The 13′ Boston Whaler

In the early summer of 1984, when I was 20, I had a summer job directing a children’s sailing program operated from a tiny beach community in Gloucester, Massachusetts. My daily commute consisted of a 15-mile highway sprint in my 1975 Ford Granada to a marina in Gloucester, where my dog and I would board a 13′ Boston Whaler and drive it the few miles north to the mouth of the Annisquam River. There, I’d take a hard turn to port and run along the white-sand beach for a mile to rendezvous with a fleet of O’Day Widgeons and a group of eager students. It was an idyllic situation that lulled me into complacency on the day of my first commute.

The weather was calm and clear. The 1960s-vintage Whaler was fitted with a freshly overhauled 25-hp electric-start Evinrude, which fired right up. I idled out of the slip and into the river, overconfident in the intuition honed from a life-so-far in boats. Clearing the no-wake zone, I brought the boat up on plane and kicked back for the glass-smooth ride to the river’s mouth. The “river” is actually a canal connecting Ipswich Bay with Massachusetts Bay; it makes some hard twists and turns, and I elected to follow its natural trend, paying little heed to navigation aids.

Jenny Bennett

When first launched in 1958, the 13′ Boston Whaler, designed by C. Raymond Hunt, was a breakthrough boat in both its design and construction. Hulls are a sandwich of foam and fiberglass—a durable and unsinkable structure.

I scooted along a wide arcing turn and noticed a flock of seagulls floating ahead of me. As I drew closer, they stood up. Before I could react, the Whaler, at nearly full throttle, came to a skidding halt. The motor stalled. All was quiet. The gulls looked at me quizzically. I looked back at them, and then over the side, where I observed ripples of fine sand just a few inches below the surface. Off to starboard, I spied the green can clearly marking a turn in the channel that curved away from the route I’d been following. I furtively scanned the area for onlookers. Mercifully, there were none. I stepped out of the boat, pushed it off the sandbar, and checked the motor for damage. It was fine, save for a little paint off the propeller. The hull was undamaged, too. I patted the dog on the head and pulled slowly away, munching on a big serving of humble pie, firm hand on the wheel, the giggling gulls laughing behind me.

I confess this lapse in judgement not for absolution, but rather as a testimonial to the bombproof durability of the 13′ Boston Whaler—the flagship “unsinkable” boat that launched a legendary company and which, though introduced in 1958, is still among the most coveted small powerboats on the New England used-boat market.

Jenny Bennett

Early Boston Whalers were offered in two models: the Standard, in which the operator sat on an aft thwart to control a tiller-steered outboard motor, and the Sport (shown), which featured a small ’midship console and three thwarts.

Origins of the Unsinkable Boston Whaler

In 1916, Albert Hickman, a restless and unbridled innovator in powerboats, developed and patented a hull form he named the Hickman Sea Sled. Writing in WoodenBoat in 1991, David Seidman said that the boat “looked like someone had taken a perfectly normal V-bottomed boat and cut it down the centerline, then reassembled it so the original sides looked like they were in the center and the centerlines were on the sides. Sort of like putting your shoes on the wrong feet. The boat had a tunnel forward in the shape of an inverted V that flattened as it went aft. This was enclosed by two outward-turning bows that seemed to be pulling the boat apart right down the middle.”

Liz Duffy

The Boston Whaler was inspired by the Hickman Sea Sled, a wooden boat first built in 1916 in a range of sizes up to 70′. Sea Sleds essentially melded two hulls, like a catamaran, forming a tunnel along the centerline. The Boston Whaler incorporated a third, centerline hull, which eased the outboard-motor propeller cavitation that had challenged operators of the Sea Sleds.

In 1928, Hickman developed a 13′ Sea Sled that won the 260-mile Boston to New York Race. He also developed a 78′ version of the boat that was built by Graves Yacht Yard in Marblehead, Massachusetts, for the Army Air Corps. The small-craft historian John Gardner worked at Graves during the construction of the behemoth Army Air Corps Sea Sled, and recalled its construction as akin to building a giant plywood box.

Three decades later, with World War II in the rear-view mirror, a Marblehead-based builder named Dick Fisher sought a design in which to test his newly conceived foam-cored fiberglass construction technique. Fisher was a nephew and protégé of the yacht designer Frank C. Paine, a legend in racing-sailboat design in Marblehead. Fisher had graduated from Harvard in the 1930s and gone on to co-found a company that manufactured electrical products. Boats were his passion, however, and he’d made early experiments in building lightweight balsa craft, which were of limited utility due to that wood’s softness. Later, in the early 1950s, he lit on the idea of building boats of polyurethane foam—a new invention at the time. While this foam was soft and vulnerable like balsa, he reasoned that it could be sandwiched in a fiberglass shell to produce a hard, unsinkable hull.

Jenny Bennett

Early Boston Whalers have proven to be quite durable and are often the chase boat of choice for many sailing programs. Aftermarket rubrails sometimes replace the hard-rubber original ones. However, one must be cautious not to allow water into the foam-sandwich hull when drilling new holes in the boat. Well-preserved or restored early boats often fetch high prices; for people willing to invest some labor, there are bargains to be found in well-worn hulls.

Fisher tested his theory in a small daysailer, and later struck a royalty deal with Albert Hickman to build Sea Sleds using the method. Hickman, however, sought increased control over the arrangement as negotiations progressed, which ultimately killed the deal. So, Fisher turned to C. Raymond Hunt, whose vast design output includes both the Concordia yawl—one of the most enduringly popular traditional wooden cruising sailboats ever designed—and the deep-V hull, which revolutionized both offshore powerboat racing and recreational boating.

Fisher’s testing showed that the Sea Sled hull generated a mixture of air and water that caused a centerline outboard-motor propeller to cavitate. So, Hunt developed a new form with a centerline “hull” in place of Hickman’s tunnel; this hull, flattened aft, fed clean water to the propeller. While the overall form of the boat, with its maximum beam carried all the way forward and aft, resembled the Hickman Sea Sled in plan and profile views, its underwater details were sufficiently different so as not to infringe on Hickman’s patent. The Fisher-Hunt creation, built in a foam-and-fiberglass sandwich with a distinctive blue interior, was unveiled as the 13′ Boston Whaler in 1958.

Jenny Bennett

The old and the new: An early 13′ Boston Whaler rests alongside a late-model peer. Aside from the obvious difference in interior color, the later boat has a modified hull shape—a more rounded bow, an easing of the chine profile forward—and molded interior components rather than the wooden ones introduced in 1958.

The Whaler’s construction was unique for its time, and became a trademarked process called Unibond. The hull and an interior liner were laid in fiberglass, separately but concurrently. While still curing, they were clamped together, with a resulting void between them. Into this void, at the bow, was injected polyurethane foam, which traveled aft under pressure, expanded, and emerged through a relief hole in the stern, confirming the filling of all voids. The whole deal—polyurethane and fiberglass—cured into one solid piece.

Three years after the Boston Whaler’s introduction, in 1961, Life magazine ran an article on the design, and featured a photograph of Dick Fisher sitting calmly in the stern of one of the boats, while in front of him a pit saw was apparently cutting the hull in half. A subsequent photograph showed Fisher motoring along, dry-shod, in the sawed-off stern section. The article was titled “The Unsinkable Legend.” The visual message was powerful; sales of the boat went through the roof, and variations on the theme of that original story have appeared in Whaler advertising over the years.

A Perfect Harbor Tender

Boston Whaler has been through many chapters and owners since its founding. It remains a solid company building a range of high-quality boats. The classic 13-footer with blue interior remained in production until 1971. The following year, desert tan was introduced for the interior (along with modifications to the hull and liner), and from 1994 to 2000, when production ended, the interiors were white—although 1998 saw a limited-edition model with the original blue interior.

Benjamin Mendlowitz

The versatile 13′ Boston Whaler offers nimble speed when it’s needed, and great load-carrying capacity for larger-vessel support. The boat will carry six average-sized adults on its three thwarts—or fewer people and a load of gear.

My own history of drama in Whalers came full circle a few years ago. For several years I operated a small charter company with a 46′ sloop out of Castine, Maine. On the boat’s very first charter, I received a call from the captain about 15 minutes after they had left the float. The steering was disabled. Did I have any insights? Could I get out to the boat in short order? I was on shore. My dinghy is a 13′ oar-powered peapod, and it does just about everything I want it to. But to get from the harbor to the stranded boat quickly required something else.

I hailed a friend who had a 13′ Whaler at the town landing. Three of us jumped into his boat and scooted out to the mouth of the harbor—a journey that would have taken an hour or so in the peapod, and would have been cramped and slow going with three grown men aboard. In the capacious Whaler it took just a few comfortable minutes. (The steering issue turned out to be an accidental engagement of the autopilot, which was resolved before we arrived.) That brief ride reminded me of the timeless utility of the 13′ Boston Whaler.

At harbor speeds, the boats can carry a load of gear or people; they maintain reasonable if somewhat sluggish maneuverability at displacement speeds. The directional reverse of the outboard motor allows easy handling in close quarters. The boats plane quickly, and steering is nimble when they do. With a 25-hp outboard—the standard for a 13-footer—the top speed is about 26 mph. With the upper limit of 40 hp, the top speed increases to over 30 mph. At those upper speeds, every wavelet is felt by the occupants; larger waves will launch the boat clean out of the water.

Liz Duffy

The 13′ Boston Whaler carries its near-maximum beam all the way to the bow and stern, offering great stability along the length of the boat. Stepping directly aboard in the bow would be perilous in a conventional sharp-bowed boat such as a peapod.

I am still a devoted rower, and I still own a 13′ peapod. My mooring is 3⁄4 mile from the town dock. On a good day, it takes me 20 minutes to row out to it in my peapod; in a foul tide it can take 40 minutes or more. With three adults aboard it’s a safe option, but a chore; six adults is out of the question. By contrast, the 13′ Boston Whaler is rated to carry six adults, perhaps not in ultimate comfort, but certainly safely in calm conditions. As a multipurpose harbor tender that takes up less space in the driveway than a small car, it’s hard to beat. And practicality aside, the 13′ Boston Whaler is a perfect vehicle for a spontaneous island picnic or a joyride to the mouth of the harbor on a warm July evening.

Matthew P. Murphy is editor of WoodenBoat magazine and founder of Small Boats magazine.

Based on the author’s empirical research, there is always a 13′ Boston Whaler for sale somewhere in New England on Facebook Marketplace. Prices for serviceable boats range from $2,500 to over $10,000. Hull weight is critical in assessing the condition of these boats; overweight hulls have likely been breached, and are waterlogged—a non-fatal condition that requires careful and thorough drying of the interior foam and subsequent fiberglass work.

For more articles by Matthew P. Murphy, see “The P.T. Skiff,”, “The Rhodes 19,” and “The Ladybug Pram.” For more on the Boston Whaler range, see “The Boston Whaler Montauks.”

13′ Boston Whaler Particulars

LOA:   13′ 4″
Beam:   5′ 5″
Draft:   6″
Weight:   about 275 lbs originally
Power:   9–40 hp
Capacity:   6 people

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