Articles - Page 18 of 51 - Small Boats Magazine

Umbagog Lake

Our 19′ wood-and-canvas freight canoe, a derelict whale of a boat I’d restored, is a bit of a pig for long-distance paddling, but Tina and I stay mindful of the weather, eat well, work a little, and take the time to enjoy the beauty and quiet around us. And happily tuckered out after a full day outdoors, we sleep well, too. Early in September of 2021, our longtime friends Richard and Jessica Johnson, with their nimble kayaks, joined us for five days of paddling on Umbagog Lake, which straddles the border between Maine and New Hampshire and is the southernmost lake in Rangeley Lakes chain.

We left the low, muddy launch site at the south end of the lake at about 2 p.m. and paddled northwest toward the north end of Big Island and one of the three dozen campsites maintained by Umbagog Lake State Park. Our 19′ canoe has a transom to take an outboard motor, but the gently rockered stern makes it possible to move right along when paddling if we put some muscle into it. There was an easy southwest breeze at the outset, but after the half-mile crossing of Sargent Cove and leaving the lee, whitecaps surged around us. We still had 2 miles to paddle into Thurston Cove, now into a headwind.

Richard, in his yellow kayak, was out ahead scouting the shoreline for our campsite while Jessica kept us in view; we were trailing nearly 1/4 mile behind. The forecast was for a cold front to pass through in the afternoon and, right on cue, the sky turned as gray as a hornet’s nest, the temperature dropped, and the wind freshened. In the bow, Tina quickened her strokes to maintain headway and I switched to working my draw stroke hard on the starboard side to counteract the rollers and keep the big boat on course while quartering into the waves. When I paused to throw on my raincoat, the canoe spun quickly, the high freeboard acting as a sail. Putting our backs into it, we drew even with the northwest point of Big Island, where tall pines and spruce swayed in the gloom as the wind intensified, driving the slanting rain. To the east, Jessica, with Richard’s help, hauled her boat up the wet, black-rock shore of the campsite. Tina and I paddled farther windward before swinging downwind to ride the waves to the landing where Richard and Jess were waiting to catch our bow.

Tina and I slid over the gunwales into knee-high water and held the boat off the gravelly beach as the waves splashed against our legs, soaking our shorts. Tina pulled the Johnsons’ tent from under the canoe deck and chucked it up to them. We covered the canoe’s remaining cargo with a tarp as the rain angled across the wind and streamed across the tarp.

The canoe was side-to the rock-bound shore but was too heavy to lift. I hurled the 10-lb mushroom anchor offshore and secured the stern to its rode while Tina kept the bow off the rocks and held down the tarp. Richard and Jess got their four-man tent secured to its poles while the loose rainfly snapped like a whip. The gusting wind kept Tina and me focused on the canoe—our little anchor doesn’t hold well in a blow.

Paddler tends to a canoe along a rocky shore.

With one tent up and the squall slackening, we offloaded the canoe, stashing open crates and totes in the tent and stacking dry bags and firewood nearby. Then, the four of us carried the freighter out of the water and set its canvas-covered hull on life jackets and seat cushions safely above the exposed rocks on shore.

Tina and I set up our two-man tent while Richard and Jess carried the gear stowed in their boats to their tent. The rain let up. They found the food bags and set out cheese and crackers. We heard the tinkling of ice in our camp mugs as they mixed drinks for happy hour. Soon, I had steak tips searing on the folding charcoal grill while the peppers and onions caramelized on the propane-fired griddle and quinoa and mushrooms simmered on the stove.

By early twilight the sky had cleared, and the evening cooled into a starlit night. I bundled up in warm pants and wool hat before we lazed in camp chairs, staring at the blue flames and orange coals of the dying fire. A loon’s song echoed around the lake.

Picture of a wooden canoe ashore with Umbagog Lake in the background.

In the morning, we fired up the camp stoves for French press coffee and oatmeal. After breakfast, Richard and Jessica tended to some leaky seams on their tent fly. Richard fashioned temporary drip rings for their paddles from twine and electrical tape to stand in for the originals, which he had forgotten to replace after varnishing the paddles. Jess sketched with colored pencils in her notebook while Tina rambled around the north end of Big Island and came back with news of dessert-plate-sized moose prints in the soft mud just 30 yards from our tent site.

We broke camp, then used the hand pump to empty the canoe of rainwater before the four of us lifted it back into the water and loaded it with firewood, coolers, backpacks, tents, kitchen supplies, fishing gear, spare paddles, water jug, and food bags.

Two men hold a canoe near a rocky shore.

Tina and I got aboard and pulled away from Big Island, heading off for our day’s paddle to a campsite about 7 miles away at the northeastern end of the lake. Since our canoe was the slow boat, we got a head start while Richard and Jess finished stowing their gear and launched. They quickly caught up to us and paddled off along the shore, Jess with binoculars around her neck and Richard with a map under the bungees on his foredeck. We would meet for lunch at Molls Rock on the western shore. A west-southwest breeze gave us easy downwind paddling. The map showed a northeast heading to Metallak Island and then a jag north to make Molls Rock.

Two paddlers aboard a wooden canoe in a lake surrounded by trees.

By noon Tina and I were short-sleeved in the sunshine, and we found the paddling rhythmic and easy. Five loons floating nearby made mournful wavering calls, then dove out of sight. The wide-open lake basin stretched out along the evergreen hills dappled yellow and red with early touches of fall. The northern White Mountains rose to the south behind us, gray silhouettes beneath a bright sky. A blue heron stalked the shallows, fishing. I was fishing, too, trolling a small silver minnow lure. The pole bent and I quit paddling to set the hook and reel the line in. Tina netted the yellow perch as it rose to the surface by the canoe. Jessica was planning a chowder for our last night’s dinner, and we would add the fish to the pot.

We poked into Black Island Cove and made an easy landing on a soft, sandy beach on the north side. Wading in the ankle-deep water we saw hundreds of silver-dollar-sized freshwater clams and the curlicue grooves they trailed. After a stretch and a stroll, we boarded the boats again and continued, paddling around and between jutting boulders and exposed rock piles along the lake’s west side. We passed a few fishermen, their powerboats drifting with the wind in the shallows alongshore. Then, up ahead, we made out the prominent point of Molls Rock. Richard and Jess were already there and directed us to an easy landing on the bare-rock shelf at the water’s edge. To reach the top of Molls Rock, we walked up a worn granite incline. Clumps of green grass and a stunted spruce clung to the cracks and duff fringing the bare gray dome where names and initials had been carved into its knobbly top. The vista from 15′-high prominence swept from Tyler Point on our right up to Pine Point to the northeast. Beyond Pine Point and across the lake rose Johnson and Moose mountains.

To the northwest, the Magalloway River empties into Umbagog at the lake’s outlet and meets the Androscoggin River. The Floating Islands Bog lies between the rivers but as we left Molls Rock and headed north, we found the lake level too low to permit even the kayaks from progressing very far westward. Tina and I held back in the big canoe and skimmed over the clear shallows through lilies that twined around our paddle shafts. The muddy lakebed was close beneath us, but only rarely did we touch bottom with our paddles.

After traveling more than a mile north we turned east for the 2-mile run to our next campsite at the entrance of Sunday Cove. As we passed Pine Point, the afternoon wind picked up out of the west. In weed-free water now, I set to trolling again. The sky was nearly clear and bright blue as we rode downwind on the rising waves toward the 1/3-mile-wide mouth of the Rapid River. Richard and Jess paddled ahead along the shore to scout for the campsite. Tina and I saw only uninviting gravel and boulder landings and stayed a 1/4 mile offshore. Umbagog spans 8 miles from north to south and has an average depth of just 10′; it is deepest at the north end where it reaches down 50′ in spots. The west wind was blowing briskly across the 2 miles of open water behind us, and whitecapped waves swelled as the breeze freshened. As we waited for a sign from Richard, Tina and I labored to keep the bulky canoe on course and away from the lee shore.

In the distance we saw Richard land on the south side of the point at the entrance to Sunday Cove and manhandle his loaded kayak out of the water and up the rock-bound landing. He walked the shore of the peninsula looking for a better landing spot for the rest of us. Finding none, Richard waved Jess in and waded out to steady her kayak as she disembarked while it was still afloat. We then followed to the landing—a cove behind a wave-rounded natural breakwater, no larger than a compact-car-sized parking space. Paddling hard, broadside to the wind, we poked the bow of the canoe into the calm water just behind the rocks, letting the canoe swing slowly into shore where Jessica and Richard caught us. We managed our exit in thigh-deep water with wobbly rocks underfoot. Jess held the bow and Tina the stern as Richard and I offloaded the boat, tossing the firewood we carried high up the granite slope.

A wooden canoe rests along rocks near a lake.

The wind was lively, and the canoe bobbed in its tiny harbor. Jessica strained to keep the canoe off the rocks and was a little dumbfounded when she saw Tina reeling in the trolling rod. I had forgotten about the rod while controlling the boat and hadn’t brought in the lure before approaching the landing. At the end of the line was a fist-sized, mossy-green bass on the hook: more fish for the chowder! After steadying the rocking canoe, the four of us humped the canvas-skinned canoe up the rocky slope and onto the life jackets and seat cushions. There was a little yellow paint from Richard’s kayak streaked on the rock along the path he had taken.

The campsite was crowded with crooked white cedar and arrow-straight spruce, white pines with trunks as thick as whisky barrels, balsam firs as symmetrical as Christmas trees, and a hemlock with branches like inverted umbrella ribs. Red maples blocked the sky with their thick crowns of leaves, and white birch were charcoal black where horizontal strips of paper-white bark had curled back. The air had a spicy smell of cedar with a pungent turpentine whiff of pine. At the head of the cove to our south, the mixed forest and shrubs gave way to a small, open beach and shallow water.

In the morning the woods were suffused with a thick fog. Tina had gotten up early and was perched on the rocks peering through the murk toward the lake. As the sun rose, the fog burned off and, under an azure sky, all four of us boarded the canoe to paddle into Sunday Cove and search for the Carry Road. If we could find it, a 3-mile walk would take us to Forest Lodge where author Louise Dickinson Rich and her family lived in the 1930s, chronicled in We Took to the Woods. Paddling into the shallow head of the cove, we wallowed in sandal-sucking muck and carried the canoe, carefully hop-scotching rocks, to a berth on the boat cushions. A stream we could have crossed in a single stride trickled through the loose rocks and under a derelict timber-and-steel bridge overgrown with brush. We wove through tangled woods, around blowdowns and through tight stands of saplings. We found rusted remnants of metal buckets and heavy wire, but nothing that looked like a road much less a footpath. Before getting in too deep, we headed back to the lake and searched along the shoreline. With no sign of a trail there either, we returned to the canoe. I paddled while Tina and Jess settled between the thwarts and Richard stood in the bow, pointing the way through the maze of rocks in the shallows. As we paddled out of Sunday Cove, we considered turning south into the mouth of the Rapid River to look for the path, but the low water discouraged us from that, and we headed back to camp.

Tina trolled on the way out of the cove. The lake holds large brook trout and landlocked salmon, and I daydreamed about splitting a cedar log and grilling planked salmon for dinner. Tina got a strike and we stopped paddling while she played the fish. In a minute or two, she had it alongside the canoe and its silvery sides flashed just beneath the surface of the olive-green lake water. I hadn’t put the landing net aboard—this was to be a hiking trip—and when the not-too-tired fish came alongside the canoe, I tried to hoist it aboard by grabbing the line, but it shook itself free and swam away.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing in camp amidst the trees. Jessica and Tina strolled on the beach while Richard and I played cribbage. Tina lazed in her hammock; Jessica sketched; we swam. Later that afternoon, three otters came bobbing into our little bay. Loons warbled across the water to the south. A shrike, easily identified by its Zorro-like black mask, flitted through the tree limbs. Red squirrels nibbling on mushrooms chattered with rapid raspy barks.

That night, as the campfire faded and darkness surrounded our campsite, the Milky Way’s dusty glow appeared overhead. I spotted the Big Dipper just as a shooting star streaked across it. Far off to the west, beyond the lake, a jagged bolt of lightning flashed. As we zipped into our tents, rain fell with a whisper. Thunder rumbled through the night and rain pattered on and off.

By morning, water was trickling from the trees and the rain flies were soaked but the storm had passed. Cotton-white clouds draped the western hills and there was a faint southwest breeze. Tina and Richard were up early, standing at the edge of the lake watching the otter family swimming and diving a mere 10′ away. A doe and two fawns with white-speckled backs sauntered across the beach. We stood in our raincoats under the dripping evergreens during our breakfast of coffee and granola. After breaking camp and loading up, we paddled away on mirror-like water.

Two women eat breakfast on a rocky shore with a view of a lake.

Tina and I floated westward back toward Pine Point in the flat calm. The still morning air, thick with humidity, hung in a thin chalky haze over the lake. Fish, sipping flies, left dimples on the water. I could occasionally get one to follow a lure in toward the canoe, but then it would drift off when it got close to us.

After we rounded the northernmost prominence of Pine Point, we had 4 more miles of paddling south to round Tyler Point and reach a campsite inside Tyler Cove. The weather was quiet, with no appreciable wind, either with or against us. Loons laughed and swam nearby. A bald eagle looked down on us from its tree-branch perch. We paddled languidly and it seemed a long, sleepy haul.

At length we reached the landing at Tyler Cove. We slowly drifted over the shallows and nosed the canoe gently onto the sandy beach. Rain was likely to fall in the afternoon, so we set up the tents and hung the flies, still damp from last night’s rain, to dry before putting them on the tents. Using the kayak paddles as poles, we set up our tarp over the campsite picnic table.

Jessica made fish chowder with the fillets of the fish we had caught and, although there may have been more canned corn in the chowder than fish, it made a delicious dinner. Rain spattered lightly as we drifted into our tents.

On the last morning, we woke early to a gray dawn with drizzle speckling the lake. Tina, Jess, and I, still a little foggy-eyed, strolled southeast to a bog surrounded by blueberry bushes, balsam fir, and white birch. After a breakfast of oatmeal, grilled bread, and coffee we watched a family of three loons swimming 10 yards offshore. The elders were diving and bringing up food (freshwater clams, perhaps) to feed their youngster. The young one stuck its head under water but never dove and the parents whistled softly to each other as they fed the little one.

We loaded up and, although it was easy to shove the canoe off the sandy beach, once out on the lake, Tina and I were blown backward by the stiff northwest breeze. We settled in and bulled our way through the whitecapped waters to the lee of 150-yard-long Metallak Island. After a breather we ran southwest, back toward Big Island, with the wind aft on our starboard quarter. Rounding Tidswell Point, Richard and Jess rejoined us, and we drifted awhile downwind, lolling in the surf with the whole of Umbagog Lake behind us.

Tom DeVries and his wife Tina live in New Braintree, Massachusetts. He enjoys fruitful days spent in Beyond Yukon Boat and Oar, his snug woodworking shop. In years gone by, Tom has also canoed on the Yukon, fished commercially in Alaska, and sailed his skipjack on the Chesapeake. He wrote about his 1986 river travels in Zaire in the May 2019 issue. He wishes to thank Bob Lavertue of Springfield Fan Centerboard Company for the gift of the freight canoe four years ago.

If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.

A Small-Boat Chart Holder

While a GPS chart plotter is our primary source of navigation information, printed charts and chart books still have a place on our boats. The challenge, particularly on outboard skiffs, is keeping the charts in place. Lay a chart or chart book down, and it may blow away. Try holding it for a look while underway, and it will bend and flap in the breeze.

I designed and built a couple of portable chart holders three years ago. They’re simple—a piece of plywood with shock cords to hold the chart in place and strips around the perimeter to provide a little lee for the edges of the chart. Ben Fuller has seen and used our holders, and this winter decided to build a couple. He modified the design, and we’ll see how his work this summer.

Plywood 3⁄16″ to 1⁄4″ (4mm to 6mm) thick works well for the panel. I used marine plywood, but any plywood with exterior glue and a smooth surface should be satisfactory. A bit of weight is desirable to help keep the unit from being blown about, but 3⁄8″ thick might be a bit heavy. Plywood also has the advantage that it floats. While we haven’t dropped a holder overboard yet, it is certainly a possibility, and it’s reassuring to know we’ll be able to recover the errant charts.

The wood strips around the edges can be rectangular or quarter oval in section (or a fancier profile, if desired). Rectangular strips are simple to rip from a board if a tablesaw is available. Wood molding strips from a good lumberyard are an alternative. The rectangular strips on the original holders are 1⁄2″ high. Ben used 11⁄16″ quarter-round molding, which I will use when I build additional holders. The original holders initially had strips only along the top and bottom. We found that strips on the sides are also needed to shelter the edges of the chart when the holder is turned sideways to the wind. It isn’t necessary for the strips to be continuous around the sides. Ben established that installing the strips in sections around the hole notches is more efficient than installing the strips and then drilling the holes and cutting the notches.

The shock cords at the top and bottom should be within a couple of inches of the edges of the chart to keep the chart corners from lifting in the wind, but not so close that the chart can slip out. The strips along the holder should extend close to the corners for the same reason.

The shock cords are held in place by holes on one side and notches on the other side. The originals have three shock cords with a wood dowel toggle on the free end. The ends through the holes have simple overhand knots which keep the shock cord from pulling through. Each cord slips into a notch and is held in place by the toggle. To fasten the shock cords in place, stretch them so that the toggle will fit around the edge of the panel with the cord in the notch. Releasing the cords just requires pulling the toggles around the edge of the panel. Be sure to hold onto the toggles so they don’t whip around and hit someone.

Ben’s holders have a single length of shock cord with the ends of the cord through holes on one side of the panel. The shock cord goes through a wood strip with holes drilled in the ends. The strip takes the place of individual toggles.

I use 3⁄16″ shock cord, and it is strong enough; 1⁄8″ should also work well, particularly if three cords are used. A 1⁄4” shock cord would probably be satisfactory, but I wouldn’t use a larger diameter.

The holes for the fixed ends of the shock cords are the same diameter as the shock cord, and the notches are wider. With the 3⁄16″ -diameter shock cord we used 1⁄4″ -wide notches, though wider also works. To create a notch, start by drilling a hole with a diameter the desired width of the notch, then saw from the edge to the hole.

The shock cord only needs to be snug enough to hold the chart in place when stretched over it. Any tighter makes it more difficult to secure the cord in place and to push it out of the way when the buoy you are looking for is under the shock cord. The original holders span 13 1⁄2″ from the holes to the notches, and the shock cords are stretched about 2 1⁄2″ inches when in place.

Use a water-resistant glue to fasten the strips to the plywood. No need for epoxy or other high-strength glue; Titebond III is satisfactory. If you also use nails or staples to hold fasten the strips with or without glue, make sure they are galvanized or stainless.

The space between the strips needs to be large enough for the chart or chart book to fit; if it is much larger than that, the edges of the chart may be blown by the wind.

We carry two chart books and holders when underway in an outboard skiff. One stays by the helm while the other is used by a passenger/navigator—we’ve found it’s nice to be able to hand passengers a chart to look at. The holders are also useful when a portable flat surface is needed, such as a place to write notes. Ben has painted his holders white so he can write directly on them. His holders also have molding strips on both sides of the back so they can be placed over a thwart without risk of sliding off.

My original chart holders were put to use immediately after construction three years ago and never received any coats of finish. They do stay inside when not in use, and so far, they’ve held up with only some darkening of the wood from sun exposure.

David Cockey’s interest in traditional boats and boatbuilding began while he was a teenager in Maryland. His influences include Howard Chapelle’s books and John Gardner’s columns in National Fisherman. Several years ago, following a career in automotive research and engineering, David and his wife moved to Maine. His current activities focus around boat design and documenting historic boats, and his boating includes monitoring Maine Island Trail Association islands in Penobscot Bay.

You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Magazine readers by sending us an email.

Boat Medic

Minor injuries at home, at work, or in the shop may be painful and inconvenient, but most do not have severe consequences. But take that minor injury into the backcountry, or on a coastal cruise many hours from definitive care, and the stakes can quickly get much higher, particularly if an injury impairs mobility which delays travel to safer environs or renders an individual unable to operate a vessel safely, or at all. A well-stocked first-aid kit is an important piece of gear and can go a long way to keeping treatable injuries from turning an outdoor adventure into an epic, or even disastrous, affair.

The Boat Medic first-aid kit from My Medic is well-thought-out and very well stocked and packaged. It should allow responders to render care for a wide range of injuries and illness running the gamut from minor to life-threatening trauma. The supplies are packed in a waterproof and robust 10″×12″×6″ plastic case. Secure closure is provided by two rugged dual-action latches that prevent accidental opening, while an automatic pressure-valve equalizes the air pressure to assure that the case can always be easily opened. The case kept water out during my 10-minute spray test and 30-minute immersion, confirming its IPX7 rating for waterproofness.

I was impressed with the range of problems the kit was prepared for. There are ample supplies for minor wounds, burns, and orthopedic injuries, which I would expect (and hope) will be the most common uses for a first-aid kit in a field setting. The kit’s supplies for major trauma care could certainly stabilize potentially life-threatening injuries when used by a trained responder. There is no included checklist of gear (helpful when searching for a needed supply in an emergency, as well as when the kit is restocked), though one could be made from the list of contents on the kit’s web page. And while there is no instructional material beyond what is printed on each item’s packaging, users of a pre-stocked first-aid kit should familiarize themselves with its contents and read a good wilderness first-aid manual like NOLS Wilderness Medicine.

Knowing how to use the items in the kit is every bit as important as having them handy. The tourniquet included in the kit, for example, can stem the flow of life-threatening bleeding, but should only be applied after direct pressure, wound packing, and pressure dressings have failed to control blood loss. A tourniquet in place for longer than a few hours can lead to permanent neuro-vascular injury or even limb loss, so a provider should be absolutely certain it is required before placing one, and once placed, the patient should be marked (on the forehead, usually) in pen to alert subsequent caregivers that a tourniquet is in use, and the time it was applied. Similarly, the kit’s nasopharyngeal airway can assist in maintaining an open airway in a patient with a depressed level of consciousness, but it can cause harm if used in the setting of unsuspected cranio-facial injuries.

Almost all first-aid kits will require some additions to meet local or personal requirements. For my New England cruising, I carry a tick remover along with doxycycline and dosing instructions for Lyme disease prophylaxis. I also carry Benadryl for insect bites, poison plant exposures, and mild allergic reactions, and an Epi-pen to treat severe allergic reactions to food or bee stings.

The Boat Medic first-aid kit might be more than you need for day trips where emergency resources aren’t far away, but for an extended cruise, a shop, instructional program, or to supply peace of mind, it is a well-stocked and securely packaged kit.

John Hartmann built his Ilur dinghy WAXWING, and his Jewell-class pocket cruiser UMAMI to sail in the Thousand Islands, Lake Champlain, and the coast of Maine. He is a board-certified emergency physician cruising into semi-retirement after 29 years on the front lines.

The Boat Medic waterproof first-aid kit is available from My Medic for $197.95. Some outdoor equipment suppliers also carry the Boat Medic.

Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising, or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.

DeWalt 20v Random-Orbit Sander

If you wandered by our home’s little boatworks and asked what our most used tool was, I’d probably have it in my hand. It’s a DeWalt 5″ random-orbit sander and because it is cordless, I may not even be in the shop when you find me using it.

We started sanding decades ago and have never stopped, first by hand with bits of folded sandpaper and then with a square-sheet orbital sander. Along the way, we discovered that random-orbit sanders leave fewer visible scratches on our wood and fiberglass projects. For many years afterward, we used a single-speed Sears Craftsman random-orbit sander with a cord, knowing that it would wear out within the one-year warranty, and we’d return it for an exchange. We started switching to cordless tools as they became available, and five years ago we added the DeWalt 20V XR Max brushless random-orbit sander to our arsenal.

The DeWalt has been a good fit, literally. When I first started using the sander, I felt it was a bit big in my medium-sized palm, but I don’t even notice the size now. I can use the sander with either hand, and switch frequently to avoid fatigue. The sander weighs 1.9 lbs—a good weight for applying the pressure to a horizontal work surface and yet light enough for working overhead. The battery or the dust port can be used as an alternate handhold, especially nice when just the right touch is needed on small or delicate workpieces. The sander stands 5.1″ tall, 7.1″ wide, and the kit came with a 3-amp-hour (Ah) battery. Sanding discs are the 5″-diameter hook-and-loop style.

With the 3Ah battery the DeWalt can sand for well over 20 minutes, which is plenty for my taste, and the larger 4Ah and 5Ah batteries offer extended sanding time beyond that. The 5Ah battery is a bit bulky, can tip the sander on edge, and limits access to some smaller spaces. The 20V XR Max brushless technology extends run time and provides excellent power. The sander speed can be adjusted from 8,000 rpm, for softwood or faring compounds, up to 12,000 rpm, for aggressive sanding on harder surfaces such as hardwoods or fiberglass. At the high rpm setting I can remove a lot of material in a short period of time. The sander does an excellent job of pulling dust into its dust bag through eight dust ports on the disc, or a shop vac can be connected with a DeWalt adapter.

Cordless tools are an excellent fit in the boatyard, eliminating the electrical shock hazard, and the portability of the tool allows me to work in a variety of locations. I prefer sanding long workpieces and tight spots without having to manage a cord and have not found myself in want of a corded sander for the past five years. The textured rubber grip on top of the DeWalt provides a secure grip which minimizes vibration.

The DeWalt sander comes with a three-year limited warranty; we are more than two years past that, and it’s still sanding.

Kent Lewis and his wife Audrey have messed about in over 50 different vessels over the past 28 years, and most of them needed some kind of sanding. Their boating and sanding adventures may be found at their blog, Small Boat Restoration.

The 20V MAX XR 5″ Brushless Cordless Random-Orbit Sander with a 2.0Ah battery, charger, and carry bag is manufactured by Dewalt and is available from stores and online retailers for around $150.

Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising, or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.

LAZY LIGHTNING

Dave Feder built a kayak and burned it. He also made countless tables, stools, benches, wine-bottle racks, cigar boxes, bowls, and plates and burned them all. And yet he has much more to show for his efforts than a heap of wood ash. He burns his woodworking by wetting it with an electrolytic solution—baking soda and water—and clamping a pair of electrodes to it. With a flip of a switch, electricity flows through the solution-soaked fibers and the heat it generates slowly burns out across the wood. If it sounds dangerous, it is. Dave notes, “I am playing around with 2,000 volts, so inherently the whole process is potentially lethal. It is fun, though.” The burnt wood takes on the same fractal patterns that lightning makes between clouds and earth, but while nature’s lightning is a fleeting bright white flash, Dave’s lightning leaves charcoal-black scars of equal beauty.

The tree-like patterns of electrical discharge were first created in 1777 by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, a German physicist. He generated static electricity to create a discharge across a glass plate where a fine powder of sulfur and red lead was attracted to the paths of the electrical current. The tree-like patterns are known as Lichtenberg figures.

Dave does Lichtenberg wood-burning as a hobby and side business—My Twisted Nature. Most of his pieces are live-edge wood slabs for tables and bar countertops, so he does very little joinery and considers himself “a completely novice woodworker. I have not glued two pieces of wood together since middle-school woodshop class in the early ’70s.” But Dave knows electricity. He spent four years in the Navy as an electrician’s mate on a destroyer, and in civilian life he has made a living as an electrical engineer.

Growing up, Dave spent his summers on the Jersey shore and swimming there fostered a love of water. As an adult, he took up recreational kayaking and enjoyed it as a means of getting on the water, but he hadn’t considered building a kayak for himself until he saw a strip-built kayak being paddled on a lake not far from his home. He had no experience building a boat of any kind and doubted that his woodworking skills were equal to the task. A dozen years slipped by since that moment of inspiration, and then the pandemic forced everyone to make changes. For Dave, not all of the changes were for the worse: “After years of daydreaming and never doing anything about it, I found myself with time on my hands during the Covid winter and decided to try and build a boat.”

His first venture into boatbuilding was on a small scale. He bought a kit for a 4′-long model kayak, a hybrid with a stitch-and-glue hull and a stripped deck. That gave Dave a feel for two methods of construction, and he was drawn to the aesthetic possibilities of the strips.

He bought a full-sized kit for the 12′ 8″ Excursion kayak from Newfound Woodworks with full-length strips of red cedar and northern white cedar. For color accents, Dave used brown ash, red oak, mahogany, maple, Spanish cedar, and teak. An attractive arrangement of strips in contrasting colors would have been enough for many builders aiming to personalize a strip-built boat, but the kayak wouldn’t truly be Dave’s unless he burned it.

He wasn’t sure how the Lichtenberg figures might be affected by the glue lines between strips, so he didn’t attempt to make burns on the deck itself—once the juice was applied to the electrodes, there would be no do-overs, so he prepared separate pieces of Spanish cedar for the burns. They had to be oversize because the electricity works outward from both electrodes, creating two figures. When Dave got the patterns he wanted, he cut each out in a smaller piece to inlay in the kayak’s deck. To burn single figures on the kayak’s hatch cover and his Greenland-style paddle he flooded the wood around one electrode with a continuous spray of electrolytic solution to douse its arc and let the other electrode do the work.

Dave built the kayak on his own and worked about 200 hours over nine months before launching it in June 2021. In a nod to his relaxed approach to kayaking, a favorite song by the same name from the ’70s, and the electrical origins of its decorations, he christened the kayak LAZY LIGHTNING. It’s an especially apt name, as electricity is indeed inherently lazy. It doesn’t take the shortest, most direct route between two points, whether as lightning or Lichtenberg figures, but instead finds and follows the far more complex and beautiful path of least resistance.

Do you have a boat with an interesting story? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats Magazine readers.

Masking Tape Techniques

Preparation is the key to any good paint or varnish job. Many boats come to my refinishing shop with a good-quality finish but with ragged edges that indicate a poor masking job. Some other boats I have seen still have leftover residue from masking tape. This makes the paint job look much worse than it really is. Here are some tips to make masking easier and give you a better-looking finish.

Purchase and Storage

There are many types and brands of masking tape: green, blue, gray, silver, fine-detailing, long-mask, easy-release, masking paper, and the old standard natural-color masking tape. There are general-purpose tapes and specialized tapes; some are good, some not so good. To get the best results you’ll need the appropriate tape for the job at hand.

I primarily use 3M products, not because they are better, but because they are widely available and the company offers such great variety. The tapes I use the most are the blue long-mask (No. 2090) and the greenish plastic-like Fine Line tape (No. 218). Other favorites are the green and silver extended-use and easy-release tapes. I use these latter two only when working outdoors, in extreme conditions.

Despite its availability and low cost, I do not recommend the standard natural-colored masking tape for use with marine coatings. The adhesive is too strong to peel away easily, it may leave a residue, and I have found that it doesn’t leave a clean edge.

Proper storage is important and often overlooked. Remember, it is just the very outside edge of the tape that does the work. If the edges of the roll are exposed to dust and dirt, particles will stick to the adhesive, making it difficult to get that clean, sharp edge. If you set the roll down on a dusty surface, that roll becomes useless as a fine-detailing tape. Be careful when buying rolls of tape through mail-order companies, too. Individual rolls are often dropped into the shipping box with packing peanuts, covering the adhesive edges with dust and dirt particles. Although some rolls are individually shrink-wrapped, the plastic usually does not fully cover their sides, and it is perforated in places, leaving some areas exposed and vulnerable to damage. To avoid these problems, I buy all of my tape in bulk packages of nine rolls that come double-wrapped in plastic. Keep individual rolls in sealed plastic bags and take care to keep them clean while in use.

Masking 101

The main reason we use masking tape is to get a crisp line between two different colors. Let’s say you want to mask off an area to paint a waterline stripe, as I recently did at my shop (see photos at left). It is important to make sure that your line is clean and fair.

Here, the topside varnish and bottom paint have already been applied, meeting at the scribed boottop lines. Before applying tape to the boat, unroll and fold over the first little bit of it to make a tab. This will help immensely when it’s time to remove it, especially if you have gloves on. There will be situations that require a tab-less piece of tape, but make tabs whenever possible. Begin at a corner of the stem or transom and roll out about an arm’s length of tape. Press the tape lightly against the hull as you work your way along it. It is better to use a few long lengths rather than several short pieces. Longer lengths better enable you to make fairer lines.

Once you have applied the tape lightly to one side, sight along its edge from bow to stern, then go to the other end of the boat and sight the opposite way. If it looks fair in both directions, press it down firmly. If not, lift an end and retape the unfair section. Then, press firmly to burnish the tape against the surface, making sure to get good contact throughout its length. You don’t need to press down on the whole width of the tape, just the edge that is doing the masking.

There are very few places on a boat where you’ll have a straight line. Most masking lines will be curved; some, very tightly. While paper tapes allow for slight curves, plastic tapes will bend much better. If you need to follow a tight curve, I suggest using a thin (1⁄4″ ) plastic fine-detailing tape or other conformable tape. Its narrow width will let you wrap it around the smallest of radii, such as a small cleat or other deck hardware. You may then add wider tape outside for more protection.

There will be situations where you’ll need to mask a wide area to protect surfaces from drips or over-spray. Taping paper or plastic sheeting over the area is the best method. However, don’t rely on a simple run of masking tape for both tasks. Use one run to get a nice, clean masked edge, and then tape the masking paper to that with another line of tape. The second line of tape does not have to be the expensive plastic type; it can be of the natural-colored, crepe-paper variety.

Post-Paint Procedures

Although many people think they must wait for their paint to dry before removing masking tape, this is not true in the vast majority of cases. In fact, most often, prompt removal of the tape is critical to success. After you apply paint or varnish, leave the tape on for only the few minutes it takes to clean your brushes. Keep your gloves on. Then remove the tape by grabbing the little folded tab and gently pulling it back beyond 90 degrees (see opening photo). I keep a putty knife handy to help grab those little pieces of tape that had to be applied without tabs. If the coating was properly applied, it should not run when the tape is removed. If it does, you have applied your paint too thickly. If you leave the tape on too long the adhesive may stick to the surface, leaving a mess; it may even pull off the paint.

Sometimes you may find little “flags” of paint that have leaked under the tape. This means that there was a small length of tape that was not pressed down securely. It usually happens at tape joints, another reason to use as few pieces of tape as possible. Now is the time to get rid of these flags, before the paint dries. Fold a paper towel over the end of a putty knife or flat-blade screwdriver. Dip it in solvent, and then use the tool like a pencil eraser to carefully “erase” the paint flags.

Masking tape is not just for paint. Use it any place you need a clean edge for a coating or want to protect an edge while sanding. If you have to add some caulk around a fitting or along a seam, don’t just squirt it all over the place. Take a few minutes to mask along the seam’s edges, apply the caulk, level it with your finger or a putty knife, and then remove the tape. You’ll have a nice, clean line that looks like it is supposed to be there rather than looking like a quick and messy fix.

Remember to use the proper tape for the job, keep your tape clean, and, in most cases, remove it as soon as you’re done with your application. Follow these simple steps, and you’ll find masking to be a helpful process rather than a difficult task.

Exceptions to the Rule: When to Leave Tape in Place

As mentioned, in the majority of cases you should pull off the tape early. There are exceptions, though, such as when using epoxy or when there is a highly detailed masking job that requires several coats of paint. A good example follows as I describe a sign painter’s technique that I now apply to boat painting.

This technique will produce a very crisp line on a smooth surface or a decent line on a rough surface. Let’s say we are painting a black covestripe on a white boat where there’s significant wood grain to contend with. The paint could seep under the tape through pores of the wood. Apply the fine-detailing tape as you normally would, making sure to press it firmly against the hull. Then before you paint the black line, apply a coat of white paint. This will fill in the tiny holes and seal the area between the tape and the wood. Leave the tape in place. When the white paint is dry, apply your topcoat of black. When you remove the tape, you’ll see that you have a razor-sharp line.

Gary Lowell, a Society of Accredited Marine Surveyors Surveyor Associate, owns Lowell Boats Inc. in Greensboro, North Carolina, and teaches Marine Painting and Varnishing at WoodenBoat School.

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A Shop-Made Painting Lamp

A good finish depends on many factors, including the quality of the paint or varnish, the preparation of the surface, and the expertise of the painter. However, even with the best possible paint quality, preparation, and skill, success will be elusive without good lighting.

Light intensity alone is not enough. It’s the reflection of light from the surface that allows us to judge the quality of a coating: at the right angle of reflection we can gauge whether we have applied the paint too thick, too thin, or whether there are places missed altogether—so-called holidays. We can see the work better if we lower the angle of the light source relative to the surface.

My shop does not have the best lighting; one side of the boat gets far more light than the other. The lighting isn’t much better in the boathouse, where our 20′ sloop gets an annual paint upgrade. When varnishing round-sectioned spars in either of these spaces, it is particularly challenging to get enough light to reflect at a favorable angle.

I think the natural light coming from a window gives a better reflection for painting than artificial lighting does. But of the artificial lights I’ve used, I have come to favor the LED type. LED lighting has an intensity of reflection that is lacking in incandescent or fluorescent technology, especially if the LED bulbs are of the “daylight” instead of “soft white” variety. It seemed worthwhile, therefore, to explore the possibility of making a lamp for painting that would use daylight LED technology. If this light were handheld, then it would be possible to position it easily so that the light would bounce off the surface at a favorable angle without having to contort my body to get that perfect low-angle reflection from a distant window.

Sponsored by: WoodenBoat’s Mastering Skills

A single household LED bulb proved unsatisfactory, because the area of reflected light was too small to assure even paint coverage. Also, this type of bulb is designed to diffuse light in all directions and therefore doesn’t reflect as intensely as I had hoped. I then bought a battery-powered LED flashlight of the type that has a cluster of small bulbs; I found that they were concentrated to give a spot of light, which worked better than a single bulb but still didn’t cover enough area for my needs.

Success has come with a shop-made lamp, shown in use in photo 1, that adapts LED strip lights intended to be mounted under kitchen cabinets so that they shine down on a countertop. The strips are 3/8″ wide, with an LED bulb every 11/4″. The strips can be cut to length and fastened to a surface with their peel-and-stick backing. Several strips can be wired together and then connected through an included 12-volt power supply that plugs into a 120-volt outlet.

I mounted the LED strips on a 3/8″-thick cedar board, to which I attached a handle and then a cowling made from a sanding belt ripped to a width of 21/2″ and tacked around the board’s perimeter. In use, I hold the lamp so that its light reflects off the surface being painted while the cowling prevents the lights from shining directly into my eyes.

This lamp has significantly improved my ability to turn out good paint and varnish work. I now have almost no holidays, and the few that do appear are easily found with a sweep of the light before the paint begins to set. Sags and “curtains” are also easy to catch and correct in time. The constantly adjustable angle of reflection required in finishing spars is far easier to achieve with this lamp, and poor ambient lighting is less of a problem, as shown in photo 2. I have even found the lamp useful outdoors on a sunny day, during which the intense backlighting while working on the shady side of the boat can impair vision.

To make the lamp, first cut out the back from a piece of cedar or other lightweight softwood, as shown in photo 3. The dimensions are 3/8″ thick, 5″ wide, and 8″ long. Round the corners to a radius of about 1/2″. The back can be coated with shellac or varnish if desired.

Make the handle 5/8″ thick, 11/2″ wide, and 7″ long, shaped below the back to fit the hand. Fasten the back to the handle with two No. 6 × 3/4″ screws. Also fasten the power supply above the handle on the back, as shown in photo 3.

The LED lighting strips are cut into five 8″ lengths, with the cuts made through the middle of the copper pads that show through the white strips every 4″. The positive and negative polarity of the strip is indicated in print adjacent to the copper pads on the strips themselves. Cut a notch at both ends of each strip, removing the negative (lower) half-pad at the right-hand end and the positive (upper) half-pad at the left, as visible in photo 4. Peel the backing from the adhesive strips and stick them to the back in five evenly spaced rows, as shown in the photo, leaving 3/8″ of wood above the top strip where a 1/4″ hole will be centered to lead the wires to the power supply. It is important to keep the writing on all strips right-side up, as the polarity of the top of each strip is positive while the bottom is negative.

Next, solder a piece of bare copper wire at each end of the LED strips, as shown in photo 5, connecting all the positive pads on the right side and all negative copper pads on the left. I used 14-gauge wire (1.84mm) taken from scrap left over from a household wiring project, although wire as small as 18-gauge (1.16mm) will carry the small current required.

Sponsored by: WoodenBoat’s Mastering Skills

Solder insulated wires to the upper ends of the bare wires, as shown in photo 5, and lead them through the 1/4″ hole at the top center of the back. Cut these wires to length, strip their ends, and fasten them to the appropriate positive and negative terminals of the power supply on the back of the lamp.

The cowl, visible in photo 1, is made from a coarse-grit sanding belt 30″ long. A used one will work fine. The perimeter of the lamp’s back is 26″, so cut the belt to a length of 27″ to allow a 1″ overlap. Then cut the belt lengthwise to make it 21/2″ wide. Attach the belt grit-side out; otherwise, it will not bend around the corners of the back. Tack it to the back with 3/8″ or 1/2″ tacks, and use contact cement to bond the overlapping ends.

Materials

LED lights and power supply. The strip lighting and 6-watt power supply used for the lamp shown in this article are made by Armacost Lighting, www.armacostlighting.com, and are available from Lee Valley Tools, www.leevalley.com, specify indoor natural white LED tape lights, with 30 LEDs per meter. The strips are sold by the foot; a 4′ piece is needed for this lamp.
Sanding belt. The sanding belt for the cowl can be readily found at hardware stores, but a used one would work fine. (Another dark, dense, flexible material could be substituted.)
Wire. The necessary lengths of bare and insulated electrical wire (16- or 18-gauge), are readily available at hardware stores. The red-and-black wire visible in the photos was left over from another project and came from an auto parts store.
Wood. The back and handle can be made from cedar or any scrap wood that can be shaped to 5″ × 8″. A thickness of 3/8″ works well.

Trailing the power cord is a minor inconvenience that could be eliminated by using a rechargeable 12-volt battery pack, but only at the disadvantage of its cost and ungainly weight. Another small inconvenience is that holding the lamp prevents holding a paint container. For me, these problems are a small price to pay for achieving a consistently better finish on my boats.

Contributing WoodenBoat editor Harry Bryan lives and works off the grid in Letete, New Brunswick. For more information, visit www.harrybryan.com.

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Haven 12 ½

Designed by Joel White, the Haven 12 ½ is a handsome daysailer based on the Herreshoff 12 ½ but modified for a centerboard.

Plans for the Haven 12 ½ are available from the WoodenBoat Store.

Ocean Pointer

The David Stimson–designed Ocean Pointer, a 19 1⁄2′ center-console outboard skiff, stands on the broad shoulders of a long Maine tradition. Alton Wallace began designing this boat’s ancestors in the 1940s, settling on the legendary West Pointer hull form in the mid-1950s. The West Pointer was meant as a stable fishing boat with good seakeeping abilities. He arrived at the hull shape the old-fashioned way, which is to say that he carved its shape in wood rather than drawing it on paper. Wallace built hundreds of these skiffs himself, and had a reputation for unusual generosity with the design: hundreds more—perhaps thousands—were built by fishermen and by other shops in both wood and fiberglass. Some of these were direct copies of Wallace’s original lines; others were derivative designs.

Although so many boats were built over several decades, the boat’s lines were not formally committed to paper until 1996, when the Rockport (Maine) Apprenticeshop measured one of Wallace’s boats, drew the lines, and built a copy. Bob Miller, writing for WoodenBoat No. 130, recalled the days in which he got to know Alton Wallace during that measuring project. “One might ask,” wrote Miller, “how someone with just a block of pine and a jackknife could design a boat that has been so widely copied and imitated. The answer is simple. Before Alton started whittling out the shape of what was to become the West Pointer some 50 years ago, he had spent a good part of the previous 30 years in and around boats that he and his father built and then used for trawling, dragging, shrimping, lobstering, and tuna fishing the often unpredictable waters at the mouth of the New Meadows River. Alton knew what made a boat work and what didn’t.”

Matthew P. Murphy

Owner-builder John Blatchford with his Ocean Pointer skiff near Bucksport, Maine. Using detailed instructions from designer David Stimson, Blatchford built the boat over the course of two years.

“It’s a flat-bottomed, round-bilged boat,” Paul Lazarus told me. Lazarus, who edited Professional BoatBuilder magazine for nearly two decades, owned a 16′ Alton Wallace skiff. The 16-footer was Wallace’s original design. He then built an 18-footer and, later, a 20-footer by simply spreading the molds apart and padding them out—all by eye. The larger boats eclipsed the 16-footer in utility, but the 20-footer was too big for Wallace’s shop—a converted schoolhouse. The 16′ edition of the West Pointer—a tiller-steered open boat— was powered by a 25-hp outboard. The 18-footer, with its greater length, side decks, a bulkhead, foredeck, and center console, was heavier and required twice that power. This boat—the 18-footer powered by a 50-hp motor—was the oft-copied sweet spot.

The hull form became famous for its good attributes, and especially for its great stability at rest. “That’s why it was such a good work platform,” Lazarus said. “They could drape a giant tuna [a 300-plus-lb fish] across the gunwales without rolling the skiff.” The boats were also low-sided for easy working and, with their flat bottoms, quick to plane. Pronounced sheer and flare forward obviated the need for a spray rail forward, and this shapely bow was balanced by proportionally pronounced tumblehome aft.

“If Wallace were to be faulted,” Lazarus said, “it would be because he didn’t prime the faying surfaces.” His boats were dry-strip-planked, which means that the planks were mechanically fastened without any compound or adhesive between them. “The only compound he used in the boat was where the keel met the stem—some black goo,” said Lazarus. His own 16-footer lacked floor timbers and had a shallow keel, and thus had a fairly limber bottom. “It was underbuilt,” he said. He is quick to point out, though, that the quickness of Wallace’s builds was in keeping with the design’s purpose: “He didn’t build these boats to be rebuilt; he built them to be used up. They were workboats.”

As workboats, dry-strip-planked West Pointers were meant to be used often, and were certainly not meant to spend long stretches out of the water, living on a trailer. The strip planking would dry and shrink in these conditions, creating numerous leaks that would seal only in the days following relaunching. And these boats were fastened with galvanized nails, which tended to rust out.

So, here we had a beautifully evolved hull form of serviceable but limited-life workboat construction. The West Pointer would make a fine form for a recreational boat, but this would require a construction upgrade.

Enter, David Stimson and the Ocean Pointer.

In the Ocean Pointer, Stimson channels Alton Wallace’s intent for the West Pointer, but he updates the construction to take advantage of epoxy. In his book, How to Build the Ocean Pointer (WoodenBoat Books, 2002), Stimson writes, “There is nothing new about the elements of Ocean Pointer’s design or construction. The general hull form has been around for at least fifty years. Plywood bulkhead frames, strip planking, sheathing fabrics, and epoxy have been in use for decades. The combination of these elements is what makes Ocean Pointer unique. Someone may prove me wrong, but as of this writing, I think that this is the only design that incorporates epoxy-glued strip planking on bulkhead frames in a pointer-style hull.”

Matthew P. Murphy

Ocean Pointer uses a classic center-cockpit layout, with ample storage under the foredeck, in the console, and under the helm seat

To get a feel for the Ocean Pointer, I went on an outing with John Blatchford, who built a fine example of this boat. Blatchford’s boat is built of strip-planked juniper formed around plywood bulkheads. The backbone is of mahogany; the stem assembly is laminated. That assembly includes an inner stem that does the structural work of holding the boat together forward; an outer stem, or stem cap, creates the illusion of a rabbet without the labor of cutting one. This is a common technique in strip-planked canoe and kayak construction; it makes good use of materials and is accessible to the inexperienced boatbuilder.

A plywood sole sheathed in Dynel caps a water-tight bilge, making the boat self-bailing and contributing a vast, foam-filled reservoir of buoyancy. The ample foredeck and small afterdeck are also of Dynel-sheathed plywood. In a departure from the instructions, Blatchford fiberglassed his boat both on the inside and outside. “I wanted a bulletproof boat,” he says. He also ran the sheer about an inch and a half higher forward than the design specifies, thinking it might knock down more spray. After some experience with the boat, he concedes that he wouldn’t advise either change. “It would have been a bulletproof boat regardless,” he says.

Working with the assistance of Jim Kingan of Penobscot, Maine–based Rosebud Boat Works, Blatchford built his boat over the course of two years. He has high praise for Stimson’s instructions, which he used before they were published as a book. “It’s a great book,” Blatchford says. “Great instructions.”

Blatchford powered his Ocean Pointer, OLD TIDES, with a 50-hp Yamaha four-stroke. He’s kept copious notes on the boat’s performance, and shared these highlights: At 5,300 rpm with only the operator on board, the boat will make 28 knots. Drop to 4,000 rpm, and the boat slows to 16 1⁄2 knots. With three people on board and the motor running at 4,100 rpm, the boat makes 15 knots.

OLD TIDES handles well at low speed, with little tendency to blow off sideways despite her flat bottom sections. She transitions gently onto plane and makes a nice, easy bank in hard turns. There’s none of the suspicion of tripping we’d feel in a chine hull pressed into a too-hard turn. Accelerating to full throttle, she gradually presses her bow further and further down, finally running level at 28 knots.

Blatchford showed me his boat in the sheltered waters near her home port of Bucksport, Maine, near the mouth of the Penobscot River. We didn’t have a chance to test the efficacy of the boat’s shapely forward sections in keeping the occupants dry, but that’s of little consequence to Blatchford: “If it’s a windy day,” he says, “I’m not going out on [Penobscot] Bay.” Lazarus, however, told me that the boat was well mannered in a chop and didn’t root in a following sea.

Blatchford uses his boat mostly as a river cruiser, exploring the marshy narrows of nearby Frankfort Flats, or making the scenic run to Bangor, about 15 miles to the north. It seems a perfect fit for him. I asked whether he’d considered other boats when selecting a design to build, and he said that he did not. The West Pointer’s reputation cinched the decision for him early. “I took two years to build the boat,” Blatchford says, “and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was a great joy. Great joy.”

Ocean Pointer’s hull shape derives its distinctive features from the skiffs built by Alton Wallace since the 1950s. The distinctive features are these: ample flare in the bow sections, pronounced tumblehome aft, and flat floor sections running along a dead-flat keel profile.

Plans for the Ocean Pointer are available from Stimson Marine. The instructional book, How to Build the Ocean Pointer, is available from The WoodenBoat Store.

The PT Skiff

The Port Townsend Skiff is a boat with a mission: Deliver stellar fuel economy in a good-looking, well-performing package. Russell Brown, the energy behind this boat, observes that our society has “gone to a totally absurd place” in powerboat design. “We came from having incredibly good-looking, sea-kindly motoryachts,” he says, and we’ve drifted into a place of having overweight, overpowered behemoths. The Port Townsend Skiff, in part, is a “relearning of what’s already been learned.”

The design was conceived in answer to a challenge sponsored by this magazine’s mother publication, WoodenBoat, and its sister, Professional BoatBuilder. In that challenge, we sought a boat of trailerable size and weight that would burn no more than two gallons of fuel per hour while maintaining a 10-knot cruising speed and carrying a family of four—or about 800 lbs. With the design parameters in mind, Russell Brown engaged the talented Seattle, Washington–based design firm of Bieker Boats to develop a boat that could be sold in kit form for amateur construction. And thus the Port Townsend Skiff—and the company that sells it, Port Townsend Watercraft—was born.

Matthew P. Murphy

The fuel-efficient PT Skiff handles well under a range of conditions and speeds, can carry a load, and moves well with just a 20-hp outboard.

In describing the concept for the new design, Brown recalls an encounter he had with a native Guatemalan dugout canoe many years ago. That boat was 40′ long, piled high with gravel, and moving effortlessly while powered by a 6-hp outboard motor. The boat’s efficiency was a product of its narrow beam. To move such a load in the U.S., says Brown, “you’d add horsepower—the exact opposite of a canoe.”

The Port Townsend Skiff has a narrow waterline, and to this she owes her efficiency and good ride. The boat is initially tender, meaning that she rolls easily to one side when a passenger steps aboard. “What you get for that tenderness,” says Brown, “is efficiency and ability to travel in rough water.” A water-ballast tank in the boat’s bilge firms things up a bit when the boat is at rest, and it provides momentum through a chop when the boat is lightly loaded. It holds 32 gallons of water, and is self-bailing when the boat is moving: simply open a valve, and the tank runs dry. This boat is designed to move—a commuter, at heart.

Matthew P. Murphy

Russell Brown (at helm) conceived the parameters for the PT Skiff design, and engaged the Seattle-based design firm Bieker Boats to develop the plans and kit. The windshield’s height is adjustable by means of a light line and jam cleat.

While the PT Skiff’s top-end speed is about 25 knots, speed was not the objective. “You could get better top-end speed in a purely planing boat,” Brown says. But for that, you would sacrifice efficiency and handling in the low and mid-speed ranges, and you’d give up some comfort. The Port Townsend Skiff is one comfortable boat in a chop. “The skinny hull is a pain getting in and out of,” says Brown, “but drive over a lumpy sea, and it really pays off.”

Brown and his wife, Ashlyn, trucked the prototype PT Skiff across country last summer to display it at The WoodenBoat Show. After that, they visited WoodenBoat’s Brooklin, Maine, headquarters, where we were able to test the boat—and compare and contrast it with the Design Challenge winner, Marissa (see page 64). It is, indeed, initially tender, but not alarmingly so. It steers nimbly at low speed and in tight quarters and accelerates smoothly, without the planing bump or ill low-speed manners of a pure planing boat. At cruising speed, it takes a 2′ chop with aplomb, and in tight turns it develops a notable bank. The Port Townsend Skiff’s rated horsepower is 25, and that power will yield the aforementioned 25 knots. The boat we tested was equipped with a 20-hp motor—Brown’s preference— and it topped out at 21 1⁄2 knots.

Matthew P. Murphy

A sophisticated hull form and light weight are the keys to the PT Skiff’s success. Light weight is achieved through careful choice of materials and good engineering.

It’s not the simplest boat to build,” says Russell Brown of the Port Townsend Skiff’s construction. There is, however, a detailed building
manual that walks through each step of the process. The boat is available in only kit form, and that kit includes hull panels that are joined to full-length sheets by means of a CNC-cut puzzle joint—which is just what it sounds like, and allows for flawless alignment. These panels and other parts are pre-finished before installation.

The hull begins to take shape with the wiring- together of the bottom panels, and to these are joined the next planks. This yields the basic shape of the bottom, which is nestled into a plywood cradle—a part of the kit. There are 10 frames and the transom, and these reinforce the wired-together bottom. The frames have tabs on their edges, and these are indexed to corresponding slots in the skin panels—again making for flawless alignment. Wires are placed at each of these notches to hold things together until gluing. The bottom receives longitudinal members that form an egg-crate structure in concert with the transverse frames, to take the considerable pounding expected on the flatter aft part of the boat. Topside panels are wired to the bottom planks, and this seam is later reinforced by short, tapered frames. In an effort to keep things lightweight, the structure is beefed up where required, and lightened where possible: The bottom panels are 9mm; topsides are 6mm. With everything wired together, the resulting seams are carefully ’glassed.

PT Watercraft

PT Watercraft estimates that a PT Skiff can be completed, with motor, for $10,000 to $12,000.

I’ve tried here to condense a detailed process into two paragraphs, to give you a sense of how this boat goes together. I’ll end this condensation by simply say- ing that, excluding appendices, the building manual is 258 pages long and includes 630 images. Any attempt by me to explain the nuances of the Port Townsend Skiff’s construction will simply not equal this effort. What you should know, however, is this: The Port Townsend Skiff uses a basic boatbuilding technique—stitch-and-glue— but it uses it in a very refined manner. Careful alignment and gluing will yield a boat vastly more refined than an average stitch-and-glue boat. Craftsmanship is paramount in the construction of a good PT Skiff, but a clever amateur builder should not be daunted by this, because your guide through the process, Russell Brown, is a master of wood-composite construction.

In fact, Russell Brown has been called the epoxy cop. “He’s a clinician with epoxy,” says one friend of Brown’s reputation for clean and precise work with glue. “There’s a lot of epoxy technology in the Port Townsend Skiff,” says Brown—for example, techniques for secondary bonding, whereby bulkheads and other assemblies are fitted and glued to pre-finished hull sides. “There’s a lot more to it than meets the amateur eye. There’s gluing, ’glassing, filleting, and coating, and each requires careful attention if you’re going to get the most out of it.” Brown’s attention to detail is exemplified in the contents of his kit: There are eight different sizes of machined fillet sticks included in the box. “Working cleanly with epoxy makes a high difference in weight,” Brown says. But the results are worthwhile: Brown believes that the boat cannot be built lighter out of another material while still maintaining the same longevity, ease of construction, and low cost.

Matthew P. Murphy

The PT Skiff takes some if its design inspiration from the world of performance sailing craft.

So here we have a refined boat and a detailed guide. Although he’d gone to great lengths to make this boat accessible to the dedicated amateur, Russell Brown was initially a bit apprehensive that the details would overwhelm an amateur—that the construction would take an unreasonable amount of time. Testimonial to the contrary arrived at the time of this writing, in early August 2010. Port Townsend Watercraft e-mailed an announcement saying they’d had a rendezvous with their first kit builder and his finished boat. That builder, Jan Brandt, had previously built smaller boats and kayaks. He spent five part-time months, balancing a full-time job and family obligations, building his Port Townsend Skiff.

Matthew P. Murphy

The boat’s construction employs proven kit-boat methods, such as the puzzle joint, seen here, that joins the console to the bottom framework.

Curious about the builder’s perspective, I clicked through to PT Watercraft’s online forum, where Brandt had posted the following:

“Hey, I enjoyed it, and now I enjoy being on the water. PIKA has exceeded our expectation in her utility as a runabout and camping boat for the Puget Sound area. We have powered her with a new 25hp E-Tec, which proved plenty powerful. On a recent trip to Deception Pass, fully loaded with 3 adults, 1 child, 8 gal of fuel, and food/gear for the day we averaged 1.25–1.5 gal/h running between 15–18 kn. I am still learning when it’s best to use the water ballast since so far we have been running loaded for every outing.

“One thing is certain, she turns heads wherever she is. Paul and Eric drew a beautiful and functional hull, and Russell provided the insights and experience to build her strong and light. Thanks guys. We are having a blast.”

PT Watercraft offers a range of kit- boat options for the PT Skiff. The base kit is currently (September ’10) priced at $3,950; the full kit costs $5,680.

For more information about the PT Skiff, visit PT Watercraft.

Shellback Dinghy

According to WoodenBoat’s founder, Jon Wilson, “The Shellback provides an education in the fine points of sailing, rowing, and sculling for sailors of all ages, her standing lug rig easily dropped altogether if the winds come on too strong. She is not easily adaptable to outboard power, primarily because the weight of the motor throws her fine hull out of trim, but she rows well enough to provide plenty of efficiency and speed, even with a load.”

Plans for Joel White’s Shellback Dinghy are available from The WoodenBoat Store.

The Beachcomber-Alpha Dory

Small-boat designer and builder Daniel Noyes launched his Beachcomber-Alpha dory—with some alterations—in 2008 as a kind of tribute to maritime historian John Gardner. Living as he does in Newbury, Massachusetts, he was well aware of the type, which originated in the late 1800s in nearby Marblehead. These towns are near Gloucester, north of Boston, where dories thrived in the schooner fisheries and were soon enough adapted as racing sailboats when the sport took hold in the late 1800s.

In the 1970s, Gardner documented the Beachcomber-Alpha dories not once but twice, first in his Building Classic Small Craft (International Marine, Camden Maine, 1977) and again in The Dory Book (International Marine, 1978). Gardner was a vocal advocate of traditional designs for small craft and also of traditional and practical construction. Dan’s dory touched water for the first time at WoodenBoat’s waterfront in Brooklin, Maine, hours before the Small Reach Regatta (SRR) in 2008. He brought it back again in 2009.

Lauren Noyes

Originally intended for spirited racing, the Beachcomber-Alpha dory can be an exciting handful to manage. With three crew, one handles the jibsheet, another the mainsheet, and the third steers by means of a continuous loop of line made off to a yoke over the rudderhead.

For boats like these dories, what has changed since Gardner’s day? Construction, primarily. Like many boatbuilders these days seeking materials that are readily available and also light in weight for their lapstrake hulls, Dan used marine plywood—1⁄4″ on the sides and 3⁄8″ on the bottom. But Dan elected to clench-nail the laps in the traditional way in addition to gluing them. A traditional builder who had worked at the Pert Lowell Company earlier, he was setting out on his first glued-lapstrake project, so “it felt a little bit safer with clench nails as well.” He sealed the inside with epoxy and paint and sheathed the outside in 6-oz fiberglass cloth set in epoxy.

Dan followed Gardner’s hull shape and construction plan closely but not exactly. After looking at one of the original boats in the Marblehead Historical Society collections, he decided to flatten the sheer by reducing its height by 1⁄2″ at each end and adding about 3⁄4″ amidships. Gardner himself wrote that he had actually added spring to the sheer in his rendition—and many might like it better that way, or at least to not stray from the plans—but Dan preferred to pay a little homage to the original boat he had seen. He used four sawn frames as Gardner called for.

“We kept the bottom rocker, although the bottom was flat in the original boat,” Dan said. “I really love the shape of the stern there—the ‘mackerel tail.’” In the old “cod’s head and mackerel tail” way of shaping a hull, the widest part of the boat is a little forward of amidships, with a long taper aft to the transom. “The widest point is up by the centerboard case, almost,” Dan says. “It’s definitely an old way of thinking about how to get a boat to go fast. I have a feeling it shapes the boat aft, reducing the suction around the transom area.”

Dan took considerable liberties with the sail plan, adding 3′ to the sail’s luff and 3′ to the foot to substantially increase the area. He wanted the boat to move well in the comparatively light airs of his home waters around Newbury. Some of his decisions would have probably tickled John Gardner, not to mention the old Marbleheaders. For his clench nails, for example, he used commonly available aluminum siding nails instead of harder-to-find and more expensive copper ones. His mainsail is cut from a cast-off old jib—a touch I have to believe that Gardner would have thought well of, and one that fits right in with the go-to-it tradition of the dory racers.

The Beachcomber-Alpha dories were always meant for racing, so it should come as no surprise that they are fast, by any measure. The name of the design itself comes from the two rival sail racing clubs, Beachcomber in Marblehead and Alpha in nearby Salem, that once used them for spirited competition. Like other dories of the era (among them the similar Swampscott, Nahant, and Chamberlain gunning dories), Beachcomber- Alphas were adapted and tweaked by experienced sailors who were always looking for ways to take the dory to new heights. Competition was their driving force, and sometimes they stretched the definition of what a dory is.

Lauren Noyes

These dories make excellent daysailers that not only can be launched from a trailer, but with the rudder stowed inside, can be beached and easily refloated.

With my own boat to manage and a lot of obligations at the SRR, I could join Dan and Joel Peck, his friend, co-builder, and co-sailor, only briefly in light air one midday. My first impression was that at 21′ LOA and 5′ beam, this is a big dory, and I found her to be quite stable. But in the bit of a zephyr we found that day, the boat still moved with remarkable ease. And, in watching her sail during the SRR weekend as we experienced breezes touching 20 knots, she seemed very stable in the blow, as well, with skipper and crew providing intelligent ballast on the weather rail. Dan and Joel sailed her off the beach after lunch one gusty day, and she shot out of there at a truly amazing pace. The sail doesn’t have reefpoints, relying instead on the change in sail shape when easing the mainsheet to reduce power. “It’s a bit overcanvased,” Dan admits, but he sails most often on Plum Island Sound in winds of “maybe 8 to 10 knots, where it would be 15 to 20 plus in Marblehead,” where the earlier racers used a smaller sail. If he were to build a boat for a client, he’d use something more like the original. “In the Gardner plans, the sail has a 15′ hoist and a 15′ boom. I used to sail a Sunfish that was 14′ × 14′, so I thought, what, this is a 21′ boat? But I can see where it [the Gardner sail plan] would be perfect in Marblehead. And then, I’ve been sailing dories since my Dad gave me a Chamberlain dory skiff when I was 14, so I have an idea about keeping right-side up.”

Steering a sailing dory—or any fine-ended double-ender—presents some challenges. A tiller for such a boat would be a ridiculously long thing, and it very likely would force one crewman to take his weight to leeward to steer—not a place where you want to have to go when it’s blowing 20 knots. I suppose that a page could be borrowed from racing dinghies by using a tiller with an athwartships extension, which would allow steering while keeping your weight on the weather rail, but even then such a long tiller would sweep a large and sometimes inconvenient arc. One time-honored solution on boats of this form is a push-pull tiller working fore-and-aft through a single-arm yoke fitted to the rudderhead. This can be very effective, though it takes a little getting used to. The longstanding solution in the Beachcomber-Alpha dories, however, has been to use a continuous loop of line made off to both ends of a two-armed steering yoke at the rudderhead. This works even better, because the crew can distribute their weight not only athwartships but also fore and aft and still be in reach of the steering. Unlike the push-pull system, there’s no long tiller to contend with during tacks or to flop overboard when launching or beaching. This loop system has been used in a lot of boats to very good effect—the lately very popular N.G. Herreshoff design Coquina uses the same idea—and it is truly amazing how easy it is to get used to it. Dan runs his steering loop only as far forward as the ’mid-ship thwart, which puts the line within easy reach, just as in Gardner’s drawings.

Even in the original boats, the mast had to be stayed, using one shroud per side and a forestay upon which the jib was hanked, so Dan followed suit for his larger sail area. The mainsheet is set up to distribute the load along the boom, which can therefore be rather light for its length. The rigging is more complicated than the stark simplicity found in many sailing dories, yet it takes only 10 or 15 minutes to get the boat set up and ready to sail after launching.

I didn’t have time to join in for a row, but Dan tells of how easy it is to get the boat moving with her two pairs of 9′ oars and how well she keeps up her pace. In a 5.5- mile rowing race on the Essex River last year, she came in only 20 minutes behind the first-place finisher—but Dan notes that his was the only boat in the class set up for sailing. All the others were designed to win rowing races, and the winner was a high-tech, fabric-covered hull pulled by a couple of athletic types. Not a bad showing for a design over a century old.

Lauren Noyes

Competitive sailing was in the genes from the beginning for the Beachcomber-Alpha dories, but builder Dan Noyes has also found that his boat can hold its own in rowing races against more modern competitors.

At the time that Gardner documented and celebrated dories and other historical small craft for the books he published in the 1970s, no one could have predicted how the small-boat resurgence he so longed for would play out in the coming decades. With mooring and dock space at a premium and seem- ing to cater to exceptionally large boats that are more often the rule than the exception these days, there seems to be a small-is-beautiful counterpoint going on. Comparatively small and light boats that can easily be kept at home and launched from a trailer are finding eager audiences of camp-cruisers, gunkholers, explorers, daysailers—and boatbuilders working predominantly in wood.

None of which is to say that the kinds of traditional boats Gardner held up to the world as worthy of attention and in need of respect have been superseded in any way. Far from it. In fact, what made traditional boats great in the first place still makes them worthy today. Plus, nine times out of ten, boats designed these days with the small-boat sailor in mind derive from one kind or another of traditional craft: Scandinavian faerings and Greenland kayaks above all, but sharpies, dories, Whitehalls, you name it. Time and use seem to prove the merit of adapting these traditional types anew again and again, rather than confining them to the history books.

“Last year,” meaning 2008, “they didn’t run the John Gardner workshop down at Mystic,” Dan said, meaning the John Gardner Small Craft Workshop at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, a weekend gathering of traditional craft that Gardner, then a Mystic employee, started in the early 1970s. The event was canceled in 2008 but returned in 2009, albeit at a reduced scale. “So I thought it would be cool if I could build a John Gardner—one of his designs. I thought about a Merrimack wherry.” But that was only 12′ long, and he wanted something for camp-cruising. Gardner produced books full of plans showing every detail you needed to build the boats, a tactic he hoped would lead to a liberal proliferation of traditional types. “So I looked at the Beachcomber- Alpha, looked at the budget, and went for it. We had the SRR as a deadline, and banged it out in about a month and a half.” I never met John Gardner, but I can’t imagine a better kind of tribute.

John Gardner drew his lines for the Beachcomber-Alpha dory in the early 1970s. He made the sheer a bit flatter than usual for the type, which was used extensively for racing in Marblehead and Salem, Massachusetts.

John Gardner’s plans for the Beachcomber-Alpha dory suitable for construction, with extensive descriptions and including the table of offsets, are found in Building Classic Small Craft (International Marine, 1977), which is available from The WoodenBoat Store.

DN 60 Iceboat

America’s Great Depression was in full swing in the mid-1930s when The Detroit News held a design competition for a simple, inexpensive racing iceboat that could be built in a garage or basement workshop, and be easily transported on top of a car. The result was a 12′ craft that appealed to Detroiters looking for an affordable diversion from their economic woes. Initially called the Bluestreak 60, the sleek boat was first seen skimming across nearby Lake St. Clair during the winter of 1936–37. The name was later changed to DN 60 (for Detroit News and the boat’s sail area).

Iceboating, or ice yachting, began more than 400 years ago in Scandinavia and other northern European countries. Wooden boxes rigged with sails and mounted on skates carried goods and passengers along the frozen canals of Holland through the mid-1700s. As early as the American Revolution, iceboats were sailed on the Hudson River and, in the late 1800s, lumbermen in Michigan logging camps sailed the scores of local lakes for recreation.

Gretchen Dorian

Simple to build, exhilarating to operate, the DN 60 is an excellent “hard-water” boat. Developed in the Detroit area, it offers plenty of excitement to thrill-seekers in northern climes.

By the 1930s, iceboating had become a sport for the wealthy, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Detroit auto magnates, who sailed large iceboats that were out of reach financially for most folks. The arrival of the affordable DN put a new face on iceboating.

Over 70 years after it was introduced, the swift and diminutive DN 60 remains the world’s most popular iceboat class, sailing under the auspices of the International DN Ice Yacht Racing Association, with more than 2,000 members split about evenly between North America and Europe. The present DN 60 retains the basic design of the original model, though sails and gear continue to be refined. The 12′, open-cockpit hull, which is a snug fit for its skipper (to the point of his virtually wearing it), rides on three runners: one under the bow, which steers the boat, and two under either end of an 8′-long plank fitted across the opposite end to provide stability. DNs, fully fitted out, typically weigh 100–150 lbs.

From its earliest beginnings in the sawdust-strewn Detroit News hobby shop, the focus of DN builders and owners has been to make the boat faster and more competitive on “hard-water.” The DN slides along on its honed 1⁄4″-wide steel runners—much like ice skate blades—at up to five times the speed of the wind, their speeds exceeding 60 mph. Catching a breeze, the skipper hauls in the mainsheet to trim the sail, and the light-weight boat begins to accelerate. As the windward blade lightens, the runner plank lifts gently off the ice, forcing the skipper to hike out (shift his weight) to balance the craft. Only the wind and the clanging of runners on the ice break the silence.

Sailing 130 degrees off the true wind, the DN hits its top speed. “It’s an incredible happening,” says Meade Gougeon, who, along with his brother Jan, has been sailing and racing DNs since the early ’60s. “As the [apparent wind speed] goes up over 50 mph, you have trouble staying connected with the ice.” DNs also perform remarkably well in light air, unlike the big iceboats.

Gretchen Dorian

Meade Gougeon skates along in his own DN 60 at interstate highway speed. Meade and his brother Jan have made significant contributions to the sport, their bonding system making the boats stronger, more resilient, and more accessible to the home builder.

For 30 years following the launch of the first fleet on Lake St. Clair, the DN—with the exception of minor modifications—was virtually the same wooden boat, which was susceptible to damage from moisture and extreme cold. By the late 1960s, the Gougeon Brothers, working in their Bay City, Michigan, shop on the Saginaw River, produced a stronger and lighter DN by using a new epoxy bonding and sealing system (known today as the WEST System), which they had developed. This eliminated the problems associated with bare wood being exposed to the elements. It was a significant breakthrough, offering a new-generation iceboat.

The DN proved to be an excellent test subject, because of the high stress loads to which its components were exposed. The vast expanse of ice on Saginaw Bay offered ideal laboratory conditions. Five years and 200 DNs later, the Gougeons sold the building segment of their business to concentrate on further development and production of their WEST System, but they had left their mark on the boat and sport.

Gretchen Dorian

As apparent wind speed tops 50 mph, it can get difficult to remain connected to the ice.The tapered fuselage, almost wing-like in profile, helps to retain her footing.

On any given winter weekend in the United States, Canada, and Europe, hundreds of hard-water sailors flock to the best ice on which to race or simply take another electrifying ride. On Wednesdays during winter months, designated Internet sites list ice conditions for the coming weekend and forecast wind velocities. Along with other regattas, the North American Racing Championship race is held each winter where ice conditions are conducive to competitive racing. It’s not unusual for DN sailors to travel 200–500 miles to find smooth ice.

As many as 50 percent of the sailors you’ll find competing in any of these regattas have built their own boats. Meade Gougeon calls the DN “a tinkerer’s dream,” because it can be built in a home workshop, with minimal space and without the need for expensive, heavy-duty tools. Best of all, materials are relatively inexpensive, which appeals to would-be 21st century iceboaters, just as it did to Detroiters during the Depression years.

The most challenging aspect of building a DN is the hull (also called the fuselage), which may weigh between 42 and 50 lbs. First-time builders often purchase an assembled but unfinished hull, without hardware, from a supplier. Others choose to work from scratch, following readily available plans. Either way, the hull is constructed from 1⁄8″ marine-grade plywood (Sitka spruce and Douglas-fir are favored) on a jig, using low-tech traditional boatbuilding methods in combination with the modern high-tech processes pioneered by the Gougeons.

The components—side panels, stem, bulkheads, floor, seat, and stringers—are bonded together and then sealed in epoxy, creating an extremely strong, lightweight structure. The runner plank—8′ long, 6 1⁄2″ to 7 1⁄2″ wide, and 1″ to 15⁄8″ thick—is the only remaining solid wooden component, often made from white birch, Douglas-fir, or ash, and weighs 15 to 20 lbs. These wooden components can be finished bright or painted.

Gretchen Dorian

The cockpit, with its humble tiller, is as simple and as inviting as the little red wagon of childhood days—only this little cart goes a whole lot faster.

DN masts (which can be no longer than 16′ or less than 15′ 6″) and booms (which must be no more than 9′ long) are made of aluminum, wood, carbon fiber, or fiberglass. Masts without stays, but complete with hardware and a halyard, can weigh no less than 15 lbs. That heavily loaded spar is the most likely component to require replacing over time. Booms can be hollow and have no weight restriction.

The remaining pieces, like runners and hardware, are generally purchased and attached to the hull according to specific instructions that ensure the greatest sailing efficiency. Runners weigh 7 to 15 lbs each. Hardware is bonded to the fuselage with epoxy. Sails are usually purchased from sailmakers.

Conveying a DN to a regatta is usually a simple matter of cartopping the fuselage and long components, although Meade Gougeon carries up to three DNs inside his van. Once at the site, it takes approximately 15 minutes to set up and rig a DN thanks to push-pull pins. After that, the joy of sailing across a mirror-smooth hard-water lake awaits the skipper. “It grows on you,” says Meade. “It’s sailing in its most basic form.”

High speeds and sometimes instant, violent jibes put extreme loads on the mast and rigging. Not surprisingly, mast replacement is common among racers.

Plans for the DN 60, as well as sources for unfinished hulls and parts, are available from several suppliers listed on the IDNIYRA website.

Ten Things That Can Hurt Your Wooden Boat

In my years of teaching boatbuilding and repairing wooden boats, I’ve noticed many mistakes owners make in the upkeep of their boats—common practices, done with good intent, that can often do more harm than good. I’ve distilled these into a list of the ten most common ones I’ve observed. Being aware of these things should help to eliminate some frustration and expense. My list loosely follows the common order of seasonal work, from springtime commissioning to autumn haulout.

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Sponsored by: Pettit Paint

1. Sanding and painting when the hull is dry

At some point, our boats spend time out of water. Whether hauling out for the winter, or for just a few weeks of maintenance, it is important to keep an eye on your hull’s moisture content. Is the paint cracking at the seams? Can you see through the seams? If so, it’s important to get some moisture into your boat so she will swell up before you paint, and even before you sand. Why do this before sanding? Because if the seams are open, dirt and sanding dust can work into them, and even good vacuuming doesn’t always clear them out. Painting then traps this debris in the seams. As the planks then swell after launching, their edges will encounter that accumulated crud. Chances are that a bit of stray sanding dust won’t hurt the seams after one year, but over a span of years its accumulation will restrict plank swelling and possibly cause leaks.

Before painting, a bit of “pre-swelling” by means of wet towels, a sprinkler, or some other method should close the seams. Resist the temptation to put more than a few inches of water in your bilge: boats are engineered to keep water out, and not to hold it in.

There’s another common malady caused by inadequate swelling, and I often end up repairing the resulting damage. Many boats have their planking screwed directly to the transom edges. When the transom’s thickness shrinks with drying, the plank ends can stand proud of the transom. It’s tempting to want to sand these projections off. But after several years of sanding plank ends flush with a dried-out transom face, critical planking material is eliminated, and splits develop at the fastening holes. Rot may soon follow. The well-intended sanding has eliminated the “relish”—the all-important material between the plank-end fastenings and the ends of the planks. Leave those projecting plank ends alone. After the transom swells back up, everything will align.

2. Additional caulking when the boat is dry

“I could see right through the seam, so I added some cotton!” That’s a common refrain I hear when a leaky boat comes into the shop. Caulking requires care. If you can see light through your seams, my first advice would be to wait. Even with a severely dried-out boat, you can’t assume it is going to be a leaker until it is back in the water and swelled tight.

There are many ways to get the moisture back into a dried-out hull, but if you are pressed for time and aren’t able to wet your boat before you launch, you can drive some really squishy stuff into the seams so that you can promptly get the boat back in the water. Slick Seam, a soft, waxy product made by Davis Industries, is the standard for this treatment. It is effective, but rather messy when it squeezes out. It also has a reputation for clogging sandpaper. For these reasons, it’s typically used below the waterline as a spot-treatment on problem seams.

Dried-out topsides that have been given a fresh treatment of seam compound will likely end up with a bunch of seams emphasized by proud beads of squeeze-out after a boat is launched the planks have swelled up. These beads might look bad, but their presence indicates a healthy boat because the seams have closed up naturally upon swelling. If you’re after a mirror-like paint job, you’ll have to scrape and sand that compound flush when the boat comes out of the water at the end of the season—and then maintain the hull’s moisture content so the seams don’t open again.

3. Overcaulking

This is an extension of the previous item. I have pulled enough caulking out of boats—layers and layers of strata, caulking on top of caulking—that I start to feel like a geologist. Before driving in new caulking, you must first take out the old stuff.

If your boat is leaking, the caulking might be bad; it is, after all, a natural fiber, and it can rot. Reef out the old caulking (see sidebar below) and replace it; adding more on top of what’s there is only going to damage the seams.

Driving in excess caulking by means of a caulking iron essentially forces a wedge into your boat’s seams. It can increase the shear, or lateral load, on your plank fastenings as well as increase the width of the caulking seam. As the planks swell with moisture after the boat is relaunched, the pressure that builds up between the plank edges can actually put tension in the frames and tear them apart, like a rope snapping in two. The effect is especially bad with dense mahogany planking; cedar is more resilient and forgiving. Even if frames don’t break, you will likely have compressed the planks beyond their ability to return to their original widths because of a phenomenon called “compressive set”: if a swelling piece of wood is restricted to a specific dimension, it will never swell beyond that dimension in the future.

A Shop-made Reefing Hook

The tool of choice for cleaning out old seams is a reefing hook made from the tang of an old file or a flat-head screwdriver. Using a propane torch, heat the tang or the screwdriver tip to red-hot. Then, bend the handle (or tip) a little past 90 degrees and quench the hot metal in water. File the business end of the tool to the sectional shape of the seam. Judiciously placed in the seam and dragged along, such a tool is very effective at removing old cotton and compound. —Eds.

4. Wrong fastening type or size

Imagine this: You remove a piece of varnished wood every year for 20 years so its finish will remain perfect. The screw holes become fatigued. Or imagine a badly corroded screw holding a plank to a frame; its threads have weakened and lost their grip, and the wood surrounding the screw hole has deteriorated to the point that it will no longer hold a fastening of this size. In either case, the screws spin uselessly in their holes, and the most convenient remedy is to replace them with larger or longer ones. This tactic only works with proper preparation. If you simply jam a larger screw into an existing hole, the new screw will likely be too big for the original hole, and the countersink not deep or wide enough; the screw may also be too long. The result can be disastrous, with one or more pieces split. If you’re increasing the screw size, you must drill a proper pilot hole for the new screw, and this includes the pilot hole for the screw’s threaded portion, a clearance hole for the unthreaded shank, and a properly sized countersink for the screw head. If there is inadequate material for a larger fastening, it’s better to plug the old pilot hole with a whittled, epoxied-in plug and then redrill it for a screw matching the original one’s size.

5. Inadequate varnish

If you don’t have the time to prepare for and apply enough coats of varnish, you might think about another strategy. In my experience, a boat is not going to take the all-day, every-day abuse of the summer sun without a minimum of six coats—and afterwards at least one, but preferably two, maintenance coats per year. Anything less than that invites deterioration, which will require scraping back peeled or yellowing varnish to fresh wood and rebuilding the finish in that area. You might also end up sanding back graying wood to a fresh surface, and in the process lose some critical wood thickness. Varnish requires commitment.

If your time and budget don’t allow you to maintain brightwork, consider paint or oil instead. Boiled linseed (see WB No. 254) is the oil of choice for most boat finishes; unlike raw linseed oil, it dries fast and forms a film. While oil is the easiest finish to apply, it does not give the same protection as a coat of paint, and it tends to blacken as it ages. It also is not as effective a moisture barrier as paint or varnish. However, when kept up, it makes a perfectly fine and time-proven finish, and it can keep rot at bay.

6. Inadequate preparation for paint

If you are going to paint, prepare your surfaces properly. Sand off all the gloss of the previous coat. For bare wood, rough up the surface adequately; too fine a sanding can burnish the wood, making it more challenging for paint to stick. Also, if you can, paint the whole piece. I often see thwarts with only their tops and edges painted, and the bottoms left bare. If moisture can get into one side easier than the other, it can ruin the finish and possibly warp the board. If at all possible, paint even what you aren’t going to see; it will make the wood more stable and protect against rot-causing moisture intrusion.

7. Inadequate pre-launch cleaning

Before you launch for the season, make sure your boat is clean. Get as much crud off as you can while the bilges are dry and you have access to a vacuum cleaner. Sanding dust accumulates everywhere. You likely gave the boat a good cleansing before painting, but that’s never good enough. Sanding dust finds homes in plank seams and at the junction of your keel and floor timbers; vacuum these areas using a crevice tool and a brush attachment. Water will pass more freely through limber holes if there’s not a lot of debris sloshing around in the bilge. A clean bilge will also help keep the pump from clogging.

After the boat is launched, keep her clean. If I had my way, we would cruise barefoot and eat out of feedbags. There’d be no grit from shoe soles or bits of food to fall or get blown everywhere. But that shoeless vision isn’t always practical, so be vigilant with a broom and dustpan. And really watch out for stray potato chips: not only will they do an amazing job of plugging up your cockpit drains and scuppers, but the stains from the grease will have your decks advertising what you had for lunch.

8. Freshwater washdown

A clean boat is super important. When dirt accumulates in a crevice, it holds moisture, and the next thing you know you have rot. You need to wash that dirt off—but not with fresh water. A regular freshwater wash-down with a dock hose is fine for fiberglass boats, but not wooden ones. The fungus that causes wood rot requires warmth, wood, and water—fresh water, to be exact. Frequent freshwater wash-downs, especially in concealed, poorly ventilated areas, can thus exacerbate rot.

Salt water is the answer. Old-timers sluiced their decks with salt water regularly, to keep planks swelled and rot at bay, and you should, too—especially after a rainfall. Salty water prevents rot fungus from growing and it also keeps deck planking nice and tight. Even your dinghy, if it’s traditionally planked, deserves a good dousing of salt water after you’ve bailed the rainwater out of it. Afterward, of course, bail out the salt water.

Having a squeegee or chamois to wipe standing water from seats and other horizontal surfaces prevents your own bottom from getting wet. It also prevents wear and tear from the salt left on that finish you worked so hard to apply.

In addition to salting, you might consider a canvas cockpit cover to prevent large amounts of rainwater from finding its way into the boat. A cover can virtually eliminate pumping on a boat that is otherwise tight. It also eliminates bird guano, which fouls finishes and bilge pumps. Just make sure the cover isn’t tacked down too snug; too tight a seal can restrict air movement and encourage mildew.

9. Improper support on the trailer

When the season is over and it’s time to haul your boat, you must be sure it will be properly supported on the trailer; errors in this department can lead to major work.

First, make sure the weight of the boat is distributed evenly along the length of the keel. If your trailer has bunks or stands, think of them as kickstands only. They are there to prevent the boat from falling over, but they should not hold the entire weight of the boat. You should be able to loosen one whole side and careen the boat over. Rollers are generally bad for planked wooden hulls: they tend to point-load the hull, rather than distribute the weight evenly. If the centerline structure is not supported, bunks or stands can press themselves into the sides and bottom of the boat. Most hulls aren’t built for these pressures, and they will deflect in those areas. The hull was built to have uniform pressure all over, not in a few localized places.

The problems caused by improper trailer arrangements can be magnified when coupled with ratchet straps. These straps are convenient and easy, but also powerful enough to split a plank. Use them with caution. I prefer using rope and a trucker’s hitch; this provides adequate pressure for keeping the boat from moving during transit. With the weight centered on the trailer, and with the trailer winch holding your boat forward, your strap should be tightened only enough to keep the boat and trailer together, to prevent bumps in the road from doing any harm. If your boat has a drain plug and is stored outdoors on a trailer, pitch the hull so the plug is at the low point and any water will run out if your cover leaks.

10. Improper storage

Before the boat is put away for the winter, it should be thoroughly hosed off with fresh water and all surfaces allowed to dry. Salt draws moisture which, due to decreased airflow and sunlight, invariably grows mildew during storage. Also, I have seen a fair bit of animal damage to wooden boats by porcupines and squirrels attracted to a salt lick. With this cleanup accomplished, keep in mind these four aspects of storage that promote a wooden boat’s good health: support, shelter, ventilation, and humidity. Ignoring any of these items can lead to damage.

Support

As with trailering, a boat that’s improperly supported on land is likely to go out of shape. If it has long overhangs, gravity will attack those first. Jackstands, shores, or some other sort of prop underneath the bow and stern will minimize their tendency to droop. If weight is concentrated on the stands rather than along the keel, the hull is likely to deflect in those areas, damaging planking and frames. As with trailering, the first step to properly storing your boat is to concentrate its weight along the centerline, typically on blocking.

When a boat does start to go out of shape, its seams can open up. When they do, an unsuspecting owner might be tempted to drive caulking into those seams when light shines through them. Caulking helps a boat hold its shape, and so this added caulking only reinforces the damage caused by poor support.

Shelter

The goal of sheltering your boat is to keep rainwater out of the bilge and to keep it from drying out too much in the wind and sun. Rainwater will either promote rot or, if it freezes, will expand and damage the planking. Wind dries wood the same way it causes chapped lips. Sun drives moisture out of planking and hull timbers. A good shelter helps keep the boat swelled tight by maintaining adequate humidity.

Shelter options range from purpose-built boathouses to humble tarps; the choice depends upon the size of your boat, your environment, and your budget. A dirt-floored shed provides the best storage for the least annual effort, as it tends to naturally regulate ambient humidity. A canvas cover, however, drawn down over the topsides, also can do a fine job of protecting a boat: the fibers of such covers tend to swell during rain to shed water, and their shrinkage in dry times permits healthy ventilation. Shrink-wrap, often considered the bane of wooden boats, can actually be a good option, too, as long as it’s adequately ventilated and carefully blocked away from the hull to avoid sealing in moisture.

No matter what you build for shelter, or where you store your boat, the focus should be on keeping a balance of moisture both inside and outside of the hull. A dirt floor is a good place to start as it typically stays damp. If you have a wooden floor—or in the worst case, concrete, which draws moisture from the air—you may have to supply moisture at some point if you want to keep your boat from drying excessively.

Ventilation

Air must circulate around and within a stored boat. On the interior, it’s best to pull up a few floorboards, and to leave drawers and locker doors open in order to promote airflow. Having the hull sit in the dirt or wet grass will promote rot. So, in addition to providing support, keel blocking allows airflow. Use blocks, sawhorses, or whatever is appropriate to your situation to get the hull off the ground.

Humidity

A stored boat requires a balance of fresh air and consistent humidity. One strategy to ensure that the wood holds its moisture is to do some painting before the cold weather sets in. In New England, it is common to do all maintenance in the spring. But if the base coats on both the topsides and bottom are solid all winter, and the interior is humid but exchanging air every so often, a boat might just require only a spring touch-up instead of an extreme makeover each season.

Humidity can be maintained if necessary with plastic drapes tenting the boat from the toerails or waterline down to the floor, perhaps with humidistat-controlled humidifiers or even buckets of water placed strategically around the tented-off area beneath the boat.

Darin Carlucci teaches sailing, building, and restoration at The Carpenter’s Boat Shop in Pemaquid, Maine. He and his wife, Serafina, are raising two girls, and he is also busy building a house for his family.

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Varnishing Basics

Many years ago, one of the big varnish manufacturers had a regular advertisement showing a cowering boat owner eyeing a brightwork project with a feigned expression of terror, and saying “Vvvvvvvvarnish?” Such fear is a common sentiment among would-be and occasional varnishers, and for good reason: Varnish provides excellent protection while showing the beauty of the wood, but it takes a consistent commitment of time and skill each year to maintain it. And achieving a good bright (aka varnished) finish in the first place requires careful surface preparation and application.

There are myriad pitfalls that can compromise the job along the way, and a lack of maintenance during the season can ruin a fine job. Paint, frankly, is a better option for those who lack the time or inclination to maintain varnish. Indeed, vast expanses of paint (cabinsides, for example) accented by bright trim will look much better than poorly maintained varnish. Varnish, however, is not only rewarding aesthetically; because it’s transparent, it also can reveal potential areas of rot that show up early as dark, discolored spots before they become a serious problem.

Some great books and articles have been written on the topic of varnishing (see Further Reading at the end of this article). For those seeking a more succinct lesson than those tomes provide, all major varnish brands include on their labels a concise set of instructions. I’d wager that that’s where most of us take our initial varnishing advice. Yet, due to the space constraints of the can, these instructions are typically printed in a barely legible type size, and they leave some room for interpretation—especially for the first-time varnisher.

So, the goal of this article is to interpret the varnish can—to give a bit more depth to those instructions, without writing a book. A can might say to remove all dust. We’ll look at how we do that, and the other basics of varnishing, leaving aside tangential concepts such as two-pack systems, spray application, wood staining, and stripping of old finishes.

Preparing and Sealing Bare Wood

All labels will tell you the wood must be clean and dry before varnishing. But there are a few other considerations, too. Painters and varnishers have an old adage: “It’s 90 percent prep work.” Divots and unevenness in the surface will telegraph into the finish coat, so be sure to get your bare-wood surface as smooth and scratch-free as you’d like it to be when finished. If you can live with raised and uneven grain, then a thorough sanding is all it takes. But if you’d like a mirror-smooth finish, now is the time to begin working toward that.

Large, flat surfaces such as transoms and cabinsides can be sanded with sticky-back sandpaper, which comes in a roll, mounted on a hard-rubber sanding block. Alternatively, the surface may be scraped smooth with a cabinet scraper—essentially, a small rectangle of thin tool steel with a uniform burr worked into its cutting edge; when drawn across the wood surface, the cabinet scraper raises the finest of shavings. Rounded and faceted surfaces may be hand-sanded without a backing block, but achieving consistent contact between the paper and the surface can be challenging in this scenario. A better approach is to create a custom backing block from blue foam insulation. To do this, cut off a block of foam of appropriate size, form a piece of 80-grit sandpaper over the surface to be sanded, with the grit side facing out, and rub the foam block back and forth over it until the shape is transferred to the foam. You now have a shaped block to which you can apply your paper. This works especially well on long, straight facets and rounds, such as handrails, railcaps, and half-round trim.

A quick survey of varnish labels reveals strong disagreement over what grit of sandpaper to use before the all-important first sealer coat is applied. One can I looked at specifies using 80-grit on bare wood, while another says 120. And still another recommends 180–320-grit paper. The theory of the coarser grits is that they’ll give the varnish more “tooth,” or mechanical adhesion. Lower-density woods will easily soak in the initial coat of varnish, so a finer grit is a good choice here; denser woods may require a coarser initial sanding, so extra care must be taken to sand with the grain to mask the scratches, because a fine finish requires no visible scratches in the bare wood. For most wood species, 180-grit is a good choice. The sealer coat (which we’ll cover shortly), if thinned properly, will penetrate the wood’s surface to give adequate mechanical adhesion.

Preparing Previously Varnished Surfaces

If your task is to apply a maintenance coat or two to an intact finish, rather than to varnish bare wood, then you must first clean the entire surface of grit and dirt, and then sand it with fine-grit paper; 220–320 grit is the right choice for this. But before you get started on that task, you should survey the surface for yellow blisters. These telltale marks show where the varnish has separated from the wood, and they must be carefully scraped away to bare wood before sanding can proceed. (If the surface is littered with these blisters, or if the majority of the finish is peeling, then you must strip the entire piece to bare wood—a process we won’t cover here.) A 1″ hook scraper, filed sharp, is the ideal tool for scraping away small blisters. It’ll dull quickly as you use it, so keep a file handy, and sharpen the scraper’s blade as soon as it can no longer remove fine ribbons of varnish—which will be fairly often if you’re scraping frequently. Don’t do this sharpening on deck; the fine steel dust will rust and make a mess.

If you’re scraping bare spots in a finish that’s been stained, then you have another challenge ahead: These bare spots must either be restained to match the surrounding finish, or you must live with the contrasting patches. Likewise, scraped patches in unstained mahogany are likely to contrast at first with the surrounding finish, though they’ll blend in as the finish ages. On the other hand, if you’re working on teak, you’ll find that scraped bare spots blend beautifully and immediately with the surrounding finish.

Scraped bare spots must have their edges “feathered”—the hard transition from bare wood to varnish must be sloped by careful sanding. The goal here is to gradually thin the varnish around the edges of the crater, but to not remove wood. A sanding block is recommended, and careful use of a scraper can speed things up. With the scraping and sanding done, it’s time to apply a sealer coat to the bare spots—to “spot-prime” them—and then to apply three or more “build coats” to these spots (see application instructions, below).

Folding Sheet Sandpaper

For sanding long pieces of trim, handrails, spars, oars, and such, you’ll likely be using 9″ × 11″ sheets of paper. These should be folded and then cut into quarters. These quarters are then folded in thirds, as shown in the photograph, so that none of the grit surfaces touch. When one surface becomes clogged and no longer cuts, flip the paper over for a fresh surface. When that one is clogged, unfold and refold the paper to expose the final unused surface. This can also be done with half sheets—though for surfaces typically requiring pieces this large, you’ll likely want a sanding block.

Sanding and Dust Removal

With scraping and spot-priming out of the way (if you had to do it at all), it’s time to sand the entire surface. This is a step that often befuddles the novice varnisher: The goal, after all, is to build up a thick coat of varnish on the wood. This must be accomplished by applying multiple coats, and you must sand between these coats, typically, to get the later coat to adhere to the earlier one. But in the process of doing this, you want to sand away as little of the previous coat as possible. A light touch and a fine grit are required for this task. If the finish is in great shape, then use 320. If it’s beat up or requires some leveling, then use 220.

There are two exceptions to this sanding-between-coats rule. The first is a technique called “hot-coating,” whereby a subsequent coat is applied to one that’s not yet fully cured, so the two actually melt together, chemically. If you’re new to varnishing, then I suggest you stick to the tried-and-true methods outlined here, and not be lulled by the promise of less sanding. The second exception involves wood coatings specifically formulated for no sanding between coats. They save the time of sanding. And they save material, as there’s no specter of sanding away the previous coat. Sanding between coats, however, has the incidental benefit of dulling the previous coat, giving a nice sharp contrast between varnished and unvarnished areas when you’re actually applying the stuff. Unless the light is just right, you can’t always see where you’ve been when you don’t sand between coats, and thus you risk “holidays” in your finish (see “Applying the Varnish,” below). The other drawback of not sanding between coats is that you lose the chance to eliminate the previous coat’s imperfections. Sags, dust, bugs, lint, unevenness, and other sins are repaired or eliminated with each successive sanding. My caveats notwithstanding, not sanding between coats is a significant time-saver, and once you’ve mastered the art of basic varnishing, it might prove worthwhile to look into these no-sanding-required formulations.

It seems antithetical to do all of that sanding, and then to be instructed to apply varnish only to a surface that’s clean and free of dust. But take heart: There’s an established protocol for removing dust from a surface. First, vacuum as much of it away as you can, using a clean brush attachment on your shop vacuum. If working outside, you can use compressed air to blow off the dust. Second, wipe down the surface with a rag that’s been dampened—not soaked—with paint thinner or some other solvent that won’t leave a residue. The rag itself should be clean and free of lint. The third and final step is to wipe the entire surface with a painter’s tack cloth.

Applying the Varnish

The man who taught me how to varnish had a rule regarding time of day: He’d never begin applying varnish outside after about 2 p.m. on a summer day. Why? Because humidity on uncured varnish will dull and cloud the finished product. I had this lesson driven home the hard way several years ago when, pressed by schedule to get a coat of varnish on my mast, I did the job after work, at 5 p.m. I knew better, but I guess I thought I was invincible. Within a few hours, the dew dropped on the partially dry varnish, and the next morning the finish on the “up” surface of the mast was cloudy, dull, and textured, while the down side was clear and shiny. Cool, dry weather—classic New England fall conditions—is best, as the varnish has a chance to level out before it cures. In fact, getting your varnish done in autumn is a great way to manage your varnish maintenance, as you’ll feel like a genius for having it out of the way come the press of spring and the promise of boating weather. One word of warning on this: The short, cool days of fall typically require an indoor workspace, because the dew dries late in the day and falls early in the evening.

The first coat on bare wood is the sealer, which should be thinned adequately enough to allow it to seep into the wood before it cures. When it dries, the sealer should all but disappear into the wood; there should be no ambition to achieve a heavy gloss finish at this stage. Thinning is typically specified as a percentage of the varnish in your pot, and the range specified by manufacturers varies depending upon the viscosity of the varnish. One brand of thick-bodied varnish calls for 50 percent thinning for sealing purposes; less viscous, more forgiving varnishes are generally thinned only 10 percent.

Don’t varnish straight out of the can. Instead, pour your varnish through a medium or fine paint strainer into a clean container. This filtering step is especially important if you’re using a previously opened can, because globs of cured varnish can inhabit the rim and find their way into your finish.

Once the sealer coat has dried, it’s time to scuff it with 220-grit paper—just enough to knock down any hardened fuzz on the surface, and to dull the shine, if there is any. With this done, wipe down the surface with thinner applied to a clean lint-free rag, follow with a tack cloth, and apply the next coat. Some manufacturers will recommend that this next coat be thinned by 25 percent, while others will counsel full-strength varnish at this stage. Again, your best bet is to follow the can’s instructions.

The ideal is to not thin your varnish at all for the subsequent buildup coats, but the reality is that your brush will drag after a while on hot days or on long jobs as the solvent in the varnish flashes off. A fraction of a capful of proprietary thinner should thus be added occasionally, to make the varnish flow properly.

Good brushing technique is a matter of experience and concentration. I have good days and bad days applying varnish, probably because I do it only a few times a year. Here are some of my common pitfalls, and how I’ve come to avoid them:

Sags—It’s incredibly disappointing to look back at a surface that was varnished only five minutes ago, and to see an unfixable sag propagating down it. Varnish, you see, has a short window during which it can be worked. Once it starts to set up—to skin over—further brushing will only make it worse. Let’s consider varnishing a sailboat’s cabinsides: I like to apply the varnish in adjacent vertical bands and, once the brush has been emptied of varnish, to brush these out horizontally. This technique “meters” the varnish consistently, and avoids great sags in the middle of the surface. The place I always get into trouble when doing my cabinsides is under the half-round trim that defines the top edge of the cabin. Varnish loads up under there, and no matter how carefully I inspect the area before moving on, it always seems to release a sag or two. To avoid this, I now mask the cabinsides and varnish the trim first, and then freehand the cabinsides once the trim cures. It takes a bit more time, and some tape, but the saved frustration is worth it. If you find a sag in a cured buildup coat, scrape it away carefully before sanding for the next coat.

Dust—This is a disappointing defect, too, though I must say that a small bit of dust in the varnish seems to disappear once the boat is in the water. Perhaps it’s that our focus shifts to other things once the season is underway, or we absorb the boat as a whole, rather than as a brightwork project. Anyhow, don’t despair if you get a bit of dust in your buildup coats. The time to really be attentive to this is when applying the top coat. Varnish on a still day, vacuum, wipe, and tack the surface carefully, even wet down the shed floor if your situation allows you to do so, and use a clean brush. If you still pick up some dust, remember: This is an ongoing process, year after year. There’ll be time for perfection next season.

Holidays—“Holiday,” as you likely know, is the painter’s affectionate term for places that didn’t receive finish, and should have. They are typically a mental concentration issue, though occasionally they may be the result of inadequate amount of varnish on the brush. Be aware of them. Avoid them. And know that you’ll get better at brushing the more you do it.

Brush marks—Brush marks are the result of one of two things: Either the varnish has been overworked to the point that it was curing while being brushed, or it was applied in short, choppy strokes that began in the “wet edge.” The wet edge is the “front,” if you will, of wet varnish that’s advancing along the unvarnished surface as you apply the finish. Always complete your brushstroke into this edge, rather than originating it there. And apply it in long strokes that unload the brush evenly. Short, choppy ones will pile up the varnish unevenly, possibly leading to sags. The idea is to spread a coat of uniform thickness, one that’s sufficiently thick to shine, but not so thick that it will sag. Whatever it takes to achieve this should be done: Speed of application, a good-sized badger-hair brush (1½″ or 2″), easily spread varnish (add retarder on warm days and accelerator on cold ones), and a “feel” for the process, all help.

People new to varnishing often balk at the idea of five to seven coats, thinking it an excessive amount. But that’s typically the minimum required to build up a good and durable varnish finish that will last all season—again, with sanding between each coat. You’ll know you’re sanding a fresh coat too soon if the varnish gums up your paper; you must wait to sand until the varnish doesn’t do this, but rather turns to fine dust. It takes one to two coats per year to then maintain a varnished finish in a temperate climate, and more in the tropics. A few months of neglect in hot summer sun will result in a dull finish, and a little more than that will often result in cracking in the surface, and eventual peeling.

Brushes: Bristle or Foam?

Badger-hair bristle brushes are the standard for serious varnishers. They are worth their cost, because they hold plenty of varnish and release it evenly and cleanly—that is, with minimal brush marks. With careful cleaning and storage, they can be used year after year. Cleaning typically requires three rinses in clean thinner, with a twirl in a paintbrush spinner between each rinse. Then they can be soaked in kerosene or diesel and spun out before being wrapped in a clean rag and hung from a hook for the season; to use them again, soak them in thinner to wash off the kerosene, spin them out, and they’re ready to go. Never store them in a can of thinner, because remnant varnish solids will settle to the bottom of the can, contaminating the brush.

Foam brushes are disposed of after use. Their downsides are: (1) They don’t hold as much varnish as a bristle brush, so they must be dipped more often and thus long, even strokes can be a challenge; (2) they lose their stiffness after a period of time; (3) they don’t work well cutting into tight spots; and (4) they add to the solid-waste stream. Nos. 1, 2, and 3 are generally considered to be acceptable trade-offs for small jobs, or in situations where prompt brush cleaning is challenging or impossible. The solid-waste issue must be balanced against the chemical-waste issue of cleaning brushes with solvent. Neither one is zero-impact.

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Reacquainted

Of all the boats I’ve built and cruised with, my sneakbox LUNA is the one that has meant the most to me from gathering the materials to build her to having her see me safely through my most challenging voyage. All the planking for her cold-molded deck and hull came from a large western red cedar driftwood log I towed by kayak to my home beach and split by hand with a maul and wedges. I constructed the sneakbox in a cabin/shop I’d built deep in the foothills of Washington’s Cascade Mountains where my electricity came from alkaline batteries and the running water was the South Fork of the Sauk River, a lazy stone’s throw from the front door. When her hull had enough of a finish to be weatherproof, I hauled her on a sled towed by a snowmobile 14 miles to the roadhead and moved to another utility-free cabin on Lopez Island.

LUNA was meant for a winter cruise from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cedar Key, Florida, by way of the Ohio River, the Lower Mississippi River, and the Intracoastal Waterway skirting the Gulf of Mexico. For two-and-a-half months in the winter of 1985, she carried me 2,400 miles through storms, floods, ice, darkness, log jams, and whirlpools.

After that adventure, I moved on to other boatbuilding projects and took LUNA out only a handful of times. I last rowed her nearly 20 years ago; since then she has been in the garage, set on edge, leaning against a windowless wall. I caught a glimpse of her bow poking out from the shadows every time I pulled one of my other boats out of the garage.

Drawn by the fond memories of my cruise, I decided I’d try to spend a winter night aboard LUNA. I moved the boats that had hemmed her in for so long, lowered her onto a dolly, and wheeled her into the back yard. After I hosed the dust off, LUNA looked to be in very good shape, none the worse for her decades of idleness.

The hatch had been damaged during the cruise, so I fixed the cracks in its mahogany frame and gave it a fresh coat of varnish. The two bronze bolts that anchored the braces for the folding oarlock stanchions needed to be replaced and then LUNA was as fit as she was when I first built her. There was even some luster left in the only varnish she’d ever had. While the boat sat in the back yard, I tried taking a few naps in the cockpit. With a sleeping pad and a pillow, I was quite comfortable and once even drifted off to sleep.

For an overnight outing I wouldn’t be filling the boat for a month’s-long cruise, and there would be room to take a few accessories that I once would have considered unnecessary. Thirty-seven years ago, I could lift LUNA’s 135-lb hull to my shoulder and carry her for a short distance, but now I need to be much more cautious about my back, and so I made her a cart of plywood and hand-truck wheels.

I also mounted two wide-angle mirrors to help me see where I was headed. During my long voyage, I had never felt the need for mirrors on LUNA and felt pride in how far I could turn my head to look over the bow. My neck doesn’t provide the same range of motion now. To offer more shelter, I bought a $27 tent and cut a hole in its floor to fit around the cockpit coaming. There had been a few rainy nights on my cruise where I had just pulled the hatch over the cockpit, but I discovered in my recent backyard naps that I’d lost the tolerance for that.

I chose a cold February night to sleep aboard LUNA in the back yard. I slipped a self-inflating sleeping pad in the bottom with one end tucked under the foredeck and the other butted against the footboard as I had during that winter cruise long ago. It took me a long time to get into the sleeping bag. Once in, I was able to lie on my left side, as I normally do, but I was far from comfortable. There wasn’t room to put one knee on top of the other, so I had to stagger them. I had plenty of room above me because of the tent, but I was facing the port side and felt boxed in. My chest tightened. This wasn’t going to work, and I couldn’t afford to spend a sleepless night with this trial. I clawed my way out of the sleeping bag and sat up in the cockpit. I tried to put my shoes on, but my feet seemed to be out of reach. My knees don’t bend as they used to, and it was made worse by the confines of the cockpit; I had to pull on a shin to get a foot close enough to put a shoe on. I retreated to my bedroom.

I hadn’t entirely given up on the idea of sleeping aboard LUNA and a few days later drove with her on the roof racks to a lake where I planned to spend a night. I lowered her to the cart and rolled her to the water’s edge. It was just a 150-yard row to the only island on the lake, a tree-crowned islet one-third the size of a football field.

On the east side of the island, there is a cove just wide enough for LUNA’s oar span. Once there, I backed in and crawled aft across the deck just as the brass strip on her skeg ground against the rocks, bringing the boat to an abrupt stop.

I stepped ashore with the painter in hand. At the foot of the island’s knot of alder and maple trees the ground was bare; geese had eaten whatever ground cover there might have been and paved the island with a greasy black smear of poop. It didn’t invite walking across the island.

Returning to LUNA, I struggled to find solid footing and keep my balance. To keep her off the rocks I stepped into the water and waded out to her. The muddy bottom was every bit as slippery as the island and I lurched aboard. My momentum carried LUNA across the little cove into a web of overhanging branches that scraped across her deck like fingernails on a blackboard. She surely must have wondered who this lumbering oaf was who had dropped so heavily into the cockpit. I coiled the painter and pushed off the bottom with an oar until I was clear of the tangle.

I rowed away from the island into the middle of the lake and sat with my hands resting on the oar handles. I had hoped that spending a night aboard LUNA would rekindle how I’d felt during that winter cruise 36 years ago. It was a voyage unburdened by purpose and free from the gravity of land—a voyage to a goal so distant that it lacked all urgency. There was just LUNA and me, together in each fleeting moment. My efforts to recapture that feeling weren’t being thwarted by LUNA. What I had more truly been trying to reconnect with was my youth, and I was only making myself painfully aware of my age. Nothing about LUNA had changed, but I was not at all the same person.

I felt the warmth of the afternoon sun on one side of my face and the chill of a feather-light breeze on the other. LUNA made music of the ripples lapping at her hull. When I took to the oars and rowed north, my breath grew deeper and stronger with the rhythm of rowing. I let the feathered blades skim across the water between strokes and felt the water as fully as if it were touching the backs of my hands. LUNA glided across the water with the hiss of water swept under the bow. She had awakened from her long slumber and surged ahead, leaving a champagne trail astern. I’d like to think she recognized me.

Handy Billy

The summer high-pressure systems that bring sunny days to the Salish Sea are known for their accompanying lack of winds. After cruising British Columbia’s Discovery Islands in a small sailboat, I decided I’d enjoy the area more aboard a small motorboat, one that I could use to poke and prod my way along the meandering coastline, tucking into the small bays along the way.

I began a search for a suitable small motorboat to build. I studied the offerings from local designers who knew my local waters, but ultimately settled on a boat by Harry Bryan, a boatbuilder/designer based on Canada’s opposite coast. In 1998, he envisioned an update to the deep-V inboard-powered boats William Hand developed from 1900 to 1920. “The hulls Hand developed,” Harry writes, “do not skip along the surface of the water like fully planning boats. They will, however knife through the water at well over displacement speeds. Hand commented that he could recommend these boats without reservation as wholesome, steady, fine little sea-boats capable of really surprising speed.” Harry wanted to combine the advantages of the deep-V hulls with the clean and efficient four-stroke outboards, which were emerging at the time he was studying Hand’s work. Harry’s design was the Handy Billy 21.

I was sold on the boat’s classic lines, and its construction seemed to be within my abilities and budget. Fortunately for me, WoodenBoat ran a series of articles in 2001 on how to build the 21′ Handy Billy in issues 159 through 161, and I used them as my guide. At 21′, the boat is very close to the dimensions of a typical garage. I had enough room for it, but if a smaller Handy Billy is a better fit for the workplace you have available, Harry offers an 18′ version.

The Handy Billy’s long, lean, semi-displacement hull would marry well with Harry’s intention to use a modest outboard, just 25 hp, with electric start. His plans include three sheets of drawings—lines and offsets, construction details, and miscellaneous details—and a 21-page booklet. The plans detail batten-seam construction with 5/8″ cedar planking on oak framing. The outboard is enclosed in a covered well, so the boat can move along quietly and with little disturbance to the environment or the crew.

Photographs by and courtesy of the author

The Handy Billy was designed for batten-seam construction and the battens would be let into the frames. The author opted for cold-molding, which didn’t require the battens.

Harry’s website designates this build as best for someone having intermediate skills. It is helpful to have some skills in woodworking (cutting, fitting, and shaping) and problem-solving, but having good work habits and a capacity for project management and planning will also really pay off. For anyone new to boat construction who is contemplating this design, it would be worthwhile to attend a workshop course and/or study many of the great books on construction. An intermediate project like the Handy Billy is mostly about having the perseverance that it takes to learn and to see the project to the end.

Building on my experience gained from constructing a plywood flat-bottomed sailing skiff, I waded in guided by the three WoodenBoat articles. They seemed to cover most, if not all, aspects of the procedures. Construction went as I had imagined with only a few difficulties. I did not have an easy time bending the single-piece sheer clamps into place as they wanted to split. Eventually, I did get them to fit. Today I would laminate the sheer clamp in place using more easily bent pieces.

The batten-seam construction would have three planks above the chine and four below. Like the William Hand boats that were its inspiration, the Handy Billy has a high and fine entry that will cut through chop.

While the framework is designed for batten-seam construction, Harry offers a single-sheet drawing by Doug Hylan for plywood construction. Harry’s website also notes the hull can be strip-built, but there are no instructions for that method. I went with cold-molding the hull; as with plywood construction, it eliminated the need for the seam battens in the framework. I applied 1/4″ x 3″ western red cedar in three layers with the outer layers laid fore-and-aft sandwiching a middle diagonal layer. The exterior has 6-oz fiberglass set in epoxy.

Harry writes in the Handy Billy booklet: “Motor boats have always carried with them the burden of noise.” He addresses the problem “by placing the engine within the hull and adding a barrier of acoustic insulation. The result is probably the most quiet outboard boat on the market.” To make sure the motor you’ll use with the boat will fit its housing, Harry notes that it is advisable to have it on hand in case you need to modify the well and engine box to provide full range of motion for the outboard.

The Handy Billy weighs around 1,300 lbs; an electric winch and guides on the trailer simplify launching and retrieval.

Towing the 1,300-lb boat and its trailer may require an SUV or a pickup truck. Launching at the ramp is straightforward. I have a 2,000-lb single-speed winch that is adequate for hauling out. Trailer guides have proven their worth to me while loading and unloading such a heavy boat by myself.

There is adequate room around the center console for passengers to move safely about the boat. Just below the aft end of the foredeck is the opening for the shelf that holds the fuel tank.

The cockpit is 13′ x 5′ and has enough space to move around while tending docklines and attaching fenders. It is deep enough to give you the feeling of being inside rather than on top of the boat. The center console gives the skipper an unobstructed 360-degree view and has room for instrumentation, binoculars, sunscreen, sunglasses, and other items. Forward of the helm there is a thwart with room for extra clothes in dry bags. In front of the engine compartment there is a bench seat with a fold-down backrest that gives access to two small storage compartments that are approximately 15″ x 15″ x 24″ deep on either side of the motorwell. There’s plenty of room to stow fenders under the rear bench. Beneath the foredeck, the Handy Billy has a shelf for the fuel tank and another above it for a fire extinguisher, spare ropes, and other items. I recently refitted the gas tank shelf with a sliding shelf to allow for easier access when refueling. The boathook and spare paddle are hung on hooks fastened to the inside of the frames. Flotation is not mentioned in the plans, but it could be put forward under the deck and in the rear compartments alongside the engine if desired.

The cutout for the motorwell is the only visible sign that the Handy Billy has an outboard motor for power. The large hatch on the back deck provides easy access to it.

I went with a 20-hp four-stroke motor, but on many occasions, especially with guests aboard, wish that I’d stayed with the 25-hp suggested in the Handy Billy instructions. The trade-off would be a marginal increase in gas consumption, but it would be worth the increased speed and power. With the 20-hp motor, the boat does get up to a top speed of 17 knots in a steady and gentle manner. The boat slices through the chop and is dry in all but the most extreme conditions, the ride is smooth and comfortable, cornering is steady and predictable, and the boat is easy to maneuver in tight spots and while docking. Passengers ride on the forward bench which trims the boat nicely and allows for easy conversation during all but the highest speeds. I have confidence in the Handy Billy’s abilities to handle moderate conditions on lakes and other protected waters.

The Handy Billy was not an overly difficult project, but it did come with a steep learning curve. In my 20 years with the boat, I have gained many skills as a builder and owner. Today, I use it for video recording, work for which the boat is very well suited. It would make a fine addition to a lakeside cottage as a runabout for fishing or transporting in style. It’s a charming boat that continues to resonate with admirers wherever she goes.

Steve Cormack is a self-taught amateur builder with a workshop in Pender Harbor, British Columbia. He started building boats nearly 40 years ago and has completed several small plywood kayaks and strip canoes. In addition to the Handy Billy, he has built two sailboats: a Selway Fisher Ptarmigan pocket cruiser and a Blackswan 22 for cruising. He is currently finishing a 32′ Lake Union–style dreamboat based on a Katherine 30, designed by William Hand Jr.

Handy Billy 21 Particulars

[table]

Length/21′

Beam/5′10″

Weight/ approx. 1,300 lbs

Capacity/1 to 8

Propulsion/ 8–15-hp outboard for displacement speeds, 25 hp for planing

[/table]

Plans for the Handy Billy 21 are available through Bryan Boatbuilding for CAD $80. Plans for the Handy Billy 18 are available for CAD $80. A single sheet of information for plywood construction for both versions is available for CAD $25.

Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats Magazine readers would enjoy? Please email us!

Colonia Dinghy

SUN DANCE II is a sprightly 17′ sailing dinghy whose design dates back to 1901. The original boat of the series from which she emerged, designed by N.G. Herreshoff and built by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, was a daysailer meant to be carried aboard the 189′ Gardner & Cox–designed steam yacht COLONIA owned by Frederick G. Bourne. An avid yachtsman, Bourne was president of Singer Manufacturing, the sewing machine company, between 1889 and 1905. He was also a member of several yacht clubs and commodore of the New York Yacht Club from 1903 to 1905. Bourne, with these bona fides, had a refined taste in boats, and knew what he wanted in a daysailer when he commissioned COLONIA’s dinghy. Herreshoff went on to build 36 Colonia dinghies, as boats built to this design and its variations have come to be called.

SUN DANCE II is a copy of a Herreshoff-built boat called GARRYOWEN, which was launched 1926. GARRYOWEN was built for Charles Goodwin, who visited the Herreshoff shops in late June that year and placed an order, on the spot, for a daysailer for use at Essex, Connecticut. Based on correspondence in the archives of the Herreshoff Marine Museum (HMM) in Bristol, Rhode Island, Goodwin seemed to have been considering Coquina, a 16′8″ cat-ketch that Herreshoff had designed for his own use. The day after Goodwin’s visit, Herreshoff wrote him suggesting he consider something else:

“We have moulds for another boat…which I think would make a better boat for you and probably as fast under ordinary conditions. I am enclosing profile and half breadth of deck of each for comparison which will show better by holding paper up to light. This later design has an over hang forward which gives very graceful lines.”

Herreshoff went on to give the boat’s dimensions as “17ft 2in extreme length, 14ft 8in waterline, 5ft 5in beam, 24in deep and 16 1/2in freeboard at midsection.” He further described the floors as being “a little flatter than Coquina, giving a much fuller builge [sic] and of course much more natural stability and capable of carrying larger sails. Boats built from this model have usually been rigged with mainsail & jib and the last had jib-headed [aka Bermudan] mainsails set on short masts with yard having jaws in sails. If the extreme length of 17ft 2in is used the two masted rig could be used, but if the boat is made much shorter probably the jib & mainsail rig would be desirable to get sufficient sail area.

“The hull of this model 17ft 2in long would probably weigh 300lbs and with all gear on board except ballast nearly 400lbs.”

The resulting boat had frames—presumably of oak—spaced 7 1/2″ apart. She had a 5/8″ butternut transom and was lapstrake-planked in 5/16″ white cedar. The stern deck was also planked in 5/16″-thick white cedar and sheathed in canvas. Coamings and sternsheets were butternut. SUNDANCE II, a copy of GARRYOWEN, was built around 1975 to the original scantlings but trimmed in mahogany, as was COLONIA’s original dinghy. The builder’s identity is obscure. She carries the signature molded Herreshoff sheerstrakes—an eye-pleasing sculptural detail that eases the transition from topsides to deck edge and offers additional wood for deck-edge fastenings.

Photographs by the author

David Gardner hauls his 17′ daysailer, SUN DANCE II, on the ramp in Castine, Maine. The boat was designed by Nathanael Herreshoff in 1901, and numerous modified versions were built over the ensuing decades.

In classic “barn find” fashion, SUN DANCE II’s current owner, David Gardner, found her in 2017 at a yard sale near Castine, Maine. “From a quarter mile away,” he recalls, “I knew it was a Herreshoff.” David, at first, thought the boat might be a Coquina, a design recently made popular through the efforts of Maynard Bray and Doug Hylan, who redrew the plans for glued-lapstrake plywood construction.

David purchased the boat, embarked upon a restoration, and began researching its origins. In consultation with Bray, he determined that it was built to the design of COLONIA’s sailing dinghy. As is the case with most N.G. Herreshoff designs, there are no published lines for this boat. Herreshoff’s design process began with the carving of a half model which, once refined, he would measure on a purpose-built device in order to develop a table of offsets. Those offsets would be used to create a full-sized body plan, and then molds.

David spent two summers restoring SUN DANCE II. He was then a vice president at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, where he had access to the boat shop, the sail loft, and lots of expert guidance. In the background is the academy’s training ship, STATE OF MAINE.

Luckily for David, lines weren’t required for his refurbishing of SUN DANCE II. She had a few fiberglass patches, which David left in place, but “structurally,” he said, “she was pretty sound.” He spent two summers bringing SUN DANCE II back to sailing condition. He was working then as an administrator at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, and so had access to the school’s well-equipped boatshop—not to mention a fair amount of expert guidance.

Although the hull was intact, the boat’s details and finish needed attention. “The centerboard was splitting apart,” he said, so he built a new one—a five-stave affair, weighted with about 4 -1/2 lbs of lead to sink it. The sole needed replacement, so he used the old one as a template in constructing a new one. He also removed a small bowsprit, which was never part of the design. He built a new mast, joining the staves using the bird’s-mouth joint technique, and he built his own sails in the Maine Maritime Academy sail loft.

When David found SUNDANCE II for sale at a local yard sale, the rig had been modified to a marconi sloop—with additional maststeps to configure the boat as a cat yawl. He consulted the original Herreshoff drawings to build a new rig and made the sails himself.

The boat, as found, was marconi rigged with a “crummy old solid-wood mast” that was warped. “It was clearly not original,” David said. She had about 94 sq ft of sail, and there were two maststeps, so it could be alternately rigged as a catboat or a sloop. David found the original 1901 gaff sail plan and drew up a new sail plan based on this. He notes that the boat “had suffered from some crude carpentry over the years.” He went to some lengths to correct this but was mindful of the fact that he wanted to sail the boat. And so, he struck a careful balance between functionality and originality.

“A restoration purist might frown at some of the stuff I’ve done,” David added. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. In the several times I’ve encountered SUNDANCE II at the Castine Town Landing, she has swelled a crowd of admiring visitors.

I was one of those admiring visitors in 2019 when I first met David and SUN DANCE II at the landing, soon after he relaunched her. I had a similar reaction to David’s when he first encountered the boat: There was something distinctly Herreshoff about her, but she wasn’t quite a Coquina. David unfolded her story for me, and we resolved then to go for a sail—and finally found the opportunity to do so last fall.

Launching and retrieval are straightforward processes with SUNDANCE II, though David is considering keeping her on a mooring.

I met David in the parking lot of the landing on the day of our outing. The boat was on a trailer behind his Toyota Rav4, with the mast laid in a custom cradle on deck. He rigged and prepared the boat—an operation that took about 20 minutes working by himself —and stepped the mast through the hole bored in the thwart. David then secured the shroud and forestay lashings, launched the boat, paddled her to the float, rigged the sails, and we were off.

This custom spar cradle allows the mast, boom, and gaff to be securely carried on deck for trailering and storage.

It was gusting to about 18 knots that day, and I was immediately impressed with SUN DANCE II’s acceleration, as compared with her keel-configuration cousin, the Herreshoff 12-1/2. I’ve often thought of the 12-1/2 as a little big boat. It has the feeling of a true displacement boat, notably as the wind comes up and she begins drawing a quarter wave. SUNDANCE II’s acceleration is more reminiscent of a racing dinghy—but a comfortable one with bench seating, traditional appearance, and the capacity to carry two grown men.

The boat was easy to rig. The halyards are made off to belaying pins in the mast partner/thwart, and the sheets lead easily to the helm. In puffs, she would heel to the deck edge and then stay there—though it was imperative that the skipper keep the mainsheet in hand and remain alert. Crew-weight distribution mattered. That boat carries 120 lbs of lead ballast in the bilge and, despite, flotation foam in the bow and stern, capsize recovery would be a considerable project.

David Gardner at the helm of SUNDANCE II. The main and jib sheets are led to within easy reach of the helm, allowing for easy singlehanding.

The boat is quick in stays and responsive to changes in sail trim. She was easy to singlehand, with the mainsheet led through a turning block on the top of the centerboard trunk and the jibsheets within easy reach of the helm. The seating is comfortable, with easy bracing against the leeward seat when the boat heels.

For a middle-aged sailor seeking a combination of excitement, comfort, and traditional good looks, the Colonia dinghy is worth serious consideration. Building one would require some research, as well as an advanced grasp of lofting and boatbuilding. The 36 iterations built by Herreshoff were adjusted, sometimes considerably, to meet the owners’ needs, though the offsets for the original boat, taken from the model, are archived in the Hart Nautical Collections of the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are copious construction and detail drawings in those archives, as well as at the Herreshoff Marine Museum. This material is cited in The Herreshoff Catalogue Raisonné, a vast online catalog of Herreshoff material from both collections.

Matthew P. Murphy is the editor of WoodenBoat magazine.

Colonia Dinghy Particulars:

[table]

LWL/17′ 3″

Beam/5′ 6″

Draft, board up/7.75″

Draft, board down/3′

[/table]

MIT Museum

Readers searching for plans and details in the Catalogue Raisonné should be sure to read its discussion of copyright and seek permission and high-resolution files from the MIT or HMM archives, as needed. (The MIT Museum, at this writing, is in the process of moving and is thus closed to research requests, but that situation is forecast to change in the near future.)

Would-be builders who are captivated by this boat, and want an easier path to commence building, might give Coquina a close look, just as Charles Goodwin did back in 1926. Joe Brennan’s cold-molded Coquina appeared in the November 2014 issue of Small Boats. The highly detailed plans package assembled by Maynard Bray and Doug Hylan is available from Hylan & Brown Boatbuilders.

Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats Magazine readers would enjoy? Please email us!

Sailing the Archipelago Sea

We launched our 14′ Elf faering, ELDIR, in the emerald waters of the harbor at Kasnäs. Once a remote, sleepy fishing village and ferry terminal, Kasnäs is now a bustling resort with a hotel, spa, and minigolf. A 47-mile drive from the mainland and situated at the end of a road that crosses four islands, including Finland’s largest island, Kasnäs is at the crossroads of the many passages that weave through the myriad islands of the country’s Archipelago Sea. One of the passages would give us a shortcut to the outer archipelago and the island of Jurmo where Inari, my 16-year-old daughter, was going to spend some time with her mother in a rental cabin. We decided to make a sail-and-oar adventure out of getting her there.

The gray lapstrake hull and varnished interior of ELDIR, our little Iain Oughtred–designed plywood faering, certainly stood out from the flock of white fiberglass hulls as we loaded camping gear and prepared for sailing. We got many compliments from people passing by with their boats as ELDIR sat loaded and swaying at the end of a pier. It was late in July, and the forecast for our launch day and the week beyond promised brisk winds, so we had tied in a reef. We hoisted the lugsail, and ELDIR quickly picked up speed as we passed the harbor’s outer piers and headed to our first and somewhat protected 3-1/4-nautical-mile passage south toward Rosala. At 3-1/2 miles long, Rosala is one of the largest islands in the crowded archipelago. In the 14- to 18-knot westerly wind and on a closehauled course against a sharp 1′ to 2′ chop, we soon were pelted by spray on our faces. Avoiding an early tack, we turned east and rounded an island no more than 100 yards across that was capped with a thick stand of dark, tightly packed pine trees.

ELDIR does not have a centerboard or a daggerboard, and the unobstructed interior provides plenty of space for me and Inari. We sat on the floorboards and, with our weight low in the hull, ELDIR acted more like a ballasted ship than a 150-lb dinghy. The boat was very steady in spite of the wind and choppy water; we had no need to shift our weight to avoid excessive heeling. In previous cruises ELDIR had proven to be extremely seaworthy for her size, feeling secure even on rough passages.

For a moment, our route turned farther east onto a broad reach; ELDIR rode the waves, hissing as she exceeded hull speed and trailed twin rows of foam. We encountered a sloop closehauled temporarily turning into the wind to luff, apparently to take photos of us. We turned to windward and, as there were no more islands close by protecting us, the sharp chop grew, throwing more and more spay into and over the boat. It had been a record-breaking warm June and July and, while the air temperature had dropped into a comfortable 68 degrees, both the water and the granite islands radiated the heat they had accumulated.

Tacking through the chop north of Rosala, we made good speed in the stiff breeze but little progress on our intended southwest heading. Inari and I took turns steering and navigating. From her early years on, she has been a naturally skilled helmswoman. For navigating, we relied on paper charts and compass instead of a GPS. Only the main shipping lanes are marked, but the charts are very accurate, and often the names of the islands are descriptive—Furuskär (Pine Island), Bredskär (Broad Island)—aiding our visual navigation. ELDIR has a draft of only inches, so we could usually see any threatening underwater rocks or shallows from an unusual cresting of waves or the change in color of the sea.

Despite the warm summer the sea had been remarkably clear of algae, at least here in the Archipelago Sea. The Baltic is known to be the most polluted sea of the world: with more than 80 million people living in its drainage area and its average depth only 75′, it is continuously threatened by excessive amounts of nutrients. Several conservation measures have been taken by the countries along the coast, and there has been some improvement during recent years. On our cruise, I clearly saw some promising signs: bladderwrack, a seaweed generally perceived as a sign of a healthy sea, has regrown abundantly after many years of growing scarcer.

Tired from our morning drive and not having had coffee after lunch, I decided to aim for a 100-yard-wide treeless rocky islet coming into view over the bow. As we drew near, we saw the telltale signs of submerged rocks, dropped the sail, and struggled through the labyrinth of rocks by paddling against the wind with one oar. The islet had been inhabited by seabirds and the rank odor of guano hit us even as we secured the boat. I retrieved my mocha pot while Inari took off her wet raingear and stood on the crest of a cliff with her arms spread wide, like a seabird drying out its feathers in the warm breeze.

Refreshed by coffee and chocolate, we left the islet and continued working to windward. Here the islands were closely knit, and we were more protected from the wind and waves coming from the southwest. Inari had been navigating, keeping track of our progress on the chart on her lap. After an hour, she said that we had proceeded only half a mile from our stop at the islet. She had a good point, and I decided we’d call it a day. Only 200 yards away on our port side was a small island, separated by only a 10′-wide channel from a larger island. We tacked into a cove created between the islands and landed on a rocky beach at the base of a steep, pale gray granite cliff. The depth was too much for our small anchor’s 50′ rode to get a grip, and we moved to a spot where the shore met the sea with a gentler slope. Although ELDIR was quite heavy with her load of gear, together we managed to pull her up on a gritty bedrock ledge and tie her to the trunk of an alder tree. We took a breather sitting on a rough granite outcropping that was still warm with the midday heat. To the north, the sky was washed with amber rays of the descending sun, and the distant islands were coal-black silhouettes against the pale-blue sea.

For dinner we cooked ground-chicken burgers on the Trangia stove and served them on split, toasted rolls with sliced cherry tomatoes, mixed greens, and cucumber mayonnaise. Our cliff-top feast brought a sigh of pleasure from Inari. We found a good spot for the tent, close by our boat and protected from the wind by a group of crooked pine trees.

Sometime during the night, I was awakened from a sound sleep by a peal of thunder. As rain hit the tent I rose and gathered the foulweather gear we had hung up in branches to dry and brought it into the tent.

We woke up to an overcast day and during breakfast I checked the forecast. The gale warning had been downgraded to winds of 14 to 18 knots: we could proceed with the short 2-mile unprotected crossing into the Vänö archipelago as planned. This crossing separates the inner archipelago—where the islands are larger, higher, often with steep rock shores covered with gray lichen and mostly capped with thick stands of pine trees—from the outer archipelago where diminutive islands have copses of alder scattered in small valleys in between cliffs wherever they can find some shelter from the elements and enough soil to grow from. Before the crossing we had some tacking to do into the southwesterly wind, which was bringing dark clouds that threatened rain and high wind. We sailed toward a half-mile-wide island and headed straight for a gentle slope of pale beige and gray granite. We pulled ELDIR ashore and set up our pop-up tent just as the rain started; we lay down inside and listened to the wind and rain rattle the tent.

After lunch and with the rain over, we set sail again and began the crossing in seas only 3’ high and no longer cresting. A few tacks into the crossing the wind eased, and we shook out the reef. Approaching Vänö, the largest island in an archipelago that shares its name, the rain started again, and it was soon dripping from the sails. The wind nearly died, but as we bypassed Vänö we could veer away from the wind and keep ELDIR gliding along through an intricate labyrinth of dull-gray granite islands. After a couple of hours, the rain stopped, and the sun revealed itself and turned the landscape into a palette of bright colors. Bare slopes of granite rising gently from the bright blue sea were washed in muted orange and pink.

Inari and I were thoroughly soaked, and despite the sun, we shivered from the cold. Luckily, our destination for the night was our summer cabin in the Vänö archipelago where I spent most of my childhood summers. After endless tacking in the feeble wind through a knot of islets, some carpeted with low wind-shorn alder trees and others just bare rock, we reached Örskär. My sister and her husband were waiting for us and had already warmed the sauna next to the cabin. They had arrived earlier, having taken the ferry to Vänö and our small open motorboat from there to Örskär. Inari and I settled into the cabin, changed out of our wet clothes, and warmed up. That evening, we relaxed in the sauna, took some refreshing dips in the sea, and had dinner before calling it a day and retiring to the cabin’s bunks for a long and peaceful sleep.

In the morning, headwinds had been forecast again, but for a moment we enjoyed sailing a gentle southerly breeze on a broad reach. As we approached a narrow channel only as wide as a paved highway east of Borstö Island, the wind turned against us. Rather than short-tack up the passage, we dropped sail and I took to the oars for the first and only time of our cruise. Once we were clear of the channel, the wind picked up, and we raised the sail again. We could bypass Borstö with a single tack and crossed the main fairway leading in an east–west direction from Vänö to Jurmo. This passage is open to winds from the east and west and, beyond Borstö, also from the south. As the wind was increasing, we chose to cross this opening and seek a more sheltered route north of the passage.

It was lunchtime as we approached an isolated bare islet the size of a basketball court and found a spot for landing on the lee shore. As I cooked some pasta, Inari prepared a cold sauce from fresh avocado, chopped onion, garlic, lime, and chili. On the windward side of the islet, looking straight into the wind, we could see a faint silhouette of Jurmo on the horizon about 11 miles west. It seemed unreachable, as the wind and waves would keep us crawling and tacking through the maze of islands, north of the straight, open passage toward Jurmo.

During lunch the wind increased, and as we continued northwest we encountered escalating seas, although we were somewhat in the better-protected waterways. Even reefed, ELDIR was heeling more and more, and the waves hitting us astern and on the port side occasionally caused water to lap over the leeward rail. Inari, as calm and as upbeat as ever, steered with a steady hand. Her positive spirit made for pleasant company despite the occasionally challenging conditions. We changed our course farther north and aimed for the shelter of Lökholm, an island just one-half-mile across. Now on a beam reach, ELDIR rose steep wave faces to their crests, then doubled her speed on the descent to the troughs, riding one wave after another.

It wasn’t long before we entered the sheltered bay on the northeast side of Lökholm, where a half-dozen private piers and boathouses, painted red and white, were scattered all along the shore. To the south of us was a sandy beach backed by low-growing alder trees where we could land, and we took a tack back to it. As we approached, Inari lowered the sail and I poled with an oar to the beach; we would wait here for the wind to blow off its rough edge. We strolled around the island on a beautifully maintained path meandering in between the cliffs and knee-high fields of heather. The path led to an arboreal tunnel of old alders with trunks 20″ across and shadowy crowns spreading above us some 20′ high. The sun broke through the murky overcast as we passed a few old crofts and courtyards, probably now used as summer houses. Not once during the walk did we glimpse a single person, giving the island an eerie stillness.

By the time we got back to our boat, the sea had calmed and no longer was streaked with white crests, so we set out and beat to the northwest. ELDIR needed more power to get enough momentum to carry through the waves, so we shook out the reef. She pressed her lee side into the sea and started happily hobby-horsing across the swell.

We beat along on a passage across Bodö Reach and eventually started feeling that we had had enough for one day. To the south was Örarna, a low, cruciform island made up of four ragged, intersecting peninsulas; it seemed to have a flat, level span of rock on its northern end where we could camp. We sailed ashore and bathed in the honey-colored evening light as we pulled ELDIR up on a ledge. I popped up our tent straight onto the gently sloping rock as Inari started chopping an onion for our dinner, adding chickpeas, rice, garlic, canned cherry tomatoes, and spices.

During the night, a squall passed over us, rattling the tent and pounding the fly with heavy rain. It was still raining in the morning—a good excuse to sleep in. When I got up to make breakfast there was a weak shower, and shortly afterward the sky cleared.

We carried on our battle against the wind along Bodö Reach, and the chop grew bigger as we left the shelter of Trunsö to the south of us. While Jurmo Island was to the southwest of us, our plan was to head west in the lee of a group of islands north of Jurmo Reach and then, conditions permitting, we would make the crossing. If we were lucky and the wind shifted westward, we’d have a chance to make the crossing from the north, without having to fight to windward.

We stopped for lunch just outside Björkö, behind an islet that sheltered a deep natural harbor. I rarely use the anchor, as it’s easier to pull ELDIR ashore on most stops, but decided to drop the hook here. Unfortunately, we lost the anchor—the knot holding it to the rode slipped loose from the hook as we were preparing lunch.

Before we got under way again I tied in a reef, but shortly after we departed ELDIR did not have enough power to make any real progress through the chop so we shook it out. We pounded to weather, tack after tack, and even by late afternoon the wind showed no signs of waning. I decided we’d seek shelter in a cove formed by a steep, high island called Lotan and a low small islet almost attached to it. We would have more shelter behind the steep cliffs of Lotan, but as it is easy to misjudge the conditions on the leeward side of larger islands, I preferred the low rocky shores of the islet where we would have an unobstructed view toward Jurmo and the crossing.

After we came ashore I was feeling clammy, so I took a dip while Inari sat by the cliff and read a book. We checked the weather again; the forecast was for 18 knots of wind with gusts to 25 knots. I decided that we would wait for the worst of it to blow over. From previous encounters I’d had with Jurmo Reach in bigger boats, I knew that this crossing could be more difficult than any other we had previously made with ELDIR.

We popped up our tent up on the bare rock but struggled to find a spot where the wind would not collapse it. There was little shelter to be found on the islet, but we found a rock face as high as a minivan, which barely provided enough shelter for our tent. After some salad and sandwiches, we retreated to the shaking tent and set an alarm for 2 a.m. We had roughly a 24-hour weather window to get in and out of Jurmo, and there was little time to waste.

When the alarm went off I got up, but didn’t feel like I had slept at all even though I must have nodded off. I poked my head out of the tent; our map, in a plastic cover, lay just outside the tent, but I could barely see it in the darkness. I said to Inari that it would be better to wait for some morning twilight, and she agreed. We set the alarm for 4 a.m. When it went off, it woke me from a deep sleep. The wind had died down, so we promptly packed our gear and headed for the boat. Dawn and the newly risen moon cast some light on the water, and we felt confident about taking on the crossing.

Close-reaching, ELDIR glided across the abated sea, as a muted red daybreak painted a glowing background to the dark silhouettes of islands around us. Inari and I sailed without saying a word.

As the sun’s bright disc gained some height above the horizon, laying its warm light on us, we drew near the end of the crossing. Jurmo’s steeply rising northern shore of rocks and sand spread out beyond the bow.

We sailed westward along a steep, boulder-strewn bank of sand. In the frail puffs of wind, we struggled to work ELDIR to weather. It would have taken us an hour or so to reach the harbor; instead, we came about and set a course toward a rocky shore close by where Inari would be staying. When we found a suitable place to get ELDIR up on the steep shore, we were relieved to have reached our destination and a little weary from the several days of arduous windward sailing. We were low on food and water, so we took a walk to the harbor where a small cafeteria and shop operates in a weathered cottage-like building—painted brick red with white trim—that sits at the root of one of the weathered wooden piers.

With the supplies we’d bought in a bag, we hiked back to our boat along a path that took us to the 56′-high summit of the Högberget, Jurmo’s highest point. The view from the top takes in the open Baltic Sea and the island’s landscape, covered in low-growing heather and juniper, that extends on narrowing snake-tail capes that meander far into the sea to the southwest and northeast.

Back at the boat, Inari and I said our farewells to each other and she returned to the harbor to rendezvous with the rest of her company for her stay on Jurmo. It was still early in the day; I tied a hammock under alder trees close by and tried to have a nap, but while I was tired, I was not sleepy. When I felt and heard the wind stirring, I decided to launch.

With an 8-knot westerly and clear skies, the return crossing with a following breeze was a relaxed one. I wanted to position myself on the north side of the eastward open-water passage from Jurmo because the next day’s forecast was for a brisk northerly breeze of 17 to 22 knots; I didn’t want to take that on closehauled. By moving northward now, I’d make the rest of the return passage on a reach or a run, depending on route selection.

I sailed 7 miles northeast from Jurmo and took a lunch break on a small islet just outside the old fishing village of Trunsö. The smoked salmon I had bought from the Jurmo shop was a welcome change to the menu. Energized by coffee, I proceeded north through the narrow passage on the east side of Trunsö and continued northeast toward Lökholm. Afternoon was turning into early evening when I began to look for a suitable island to spend the night on. I had passed several uninviting high and overgrown islands with steep and rocky shores. After sailing through the channel at Lökholm, I headed toward a cluster of small islands where I hoped to find a haven from the expected northerly. As I bypassed Skataskär’s southern cape and turned northeast, my intuition proved right: before me I saw a beautiful horseshoe bay with rocky shores and a gently sloping ledge toward which I steered ELDIR. Low and crooked alder trees provided shelter from winds, and a flat spot on the ledge where I’d landed was big enough for my tent. My refuge was painted in the soft light of the evening sun while a bank of dense, dark clouds crept in from the southwest, rumbling with thunder. I slept well in my rocky refuge.

In the morning, I woke up to a world shaded by gray clouds, with wind hissing through the alders. Although my campsite was sheltered, I could see gusts of wind changing the colors of the sea. Farther away, waves rose in white crests as they hit and tumbled over shoals and skerries. I took my time with breakfast and then prepared the boat well, anticipating a rough ride.

The first leg of my passage would be a flat run southward, so I started with a makeshift second reef by raising only the yard, leaving the boom to rest on the gunwale. This had worked well previously, when I had encountered conditions in which ELDIR would have been overpowered with only the single reef sewn in the sail. With greatly shortened sail, ELDIR was soon surging with the waves, perfectly under control. As I approached Borstö I had to decide whether to take the marked route, which required a brief tack into the wind, or to continue southeast through narrow channels between small islets. I chose the former and hoisted the yard to raise the sail with its reef tied-in and turned to weather. The wind spilling over and around land was gusting and constantly changing directions; I struggled to tack and soon gave up. I lowered the sail altogether and turned downwind. By occasionally lifting the lugsail’s yard by hand, I navigated the unfamiliar waters slowly, scouting ahead for signs of shoals or rocks.

I turned east and the route I had initially decided against turned out to be fine and sheltered by some islands. I again hoisted the sail with the single reef and was soon exposed to the north wind and waves that had gathered size and force over several miles of fetch. I was able to turn a bit more away from the wind and could feel ELDIR rising on a wave and storming along with white foam fanning out from both sides. In spite of the demanding conditions, I had a peculiar feeling of control. With the high speed the boat seemed to become more stable and needed only minor tweaks on the tiller.

After a while, as I was closing in on a narrow channel, I saw a man standing on a cliff outside a cottage and a moment later a small crowd joined him. They were all watching ELDIR, a tiny, red-sailed, ancient-looking craft riding the swell with white crests flaring from the bow. As I reached the lee of the channel, it was as if I had slammed on the brakes, leaving ELDIR only enough speed to glide gracefully along. Clearing the channel, I turned north and landed on a small bare ledge located in the middle of a sheltered cove on the east shore of Stockhamn. I shook off the adrenalin as I prepared salad and sandwiches followed by coffee. I checked my phone and saw a text from Inari: “Everything okay? I have never seen bigger waves as today on the north shore of Jurmo.”

It was still blowing quite a bit when I got underway again. I sailed in a more sheltered route toward Örskär. Broad- and beam-reaching to our cottage was a blast, although in waters somewhat sheltered by islands on the way, I was doing less surfing. The harbor by our cottage lies on the southern side of the island, and it took quite a bit of tacking to enter it, the wind being gusty and shifting as it passed over the island. I spent a pleasant afternoon and evening enjoying the sauna, dinner, and the company of my sister and her husband.

From Örskär I had only 11 miles left to reach Kasnäs. The weather was docile with bright blue skies and a following wind of 6 to 10 knots. Instead of the regular, more protected routes, I chose to sail northeast from our harbor into a scattering of islands and islets. To navigate through granite skerries and islets, I kept my finger on the map and counted the islands as I passed by.

After half an hour or so I had avoided all the hidden shallows and rocks and was through the Vänö archipelago, sailing open water toward the Rosala archipelago. ELDIR rocked gently in the swell, and my last passage was again more sheltered. I eventually turned north toward Kasnäs Harbor and sailed all the way right up to the boat ramp. Exhausted by six days of challenging sailing, I stepped out of ELDIR feeling very much alive.

Mats Vuorenjuuri is the father of three and has been an entrepreneur making a living in graphic design, photography, freelance writing, and most recently as a boatbuilder as well, offering boatbuilding and maintenance services through Nordic Craft. After sailing various types of vessels,including sail-training schooners, he enjoys the simplicity and pleasures of small boats . He wrote about cruising the Finnish coast in his Coquina in our May 2016 issue and about a Lakeland Row in January 2017.

If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.

It’s a Wrap

For decades I’ve used spiral wraps of slender strips of rubber cut from inner tubes in gluing up oars, paddles, and spars. I used the rubber strips initially because I didn’t have enough clamps for the longer pieces or clamps large enough to span blanks for oar and paddle blades. Even though I now have plenty of clamps, including bar clamps, I still use rubber strips for those particular jobs. The strips are easy to apply and provide plenty of pressure. The rubber weighs next to nothing—a set of clamps is heavy and can cause a workpiece to sag and curve—and hardly occupies any space while doing its job, so the workpiece is easy to set aside while the glue cures.

While the stretch wrap is not reusable, it is recyclable. The roll I bought at Home Depot is made by Pratt Retail Specialties and is made of 100% recycled plastic, and, according to my online research, it can be recycled. Stretch wraps are usually made of linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE), a category-four recyclable material. It can be recycled along with low-density polyethylene (LDPE), which is also a category-four material, at locations where plastic-film products such as plastic bags are collected. Check with your local recycling programs. The stretch wrap cannot be recycled with the remnants of Titebond on it.

While I haven’t used the stretch wrap on bird’s-mouth spars yet, I will the next time I have the opportunity. I expect the wrap, along with rubber strips and maybe some of the stainless-steel hose clamps I’ve used for past spars, will be a combination that tidies up another very messy glue-up. While it’s often said a boatbuilder can never have too many clamps, there are jobs more easily and just as effectively done without using any at all.

Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly.

You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Magazine readers by sending us an email.

Quick Change Jack

We have five trailers to tow around our armada of small boats, and when we hit the road we carry a roadside repair kit, with one of the most important items being a trailer jack to change out flat tires or bad wheel bearings. For many years we focused on jacking up the trailer frame, which meant a variety of jacks ranging from a repurposed car jack, a 3-ton bottle jack, a wooden 2×6, to a heavy floor jack. Recently we came across a better solution, the Springfield Quick Change Jack, which has no moving parts and lets the towing vehicle do the lifting.

The jack is a heavy-duty aluminum semicircle that cradles the axle in a notch on one end and uses a cam action to raise the axle, with lifting effort provided by the tow vehicle. It is easy to use. The jack is placed under the axle, close to the inside of the wheel and tire that need to be raised. Seven treads molded on the arc of the jack grip the ground while the vehicle is moved forward or backward, depending on which direction the jack has been placed. Once the tire is raised enough to perform the necessary work, the tow vehicle is placed in park, parking brake set, and, for a belts-and-suspenders approach, a set of wheel chocks is placed around the tow vehicle’s tires. We have found the jack to be just as steady as any of the other jacks that we have used and, in some cases, even steadier because the length of an axle jack is much shorter than a frame jack.

The jack is designed to work on trailers that have round or square axles and wheels that range in size from 10″ to 15″ in diameter, which covers all five of our trailers. The weight capacity of the jack is 4,000 lbs. The jack’s small size and light weight mean that it can be stored just about anywhere, and some similar versions have predrilled holes that allow the jack to be bolted to the trailer frame for everyday carry. We leave ours loose because we have multiple tow vehicles and multiple trailers. When we hit the road we grab the jack, a folding lug wrench, and a spare tire (if the spare is not already mounted to the trailer).

Nothing can ruin a fun day of boating quicker than a roadside breakdown, and the less time we spend raising and lowering a trailer on the side of the road, the better. Fortunately, the Quick Change Jack lives up to its name.

Audrey and Kent Lewis, aka Skipper and Clark, have towed boat trailers across the U.S., from left to right and from top to bottom, with a most memorable experience of burning up a brand-new set of 8” tires in six hours during a daytime dash across Arizona in the summer. Luckily, they had thought ahead and had brought two spares. Their small boat adventures are blogged at Small Boat Restoration.

The Springfield Quick Change Trailer Jack is manufactured by Springfield Marine and is available from National Supply for $72.99, from Amazon for $59.94, and from other online retail outlets. Overton’s sells a similar jack that works on 8″ to 15″ wheels.

Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising, or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.

Small Boat Head System

Once upon a time, a cedar bucket for a head was considered luxury aboard a small boat. L. Francis Herreshoff, in his drawing of his Rozinante, even shows one in use by a Rodin-like Thinker. But no more. “Bucket and chuck it” is a thing of the past. And here on the Maine coast we are strictly Leave No Trace—no cat holes and no digging at all on the islands—so the only alternative is a pack-it-out system, whether used ashore or afloat.

The problem is, of course, that small boats are still small. Portable flush toilets, like the classic Thetford and Dometic toilets, are too large to fit into most open boats. The folks at Duckworks decided to find a solution and produced their Small Boat Head System (SBHS): “The aim for it,” according to Duckworks, “is more for last-resort use than for daily function as a head. The idea was a solution that can be realistically carried on a small sail-and-oar type boat. The inspiration was events like the Salish 100 cruise where it’s unlikely we’ll be away from marinas or campground facilities for more than a day, but where a portable head may well be needed in a pinch. And then of course when not being used as a head it can serve other functions—dry stowage, bucket, campfire seat, etc.”

The SBHS is built around a 3.5-gallon cleaning bucket with the same 11-3/4″ diameter as standard 5-gallon buckets, but is just 10-3/4″ tall. The bucket is sturdy, much more so than the somewhat flimsy ubiquitous paint and drywall-compound buckets, and comes with a thick, soft rope handle. The system includes a small toilet seat, a caddy for toilet supplies, a padded bucket-seat top, a rubberized stabilizing base that can be screwed in place, liner bags, and a gelling waste treatment.

Preparing for a week on the Maine Island Trail in my 17′ oar-and-sail boat, I packed the full system and gave it a workout. On my boat, the base isn’t required. The bucket stows nicely and securely without it in between the daggerboard trunk and a buoyancy bag, and therefore doesn’t need the base to keep it from sliding around. I moved the bucket to centerline aft of the center seat to use it. The base also requires a flat surface, and there is too much curve to the floorboards to take it. The bucket and seat top are great; they make a convenient camp seat and support my full weight when I am crawling around in the boat. Their combined height of 11-1/2″ puts the top just flush with the boat’s center seat. I took the toilet seat along, but I didn’t use it. The seat can be a more comfortable perch than the bucket rim, but I found it quite simple to just use the bucket and liner bag without it.

The system includes a caddy to carry toilet paper as well as the system’s gelling agent and bags to line the bucket and hold the waste. The caddy, originally designed to hold cleaning supplies, is 6-3/8″ tall and leaves 4″ of room for filled wasted bags in the bottom of the bucket. You could cut the handle off to leave almost 6″ of room and replace the handle with a length of cord.

To use the SBHS, you place a bag in the bucket and fold its edge over the bucket rim. The toilet seat snaps on—it’s a tight fit—and holds everything together. Before using the toilet, you sprinkle a bit of EcoGel into the bag. Each packet is good for several uses. Each bag can be used for single or multiple uses, according to your preferences. After use, the bag is removed by taking toilet seat off before tying the top of the bag with an overhand knot. The used bags are stored in the bottom of the bucket; there was plenty of room for me to store a week’s worth (or more) of them.

If the SBHS will get a lot of use, keeping the supplies outside of the bucket will free space in the bucket for waste storage. Plastic airtight ground-coffee containers work well for storing the toilet paper, bags, and gel. I also found some 10″ round Rubbermaid containers that fit nicely inside the bucket and have room for the toilet supplies or for filled waste bags to provide tidier storage inside the bucket or outside. The containers also make it easy to empty the bucket to use it for other purposes. One-gallon plastic paint buckets with the metal handle removed can also safely store used waste bags to free space in the bucket.

The liner bags are biodegradable and work well with the system. They are developed specifically for human waste disposal and work in conjunction with Eco Gel, a powder that deodorizes and gels the liquid waste. Eco Gel is nontoxic and composed of citric acid, lemongrass extract, and sodium polyacrylate, which is the same gelling agent used in diapers and gel cold packs. Sodium polyacrylate is not biodegradable. Used bags and their contents are disposed of in a trash-disposal facility.

My preference for waste disposal starts with a portable toilet that would be emptied at a standard toilet connected to a sewage treatment facility. Second would be a well-maintained campsite outhouse; and third, in keeping with intended purpose of the SBHS, would be bagged waste disposed of in a municipal solid-waste system. Following the principles of Leave No Trace and the prohibition of dumping waste overboard, the SBHS provides a compact and convenient means of taking care of waste in any craft larger than a kayak whenever you’re boating in areas without facilities, leaving them unsullied.

Ben Fuller, curator of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has been messing about in small boats for a very long time. He is owned by a dozen or more boats ranging from an International Canoe to a faering.

The complete Small Boat Head System is available from Duckworks Boat Builder Supply for $79. The “Complete System” includes all the items below including one roll of liner bags but does not include gel packets.

Editor’s notes

After reading Ben’s article, I bought the Small Boat Head System (SBHS) from Duckworks. While the three largest of my boats have room for a portable flush toilet, my other boats don’t. The smallest of them, LUNA, is a sneakbox and a very capable cruiser. I spent 2-1/2 months aboard her during the winter of 1985-86 and used whatever restroom facilities were available on shore, but more often I had to resort to digging catholes. I’m no longer comfortable with that routine; it doesn’t seem fair to get so much pleasure from the wilderness and then use it as my toilet.

I knew the SBHS would be too large to stow under LUNA’s deck and planned on adapting another bucket to fit. The lid, toilet seat, and caddy all fit standard five-gallon buckets, so I cut about 5-1/2″ off the bottom of a Home Depot bucket and installed a 3/4″ plywood bottom in the shortened top part. The only drawback with cutting the classic orange bucket in half was that I lost its Home Depot rallying-cry motto: “Let’s DO this.”

As Ben does, I use my modified SBHS without the toilet seat. The bucket rim isn’t unpleasant to sit on, but without the toilet seat clipped over the top of the bag, I use a cord with a lock to hold the bag in place when I get up (a slightly sweaty bum can be a bit sticky). To open more holding space in the bucket, I cut the handle off the caddy. There are two holes molded into the ends of the caddy’s divider that are just right for adding a handle of 1/8″ braided cord.

I’ll carry my shortened SBHS aboard the boats that have never had toilet facilities and use it when I get caught away from public restrooms. It’s a good way to leave no trace.

Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising, or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.

HOPEWELL

Jeremiah Gallay’s earliest boating memories are of canoe outings with his dad on the rivers and lakes of Maryland. The experiences made a lasting impression; he took up sailing while studying art in college, and his interest in boats drifted into his studies. Fallen leaves and branches suggested floating sculpture, and he built functional watercraft in organic forms. Years later, Jeremiah created LEAF-BOAT, modeled after a fallen leaf with its edges curled upward. He drew the leaf, modified and scaled the drawings, and built the design as a cedar-strip-on-oak-frame vessel to be paddled by a crew of two.

In the early 2000s, when Jeremiah was in his late 20s, he began designing and building a more conventional craft, a 12′4″ gaff-rigged catboat. He created the drawings with a CAD program, constructed a solid keel and frames, and sheathed the hull in marine plywood—except for the forefoot. Plywood couldn’t take its compound curves, so he carved this element from solid blocks of wood. The project was complex and challenging, but after nearly four years of work, the boat was launched and it worked beautifully. Jeremiah named the boat STEADY, reflecting personal values of stability, balance, and perseverance. As an Irish friend used to encourage him, “Steady on, Jer.”

After STEADY and LEAF-BOAT, Jeremiah was considering another project and his dad suggested a motorboat. Since Jeremiah knew less about motorboats than he did about sailboats, he decided to look for an existing design. The search led him to Paolo Lodigiani, an Italian boat designer based in Milan who had launched his company, B.C.A. Demco, nearly 30 years ago. B.C.A. is an acronym for Barche Con Anima, Italian for “boats with a soul,” and Paolo created Demco from the Latin dementia construendi or “the madness of building.” The “madness,” Paolo writes, “is clearly ironic, as I am more and more convinced that boat-building, even if to someone it can appear as a madness, is actually an excellent therapy.” Jeremiah bought plans for Paolo’s Silver 333, a 3.33m (11′) two-person runabout with a beam of 5′ and powered by an outboard of up to 20 hp.

The specified stitch-and-glue construction method didn’t appeal to Jeremiah, so he wrote to Paolo, who sent CAD files to help adapt the Silver 333 to plywood-on-frame construction. The conversion took a bit of work, but Jeremiah eventually produced drawings that he could print at full size for patterns. He started construction in 2017 and continued the work over the next few years.

On a fall day in 2020, Jeremiah decided to take STEADY out sailing on the Potomac River. The conditions were excellent, and he was able to go farther downriver than usual before stopping for a snack and turning around. Driving home from the marina, he began to experience some chest pain and once home, called for an ambulance. Jeremiah, then only in his late 40s, was having a heart attack. In the interest of expediency the hospital staff didn’t stop to ask his name, but assigned him the name “Hopewell.” After recovering, Jeremiah suggested to his dad that HOPEWELL might be an appropriately uplifting name for the not-yet-finished runabout.

A year later, Jeremiah had completed the motorboat and launched it with family and friends, four-and-a-half years after the project began. In a speech he gave at the launching, Jeremiah said:

A boat, for me, is an analogy: we strive to stay afloat in more ways than one. Each of us works to develop an understanding of the world and to find our own way of exploring the unknown. This effort can be challenging, as our vision may be clouded, and our stability may be compromised. Our actions and ideas reflect our curiosity for exploration and our desire for understanding. We move through the environment using our ingenuity and available resources. Boats enable us to go places we could not otherwise go, and to see things around the bend.

Building the Silver 333 had indeed been “an excellent therapy” for Jeremiah. His experience taught him that “boats can certainly raise our spirits as well as our physical selves.” His runabout’s name carries on the hospital staff’s message that people can overcome challenges with tenacious positive effort—HOPEWELL.

Do you have a boat with an interesting story? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats Magazine readers.

Painting SYMRA

SYMRA is a classic wooden sloop designed by John Alden and built by the Edison Vocational School in Seattle, Washington. She was launched in 1941, and has been in my family for 66 years.

When I took over her stewardship from my father in 1974, I soon grew extremely frustrated with the quality of the paint lines I was achieving with masking tape. Unless that 1970s-vintage tape was applied with enough pressure, paint would seep under its edge and leave a mess; tape applied with enough pressure to prevent seepage often pulled away small pieces of the underlying freshly applied topside enamel when the tape was removed.

In those days I was masking both the boot top and covestripe. After those early disastrous experiences, it was easy to jettison the accenting covestripe and leave the cove the same shade of white as the hull. SYMRA has relatively low freeboard, and didn’t need this accenting element. But I wanted to keep the boot top, and this presented a different problem.

Painting Scribed Waterlines

A yacht’s waterline is typically scribed into the hull, meaning it is delineated by a shallow, precise, line that’s cut into the wood’s surface. If there is a boot top, then there are two such lines to scribe. These lines do more than record the locations of waterlines; they also provide a means by which one can “cut-in” the paint.

A waterline has to be periodically rescribed after sanding and paint begin to obscure it. If the line is still fair and correctly located, then one can simply tack a batten along it, and then, with light pressure, drag the corner of a saw along it to scribe the line. If the scribe marks have been obliterated, then the scum line, or line of oxidized bottom paint, can serve as a reference provided the boat has been in proper trim. (The bottom paint should reach above the line of flotation for effectiveness as well as appearance.)

The boot top is maintained in the same manner as Mark Haley’s cabin sides: scrape, sand, prime, glaze, sand, prime, and paint. As with Haley’s description of cutting-in the red trim detail against his white cabin side, a scribed waterline provides a natural detail to which to cut. When an observer backs away just a few feet from the boat, the scribe mark is imperceptible to the eye; all one perceives then is the crisply cut waterline. Some painters imagine the scribe mark as a sort of micro-moat. They load the brush with a modest amount of paint, and hold it slightly skewed to its direction of travel so that only the tip is contacting the scribe mark. As the brush moves along the scribed line, paint flows off it and into the “moat.” It takes a steady hand, but the scribed line provides a sure reference. If the amount of paint is, indeed, modest, then the paint will be contained by the scribed line, and a fair and smooth painted line will develop. Other painters see the scribed line as a sort of fence, to be painted up to, but not in to; this has the benefit of not filling in the scribed line with paint. Regardless of which technique you develop, the rest of the area is painted as portions of the line are cut-in.

Mark reports that he used a 1″-square residential painting pad—an “edger”—to paint his waterline, with very good results. —Eds.

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Mackinaw Boat

Designer Nelson Zimmer based this double-ended shoal-draft ketch design on the highly regarded Mackinaw boats that worked Lake Michigan and Lake Superior during the late 1800s.

Plans for Nelson Zimmer’s Mackinaw are available from The WoodenBoat Store.