motorless cruise up one of these rivers today? Eric and I wanted to find out.

Our boats seemed suitable—shoal draft, nimble under sail, and easy enough to row, while having comfortable accommodations for overnighting. Eric’s boat, INDIGO, had no motor, so he was fully committed to oar and sail. Mine, TERRAPIN, has an electric trolling motor on a bracket, but I was determined not to use it.

At the Choptank’s mouth: Cambridge, seat of Dorchester County and historically one of the principal ports and boatbuilding centers on the Chesapeake. Upriver, at the head of navigation: Denton, seat of Caroline County and through the 19^th century a major export point for lumber and farm produce. With 35 winding miles of river between the two ports, it promised to be an interesting challenge for a four-day weekend.

At the ramp on Cambridge’s Eaton Point, where we were preparing the boats to launch, the wind was brisk and out of the south—a wind advisory had already been broadcast. While TERRAPIN was still on her trailer, I tied the second reef in her 150-sq-ft balanced lugsail. Eric was ahead of me, having already put the second reef in his 114-sq-ft jib-headed main.

Once we got under way, we scudded to the northeast on a reach and passed under the 1-1/2-mile expanse of the Route 50 bridge, a gently arching ribbon of concrete girders resting on countless cylindrical piers, and 50 yards farther on, through the gap in the old Harrington Bridge, now a pair of fishing piers. A chop was just developing mid-river. The starboard bow caught the bigger waves, tossing spray into the air, and once or twice, the cool water found my face. It was exhilarating. Less than 2 miles beyond the bridge, we veered north and with the wind now at our backs, everything quieted down. The boats’ motion eased. The weight in the helm, the solid chunk and thump of the wooden hull slashing across the chop, and the strain in the rigging all melted away as we eased the sheets to follow the river through its left-hand sweep. We passed large homes with expansive, immaculate lawns spread along the riverbanks. Signs of the city and highway rumble dropped away.

A few miles on, beyond the outskirts of Cambridge, the estates disappeared and the houses looked like they had been here for quite some years. The river was bounded almost entirely by marsh and woodland; breaks in the trees revealed farm fields beyond the banks. This time of year, the winter wheat is tall and ready for harvest; the corn is just getting a foothold across this low-lying, verdant landscape. In this low country, the subtle irregularities in the horizontal landscape give way to an immense arching, hazy blue sky.

The tide was with us. Our narrow yawls held between 5 and 6 knots hour after hour, churning up fine, frothy bow waves and leaving easy, flat wakes behind their double-ended hulls. As we carved our way up the river, it narrowed, and the nascent chop of the open stretches was left behind. Now, just smooth, easy speed as we slid past the bright green of the saltmarsh cordgrass backed by the mottled and darker greens of the scalloped treeline. The Chesapeake water is usually the color of lightly creamed coffee, but as the day progressed, the sunlight played games over the river—a soft tan coloring the corrugated surface one moment, reflecting the blinding, unfocused glare of an old mirror the next.

A thin cloudbank slid in from the southwest, turning the sun into an orange smudge, softening the riverscape’s textures and muting its tones.

We were making good speed but were in no hurry. When we reached Choptank Landing, we swung east into the mouth of Hunting Creek and nestled into a small cove next to the low bridge that leads into the village of Choptank. The north-facing cove shielded us from the bluster out on the river, and we were well situated for a relaxing evening. A turtle, likely a terrapin, poked its thumb-sized head above the water for a moment. Schools of finger-sized fish churned the surface—first off the bow, then to port, and again by Eric’s boat. To the east, a mourning dove endlessly cooed its low, sad five-note tune. On the opposite bank, a Carolina wren sang its lively soprano trill.

Friday morning, we rowed over to Choptank’s marina, a modest 70-slip harbor protected by wooden bulkheads. There once was a wharf here, one of many built along the length of the river. The banks of the Choptank are by-and-large low and muddy, often banded by marsh that could not be traversed by horse or cart, so where there was a stretch of solid bank next to deep water, as there is at Choptank, schooners of the 18^th and 19^th centuries could deliver and load goods.

We tied up and took the opportunity to stretch our legs. A few kids were swimming at the tiny crescent beach next to the marina, but otherwise it was quiet. It was approaching mid-morning and the wind was building out of the west. TERRAPIN, like INDIGO, is well-ballasted and displaces about a ton, but when I stand to row, I can put all my weight into the stroke and get the boat moving. With some effort, we rowed free of the marina and got our boats into deeper water, clear of obstructions. With mizzens set taut to hold our small yawls head-to-wind, we raised sail and were soon able to bear off, under sail once again. Below a blue sky becoming washed by a developing summer haze, the wind was nonetheless brisk, offering relief to temperatures already in the high 80s. We wore light, long-sleeved shirts and wide-brimmed hats. Eric pulled an orange and black bandanna up over his nose. The glare of the sunlight glancing off the river surface was blinding. But the sailing? In this wide, open stretch of the Choptank, the drive was solid and steady; our boats dug in and took off with vigor.

As we approached Frazier Point, the tide was beginning to ebb and we were forced to cover a short leg straight into the wind–a wind that had now become unsure about its speed and direction. Our two Autumn Leaves are rigged differently but sail almost exactly the same. TERRAPIN, with her big standing lug main, shows some advantage downwind.

INDIGO’s jib-headed yawl rig gives her an edge into the wind. But when we attacked the 100-degree bend around Frazier Point, working to clear the point and fall off onto an easy reach, Eric edged well ahead of me, putting more than a quarter mile between us. (That evening, I learned that Eric, a whitewater canoeist well versed in reading currents, had spotted a broad, gentle eddy circling behind Frazier Point, slipped into it, and let it pull his boat halfway around the bend.)

As we headed north, the cordgrass gradually gave way to marshlands with a mix of reeds that thrive in the brackish upstream environment of estuaries. Up ahead, two watermen in an outboard skiff were working a line of crab pots. Their voices and the putter of the motor broke the stillness of the day. We had seen very few boats on the river, which was not my experience in other parts of the Chesapeake. As we followed the river around another bend, the wind jibed the main to port, but left the mizzen out to starboard. I was sailing wing on wing. The Chesapeake schooner captains sometimes called this “reading both pages.”

It was early afternoon and we had reached the bend around Hog Island, a low marshy headland on the inside of a long, quarter-mile curve in the river. On the outside of the bend, the river has carved itself into a high bluff topped with a line of trees. The tide was now driving against us with authority: our tacking angles felt good, but we were barely advancing against the building current. A red buoy marking the starboard turn in the channel teased us–it refused to get closer despite our best efforts to advance on it. I hailed Eric on the VHF and suggested nosing into the steep left bank to escape the wind and take a lunch break. He was quick to agree. Once his hook was set, I dropped sail and rowed over to tie up alongside. As we lunched, a bald eagle glided by. The heat built to 90, then 94. Cumulus clouds formed overhead but offered scant shade. We sweated it out, waiting for the current to abate.

At 3:30, we decided to get going. Eric commented, “At least it’s not so hot.” I checked my thermometer. “No, still 94. You’re just getting used to it.” The wind was building back to the unvarying forecast: northwest, 15 knots with gusts over 20. We still had the double reefs we’d tied in at the ramp, and we’d leave them in.

Once we cleared the bend around Hog Island, the banks opened up and a tailwind, channeled by the local geography, found its way down to the water. TERRAPIN and INDIGO took off. I was initially ahead, and looked back to see INDIGO throwing up a thick and frothy bow wave, a big wide mustache of water breaking across the river. She heeled to the breeze, her three sails taut and trimmed to perfection.

The breeze freshened further. We were sailing our little cruisers like racing dinghies, sheet in one hand, tiller in the other, working constantly to get all we could from our boats and trading the lead frequently. Where the river turned into the wind, we tacked carefully, playing the puffs for boat speed. Where a wall of trees all but shut down the breeze, the treetops continued to bow, rustle, and swish to the wind, but down on the water it was touch and go for us to maintain momentum.

Another bend and the Dover bridge came into sight at the far end of a widening expanse of the Choptank. It’s a new steel and concrete girder bridge that rises 50′ over the river. Just a few yards upriver, the old steel-truss bridge that it has replaced remains, freshly painted a bright blue, its swing span left open. We slid under the new bridge and then between the bulkheads of the old one.

Eric was a few hundred yards ahead of me when I felt a few drops of rain on my back. Seconds later, Eric was on the radio. “Weather alert. Thunderstorm warning and risk of 35-knot winds.” This, on a day with no mention of rain in the forecast. I checked the chart. There was a 100-yard-wide cove, the entrance to Mitchell Run, just ahead on the river’s left bank. A shallow bar guards the entrance, but it was the only shelter available. I hailed Eric on the radio and told him where to look for it. “I think I see it,” he called back.

INDIGO hit the bar first, slid to a stop, but then shifted forward and worked herself free—Eric would reach shelter in time. I tried closing with the shoreline farther downstream, hoping the bar would be deeper there, but it was not.

TERRAPIN’s bilgeboards kicked up when they contacted the bottom and she stalled out. I dropped the sails, raised the boards fully into their cases, and shipped the oars. Over my shoulder, I could see a tall, thick gray mass of cloud flashing with lightning approaching from the southwest. I pulled hard on the oars. At first, there was little response, but then TERRAPIN began to edge forward. A few more strokes and I was free.

With the wind behind me, it took little time to row into the cove and get the anchor down. The water was shallow and surprisingly clear; I could see the anchor hit the bottom. We were secure close behind a line of trees and as ready as possible for the onslaught.

The thundercloud approached, boomed, cracked, and flashed. Sharp bolts of lightning broke the increasing gloom as the heavy cloud eclipsed the sun. But the storm’s track took it just south of our little haven. I breathed a sigh of relief. Not long after, to the east, the thundercloud, as white as whipped cream, was brightly illuminated by the sun descending to the west.

By 6:30 p.m. the wind had all but died. Even so, forecasts for gusty northwesterlies would persist through the night and the next day. Should the wind return, we could become pinned in Mitchell Run. Eric and I rowed back into the Choptank and found the breeze slackening and the upstream current building. We saw our chance. Steady work at the oars can push TERRAPIN at 1-1/2 knots, but with the current the GPS showed she was moving along at a steady 3 knots. It didn’t take long to cover the mile to the point where Kings Creek empties into the Choptank from a wide marsh. Next to the marsh lies Kingston Landing, another spot of solid ground, once an access to trade but now a single boat ramp. As we rowed past the marsh, dozens of swallows rose and darted across the darkening sky that was first a deep blue, then a muted purple, before all settled down for the evening. Far to the east, the storm clouds had collected in a long band. Lightning flashed erratically as the front swept off to the east, the mountain range of clouds showing its peaks behind the distant treeline.

Anchored about 50 yards apart, we settled into our evening routines. Eric brought real food, fresh goods that require actual cooking, while I took the minimalist approach–boiled water poured into a freeze-dried dinner bag or just cheese, crackers, nuts, fruit, and cookies. After eating, it was time to settle down to the forecast and charts for the next day’s progress, and then opening a book for an hour or two. The Autumn Leaves design includes an especially comfortable reading chair that folds away under the aft end of the berth flat. I settled in to read a few more chapters of Chesapeake Bay Schooners by Quentin Snediker and Ann Jensen, the best account I’ve found about the heyday of commercial sail on the Bay.

Saturday morning, I checked the forecast on my cell phone. The small-craft advisory persisted, but I was hard pressed to believe it—the temperature had dropped to 67 degrees and the air was dead calm—but I was not going to shake out the reefs. I stood up in the companionway and saw INDIGO riding to her anchor, reflected in the glassy calm of the morning. Eric was busy readying for our next leg. As we got under way, the forecast began to show itself. Heavy gusts plowed in from the northwest. I looked at the chart. In these conditions, exiting the 90-degree bend at Williston might prove difficult.

By mid-afternoon, it was gusting into the upper 20s, whipping down and across the river at random angles. But the shifts had not brought the wind head-on and we made good time until we encountered the bend at Williston. Eric had been working his way up the river just ahead of me, but as the village came in sight, INDIGO did an odd shuffle into the mouth of Mill Creek, something clearly amiss. Frequent tacks in the erratic air had tangled Eric’s jibsheets on the bow cleat, and he needed to pause to sort them out.

I pressed on, hoping to find a sheltered spot to drop anchor until Eric was ready to move on. But as soon as I followed the river’s turn to the northwest, I felt the full force of the wind the small craft advisory had warned about. I was knocked back on every tack, unable to gain ground before I was across the river and forced to come about once again. Frustrated, I doused sail and dropped the anchor.

The fetch here was short, but the whitecaps were seething and the tide had begun to ebb. Progress was no longer possible. The broad palm of the claw anchor was reluctant to grab the soft, muddy bottom. I fed out more rode. TERRAPIN continued to drag backward 20′, 30′, then took hold. The bow bucked and pounded on the chop and the mizzen, left standing to keep the boat’s head straight, rattled loudly on and off as TERRAPIN swung and fought her anchor but I had a moment to catch my breath.

A hundred yards behind me, Eric had put his anchor down and decided to wait for the tide to ease. His boat came to rest just off a vacant private dock, so he eased her back and tied up alongside.

We sat tight for several hours, watching and waiting for wind and tide to ease. The current began to slacken as the tide approached the low mark, and we were itching to get on our way. The gusting had moderated slightly as well and five turkey vultures that had been sheltering in the trees next to me took flight.

The whitecaps were almost gone altogether, and there was a well-protected anchorage at Watts Creek, about 2 miles upstream. If we could reach it, we would enjoy a peaceful night. But my situation was difficult: I was anchored close to the northeast shoreline and a treeline that periodically blanketed the wind. Halfway across this narrow stretch of the Choptank, there was no protection at all from the still frequent blasts of wind. And spreading out from the far shore lay a mudbank barely covered by the receding tide.

I hauled up the anchor, raised sail, and turned TERRAPIN’s nose across the river. First, there was a gentle nudge from the light air behind the trees. She moved forward two, three boat lengths. Then the next gust hit. She heeled hard to port and began to accelerate. But before there was way on enough to tack back, her port bilgeboard grabbed the mud on the west side of the river. She heeled hard, farther over than I’d ever experienced, then came to a dead stop, still at a sharp angle despite the boat’s flat bottom.

I frantically let the sheet go and freed the halyard from its cleat. The sail swung off to port, but in this wind, friction tied up everything and I was forced to go forward to pull the yard down to the boom, which is supported by lazyjacks. The boat leveled out some, but not until I pulled up the leeward bilge board did she straighten, her belly now flat on the muck.

I looked back down the river to see how Eric was doing. He appeared to be tied up to a bulkhead. Would I be stuck here, glued to the bottom, until the tide freed me?

I shipped my oars and, standing in the cockpit, started pulling astern. The blades locked in the mud and bent alarmingly. I eased off; I didn’t need broken oars, too. Getting back to the rowing with more care, there was some perceptible movement. Then a little more. The wind was still a solid 20 knots, the trees still hissing and swishing, leaves turned bottom-side up, and that pressure was now helping slide the boat along the bottom as I forced it away from the bank. Five minutes of work and she eased free. I raised the main. I was determined to round that bend, but two tacks later, I realized that anything gained through the water had been lost to the still-ebbing tide. Defeated, I sailed TERRAPIN back down around the bend and anchored in the partial lee of a mixed stand of thin, vine-woven trees arrayed along the northwest bank.

Eric had pushed off his dock at the same time I had raised my anchor. INDIGO, rigged as a jib-headed yawl, was promptly spun around by the unpredictable gusts. His attempts to tack proved no better than mine. As his boat was turned, he released the mizzen sheet to regain control, but it didn’t work. INDIGO took another turn, this time twisting the freed mizzen fully forward, where it jammed against the main, locking the sails together. INDIGO was out of control and driven headlong into the aging wooden bulkhead. A few neighbors wandered down the lawn behind it to say hello, unaware that this hot, breezy day was sorely testing our two little boats and their skippers, too.

As the sun dropped so did the wind. Eric was eager to move on to escape the horseshoe turn at Williston. He started rowing into the setting sun. I squinted to watch him disappear into the orange glare reflected off the river. Five minutes later he hailed me on the VHF. “Come on, it’s great!” That was all the encouragement I needed.

After a second stretch at the oars through the darkening evening, we anchored in Watts Creek, satisfied that we had escaped from the bend at Williston. We rafted our boats together as the day’s last light slipped away. It was a remarkably quiet evening and felt all the more calm in contrast to the day’s relentless wind. We toasted our little success with a shot of rum.

We stirred Sunday morning before the sun was over the trees. The sky was brilliantly clear, the humidity thankfully down and, at that moment, the air light. We had anchored just 2 miles downriver from the landing in Denton and Eric was determined to row the last stretch. He got INDIGO under way first and soon disappeared around the headland at the mouth of Watts Creek.

A few minutes later, I rowed out from the creek to deep water and found just enough breeze to get TERRAPIN moving. Looking upstream, I saw Eric standing between his jib and jigger, swinging the oars steadily. His progress was good and before long he disappeared, first half-obscured by the marsh grass, and then lost around a bend.

The Choptank quickly narrowed from one-third mile at the creek to 150 yards just a half mile to the north. There was a wide stretch of marshland on both sides; thick stands of jade green arrow arum along water’s edge, its broad spiked leaves pointing to the sky, a mottled mix of marsh grass behind it. Beating to windward in this narrow passage to Denton required short tacks all the way. I didn’t dare test the depth close to the exposed mud banks. I needed to maintain boat speed to guarantee the tacks. Twice, I stood to hold the boom out to windward to bring TERRAPIN’s head across. After 1-1/2 miles of this zigzag route up the river, I reached the concrete-and-steel girder bridge at Denton. I sailed to within 10 yards of the span, where the bridge and surrounding buildings killed the wind. I took to the oars to pass under the span and pulled into the wharf. Eric was standing by to grab a line.

As we secured our boats Mike Reese, a longtime Denton resident and retired boatbuilder, walked down to say hello and have a look at our boats. He said the Choptank has been gradually silting for hundreds of years, ever since the forests were turned to farmland, and the river, which was once deep enough for cargo-laden schooners, is now so shallow that access to the town docks is difficult. Powerboaters still come upriver because the fishing is good. I asked, “Do boats reach Denton by sail anymore?” He said we were the odd exceptions.

David Dawson is a retired newspaperman who has been hooked on boats since he was a boy, when his dad built a plywood pram. He does most of his cruising on the Chesapeake Bay, but has taken a variety of trailerable boats elsewhere to explore waters from New England to Florida. Nearer to home in Pennsylvania, he enjoys kayaking the local rivers, lakes, and bays.

The Choptank River and the Underground Railroad

In the early 19^th century, the Choptank River was a busy place. Schooners tied up at Denton’s wharf to take on lumber, wool, tobacco, grains, tanbark, and other cargo to be shipped to Baltimore. A constant stream of sailing vessels ran up and down the river. While the age of sail casts a romantic light on the region, it’s important to remember that the early economy of the Choptank—like the rest of the Eastern Shore—was built largely on slave labor. The cargo carried by those vessels, and even the wood used to build some of those ships, was produced by enslaved people.

During the middle of the 19^th century, a network of resources for escapees, known as the Underground Railroad, developed and Caroline County became dotted with safe houses in the area surrounding the Choptank River. But outside the courthouses in Denton and Cambridge, people were bought and sold; inside, severe sentences were handed down to any who helped those who sought their freedom.

In March 1822, American abolitionist Harriet Tubman was born into slavery about 10 miles south of where we launched in Cambridge. She and two of her brothers, Henry and Ben, later worked on a plantation at Poplar Point, just upstream from the town of Choptank, adjacent to the old landing that is now the Choptank marina. On September 17, 1849, she escaped with her brothers, but she returned to the Choptank area several times to help dozens of others escape. The tracks of most of those she helped free ran parallel to the river as the escapees headed north toward Philadelphia and, in some cases, on to Canada.

Our visit to the Choptank fell on the 200^th anniversary of Tubman’s birth and we reached Denton on the Juneteenth holiday commemorating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in America.

If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.

WAYLO-WAYLO

"I’m a pretty lucky guy,” says Richard Honan, 74, of Winthrop, Massachusetts. He has been building one boat after another since 2002, and in 2020 he had begun work on his 13^th boat, a peapod, the Beach Pea designed by Doug Hylan, when the dark cloud of the pandemic hit , it had a silver lining for Richard. “My grandkids couldn’t go to school, and they would spend all that time with me building that peapod. Otherwise it never would have happened to have all day, every day, for weeks on end, for them to come work with me.”

In addition to granddaughters Anna and Emily, one of the boys in Richard’s neighborhood, joined the project. “Christian Buonopane was getting dropped off from school. I didn’t even know him. I introduced myself and said, ‘Do you want to learn how to build a boat?’ He spent a year and a half with me.” Richard’s grandson, Ben, also joined in with the boat building and was instrumental in helping make the mast. “Ben is very quiet, sometimes even withdrawn. I got him to come to the shop to help me make the poor man’s hollow mast. He really got into it and couldn’t believe that with just hand tools, planes, and a sanding belt turned inside out we could make something as perfectly round as we did.”

Richard began building boats in 2002 while he was in business making signs. In 1971, after serving in the Army in Vietnam, he started the Richard Honan Sign Company, specializing in hand-carved wooden signs, hand-painted and often highlighted with gold leaf. Some of the tools in his shop were handed down to him from his father and grandfather.

His first boat was a 7′ 8″ Joel White-designed Nutshell Pram, built with a son-in-law, Elvin (Emily’s father). Elvin didn’t have a lot of experience using woodworking tools before and had never previously built a boat of any kind. They named the boat R&R, for Rodriguez (Elvin’s last name) and Richard to commemorate their time together. The name also recalled the free time Richard had while serving in Vietnam.

Among the other boats Richard built were a 14′ Reuel Parker sharpie, a 16′ Ducktrap Wherry by Walter Simmons, two David Nichols Indian Girl canoes, an Adirondack Guideboat, two kayaks, and a strip-built 16′ Marc Barto gaff-rigged Melonseed skiff, which won the I Built It Myself “Best in Show” at the WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport. “Let me tell ya,” Richard said, “you get Best in Show at Mystic Seaport, and there’s nowhere else to go.”

For Richard, there was “nowhere else to go” but back to the shop to build another boat. “I’m lucky I’ve got a wife who is patient with me and doesn’t even know how many boats I have.” While Mary’s glad that all the grandkids have become good swimmers while horsing around with Richard’s boats, “she’s not much of a boater. As far as sailing goes, she thinks that when boats heel, the next thing is you’re gonna die. Even so, Mary has had two boats named in her honor: PROUD MARY, a 24′ 4″ one-design Raven class, which Richard bought before he started building boats; and PROUD MARY II, the prize-winning Melonseed.

Richard has an enthusiastic worldwide following on his social media postings. An old family friend, Charlie Kitson, gave Richard the Atlantic white cedar that became the peapod’s planking. Charlie had planned on building a boat with the wood but, as he told Richard, he was getting too old and recognized “it’s not going to happen, Rich. I’d rather watch a boat get built with stock that I’d provided for you.” He gave the stack of flitches, a whole log’s worth, to Richard. It was more than enough to make all the strips he needed to mill for the peapod. He has also inherited lots of stainless-steel and bronze boatbuilding fastenings they were never going use. “I have boxes of fasteners that look like boxes of gold.” “Someday” he mused, “someday, I’m going to be doing the same thing, donating fastenings and hardware to somebody else.”

The peapod was christened WAYLO-WAYLO in honor of his late brother Stephen. Whenever Steve visited Richard at the basement woodworking shop, he’d stop at the top of the stairs and announce himself: “Waylo, waylo!” He’d do the same when he entered the local yacht-club bar to let the regulars know “Steve’s here!” Stephen was not only Richard’s brother, he was Richard’s best friend. He was like a silent partner, helping out with the boat building and helping prepare the boats for launching in the spring. Steve often took visiting friends sailing into Boston Harbor. As they were leaving Winthrop Harbor, they were always curious to know where he was taking them. “Hey, Steve, where are we goin’? Are we goin’ to the harbor islands? Or we goin’ into Boston Harbor by the USS CONSTITUTION? Where we goin’, Steve?” and Steve would say “Where’re we goin’? We’re there! We’re there!”

Richard has now built 14 boats, and while he has kept track of the number of boats he has built in the past, the accounting that matters most to him now is in the boats he’ll build in the future: “I measure my life now in how many boats I have left to build.” He has kept only four of the boats he has built. He sold several for the cost of the materials and he has given others away to family, friends, and boating clubs. He gave a canoe to a neighbor who had some young kids. The neighbor was reluctant to take the boat without paying something for it. “Listen,” Richard told him, “if you have half the fun that my grandkids had in this canoe then it’s a good deal.”

He’s not in boatbuilding to make a profit that can be measured in dollars. “I’m the richest person you know. I’m retired, I have enough money, just enough money to live on. I own my own house. I build boats, create driftwood art, and do stuff with my grandkids. I’ve been married 50 years and I’ve been with my wife 56 years. I’ve got two daughters and five grandkids, and I see them all the time.” That makes him a wealthy as well as a lucky guy.

Do you have a boat with an interesting story? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats Magazine readers.

Mercer Slough

The Whitehall I built in 1983 is the finest bit of boatbuilding I’ve ever done. It began with a commission, so I wasn’t driven by daydreams of cruising as I had been with other boats I had built. For the Whitehall, I focussed on craftsmanship. Halfway through the project, my customer backed out on the deal, but at that point it didn’t change the nature of the work—I was building the boat for boatbuilding’s sake. I was deeply committed to traditional construction and put my best work into the best materials I could find: Port Orford cedar for the planks with mahogany for the sheerstrake, white-oak for the frames, and copper and bronze fastenings. I fashioned the breasthook, quarter knees, and boom jaws from crooks that I gathered and cured. The fruitwood crook that provided the book-matched pair of quarter knees was a once-in-a-lifetime find, perfectly suited to the angle and the curves.

I finished the Whitehall bright. The wood was too pretty and noteworthy in its rarity to hide under paint and I didn’t want to conceal the work I had taken such pride in. I launched the boat without christening it, leaving the naming to a buyer I hoped to find. A young couple living in one of the tonier parts of the Seattle metropolitan area purchased it and over the years I lost track of them and the Whitehall.

Thirty years later it resurfaced when its second owner sought me out. He’d had the boat for several years and loved it but was no longer able to use it. Feeling very strongly that it belonged back with me and my family, he let me buy it at a fraction of its value. Its transom had remained just as I’d made it, unadorned; the Whitehall was still without a name.

Between 1980 to 1987, four other boats I had built for months-long cruises got me through all the adventures that had captured my imagination and ambitions, and I was ready to settle into a career and raising a family. When I brought the Whitehall home in 2014, my kids were on their own and I had just been hired by WoodenBoat. Later that year, the Whitehall became a valuable asset for my work as the editor of Small Boats. It made its first appearance in the November 2014 issue in an article on Beaching Legs and has since appeared in one way or another in at least 54 more articles.

I enjoyed the attention the boat attracted at the launch and in my driveway, but all too often I treated the Whitehall very much like a trophy, brought out only for show and for polishing. That was until Nate and I spent this year’s Father’s Day together aboard it exploring Mercer Slough, a backwater surrounded by a park just south of downtown Bellevue, Washington.

The change in my feelings about the Whitehall and my relationship with it happened as Nate and I tethered it at the bottom of the Kelsey Creek fish ladder. I had only one fender and, before I could get it properly situated, the gunwale grated against the rough concrete wall. The gouge in the oak outwale would leave the boat scarred, but I realized that it would be a memento of a day I’d be happy to remember. My own scars have made the events that created them impossible to forget: the crescent scar on my left index finger I got while learning to whittle when I was 10 years old, the stitch-puckered scar on my right knee where a scalpel-sharp flake of obsidian sliced into it while I was making arrowheads at 14, and the pale V at the base of my right thumb I got at 23 when I was running around Green Lake, tripped and tumbled, gored my hand on a jagged edge of broken concrete, and fell into the lake.

The only scar the Whitehall had carried before Mercer Slough is one that you might not notice. It’s a scarf joint 18″ back from the forward end of the third plank up from the garboard on the port side. I’d split the plank’s hood end while trying to nail it into the stem rabbet without steaming. I had to patch on a new piece. For the 39 years after I’d launched theWhitehall, it had been so gently used and so well maintained that there wasn’t another scar anywhere, no visible sign the boat had ever been subject to the mishaps that are inevitable when venturing out into the world. It’s tempting to coddle beauty, but it comes at the expense of character.

My other boats have scars that bring their histories to life. My sneakbox LUNA has a patch on the bottom where I hit a submerged rock when I stopped on the muddy Kentucky shore of the Ohio River to meet Shantyboat legends Harlan and Anna Hubbard. My Gokstad faering ROWENA has a gouge in the garboard where she slipped off a rail cart at the end of a remarkable portage across Alaska’s Admiralty Island. One of my Greenland kayaks has a patch where a harpoon I’d thrown during a traditional skills demonstration didn’t make it past the foredeck.

I’ll still take good care of the Whitehall, but I’ll seek out more opportunities to enjoy using it with my kids and those close to me. We all have scars, boats and boaters alike, and with its recently gouged gunwale the Whitehall seems more like a member of the family just like BONZO, HESPERIA, and ALISON, the other boats in our fleet that share in making memories. It may be time to give the Whitehall a name.

Norwalk Islands Sharpie 23

I first got interested in sharpies after building an Arch Davis-designed Laughing Gull and sailing it for some 10 years. I became enamored with its speed and shallow draft. When I moved from Miami to New Orleans, I found that the best sailing here is during the cooler months, but it was hard to find crew willing to take spray on that 16′ open boat on chilly days. I needed a bigger boat, and I wanted it to be a sharpie.

When I discovered the Norwalk Islands Sharpie 23 (NIS 23), I knew that it was the one for me. The NIS class ranges from 18′ to 31′ and was designed by the late Bruce Kirby, who is best known for creating the globally popular Laser. He deemed his Sharpie-class boats “cruising Lasers for grown-ups.” Kirby’s sharpies are flat-bottomed, centerboard cat-ketches with unstayed masts. Prior to getting my hands on a Norwalk Islands Sharpie 23 for myself, I read an article by Robert Ayliffe, arguably the world’s foremost advocate for the class, in Australian Amateur Boat Builder in which he described crossing the treacherous Bass Strait in his NIS 23 and reaching 17.5 knots surfing down swells. The NIS 23 seemed like an affordable way to have a high-performance cruising boat, and I wanted to experience this speed for myself.

W. Peter Sawyer

The mainsheet is anchored to a traveler forward of the mizzenmast, and the mizzen’s sheet leads forward to the base of its mast. Both are within easy reach of the helm.

My NIS 23 was built in 1996 at Sea Island Boat Works in South Carolina, though many have built their Norwalk Islands Sharpies at home. The single-chine plywood hull is built over plywood frames and sheathed in one layer of epoxied fiberglass. Ballast is supplied by 2″ of lead that surrounds the centerboard slot on the bottom of the boat, reportedly weighing about 600 lbs. The centerboard is made of aluminum. The construction is solid, and I have felt secure in all conditions.

I keep my NIS 23 in the water, but it is easily trailered. Since it has a centerboard and flat bottom, it comes up on the bunks with no trouble at all. I have towed mine with a Honda Pilot, but I feel much safer on the road when it is behind a pickup truck.

Early versions of the Norwalk Islands Sharpies had aluminum masts; later ones, like mine, carry carbon-fiber ones. They’re stepped in tubes just as you would drop in a mast on a Laser. There are no stays. The mainmast can be stepped by just two people, who are always relieved when it is in—and not lying fractured on the pavement. Ayliffe has designed an optional tabernacle system that would greatly reduce the stress associated with getting the masts into place. Maintenance has been easy—with its simple cat-ketch rig, there is not much to keep up. Varnished wood is at a minimum. Getting the boat from highway and ready for sailing from the dock takes about an hour and a half.

The boat is tender at the dock. When welcoming guests on board, I always stand on the opposite side of the boat so their side does not settle in the water so much when they step in.

The cockpit is generous for a boat of this size, and four adults can sit comfortably forward of the tiller. When out for a sunset cruise carrying a conservative amount of sail, the cockpit remains comfortable even while heeling. If I’m looking to maximize speed, I release the lifelines and sit on the gunwales. A short hiking stick is needed. Visibility from the cockpit is excellent.

W. Peter Sawyer

The custom forward V-berth for two, here with cushions in place, is spacious and frees up the aft part of the cabin for storage. The berths flanking the centerboard trunk e have had the cushions of third and fourth berths removed to reveal the plywood panels that cover the footwells either side of the trunk.

Once underway, the NIS 23 is simple to sail. Being a cat-ketch, it does not carry a jib, but rather a main and mizzen. Both sheets can be managed by the skipper. Tacking involves merely pushing the tiller to the lee side of the boat. With no jib, no handling of sheets is required. I’ve had difficulty making it through irons only in winds above 20 knots and with a steep chop.

The NIS 23 carries plenty of sail, and I am quick to put in a reef if upwind sailing is required. I have two reefing points on the main and one on the mizzen. When the windward chine lifts from the water, it is time to reef. Most NIS have a reefing system that can be controlled from the cockpit. I’ve not taken the time to set it up on mine, but should.

The boat does not love to go upwind—it points to about 55 degrees off true wind and, in a chop, it needs another 10 degrees or so off to maintain boat speed. That said, the NIS 23 will make 5.5 to 6 knots on a closehaul in as little as 12 knots of wind.

Emily Woodruff

The NIS 23 carries a 150-sq-ft mainsail and a 64-sq-ft mizzen.

The boat shines on a beam reach to broad reach when it maintains 6.5 knots boat speed in about 12 knots of wind. It can carry considerably more sail downwind. Its maximum speed I’ve seen was 10.7 knots running a broad reach in 20 to 25 knots of wind with full sails up. It becomes easier to control the boat after coming up on plane, though she only stays on plane while surfing down a wave. When not on plane, the boat’s weather helm is an annoyance. This can be reduced by dropping the mizzen and reefing the main, though the thrill of getting on plane means I don’t use this option much downwind. However, in 30 knots of wind, I’ve made 10.4 knots with the mizzen alone (though the carbon-fiber mizzenmast was bent like a parenthesis).

If the wind is more than 15 knots, the NIS 23 likes being on a run, too; the cat-ketch sail plan makes running wing-on-wing straightforward. If the wind is less than 15 knots, trading broad reaches is faster and more enjoyable. I keep the centerboard down for stability while running downwind.

I’ve sailed the boat extensively on the north Gulf Coast, particularly in Mississippi Sound, in winds up to 40 knots. With two on board, it can continue sailing on all points of sail up to about 20 knots with a double-reefed main and single-reefed mizzen. Upwind, I drop the mizzen at 25 knots and sail with just the double-reefed main. Caught in a squall, alone, I had to go to bare masts when the winds pushed over 35 to 40 knots.

With its flat bottom and centerboard, the boat’s motion in heavier seas is surprisingly comfortable. There is none of the laborious lumbering that’s felt on keel boats.

The sharpie is stable under sail, and I’ve never worried about a capsize. However, it is quick to heel, making early reefing important. The carbon-fiber masts mitigate gusts by flexing and thus dumping excess wind, reducing heel. Crew can move about while underway, but not without being alert. This is particularly the case when sailing upwind.

Despite their flat bottoms and relatively high-placed ballast, the Norwalk Islands Sharpies are claimed to be self-righting. I have never felt remotely close to a knockdown in mine, even while carrying too much sail in high winds.

The mizzen is an excellent sail for maneuvering in the marina. After getting comfortable with how far the boat drifts, I rarely use the engine for anything but backing out of my slip. When returning, I drop the powerful main about 100 yards from the dock and then amble toward the slip under mizzen alone. The mizzen is easily doused while holding the tiller, and I do this about 10 to 40 yards from the slip, depending on the wind. We then glide into the dock, and I arrest the remaining motion by placing a hand on a piling.

Emily Woodruff

The aluminum centerboard and 600 lbs of interior lead ballast help the NIS 23 stand up in a breeze.

Overall, I rate the NIS23’s sailing performance as nothing short of thrilling on a beam reach or broad reach. She is fair upwind and strong on a run—as long as you have a stiff breeze. My favorite characteristics of the boat are its speed and the shallow draft that enables the exploration of marshes and flats.

I have a 6-hp outboard on a bracket off the stern, which is more than adequate. The boat doesn’t need more than half-throttle to reach hull speed, which is around 5.5 knots.

At anchor, the NIS23 is pleasant. I have so far spent about 45 nights on board and, while many have criticized sharpies for pounding at anchor, that has not been my experience. Its extremely shallow draft of just 8″ allows access to very protected anchorages inaccessible to deeper-draft boats. In my cruising grounds, marshes are abundant. My approach is to anchor just 50′ or so off the windward marshland or even in a narrow marsh creek.

One night while anchored off Cat Island, Mississippi, a large storm brought 45-knot winds. Despite my taking cover in a marsh creek, the winds whipped the boat back and forth at anchor all night, making sleep all but impossible. Around 3 a.m., I awoke, and while the wind roared, my berth was paradoxically motionless. Fearing that the anchor had dragged and the boat had been driven into the marsh, I peered out of the hatch. My headlamp illuminated black mud all around me. The wind had driven about 3′ of water out of the marsh and the boat was resting contentedly on its flat bottom. I slept well the rest of the night, and then had to wait about 8 hours for the water to come back.

Accommodations in the cabin are limited; I liken the experience of time spent in the cabin to a spacious, floating tent rather than a yacht. If your NIS 23 don’t have the curved-hatch option, which provides 5′ 11″ of headroom, don’t count on standing up. In the after part of the cabin, there are two full-length single berths; I removed part of the cabin’s forward bulkhead to allow for a V-berth for two more crewmembers. Kirby’s drawings have options for a similar arrangement of four berths as well as sleeping accommodations for two with open space for a galley and a head. I have three overhead lights and a ventilation fan powered by a solar panel/battery. For cooking, I bring along a Coleman stove and place it in front of the cabin hatch in the cockpit, which is a good arrangement even when it is raining. Even for a nine-day Gulf Coast cruise, there was plenty of space for provisions and enough sleeping area for two.

The Norwalk Islands Sharpie 23 is a simple, fast boat with exceptionally shallow draft. I bought mine after having done quite a bit of camp-cruising in a 16′ open boat, and while the NIS 23’s cabin is nothing fancy, it is quite nice to not have to worry about finding a campsite at the end of the day, just a protected spot of water.

Peter Sawyer is a general surgery resident in New Orleans, Louisiana. He learned to sail when he was 11 years old at Camp Sea Gull, a seafaring summer camp on the North Carolina coast. He has been at it ever since.

Norwalk Islands Sharpie 23 Particulars

[table]

Length/23′

Load waterline/18′ 9″

Beam/7′4″

Draft, board up /8″

Draft, board down/4′ 6″

Weight/1,540 lbs approx.

Sail area, main/150 sq ft

Sail area, mizzen/64 sq ft

Sail area, total/214 sq ft

Power, outboard/ 2 to 3.5 hp

[/table]

Plans for various arrangements for the NIS23 are available from Norwalk Islands Sharpie. Options include plans for a “from scratch” build, a precut “plywood only” kit, and an “everything you will ever need, including trailer” kit.

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!

Sailrite Sail Kits

We are building a Joel White 7′ 7″ Nutshell Pram and will rig it with a 37-sq-ft lug main. We ordered the Nutshell lugsail kit from Sailrite, pressed Skipper’s sewing skills into service for the construction, and are very pleased with the result.

The kit comes with nine pages of instructions, five precut sail panels and six sets of corner and reef reinforcements pre-cut from 4-oz Dacron. Also included in the kit are telltales, a Sailrite logo sticker, spur grommets, a roll of 1/4″ Seamstick double-sided adhesive basting tape, V-69 UV-resistant polyester thread, and 3″ non-adhesive Dacron tape. All the materials were well packaged, and shipping was prompt. When we had questions along the way, Sailrite’s crew and sailmaker were very responsive to our phone calls and emails.

The sail panels are computer plotted with seam lines, hem lines, and reefpoint placement. The sides of each panel are curved to different degrees, so when they are sewn to the 1/2″ marked on the cloth, this broadseaming, as it’s called, helps give the sail its “belly,” and together with the curves in the sail’s perimeter of the sail, create a wonderful three-dimensional aerodynamic shape for driving power.

Armed with a basic home sewing machine, scissors, and a #2 spur-grommet die set, Skipper was able to assemble the sail in just a few hours (even with my “help”). We used Skipper’s home-sewing Janome machine instead of her Sailrite LSZ-1 walking-foot machine, to validate Sailrite’s assertion that the kit can be assembled with a home sewing machine. A zigzag stitch 3/16″ wide and long is used throughout. The seams between panels get two rows of stitching, each 1/8″ from the nearer edge. If your sewing machine cannot stitch zigzag, the Sailrite instructions say those panel seams get three rows of straight stitching.

The corner patches are three layers thick and, when the double hems for the leech and luff are folded and sewn, the corners have a total of six layers to sew through. A light-duty machine will work its way through the layers—a little help with the hand wheel may be required—and extra care must be taken to advance the sailcloth under the presser foot to get an evenly spaced stitch. If you have a heavier-duty machine with a walking presser foot, like Sailrite’s LSZ-1, it controls the slippery sailcloth for you.

The 2″ squares for the optional reefpoint patches must be cut by hand using sharp scissors. The Dacron sailcloth is treated with resins that minimize if not eliminate fraying, and edges don’t need to be cut with a hot knife. The precut pieces from Sailrite are cut with a sharp rotary cutter on a computer-controlled plotter.

The instructions explain the markings on the sail and the sequence of construction. Sailrite has done a good job with the assembly sequence of the five panels and the reefpoint, peak, clew, tack, and throat patches to minimize the number of times that large amounts of sailcloth must be rolled up to run through the sewing machine’s throat, which can be a challenge on a small machine. After the five panels and all of patches are sewn together, the leech and foot are folded twice and sewn with a double hem to reinforce the perimeter and to cover and protect the cut edges of the cloth and lock the ends of the seam stitching. The head and luff are not hemmed but have the Dacron tape folded and sewn over the edges to cover them and serve as a reinforcement for grommets. The brass spur grommets included with the kit provide extra grip on the sailcloth.

The finished sail is laced to the yard and mast, and the sail is set loose-footed on the boom. The vertical seams between the sail panels give the sail a classic look, and the shape will provide good performance for the small pram.

Audrey and Kent Lewis mess about in the Tidewater Region of Virginia, and look forward to the launch of their mighty pram, EXCUSE ME. Their adventures are logged at www.smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com.

The Nutshell sail kit in white Dacron costs $169.90. It is also available in cream ($289.20) and tanbark ($295.20). Sailrite offers sail kits for a wide array of boats as well as fabric, hardware, and sewing machines. If a sail kit is listed as “Out of Stock,” it is still available, though perhaps with some substitutions of materials; call or email Sailrite for further information.

Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising, or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.

Pond Island

It was a Saturday morning in September, and my not-quite-girlfriend Delaney and I had just left the fishing dock in Bass Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine, in RIDDLE, my Shellback dinghy, for a weekend of camp-cruising in Blue Hill Bay. In spite of a late start—it was almost lunchtime—the morning fog, damp and breathless, had failed to burn off and visibility was measured in oar lengths instead of miles. With RIDDLE loaded down with two days’ worth of food and camping supplies, we floated the boat—sunk down well past the waterline—off the beach and headed out into the opaque white, using an aviation navigation app on my phone as our GPS.

Delaney packs the shellback dinghy with oars, a sail, a foam cooler, life jackets, tent, and food.

Delaney sat in the sternsheets serving as chief navigator; I was in the forward rowing station, and RIDDLE was cutting through the still water at a brisk clip when we heard the Swans Island ferry get under way somewhere off to our port side. The rumble of the ferry’s engines changed from a dull idle to a persistent growl, sifting through the fog and telling us it was in gear and under way. I grinned at Delaney in what I hoped was a confidence-inspiring way and pulled a little bit harder on the oars until I felt RIDDLE dig into her bow wave. The water quietly lapped along the hull as we pulled southwest, leaving astern the gritty beach and oil-slicked surface waters of the fishing dock shrouded in hazy gray.

While I had never launched here before, I thought I had a firm grasp on the water’s hazards and the standard ferry route. Bass Harbor is a cove that runs north to south with Weaver Ledge at its entrance just west of center. I had assumed that the car-carrying ferry, which left from a pier a few hundred yards to the south of our launching point, would stay east of the ledge, keeping to the deeper waters. Under this assumption, and in the interest of minimizing mileage, we kept to the ledge’s western side.

A zoomed-in map of Blue Hill Bay shows Pond Island's location relative to the launching point at Bass Harbor and the WoodenBoat waterfront in Brooklin. An inset of a map of the state of Maine shows that this adventure happened in DownEast Maine.

With the ferry’s low hum nearly enveloped by the fog behind us I rowed ahead, confident in our course and that the ferry would pass well to our port side. Delaney, who had laid back and seemed to be enjoying the subtle rock and acceleration of each pull of the oars through the flat water, started to look around as if led by a hook in her ear. Hesitantly, she said: “I think we’re in the ferry’s path.” A half-minute later she repeated that, but now firmly. Though neither of us could see the ferry, the sound of the engines was rising to a crescendo, and I knew she must be right.

After a quick consultation of the chart, I turned hard to port and pulled for the ledge in the middle of the channel, using every bit of skill and muscle I possessed to propel us as fast as possible while listening to the ferry bearing down on us. Suddenly, the red buoy marking the west side of the ledge came out of the murk ahead, just as the ferry loomed from the fog 20 yards off our port beam. Suppressing a yelp, I made straight for the nun and we shot past it at hull speed as the ferry blew by, cutting a few yards from the marker on its way out the harbor. Quickly, I dug one oar in to spin us around, and we met its wake head-on, bouncing wildly and grinning like idiots.

Once the ferry had passed and our heart rates had settled to an acceptable level, we resumed our course and felt our way out around Lopaus Point, striking out westward into Blue Hill Bay. With the fog still closed in, muffling the sounds of the seagulls on the rocky shore until all was quiet, our world was soon contained in a circle of off-white nothingness, with only the occasional lobster buoy disturbing the scene.

We switched places, passing each other while stepping over coolers and dry bags filled with gear, and Delaney took over the oars while I reclined in the stern assuming a more managerial position. While she is an excellent sailor, having raced at a high level during college, this was only her second time rowing, so I got to enjoy the sight of a determined Delaney trying furiously to keep the oars in the oarlocks and our course a straight line. With laughter and a little not-so-helpful coaching as I pantomimed vague angles of oar blades and lever arms, we splashed our way west as the fog began to brighten around us.

After a half hour and about a mile of progress, we had just switched places again when I saw a pair of shiny dark heads bobbing in our wake. The seals stayed about five yards behind us as we plodded along at 2 or 3 knots, providing a welcome variation on the scenery for an hour or so.

By noon the fog had burned off over most of the bay, and the sun beat down on us without a breath of air to alleviate the heat. Stripped down to swimsuits, we rowed on impatiently and the 5 miles of bay between us and our destination seemed to stretch on indefinitely.

Pond Island is less than 3/4 mile across, is mostly tree-covered, and has a small tidal pond on the northern side that we planned to camp by. There is a 1/4-mile-long beach hiding this pond, and that spit of sand happens to be a popular picnic spot for locals, so I wasn’t particularly surprised when we rounded the corner and saw a white Boston Whaler pulled up on the beach with a flock of small children cavorting around it. The tide had carried us slightly south of the island on our passage over, so we turned north to get out of the current running parallel to the shore. We had been looking forward to jumping into the 50°F water to get away from the heat. Since we didn’t feel like socializing, we stopped rowing once we saw the beach was infested with youngsters and drifted slowly south with the ebbing tide, each of us sprawled on opposite ends of the boat too exhausted to be upright. Of course, this setback meant it was time to break out the beer and chips to help ease the pain of being cooked to medium-rare in the midday sun as small flies bit our ankles.

When the powerboat and its associated munchkins finally called it a day and vamoosed, we picked ourselves up and rowed over to the beach. The tide was almost fully out at this point, leaving about five yards of sandy beach above a hundred yards of rocky mud below, with scattered knee-high rocks sticking out at the perfect height to catch the propeller of a picnic-goer’s outboard at mid-tide. We grounded on the beach to the screech of plywood on rocks and dragged the loaded boat to the high-tide line. RIDDLE seemed to have grown much heavier while the biting flies stung like needles. Delaney and I made a frantic run to the water, with a comet’s tail of flies trailing behind us until we plunged into the water, the shocking cold of the emerald green a welcome relief.

The unrigged shellback dinghy lays on a beach at mid-tide. The water has started to go out and has exposed the gray sandy beach of Pond Island.

Once our feet were numb and the flies had subsided, we trekked back to the dinghy to unload and begin setting up camp. After about five minutes of searching, and stretching ourselves out to judge the ground’s levelness, we found a tent-sized flat spot in the knee-high grass above the beach and decided this was just the place to make camp for the night. It was shielded from wind to the north by an embankment at the top of the beach, and the ground was covered with rounded, sea-tumbled rocks and shells interspersed among them. We set up the tent, pleased with the views of Acadia Mountain to the northeast and Blue Hill Mountain to the northwest. The grass on the embankment hid the ocean, so it looked like we were in a field that stretched for miles.

By now it was only around two in the afternoon, and the sea breeze had finally started to fill in from the southeast. I grinned at Delaney, “Should we go for a sail? Maybe we could make it to Brooklin and surprise everyone.” She grinned back, “Of course!” So, we dragged RIDDLE back down the beach, although the haul wasn’t quite as far this time; the tide had just turned and water was creeping up the beach steadily.

I unrolled the sail, a standing-lug arrangement that fits inside the boat when stowed, and rigged the boat while still on the beach. Then, after a quick shove from shore, we began sailing north with the wind behind us blowing away from the island. Since the water just offshore was too shallow for the rudder, I had an oar over the stern for steering. With the daggerboard partially down, we scudded out past the last line of rocks and into deeper water. I pulled the oar back into the boat, letting RIDDLE luff up to head into wind while I set the rudder.

It was about 4 miles to Brooklin where Delaney is an editor for WoodenBoat magazine and I was on staff at WoodenBoat School, and we were hoping to blow in and surprise everyone that we had made it all that way in the fog. We settled onto a beam reach heading west, with Delaney wedged in forward by the mast looking very pretzel-like in the barely human-sized space while I sailed. I tried to concentrate on the sail and wind, doing my best not to stare at the beautiful girl lounging up forward. I can’t say I was particularly successful. Low, cotton-ball clouds built up over the mainland, the fog stayed in a solid bank to the south, and the breeze wavered at an inconsistent 4 knots as we worked our way west.

By the time we made it to Naskeag Point, the closest land on the western side of Blue Hill Bay, it was clear the breeze was dying quickly. We admitted defeat—our blistered hands had had enough rowing—and went to tack around to head back to Pond Island. RIDDLE came head-to-wind in the light breeze, but then faltered and fell back onto the port tack as we were barely making steerage way. Trying again, I pumped the rudder a few times to get the bow through the wind and we made a slow, languishing tack to port back toward camp. We made it back to the beach as the sun began to sink close to the horizon, and we hurriedly dragged the dinghy past the high-tide line and scrambled to find firewood. Delaney had brought a vegan pineapple curry she’d made for us to heat up for dinner. As a fervent meat eater, I was rather skeptical of a vegan meal, but, regardless of my food inclinations, we needed to hurry up and build the fire before the sun set. Delaney amassed a pile of driftwood while I made shavings from what looked like a promisingly dry piece of cedar and lit the fire; white smoke from the damp wood settled over the water like fine gauze.

The flames built up to chest height and sparks shot skyward like miniature rockets on an unstable trajectory. As the sun turned the western sky blood orange, we let the fire burn down to a bed of coals. We dug through the cooler, bypassing the breakfast food to get to the curry. I’d brought a wok from the boathouse at WoodenBoat, and once the flames subsided, I put it on the side of the fire with the exceedingly healthy-looking curry settled down at the bottom of it. After a few minutes, the curry was bubbling promisingly, and it smelled delicious, even to a diehard meat eater like me.

We had just dug into dinner with the ravenous hunger of a pair of young adventurers who had received too much sun for one day, when Delaney’s grandmother called. Since no amount of hunger should ever get in the way of talking with a worried grandparent, dinner was postponed until Delaney could assure her grandmother that we were indeed still alive and weren’t endangering ourselves too severely. After the phone call, we settled down for a few hours of storytelling and breeze-shooting as the wind began to build from the north and the tide crept up to lap quietly at the edge of our fire. With the sun long gone and the breeze blowing directly onto the beach with the urgent feel of a cold front, we snuggled by the fire in a Navajo blanket to keep the cold at bay.

Around midnight we ran out of firewood, so we decided to call it a night before we fell asleep on the beach with the sand fleas. We doused the fire and scuttled through the waist-high dune grass to the safety of the tent, our laughter carried ahead of us by the building wind.

The morning dawned cool and crisp, the kind of late-summer day that reminds you fall is coming. After languishing in the tent for about an hour, unwilling to leave the warmth of the sleeping bags, we crawled out of the tent around 10 to a stiff north wind flattening the coarse grass around the tent. Making my way to the site of the fire from the night before, I could still smell the smoke on my clothes and feel on my skin the grit of the sand still stuck there from the evening. I tracked down the single-burner propane stove and set it up on a driftwood tree trunk lying shielded from the wind behind the bank of the beach.

Tom, sitting in the foreground, gives perspective. Acadia Mountain towering in the background makes the dome tent look tiny.

We propped ourselves against the log and Delaney made us a breakfast of eggs and vegan sausage, which I had to admit was almost indistinguishable from the meat it was trying to impersonate. Sitting in the grass with the log pressing comfortably against my back, I stared at the salt pond 100 yards away. “Do you think we could get the boat in there?” I asked.

“We could row up the creek that feeds the pond,” she suggested, reading my mind and already packing up breakfast and moving toward the dinghy.

We launched RIDDLE into a steep, short chop crashing onto the sand. The spray salted my lips as we launched and sent shivers down my spine while I rowed us 20′ off the beach. Turning to port, we paralleled the shore, the beam sea trying to slide me across the thwart until we came to a cut in the sandbank with the creek that fed the pond. It was just wide enough for the oars to clear. We shot in with a following sea, and I pulled aggressively to keep us from getting thrown sideways by the breaking waves. Passing through the head-high cut in the bank, we were suddenly in the calm waters of the creek. The passage had gotten considerably narrower and soon there was not enough room for the oars. Seeing the perfect opportunity to impress Delaney, I asked her to switch places with me, then threw an oar over the stern to begin sculling us along. “Wait, let me try that!” she exclaimed.

If rowing had been hard to explain, it soon became clear that sculling was even more difficult. But Delaney was a quick study and was soon wiggling her wrist in just the right way to move us along, cursing colorfully every time the oar jumped out of the sculling notch in the transom. There is an advantage to learning to scull in a strip of water 5′ wide: the close banks let the boat pinball off them, so keeping a straight course isn’t much of a concern. However, the creek was made up of many short, 20′-long straight sections followed by 90-degree turns as it worked its way back to the pond, so just as Delaney got us up to speed, RIDDLE would ram into the bank and ride up onto the grass.

After a few such collisions, the stream became even narrower, and the dinghy was soon wedged between the grassy banks. As I stepped easily over the side and onto the grass, RIDDLE didn’t budge. The pond was only 20′ away, so once Delaney had piled out, I grabbed the breasthook and dragged RIDDLE the remaining distance over land, the skeg hissing as it cut through the grass. Once in the water, I triumphantly jumped into the dinghy and rowed the circumference of the 8/10-acre pond as the oar blades dragged on the shallow bottom. The pond wasn’t as spectacular as I had hoped and only about 5″ deep with shallows that persistently grabbed at the skeg of RIDDLE in an annoying way. After I’d made a lap, Delaney and I dragged the dinghy straight back to camp over the grass.

Tom stands in the shellback and uses an oar to punt the boat through a narrow stream

By now it was about 11:30, so we decided to make one last excursion before heading back to Bass Harbor. Lamp Island, a hillock only 50 yards long and a third as wide, lay ¼ mile north of Pond Island’s beach. I have a penchant for high places, and this tiny islet seemed to be the tallest rock in the immediate vicinity, so we dragged RIDDLE down to the water yet again, leaving a trail of blue bottom paint on the golf-ball-sized rocks. Delaney jumped into the front before I could get there and told me she would do the rowing. We went bashing directly to windward, spray soaking our sweatshirts while whitecaps rolled past as we crawled toward Lamp Island. Making landfall on the lee side, I ran up to the sandy bank and climbed to the top. I pulled myself over the edge, but instead of the soft grass I had anticipated, the top was covered in exceedingly prickly bushes, and I was bleeding by the time I managed to stand up. Delaney laughed at my cursing as I made my descent but when I reached her, she consoled me with a kiss.

Delaney grins while rowing. The oars are in the oarlocks.

After relaxing on a half-tide rock on the north side of the island as the breeze kept the noonday heat at bay, we jumped back in the dinghy. The breeze was blowing an exhilarating 15 knots, more than enough to be downright sporty in our Shellback, and with the wind at our backs we flew back to Pond in about three minutes flat. Packing up camp, we threw gear loosely in RIDDLE in our excitement to go sailing. With Delaney on the tiller and me on the sheet, we tore off toward Bass Harbor on a beam reach, the water hissing on its way past. Doing 5 knots, RIDDLE threw cold spray onto us every time we met a wave, but we couldn’t stop laughing and were having too much fun to mind the cold. The fine water droplets hung in Delaney’s hair, adding silver to her auburn mane. The 5-mile passage that had seemed so long the day before flew by, and about an hour after leaving Pond, we had hardened up to a close haul and began tacking north up Bass Harbor.

Ocean spray flies towards the camera as Delaney sails RIDDLE

Once we were inside the protection of the harbor, the breeze became fluky, and sections of calm water were darkened by catspaws barreling down from all sides. The winds converged on us in a frustratingly inconsistent manner. It took us the better part of an hour to work up the mile of harbor, but we eventually ran up on the beach by the fishing pier we had left from. RIDDLE protested loudly as we ground onto the barnacle-covered rocks, and we climbed out soaked in seawater and once again gritty with sand. Our adventure had come to an end, the two of us none the worse for wear and RIDDLE losing only a little bottom paint. We packed the boat into the back of my truck, and with sand clouding the rearview, my girlfriend Delaney and I peeled out in search of food and a shower, muscles sore but spirits high.

Tom Conlogue is a former WoodenBoat School waterfront staff member who is currently feeding a crippling boat addiction as a student at Maine Maritime Academy. He can usually be found near some patch of water messing about in small boats.

Editor’s note: Pond Island is administered by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust and camping is permitted only at the established site on the east side of the island. The author learned of the restriction only after the trip.

If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.

Slip Thwarts and Side Benches

When I first saw the Jimmy Skiff II (above) that I reviewed for this issue, I was pleased to see its interior equipped with an offset daggerboard trunk. In “Getting Out of Line,” I had mentioned my fondness for off-center trunks, and Bud McIntosh expressed a similar sentiment in How to Build a Wooden Boat: “The centerboard and its trunk take up room in the best part of the boat, and create an antisocial barrier in an otherwise friendly cabin.” I think he’d also agree that thwarts, as their very name suggests, create a barrier to an otherwise friendly cockpit. The Jimmy II’s removable slip thwarts, and the side benches that support them, are features I’ve found very well suited to rowing, sailing, and sleeping aboard.

My path to considering slip thwarts and side benches began with the Chamberlain gunning dory I built in 1980. In its 19′ length it has five thwarts, and three of them intersect the centerboard trunk and the mizzen partners, so getting from one end to the other at any speed rocks the boat and begs for barked shins.

I’ve spent just one night at anchor aboard that boat—long, uncomfortable, and sleepless hours waiting for daylight—plenty of time to let it sink in that the boat wasn’t at all suitable for cruising. While that boat pointed out the problems of a cluttered and unalterable interior, the 13′6″ sneakbox I built in 1985 provided some solutions. The seat for rowing was not a fixed thwart but a box that could be tucked under the deck at night to open up the cockpit for sleeping. Its daggerboard trunk was set 12″ to starboard and part of the coaming, leaving the center of the boat free.

In 2005, when I built a Caledonia yawl for camp-cruising with my two kids, I kept the hull and sailing rig as designed but started from scratch for the interior arrangements. Applying the sneakbox’s lessons of asymmetry and adaptability, I moved the centerboard trunk 14″ to starboard. (Keeping its top at seat level and raising it bottom up the slope of the garboard diminished the depth of the trunk, so I made it longer to give the board the same area.)

The trunk led to wide side benches with parallel inboard edges, and those invited a modular system where slip thwarts and floorboards could rest anywhere on ledges to fill the gap between the benches.

The resulting width of the side benches brought some benefits I hadn’t anticipated. Standard benches are usually fairly narrow, and their curves parallel the contour of the hull. A 9”-wide side bench, like that in my 14’ Whitehall, is not much of a seat while at anchor, let alone when a boat is under sail. When the boat heels, the weather inwale angles into the small of your back and pries you off the bench. With a wide side bench you can lean against the inwale and still be well planted on the seat. In light air, the wide bench also allows you to shift your weight inboard in response to lulls in the wind. The inboard edge of a leeward wide bench, which is closer to the centerline than that of a narrow bench, can make a foot brace that’s better positioned to keep your weight on the high side.

Side benches also provide voluminous, out-of-the-way storage areas. The Jimmy II has watertight flotation or storage compartments; those in my Caledonia just have slatted tops and canvas-panel fronts, but they protect the dry bags and keep the hull’s sloped sides from funneling them into the middle of the boat, right where I need to put my feet.

My yawl has a bit of deadrise, so it needs floorboards to provide a flat surface to stand on. I made the floorboards as wide as the slip thwarts are long so they can also be set on the bench ledges to create a large sleeping platform. Some argue for sleeping in the bottom of the boat to get the best stability, but I’ve never had any issues with sleeping at bench or thwart level in any of my boats.

Other extensions of this “modular” approach made possible by galley-box benches supported by the ledges—right side up to cook, upside down and closed to be used as a thwart while under way—and a dining table created by setting a floorboard on a pair of slip thwarts set on edge.

When I decided to build a boat with accommodations for cruising in the off season (see “A San Juan Islands Solo“), I incorporated the the side-bench/slip-thwart concept in the cockpit and the cabin.

In 1927, the architect Le Corbusier wrote: “Une maison est une machine-à-habiter”—A house is a machine for living in. We inhabit our cruising boats, and they too should be machines designed for our living aboard them. A good measure of their performance is the ease with which we can use them. Your boat should adapt to you, not the other way around.

Jimmy Skiff II

Chesapeake Light Craft’s Jimmy Skiff was inspired by flat-bottomed utility boats used under sail and oar for work and transportation on the bay. The design was named not after a guy named James, but after the blue crabs of Chesapeake Bay—the females are called sooks and the males are called jimmies. The original CLC version was developed two decades ago and for almost half of that time designer John Harris has been working on an update to the popular design. The 13′2″ Jimmy Skiff II has the same length as its predecessor, but its beam is up from 50″ to 52″ and the transom has been reconfigured—broader and with less rake—to accommodate a small outboard motor.

Christopher Cunningham

The space from the transom to the forward bulkhead is 9′ 6″ long. With hatches to provide access to the enclosed space under the benches and slats to bridge the space between them to make a sleeping platform, the Jimmy II could do some overnight cruises.

The Jimmy II can be built from a kit or from plans. The instruction manual provided for both options is 179 pages long and richly illustrated with drawings and color photographs; there’s no shortage of hand-holding to lead first-time boatbuilders through the process. The last 13 pages of the manual provide instructions for the builders who opt to build from the plans, including details on scarfing plywood and timber to get the full-length pieces required.

Eight plywood panels make up the kit’s hull; its bottom and sides are all composed of two pieces joined together with puzzle joints and the transom is built up of two layers. The CNC-cut parts assure the accuracy of the construction. With the shell of the hull put together, the construction of the Jimmy Skiff II departs from the original design. It has three bulkheads: the forward bulkhead will be part of a flotation compartment in the bow and the other bulkheads will provide support for the side benches/flotation compartments, the new design’s most notable features. The ‘midship and aft bulkheads each have center sections that hold the boat’s shape during construction but are later removed to open up the space down the middle of the boat.

Christopher Cunningham

The mast partner is incorporated in the aft extension of the foredeck. The white plastic shims in the mast step are not standard equipment but here was an adaptation in one of the first Jimmy Skiffs built. The step in the production model is cut to fit the mast.

While the original Jimmy had a foredeck enclosing the bow’s flotation compartment, the Jimmy II has that triangular panel set below the sheer. Access to the compartment in the original was through a round port in the bulkhead, which was blocked when the mast was in place. The recessed panel accommodates the hatch nicely and provides a place for where gear can be set when conditions are calm. It also makes a perch that’s more comfortable than the arched foredeck with a small coaming along its aft edge.

The side benches extend from the transom to the forward bulkhead and enclose a generous volume of flotation. The instructions note: “If you plan on using an outboard on your Jimmy Skiff II, you must add foam flotation inside the seat tanks. The U.S. Coast Guard requires it.” The rigid sheet foam insulation shown in the manual assures the flotation compartments keep the boat afloat even in they take on water. If you choose to cruise without a motor, the bench seats, equipped with hatches, offer a lot of protected storage.

Christopher Cunningham

The daggerboard is built inside the starboard bench. Builders who initially build the Jimmy II for rowing only can build the trunk into the bench compartment and open the slots later, when the sailing rig option is added. The instruction manual includes measurements for locating the two places to drill pilot holes.

For sailing, the benches provide broad seating surfaces that make shifting weight fore-and-aft easy. Between the benches the boat has a 20″-wide passage that’s 9-1/2′ long. Ledges along the benches’ inside faces support slip thwarts that drop into place for rowing. The daggerboard trunk is set inconspicuously in the edge of the starboard bench, eliminating the obstacle created by a trunk set on the centerline. (Read a few of the editor’s thoughts on off-center daggerboard and centerboard trunks in “Getting Out of Line.”)

Chesapeake Light Craft

Rowed at speed, the Jimmy Skiff II keeps its proper trim.

The Jimmy II has very good stability, and I was at ease whether I was rowing, motoring, or sailing. I found the open interior plan quite inviting. And familiar. I had designed the interior of two of my boats with side benches, an offset board, and an unobstructed middle; no rocking the boat stepping around a centered trunk, no barking shins on fixed thwarts. For rowing, the slip thwart is easily adjusted to get a comfortable distance from the oarlocks. The skiff wasn’t equipped with foot braces and I always miss having to row without them. In one of my slip-thwart boats I have a footboard supported by a dowel stretcher that sits in fittings secured beneath the thwart-support ledge. A similar arrangement could easily be added to the Jimmy II. Even without foot bracing, the boat, being so light, is easily driven under oars. The optional textured sheet foam in the bottom is a good addition, and provides a bit of friction to push against.

Christopher Cunningham

With two aboard, the skiff trims well with a rower at the forward station and a passenger in the stern.

The boat was quick to accelerate and tracked well. I could maintain 3.3 knots at a relaxed pace, sustain 4.25 knots at an exercise pace, and topped out at 4.5 knots. With a passenger along, I took a seat in the bow and, rowing at the forward station at a relaxed pace, hit about the same speed; exercise pace was 3.9 knots and top speed was 4.3 knots. Solo again, sitting in the center of the boat facing the bow and pushing the oars in the forward locks, I could hit 3.5 knots.

Chesapeake Light Craft

The weight of the outboard and the helmsman in the stern forces the bow to ride high. A tiller extension would improve trim and likely add speed when motoring solo.

I brought my 2.5-hp, four-stroke outboard along for my Jimmy II sea trials. It’s mount, fortunately, straddled the upper rudder gudgeon and could be securely clamped to the transom. The outboard weighs 37 lbs, just shy of the listed maximum of 40 lbs. I should have had a tiller extension so I could get my weight farther forward to relieve some of the burden on the stern. The slip thwart allowed me to get as far forward as I could and still have a grip on the tiller; the trim wasn’t ideal but the skiff behaved itself, and I hit 5 knots at full throttle. With the motor kicked up, the boat was in good trim when I rowed from the forward station. I brought a passenger aboard to sit in the bow and get it back into the water for motoring and that brought the speed up to 5.3 knots.

Chesapeake Light Craft

The 19′ 2″ unstayed mast supports a 68-sq-ft leg-o’-mutton sail. The high sprit boom is vanged by the sail and isn’t likely to clobber anyone when coming about.

The Jimmy II carries a 68-sq-ft leg-o’-mutton sail that’s set with a sprit boom. The forward end of the boom is set well above the tack, so the sail is self-vanging. The snotter is led down to the base of the mast, rather than tied off on the sprit, so it’s easy to adjust the boom while safely seated. For my trials, the wind was blowing offshore and very fluky, switching suddenly from holes that let the sail droop to gusts I’d guess were pushing 15 knots. Fortunately, the side benches made it easy to shift my weight in any direction and I could respond quickly. I placed the slip thwart close to amidships so I could sit there to keep the boat on an even keel in the lulls and use it to slide across from one bench to the other when tacking. With that arrangement I had none of the awkward crawling around in the bottom of the boat that can dampen some of the enthusiasm I have for sailing a small boat. In the gusts, the hull had enough stability to absorb the blows, and I had time to react by easing the sheet and rounding up. When a gust sustained itself, the skiff accelerated quickly and took off. It was a thrilling ride. The boat, as light and as quick as it was, kept me on my toes, but stayed under control.

Christopher Cunningham

The slip thwart rests on ledges on the side benches and is tethered to prevent loss. The thwart not only provides a seat for rowing, but also serves as a bridge between the benches for sliding across the cockpit during a tack while sailing. Filling the gap between the benches with more thwarts or bed slats could create a roomy sleeping platform for a solo cruiser.

In the manual, there is the suggestion that Jimmy II can be used for cruising, with the slip thwarts removed to clear the center for sleeping. Designer John Harris wrote, “That would fit my narrow shoulders, but if you were wider you could have a bundle of ‘bunkboards’ to fill in the space between the side seats to create a big berth flat.” That 20″ space would be too tight a squeeze for me, even if I could sleep on my back, taking up the space with my shoulders. I sleep on my side and need to have enough room to draw my knees up, so I’d opt for bunkboards. If you were to make eight more slip thwarts, in addition to two included in the kit, you could cover 7′ of the space between the benches. That makes for a sizable block of lumber when it needs to be stowed, but if you have a thick sleeping pad you can get by with spaced slats, connected by webbing to keep them evenly spaced. (See the IKEA bed-slat tip.) Though a 13′ skiff might seem like a small boat to cruise, in protected waters it can be up to the task if you pack light and pick your weather.

The Jimmy Skiff II is small and simple, yet since its side benches and clear path down the middle of the boat make it easy to move around, it feels much bigger. Its versatility is among its many virtues, and in sheltered waters like some of those in Chesapeake Bay it would prove quite useful.

Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Magazine.

Jimmy Skiff II Particulars

[table]

Length/13′ 2″

Beam/52″

All-up weight/120 lbs

Rowing draft/4″

Sailing draft, board down/24″

Sail area/68 sq ft

[/table]

Full-size plans ($125) and kits (base kit, $1520) for the Jimmy Skiff II are available from Chesapeake Light Craft. A sailing kit ($1420) is available separately.

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!

Autumn Leaves

Two years ago, when I was considering building my next sailboat, I daydreamed about a compact, shoal-draft solo cruiser with a comfortable cabin that has no need of an engine. My sailing in recent years involved cruising and racing my trimaran, sometimes in very lively conditions. That boat was all about speed and distance. Perhaps I’m getting old and lazy and even a bit cranky, but no more jibs, no more winches, no more twangy-tight shrouds for me. I’d had enough of fooling with the noise and maintenance of engines and the careful timing and physical effort that sail rigs demand simply to change direction. I wanted to revisit the low-key end of the boating spectrum, gunkholing the shallow and protected places that few cruisers visit.

I had expected there would be a good list of production boats to fit the bill, and an even greater selection of plans and kits for the home builder. But no, my search was a frustrating one until I recalled seeing Chesapeake Light Craft’s Autumn Leaves in WoodenBoat No. 249. It was not just a boat that I could make work for what I had planned, but one that John Harris had drawn from scratch for exactly this purpose. Add to that the availability of a CNC-cut plywood kit and a timber package milled of quality stock, and my decision was all but made.

David Dawson

The Autumn Leaves has a towing weight of about 1500 lbs. and doesn’t require a large truck to pull it. The Volvo here has a towing capacity of 3,300 lbs.

At the time I had read Mike O’Brien’s comments about the design in WoodenBoat, no one had built an Autumn Leaves, but I was quite intrigued by Mike’s assessment of the drawings. While he noted the rig—a classic yawl with a jib— “will prove a joy to handle,” it seemed the three sails might be a bit fussy for me in an 18′6″ boat. A few years ago, I turned a 16’ skiff into a balanced lug yawl and found it most agreeable, and knew this rig was the right direction to take. I was downsizing from that larger and fairly complicated trimaran and wanted to simplify everything as much as possible. I wrote to John and asked if an Autumn Leaves could be built with a balanced lug main in a tabernacle. John agreed and drew the new sail plan and at the same time extended the cabin trunk to create a more agreeable interior. With that, I placed my order.

Putting the hull together was straightforward. Chesapeake Light Craft cut the kit for me without having put a prototype together—the first time they’d done this—but I was game to be the guinea pig. The plans were detailed, but a step-by-step construction manual had not yet been created. I received countless tips from John as I worked my way through the build. The precision of the CNC okoume parts was a marvel. I found just one very minor measurement error in the entire kit. I also purchased the Autumn Leaves timber- and spar-stock packages. The quality of the lumber was far beyond anything I could have sourced locally, and because the stock was milled to the finish width and thickness, I saved many hours of work sawing, resawing, and planing.

Caroline Dawson

The auxiliary power is provided by a pair of oars rowed while standing and facing forward.

The specs for Autumn Leaves create a very stout hull. The bottom is composed of two layers of 9mm plywood with a third strip of 18mm ply down the center, forming a wide, flat keel. Generous placement of cleats and stringers tie bulkheads and horizontal plywood members together to create a very rigid structure. In the ends of the boat, below the cockpit sole aft and berth flat forward, foam provides about 860 lbs of flotation. This plywood boat does not resonate like a drum, often a problem with the type. The exterior surfaces are sheathed in epoxy and fiberglass. I had the aluminum tabernacle for the free-standing main mast fabricated by a local shop.

The plans call for 14 ballast castings of approximately 38 lbs each, or 532 lbs total. The mainmast and tabernacle structure on the lug version is heavier than the deck-stepped, stayed mast on the original version. To compensate for this, John suggested that I add extra lead, bringing the total up to 620 lbs. Making the castings was the only process I’d never done before, and so was the biggest challenge of the build for me. Others may be intimidated by having to melt and pour lead, but those familiar with the process said it’s not really difficult. My view is that going with lead is preferable to the alternative. Building a water-ballasted boat adds another step to the launching and retrieval at the boat ramp.

courtesy of Chesapeake Light Craft

The box-section hull has a beam of just 5′, but lead ballast in excess of 600 lbs keeps the hull on its bottom while under sail.

Fifteen months after picking up the kit from CLC in Annapolis, Maryland, I had my Autumn Leaves in the water. The boat immediately surprised me with a surefootedness and ease of motion that I did not expect. The slab-sided hull has just 5′ of beam, but motion is tempered by of the lead ballast under the floorboards. It feels in every respect like a bigger boat than it is.

I’m more than pleased with the ease of raising the mainmast in its tabernacle without assistance, setup rigs, or tools of any kind. Both the main and mizzen sails remain laced to their spars. The mizzen bundle is light enough to lift and simply drop straight through its partner. The bilge boards are housed in cases that open to the side decks. They are not ballasted and pivot up and down with very little effort.

The Sitka-spruce mainmast, boom, and yard are of lightweight, hollow box-section construction, and the masts are unstayed so it takes little effort to rig the boat and raise sail. The mizzenmast and its sprit are solid, but are small enough to be easy to handle. The 180 sq ft of canvas the boat carries in the main and mizzen is plenty; even in the lightest airs, it ghosts willingly and easily. As the wind picks up, weather helm predictably builds, and feathering or even dousing the mizzen and trimming up the boards will reset the balance.

My first real outing in a strong wind had me concerned on this point. A tailwind of 25 knots and a steep, breaking Chesapeake Bay chop that reached 4′ high forced yawing beyond what the shoal-draft rudder could control, despite its generous endplate. But adjustments since then—setting the sail more forward on the mast and lifting the boards partway—have shown that in most conditions the boat is fine as drawn. For sailors who regularly have to navigate rougher conditions, John has sketched a rudder that encloses an aluminum drop plate to increase its depth and area when needed. I may make one, but rougher conditions are not what I have in mind.

Cie Stroud

The lug rig carries 150 s ft in the main and 30 sq ft in the mizzen for a total of 180 sq ft, just 7 sq ft less than the alternate rig with the same mizzen, a 114 sq ft Bermuda main and a 43 sq ft jib.

The suitability of the Autumn Leaves design to the dedicated gunkholer is obvious at a glance. It draws just 8” with the boards up and has no appendages to catch weed or pot warp. This was brought home to me on a very blustery day at a local lake. It was time for lunch and I wanted to get out of the wind and relax. I sailed deep into a tree-lined cove, close to the shoreline. The water was choked with weeds. No problem, I doused the sails and let the anchor go into the green mass. So close to shore, the wind was down to nothing and the October sun was quite warm. After I ate and rested, it was an easy drill to raise the anchor, set the sails, give one sweep of an oar to bring the bowsprit away from the overhanging branch it was nuzzling, and off we went. As soon as I cleared the weeds, I put the boards down. Catching the breeze beyond the shoreline’s wind shadow, the boat bounded down the lake.
When I first sailed the boat, I found it easy to greatly underestimate my speed until I consulted the GPS. The skinny hull does not toss the water around much, removing the noise and visual clues that usually suggest speed in a boat this size. And if the reefs are tucked in when due, the Autumn Leaves stays on its feet, giving the crew nestled in the deep cockpit a sense of solid security.

David Dawson

The cabin isn’t large, but it has a comfortable chair that folds down to create a broad sleeping platform for one.

Simplicity extends to life aboard the Autumn Leaves. When it’s time to settle down for the evening, John made sure the solo cruiser would have ample comfort. In the center of the cabin is a cushy easy chair, just right for reading. It’s folded and hidden under the end of the berth when not in use. Countertops are right at hand near the companionway, with camp stove to one side and navigation gear to the other. Everything is within arm’s reach. The cabin overhead is low, but the average person can sit on the forward end of the berth flat without butting up against the roof, and there is space enough to stow and use a portable toilet or bucket, as one prefers. One compromise I made in opting for the unstayed mast is an obstruction about a foot back from the forward end of the cabin—the tabernacle comes through the deck and the berth on its way to an anchoring cross-member on the hull. There is good headroom forward, thanks to the extended trunk, and to my surprise I found it wasn’t difficult to crawl out through the hatch at the forward end of the cabin roof. Storage in the cabin is generous, with lockers under both the berth flat and the cockpit sole.

courtesy of Chesapeake Light Craft

The designer recommends putting the first reef in when whitecaps appear.

Three can be comfortable in the cockpit for a day sail, but for overnighting, Autumn Leaves is a one-person cruiser. And the solo sailor does need a bit of determination to go without a motor. The boat has a good deal of windage and, loaded for a week’s cruise, it displaces over a ton. It rows easily in a calm—I can maintain 1.5 knots with minimal effort, 2 knots if I push hard—but once the wind is much over 5 knots, the boat needs to be sailed to make good way.

John told me he was aiming for an L. Francis Herreshoff Rozinante-type of boat that would be easy and affordable to build, a canoe yawl in the tradition of Albert Strange and friends, an engineless sailboat for cruising as it was once always done. I think he hit the mark. I christened my Autumn Leaves TERRAPIN, after a turtle once common up and down the East Coast of the U.S., and with her I’ll be gunkholing the shallow and protected places that few cruisers visit: the backwaters, creeks, rivers, and estuaries along the Mid-Atlantic coast.

Autumn Leaves Particulars

[table]

Length/18′5″

Hull weight/1,500 lbs

Beam/60″

Max payload/2,200 lbs

Rowing draft/8″

Sailing draft/37″

Sail area/Yawl 187 sq ft; lug yawl 180 sq ft

[/table]

Plans ($45) and kits ($3324 for plywood parts) for the Autumn Leaves are available from Chesapeake Light Craft.

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!

Southing in the Inside Passage

Low gray clouds and fog hung in the hills above Port McNeil, an isolated town on the northeast side of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and the jade-green water of Broughton Strait didn’t show a ripple. A curtain of dark conifers lined the shore and a bare, logged hillside hulked in the distance. Every inch of space of ROW BIRD, my 18’ Arctic Tern, was stuffed with gear, food, water, art supplies, and books. It was early August, and over the next six weeks, I would row and sail some 350 nautical miles through British Columbia’s Inside Passage back to the United States.

After I launched at a campground between town and the Nimpkish River, the clouds broke up and thin strips of blue sky appeared. ROW BIRD glided through the shallows, gliding over a meadow of eelgrass. The tips of my long green blades were just inches beneath the surface; rusty rock crabs and finger-sized fish darted at the approach of the boat’s shadow. Reaching deeper water, I rowed toward the jumble of buildings and boats that crowded Alert Bay, the village lining the edge of Cormorant Island, 1-1/2 miles away.

At the north end of the bay, a First Nation’s longhouse, as big as a barn, was covered with the black-and-white stylized painting of an eagle perched atop a skeletal fish. Several cedar totem poles with orca, wolves, and human figures painted in bold red, green, and black stood nearby. I spent the afternoon walking around the island, and that evening I anchored just offshore of the longhouse. I unrolled ROW BIRD’s cockpit cover and stretched it between the masts; I arranged my foam pad, sleeping bag, and mini pillow on the floorboards. Black turnstones—stocky, white-bellied shorebirds perched on splintery pilings—kept me company with their shrill chirps until dusk. Exhausted by a busy first day, I quickly fell asleep.

I awoke in the morning to a fog so thick I could barely see the shore 300’ away. I stowed my bedding, transformed the cockpit into a galley, and cooked a breakfast of oatmeal with dried apples. When I peered out under my cockpit tent, I saw nothing but a dingy white haze and heard only the deep bellow of ships’ horns farther offshore. I got under way and crept along close to the shore, but when one particularly loud horn inexplicably seemed to be getting closer and closer to the shallows, I tied up to a dock. A break in the fog revealed the source: a seven-story-tall cruise ship that was anchoring in deep water just a few hundred feet away.

When the fog lifted, I rowed east along the upper reaches of Johnstone Strait into the Broughton archipelago through the churning currents in Blackney and Whitebeach passages. In the fluky wind filtering between islands and along channels, I changed from sail to oar frequently as I navigated through a few dozen of the archipelago’s hundreds of forested islands, tree-capped islets, and bare rocks. I measured time now only by the tides and the amount of daylight available, and because I wouldn’t be returning to my starting point near Port McNeil, there was no need to think about when to head back, only where to go next.

I explored the intricate shorelines of the Broughton Islands, poked around rock gardens, and slid into small coves. A few dozen yards off Mound Island, a 3/4-mile-long wooded island nestled in the south end of the archipelago, I used my Anchor Buddy to keep ROW BIRD off a stone outcropping almost as big as a baseball diamond. At its top was a shallow basin filled with salt-marsh plants and succulents like lime-green pickleweed with tiny salt crystals under its plump stems. Intricate horseshoe-shaped patterns of blue-gray lichen clung so closely to the rock that they appeared to be painted on.

I could have spent my whole trip wandering through the archipelago, but I had a loose itinerary that included 35 stops. I had allowed for a few relaxing zero days, as well as weather or tide delays, but felt I had to move whenever weather and currents were in my favor, meaning I was neither rushing nor lingering.

To travel eastward from the Broughtons, one option was to take on 50 miles of the notoriously windy and rough Johnstone Strait, a narrow passage so long and straight that its eastern extremity would be hidden not by islands but beneath the horizon. The passage provides limited shelter for a small boat, so I opted for a longer, more protected route through the meandering back channels along the mainland. On this calmer journey I would only need to navigate a brief 15-mile stretch of Johnstone Strait—but I’d have to contend with the fast-moving tidal currents in Chatham Channel, Whirlpool Rapids, Greene Point Rapids, Dent Rapids, Gillard Passage, and Yuculta Rapids.

A few mornings later, I was rowing in the 3/4-mile-wide channel between the Lady Islands and Turnour Island. Since dawn, the only sounds I’d heard were the gentle splashing of my oars and the occasional guttural cackling of a raven, but that calm was pierced by the loud “PFFFFT” exhalation of a humpback whale that had broken the glassy surface of the water just a few boat lengths to starboard. The whale was as long as a school bus and could have been quite frightening, but it just rolled on its side, extended a 12′ long pectoral fin upward, and promptly disappeared.

The next day, leaving from the placid waters of Lagoon Cove on the north end of East Cracroft Island, I rowed through The Blow Hole, a 130-yard-wide channel between Cracroft and Minstral Island that’s known for strong winds that funnel through the gap. I encountered only a modest headwind that followed me as I turned south between the steep, forested hillsides that surround Chatham Channel, the first of six tidal rapids I’d need to traverse.

I tried sailing against the headwind, but found myself making ground on one tack and losing it on the other, making it to Chatham rapids later than I expected. I turned on my marine radio and looked around for other boats. Seeing none, I headed east in the narrows with almost 2 knots of current in my favor. About halfway through, I saw a flash of red through the trees. I saw it a second time, but I wasn’t sure what I’d spotted on the far side of the bend until the radio came alive.

“Tug heading west up Chatham Channel,” a voice said. “This is motor vessel ENCHANTED SEA. We’re heading east. What can we do to keep out of your way?”

“We’re triple wide,” the tug’s captain replied, indicating the he was in one of two tugs pushing four barges, “It would be appreciated if you could spin a few circles above the rapids until we pass.”

“Roger that.”

Under oars alone, it was a challenge for me to turn ROW BIRD around and buck just a couple of knots of current. As the tugs and barges came into view, I doubted there would be enough room for me to stay safe between their likely course and the jagged, barnacle-covered rocks in the shallows. I spied a tiny cove, barely twice the width of my boat, on the Cracroft shore, a few hundred feet downstream. I floated into that small refuge, just as the tugs and massive barges labored by leaving, to my relief, virtually no wake behind them.

Over the next few days, I covered about 30 sea miles almost entirely under oar power, and transited Johnstone Strait, Sunderland Channel, and Whirlpool Rapids in the middle of Wellbore Channel. The northwest winds that I’d read were typical in this area never materialized, despite daily weather forecasts issuing warnings for a strong northwest wind.

As I rowed west along Cordero Channel and approached Greene Point Rapids on the northeast side of West Thurlow Island, I expected funneling winds to push me through the gorge-like passage. The rippling rivers of water pushed with the flood tide, waving kelp, and swirling back-eddies were the only signs of movement for the first few miles. Eventually, a westerly wind rose just enough for a sedate downwind sail through the end of the rapids; it petered out at the east end of East Thurlow Island, just before I reached the 600’ government pier at Shoal Bay. I cleaned the hull in the afternoon and then spent a sociable night at the dock there with cruisers who had arrived aboard several big motor yachts.

Underway again at dawn, the coal-black water reflected the low clouds overhead as I rowed toward the final trio of rapids—Dent, Gillard Passage, and Yuculta—strung one after another along a 3-½-mile stretch of Sonora Island’s east coast. I had planned to complete one rapid per day, slipping through each one as wind and current allowed, stopping for a night in between. I went through much faster. I arrived early enough that I rowed against the last of the opposing tide and passed through Dent Rapids as soon as slack started. Surprised to see that I’d made it to the Gillard Passage rapids just as the tide was turning in my favor, I forged on, taking Innes Passage, the 250′-wide channel tucked behind ½-mile-long Gillard Island.

Just 1/4 mile south of Gillard I entered Yuculta Rapids, where two hulking sea-lion bulls cavorted in the water. I rowed into an eddy and slowly pulled out my camera, thrilled as they came closer. Then, like a growing crowd of rowdy school boys, three more bulls joined them and I felt I was becoming the subject of their chasing game. Worried one might get the idea to leap aboard, I charged away into the heart of the rapids. It was just past slack, and a tongue of bubbly water down the center of the broad channel showed the safest and least obstructed route. ROW BIRD was jostled and turned here and there, but I drew on my experience with whitewater rafting to hold a steady course downstream.

Once clear of the main current, I pulled into a small cove on the rocky east shore of Sonora Island. I landed on a patch of white shell beach where I found a cascading freshwater stream surrounded by logs and lush green sedges. I checked for bear scat and prints, and seeing none, stripped off my sweat-soaked clothes and stepped in for a chilly bath and laundry session. It was pure relief to be clean again, despite the long strands of algae that clung to my hair and clothes. From the safety of the cove-nestled stream, I watched logs and woody debris in the tail end of Yuculta churn beneath the flanks of the surrounding mountains.

During the two weeks I’d been out, I hadn’t encountered another self-propelled cruiser, but I was hoping I’d cross paths with my friend Dale, who was participating in the Barefoot Raid, an informal race for sail-and-oar craft. I studied the race itinerary I’d jotted down on a scrap of paper before I’d left home, and realized that with a small change from the route I had planned, I could intercept the fleet on the northwest side of Cortez Island.

With this hopeful and loosely planned rendezvous on the horizon, I rowed into the lazy backwaters of Háthayim Park and spent a zero day cleaning salt off the gunwales, mopping out the bilge, organizing my supplies, and relaxing.

The next day, I ghosted south 2 miles to rock-fringed Carrington Bay, also on the northwest coast of Cortez Island. The fastest of the racers had already arrived and were at anchor. A few stragglers, Dale among them, tacked all the way in a dying breeze to join the rest of the fleet. I tagged along and soon all of the boats had surrounded POOR MAN’S ROCK, a two-story workboat that followed the racers and served as the Raid’s sweep, cookhouse, and party spot. It was large enough to hold several boats in its cargo bay and 20 Raid sailors on its deck.

In the morning I joined the raiders as they continued on their clockwise circumnavigation of Cortez Island. We made the 1/2-mile crossing to West Redonda Island, tensely waited out a gale warning in a cove, and then plowed south flanked by the steep, forested hills along Lewis Channel. On the third day, the group headed west around Cortez and I continued south, crossing to the mainland’s Malaspina Peninsula, and the town of Lund. It was the first time in weeks I’d seen cars on a road.

I followed the mainland coast for another 15 miles, resupplied in Powell River, and continued toward the Strait of Georgia, a vast body of water covering nearly 2,400 square miles. Each morning I listened to the marine forecast, trying to make a cautious plan to cross safely from the British Columbia mainland to Vancouver Island. The forecast covered such a wide area that it was hard to know what I’d encounter within the narrow band of the strait where I’d make the crossing.

Malaspina Strait was protected by Texada Island from some of the influence of the adjacent Strait of Georgia, but being over 2-½ miles wide, it was choked with chop and confused swells that splashed aboard ROW BIRD. The one saving grace was a northwesterly 15-knot wind that pushed me through the lumpy conditions to Pender Harbor, where I would start the first half of the 20-mile crossing to Vancouver Island.

Leaving the crowded harbor the following morning, I was excited to get back to open water and the freedom to move without constantly looking out for faster-moving motorboats. From Pender to Lasqueti Island was about 11 miles. I put on my sun hat and slathered myself with sunscreen. To row at the quickest pace I could before the wind picked up, I dropped the masts into the boat. I had rowed barely an hour when the tide must have shifted, because the water became so thick with short chop that it felt as though I was rowing through syrup. My normal 3-knot rowing speed dropped by half.

Later in the day a tailwind filled in and I set sail; wind waves combined with the chop, creating a lumpy 2′ following sea. ROW BIRD seemed to push the water like a bulldozer instead of cutting through it. As the wind strengthened from a gentle breeze, little whitecaps began to appear in the distance. Normally, I’d reef my mainsail when the wind approached 12 knots, but I pressed ahead under full sail. ROW BIRD bounced along, taking spray over the bow, but with the ballast of 7 gallons of drinking water and all my gear on the floorboards, combined with the steadiness of the wind, the boat felt docile and the tiller was light in my hand.

Hours later, the 8-mile crossing of Malaspina Strait was behind me and I passed Texada Island. After another 3 miles, I reached the craggy south end of Lasqueti Island. Its black volcanic rock jutted out into the strait like the broken furrows of a giant plow. I had a 1:20,000-scale chart for the islands, so I knew where Squitty Bay was, my destination for the night, but I couldn’t see its narrow entrance. I dropped the sail and poked cautiously into crevices in the southern shore by oar, aware that an errant wake could bash me against the rocks. Finally, I saw masts sticking up above a steep stone outcropping, and found the crooked 30-yard-wide entrance. ROW BIRD glided through the sheltered water toward the government dock, where I found a spot just big enough among the 10 local boats occupying the rest of the space.

Sheltered by two long ridges of rock, the water around the dock was smooth enough to see a reflection. I fell into conversation with James, a local shipwright working on a wooden sailboat moored there. He’d been living in the islands and exploring them in craft large and small for most of his life. I told him about my journey, and he suggested a route across the western 8-mile crossing of the strait that would avoid a National-Defense torpedo test range southwest of Lasqueti and provide some protection from waves by threading through a series of house-sized rocks and small islands close to the mainland.

Squitty Bay was surrounded by a provincial nature park, and feral sheep grazing among the smooth-skinned madronas and rough-barked junipers kept the grass and shrubs under the trees so low that it looked like it had been mowed. I spent two days relaxing, sketching, and waiting for the right weather window. Early on the third morning, I climbed a 200’ hill that looked over the strait. Smooth water spread to the south of the island; to the west, where I was bound, dark ripples marked the open water separating Lasqueti from Vancouver Island.

The forecast called for a 5- to 10-knot northwest wind, so I anticipated a fast and mellow crossing. I rowed out of Squitty Bay, negotiated around a tug towing a log raft the size of three football fields, then passed from the smooth water into the first of the ripples I’d noticed from the hilltop. In the distance, Vancouver Island was so far away it looked like a thin ribbon of green on the horizon, in spite of the 4,000′-high ridge running along its length. Once I was under sail, the water became lumpy, and a confused swell from the north slapped ROW BIRD on her starboard side. Every third or fourth wave sent spray over the bow that left a salty film on all my dry bags and lines.

Half an hour later, the hull hissed as ROW BIRD bounced through the chop, leaving a frothy wake astern. Seven miles into the crossing, I cleared the Ballenas Islands, two 1/2-mile-wide islets that sit 3 miles from Vancouver Island’s shore. The swell and wind had increased enough that I hove-to and put a reef in the lug mainsail. The wind turned gusty, and I had to luff the mainsail more often than I could haul it in; I hove-to again and put in a second reef. I was following the plan for the crossing that James had outlined, but the rising wind and worsening sea state was troubling. Nanoose Harbor, the nearest place on Vancouver Island to get off the water, was still about 3 miles to south, but with access limited by a military base along its shore, I was reluctant to pull in there unless I got desperate.

I scanned the chart for a sheltered landing site, but couldn’t figure out how to progress safely perpendicular to a following sea that had now built to nearly 4′. Putting the third and final reef into the sail, I tried to make my way toward a private marina I saw in a tiny cove but ultimately decided I couldn’t make it. To avoid taking on water, I had to steer away from crests breaking astern. Seawater sloshed in and out of the bilge and over my feet, but I didn’t dare stop and bail.

A strong gust made ROW BIRD round up and slam over the back of a steep wave into a deep trough. The sails hung limp for a moment, then rattled noisily. I decided to let ROW BIRD drift, hoping that conditions would moderate. I set the mizzen tight, and the bow pointed into the wind, but, unfortunately, the waves were coming from a different angle and hitting the starboard quarter. I drifted toward slowly southward toward the Ada Islands, little more than a cluster of bare rocks with reefs awash in whitewater. I clenched the tiller in my right hand, adjusting to each set of waves, wondering if the next might swamp me. I pulled my VHF radio out of my PFD pocket and switched it to channel 16. Would this be the day I called for a Coast Guard rescue?

The waves crested in crumbling white foam, lifted the boat, then slowly passed me by without breaking entirely from top to bottom. Twenty minutes later, I decided that I wouldn’t call for help as long as I could still sail, so between swells, I hauled the mainsail back up, loosened the mizzen sheet, and turned ROW BIRD downwind. She surfed, swerved, and ducked between waves, and as I approached Stephenson Point at the entrance to Departure Bay. In the lee, the wind and waves abated but I had to steer away from an approaching ferry, and in the bargain slid over a reef near Horswell Rock, scraping the centerboard. When I slipped behind Jesse Island, the sails suddenly went limp, and with the ordeal of the crossing over, I felt lightheaded and hot. I peeled off my damp drysuit and collapsed onto the thwart. When I regained my strength, I rowed into a marina in downtown Nanaimo, where the high-rises loomed over the shoreline. I went to check in at the front desk, and exhausted and ravenous, I asked where I could find some pizza. The harbormaster immediately produced a partially eaten pie from behind the desk. “Take as much as you want,” he said.

Two days later, I left Nanaimo and continued southward. Using a pair of range markers, I slipped between Vancouver and Gabriola islands via False Narrows. This signaled the entry to the Gulf Islands and cruising in civilization where there were ample calm anchorages, marinas, and sand beaches. The days that followed were like a vacation rather than a wilderness expedition. I rowed and sailed in protected waters where a multitude of islands prevented much fetch from building, and stopped frequently in small towns for luxuries such as ice cream and fresh baked pastries. No longer did I think about my stores or the presence of bears; I simply enjoyed long ambles in provincial and national parks.

The afternoons were set ablaze when the sun set, turning the sky and water fiery reds and oranges, and, as September rolled in, there were fewer boats on the water. Rainstorms indicated that the season was coming to a close. Forty miles to the southeast of Nanaimo I stopped at Saturna, a 7-mile-long island pushing into a notch in the border between Canada and the U.S. Black clouds skated across the mountains to the west and blocked the sun. As I stood on a dock at Winter Cove, rain fell in dreary streaks from gray clouds.

On the days that followed, I made my way at an easy pace through the Gulf Islands, and then crossed Haro Strait into the San Juan Islands of Washington.

Under clear skies, a chilly westerly wind drove me across the San Juan archipelago to Orcas Island, where I left ROW BIRD at a marina for a few days off the water. I spent two nights at a friend’s house, grateful for the shelter as thunderstorms or low clouds rolled in each evening. Being indoors was starting to feel appealing.

My friend Andy had brought my car and trailer from home, parked them on the mainland, and came by ferry to Orcas to join me for the last leg of my cruise. After being alone on my boat for over a month, it felt good to have some company as we wound through the remaining islands.

We spent a damp night camping on Lopez Island’s Spencer Spit, a popular marine park, and got underway in the morning, headed east for Thatcher Pass, a ½-mile-wide gap between islands on the thoroughfare to and from the mainland. A hide-and-seek fog covered navigation marks, waterways, and entire islands. Foghorn in hand, we crept around Decatur Island to the safety of the cove on the west side of James Island.

We tied ROW BIRD to the public dock there and climbed the wooded trail to a ridge where we hoped to see east across Rosario Strait to Anacortes, 3 miles distant, but it was lost in the fog’s dull-white void. The strait is a dangerous crossing, with strong currents, long fetches, and a north–south shipping lane crossed by a busy east–west ferry route. I’d never attempt it in fog, and even if it were to lift, we’d have to wait for the turn of the tide to slow the currents in the strait. We were stuck, at least for the night, on James. Andy got busy with his phone, making arrangements for the unanticipated absence from home and work. But for me, the fog provided the chance for another zero day and a welcome excuse to savor a final day of cruising, my 37^th away from home.

Late the next morning, the fog had cleared, and with Andy navigating in the stern, I rowed, somewhat reluctantly, the last few uneventful miles across water that shimmered like rippled satin.

Bruce Bateau, a regular contributor to Small Boats Monthly, sails and rows traditional boats with a modern twist in Portland, Oregon. His stories and adventures can be found at his web site, Terrapin Tales.

If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.

A Fringe of the Wild

As far as sailing goes, it had been a summer of frustrations for me, with one boating trip after another canceled or cut short while I dealt with life ashore. A series of job interviews seemed to be heading nowhere I wanted to go. My house was an affliction of leaking faucets, sagging gutters, and wildly overgrown hedges, and the car wasn’t much better—wheel bearings, transmission, tires, all the tedious consequences of chronically unenthusiastic maintenance arriving all at once. Then an unexpected funeral brought me back early from a solo cruise on Georgian Bay. I kept hoping that one morning all these unwelcome obligations would drain away like an ebbing tide, leaving me free to hoist a sail and set out along the margins of the world to find a place where the water’s crooked fingers had dug deep into something worth seeing.

A cold and rainy September seemed likely to finish the dreary season entirely. But then a narrow window of freedom opened unexpectedly just as the weather promised to improve, and I was off with my boat and a pile of camping gear before complications could arise, with no clear destination in mind except “away.” A quick look at a rest-stop road map an hour down the road reminded me of a sprawling lake system in northern Wisconsin, 15 miles from the Michigan border, created by a dam at the confluence of the Turtle and Flambeau rivers. I hadn’t been there for a couple of years, which seemed like reason enough to make it my destination now. After a phone call to convince my brother Lance to meet me there with his Phoenix III for a few days, I was moving again. “The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous,” Thoreau assures his readers, and by this definition I am nothing if not wise.

“Paul Bunyan was too busy a man to think about posterity,” wrote Aldo Leopold, noted conservationist and author of the classic A Sand County Almanac, “but if he had been asked to reserve a spot for posterity to see what the old north woods looked like, he likely would have chosen the Flambeau.” The ancient pine forests of northern Wisconsin were gone before the 20th century began, as Leopold knew all too well; his essay on the Flambeau River is in large part an elegy to a vanished world. By the time he wrote it, sometime in the 1940s, the Turtle-Flambeau Dam near the river’s headwaters was 20 years old. But despite the irresistible advance of modernization—Wisconsin’s burgeoning dairy industry needed such dams for rural electrification—the state government had also moved to preserve a 50-mile stretch of wild river on the upper Flambeau, just below the dam. Leopold again: “Slowly, patiently, and sometimes expensively the Conservation Department has been buying land, removing cottages, warding off unnecessary roads, and in general pushing the clock back, as far as possible, toward the original wilderness.” It was a wilderness that would later expand to include the new man-made lake that had swallowed the floodplains of the two rivers for a few miles above the dam.

As I pulled into the parking lot at the main boat ramp of the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage—all but empty on a Sunday evening in mid-September—it seemed to me that the clock had been pushed back far enough to seem almost irrelevant here. The lake lay hidden within a forest of pines and hardwoods already more than 100 years old. The shoreline wandered across the map in a series of elaborate flourishes for more than 100 miles, enclosing 14,000 acres of water and nearly 200 undeveloped islands—and, almost unbelievably, dozens of free first-come, first-served campsites accessible only by boat. Here was a sail-and-oar wilderness at the scale of a long weekend, along with an astonishing absence of bureaucracy. No fees, no permits, no reservations. The clock, it seemed, had not just been pushed back. In some ways it had stopped running entirely.

Lance was already at the ramp when I arrived. We launched our boats, hastily transferred gear, parked our cars, and set off under oars down a narrow channel that ran northward between a chain of tiny islands to starboard and a long peninsula to port. When we reached open water, we hoisted our sails and began working our way southwest in light winds as the sun dropped toward the horizon. An hour later, we sailed into the wind shadow of an unnamed island—one of many—near the center of the flowage and turned north again, ghosting along in winds too light to feel. One of the unwritten rules of evening sailing was holding true: the closer we got to our destination, the fainter the breeze became. No matter, though. We were in no hurry. We simply glided along past island after island, moving so slowly that each boat seemed to be floating atop an impressionistic portrait of itself, Monet trading his lilies for lugsails.

We beached our boats below an empty campsite at the northern tip of an unnamed island and unloaded our gear. We had come only 2 miles from the ramp, but distance is not the only measure of solitude. There is magic to camping on an island, however near the mainland it might be—just ask Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. Two miles on the map had become 100 miles in my mind, a welcome unburdening from life ashore.

Our island had been a low ridge on the east bank of the old Flambeau River before the dam swallowed it up. Now the river was gone, along with a dozen smaller lakes and waterways: Rat Lake, Horseshoe Lake, Townline Lake, Baraboo Lake, Otter Creek, Beaver Creek, and more. But other than the wide band of gravelly beach surrounding each island, the mark of midsummer drawdown at the dam, there was no obvious sign of the lake’s industrial origins. There were a few cabins and lodges along the northern and western sides of the flowage, I knew, but here we seemed surrounded by pure wilderness.

After setting up our tents and cooking supper over camp stoves, too lazy to bother with a fire, we watched the moon climb through the treetops. The wind died away entirely as the evening grew darker. When the islands had faded to nothing but jagged silhouettes in the moonlight, I returned to the water’s edge to check on the boats before retreating to my tent for the night. But, as usual, the temptation was too much for me. Instead of going back to camp, I shoved off and set out under oars with no intention but to continue moving slowly through the night until I had seen something of what there was to see.

Working to an easy rhythm with the oars floating lightly in my hands, I glided over water so dark and still that it might have been a photograph. With each stroke, water ran down the oar blades to fall drop by drop onto the surface of the lake, and the sweep of the oars on the recovery drew long arcs of slowly expanding circles alongside the hull. It was the only sign that the boat was moving at all.
I kept rowing gently through a maze of islands that were nothing more than looming shadows in the darkness. For how long—an hour? Two? It was impossible to know. Somewhere out on the water a loon called, and called again. And far above the earth, beyond the darkness of the night sky, the stars continued their slow-moving circumnavigations around the pole star, measuring out the hours almost imperceptibly.

Morning brought an autumn chill and cloudy skies. We dawdled through an unambitious breakfast in camp, waiting for the slow sunrise to dry the dew a bit before setting out for the day. Soon enough, though, we were ready to be moving. Our island campsite was comfortable, especially considering the price—a picnic table, fire ring, and open-air toilet hidden back in the woods—but we hadn’t come this far to stay ashore all day. We pulled out our maps and started to look things over.

A southeasterly breeze made the choice of where to begin an easy one: we would sail north, following the original channel of the Flambeau until we reached the northern shore of the flowage, where we would have to work our way westward under a low bridge and around the northern end of the aptly named Big Island. From there, we’d be entering the course of the Turtle River, which we’d follow down the west side of Big Island to the dam. Then north again, roughly paralleling the old Flambeau channel once more past dozens of smaller islands, to close the loop at camp. Ten miles, give or take. Just about right for a casual day’s journey.

With a base camp to return to, we didn’t need to load much gear—just water bottles, rain jackets, and a few snacks. Then we hoisted our sails and shoved off from the beach, riding north on an easy broad reach. After a mile we turned west, skirting a chain of piney islands on a run dead-downwind, jibing now and then. The breeze was light enough to let my Alaska edge slowly ahead of the Phoenix III—no surprise with an extra 10 square feet of sail, and a waterline more than 2’ longer. But it was really no more than a slight edge. The two boats seemed well-suited for cruising together. Before long, I pulled into a shallow reed bed to drop my sail and mast so we could pass under the bridge connecting Big Island to the mainland. I started to pull out the oars, but we were already moving straight toward the bridge. The wind would push us through, I realized. We drifted easily along the marshy shore and under the low bridge, where a bright yellow sign needlessly proclaimed Caution Low Bridge Narrow Channel. I smiled. There was barely room for the hull to slip between the rocky banks—and that in a narrow sail-and-oar cruiser with a 4′ 8″ beam. I could have stood in the center of the channel, knee-deep in dark water, and touched the stones on each shore. But our boats floated through without so much as brushing the bottom. With water levels so low, I didn’t even have to duck my head.

We beached our boats on a wide sandy beach on the far side of the bridge, 3′ below the summer high-water mark. A low tide in the north woods begins in July when the spillways open to maintain water flows for the electric plants downstream, and lasts until spring. No need for complicated anchoring systems or clothesline moorings here—at least, not if we returned before April. But I took my 6-lb Northill anchor up the beach anyway, and set it firmly at the sand’s edge, wary of an unintended marooning should my boat somehow float away. Overkill, I knew, but I’ve learned to accept that overkill is generally more tolerable than underkill.

Overhead, gray clouds were breaking up and streaks of bright blue were showing through. We left our boats on the beach and crossed the bridge onto Big Island to walk a long way along the trails. Autumn was just beginning to show itself in muted browns and oranges, and monarch butterflies flickered back and forth above our heads as we dawdled along. That’s the beauty of a small wilderness: no urgency, no reason to push on for mile after mile. Plenty of time for side trips.

Eventually we returned to the boats and set off again. The Flambeau was behind us; our course followed the Turtle River channel west and south from here, down the western side of Big Island. We sailed a slow beam reach through 100 yards of reedy shallows, rudders kicked up but still dragging, before reaching deep water and turning south.

It had been a while since I’d been on a two-boat trip with Lance, and I was quickly remembering how much I liked it. As always, we made for an unruly armada, breaking formation on the merest whim, but generally remaining in sight. With the wind behind us, the Alaska edged ahead at first; then I cut inside a couple of small islands to hug the shores of Big Island while my brother took the outside route to regain the lead. And promptly surrendered the lead again by landing at one of the campsites on Big Island while I kept drifting slowly along the main channel, sitting to leeward to keep my sail filled in the light breeze. And so it went.

As we reached the far western side of Big Island, the winds picked up and the channel veered south, making for a tough beat. With all the miles I’ve spent aboard my brother’s Phoenix III, I’ve come to appreciate its excellent performance to windward. Now, falling behind in my Alaska, I found myself wishing his boat wouldn’t point quite so high, or tack so quickly, or slice so cleanly through the chop. Or maybe it was more the skipper than the boat. Either way, aboard my Alaska it was getting windy enough to be interesting. Before long, I headed into the wind and dropped the sail to tie in a reef. But the wind kept building, stronger and gustier. Even with a reef in, it was getting to be a handful. And then a double handful. I’ve learned that my Alaska, with its narrow beam, slack bilges, and low sweeping sheer, is not shy about dipping a leeward rail when pressed hard. That had been alarming at first, until I learned to trust that it would heel only so far and then keep sailing right along. Still, I’m too lazy to really enjoy hiking out and pushing hard. Better to keep things in control.

When I spotted a long sandy beach on the western shore of Big Island, I steered right toward it at speed, sheeting in hard, then pulled up the rudder and let the sheet fly just as the stem scraped the sand. With my weight far back on the sternsheets, the boat glided well up onto shore and ground to a stop. I dropped the sail and tied in a double reef. Lance joined me on the beach a few moments later, and tied in a reef as well—more to let me keep up, I suspected, than because he needed it. But I wasn’t going to try to talk him out of it.

Of course, there is nothing so fickle as the wind. The approaching frontal system swept past quickly in a riotous jumble of clouds and rainy gusts, and before I had managed to sail a half mile, it was time for the full mainsail again. Already the Phoenix III had opened up a wide gap. It was definitely faster to windward, where the Alaska lost ground on each tack, its long flat keel needing to be sailed around in a gentle turn. At least I was finally gaining ground under full sail, I consoled myself. Or at least, not losing ground anymore.

I followed Lance toward the foot of Big Island, dodging through a field of stumps that would have been hidden at higher water. More than once I found myself tacking within inches of a stump I’d seen too late, hoping I wasn’t about to sail right over another that I hadn’t seen at all. Worse still were the occasional angled logs still rooted in the lake bed but barely visible—or not—above the surface. At one point I felt a booming thump on the hull as I sailed right over one of them. All right, at more than one point. Apparently the warning on the Department of Natural Resources’ map I’d picked up at the boat ramp before launching—“The Turtle-Flambeau Flowage has an abundance of stumps, logs, floating driftwood, and rock bars”—wasn’t as irrelevant to a boat with a mere 7” draft as I had assumed, at least not in September. I glanced at the map again. There, too, was the obligatory “The map should not be used for navigation” disclaimer. Busted again, navigating when I wasn’t supposed to. Sometimes it seems like I’ll never learn.

But finally we sailed free of the stump field—which, I reminded myself, has probably done a lot to keep the jet skis away, so it’s not all bad. And then we tacked past the Turtle Dam with its long line of yellow buoys and turned north again, heading downwind along another string of islands. Off the wind, the Alaska pulled ahead of the Phoenix III, sail area and waterline triumphant again. We finished the day by approaching camp from the east, slipping through the narrow dogleg channel that separated our island from its nearest neighbor, skirting a few downed trees that rose from the water like grasping hands, before sliding up onto our home beach again. An evening of thunderstorms and hard rain drove us to our tents early.

The next day brought clear weather at last. The wind had swung around to the southwest, bringing some fierce gusts, but it wasn’t enough to keep us ashore. We launched our boats and tacked down to the southern tip of our island, where we started to beat our way southward through the biggest stretch of open water on the flowage. Again I waffled back and forth: one reef, two reefs, no reefs. Gusts. No gusts. Strong wind. Light wind. Light wind, strong gusts—an interesting combination, impossible to reef for. Lance pulled ahead steadily in the Phoenix III. I tried not to notice.
We worked our way toward the southern reaches of the flowage, taking time to stop at several islands along the way. A few more thumpings of the centerboard when I cut too close to shore at one point reminded me too late of the “abundance of rock bars” the map had warned about. Still, no harm done. At least, not this time.

Before long we were well past the farthest point that we reached on our last trip two years earlier, into a chain of smaller lakes that was almost a river again. Tacking and jibing in the shifting gusts that swept the narrow channel, we sailed south and farther south. Finally, though, the low water levels defeated us. At the mouth of Otter Creek, at the very end of the flowage, the Alaska ground to a halt among the reeds, keel dragging in the mud. Even in a kayak I couldn’t have made it into the creek and continued upstream.

Forced to turn around, we sailed our way back to open water with no regrets. It had been a perfect day exploring a wilderness that seemed as if it must have been created for sail and oar. No motors, no people, nothing but sun and wind and solitude, the gentle motion of the waves, an occasional splashing of spray over the coaming. Island after island, tall pines and birches shuffling in the breeze, the quiet splashing of small waves on the shore. Seen from a small boat, the southern half of the Turtle-Flambeau seemed like pure pre-industrial north woods—no cabins, no cottages, no roads, only an unbroken forest of mixed hardwoods and pines.

But of course, like so much that seems too good to be true, the Turtle-Flambeau is as much illusion as it is reality. What looked like pure wilderness was only a clever ruse, I knew, the result of what the Department of Natural Resources calls “a 300′ aesthetic zone”—a fringe of timber left perpetually unharvested around the entire shoreline of the flowage, with provisions for selective logging and intermittent clear-cutting still in place farther inland. Still, it was better than nothing at all. Give me a small boat, a sail, and a good pair of oars, and I’ll work my way along the margins of the world past whatever fringes of the wild remain, wherever they lead. That was exactly what I had come looking for, after all.

It was late afternoon by the time we headed north toward camp, paralleling a chain of islands up the western shore of the flowage. Light winds gave way to lighter winds. The sun dropped below the trees, but still the light caught our sails in a soft golden glow even as the water beneath grew ever darker. Eventually we turned up a narrow passage that ran through a jumble of small islands, where the breeze faded almost to nothing. We floated up the channel side by side, the Alaska slowly pulling ahead thanks to its larger mainsail.

The sky faded to a deep blue, and stars began appearing overhead. And for more than a mile, for more than an hour, we sat silent and unmoving in our boats, drifting along so slowly that it was hard to perceive any motion at all. Only the faint ripple of our wakes and the whisper of moving water along the hull disturbed the sensation of utter stillness. Weight to leeward to keep some wind in the sails. Steering with the barest nudges of the tiller. Slowly and ever more slowly, our two boats slid over the dark water.

Somewhere a loon called. The moon rose slowly over the trees, casting its rippled light over the water. And far behind me, the victim of a shorter waterline and a smaller sail, my brother’s boat hung altogether motionless atop a sea of blackness, white hull clearly outlined against a seemingly endless backdrop of jagged islands and dark pines. An illusion, I thought to myself again. But one worth seeing.

Tom Pamperin is a freelance writer who lives in northwestern Wisconsin. He spends his summers cruising small boats throughout Wisconsin, the North Channel, and along the Texas coast. He is a frequent contributor to Small Boats Monthly and WoodenBoat.

If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.

Song Wren

A cruising sailboat in the 20′ to 22′ range resides at the high end of the spectrum that most amateur boatbuilders can realistically aspire to. Go bigger and you need time, money, space and skills that few of us have. But there’s a delectable spread of choices at the level just below the impossible dream—plans by at least a half dozen highly regarded designers. Of these, Sam Devlin’s Song Wren 21, was, in the end, the most compelling. I had already built two smaller stitch-and-glue designs from Devlin Designing Boat Builders, so I felt comfortable with the process.

The Song Wren can be built with a shallow slotted keel and a centerboard for sailing thinner water and easier trailering and launching. I was drawn to the fixed-keel version for its ballasted-keel stability and cabin space unobstructed by a centerboard trunk. Its profile exuded the refined dignity of a much larger craft, and the gaff-cutter configuration offered the complexity I crave in a sailing rig. I love to stay busy, tinkering and tuning sail trim.

Devlin had drawn the Song Wren in 2011 as a commission, but nobody had yet built one, so no one could report on how it would sail, and if there were bugs in the design. I had budgeted up to $36,000 for parts and materials, a figure Devlin confirmed to be in the ballpark. Committing this pile of money to a boat that has never before existed, to be executed by an amateur who just barely knows what he’s doing, would seem edgy by any objective standard. But anyone who’s ever loved a boat, or a drawing of a boat, understands.

Dennis Ryerson

The Song Wren is the first of Devlin’s smaller sailboats to use double-chine construction, and the upper chine provides an opportunity to mount a rub strip the full length of the hull. This makes the hull appear longer and lower, giving it a more serious, big-boat look.

Devlin can supply a kit of CNC-cut okoume plywood panels for the hull and bulkheads, so I went with that option. Not only does it relieve the builder of the dismal job of scarfing plywood, it also provides a fiberboard building jig with slots that hold and align the Song Wren’s five bulkheads. This ensures that the hull will take form accurately, and that an insubordinate builder will not tinker with the basic design. There’ll be no sneaking in an extra 6″ of overall length, nor robbing from the cockpit to make more cabin. Amateur builders are probably better off with such temptations foreclosed.

The hull is built upside down on the jig, and the two-chine design (two side panels and one bottom half per side) made the handling of the big pieces manageable—with the help of one dedicated and capable friend. Topsides, I made one significant structural and aesthetic change, with Devlin’s approval. His plan called for a mast tabernacle to sprout from the cabintop with a steel compression post to carry the load to the keel. I planted the tabernacle on the deck instead and moved the cabin trunk’s front 6″ aft to lock into the tabernacle and buttress it. I added a beefy laminated deckbeam underneath, 2″ thick and 6″ wide, and supported it with the relocated compression post. The result is a terrifically strong foundation for the mast (which also enjoys six stays!) and, I think, an elegantly integrated design detail. It was a lot of additional work, but a project as ambitious as building a boat like Song Wren does not argue for taking the expedient path.

Dennis Ryerson

The maximum headroom of 51” is more than adequate for seated tall people. The surface at right doubles as chart table and galley counter; a cooler slides underneath. A portable head resides in the closed compartment under the seat forward of the counter.

Though cabin headroom is only 51″, I wanted to outfit the living quarters as elegantly as possible. My plan is to park the boat at a marina in Port Townsend, Washington, or the San Juan Islands and use it as an occasional summer cabin as well as a daysailer. I installed a ceiling of 79 varnished sapele planks, concealed all electrical wiring behind sapele trim or structural bits, and built in a total of 16 drawers, shelves, bins, and cubbies to corral the clutter that loves to overwhelm small-boat cruising.

The build consumed 4,500 hours, and the cost of parts and materials came in about $1,000 below that $36,000 budget. It was challenging, but the 14-page plans set is extraordinarily detailed, including such things as a precise assembly sequence for the keel and several drawings of the cabin’s sliding hatch. Still, I wouldn’t recommend this as a first boat for any amateur builder.

With 302 sq ft of sail, the Song Wren seems generously canvased to make the best of Puget Sound’s notoriously skinflint summer wind. Devlin estimates the dry weight at 2,800 lbs, but I haven’t yet weighed this first real-world iteration. It glides eerily through air that’s barely stirring. Two knots (verified with an anemometer) gets us moving. In 5 knots of true wind we’re seriously sailing. On a close reach we enjoy 4+ knots of boat speed with 7 knots of apparent wind. In 10 knots apparent we are approaching our theoretical hull speed of 5.8 knots. A close reach seems to be this boat’s best point of sail. In the best conditions, the Song Wren will sail up to about 40 degrees off the apparent wind and tack through 95 degrees—decently pointy in the gaff-rig universe. The jib slips easily past the staysail stay for tacking, though in very light air it helps to furl it halfway when beginning the tack, then release the furling line to finish.

In this first season since the May 2019 launch, my wife Patty and I have tried all possible combinations of sail—always fun and interesting when you’re blessed with more than the usual main and jib—and learned what works and what doesn’t. The best balance and performance come with all three sails flying. The staysail doesn’t provide much power—it adds no more than 0.2 knot in most situations—but it does help us crowd the wind more tightly, and it looks way cool. I had hoped the first reefing step would be to simply furl the jib, but this doesn’t work well. The Song Wren develops an unpleasantly heavy weather helm with only staysail and full main, and if the wind continues to rise, it’s impossible to heave-to for further reefing unless we unfurl the jib. So, we reef the main first, then roll up the jib as the second reef. The boat balances beautifully on staysail and reefed main, which gives 63 percent of the working sail area. I may add a second row of reefpoints in the main, which could be more effective than dropping both foresails.

Dennis Ryerson

The Song Wren’s cockpit seats are 7’ long, providing plenty of space for daysailing with four adults. The seats are overlaid with a veneer of sapele planks with contrasting fir strips, and the battery, charger, and depth sounder reside under the watertight hatch on the starboard side.

The Song Wren’s sail controls all are accessible from the cockpit (there are 13 lines in all), so while there’s a lot that requires attention, it’s all in a safe place. I located cam-cleated lines on the cabin top for a preventer so it can be deployed in seconds for downwind runs.

Dennis Ryerson

The staysail is self-tending with a single sheet. Roller furling added to the jib makes it easily doused from the cockpit.

Some years back, I twice had to dock chartered boats under sail because of engine failures, so I always like to plan and test what I’ll do in case of that event. With the Song Wren, approaching a dock on staysail alone is a good idea since it provides a suitably poky pace and will drop instantly. It will not, however, claw upwind or tack, so a power-off docking still needs the jib’s aid until final approach.

Sam Devlin

The 302 square feet of sail take good advantage of light air.

For auxiliary power, I bought a new 8-hp Yamaha outboard. In all but one respect it was an excellent choice: reasonably quiet, smooth-running, powerful enough to push us to hull speed at half throttle, and incredibly economical—we’re averaging 12 nautical miles per gallon. The drawback is its weight. I tried to engineer an indented transom mount but failed, so I finally resorted to a commercial adjustable mount. Cantilevering 90 lbs out nearly 1’ behind the transom makes the engine hard to tilt up and causes the boat to squat low on its design waterline aft. The only mitigation at this point seems to be to plant more ballast forward. If I were starting over, I would consider sacrificing some cockpit locker space (there’s plenty) for an inboard motor well.

Sam Devlin

The sail controls all lead to the cockpit, so there’s no need to venture forward to tend to the jib and staysail.

Near the end of this first sailing season, the most remarkable thing about living with the Song Wren is its accommodations. For such a compact boat, both its cockpit and cabin seem incredibly spacious and comfortable. Four people easily daysail; three sleep inside as long as they’re close friends. The most rewarding thing is this boat’s jaw-dropping beauty—and Devlin deserves all the credit for it, not me. I have perhaps accentuated it by celebrating its woodiness with acres of brightwork (rub strips, toe rails, cabin sides, companionway doors, cockpit seats, and more), which I may regret when the time comes to sand and revarnish. Devlin implores builders to paint everything. But when you totally fall for a boat’s great looks, and its performance keeps you engaged and intrigued, you’re not afraid to look forward to a mountain of work in the relationship.

Lawrence W. Cheek is a journalist and serial boatbuilder (two kayaks and four sailboats to date) who writes frequently for WoodenBoat.

Song Wren 21 Particulars

[table]

Length on deck/21′3″

Length overall/26′7″

Beam/7′5″

Draft, fixed keel/36″

Draft, swing keel/board up 24″, down 47″

Displacement/2800 lbs

Sail area/302 sq ft

[/table]

Construction plans for the Song Wren are available from Devlin Designing Boat Builders for $275 ($1 for study plans).

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!

Elf

From all the refined creations of the designer Iain Oughtred presented in the intriguing biography A Life in Wooden Boats, written by Nic Compton, one particular boat, the 14′11″ Elf, caught my eye and imagination. Based on Norwegian faerings with roots in the Viking era, the small but intrepid-looking Elf is a fascinating adaptation of ancient design to modern construction. I had built a couple of glued lapstrake plywood canoes, so the Elf was a natural choice for me.

The original faerings were built by hand and eye, and had slowly evolved during hundreds of years to meet the local conditions and particular purposes. Iain carefully studied every design and photo he could find, realizing no two faerings were alike. He had a commission for a boat smaller than the original ones, and after absorbing all he could find on the subject, he began drafting his own interpretation of the faering, adapting the structure for glued-lapstrake plywood.

Mats Vuorenjuuri

The Elf has many traditional elements—broad strakes, rangs (angled frames in the ends), kabes (wooden row locks)—and only the daggerboard trunk and the absence of lap rivets betray its modern construction. For rowing, a plug for the daggerboard case will keep water from splashing into the hull.

Iain’s plans are famous for their elegance and detail, and Elf makes no exception to this. The package includes full-sized templates for the building molds, frames, and stems plus lines plan, construction plan, detail patterns, materials list, and construction notes. Add Iain’s own informative book Clinker Plywood Boatbuilding Manual, and you should be good to go.

Iain recommends 9mm okoume or 7mm mahogany plywood for the hull and Douglas-fir, larch, or pitch pine for keel and frames. There are only two laminated frames in the center of the boat and smaller canted frames—rangs—aft and forward in the hull. The center and forward thwarts are installed aligned with the main frames further reinforcing the structure.

With basic woodworking skills, tools, and some practice in using epoxy, building Elf should not be too demanding. One critical step is to get fair and accurate lines on the three wide strakes of the hull. This can be achieved using plywood or bendy strips attached together to make patterns to transfer plank shapes from the molds.

In his book, Iain constantly uses various clamping methods to avoid the need for screws. Moving forward with the building process, I started to understand and appreciate this method more and more. The benefits of avoiding screws are less screw removal, fewer holes to be filled later, and perhaps a more elaborate structure. There are some stages where screws are necessary and unavoidable to get parts set correctly for gluing.

Sanna Virnes

Elf is a joy to row, it moves effortlessly and tracks exceptionally well. The hull is quite full forward, so, for rowing alone the forward thwart is a good choice, especially when traveling downwind. Some gear or ballast aft, will help put the keel level.

As the hull comes together, you really begin to admire the simple and functional structural design of the boat. Realizing the unadorned beauty of Elf, you will think very carefully before adding anything but the necessary fittings into the boat. It took a whole year before Iain dared to equip his own boat with sailing gear, and to that end, a slot for the daggerboard is cut to one side of the wooden, full-length keel and the daggerboard case is fitted forward of the center thwart. Iain has drawn a beautiful Norwegian-style rudder, and there are two options for rudder fittings. One has a long, curved rod held by two stem fittings that allows the rudder to be positioned high on the stem with the blade nearly clear of the water for rowing or beaching, or low with the blade fully submerged for sailing.

I chose a more conventional solution of common pintles and gudgeons and remove the rudder when I’m not sailing. With the 5′-long tiller, I can easily steer even while sitting in the middle of the boat.

The plans include drawings for oars and the traditional oarlocks called kabes. The oars are locked to kabes using rope loops. The loops need to be measured and spliced carefully for both a smooth rowing experience and to allow shipping the oars. The 9′ oars for the Elf have looms with flat backs and bottoms that fit the kabes and set the blades at the proper angle. The blades are long and narrow; their shape catches little wind while being effective.

The Elf weighs only 143 lbs and can easily be pulled up on a beach or onto a trailer singlehandedly, and two people can carry it. I bought a pair of inflatable beach rollers for effortless and harmless beaching; they fit under the thwarts when not in use and serve as flotation.

Once you get the Elf in the water, it will feel tender at first, but stable when you get settled on the thwart. Then the very first strokes will put a smile on your face. The hull resistance in slow speeds is remarkably low, and the boat is very easily driven. A peaceful pace for this boat is 3 knots, and by adding some effort, a knot more can be achieved. This seems to be the hull speed. The full-length wooden keel provides excellent tracking, and she turns smoothly. Because the Elf’s bow is much fuller than its stern, the forward thwart is the best choice for rowing alone; putting some gear or ballast in the stern will achieve proper fore-and-aft trim. For solo rowing, when the wind is abeam, rowing from the aft station will help prevent the hull from turning into the wind.

Mats Vuorenjuuri

With two rowers, Elf balances up nicely and maintains good speed with little effort. The 3′ spacing between the rowing stations is just enough for two well-synchronized rowers.

Because the span between the aft station’s kabes is 4″ less than the span at the forward station, you will lose some leverage rowing aft. For tandem rowing, the space between the two rowing positions is just enough.

The extreme lightness of the Elf has its virtues and drawbacks. It takes very little to move it, whether under oar power or sails. Lightly loaded, the hull sits high on water, and the upswept bow and stern add to windage. Although the hull can handle rough wave conditions, rowing against even a moderate breeze can be hard work. Waves also have an effect on the light hull, and its lack of momentum while tacking can lead to getting caught in irons. After you steer through the eye of the wind the Elf will start flying; off the wind it will accelerate quickly to surf down waves, occasionally exceeding hull speed.

Once you step into the Elf you are more than doubling its displacement, making it sensitive to both longitudinal and transverse trim. This can be disconcerting to a novice, at least to begin with, but very useful to an expert sailor accustomed to trimming and ballasting a sailing dinghy. The magic of faerings is in a narrow waterline beam for fast rowing, and a ’midships flare for ample reserve buoyancy to resist heeling while under sail.

Pasi Ehrola

Elf is well mannered under sail. Once the ample flare in the midsection hits the water, the hull stiffens up considerably.

Elf sails quite well even without the daggerboard. Before I installed the daggerboard case, sitting on the floor in the center of the boat was a sweet spot when sailing alone. The push-pull tiller rests conveniently on the center thwart, and I had unobscured views under the sail. When the wind picks up, you get more leverage from body weight by sitting on the thwart, or by hiking out on the gunwale. Sailing with a family of three aboard was also comfortable—my daughter would sit in front of the mast on the floor, I steered while sitting between center and aft thwarts, and our third crew sat between the center and forward thwarts. Loaded this way, Elf is very forgiving and stable.

Adding the daggerboard resulted in faster tacks and better windward performance. If you have camp-cruising in mind, I would seriously consider dispensing with the daggerboard and case to get good use of the stowage space in the center of the boat.

Gene Williams

This Elf, built by Duane Mathes, carries the sprit rig that is detailed in Oughtred’s plans.

I deviated from the plans for the sailing rig. The plans call for a 53-sq-ft sprit sail, but I opted for a lugsail of similar size; lugsail is also a choice of preference by Oughtred for Elf’s big sister, the 16′ 6″ Elfyn. As designed, Elf’s mast is supported by an extra partner fastened at the sheer. I wanted to minimize the structures and have unobstructed access to the bow, so I used the forward thwart as the partner. With this arrangement, the mast bury is quite small, so I stayed the mast using the halyard as one stay, and a dedicated line as the other. Eventually, finding the right tweaks for the lug sail, balance was good. The area of the balanced lug sail that sets forward of the mast compensates for moving the mast location a little bit aft, so the center of the sail’s overall area is very nearly the same as that of the spritsail.

As Iain remarked about the Elf: “Getting such functional efficiency in such a simple shape is astonishing.” Build an Elf for rowing, sailing, or wandering solo with a light load of camping gear, you can hardly go wrong. Elf is packed with character. Give it time and opportunities, and it will eventually charm your eye and steal your heart.

Mats Vuorenjuuri is the father of three and an entrepreneur, making a living in graphic design, photography, and freelance writing. He is currently becoming a boatbuilder as well, offering boatbuilding and maintenance services through Nordic Craft. In recent years he has discovered the simplicity and joy of small boats after sailing various types including sail-training schooners. He wrote about cruising the Finnish coast in his Coquina in our May 2016 issue and about a Lakeland Row in January 2017.

Elf Particulars

[table]

Length/14′11″

Beam/4′4″

Sail area, lug/52.72 sq ft

Weight/143 lbs

[/table]

Plans for the Elf are available from the WoodenBoat Store for $204 USD (study plans are 99 cents) and from Oughtred Boats for $224.44 AUS.

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!

Cleating the Main

"Never cleat the main” is often taught to beginning small-boat sailors. A cleated main can turn you over. A friend of mine, Barry Thomas, solved this when he built a Seabright skiff for his young son, David. There were no blocks in the mainsheet and no cleats on it, so Barry let his son sail whenever he wanted. David wasn’t strong enough to hang onto the mainsheet if the wind was strong enough to capsize the boat, so he couldn’t help but spill wind from the main.

But sometimes there are not enough hands to hold the main, steer the boat, and do something else; sometimes you just get tired and it’s a relief to have a cleat to hold the sheet. Dinghy racers are well familiar with this, and for many years have used various forms of quick-release jam and cam cleats. But sailors who haven’t grown up with them may not be fast enough to free the sheet, and so sometimes wind up taking a swim.

A traditional way to secure a sheet is with a slipped hitch on a half pin. The Ashley Book of Knots describes the Slippery Hitch, #1619: “…in small boats, especially boats that are easily capsizable, the hitch is indispensable. A whaleboat’s halyards as well as sheets are always secured with them, since a Slipped Knot admits of casting off without first removing the load.”

The slippery hitch is anchored by a pin that extends below a thwart, a rail, or some other part of the boat; a line under tension is looped around the pin, and a bight in the tail end is tucked behind the working end, using the tension in the line to pinch it into place. My faering has two pins protruding beneath the thwart just ahead of the helm, one for the halyard and one for the foot downhaul. The sail is pulled up, and the working end of the halyard is looped behind the half pin, turned into a bight, and the halyard pinches it against the thwart. A yank on the free end drops the sail.

On my Harrier, RAN TAN, I also have a pin on the center thwart, which is just a bit of 1/2″ oak dowel glued into a hole in the underside of the thwart near its aft edge. I added a bit of brass half-round to the thwart edge to minimize chafing. I use the pin and the slippery hitch to make my mainsheet fast, but also easy to release with a yank. If the sheet goes slack it will release itself, a disadvantage of this system.

When I rigged my Good Little Skiff for the hitch, the thwart had to be drilled from the top, so I turned a 1/2″ pin with a 1″ cap and drilled a countersunk hole for it in the thwart. It isn’t quite flush but is just a bump sitting on it.

I have the pins for the slippery hitches close to the boat’s centerline, and while that’s fine for light breezes, it’s not handy when I need to have my weight to windward. For RAN TAN I added a quick-release mainsheet cleat that I could reach sitting on the rail or a side bench. I took advantage of the oarlock sockets by using a 1/2″ stainless-steel carriage bolt (which fits the socket) and a piece of Delrin to hold a cam cleat.

If you don’t have Delrin, you could use anything that won’t split under a load on the cleat. Cut it to match the base of the cam cleat, and drill holes and countersinks for the cleat’s bolts and the 1/2″ bolt. To make the cleat easily removable for rowing, I drilled a small hole in the Delrin for a lanyard.

These cleats go into the oarlock sockets when it’s breezing up. I then can place the sheet into the cleat with a little tug and an upward pull instantly releases it.

Both of these systems can easily be retrofitted into most small boats and make sailing much easier by holding the sheet to free up a hand, with the ability to let it run with a single pull.

Ben Fuller, curator of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has been messing about in small boats for a very long time. He is owned by a dozen or more boats ranging from an International canoe to a faering.

You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Magazine readers by sending us an email.

Campion’s Apple 16

It all started during the summer of 2015 when I decided that it was time to part ways with MAGIC, my 1962 Alberg 35′ glass sloop. I had spent four years and countless hours restoring MAGIC to her former glory, but two years after re-launching I needed a change. While she was not a big boat by today’s standards, the amount of time and money spent just keeping the boat in the water and in good condition was exhausting. The fact that I lived in central New Hampshire and kept the boat 150 miles away in southeastern Massachusetts only made things worse.

I found myself spending more and more time on a beat-up old O’Day Daysailer that had been following me around since college. My family and I romped around the local lakes and estuaries, sailing hard and often. The only money I spent on her was gas for the car and beer for the cooler. At some point that summer, I realized that I was having as much fun on the O’Day as I was on MAGIC, but with none of the stress. Sure, MAGIC was a comfortable boat that could take somebody sailing for weeks at a time, but I was mostly going out for day sails with an occasional overnighter. I could be doing the same thing on a much smaller boat.

At about the same time, I heard about the Small Reach Regatta, organized by the Downeast Chapter of the Traditional Small Craft Association in Maine. It’s not a race, but a gathering of small, traditional sailing and rowing craft. I have always been drawn to the look of classic boats and when I saw the boat lineup on the Small Reach Regatta website, I knew I had to check it out.

I showed up on the first morning of the event and was able to sail on Mike Duncan’s FRISKY LADY (a Chamberlin 15′ 6″ gaff sloop) and on Geoff Kerr’s NED LUDD, an Oughtred 19′ 6″ Caledonia yawl. I fell in love with the Caledonia but it was a bigger boat than I needed. However, the seed had been planted, and I spent the rest of the summer researching the perfect small boat in the range of 15′ to 18′.

The boat had to be pretty and, while I prefer the look of lapstrake, there is a lot of additional setup and framing required that takes a fair amount of time, so I was looking for a stitch-and-glue design that didn’t require a strongback and associated framing. I also like the classic look of a balanced lug-rigged yawl; and with unstayed spars, balanced lug rigs are really easy to set up for launching. The mizzen makes for easy handling. In spite of the appeal of classic boats, I wanted a fast boat, and a planing hull makes this possible.

The Apple 16, a five-strake stitch-and-glue balanced lug yawl designed by Thomas Dunderdale of Campion Sail and Design, came closest to being everything I wanted. The classic lines and balanced lug yawl were just what I was looking for and the somewhat flat aft section of the hull allows the boat to get up on a plane. I’m a sucker for a plumb bow, so as soon as I saw pictures of the Apple 16, I knew it was for me.

Photographs by Jacob Bowser

The plans detail several interior layouts, and provide the option for decked ends . The author designed his own interior with flotation tanks and a removable center thwart.

After several conversations with the designer, I purchased plans and began the build. Thomas was very helpful, answering all of my questions via email or phone.

I didn’t want to wait for a shipment of full-sized printed plans mailed from England; I opted for digital files and took them to a local copy shop and had them enlarged for about $30. I was really happy with the amount of thought and detail that went into the plans; they came with a general construction narrative, a detailed 30-page keyed construction index and at least a dozen schematics for the boat, parts, and interior layout options. For a first-time boat builder, everything provided should be easy to follow.

The included materials list calls for four sheets of 6mm marine plywood scarfed lengthwise for the hull, two sheets of 6mm for bulkheads and interior framing, and one sheet of 9mm for the rudder and additional components.

With a solo skipper aboard, the Apple 16 can, in spite of its traditional appearance and rig, get on plane in a moderate breeze.

While Campion does not currently offer files for a CNC mill, someone savvy with a CAD system should be able to digitize the planking measurements and send them off for cutting to save time. I don’t have easy access to a CNC mill, so I opted to plot the strakes on the scarfed panels and cut them out myself. The plans package provides both a table of offsets and a visual diagram for plank measurements that is very intuitive.

Probably the best thing about building a stitch-and-glue boat is how fast you can make visible progress. Once you cut the strakes from the scarfed plywood panels, assembling the hull is a simple matter of drilling out holes for wire or zip ties (I opted for zip ties) and stitching the panels together. In a single, albeit long, afternoon you can go from a pile of flat plywood pieces to a structure that resembles a boat.

The author could comfortably row the Apple 16 at around 3 knots. His sectional oars, with carbon-fiber ferrules, stow neatly out of the way while sailing.

Of course, it’s not all a piece of cake. Until you get the bulkheads tied in, the entire structure is a bit of a wobbly mess. I cut cradles to steady and align it while I tied everything together. This helps immensely when one is working alone.

The job of taping the inside and outside seams, followed by a layer of 6-oz ’glass on the outside of the hull is rather monotonous. If you’re careful, cleanup should be a relatively minor job and once complete, you can move on to fitting out the interior.

The plans provide layouts for several interiors ranging from a spartan setup of three thwarts, with two doing double duty as mast partners, to a more extravagant layout with decks fore and aft. I deviated from the plans and designed my own interior with built-in flotation compartments and a center thwart that’s removable for camp-cruising.

The boat is quite light, and a solo sailor could add some ballast to stiffen the hull against the press of the sails. The designer recommends adding between 110 to 275 lbs if ballast is needed.

The plans call for a long, open daggerboard trunk to accommodate multiple mizzen sail plans (the larger plan changes the center of effort and requires the daggerboard to be located further aft). Since I was only building the version with the smaller sail plan, I shortened the daggerboard trunk after consulting with Campion.

I also increased the thickness of the daggerboard from 25mm to 33mm so I could build a NACA 0012 foil. I’ve had several opportunities to test performance against other similar designs with balanced lugs and I believe that the foil helps with upwind performance.

All told, the build took me about eight months of working 10–15 hours per week, and I couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out. A single rower with 9.5’ oars can propel the boat at 3 knots when rowing at a comfortable pace, and her sailing ability has exceeded my expectations. Trailering with my four-cylinder Rav 4 is easy.

I’ve had the boat out for dozens of times in a variety of wind conditions, and the boat is really amazing to sail. Having no prior experience with balanced lug rigs, I spent a lot of time researching balanced lug sail tuning and after a bit of trial and error, I opted to go with 6:1 downhaul and 4:1 mainsheet tackle. I used Dyneema line for the downhaul and main halyard to maximize luff tensioning ability.

The Norwegian tiller may take a bit of getting used to if you haven’t used one before, but it is the simplest arrangement for getting around a mizzen mast and has a number of advantages over a conventional tiller.

With the rigging configuration sorted out and making sure the downhaul tension is drum tight, I found that the pointing ability was quite good. Combined with the foil daggerboard, which should theoretically increase lift, the Apple 16 is not far off the pointing angles that a similarly sized Bermuda-rigged boat can achieve. When soloing, I regularly get up on a plane on a reach and hit 8.5 to 9 knots in less than 15 knots wind. Over 15 knots and I put in a single reef, and have sailed in conditions up to 23 knots without being terrified.

We have had four adults out for a sail, and while it is manageable, two of the crew need to sit in the well on either side of the daggerboard trunk forward of the thwart. The 250-lb boat is really best suited for one or two, and each additional crew member reduces the boat’s ability to plane. I have yet to be able to get the boat on a plane with more than two crew on board; I suspect that it would have to be pretty windy to do so. With that said, the boat sails well even with four on board.

The boat is as well-mannered as a light boat can be and is reasonably dry in most conditions. Beating close-hauled into chop over 2’, predictably, tends to be the wettest point of sail. The yawl rig contributes to a very balanced helm on all points with just enough weather helm on the Norwegian push-pull tiller to take any of the play out of the system and allow you to make subtle course corrections.

The Campion Apple is a well-thought-out small boat that is lively to sail and will turn heads in any harbor. It’s a good choice for a first-time boatbuilder with woodworking skills who doesn’t want to spend years building a boat that looks and sails great.

Matt Bowser, a software engineer living in Canterbury, New Hampshire, can’t remember a time when he wasn’t obsessed with boats. He grew up sailing the coast of New England from Rhode Island to Maine and is enamored with the simplicity, ease, and low maintenance of small boats. When he isn’t sailing, building, or fiddling with various boat bits, he’s mountain biking in the forests of New Hampshire and Vermont or trying to get his teenage children to hang out with him.

Apple 16 Particulars

[table]

Length/15′ 10″

Waterline length/14′ 4-1/2″

Beam/5′ 3″

Draft, board down/3′ 9″

Sail Area/123 sq ft

Ballast, if used/110 lbs to 275 lbs

[/table]

Plans for the Apple 16 are available from Campion Sail and Design, based in the UK. Prices are in Pounds Sterling: £65 (approx. $79 USD) for PDF, and £120 (approx. $146 USD).

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!

Oughtred’s Auk

The Auk is an Iain Oughtred design that dates back to 1984. He was “just looking at traditional boats and trying to produce an ideal version of an 8′ tender.” It was a smaller version of the Puffin, a 10′ tender he had previously designed; he gave the Auk a generous beam for its length and a particularly pronounced sheer. “I tend to agree with Uffa Fox that you should have a good strong sheer because it is stylish and it helps keep the water out,” he said. After selling about 250 sets of Auk plans, he redesigned it about 10 years ago to be “a refined version of the same thing with a couple of inches more beam,” and has sold a further 116 sets of plans since then. It is designed primarily as a tender with carrying capacity of three or four people “in sensible conditions,” but he gave it a balanced lug rig for sailing.

When Sam Manners enrolled at the Boat Building Academy in Lyme Regis, England, he decided he would like to build an Auk, but was keen for his to be a bit longer. Iain offers two lengths for the Auk with a little stretching by spacing the five molds, transom, and stem 2″ farther apart to increase the length of the Auk from 7′11″ to 8′11″, but Sam wanted to go a bit longer. He decided to space them 2-1/2″ farther apart than designed, which would give him an overall length of 9′2″.

Sam Manners

The interior is functional, uncluttered, and easy to clean and maintain.

Printed plans include 12 pages consisting of an introduction, four pages giving basic knowledge regarding traditional and glued clinker construction, the table of offsets, and templates for the full-scale half molds. The plans are not available digitally.

“However good the plans and templates are, we always advocate lofting,” said course tutor Mike Broome, “as it allows any errors on the designer’s part to become apparent. Also, if you are stretching the boat, it’s the only way to get it all faired up. It also means you can lift patterns and templates for any elements of the fit-out, etc.”

After lofting the lines full-size, he and fellow students set to work by setting up five 1/2″ plywood temporary molds and the 7/8″-thick khaya transom upside down on a low workbench to give a comfortable working height. The centerline structure was then added. This consisted of the sapele hog 3/4″ thick and 3-1/4″ wide to allow for the daggerboard slot, although for the rowing-only version noted in the plans it would only be 2-3/4″ wide. The aft end of the hog had to be steamed to cope with the rocker. The curved inner stem (or apron) was laminated from nine layers of 1/8″-thick sapele.

The planks are 1/4″ BS1088 sapele plywood. The garboards were laid over the hog, meeting each other in the middle and glued with epoxy. The rest of the planking was epoxied along the 3/4″-wide laps using shop-made planking clamps known as “gripes,” and temporary screws at the hood ends to hold everything in place while the glue set.

Nigel Sharp

The standard arrangement for sailing is a balanced lug sail with a daggerboard. The plans offer another option: a standing lug with a leeboard.

The plans called for eight strakes, and that is what Sam and his fellow students fitted, but they had trouble fitting the planks around the turn of the bilge. There were two planks on each side that had get around nearly 90 degrees. “It took many attempts, and we probably got through a full sheet of plywood just trying to get that curve,” Sam said, “but we managed to get it eventually with the aid of double the number of gripes. If I built another one I think I would fit three planks round that curve.”

Once the planking was completed, a 1″-thick sapele skeg and keel were fitted as well as a pair of 2′ x 3/4″-square bilge runners, followed by the outer stem (made up from three pieces of sapele scarfed together) which sealed the end grain of the plywood planks at the bow. The daggerboard slot was cut through the centerline. An epoxy sealant followed by epoxy primer were then applied to the outside of the hull.

When the hull was flipped upright and the temporary molds were removed, it “wobbled like jelly,” but before any stiffening structure was fitted, the excess epoxy was scraped away and the inside of the hull was sanded. Once that somewhat laborious process was completed, four 3/4″-thick sapele floors were fitted.

The daggerboard case is made of ¼” plywood stiffened by a 2″ x ¾″ khaya framework and braced with the 7/8″-thick khaya center thwart. Rather than having continuous risers, the forward and central thwarts bear on short supports, while the stern seat—made up of seven fore-and-aft boards laid out in an attractive fantail pattern—are supported by a 1-1/2″ x 3/4″ athwartships bearer and a pair of cleats on the transom.

The boat’s outwale is made up of three pieces: first a rabbeted section of khaya that covered the end-grain of the top edge of the top plank, then a 1/8″ piece of yellow cedar for aesthetics, and finally another piece of generously rounded khaya, giving a total gunwale thickness of 1″.

Nigel Sharp

The volume created by the broad transom helps support a passenger seated in the stern.

Fitted along the bottom edge of the sheer plank, as much for style as for a guard, was another piece of 1/2″ x 3/8″ khaya tapered at the ends.

After khaya spacers to support the inwales for the open gunwale were then fitted, the interior received the same base coats as had already been applied to the exterior, and then three coats of polyurethane paint. The khaya got five coats of varnish. The inwales were installed, and the hull was then turned over for paint and brass keel bands on the centerline, alongside the daggerboard case, and on the bilge runners.

Various ancillary parts were made up: the 1/2″-thick khaya sole boards which bear on the floors, the rudder and daggerboard in 7/8″ khaya, and spars and oars of Sitka spruce. “The instructions and plans were nicely detailed and if ever there was any small confusion, we were able to figure it out,” said Sam. “We didn’t need to refer to Oughtred’s Clinker Plywood Boatbuilding Manual.”

The boat was launched on a gray, at first windless, day in June. Sam and the two students who had most helped him with the build, Sam Ferguson and Amaya Hernández, climbed aboard and rowed out of the Lyme Regis harbor; the tanbark lug sail that Sam had made hung limply. After a while I replaced Sam Ferguson and a gentle breeze soon came off the land. We then enjoyed a brief sail as the boat slipped along nicely in the flat water.

It didn’t seem too crowded with three of us on board until we tacked. That would have been much easier with two, but maybe with a little practice three people could negotiate a better procedure. Starboard tack was the favored one for the balanced lug rig, but any loss in performance on port tack when the sail was pressed against the mast was imperceptible.

Nigel Sharp

The Auk’s full bilges make a burdensome hull with good capacity. The stretched version here has room and freeboard enough for three; the 7’10” unstretched version will carry two comfortably.

At one point, a speedboat came close by at about 20 knots, and Sam and I watched the approaching wash with some trepidation. When it arrived, however, we were boat pleasantly surprised with how easily the Auk coped with it, giving us no cause for alarm. The boat was much more stable than we expected.

We needed to get back into the harbor before the tide went out, so we dropped the sail and I rowed us back in. The three of us we were able to keep the boat on an even keel with Sam one side of the tiller in the stern and Amaya on the opposite side in the bow. At first, I was worried that there might not be room for my fairly long legs, but I soon found I could use the stern seat as a stretcher. Although the 8′ oars felt too long for me, and the leathers were too thick and prevented feathering, I could tell that the Auk will be a nice, easy boat to row. Sam’s Auk will be used mainly as a tender for his parents’ 32′ sloop. He plans to fit a rope fender around the Auk, using some old heavy-duty hemp, while her sailing rig will stow in a bag strapped to the front of the mothership’s mast. She will certainly be suitable for her role as a tender, and the option of also using her for exploring rivers, bays, and coves under oar or sail will be a welcome addition.

Nigel Sharp is a lifelong sailor and a freelance marine writer and photographer. He spent 35 years in managerial roles in the boat building and repair industry, and has logged thousands of miles in boats big and small, from dinghies to schooners.

Auk Particulars

[table]

Length/7′10″ or stretched to 8′10″ (as built here, 9′2″)

Beam/4′

Depth/19″

Weight/60 lbs

[/table]

Plans for the Auk are available from Oughtred Boats. Listed prices are in Australian dollars: $134.66 AUD (approx. $90.58 USD) for plans, $1235 AUD ($830.75 USD) for kits.

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!

Super Sailfish

Seventy years ago, LIFE put the Alcort company on the map when the magazine featured the Sailfish sailboat in an article titled “World’s Wettest, Sportiest Boat,” published in the August 15, 1949 issue. Two years earlier, Alcort had expanded their market from iceboats to the little Sailfish, a lateen-rigged wooden hull that measured just under 12′. The boat was easy to handle, affordable, and offered a sporty, splashy ride to America’s post-war market of recreational sailors.

In 1946, Alex Bryan and Cortlandt Heyniger had combined bits of their first names to create Alcort, Inc., and the first sailboat that they designed, in 1947, was the 11′ 7″ Sailfish, built in Waterbury, Connecticut. The Sailfish had a beam of 31-1/2″, a crew capacity of 300 lbs, and weighed 82 lbs. The volume of air enclosed by the hull and deck made the boat virtually unsinkable. A 65-square-foot lateen sail provided ample power.

Photographs by the authors

The authors’ Super Sailfish, ZSA ZSA, is their restoration of a wooden boat built in the 1950s. Here, the varnished daggerboard rests just aft of its slot.

The boat gained immediate popularity after the LIFE article, and within a few years the original design was lengthened to 13′ 7″ and widened a bit to 35-1/2″. The larger Sailfish flew a 75-square-foot sail, weighed 102 lbs, and had a crew capacity of 400 lbs. The original Sailfish was then labeled the Standard Sailfish and the big sister named the Super Sailfish. Production of the two models of Sailfish was brisk, and in 1960 Alcort added a fiberglass version, the Super Sailfish MK II. The MK II hull was the same size as the Super Sailfish, had the same capacity of 400 lbs, and used the same rig, but weighed 98 lbs. Alcort was also producing the wooden Sunfish, which used the same sail rig, daggerboard, and rudder as the Super Sailfish line, and a fiberglass Sunfish with a longer daggerboard and taller transom.

The Alcort literature promised the Sailfish would deliver “thrilling speed, brilliant performance, perfect portability, and swamp-proof safety.” The hull, deck, and frames were made of marine plywood, with mahogany sides, transom, rudder, tiller, and daggerboard. Wilcox and Crittenden in nearby Middletown manufactured the bronze and brass fittings for all of the Alcort boats. The spars on the original Sailfish were cut from Sitka spruce, mid-generation masts were a hybrid aluminum base with wooden top, and spars from the late 1950s on were aluminum.

Alcort offered the Standard Sailfish, Super Sailfish, and Super Sailfish MK II as factory-built boats, and they sold precision-cut knockdown kits for a wooden Sailfish through the late ’50s through the mid-’60s. The Standard Sailfish was phased out in the mid-’60s and the Super Sailfish kit was last seen in the late ’60s. Along the way, a two-page set of plans was produced by Alcort with measurements and a materials list for the frames, hull, rudder, daggerboard, spars, and sail. Armed with the plans, an intrepid home builder could build the boat with locally sourced lumber and hardware. We had occasion recently to replace the bottom panels on a factory-built Super Sailfish, and while we had the panels off we validated the measurements in the plans, and all were within a 1/32″ with only one exception. The factory boat’s bow was swept up just under 1″, a design improvement that helped reduce submarining.

The handrails amidships have an important role as foot bracing to keep the sailor from sliding off the deck when the boat heels.

The Sailfish kits came with all of the wood, hardware, sails, and line needed. Finishing kits with primer, putty, paint, and varnish could be purchased as well. Alcort provided eight pages of well-written instructions with 16 photos. The first two pages of the instructions contained a list of parts included in the kit with numbered photos. The hull was assembled upside down using the shipping crate as a strongback. The first step was to attach the 13′ 3-3/4″ deck longeron to the stem, the seven frames, maststep, daggerboard trunk, and transom. The parts were coated with a sealer, and then screwed together, and the deck was then temporarily attached to the skeleton frame and the solid-wood sides were screwed on, attached first to the stem and pulled into place on the transom with a rope windlass. The inner keel longeron was attached to the frames, and it and the sides were beveled to accept the plywood bottom panels. They were attached with glue and bronze ring-shank nails.

The assembly process was easy. Alcort advertised that it could be done over a weekend with a hammer, rasp, plane, screwdriver, handsaw, square, brace, drill, and bits. A jigsaw would be helpful for building a hull from plans.

The Sailfish delivers on Alcort’s promise of fun. We have sailed all of the models and have only capsized once when a sail caught a puff and the sheet pulled Skipper off the deck. The sheet had no fairlead or cleat, so it was either let go of the sheet or go for a short swim. One sailor joked that “the Sailfish was the boat that you learned to swim on.” The shallow-V hulls of the Super Sailfish and especially the Standard Sailfish with its 31-1/2″ beam, require more balance than the Sunfish. When sailing Sailfish, we tend to sit more amidships and hike out by laying backward at an angle, rather than perpendicular to the centerline. Handrails on the deck serve as foot braces to help maintain control of the boat while hands are busy with the sheet and tiller. Some of the models had a small toerail, which is also helpful for maintaining a grip on the flat, cockpitless deck. The sheet also works as a tether to help keep skippers aboard. Some of the Sailfish had nonskid on the deck, but it quickly wore out pants bottoms. One trick that we’ve come up for tacking is to lean backward instead of forward—while you’re wearing a PFD it is harder to bend forward on a Sailfish than on a Sunfish, which has a cockpit to tuck your legs and feet into.

The most recent versions of the spars and mast for the Sailfish were all aluminum.

The Sailfish 65-square-foot sail for the Standard and 75 for the Super are appropriately sized, neither too small to provide fun, even exciting sailing, nor so large as to be overpowering and leading to frequent capsizes. All of the models power up quickly. We’ve found that tacking is improved with a longer daggerboard, similar to the one found on the 1960s fiberglass Sunfish. The mast is easy to step and even kids as young as eight can raise the sail. Our Sailfish moves well even in the lightest of breeze; we enjoy the fingertip control on the tiller and setting coffee cups set on deck, without them sliding over the side. Once the breeze picks up to 5–8 knots, a little more activity is needed to balance the boat and get through tacks smoothly. At 10–12 knots we are moving quickly to stay on course and work the puffs, and above 12 knots we have sailed the Super Sailfish with two on board, one at the tiller and the other serving as movable ballast.

With the sailing rig left ashore, or even stowed on deck, the Super Sunfish serves nicely as a stand-up paddle board.

Alcort made a lot of promises with the Sailfish and delivered on all of them. We’ve even come up with a few more uses for the boats. The Sailfish, with its deck unbroken by a cockpit, makes a respectable stand-up paddleboard, and with a 400-lb capacity, it is well suited for larger paddlers or for an adult taking little crew members out paddling. The deeper hull design has a greater capacity than a normal paddleboard and makes for a very stable platform. The small keel strip helps the boat track straight under paddle power. We can paddle our MK II out in flat calm, and set sail if the wind picks up. I took the hull out once with a low-slung beach chair lashed to the handrails, and it made a fine sit-on-top kayak, a very useful fishing platform or picnic boat. We have also seen folks add outriggers and take their pets out for a ride with plenty of room for the whole pack.

The Sailfish is a proven design. Alcort made thousands of them, and there are still many good boats out there. As the big sisters to the still-available Sunfish, they share most of the same parts, including the sail rig and daggerboard, so building a hull would be an easy way to get into small-boat sailing. The ease of portability and small storage footprint make the Sailfish a fun boat. It’s a nice swim platform for kids, and a wet, wild ride for adults. The up-front investment is minimal and there are no slip fees necessary—just add water!

Kent and Audrey Lewis blog about and maintain a fleet of vintage Alcorts that include a Standard Sailfish, Super Sailfish, Catfish and a wooden Sunfish, along with several fiberglass Sunfish. They also maintain the Yahoo group Sunfish Sailor and publish The Sunfish Owners Manual.

Sailfish Particulars

[table]

Length/11′ 7″

Beam/31.5″

Weight/82 lbs

Capacity/300 lbs

Sail Area/65 sq. ft.

[/table]

Super Sailfish Particulars

[table]

Length/ 13′ 7″

Beam/35.5″

Weight/102 lbs

Capacity/400 lbs

Sail Area/75 sq. ft.

[/table]

Laser Performance

Super Sailfish with offsets

Laser Performance

Super Sailfish parts

The kit assembly instructions can be found in the Files section of the Sunfish Sailor Yahoo group (after joining the group) and are very helpful when repairing wooden Sailfish, or for building a new Sailfish from the plans, found in the same Files. Sunfish sails and spars to fit the Super Sailfish can be ordered from Sunfish Direct. The Sunfish is manufactured in fiberglass by Laser Performance.

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!

O’Day Day Sailer

The production of small boats was booming in the 1950s on both sides of the Atlantic, and really took off in the late ’50s with the introduction of fiberglass. Famed designers Uffa Fox and George O’Day teamed up in 1956 to create the O’Day Day Sailer. Fox is credited with introducing the technique of planing to dinghy racing and designed many significant classes of boats, including the International 14. The story goes that Fox wanted a pure racing dinghy but O’Day wanted the small cuddy added to increase appeal to the recreational market in the U.S., so Fox designed the planing hull and O’Day designed the cuddy. The resulting Day Sailer was a 16’9” centerboarder with a displacement of 575 lbs, which makes for a light load to tow behind the family car. The fractional sloop rig includes a generously sized spinnaker for exciting downwind sailing.

The first Day Sailer was sold in 1958 and immediately became popular in the recreational and racing markets. It was later designated as the Day Sailer I as four different models have since been built, with over 10,000 boats hitting the waterways. Day Sailer (DS) models I through III have been built by eight different manufacturers, with the current Day Sailer being a modified DS I with a few DS II attributes, such as the internal foam flotation and cuddy thwart. The original DS models I, II, and III were built from 1957 to 1990 by the O’Day Company in Fall River, Massachusetts. The DS I and modified versions of it were later built by Can-AM Sailcraft, Rebel, Spindrift, Precision, McLaughlin, Sunfish/Laser Inc. The current builder of the DS I+ is the Cape Cod Shipbuilding Company (CCSC) in Wareham, Massachusetts, holder of the exclusive license since 1994. The Day Sailer Class Association owns the molds that are currently used by CCSC.

Photographs by the authors

The long side benches in the cockpit provide uncrowded seating for six. The sole is above the waterline and is self-bailing.

The early DS I can be identified by wooden thwarts, seats, and cockpit sole, a centerboard lever, open cuddy, and a transom deck. The DS II came out in 1971 with built-in foam flotation. The cuddy opening is smaller than the opening on the DS I because it also acts as a thwart, and a thinner transom allows mounting a small outboard motor without the need for a bracket. The Day Sailer I and II are considered class legal for one design racing, but the DS III is not considered race-legal due to higher freeboard on the transom, which was a departure from Fox’s hull design. O’Day built the III from 1985 to 1990, so to race in One Design regattas it is important to buy a DS I or DS II. The current Day Sailer in production is a modified version of the DS I with improved self-rescuing capabilities, two sealed air tanks, and a cuddy flotation tank with a smaller hatch.

The Day Sailer, no matter which model, is a very versatile boat, easy to rig, sail, transport, and store. With the mast down the boat and trailer take up just a few feet more than an average family car, so can be stored in most garages, though the mast may need to be stowed diagonally. At the ramp, the Day Sailer can be rigged in under 30 minutes: step the mast, add the boom, bend on the jib and main, clip the pop-up rudder onto the transom, and sort out the sheets.

Stepping the mast is the biggest challenge. The 23′4″-long racing mast is stepped through the top of the cabin onto the maststep fixed to the floor of the cuddy, and that can be tricky for one person. The mast does not weigh much, but it is helpful to have a helper at the foot of the mast to guide it into the cuddy opening. The good news with this arrangement is that once the mast is stepped, it is secure, and there’s no rush to attach the forestay.

A mast hinge, a popular option, makes raising the mast much easier.

About 75 percent of the new boats are delivered with a hinged mast, eliminating the awkward gymnastics of stabbing the mast through the cuddy. Once the mast is raised and the forward hole on the hinge pinned, securing the forestay to the bow fitting takes the strain off the hinge. Side stays can then be tightened to take out the slack, but no more than hand tight. Stays that are too tight can damage the hull. Tighten the nuts on the turnbuckles and tape over any cotter pins.

There are different sheeting arrangements for the boom. Some boats have sheets attached in the middle of the boom; the sheet on a DS II starts from a traveler on the transom and ends forward on a swivel cam cleat mounted to the centerboard case. The DS II boom also has a spring in the gooseneck that allowed for roller furling— disconnect the sheet, pull the boom aft, and roll the sail onto the boom. A reefing claw has to be added to connect the sheet to the sail-wrapped boom, but this design is not optimum, nor is the wad of rolled-up sail by the boom’s gooseneck. A better arrangement is to add a conventional set of reefpoints to the mainsail. The boom also has a vang to improve sail control.

The 6′ 3″ beam gives the Day Sailer good stability, enough to keep the boat under someone standing on the foredeck.

The jib on the racing version of the DS is a standard affair, attached with hanks onto the forestay and raised with a halyard. Some skippers add a downhaul to lower the jib from the cockpit. Both the main and jib halyards are led aft on the top of the cuddy. The recreational version of the new DS I comes with a roller-furling jib, which we consider essential for sailing dinghies, especially if singlehanding. We have added a roller-furling jib to our DS II along with the mast hinge. We also added the hardware and rigging for a spinnaker, halyard, spinnaker pole, spinnaker pole control lines, sheet blocks, and jam cleats.

The Day Sailer is a treat to sail; it handles well, tacks with ease, and powers up quickly with its large sail area. The planing hull is responsive to the tiller, and the wide beam makes it stable. The boat will roll quickly but then sets on a tack, holding it with stable and positive helm control. The centerboard can be easily adjusted from amidships.

We sail a Drascombe Lugger and a Sunfish; the Lugger drives like the family sedan and the Sunfish like our Mustang. The Day Sailer handling is closer to that of the Sunfish—when the breeze picks up, the mainsheet needs to be held in the hand and someone should be ready on the jibsheets. The jibsheets run through the coaming on the DS I and through small cars on the DS II. For the highest performance, skippers have added tiller extensions and hiking straps. There is an outhaul on the battened main; racing versions have barber-haulers and travelers added. Pop the spinnaker, and it will scoot along quite nicely in a light breeze.

The Day Sailer carries 100 sq ft in the main, 45 sq ft in the jib and, for sailing off the wind, another 95 sq ft in spinnaker.

The Day Sailer’s 7′ 4″-long cockpit provides plenty of room for three adults, or two adults and two kids. With four adults it gets cozy; there is not much moving around, so whoever is sitting next to the tiller or foredeck needs to know what to do. It is easy to depower the main, reef it, or furl the jib as needed.

The cuddy is spacious for storing picnic or camping gear, and it affords a space equivalent to a two-person backpacker tent for sleeping aboard for overnight cruising. Adding a topping lift makes the boom nice ridgepole for a boom tent; there’s plenty of room to sleep in the uncluttered cockpit. The Day Sailer has completed many endurance cruising events, such as the Texas 200, Florida 120, and the Everglades Challenge.

A small kicker can be added for auxiliary power. We have used both an electric trolling motor and gas outboard, with best results coming from a 2-1/2-hp four-stroke that pushed push the boat to 6 knots at one-third throttle. The DS I will require a bracket to support and outboard; the DS II transom is thin and sturdy enough for a direct mount. If we’re not going far from home, we occasionally skip the outboard and carry a paddle; with her low coaming we have paddled her a bit, even backward over the transom.

The transom of the Day Sailer II will accommodate an outboard for auxiliary power. The Day Sailer I will require a bracket.

Day Sailers are easy to find and inexpensive, considering their capabilities. If you come across one, there are few important things to check. Make sure the centerboard moves in the trunk, see that the forestay tang and bow seam are not pulled up, inspect the cuddy deck for noticeable depression which would indicate failure of the maststep under the cuddy floor, and if it is a DS II look inside the flotation compartments. Rinse her off and get her ready to sail. There is a great Day Sailer Association with a web-based forum, and excellent parts availability.

We have had Day Sailers in our family since 1994. The first, named CYANE, handled the windy chop of Corpus Christi Bay with ease and the calmer waters of the St. Johns River at Jacksonville. We have had many fun adventures on our current DS II, also named CYANE. She has been launched for numerous day sails around Pensacola and Escambia Bay and has taken many family members for their first sail. She is most comfortable in a 10–12-knot breeze and wakes up for an exciting ride at 15. If you’re ever sailing in the Pensacola area, you’ll see her out on East Bay chasing dolphin.

Audrey and Kent Lewis enjoy time with CYANE, along with their small fleet of kayaks, canoe, sailboats, and lapstrake runabout. They blog about their adventures on smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com

Day Sailer Particulars

[table]

Length/16′ 9″

Beam/6′ 3″

Draft, board up/9″

Draft, board down/3′ 9″

Displacement/575 lbs

Sail area

Main/100 sq ft

Jib/45 sq ft

Spinnaker/96 sq ft

[/table]

The Day Sailer is built by Cape Cod Shipbuilding Company. Prices start at $18,335 (less sails). For more information about the Day Sailer Class, visit the Day Sailer Association.

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

Salt Bay Skiff

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!

Lessons from Penobscot Bay

When I moved to the Belfast area of Maine in 1989, I brought with me ACE, a 14′ sailboat that I had built in North Carolina. She had a light, planing hull, and with a crew of two or three she was fast in a good breeze. I had had a lot of fun with her. Getting very wet in the process was no imposition in warm Southern waters.

The water in Maine’s Penobscot Bay is not warm, but after the sultry calms of the Carolinas, the brisk summer winds promised good sailing. My wife is a somewhat reluctant sailor, so I had rigged my boat with a trapeze and long tiller extensions for solo sailing. While I was on the trapeze, with two sheets in one hand and a tiller extension in the other, ACE was something of a handful, but in the right breeze she would take off like a scalded cat. Sometimes I would out-pace powerboats across the upper reach of the bay in the triangle of water north of Isleboro, between Belfast, Castine, and Searsport.

The wind had to be just right, though, for those exhilarating rides. Too little wind and the boat might zip along with a humming daggerboard and a flat, fizzy wake, but wouldn’t quite reach the frantic pace that, once experienced, made anything pale in comparison. About 15 knots of wind was ideal. Much more than that—well, that is what this story is about.

I had taken to sailing out of Searsport to avoid the beat up or down Belfast Harbor. One late spring morning, with a brisk northwesterly promising a thrilling sail, I hitched the boat trailer to my old Plymouth, and headed north along Route 1. On the drive to the launching ramp I passed flags crackling in the breeze and looking out over the bay I saw a carpet of whitecaps. Maybe I should tuck in a reef before heading out, I thought.

I’d had the good sense to invest in a wet suit soon after discovering just how cold the bay could be. Icy spray on a warm day was one thing, but the uncontrollable shivering that followed full immersion for more than a few minutes provided a salutary warning of the dangers of hypothermia. I rigged the boat, pulled the wetsuit on, and looked out from the launching ramp. The wind was blowing directly offshore, and the water’s edge was calm, only ruffled by the wind, but the whitecaps farther out were plain to see. I should reef, I thought again, but what if I could handle a full mainsail? If I could keep the boat on her feet, she might take off as never before. The temptation was too much, and with my mouth somewhat dry, I pushed off, and hopped aboard.

It was hairy, right from the start. Close to shore the breeze was gusty; its direction inconsistent. An accidental jibe would have meant instant capsize, so I tacked downwind, letting the boat round up and spilling the wind in the gusts, and jibing in the lulls. As I moved further out into Searsport Harbor the wind steadied, but it was strong, and the boat felt twitchy, darting ahead, then rounding up and heeling hard, with too much weather helm for comfort or good speed. Obviously, I needed to get out on the trapeze if I were to keep ACE on her feet, which she needed to be if I was to make the best of her planing bottom.

This wasn’t easy. There was that dodgy moment as I crouched on the deck and clipped the harness to the wire—I hadn’t got my weight out yet, the sails weren’t sheeted properly, and I needed to change my grip on the tiller extension. The wrong gust just then, and I’d have been over. I swallowed my apprehension, and managed it without fumbling; now the boat moved faster and toward more open water.

It was clear, though, that ACE was still not happy. The wind continued to increase farther offshore, and gust after gust found her heeled way too far with me hanging on by the skin of my teeth, sheets eased and sails flogging, the tiller hard to windward, and the rudder dragging. Then I would get her back on her feet, struggle with the sheets, only to be knocked down again.

I needed to come up into the wind just a bit, I thought. If I could trim the sails just right and get her properly up on plane, she’d outrun those gusts, and I’d have better control. I had more sea room now, and I set about trying to find that magic combination of sail trim and course that would set ACE free.

Of course, I should have seen that it was impossible. What followed were two broad reaches, from Sears Island to the Searsport shore, and back to the island, in a series of swoops as each attempt to find the sweet spot led to a knockdown. A tugboat near Sears Island on its way to Belfast would cross my course, and caused me to come up into the wind, and tack to head back the other way. By the time I reached the Searsport shore, the tug had moved out into the Bay; now, I thought, with the harbor to myself, I’ll make ACE fly.

But conditions were worse than ever. The wind had continued to increase, and again and again I was knocked down, releasing the sheets and regaining control only with the utmost effort. Closing in on Sears Island, the inevitable happened. I could no longer risk a jibe, and as I hardened the sheets and came up into the wind to tack, a gust hit, and we were over.

Now, I had capsized this boat may times in pursuit of thrills, and normally I could get her right back up. As ACE went down, I would climb over the windward gunwale, stand on the daggerboard, haul her back, scramble aboard, and be off again. This routine depended, of course, on the daggerboard being there. This time, it wasn’t. In my haste and trepidation on the launching ramp, I had neglected to secure it with its bungee cord. Now the daggerboard had slipped out of the trunk, and began to float away as the boat continued to roll until she had completely turned turtle.

For a moment I stood on the bottom of the hull, my eyes fixed on the drifting daggerboard. Without it, I was completely helpless, but could I haul myself back onto that slippery bottom if I swam after it? Well, nothing for it but to try, I decided, so in I dived. I retrieved the board, swam back, and found that by hooking my fingers into the daggerboard slot I could just wriggle my way aboard the capsized hull again. I fished under the boat, found a jib sheet, stood back on the chine, and hauled. Slowly the boat came up, and flopped back onto her feet again.

I tumbled aboard and lunged with the daggerboard to shove it back into its trunk, but before I could do that, the wind caught the flogging sails, the bow swung to leeward, the sails filled, and over she went again.

This time, at least, I didn’t have to swim for the daggerboard, but when I got ACE upright once more, the sails filled, and over she went again.

I don’t know how many times the same exact thing happened. In that wind, I just couldn’t get the daggerboard down quickly enough. Without it, there was nothing to stop the bow from being blowing downwind, the sails filling, and the boat capsizing. It seemed futile, but there was nothing I could do but keep trying. At some point I noticed that the tugboat was no longer heading for Belfast, but was sitting motionless a half-mile or so down the Bay. If I hadn’t been so busy, I might have paused to imagine the comments on my idiocy passing between the occupants of her bridge.

My life was not in danger. I was drifting toward the rocky Sears Island shore. At worst I would have swum ashore and made a long, uncomfortable walk back to the launching ramp. The prospects for the boat were more dire. Soon, her mast would touch bottom and probably break. There would be no hope of keeping her off the rocks. I carried a paddle, but there was not the smallest chance that I could use it to work along the shore to a safe landing. The fetch from Searsport to Sears Island is about a mile and a half, but although the waves were not big, they were angry enough to make short work of a light plywood hull on those sullen rocks. Thanks to my wet suit, and my exertions, I was not cold, but I was getting tired. Soon, I knew, I would not have the strength for another effort.

Then, I had an undeserved stroke of good fortune. As the boat came back up one more time there was the merest lull; I managed to ram the daggerboard home and slam the helm down, and the boat rounded up, sails spilling the wind. For a moment I could rest. I bailed ACE out and sorted out the tangle of sheets and halyards in the cockpit.

Now, I should be able to report that at this point I dropped the jib, reefed the main, and headed for home. I did not. The tugboat was now steaming southward; perhaps I thought that I could show her crew that I knew what I was about after all. I got out on the trapeze, and headed back for the Searsport shore, in one more wild pursuit of glory.

I was no more successful than before. The wind was now, if anything, even stronger, and the struggle harder; I did not even come close to getting ACE up on plane. I wrestled with the tiller, eased the main to its fullest, and laid back hard in the trapeze; at every second another capsize threatened.

Then, when I reached the Searsport shore, I could not get the boat to come about. I could not come up into the wind, so I had to try to tack from a reach. The boat was not going fast enough to carry her way through the eye of the wind; she would falter, and fall off on the same tack, heading for the rocks. I tried again, and then again.

Clearly, I had to do something. A jibe was out of the question, and the rocks were getting uncomfortably close. Now, at long last, I came to my senses. I let the sheets run free, scrambled onto the little foredeck, pulled down the jib, unhanked it, stuffed it under the foredeck, and reefed the main.

The boat was still over-canvased, but at least under control. I was able to tack away from disaster on the rocks, and belatedly admitted to myself that there could be too much of a good thing; another attempt at glory would be unwise, I headed back for the launching ramp. I still needed to put my weight out on the trapeze even with the reduced sail, but at least I could work to windward, and pretty soon I was back at the ramp and loading the boat on the trailer.

On another occasion soon after this episode, I was broad reaching well out into upper Penobscot Bay in far too much wind, again chasing thrills, only to find that I had taken on more than I could handle. I didn’t capsize this time, but when I realized that I was really being pretty stupid, and headed back to Searsport, close hauled under just a reefed mainsail, I still needed the trapeze. It was rough out there, with short, steep, tumbling seas. I was well offshore this time, with not another vessel in sight, and I would much rather have just hiked out just on the side decks, but there was no making headway like that, so heart in mouth, I beat back hanging on that slender wire, wishing I’d stayed ashore.

That was about the last of that foolishness. Not long after, I became a father and found that having a small child at home quickly knocks some common sense into your head. I still sailed ACE, often singlehanded on the trapeze, but I gave up the pretense that I could make a 14’ daggerboarder fly in a gale of wind. I have to say that, being more prudent, I had a lot more fun.

Arch Davis grew up in New Zealand, where he learned the elements of boatbuilding and design, and sailed out of Auckland on the Hauraki Gulf and beyond. He moved to Maine in 1988, where he builds and designs boats for the backyard boatbuilder. In 2012, with his daughter Grace, he launched the GRACE EILEEN, a 30’ light displacement cruising sailboat, which they sail on Penobscot Bay and the coast of Maine. He no longer has an ACE 14, but he still takes the original Penobscot 14 out for an occasional row on Belfast Harbor. Plans and kits for his designs are available at Arch Davis Designs.

If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.

Roll on Columbia

My friends John and Helen and I toasted my departure with wild blackberries. Our farewells said, I climbed aboard KIMCHI, the 12′ Salt Bay skiff I’d built with John’s guidance. I pulled on the oars, slipping away from the dock into the John Day River near Astoria, Oregon. The sky was a gray sheet and the water like glass, murmuring softly as KIMCHI picked up speed.

I’m really a sailor, not a rower. But that morning the weather decided that, like it or not, I was going to be a rower. I didn’t mind, since there was no sun to warm me and I wanted to work up an appetite. It was flood tide, and the John Day River, which feeds into the Columbia just 12 miles before that broad river reaches the Pacific, was flowing in reverse. Once I was on the Columbia itself, the tide would be in my favor as I headed east, but I had a mile to row against a nearly 2-knot current before I reached the John Day’s mouth at Cathlamet Bay. A derelict railroad bridge marked the gateway between the two, and with a final sprint I pushed through the narrow channel between its pylons and onto the edge of the estuary’s 5-mile-wide expanse.

Leaning on the oars, I drifted with the now favorable current, slowly making my way to Portland, and my home. KIMCHI slid over submerged marshland, as minnows and weeds alike swayed to let her pass. They moved with a sleepy lack of concern, as if they would not have moved at all if the water displaced by the hull didn’t push them aside. I was glad for the stillness, catching my breath while the river itself was inhaling deeply.

After drifting a while, I set to rowing again. As I left the shallows and began traveling the channels between the sandbars and the southern bank of the river, the small black head of a harbor seal popped up from the water a few hundred feet from the boat. The seal followed me most of the morning, resurfacing every few minutes, its head swiveling like a periscope until it caught sight of me again. Each time, its dark, marble eyes held me in an unwavering gaze. Then I would blink and the seal would vanish seamlessly back into the water.

The morning passed with steady rowing on a quiet river. Around noon, the sun came out, burned the fog away, and brought the wind. It happened in a matter of minutes, and the world of gray was suddenly light blue. I stowed the oars, keeping them in the oarlocks and sliding the handles all the way to the stern where I strapped them to the quarter knees. I unfurled the bundled sail and spars, stepped the mast, and set the boom and sprit. A quick haul on the boom vang and the snotter to snug them up and cleat them, and in 60 seconds I had the sail flying. I settled into the stern, took the tiller and the sheet, and KIMCHI scooted along in the building breeze.

Her sail set for the midday breeze, KIMCHI rests on the beach of Jim Crow Sands. To the northeast, across the shipping channel, lies the Washington shore. Most of Jim Crow Sands is dredge spoil, pumped up from the bottom of the channel.

Within an hour it was blowing 7 or 8 knots from the northwest. The landscape had a new skip in its step, trotting past me where before it had ambled. As I sailed along, I spotted unusually bright white sand on the bank of an island and turned north toward it, sheeting in from a run to a beam reach. KIMCHI entered the shallows around Jim Crow Sands, a mile-long sandbar that stretches east from Pillar Rock Island. Ten yards offshore I slid forward and pulled the leeboard up from the starboard side. The rudder, rigged with a bungee downhaul that allows it to kick up, could fend for itself.

When the boat eased to a stop, I stepped off into a few inches of water and my right leg suddenly plunged up to the knee in the sand, water erupting around it with the release of trapped air. I nearly fell on my face, my left leg still in the boat at ground level, the right buried in the porous sand. After the initial shock, I rolled up my pants and stepped out of the boat with my left leg. The ground held firm, so I pulled my right leg out of the sand and stepped with it again. Everything seemed fine. I placed my third step with more force and my leg sank to the shin in a flurry of bubbles. When I finally reached solid ground, I set off running down the beach, much to the disapproval of the Canada geese and ducks attempting to enjoy their respite on the shore. They squawked, waddled, and flapped a few disorderly wingbeats to put some distance from me. I thought better of disturbing the birds and returned to the boat. The sun had burned the clouds away entirely, and a fresh northwesterly rattled the sail and spars as the boat rested on the shore.

Departing Jim Crow Sands, I decided to avoid the shipping lanes to the north of the island and take a back route around a cluster of scrub-covered islands to the east. My chart showed that the channels between them would become shallow but clearly passed through to the river. With an 8-knot tailwind pushing KIMCHI, I sailed down the first major artery, whipping past a row of ramshackle houseboats along Woody Island. I followed a narrowing course between Goose and Tronson islands; the tall marsh grass lining it drew closer. The channel was only 20′ wide when my concern grew, but there was still clear water in front of me.

I rounded a bend, and the last stretch of water ended in a wall of marsh grass swaying lazily in the breeze. I steered into the nearest bunch of grass to stop the boat, and soon the drag of the reeds held KIMCHI in place. I used an oar to turn the boat around and bring the bow back into the wind. I tried sailing back out of the channel, but after two tacks, I wound up right where I’d started. Sailing out wasn’t going to work. I struck the sail and set the oars in the locks. Rowing, I covered more ground, but if I stopped for an instant the wind pushed the boat askew and back the way I’d come. I had sailed a full mile down this winding, narrowing pathway and decided if there was some other way out, it would surely be better than backtracking. While I stood up and looked around, the wind pushed KIMCHI against the reeds.

The main flow of the river was only 100 yards away but separated by thigh-high grass and who knew what else. Still, crossing seemed better than backtracking. A little to the northwest was a tiny streamlet that extended partway into the marsh. I crossed and rowed in and the boat filled it entirely. Grass rasped on the hull as I rowed, and the oars found purchase more against the roots of the plants than the water. With each pull I plowed through the water lilies that grew in the center of the stream. This worked for 30 yards, until the thickness of the growth brought KIMCHI to a stop. I stood, pulled the oars out of the locks, and poled the boat forward. I used both oars and stood in the middle of the boat, and applied almost as much downward force as I did upward force, as if I were attempting to pole-vault over the bow. This got me through another 30 yards of marsh.

The trail of water lilies marking deeper water ran out. I had followed them as far as I could because they meant easier passage, growing where it was too deep for the grasses, but I had reached the point where all that stood between me and the rest of the Columbia was just that: grass. So once again, I stowed the oars, pulled on my water shoes, and stepped out into the soup.

Lost in the weeds, the boat proves itself an amphibious vessel. For the overland trek, all of the gear was tossed in the cockpit.

My foot landed on a cluster of grass and the roots supported my weight—I hardly sank in at all. I tiptoed to the bow from root cluster to root cluster, and grabbed the painter. For the last 40 yards, I towed the boat across the grass.

I had at last reached flowing deep water again. I paused to catch my breath. The swath of crushed greenery behind me looked like a giant snake had slithered through the marshland. I walked around to the back of the boat, pushed it forward until only the stern clung to the grass, and with a final shove, launched into the current and dumped myself on my back into the cockpit. I was exhausted and happy to be on my way once more, under sail and drenching summer sun.

Ready to sail again after our unexpected hike, KIMCHI perches on the edge of the channel to the east of Goose and Tronson islands.

I made 20 miles that first day, marshland detour and all. The wind stayed steady through the evening, and I sailed into the Elochoman Slough Marina in Cathlamet, on the Washington side of the Columbia River. My boat was half the size of the next smallest in the marina, and could have been a tender for many of them. I pulled into an empty slip next to a 35-footer and tied off. It was dusk, and the many campers and locals paid me no mind as I made my way to a picnic bench and fired up my camp stove. One bowl of corn chowder and two instant ramens later, I plodded back down the gangway and fell into the boat, where I pulled on my sleeping bag and quickly fell asleep on the foam pads I had tied into the bottom of the boat.

Before my departure from Elochoman Slough Marina on the second morning, I spread my gear out to get organized for the day. I do a lot backpacking and I never slept better in the woods than I do in the foam-cushioned bottom of the boat.

The morning of the second day was much like the first: calm, gray, and cool. Rather than immediately set out rowing, knowing I would likely spend most of the morning fighting the current, I decided to wander into town, so I went off walking. Twenty minutes later, back at the marina, I decided I could wander the town a second time before the wind picked up.

To my dismay the taco joint and brew pub were still closed, even on my second walkabout, so around 9 a.m. I got to rowing again. Within the first hour the sun was out and the wind was up, almost a perfect mirror of the previous day.

Lying supine in the stern is the most relaxing position for me and the most stable for sailing. Removing the rowing thwart and setting it in the bow gives me more room to stretch out. Cloud cover kept the sun off me while I sailed toward the east end of Puget Island after leaving Cathlamet.

Soon the wind had surpassed the first day’s, blowing close to 15 knots astern as I sailed the last leg of the channel between Puget Island and the Washington bank to reenter the main channel.

At the east end of the island, I let the sail luff and looked both ways before crossing the shipping lanes. Two osprey chicks eyed me from their nest atop a daymark.

Where the channels converge the river is almost a mile wide. There were no obstructions and the wind was over 15 knots. Small whitecaps frothed as I sailed among them. My dinghy-racing blood was up, and I angled KIMCHI to run with the swell. Keeping my weight low and aft, I kept my left hand on the mainsheet ready to pull it from its cleat.

KIMCHI started surfing. She slowed in the troughs as I tweaked the rudder in anticipation of the approaching waves, turning the boat a few degrees off the direct path of the crest. As the wave behind me caught up with the boat, lifting its stern, I lunged forward and the boat raced down the face. The rush of water hissed while KIMCHI surged forward. As the wave finally outpaced me and the bow lifted, I glanced over my shoulder and prepared for the next wave.

The sand bar on the east end of Puget Island is almost 40 miles from the mouth of the river but not beyond the reach of the tides. I had pulled KIMCHI 15’ from the water’s edge, but within five minutes the incoming tide had nearly floated her off.

The day whipped past in a gusty, blue-sky blur. I stopped for lunch at Cooper Island, on a beach so broad that it must have been made of dredge spoil, much the same as Jim Crow Sands.

Around the next bend, I passed the Beaver Generating Plant, a natural gas–powered facility. Beyond a fence that came almost to the river, the thrum of turbines emanated from the stark, metal-clad buildings.

From the power plant I sailed along the slough between Crims Island and the Oregon bank, emerging upriver on the sandy end of the wooded isle. A dragonfly hitched a ride for the length of the slough, sunning itself like a figurehead on the bow. In the main channel next to the island a cargo ship lay at anchor, splitting the river down the middle. The name DARYA SATI, painted in white letters each as tall as my mast, stood stark against the red-and-black hull. In the lee of Crims the wind had calmed, so I bobbed toward the ship with the remaining few knots of breeze pushing KIMCHI. At the ship’s stern, the gap between the hull and the rudder was large enough for me to sail through. I was tempted to try it, but imagining KIMCHI being churned into kindling brought me to my senses.

I left the shadow of the DARYA SATI behind me and sailed along the south shore of a 4-mile-long finger of land pointing downstream from Longview, Washington, passing Willow Grove Park, a stretch of beach backed by a straw-colored lawn and scattered trees. Sunbathers and power boaters were out in full force.

The wind, unhindered, blew through with the steady 15 knots it had sustained all day. I sailed southeast, upriver, to Barlow Point and entered a straight, wide-open corridor between the industrial riverfronts of Longview on the Washington side and Rainier on the Oregon side. It was a noisy, busy gauntlet to run. On either side, timber yards lined the river with towering stacks of Douglas-fir trunks 60’ long. Docked cargo vessels waited to be loaded with the mountains of logs. A tugboat chugged past, the skipper giving me a nod as he steered around a mooring buoy the size of a city bus.

The late afternoon sun shone with a burnt-orange glow, and I knew I needed to find a spot to camp. After passing the tug, I spotted the landmark on the Oregon bank that I had been looking for, a pink stucco building with a terra-cotta-tile veranda roof. It was my friend’s favorite Mexican restaurant in Rainier.

I had made 25 miles that day and had eaten only two energy bars. I beached beneath the restaurant’s patio and hauled KIMCHI above the high-water mark. I climbed up the embankment, sat down at a table, and ordered a steaming burrito. After dinner, I went for a stroll around Rainier’s waterfront before returning to the beach. I slept in the boat, my gear spread across the sand beside it.

I woke on the third day to an easterly wind and clouds looming in the eastern sky, and knew I would spend most of the day getting wet and getting nowhere. I launched in the chill air and immediately started rowing. In about an hour I made it a mile upriver along the Oregon bank, drifted back half a mile crossing the river, and remade the lost ground along the shore just west of Cottonwood Island. I had aimed for the downriver end of the island because of the narrow, slow-moving channel separating it from the Washington mainland, ideal for making progress upriver with as little resistance as possible.

The Cowlitz River flows into the Columbia at the downstream end of Cottonwood Island. After the morning’s first fit of rain I was not at all dry but I stayed mostly warm walking KIMCHI through a stretch of shallows between the island and the Washington shore.

As I approached the channel, it began to rain, and all of the weekend fishermen anchored along the Washington bank reeled in their lines and motored off. It was the middle of August, our sunniest month, so I had brought no rain gear. I shoved everything I could into the dry bag—map, snacks, water bottles—and piled my foam pads into a vertical stack in the stern so not all of them would get so wet. I put on my life vest for warmth and to keep some of the rain off me. I continued rowing—against the wind, against the current, and pelted by plump summer raindrops. I would have been miserable if it weren’t for the heat generated by rowing. A harbor seal followed me up the channel along Cottonwood. He appeared to be staying drier than I was.

About halfway down the 4-mile channel, the rain abated and I dried off a bit. My pants, which had been soaked through to the skin, slowly turned splotchy with dry patches. I bailed out the water in the boat and then, just as I was exiting the channel to return to the main body of the river, another bank of clouds reared up to the south. They dragged gossamer sheets of rain from their bellies over the hills on the Oregon shore. From afar, the gray veils were beautiful. As they reached the river the hiss of rain on water filled the air, soft at first, then growing as the clouds continued their northward advance. I resigned myself to another drenching.

Tuning out my surroundings, I set to the task of rowing like a yoked ox. It wasn’t until I was a few yards from an industrial loading dock that I looked over my shoulder to see where I was going. With a 90-degree pivot and two quick strokes I shot between its concrete pylons and into the echo under its deck. I spent an hour under there, tied off to a pylon, wringing the rainwater from my clothes and sponging the last drops from the boat with a small piece of foam that had ripped off one of my pads. A pair of ducks swam around KIMCHI. Calm followed the rain, and as it cleared, the whole width of the river shone like a liquid mirror.

In the early afternoon, the sky cleared and the wind lazily drifted back to the northwest. It had yet to build to more than a few knots, but I sailed south in the desultory breeze up the narrow part of the river south of town of Kalama, just before Martin and Goat islands. A stern-wheeler chugged by downriver, carrying a full load of tourists, cameras and binoculars dangling from their necks.

There was no other traffic upriver or down, so I decided it was safe to sail across the channel to the Washington side. It was slow going, but there was just enough wind that I didn’t think I needed to strike the sail and row. I was halfway across the river when I noticed a red buoy about a half mile upriver of me. It puzzled me because this buoy was right up against the Washington side of the river; the far side of the shipping channel was only 150 yards from the Washington shoreline, and I was smack in the middle of it rather than almost across.

Downriver I heard the unmistakable deep rumble of a cargo ship’s engine and the waterfall rush of the bow pushing through the water. I had been bobbing across the river thinking the path was clear, and now this rusted 750’ red-and-gray behemoth had rounded the corner of Sandy Island and was bearing down on me.

The skies had cleared a bit by the time I reached the anchorage in the middle of Martin Island, but an inch of rain had fallen that morning, so I spent the evening drying my gear.

I jibed as fast as I’ve ever jibed, and aimed straight for the Washington bank. The wind was still light and shifty, but I felt confident I had enough breeze and time to get clear. Whoever was at the ship’s helm must have noticed me too, and steered slightly to the west, away from me and toward the channel’s Oregon side. The ship churned passed with just 100′ between us. I looked up at the bridge, and saw, hazy through the bridge windows, someone in a white shirt and black cap looking down at me with a pair of binoculars. I reached up and waved. The crewman’s arm shot up in response, and we held the gesture for a beat as if saluting. The ship continued on its way, and I on mine as I sailed up the slough between Martin Island and the Washington shore. I entered the island’s small cove, a snug anchorage I had spotted on my map earlier that day. There were already five boats anchored there and among them were two floating docks maintained by local yacht clubs. Thick, tall walls of brambles heavy with blackberries lined the shore. I ate my fill before settling in for the evening.

August is the peak of blackberry season and the brambles are scattered all along the river shore. I made many pitstops to pick them, and some were monstrous and I could easily make a meal of the them.

I made my way to the more welcoming of the two docks, the one with the tiki hut strung with lights. I tied off, set up my kitchen, and cooked instant ramen. As evening set, I ate and watched cows grazing along the shore and lights flickering on in the anchored yachts. Despite the lousy start, I had covered close to 15 miles.

The next morning dawned cloudy, but the air was warm and lacked the cool bite that had heralded the easterly storm the day before. There wasn’t any wind, so I started the morning by rowing. As I left the cove, a faint buzzing noise come from the sky, but with no apparent source. The buzzing grew louder, and from behind the trees of the more southerly Goat Island the pink fabric wing of a paraglider appeared. He was taking advantage of the still morning air, and buzzing about with a caged propeller strapped to his back. The buzzing softened as he cut back on the throttle and spiraled slowly down to the meadow on Martin Island. His feet scraped the grass and I thought he would land, but he revved the motor and swooped back into the sky. I continued rowing and followed the slough along the Washington bank of the river.

It was an uneventful morning, apart from a brief tangle when I rowed KIMCHI’s mast into a fisherman’s line that had been cast from a cliff along the bank. With a dead stop and reverse I extricated myself from the monofilament snare. By noon, the wind still hadn’t turned up, so I continued rowing. I rowed the 5 miles from Martin Island to St. Helens and stopped on the shore of Sand Island, a 2/3-mile-long wooded isle across a narrow channel from St. Helens Marina. It’s a well-appointed city park and I was happy to take advantage of the facilities. But while I was using the restroom, some kids wandering around were drawn to my boat. I was walking back to KIMCHI just as they climbed aboard. When they noticed me approaching, they jumped out but I smiled and asked if they’d like to ride in the boat as I towed them through the shallows. They climbed back in, but before I could get the okay from their parents they were called back to the dock; it was time for them to return to the mainland. The kids leaped out once more, leaving KIMCHI with a wealth of sand.

At low tide this sand bar stretches downriver from Sand Island. St. Helens, visible on the left, is close by. The island looks quiet here, but on this Sunday afternoon it was teeming with hikers and kayakers.

After crossing to the public dock at St. Helens, I consulted my chart. I had covered a lot of ground and was ahead of schedule, so I had some time to kill and took a break to see the town. Things were off to an exciting start when the river current swept a large powerboat against the walkway that bridged the two floating docks. A half dozen boaters appeared as if from thin air, and with much grunting we shoved the 2-ton boat upstream and hauled it into an empty slip. The boat’s crew gathered their wits and made a second launch, this one successful with the application of more throttle.

At the south end of town, on the edge of a vacant concrete-paved lot, I met a chatty local named Howard. Lugging a massive jug, he paused at the foot of a stairway made of railroad ties set into the hillside, then slowly climbed the steps, watering the plants that grew alongside them. Once he got to talking, he forgot about the plants entirely and told me about the old Boise Cascade veneer plant that used to sit on the lot and had shut down in 2008. He recalled in vivid detail the plant in operation, trucks hauling in the debarked logs, machines peeling them layer by layer like so many onions, and barges swinging wide with their loads of veneer around the point of Sauvie Island, just 1/2 mile upriver where the Multnomah Channel meets the Columbia. The site didn’t look like much now, just a bare fenced-in lot with a rusted dock.

I had my eye on the Multnomah Channel, the narrow, winding 22-mile-long distributary from the Willamette River. The wind had filled in while I was ashore, and so in the late afternoon I set sail from St. Helens and said farewell to the Columbia and entered the 200-yard wide mouth of the channel. A mile in, Scappoose Bay split off from the Multnomah, and I slid along its bifurcated entry, with the dwindling northwesterly nudging KIMCHI along.

When I arrived at the bay’s only marina, 1-1/2 miles in, it was nearly dusk and there was no place to dock, so I rowed farther into the bay. It quickly shallowed, and in about 1′ of water I stopped, pulled my oars from the locks and plunged them blade-first into the mud. With the oars serving as stakes, KIMCHI, snugly tied to the looms, was prevented from swinging in the wind.

After dinner, I settled in for the night. In the dark, I checked the knots around the oars one more time, and laid back in the boat. The light evening breeze flowed over the top of the gunwales, carrying the smells of mud and grass. It was cool, but in my sleeping bag I was comfortable, and soon fell asleep. It had been another day, and another 12 miles.

When I woke on the morning of my last day, I was glad to find KIMCHI had not pulled free from the mud and drifted into the weeds. I backtracked out of Scappoose and rowed into the Multnomah Channel. Judging by the weather, the Columbia likely had plenty of wind. The channel, on the other hand, only received the irregular dregs of the wind, tumbled over obstructions along its narrow and winding path. I made my way in fits of rowing and sailing, and eventually got tired of setting and striking the rig every 30 minutes. I decided that unless the wind rose above 5 knots, I was going to row.

Multnomah Channel felt like a small town’s main street, compared to the highway of the Columbia. The southern half is lined with houseboats and the residents lounged on their porch decks, waving as I passed. A leather-skinned woman in a red bikini riding in an outboard-powered rubber dinghy passed me twice, as if she was out on a trip to the grocery store for milk.

By midafternoon, the wind had withered in the August heat. I took my shirt off to stay cool while rowing, but the air was sticky with heat and humidity. By the time I passed under the Sauvie Island Bridge, I was practically in Portland. The wind picked up above my 5-knot threshold, so I set the sail and donned my shirt.

The St. John’s bridge, the first on the approach to Portland, was bathed in the afternoon light as I sailed up the Willamette River. It was a downwind run, so I pulled the leeboard up and set it in the boat, just forward of my feet.

Just 1-1/2 miles beyond bridge I reached the Willamette, my home river, and the last leg of my journey. I passed under the St. Johns Bridge, the first of 12 that I’d pass under sailing through Portland, and stopped on the left bank at Willamette Cove. A sign on the shore said the site was toxic with industrial waste once dumped there. The woman walking her dog, the man with the camera, and the teenagers ambling across the sand didn’t seem to mind this, but I decided against spending the night there. It was nearly sunset and I still had more than 5 miles to travel up the river.

I took my last rest stop of the voyage at Willamette Cove. The sun was setting and the western bank of the river was already in shadow. I had just a 9 more miles to the voyage’s end at the Willamette Sailing Club.

With my running lights on, I set out from the cove. I was worried about sailing through the industrial part of Portland, which lay ahead, but I didn’t see another boat on the water. It was not until darkness had fallen completely, that I saw anyone else.

The city lights sprang up around me as I left the rougher part of Portland’s riverside behind me and sailed through the downtown district. Pedestrians crossing the Hawthorne Bridge stopped and waved as I passed beneath them. WILLAMETTE STAR, a 100′ dinner-cruise ship, swung wide around me and starburst flashes from the diner’s cameras sparkled beneath the steady glow from the city.

It was nearly 10 p.m. when I reached the Tilikum Crossing Bridge. The reflections of its lights glowed orange and undulated on the slow-moving water. The best wind of the day filled in from the north, bringing KIMCHI alive. I left the city lights behind and sped down the inky waters of the southwest waterfront. At 10:10 p.m., in the pitch dark, I slid into the docks at the Willamette Sailing Club. The day’s 25 miles brought me to the end of a nearly 100-mile voyage. I derigged KIMCHI and stowed her under buzzing fluorescent lights.

If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.

CHIPS

photographs courtesy of Carl Kaufmann

In profile, CHIPS bears a strong resemblance to the Herreshoff 12-1/2, one of the boats that inspired Carl’s Block Island 19 design.

Carl Kaufmann, at 92, likes to keep busy. He has a workshop at both of his homes, one on Block Island, Rhode Island, and the other in Mystic, Connecticut, and has built boats ranging from a 34-lb cedar racing shell to a 12-ton, 40′ yawl. If that weren’t enough to fill his days, he makes beautiful mandolins and guitars, 15 so far, and regards himself as a between a beginning and an intermediate luthier. He’s drawn more to building instruments than playing them: “After years of trying—well, maybe not trying very hard—all I can do,” he writes, “is stumble through ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ and ‘Don’t Think Twice.’”

These two guitars and the mandolin are examples of Carl's skills as a luthier.

The list of boats Carl has built from scratch includes the Sparkman & Stephens yawl, three Graeme King rowing shells, a Butler and Hamlin 26’ centerboard sloop, an 11-1/2′ Alden X dinghy, an 11′ 2″ Shellback dinghy, a 14′ Atkin skiff, and an 8′ pram of his own design. He built a plywood pram and a 17′ Thistle-class sloop from kits. Ownership of the boats has been shared among his son, Eric, two grandchildren, and a great-grandchild—she’s only three, but her skiff is ready whenever she’s ready to row.

There was a place in the family fleet for a daysailer, and Carl considered building to an existing design. He looked at the Herreshoff 12-1/2, but it was too small and perhaps not as fast as he had in mind for his new boat. He also considered Herreshoff’s 21′ Fish Boat and Chuck Paine’s 21′ Pisces, but these were keel boats and Carl preferred something not quite so deep. He kept looking around at other designs, but nothing quite felt right, so he decided to draw his own design. Although he had made his career in journalism, his education was in naval architecture and marine engineering. So, he drew up his Block Island 19, a centerboarder with an overall length of 19′, a waterline length of 15′, a beam of over 7′, and a draft of just 2′ with the board up. An 1,100-lb lead keel would bring the boat weight up to 2,500 lbs, “an extremely light boat,” he notes, for its type, more substantial than a 12-1/2 but substantially lighter than the Fish Boat or Pisces. For the rig he drew a generous gaff mainsail and a small self-tending jib on a traveler. For construction, carvel and lapstrake—either traditional riveted seams or glued plywood—were options, but Carl settled on a three-layer composite hull.

With the drawings finished, Carl began construction. He built the hull on ten 1″-thick molds, a structure strong enough to allow him to raise it and the hull with a chain hoist when planking was finished and turn it right-side up. The steam-bent frames were wrapped hot around the molds, which were undersized to accommodate the frame stock. The first layer of planking was 5/8″ cedar strips, nailed and edge-glued with Aerodux resorcinol, an update to the pre-epoxy standard. Like its predecessor, it is quite tenacious and even boil-proof, but is more forgiving of small gaps in the seams between planks.

Prior to painting, the inner layer of strip planks was evident. The two additional layers of diagonal planking make up the full thickness of the hull, just shy of 7/8".

About 70 strip planks went into each side of the hull for that first layer, and after it was sanded smooth and fair, Carl applied two layers of thin cedrela, a variety of mahogany also known as Spanish cedar. The planks, just shy of 1/8″ thick, were not rotary-cut as plywood veneers are, but quarter-sawn from timbers by a horizontal bandsaw mill. The stock was 12″ wide or more, so Carl cut it into strips 3″ to 5″ wide, spiled them, and applied the two layers at opposing 45-degree angles. Nylon staples, driven by an air gun and set just below the surface of the mahogany planks, held the planks while the epoxy cured and then remained in the hull. The planks weren’t required to take a reverse curve to fair into the keel, so the staples were enough to push the cedrela tight to the form.

The completed hull was leak-proof, light, and so stiff that it required few ribs to strengthen it. The exterior surface was quite smooth after the last layer of planks went on and required very little sanding prior to rolling the hull upright.

Carl had the lead keel cast—in a mold he made—by a Connecticut boatyard with a foundry. It has a slot for the centerboard and was connected to the hull’s oak keel, without any deadwood in between, by bronze bolts that run through the heavy oak floor timbers.

The hull's three layers of planking required minimal framing.

The interior work—installing floors, framing, and bulkheads—was all pretty straightforward, but the deck framing was more difficult. Like any large open-cockpit boat like CHIPS, it requires a lot of carlins and half beams, and the shelf and sheer clamp need to be sturdy because the load on the deck is not supported by an inherently strong arched beam spanning from sheer to sheer.

The coamings were designed to serve as comfortable backrests so they were steam-bent over a jig with crosspieces cut with 5-degree slopes.

The coamings posed an interesting challenge. Carl had some beautiful, broad South American mahogany, wood that demanded a bright finish, so it had to be handled carefully every step of the way. The 9″- to 10″-wide coamings would meet at a point forward and be angled outward at 5 degrees to serve as comfortable backrests for people sitting on the boat’s side benches. Carl decided to make each full-length half of the coaming in two 3/8″-thick layers.

He started with a doorskin pattern and a bending jig, which had cross pieces angled at 5 degrees to meet at a peak in the middle. He steamed the shaped mahogany pieces, applied them to the jig, and left them to cool. After they had dried, he installed them in the boat, and when everything fit properly, he removed the four pieces, applied epoxy to the interior surfaces of each pair, and reinstalled them to cure in place. He could then remove them to do any finish work required before permanently installing them. The coamings alone took somewhere between 50 to 75 hours of Carl’s time.

CHIPS has plywood decks, sealed with epoxy prior to installation, and covered with Dynel everywhere but the foredeck, where Carl used canvas because Dynel wide enough to cover the foredeck in one piece wasn’t available. Carl used some of his South American mahogany for the seats, to be bright-finished, of course, and tried his hand at wood-turning to make supports for them. Some of CHIPS’s bronze hardware was cast from patterns Carl made, and he got a Mystic Seaport rigger to teach him how to splice wire so he could make his own standing rigging.

Carl made the mast hollow to save weight. He used the same bird's-mouth construction for the gaff and jib boom.

The mast is made of Douglas-fir, and the gaff and jibboom are Sitka spruce, all made hollow with bird’s-mouth construction. The boom is a box beam, made from Sitka spruce salvaged from a much larger box-beam boom that had been abandoned at a shipyard. The boom is relatively heavy compared to the other spars, but Carl likes to have a bit of weight pulling the foot of the sail down. It tensions the leech and keeps the gaff from falling off the wind.

Carl didn’t build the boat with accommodations for an outboard, so for auxiliary power, he uses a single long oar. With the oar set in one of the two oarlocks, he rows on one side, facing forward and standing. Steering with the tiller between his knees, he makes about 2 knots. The generous sail area can take advantage of very light breezes, so he has yet to row very far.

Sitting on her trailer, CHIPS shows her modest draft.

CHIPS has a few sailing seasons to her credit now, and Carl can imagine a few tweaks he’d make. He’s giving some thought to adding a side mount for an electric outboard. While under sail, the motor and bracket would stow in the bilge. CHIPS has a light weather helm and a longer centerboard case located farther aft would help, but that’s a project for a second Block Island 19. Giving CHIPS a small bowsprit would achieve the same end, but the weather helm isn’t so much of a problem that moving the sail area forward is really necessary. Carl has mused about an alternate rig, marconi instead of gaff. Downwind speed would suffer a bit, upwind speed would improve—perhaps a wash in a day’s sail, but an interesting experiment that would require no change to the boat beyond switching the spars, shrouds, and forestay.

The forward ends of the coamings support the roof of the cuddy.

Musings aside, Carl has been pleased with CHIPS. She performs well, and the high-peaked gaff makes her quite weatherly for a gaffer. Downwind, CHIPS is “extremely fast,” says Carl; “you pull up the centerboard and that big mainsail really goes.” Carl made CHIPS’s run a bit flat rather than full so she isn’t dragging a big quarter wave that would slow her down. Off the wind, she has kept pace with 420 Class Dinghies—up until they get enough wind to put them on plane. “She’s dry, easy to handle, and she snap-tacks in a jiffy. We couldn’t be more pleased with her performance in choppy weather; when she’s properly set up, she sails herself.”

Carl took pride in CHIPS's connection to her Block Island birthplace and had her sails made by an island sailmaker.

If Carl enjoys building boats a wee bit more than sailing and rowing them, just as he prefers making guitars to playing them, there’s a good chance he’ll find a reason to build another. Come winter, when the fleet is hauled out, he’ll have to have something to keep him busy.

Have you recently launched a boat? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share your story with other Small Boats Monthly readers.

Belle Daysailer

There she was, Miss April in the 2015 Calendar of Wooden Boats. Benjamin Mendlowitz had photographed her at the golden hour, at anchor, with the water around her ever so slightly rippling. That was the first time I saw BELLE.

After 35 years of racing on Chesapeake Bay, I was looking to downsize from my 26′ racing and cruising sloop. My crew had grown older, and none of us were willing to do the foredeck duties while careening around the marks. I was looking for something a bit more manageable for one or two people. I always liked the lines of some classic gaff-rigged daysailers such as the Herreshoff 12-1/2 and its relatives, but I wanted something that was lighter and trailerable. At 16′— and with those looks—BELLE seemed to fit the bill.

After I saw the photograph in the calendar, I searched up BELLE and found that Dan Gonneau, the designer/builder, had written a blog post that was a stream-of-consciousness diary about his inspiration for exactly the kind of small boat I was looking for. It sketched out the big decisions, the tiny details, and the material choices that went into the boat, and the craftsmanship that infused her every plank, frame, and joint. Classic lines with a modern aesthetic—I was hooked!

Tom Sliter

The removable rowing thwart is shown here in place, spanning the centerboard trunk. A bulkhead just forward of the transom serves as a backrest and creates an out-of-the-way space for stowing an outboard. The 8′-long cockpit and berth-wide benches offer, with the addition of a boom tent, overnight accommodations.

Dan was working as a boat carpenter by day and thinking about his ideal small boat by night. Over the course of about two years at the D.N. Hylan yard (now named Hylan and Brown Boatbuilders) in Brooklin, Maine, Dan put pencil to paper—no CAD here!—and BELLE took shape. It wasn’t his first construction, but I think it’s his best.

His forethought shows in many ways. The cockpit, for instance, has 8’-long seats with usable storage space underneath, and the centerboard trunk is unobtrusive. The cockpit is functional but not cluttered, with everything you need and nothing you don’t. I’ve sailed with four adults on board and the boat performs well, maybe even better than when solo, and there’s still plenty of room and comfort. And a soft-sided cooler fits perfectly behind the trunk.

Tom Sliter

The steambent coamings give the boat a classic look and are set at an angle that provides a comfortable backrest.

Our BELLE, the first built to the design, has an attractive color scheme—light blue/green hull and an off-white Dynel deck. The interior has weathered Port Orford cedar floorboards and trunk cap with everything else painted gray-green. By limiting the brightwork to her red oak coamings, cypress/western red cedar cockpit seats, Douglas-fir spars, and not much else, the emphasis is on the boat’s clean, simple lines. It also means not too much varnishing in the spring.. BELLE’s whole is indeed more than the sum of her parts. The boat and trailer fit in the garage during the off-season, with a full 3/4″ to spare!

Its size means that you’re closer to the water— literally and figuratively. One of my first sails was in the fall and was a magnificent introduction to the pleasure of a small boat. I was gliding through flat water in a little creek where most trees had shed their leaves. As BELLE parted the patches of fallen leaves now grouped on the water, I could hear the slight rustle as they brushed against the underside of the lapstrake hull. Now that is getting back to nature and close to the environment, which is what I think of as the essence of small-boat sailing.

Tom Sliter

The hull, according to the designer, “has a hint of Cape Cod catboat in her, shallower and a bit beamier than a modern row/sail design without being anywhere near as extreme as a true Cape cat. The extra beam increases her initial stability.”

My wife, who is a self-described “happy passenger” on the 26-footer, has become enamored of BELLE; she finds it more inviting, less intimidating. The controls are within easy reach and are more easily managed. And while BELLE is sensitive to weight shifts, the 126 sq ft of sail, 6′4″ beam, and low center of gravity steady her well.

Rigging the boat is pretty straightforward. The 15′11″ mast is of hollow bird’s-mouth construction and weighs less than 20 lbs, so lifting it into the deck partners and setting it on the step presents no major difficulties. All halyards are cleated to the mast, which simplifies rigging. A wire forestay and two Dyneema side stays connect in less than a few minutes, and the mast is ready to accept the boom, gaff, and mainsail. The jibsheet jam cleats are set on chocks secured to the coaming.

Tom Sliter

The designer notes: “No ballast is required for this design, but if you sail solo a lot you might find 40 lbs or so of lead shot (or some such) tucked up in the bilge forward might help balance the helmsman’s weight aft. But this is strictly optional and should be investigated after launch, if at all. That said, this is an unballasted, partially decked boat, and she is best suited to protected or semi-protected waters.”

BELLE is a beauty to sail. Unballasted and weighing only about 550 lbs, she flies off the wind. And downwind, wing-and-wing, with the centerboard raised, she is a positive demon. Upwind, it’s been a learning experience for this old marconi-rig helmsman. The main has a relatively high peak and it seems sensitive to peak halyard tension. However, I’ve found that if I bring the peak up so that the leech is straight and then back off just a bit, BELLE exhibits good performance into the breeze. To help things further, I put a little bit of a foil shape on the centerboard which had originally been a flat panel made of two layers of 3/8″ plywood, rounded along both ends. I think the smoother flow helps her get a better bite to windward. And since she’s now on a trailer, I’ve replaced the bottom paint with a smooth enamel, which I’m sure gives her an all-around boost in performance.

BELLE’s broad garboards have no deadrise amidships, and that flat surface makes the boat easy to load on a trailer and should be good for pulling the boat up a beach on rollers (though I have yet to try that). It does contribute to a bit of slap on the bottom going upwind in a chop, but with a bit of heel the boat will cut through the water more like a V-shaped hull.

Debbie Sliter

The gaff sloop rig carries 92 sq ft of sail in the main and 32 sq ft in the jib.

BELLE has watertight compartments fore and aft. The bow compartment, occupying the space below the foredeck, is designed so that the bottom of the mast can fit snugly in the boat when trailering with the top nestled in the sculling notch in the transom. The boom and gaff fit securely on the cockpit floor. Beneath the seats there is ample storage space for fenders, lines, and gear. The storage isn’t waterproof—what can drain out through a limber can also come back in—but it’s very handy. To keep things dry, I use small gear hammocks under the foredeck.

The sculling notch in the transom, for those so disposed, is set off to starboard. The oarlocks are set in chocks on the coaming, and with the wide beam and high placement of the locks, 10′ oars would be required. Unfortunately, the ramp and dock I’m now using are not really amenable to such long oars and it can get a bit congested, especially when the two college sailing teams hit the water. So, I’m using paddles for maneuvering around the docks, which works pretty well for short distances.

Tom Sliter

A wire forestay and a pair of Dyneema side stays support the mast.

For longer distances, I need auxiliary propulsion. Fortunately, between the end of the cockpit and the transom (above the aft watertight compartment) is an open space designed to store a small outboard motor. Initially I thought that a 2– to 3-hp gas outboard would be about right, but further reflection on having a gas can aboard, combined with the smell and noise, brought me around to trying an electric trolling motor. The boat is actually designed with space and weight allowance for a battery under the foredeck, forward of the mast. I installed a 35-amp deep-cycle, lead-acid battery and used about 15′ of 8-gauge wire under the side decks with a master switch, quick disconnects on the battery end, and a heavy-duty connector to the motor. The motor is rated at 46 lbs thrust and moves the boat quite well at about three-quarters throttle. I can get just shy of 4 knots at full throttle. According to the motor’s manual, I should get about 45 minutes at full throttle and 2 hours or so at half throttle. This arrangement has worked well for a year. If I need more range, there is space for a second battery. One unexpected benefit is the tranquility that comes from nearly noiseless propulsion. You can almost forget that you’re under power.

BELLE attracts more than her share of acknowledgments on the water, on the trailer, and even in the garage. When you receive compliments from an admiring kayaker or fisherman, sailing a beautiful boat brings more benefits than just the satisfaction of wind and water.

Tom Sliter has been racing and cruising sailboats on the Chesapeake Bay and environs for the past 45 years. He insists that it’s the one thing that helped him retain his sanity during 35 years working on Capitol Hill. These days, Tom teaches sailing with DC Sail and is also a US Sailing race officer. His non-nautical time is spent as a member of a local fine art photography gallery. Tom’s wife Debbie notes that with BELLE around, the usual springtime scent of mulch in the garden has been replaced with the bouquet of varnish.

Belle Particulars

[table]

LOA/16′

Beam/6′2″

Draft/9″

Hull weight/approx. 550 lbs

Ballast: optional, 40–50 lbs in bilge

Sail area/126 sq ft

Outboard/2-hp gas or electric trolling motor

[/table]

The Belle is available as a finished boat from Belle Boats, Shelter Island Heights, New York. Prices begin at $31,900.

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

Morbic 11

Building a wooden boat had finally made its way to the top of my to-do list, and building a small one would be sufficient to satisfy that dream. At the time, we still had a 27′ trimaran and have since moved to a 35′ sloop, both wonderful sailing machines, but a sailing dinghy, capable of rowing, would provide a very different sailing experience. And, if light enough, we could potentially put it on top of our SUV and explore new waters. My son Tyler commented this would be a perfect new hobby for me combining two of my favorite interests: sailing and woodworking. I was eager to get started.

Inspired by the beauty and light weight of strip-built kayaks, I decided I’d use the same method for a sailing dinghy. I scoured the Internet but just couldn’t find a design that got me excited enough to invest a few hundred hours of my time. Then I found the Morbic 12 sail-and-oar dinghy, designed by the French naval architect, François Vivier.

I contacted François in the fall of 2016 to inquire if his Morbic 12, designed for lapstrake plywood, could be built with strip planks. He replied, “Yes, with some modification,” and asked me more about my requirements to make sure the Morbic 12 would meet my needs. After discussions on weight, cockpit arrangement, rowing ability, and rig, he decided a new design would be in order.We agreed to go forward with a Morbic 11 as a lightweight strip-built hull with a balanced lug rig, daggerboard, kick-up rudder, buoyancy compartments, and a bit of dry storage.

François delivered comprehensive plans with more than 60 pages including detailed drawings, a hydrostatic analysis, layouts and dimensions for lumber and plywood components, and assembly instructions filled with 3D color drawings. This would be my first boat build, so I was pleased with the clear instructions in English, and François was very responsive when answering the few questions I had along the way.

Lorena Brown

The 70-sq-ft lug sail performs well to windward, as evidenced by GPS tracks showing the Morbic 11 tacking through 90 degrees.

The recommendations for wood species were provided with several options. I used sapele for the stem, keel, and transom glued up with epoxy. These were attached to seven plywood stations on a temporary box frame. The plans do not include instructions for strip-planking, as there are plenty of books on the topic, and the creative decorative aspects are left to the builder. I used a combination of light and dark western red cedar and Alaska yellow cedar with accent strips of sapele and maple. Strip edges were beveled and edge-glued with Titebond II. I wanted to avoid staple and nail holes in the hull, so strips were held in place using hot glue, clamps, and Shurtape CP66, a stretchy and strong masking tape.

I had read plenty of warnings on how labor-intensive strip planking is; even so, I wondered what I had got myself into. Fitting a total of 220 strips was tedious work, but at least no steam was required for bending. I did resort to using a heat gun to coax some of the strips into shape on the deck, as the bends were tighter than on the hull.

After completing planking and adding the skeg and full-length keel, sanding began and the pay-off for building a strip-planked hull became apparent. The smooth-flowing lines on this boat are a thing of beauty.

Lorena Brown

The stern-sheets’ center panel is removable to allow the oars to be tucked under the center thwart and stored in the bottom of the boat. Magnets hold the panel in place.

After applying fiberglass and six coats of epoxy and sanding fair once again, I flipped the hull. The temporary stations were removed by slowly softening the hot glue with a heat gun until they could be wiggled out, without damage to any strips. I sanded and fiberglassed the interior, applying a second layer of cloth on the bottom for additional strength.

The bulkheads are of 6mm okoume plywood to save weight, and carefully fitted and filleted. There are three buoyancy compartments with access through 8″ deck plates for dry storage for wallet, keys, and other small items. I made very few changes to the design detailed in the plans, but I did move the bulkhead of the aft storage compartment back about 10″. The original placement is better for weight distribution while rowing with a passenger in the stern, but I thought I’d need a bit more for space for my feet while sailing, so sacrificed a bit of storage for it. As it turned out, I sail sitting farther forward and the original layout would have been fine.

The rudder case, built of laminated okoume plywood, is hollow to reduce weight and give access to the nuts that bolt gudgeons to the rudder. A specific brand and size of pintles and gudgeons are called for in the plans, and I could only find one source for them, at Classic Marine in the U.K. The kick-up rudder and tiller install securely on the hull in seconds and have a solid feel.

Lorena Brown

After the lugsail’s yard is hoisted, the halyard is cleated and the downhaul—a gun tackle with a 3-to-1 advantage and a cam cleat on the daggerboard trunk—tensions the sail.

The laminated Douglas-fir mast isn’t hollow, yet it is light enough for me to slip through the foredeck partner into the step. The step is keyed to prevent the mast from rotating. The yard has an adjustable attachment point to a mast traveler that I built and wrapped with leather. The halyard attaches to a ring on the mast traveler to raise the yard. A downhaul pulls the boom down and aft; raising the aft end of the boom gives the sail a nice, full shape without creases. The downhaul has blocks for additional purchase and a conveniently located cam cleat on the starboard side of the daggerboard case for downhaul adjustment. This makes for a super-easy 10-minute launch.

The plans do not call for lazyjacks, but I added some to keep the boom and yard from banging around on deck when the sail is in a lowered position. They are also helpful for reefing, which only takes a few minutes. To use my reefing system, I release the downhaul, lower the sail, tighten the new tack and clew to the boom by tying off a single reef line to the cleat to the center of boom, make fast the foot to the boom with the five reef lines on the sail, then raise sail again. There are two reefpoints, and this system has been proven on two outings in a little more than 15-knot winds.

I built my Morbic 11 in 540 hours, working on and off over 15 months. It certainly could be built in less time, but this was my first build and I was in no hurry to get it done. I joke (with some truth) that 200 of those hours were spent scratching my head. Woodworking is not my profession; my experience with it is mostly from high school, so the boat is clearly suitable for amateur builders.

Lorena Brown

A taut luff is the key to getting the best from a lugsail. Having a powerful downhaul that’s handy to the helmsman makes maintaining tension easy.

Like any dinghy, the Morbic 11 feels tender initially, but its 5′ beam stiffens up quickly and is amazingly stable. The boat accelerates quickly due to its light weight, and I regularly achieve speeds of 3 to 4 knots sailing to weather in anything more than about 8 knots of wind. I wondered how well the Morbic 11 would point with the balanced lug, and it exceeded my expectations. GPS tracks show nice 90-degree tacks upwind. We recorded a maximum speed exceeding 6 knots downwind—what a blast!

Sailing the Morbic 11 is a real kick, particularly when singlehanding. One day, sailing downwind in a blow, I suddenly caught a gust of over 20 knots that surprised me. I immediately eased the boom completely forward, over the bow, something that wouldn’t have been possible with a stayed mast, and then steered up to weather keeping the sail luffing with the wind the entire turn. Then, I dropped sail and rowed the short way into the marina, impressed that the Morbic 11 took care of me.

With two of us aboard, I’ll often take the helm and my crew will sit on the ’midship thwart facing aft and handle the mainsheet, shifting position to keep the boat at a proper heel and ducking under the boom as it comes across during a tack or jibe. With a small child joining us, their favorite spot is forward of the thwart, safely out of the way of control lines, with the mast or foredeck to hang onto as needed an unobstructed view forward.

Matthew Putegnat

With its light weight, the Morbic 11 comes up to speed easily. When sail is set, the oars stow neatly inboard.

When the wind dies, one can always row. The lazyjacks are slackened so that the boom and yard can be dropped all the way to the thwart, and the forward ends of the spars get tucked under the foredeck so they don’t get in the way. The 8′ oars, stowed either side of the daggerboard trunk, are easy to unstow after removing a magnet-held seat panel aft.

The Morbic 11 rows handily being a “classic” French sail-and-oar design. She tracks well due to the full-length keel, and is easily driven because of her light weight. There is a notch on the transom for sculling, but I haven’t learned to do that well yet. It does provide a convenient spot for the mast to lie into while trailering.

Lorena Brown

A loop of bungee holds the kick-up rudder blade down but lets it pivot over obstructions. A cord on the back side of the rudder stock runs through a shackle to make it easier to pull the blade up when approaching a beach. The sculling notch is offset to allow sculling while the rudder is in place.

Coasting onto a beach is no problem with a daggerboard that lifts right out and the kick-up rudder which stays in the raised position with a clam cleat. A full-length bronze band protects the keel.

The Morbic 11 is designed to take a small outboard, but in Oregon, where I live, that would require registration and unsightly numbers stuck on the hull, so I don’t plan to use a motor.

Many have commented to me that this boat, with all the pretty woodwork and varnish, belongs in my living room and not on the water, but that would be such a waste! It’s a wonderful sailboat, and we get much enjoyment from her the way she was designed to be—on the water.

Gary Brown, husband and father of five, is a family man and recently retired electrical engineer living in Aloha, Oregon. A boater all his life, he has owned sailboats the last 15 years, and loves to race. He kept a construction blog for Hull #1 of the Morbic 11. Gary is in the process of evaluating boat designs for his next build as he continues his woodworking hobby.

Morbic 11 Particulars

[table]

Length/11′

Beam/5′

Hull weight/150 lbs

Sail area/70 sq ft

Draft, board up/6.7″

Draft, board down/27″

Outboard/ up to 3 hp

[/table]

Plans for the Morbic 11 are available from François Vivier for 100 € (about $128 USD).

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

Trailer Guide Posts

If you go boating alone, you may be fine once under way but occasionally wish you had someone to lend a hand at the launch ramp, especially when there’s unsettled weather. Several of our boats draw only a few inches of water and while they’re good for gunkholing skinny Florida waters, at the launch ramp even a little wind and chop can push them around and it can be a struggle moving them on or off the trailer.

For power boats that carry their maximum beam well aft, the guide posts are best placed at the back of the trailer. All of our boats tuck in at the stern, so we attach guide posts closer to the middle of the trailer to center the boat as the bow comes home at the winch. The lights added to these posts supplement rather than replace the tail lights that are built into the trailer and illuminate the license plate, as required by law.

When we moved to Florida a few years back, we noticed a lot of the boat trailers had guide posts, so we took the hint and added them to our trailer frames. The metal posts, clamped on either side of the trailer frame, center the boat during loading. The square metal tubing is usually covered with a 2″ PVC pipe to protect the boat from dings and abrasion. During solo launching and retrieving, the guide posts serve as a helping hand and reduce wrestling a boat to get it lined up with the trailer. I no longer have to wade out to the end of the trailer to swing the boat around. Our Drascombe Lugger was notorious for drifting sideways at the ramp, and now that we’ve added the guide posts I can row onto the trailer!

The guide posts are also handy visual targets that help us keep track of an empty trailer as we back it, especially when it disappears down the incline of the ramp and when it is submerged. Some of our boats have a very low profile that is well beneath the rear window, and guide posts help us keep track of the trailer in the rear-view mirror.

Guide posts are L-shaped and available in different widths and heights. Most are 40″ to 60″ high. They are simple to install—just attach them to the trailer frame with brackets and bolts provided, and set them between the uprights a distance about 2″ wider than the widest beam of the boat. Posts come in galvanized steel or aluminum; for bigger boats, steel is better able to sustain larger side loads.
For bells and whistles, rollers and bunks can be added to the vertical posts to get the best fit for different boats, and one can get a set of LED lights made to fit the PVC pipe covers. The lights can be used in place of or in addition to the trailer-mounted lights. Different kits are available to mount directly on top of the pipe or attach with a bracket. Having the turn signals, running, and brake lights raised makes them more visible than lights down low on a small trailer where they might be hidden under an overhanging stern.

For our double-decker trailers we’ve had crossbars bolted to the guide posts. To make this trailer more easily convertible, we cut slots in the PVC-pipe covers and installed galvanized eye bolts in the guide posts. Lashing the crossbars takes just a few minutes. This works for light boats; bolted brackets are stronger and best for heavier loads on the upper deck.

When Audrey and I go boating together, we often load a pair of sailing dinghies, canoes, or kayaks on a double-stack trailer that we made by attaching a cross support between each pair of guide posts. Depending on the weight of the upper boat and the length of our trip to the launch, we have used aluminum crossbars or wood bunks for the cross supports. Our trailer guru, Eddie, says steel posts are required for a double-stack—aluminum posts will not handle fore-and-aft stress of acceleration and braking.

For easier launch and retrieval and hauling pods of small boats, check out trailer guide posts. You’ll get more out of your trailer.

Audrey “Skipper” Lewis and “Clark” Kent Lewis enjoy small boating along the bays and rivers of Florida’s Emerald Coast. Their adventures can be followed on their small boat restoration blog.

The authors purchased 60″ galvanized steel CE Smith Post-Style Guide-Ons from a trailer dealer. They’re available online for $105. A variety of guide posts and accessories are available from online retailers such as etrailer.

Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.