Fifteen years ago, I found myself boatless. I was deeply involved at work in the restoration of a 46′ Nevins yawl, and evenings were fairly taken up by two great kids, five and seven years old. But reading boat books and fishing magazines at bedtime just didn’t satisfy my longing to be out on the water. It was time to build a boat for myself and my family.

I was looking for a cheap-to-build, seakindly skiff or outboard boat about 18′ long. I admired the Royal Lowell Eastern 18s that were sold from Beebe Cove in Noank, Connecticut. I saw them used for all sorts of near-shore activities: clamming, lobstering, going to the beach, fishing, and just general running around. Their owners always seemed to be very content when aboard them—but for me, they were built of the wrong stuff and rather expensive.

Man aboard the Weston Farmer Kingfisher BLACK GHOST.Carol Ansel

Walter Ansel (at the helm) built BLACK GHOST (17′ LOA, 6′ 6″ beam) to the Weston Farmer Kingfisher plans. Traditional construction and a seaworthy result make her an enticing project for any experienced builder.

At this same time, Weston Farmer’s book From My Old Boat Shop had been sitting at the top of the pile on my nightstand. I got a real charge out of Farmer’s feisty and humorous prose. He hooked me with his boat designs that he presented toward the end of book. After much study and thought, it seemed Farmer’s 17′ utility skiff, the Kingfisher, would fill the bill. Farmer promoted her as a “picnic boat, a deep-water runabout, a sea skiff, or just plain family putz-about.” Her close resemblance to the superb Lyman Islander further convinced me that this was the boat I was looking for.

Several important construction details of this design made her particularly attractive to me. I could buy decent cedar and great oak cheaply. The boat fit easily in the cellar. Construction would be relatively clean with not much glue. She calls for traditional lapstrake shell construction, so the hull could be built upright around molds and then framed all at once (no plank backing out or edge bevels!) She could be built with minimum setup. Also, I just wanted to build a clinker (lapstrake) boat.

I ordered plans. The beautiful drawings promptly showed an alternative profile for an outboard version, leading to more contemplation. Simplicity of installation, reliability, and price clinched my decision to build the outboard version.

Building the Powerboat BLACK GHOST

The boat proved quick to loft on painted plywood. I built six molds out of old, rejected cedar boat plank stock and sawed out the backbone parts. A cast-off piece of live oak made a sweet forefoot crook.

Space was tight in the basement. When I got the molds up, screwed to 2×4s attached to the floor joists, and stepped on the keel, I only had 24″ to the wall on the port side! There was little room to sight plank lines; nevertheless, the house floor frame overhead provided plenty of spots to nail bracing.

Lapstrake-planked motoboat hull.Carol Ansel

A lovely near-plumb bow and neatly lined off lapstrake planking give BLACK GHOST rugged good looks that hint at her quiet strength.

Planking proceeded at its own pleasant pace until I turned the bilge. I happened to measure the room left on the transom corners for the remaining planks one night and found to my horror that the port side, close against the wall, had grown considerably. The plank lines were higher on the port side than to starboard; the wide transom had hidden this fact. I stripped off two planks from the port side and planed down the third one to be narrower. This corrected the situation, and I was much more careful as I approached the sheer (the topmost plank).

My brother and I framed the boat in a weekend. I had prepared all the stock beforehand, ripping the white oak to dimension and rounding the corners.

Here, I departed from Farmer’s construction plans and ran the frames across the keel continuously from gunwale to gunwale. This made for fast work and stronger construction than two-part frames, and I had enough long stock to do it this way.

Man pilots a wooden powerboat near other docked yachts and sailboats.Carol Ansel

This hearty powerboat can take good care of her crew even when the weather turns foul.

My wife and I riveted the frames. She decided that bucking under the hull was a much better job for me, so I lay on my back with the dolly on the floor while she headed up the nails. One of the neighbors informed us that riveting must stop at 10 p.m. We complied to keep peace in the neighborhood.

I installed 5⁄4 Douglas-fir floor timbers to stiffen the bottom. These were jogged to fit the laps and were of sufficient height to hold the floorboards. I rolled the hull outside the cellar to see what she looked like at this point. The hull looked good, if a bit high-sided. She had a nice, hollow bow and slight tumblehome aft. I knew that later the paint scheme would diminish the freeboard. High sides provide safety in rough waters; you can’t fall overboard as easily.

Finishing the inside of the hull proceeded in a straightforward fashion. For the floorboards, I used 3⁄4″-thick stock that had been rejected for planking. A V-shaped seat was built in the forward half of the boat with a console placed on the port side to hold the wheel and throttle. I built a slop-well ahead of the motor that drained overboard through the transom. In consideration of all the construction modifications I made to Farmer’s plans, I always tried to keep the materials as light and strong as possible. Not adding any significant weight to the original design delivered the performance that Farmer predicted.

Man at the helm of a white powerboat in a marina.Carol Ansel

Walter chose the outboard powering option shown in the complete set of plans, rather than the inboard version shown on the opposite page. With the inboard engine gone, he had many more options to customize the arrangement of the cockpit.

Launching the BLACK GHOST

I named the boat after my favorite fishing fly, the BLACK GHOST. I painted her outside with Kirby workboat paint and used soaking oil inside. Rails and coamings were oiled white oak. My aim was to have a paint scheme that could be maintained and completed in two weekends a year, and this proved out over the seven years that I owned the GHOST.

Launch day was a great family affair. It included many kids, friends, beer for the grownups, and cheese balls for kids. Escaped cheese balls were later found in the bilge swollen to bizarre size; for a moment I thought bits of bedding compound had evolved into a new life form. The GHOST floated at perfect trim and planed out nicely with the new 28 Special Johnson outboard I had purchased. The steering wheel was an antique, galvanized, drum-style, fisherman steerer found at a marine consignment store.

I fished the boat twice a week from June through October, primarily on the reefs that extend from Fishers Island, New York, to Watch Hill, Rhode Island. This area of half-exposed rocks is swept by strong tides. The striped bass, bluefish, and false albacore love to forage here, and the fishing is great. The GHOST proved to be a safe, extremely able, and nimble boat on the reefs. On the second trip out, my brother and I hooked lively stripers and had to leave the GHOST to fend for herself. We drifted back through the tide rip stern-first into a break that looked like a swamper. The GHOST plunged through, filled her slop well, shook herself off like a retriever, and kept us fishing. We grinned at each other upon finding out that we had a great little boat under us. We stood out in our time-warp 1950s utility skiff among the all-white center-console, tub-shower units, their fishermen staring at us in astonishment.

The favorite family beach spot was a guzzle that drained a few salt ponds across a barrier beach. We had this to ourselves, as it was inaccessible by car. We would load the GHOST with food and beach gear and try to hit the place at high tide with the ebb just starting. We’d motor in to waist-deep water, haul the gear ashore, and then anchor off. We spent many happy hours swimming the guzzle, observing all sorts of marine life with glass-bottomed boxes, or just lying on the beach looking out at our BLACK GHOST moored just off shore—waiting to take a tired, sunburned, and happy crew home.

BLACK GHOST Particulars

LOA:  17′
Beam:  6′ 6″
Draft:  20″
Displacement:  1,300 lbs

Fore and aft drawings of the Weston Farmer Kingfisher.Weston Farmer Associates

The Kingfisher’s lines plan is unusually well detailed for a small boat of this vintage.

Weston Farmer Kingfisher lines plans.Weston Farmer Associates

It gives not only the complete shape of the boat but also provides many useful construction and lofting details, such as the half-siding of the stem, keel, and apron, the location of the building floor and frames, and the centerline of the propeller shaft, to name a few. Clearly, Weston Farmer was a man who not only designed good boats but could build them as well.

Plans for the Kingfisher design are available from Weston Farmer Associates, 7034-D Hwy. 291, TumTum, WA 99034, or from Duckworks.

Ready for More Lapstrake Powerboats?

Lapstrake construction results in boats that stand the test of time in both performance and aesthetic appeal. Now that the Weston Farmer Kingfisher BLACK GHOST has your attention, check out these other designs.

The Rambler 18: A runabout for adventure

XLNC Utility Skiff: A simple, efficient hull from William and John Atkin

Flat-Bottomed Skiff HERON: A new Blake-built boat