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Blackberries for Ali

August is blackberry season here in the Pacific Northwest, and in Seattle the best picking is at the water’s edge where the brambles are accessible only by boat and almost always untouched. Picking blackberries with my daughter, Alison, is a tradition that has a long history. In mid-August of 1993, the day after she was born, we took her out in the gunning dory to pick berries on the brambled shores of Seattle’s Lake Union. This past August, when she flew up from San Francisco for her birthday, she and I planned to go boating together.

The gunning dory she’d been aboard as a newborn has been idle and without a trailer, so I pulled the Whitehall out of the garage. The best berry picking would not be on Lake Union but on the Sammamish Slough where the banks 1-1/2 miles upstream from the launch ramp were thick with brambles. Our time was limited, and rowing would take too long, so I did something I’d never imagined I’d do: I put an outboard motor on the Whitehall.

In 1978, when I started building boats, and in the years that followed, my interest was only in boats that I could paddle, row, or sail. I began a series of lengthy small-boat cruises in 1980 and took inordinate pride in the thousands of miles I covered under my own steam or by sail. Outboards then were oil-burning two-strokes and I took offense at the noise they made and the rank, blue cloud they trailed. In 1983, as I was putting the last coat of varnish on the Whitehall, if I had foreseen that I would one day willingly clamp an outboard on its beautiful mahogany transom, I could only have imagined that when I reached my late 60s I’d be well over the hill and descending into madness.

Ali and I launched the Whitehall at the ramp near the mouth of the Sammamish Slough. I clamped my 2.5-hp Yamaha, a four-stroke, on the transom and we motored upstream. Even at less than half throttle, the Whitehall made good speed, much better than we could ever muster by rowing, but the hull didn’t take well to it. The full middle and the tucked-up stern heaved up a very lumpy wave train.

We were soon through the gentle meanders where the slough is hemmed in by houses and lawns, docks and boats, and arrived at the bramble-lined stretch that runs straight for a ¼ mile through a city park. I nosed the bow into the south-facing bank where the blackberries are the ripest.

With the midday sun shining on the brambles, every gem-like bead making up each blackberry reflected a bright white pinpoint of light. The ripe berries parted from their stems at a touch while the ripest dropped when the cane they hung from was jostled. Eaten straightaway, the berries we gathered were sweet, soft, and warm. Ali picked until the tips of her fingers turned mimeograph purple. After we had eaten our fill, I paddled the Whitehall away from the brambles to midstream.

A breeze that had slipped between the banks and skimmed the river turned the water the color of blue-tempered steel. I had Ali raise the spinnaker, not because it would take us anywhere we needed to go, but to enjoy the Whitehall making speed as it was meant to, with only the sound of water curdling across the plank laps. When the air grew still and the spinnaker fell and draped itself around its mast, like a flag in an auditorium, Ali dropped the sailing rig and we motored back to the ramp.

We usually pick enough berries to bake pies—that was the purpose of the picking expedition on the day after she was born and for many of the outings we took as she grew up—but on this trip we came back empty-handed. The harvest that really mattered was the time spent with my daughter.

Taking Ali out boating while her age was still measured in hours rather than days and putting an outboard on a boat that was never meant to have one are both what I once would have considered madness, but it’s a pleasant madness, as sweet as sun-warmed blackberries picked in the middle of August.

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.

Whitehall 17

In 2011, in anticipation of retiring after a career as a research engineer, I decided I’d build wooden rowing skiff. I wanted a boat with traditional lines—particularly one with a vertical stem and a wineglass transom—and an easily driven hull, so the waterline would have to be longer than 12′. The 17′ Whitehall I found in the catalog of designs from Glen-L was just what I wanted.

I ordered the plans, and the package I received included full-sized patterns for the molds, transom, stem, breasthook, and knees for the transom and thwarts. A table of offsets is provided, but the full-sized patterns make the offsets and lofting unnecessary. The 1/8-scale drawings show the plan and overall profile, keel profile, construction details, and lines.

For transferring the drawings to the wooden stock, I ordered carbon transfer paper from Glen L. I recommend asking Glen-L for rolled drawings, otherwise you’ll receive folded drawings. The creases in the patterns made it difficult for me to obtain precise sectional shapes. The carbon paper came with a good tip: Coat the inside of the station forms with white paint before transferring the section drawings. This way the builder always knows what controls the complex curves of the Whitehall design.

Joe Titlow

Glen-L advises against lengthening the Whitehall from its designed 16′ 11″, but approves shortening it 10 percent to 15′ 3″ by reducing the mold spacing.

The Whitehall is composed of 120 planking strips bent cold over molds. The instructions suggest the hull can be stripped with hardwoods (Honduras or Philippine mahogany) or softwoods (western red cedar or Sitka spruce). The plans estimate a mahogany Whitehall will weigh about 350 lbs. My boat, STELLA, has a cedar hull with spruce trim and weighs slightly over 200 lbs. A light skiff has many advantages. It can accelerate more quickly, go faster, and be more responsive—all of that adds to the fun. At launch sites it is easy getting the Whitehall on and off the trailer, and two can easily carry it.

The instructions note that the builder can choose to use traditional glues, such as resorcinol or marine epoxy. This is just an indication of the bygone era when the instructions were written. Marine epoxies are today’s obvious choice.

I cut my planking stock from 24′-long 2×14 cedar boards. The strip construction for the Whitehall differs from the method widely used for canoes and kayaks. The strips are thicker and glued together with epoxy rather than carpenter’s glue, giving the hull greater strength, resistance to water, and durability. I put a resaw blade on my bandsaw and made 1/2″ x 3/4″ strips. The Glen-L instructions briefly discuss the option of milling bead-and-cove planking strips. Based on my experience, this is an essential step. Unlike flat-edged strips, the mated beads and coves almost snap into place, aligning themselves and closing the gaps. While you can buy bead-and-cove strips ready-made, the cost of the size of strips required for the Whitehall was prohibitive. I used a shaper to mill 5/16″-radius bead and cove profiles.

SBM

The Whitehall was designed for fixed-thwart rowing, but its long waterline and easily driven hull make a sliding seat a fitting addition.

The instructions mention the option of covering the completed planked hull with fiberglass cloth; I found additional advice in The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction. I applied 4-oz cloth with five coats of epoxy inside and out, resulting in a composite structure with a bending strength that is many times that of the cedar alone and abrasion resistance for trailering and landing on gravel beaches. The Glen-L plans recommend painting the hull, and while marine enamels will do the job, the beauty of the wood is lost. I finished my Whitehall bright, protecting the epoxy with a high-grade marine varnish.

During construction I did some things differently than called for in the plans, but I do not see these changes as fixes for shortcomings in design. I believe the aim was to keep things simple to encourage amateur boatbuilders to take on the project. Here are the refinements I made, none of them essential, and all mean more work.

Joe Titlow

Even when lightly loaded, the Whitehall gives up very little waterline length.

I chose to do the strip-planking according to what the Gougeon company calls the “Master Plank Method.” It starts with the first strip laid on the midpoint between the sheer and the centerline of most of the molds (running fair across those nearest the bow) and results in a hull with the run and grain of the planks emphasizing the sheerline, which is only important with a bright-finished hull. It looks great, particularly in the bow and stern areas.

The planking strips near the keel have to run straight, so I did a “Gougeon Double Run,” which meant switching to strips applied parallel to the keel and making the transition between the two areas along a fair curve. [Editor’s note: The strips closest to the keel take quite a twist from ’midships out to each end. While the author worked all of the strips cold, steaming the ends, or wrapping them with rags and pouring boiling water over them, would help the ends come home with less strain.]

Ray Putt

The Whitehall’s long straight keel is about 3″ deep and assures straight tracking. At speed here, very little wake is showing at the bow, an indication of the boat’s fine entry.

The Glen-L design shows eight laminated thwart knees 3/4″ thick. I made several knees to this design and while they were strong enough, they looked undersized on a 17′ skiff. I ultimately made the thwart knees, transom knees, and breasthook all 1″ thick, a small refinement, perhaps, but one that looks right aboard the Whitehall.

The instructions mention foot stretchers; while they’re important to a powerful stroke, I had in mind from the beginning adding a sliding seat. To support the tracks, I installed two parallel beams, secured under the three rowing-station thwarts and notched to sit flush with their tops. The beams also support the tracks for the racing-shell stretchers. This enhancement with the foot stretchers is essential for getting the maximum performance with the sliding seat.

Ray Putt

As with most rowing boats with wineglass transoms, the stern is depressed with a passenger in the stern sheets and the rower amidships and coming up to the catch. Even so, the bow remains low and the hull is not badly out of trim.

I launched STELLA in August 2015. Between receipt of the Glen-L plans and first launch, I spent 1,500 hours on the project, more than half of that fairing, ’glassing, sanding, and varnishing. I spent $10,448 on the materials to build the boat.

When I pulled on the oars the first time, I was amazed and delighted with the performance of the Glen-L design. The Whitehall is easily driven, runs straight, and is stable, although initially tender. A solo rower (or sculler, more properly) can easily sustain 4 knots. The Whitehall has a beam of 4′ 6″, appropriate for oars 8′ to 9′ long. Mine are 8′ 6″. For tandem fixed-thwart rowing the stretchers are removed and then two rowers can sit on the thwarts between the tracks. It’s lots of fun with two pulling, and there’s plenty of distance between the fore and aft rowing stations to avoid a clash of blades. I have seen pictures of other 17′ Whitehalls rowed with three at the oars, so it’s possible, though we haven’t tried it. It comes down to a question of elbows and knees.

Glen-L notes that the Whitehall can carry six; we’ve only had four adults aboard in reasonable comfort and safety, but there is room for two more.

Now that we have the Whitehall, members of my family would rather row than walk on the beach, a sure sign of a good design. The boat is not too big to use as a dinghy for a larger vessel, or too small to provide a workable platform for scuba diving and snorkeling.

The light weight of my Whitehall makes it easy to move off and on the trailer. The stock trailer I bought and modified for the boat weighs about 300 lbs, so the load is an easy tow with my Mini Cooper Sport. The month following the launch of the Whitehall, christened STELLA, my wife and I trailered the boat 1,300 miles from southern California to the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, Washington. We were delighted with the positive reception the boat received by attendees and by rowing aficionados in particular. We’ve made the trip three more times since then. The Glen-L Whitehall is a great boat and a real crowd pleaser.

Joe Titlow is a retired research engineer, working primarily in the aerospace industry. Besides building small boats, he constructs small buildings and furniture for his wife, two daughters, and grandchildren. Joe has owned and raced a 27′ Soling sailboat for many years, and he has been a member of the San Francisco Yacht Club for 40 years. Throughout his career he has maintained a professional interest in the dynamics of sailing vessels.

Whitehall Particulars

[table]

Length/16′ 11″

Beam/4′ 6″

Hull depth forward/2′ 6″

Hull depth amidships/1′ 10″

Hull depth aft/2′ 2″

Weight/ about 350 lbs

Displacement at 9″ waterline, four aboard with average weight of 150 lbs/945 lbs

Oars/8′ to 9′ long, 1 to 3 rowers

Passengers/2 to 6

[/table]

Plans and patterns for the Whitehall 17 are available from Glen-L.

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!

Catherine

Bert van Baar runs De Bootbouwschool (The Boatbuilding School) in an old navy yard in Den Helden, a canal-laced city on the coast of the Netherlands. The boats he and his students have built over the 20 years since the school’s founding are mostly traditional, open, lapstrake boats for oar and sail, though not, as you might expect, inspired by Dutch designs. Bert has a fondness for what he calls “the American Style,” and among his favorites is the Catherine design, the boat detailed in Richard Kolin’s book, Building Catherine: a 14-foot pulling boat in the Whitehall tradition. Bert describes the Catherine as “sleek, tender, and gracious, and builds like a miracle.”

Like its predecessors, the 7th built by the school, took shape over the course of a nine-day class.

The first Catherine to come out of the school’s shop was built in 2007, and was the 77^th student-built boat. During the nine-day class the students finished everything but the floorboards, a project that was left to the student who won the raffle to take the boat home. The sixth Catherine, christened ANNA by the retired doctor who won his class’s raffle, was planked in oak, making her heavy but tough. Bert has used mahogany too and has looked, without success, for white pine that’s suitable for planking, but most often uses western red cedar.

While the origianl Whitehalls usually carried sprit rigs, and author Rich Kolin opted for the standing lug rig in his book about building the Catherine, ANNA carries a balanced lug.

Students often wonder why such a soft wood is used to plank the boat, and Bert explains “that it works so easily, and once the boat is finished and you know how much effort went into her building, you sail her very carefully!” Riveting the laps takes a light touch to avoid burying the heads too deeply into the cedar, but the students are eager to learn and soon grew accustomed to the demands of the work.

Catherine #6, Christened ANNA, was planked with oak.

Bert works closely with the students for the first few days of the class, then gradually steps back, letting them take the lead. For this most recent Catherine, the students, ranging in age from 42 to 63 and by trade from a carpenter to a flight controller, were eager to finish the boat. They worked hard and had completed everything but the last two floorboards.

The most recent Catherine was planked with western red cedar.

Bert offered them a chance to take the boat out for a row on the canal just outside the shop, but the group had given all they had to the construction, and settled for coffee and cake. They agreed to have a reunion in Friesland when Gerrit, the carpenter and winner of the raffle, had the boat ready to be christened.