Onset Island Skiff

It’s another July day of 90-degree heat and humidity-sodden air, but we’re all standing contentedly in shallow water, wriggling our toes on the sandy bottom and admiring a key advantage of lapstrake hulls. The southwest breeze is blowing 12 to 15, we figure, and out on Buzzards Bay, things must be starting to rock and roll. Here in protected Onset Bay, pleasant little waves are charging onto the shore and against the side of the skiff, which we’ve grounded out for a bit of photography. Each wave slaps hard against the boat’s lower plank and splashes upwards only to be promptly quashed by the overlap of the hull’s upper strake. Not a drop of water makes it past that overhanging lap.

Beetle Inc.

Beetle Inc.’s Onset Island Skiff is a recent interpretation of an old idea: the traditional New England flat-bottomed skiff. Here, author Stan Grayson demonstrates the handsome boat.

After awhile, we decide to see how the boat will do running right into the chop and wind. I take a seat on the forward thwart while boatbuilder Jonathan Richards pushes us out, hops in, and fires up the 6-hp Johnson two-stroke. Bill Sauerbrey, the skiff’s designer, takes up position on the float at Onset’s little pier to watch his baby go. Just like that, we’re heading into it.

Jonathan says the boat doesn’t get up on plane as quickly as it might with 8 hp, but we’re soon thumping our way over the chop at a good clip and the ride up front is remarkably dry. The thwarts are mounted high enough to permit convenient use of the space beneath them, something that can’t be said for all such boats. I note that Jonathan has a good-sized container of life preservers under the forward seat. When I get to try the skiff out, the boat tracks right along without much attention, but she’s easy to maneuver in close quarters, has a very solid feel, and is as stable as one might expect of a 12′ 4″ flat-bottomed boat with a 4′ 6″ beam. By that I mean, this is a seriously stable skiff.

Beetle Inc.

The plywood bottom allows the Onset Island Skiff to be run from a trailer without the usual worries of drying out and leaking between outings. For those with strong backs, the trailer may be eliminated; skids on the bottom allow easy sliding in and out of a truck bed.

When we’ve had our fill, Jonathan decides we’ll haul out just as we launched when he backed his pickup down the ramp and simply tilted the boat off into the water. By the time we motor in, Bill has backed down the Chevy Silverado and lowered the tailgate.

It’s an easy job for one man to haul on the skiff’s painter and tug the boat up onto the pickup bed. (The bottom features a small keel and protective runners on either side.) A final assist comes from Bill pushing on the transom. Then Jonathan rigs a tie-down over the raised bronze oarlocks, and we’re ready to roll—no muss, no fuss, no roof rack, no trailer. Pretty neat stuff.

On the drive back to the Beetle Boat Shop, Jonathan takes a little detour through the village of Onset to show me how this new boat got its name. He pulls up to a pier with a sign that labels it the property of the Onset Island Association. The 12-acre island, home to some 50 cottages, sits just offshore. For many years, folks got to the island in plywood skiffs; however, as those iron-fastened boats aged beyond the point of no return, most were replaced by aluminum models. Beetle Boat Shop owner Bill Womack has a place on Onset, and he decided it was time to reverse the trend.

“The non-availability of a good, affordable wood boat led to aluminum once the old wooden boats wore out,” is how Womack put it. That is how the new Onset Island Skiff came to be.

Beetle Inc.

The Onset Island Skiff’s construction is pure simplicity. Two planks per side are copper riveted at their lap joints. Save for the plywood bottom, all of the boat’s pieces are are of solid wood and are recorded in patterns, which allows Beetle to build the boat efficiently and offer it at the appealing price of about $2,500.

How Is the Onset Island Skiff Built?

In case you’re wondering if there could be anything new under the sun when it comes to boats like this, the answer is “yes and no.” Today, there’s an apparently endless variety of skiffs available. There are plans for traditionally built models with cross-planked bottoms as well as skiff plans and kits intended for various methods of plywood construction. The new Beetle offering arrives on the scene as a boat that combines traditional solid-lumber construction with a plywood bottom, and traditional-looking topsides with a hull shape drawn to optimize performance not under oars but with outboard power.

“The difference for outboard power compared to rowing is the boat needs to be flat and wide back aft, which can allow the hull to plane,” is how Bill Sauerbrey put it. “For a rowing skiff” (Beetle also offers the rowing-oriented Willy Potts), “you’re always in a displacement mode, so you want rocker (upsweep) to the hull back aft and a narrower transom. That allows the stern wave to fill back in as the boat moves forward. On the Onset Island Skiff, the water just skims off beneath the transom. It won’t glide when you row it, of course, but that is not its intended purpose.”

Like Beetle’s other production boats, the Onset Island Skiff is designed for series production over a permanent mold. Patterns exist for all the boat’s parts—the two planks per side, stem, transom, frames, chines with their bevels, stern knees, keel, and thwarts—and that makes it efficient to build the skiff singly or in a series. I was impressed with the materials used in this boat. The white pine used for the 3⁄4″ hull planks and transom is cut by a local sawyer from selected logs and then carefully stacked and allowed to dry in one of Beetle’s storage sheds. The stem, frames, and chines are white oak.

The bottom is 5⁄8″ meranti marine plywood, the same durable material that the shop uses for the centerboard and rudder of its catboats. The planks are fastened in the traditional manner with silicon-bronze rivets, the remainder of the fastenings being bronze screws.

Given that the plywood bottom is the only “non-traditional” aspect of a boat built by a shop dedicated to plank-on-frame construction, I asked Bill Sauerbrey about the availability and functionality of a cross-planked bottom. He indicated that such a change would be doable but would add both weight and cost to the boat. (The Onset Skiff weighs about 180 lbs and currently sells for $2,500.) “The best way to do a cross-planked bottom would be to use quarter-sawn cedar no more than 4″ wide,” Bill said. He noted that he’s owned a boat with such a bottom for 25 years and although it is dry-sailed, it suffers little in the way of leaks upon launching.

At the bow, the skiff has a sturdy breasthook and there are two small triangular openings where the breasthook butts up against the stem. These allow water to drain out should the boat be stored upside down. The stock paint scheme is white topsides, red bottom paint, and a gray interior. Customers who might desire different colors, however, can request a change. As delivered, the boat comes with a bow painter. Those who might need to regularly tie up at a dock or in a finger slip can discuss additional attachment points with Beetle.

Beetle Inc.

The flat bottom and resulting shallow draft allow the boat to be nosed into a beach, while lapstrake construction knocks down spray and thus contributes to a dry ride.

The Onset Island Skiff is easily able to handle a 6-hp, two-stroke or an 8-hp, four-stroke outboard. Officially, however, the boat is rated for a 4-hp motor. In all cases, a short-shaft model is what’s needed. Given access to a good two-stroke, one might want to consider such a motor since it echoes the skiff’s simple nature and will weigh about 10 lbs less than a comparable four-stroke, while possibly offering more oomph and requiring no special handling during transport or storage. Whatever type motor is selected, I’d guess that most folks using these boats for the intended utilitarian purposes will find 4 to 6 hp entirely adequate.

It’s no secret among designers that there are quite a few subtleties involved in creating a good skiff. Many years ago, naval architect John Atkin—that gentle and generous man—cataloged for me what he looked for in a good skiff, and all those design subtleties came spilling right out. John admired a skiff with a stem and transom raked to permit enough flare to the top-sides to provide “lift,” the benefits of which he noted were dryness and seaworthiness. He was a stickler for a graceful sheer that both looked good and provided adequate freeboard. And he always emphasized that a hull’s rocker be appropriate to its task, tucked up aft for a rowing or sailing skiff so the stern didn’t drag but mainly flat for a model intended primarily for out- board power. He had a name for the many skiffs that failed to meet the criteria, were slab sided, too pointy in the bow, and unattractive. These boats he labeled “clamdiggers’ skiffs.”

Beetle Inc.

The Onset Island Skiff’s simplicity and basic appearance are somewhat deceiving, for there’s more to creating a stable and dry skiff than meets the eye. The subtleties of design include a slight rocker to the bottom profile forward, and ample volume and a flat run aft for good trim while motoring; a good sweep to the sheer and flared sections for a dry ride; and a wide bottom for stability. The author reports he stood in the bow, “and felt pretty secure about it”; others wishing to do so are advised to proceed with caution.

The Onset Island Skiff is, I think, a boat of which John Atkin would have approved. It’s an honest, hard-working little skiff that should last a long time and fulfill a variety of purposes: utility boat, yacht or workboat tender, fishing, even hauling an occasional in-harbor lobster trap. Most surprising, perhaps, is that one can obtain this professionally built and finished wooden boat for a very attractive price.

Stan Grayson is a regular contributor to WoodenBoat. For more information about the Onset Island Skiff, contact Beetle, Inc., 3 Thatcher Lane, Wareham, MA 02571; 508-295-8585.

The Beetle Cat and the Boats It Inspired

Since 2004, Beetle Inc. has operated the Beetle Cat shop in Wareham, Massachusetts. In that time, the shop has built and maintained hundreds of classic boats, including more than 220 of the Beetle Cat sailboat—one of the oldest wooden sailboat designs to be continuously produced and competitively raced for over a century. Take a look at Small Boats profile of the Beetle 14, and another boat inspired by this legendary design.

Beetle 14: Sequel to a legend

Bobcat: Bolger’s adaptation of the Beetle Cat for tack-and-tape construction

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