I have owned several sailboats and loved the romance of sailing, but as I’ve aged it was requiring more work and scampering about than I enjoyed. When my friend George took my wife Donna and me on a short motor cruise of the western end of New York State’s Erie Canal, I found it to be a relaxing and beautiful experience, quite different from sailing on the turbulent waters of Lake Erie. I decided to build a boat for cruising the canal.

Donna Harris

The L'Ark is built upside down with the posts on the transom and bulkhead sides extended to a common baseline. The extra length gets cut off after the hull is rolled over.

We wanted a relatively small trailerable boat that was suitable for overnight travel. It had to have a galley, a head, and berths for at least two. I also wanted a boat that had a traditional appearance and used readily available materials, not exotic and costly tropical hardwood. And, it had to be possible to build it in my double garage with the tools that I had on hand and with my limited boatbuilding skills. When I came across Philip Thiel’s Escargot, it seemed to fit the bill except for its lack of standing headroom. I noticed that the Escargot plans include four pages of supplemental drawings for a modified version, L’Ark, with the same 18′ 6″ length. This four-berth plywood canal cruiser has 6’ standing headroom, a 6″ greater beam than the Escargot’s 6′, and steeply sloped cabintop sides. It looked perfect. I ordered the plans and built a scale model to give me a clear understanding of how the hull was constructed (it is a lot less expensive to make a mistake in balsa than in marine plywood).

Read this article now for Free!

Ready for a second free article? Create a free account by entering your email address and a password below.

— OR —

Subscribe now for $29.99 a year and have immediate access to all of our content, including hundreds of small-boat profiles, gear reviews and techniques, adventure stories, and more! You can also browse our entire archive of back issues starting from September 2014, as well as post unlimited classified ads. This is an extraordinary value!

Subscribe Now or SIGN IN