Built here at the WoodenBoat School, our Iain Oughtred-designed Caledonia Yawl, SWIFTY is a handsome and versatile double-ender, guaranteed to turn heads on any waterfront. She’s comfortable to sail in a stiff breeze and dazzles in light air and to windward.
With well-balanced, relatively high ends, this lean and long yawl shows considerable reserve buoyancy above the waterline throughout her length.
In steady winds she’ll safely sail heeled over, her crew central and sitting up to windward.
The push/pull tiller may take some time to get used to but it works perfectly. Pulling the tiller forward will turn the boat to port.
To assure positive tacking, simply back the mizzen to the inside of the turn as you come about.
Plans for Iain Oughtred’s Caledonia Yawl are available from The WoodenBoat Store.
For many people, trailering a boat is a good—and perhaps the only—way to get out on the water. Unfortunately, the trailer is often the very last thing the builder thinks about. After spending all that money and time building the boat, it is tempting to economize by buying a cheap, too-light rig. That’s a bad idea. A too-small trailer is not only short-lived, it’s also dangerous.
Like building the boat, the business of trailering begins with planning. The first step in formulating the plan is to check the tow rating of your vehicle to get an idea of how large a trailer you can haul. It’s best, however, to take those ratings with a grain of salt, for almost any vehicle will haul a glued-lap Whitehall a few miles over moderate terrain to the local launch ramp; such a scenario is unlikely to test the mettle of your automatic transmission’s cooling system or your radiator, or to push your tires to their limit. It’s quite another thing, however, to attempt towing your brand-new mahogany-planked Haven 12-1/2 (see page 90) with a 1978 Subaru through the Rockies in summer. In this case, a bit more consideration needs to be given to tow-vehicle selection and upkeep.
Photo by Matthew P. Murphy
A proper towing vehicle, a trailer well-matched to the boat and properly maintained, and a good grasp of procedures, are the elements of safe trailering. Here, Aaron Porter prepares to haul his Jericho Bay Lobster Skiff.
For example, an old friend, Bruce Armstrong, regularly takes his 20′ Tolman Skiff with outboard mounted from Southern California to Lake Powell in September. He reports running 70 mph in 100-degree heat, climbing 5,000′ grades in company with dozens of 18-wheelers. Bruce, noting “failure is not an option,” drives an industrial-strength 2001, 245-hp High Output Cummins powered Dodge 4×4 rated to tow 13,500 lbs.
While Bruce’s rig might be overkill for your situation, there are still many factors to consider when setting up for trailering. The following are some things to consider as you formulate your plan.
Photo by Matthew P. Murphy
Carpeted bunks distribute the weight of a hull evenly, and allow the boat’s position on the trailer to be adjusted without damage to the bottom.
What Size Trailer?
Once you’ve determined your vehicle’s towing capacity, the next thing is to determine how much your boat weighs. For a small boat, if you don’t trust the weight specified in the design, this can often be done with simple bathroom scales. Another way to go is to place the boat on a borrowed trailer and take it to a truck scale. Bring the boat back home and weigh the trailer alone. Subtract this weight from the total boat-plus-trailer weight to give you the actual weight of the boat.
U.S. federal law requires that a trailer display its “Gross Vehicle Weight Rating” (GVWR), which is the total weight of boat and gear. When figuring the weight of the loaded trailer, be sure to include the boat, engine, gasoline (6 lbs per U.S. gallon), water (8 lbs per U.S. gallon), and gear. A useful margin of safety is that the total weight be no more than 85 percent of the GVWR. For larger boats, a tandem-axle trailer might be considered. They track better and are less prone to fishtail than single-axle trailers. Also, the extra wheels offer safer handling in case of a blowout.
Just as the trailer must be properly sized to the boat’s length and weight, the boat also needs to be properly braced, or cradled, by rollers and bunks—as least as well as when storing the vessel for winter. Boats are used to being uniformly supported by the water. When it’s out of the water, the boat has all the strain taken up at just a few places. Traditional wooden boats need more support than fiberglass ones. If necessary, augment the manufacturer’s standard equipment with homemade structures. Firehose-covered removable bunks will go a long way toward protecting the hull against the stress and strain of over-the-road travel; generally, they’re better than rollers, which tend to point-load a planked wooden hull, and thus cause damage. Outboard-powered wooden boats present a special problem, as the weight of the overhanging engine can stress the hull and even hog the keel. The transom should be directly and fully supported by a full trailer cross member.
Tongue Weight
Tongue weight is the weight of the trailer’s tongue at the vehicle. The general rule is that it be 10 percent of the total combined weight of boat and trailer. Too much weight on the tongue puts excessive stress on the towing vehicle’s suspension. Excessive tongue weight can also cause steering problems by reducing the weight on the vehicle’s front wheels. Conversely, if there is too much weight on the after portion of the trailer, it can sway and get twitchy, weaving back and forth. Weight can be adjusted by moving the boat back and forth, checking it with a scale.
Photo by Matthew P. Murphy
Before going down the road, the boat’s position on the trailer should be evaluated; 10 percent of the total trailer-plus-boat weight should be on the tongue.
Trailer Hitches
There are four classes of hitches; these are rated according to the weight (GVWR) they will be pulling. The ratings are as follows:
Class I: ……………………………………. 2,000 lbs
Class II: ………………………………….. 3,500 lbs
Class III: …………………………………. 5,000 lbs
Class IV: …………………………………. 10,000 lbs
Galvanized or Paint?
Unless the trailer is used only in fresh water, galvanized trailers will last longer and require less maintenance. Regardless of whether the trailer is galvanized or not, a thorough rinsing with fresh water after each saltwater immersion will also extend the life of the trailer. When rinsing, pay particular attention to the axles, which tend to rust more quickly than the trailer frame.
A Fitted Cover
A dandy trailer accessory is a fitted travel cover. This will keep the boat’s interior clean of road dirt during transit, saving cleanup time before launching. And, like those interior luggage compartment covers in passenger vehicles, a travel cover will also help keep expensive boat bits safe from prying eyes at rest stops.
A cover—especially a canvas one—is also great for helping to keep a wooden boat tight while it’s parked in the yard. Canvas ventilates when it’s dry, allowing fresh air in; when wet, the canvas swells a bit, keeping rainwater out.
Photo by Matthew P. Murphy
A surprising amount of debris can be kicked up by highway travel. A well-fitted and -secured cover will guard against this.
Wheels and Tires
A tire or bearing failure going down the road at high- way speeds is bad news, yet in the rush to get going, often the running gear of a trailer is overlooked. To that end, let’s take a look underneath.
If you are buying a new trailer, consider one with larger wheels, as they do not have to work as hard as smaller ones. If you have purchased a used trailer, start by inspecting the tires. Do they have enough tread? Are they inflated properly to the manufacturer’s specifications? Inspect them for rot, cracking, and cuts. If in doubt, replace the tires. Trailer tires have thicker sidewalls than automobile tires. Be sure the previous owner did not mix bias-belted and radial tires; the trailer won’t track properly in this case. Take a look at the wheels: Salt water can raise the dickens with trailer rims. If they are rusty, give them a wire-brushing and look closer. If the wheel is too corroded and porous, it may not properly hold air. After cleaning, give the wheels a good coat of protective paint.
Photo by Matthew P. Murphy
Wheels and tires should be inspected for rust and cracks. The example we see here is fine for a yard trailer, but questionable for over-the-road service.
Over time, when launching, water can infiltrate the protective cover over the wheel bearings and cause them to wear or fail. It’s a good idea to annually jack up the wheels (one at a time) to check the bearings on the hub. Place a hand on either side of the wheel and rock it in and out to check for movement. There should be a slight amount of play, but if it is excessive the bearing may need to be adjusted or replaced. Some trailer owners use an aftermarket wheel-bearing protector like the “Bearing Buddy,” which is designed to keep a slight pressure of grease between the inside of the hub and the outside environment; this deters water infiltration into the axle hub. Bearing upkeep requires a couple of shots of grease before every trailer submersion. Savvy long-distance towers like my friend Bruce carry spare sets of bearings, tubes of grease, and adequate tools on long trips; they might also carry an entire hub-and-bearing assembly with them, mounted on a spare wheel and tire, ready to install by simply removing the cotter key and axle nut. Before going on a long tow, give the bearings one last inspection.
In many U.S. states, trailers with a GVWR of 1,500 lbs or more are required to have brakes on all wheels. If your trailer has brakes on the wheels, they, too, should be inspected. If you haven’t done this task in a while, it would be worthwhile taking the rig down to the local garage for the job.
Going Down The Road
With the inspections complete, we’re ready to hit the road. Before heading out, be sure the boat is properly tied down. At the bow, the winch cable and a safety stop line should be in place. There should be transom and ’midship tie-downs as well. Trailer hitch safety chains should be inspected. These chains should be attached to the towing vehicle with strong S-hooks or shackles. The chains should be crossed. They should be long enough to permit tight turns yet short enough to suspend the trailer tongue and keep it from slamming into the pavement if the hitch fails. Everything in the trailer should be properly stowed to prevent it flying out en route. Inspect the lights to confirm that they are, indeed, working. Check the wheel lug nuts and bring along your trailer jack, wheel nut wrench, breaker bar, and chocks. And don’t forget the roadside warning devices—reflective triangles, flares, etc. You’ll be glad you did.
While on the road, make a habit of checking on the trailer via the rear-view mirrors. Drive at moderate speeds and avoid sudden stops. You have probably doubled your customary wheel-base length—a good thing to keep in mind when passing or pulling through an intersection. Make wider turns at curves and corners. Because your trailer’s wheels are closer to the inside of a turn than the wheels of your tow vehicle, they are more likely to hit or ride up over curbs. Slow down when traveling bumpy dirt roads or when crossing railroad tracks. And allow more space for braking.
Stop and inspect the boat and trailer at regular intervals. Check the tie-downs and tire pressure. Feel the wheel bearing cover; it’s okay for it to be warm, but not hot. Inspect the hitch; it may need to be retightened. Are those lights still working?
Photo by Matthew P. Murphy
The Jericho Bay Lobster skiff is almost ready to travel. It’s well secured at the bow, but awaits a final stowing of gear. The hull will need to be secured to the trailer, too.
Launching the Boat
A warm summer day can cause the local launching ramp to be a busy place, complete with lots of different kinds of boats and the corresponding personalities of those who own them. One thing they all have in common is that they all want to get into the water at the same time. It pays to be as organized as possible to expeditiously back the trailer into the water, pull the empty trailer out of the way, get loaded up, and clear the ramp.
Launching a boat is akin to landing an airplane: You are transitioning from one medium to another. If there is going to be a problem, this is a likely place for it to happen. So, it’s always good to plan ahead.
If you are new to backing a trailer, practice in a parking lot or field before getting to the launching ramp. While not difficult, it does take a bit of getting used to—whether you use mirrors or are able to crane your head around to see what is going on. Our man Bruce recommends the following: “When ready to start backing your rig, place your steering-wheel hand on the bottom of the steering wheel, look at your trailer in the rear-view mirror, and turn your hand in the direction you want your trailer to go as you engage reverse.” Back slowly, and if the trailer starts to jackknife, simply pull ahead a bit to realign the trailer and start again.
Launching your vehicle along with the boat is always considered poor form. It has been done. To avoid such an inconvenient situation, check the parking brake. Does it actually work, or is it merely ornamental and used only at vehicle inspection time? Try it on a steep hill. Putting a vehicle in “park” on a ramp and leaving the engine running is a seriously bad idea. Newspapers carry stories on a regular basis of cars driving off without their astonished owners who had dutifully “put their car in park”—on a level surface. It’s better to turn the engine off, with the transmission in park (or on a manual transmission, in first gear if the vehicle is pointed downhill, and in reverse if pointed uphill). If in doubt, have wheel chocks at the ready for insertion behind the rear wheels.
Remove all tie-downs and have everything (especially life jackets) ready to go, on the boat, before heading down the ramp. Have as much gear on board as possible, rig the mast (if you have one), have docklines and fenders ready, and (if it has one) test the boat’s engine ahead of time—especially if this is the first trip of the season— even if it ran great last fall. Disconnect the trailer-light coupling. Oh, and don’t forget the drain plug.
Photo by Matthew P. Murphy
With mast stepped and sails rigged—and after a careful check for overhead power lines—the straps are removed and the boat is backed to the water. Proper backing of a trailer takes some practice; it’s wise to rehearse in private before taking to the stage of the launching ramp.
Boyhood dreams inspired by the sleek motor launches and yachts passing by his eastern Michigan home on the St. Clair River during the Roaring Twenties must have sent ripples of excitement through young Nelson Zimmer. Years later, as a naval architect, Zimmer recalled the lovely lines of the vessels from his youth when he designed his 21′ 3″ utility launch (see WoodenBoat No. 43)—a throwback to the prosperous days of bathtub gin, jazz, Henry Ford’s Model T, and Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight.
Standing on the pier at the Great Lakes Boat Building School (GLBBS) in Cedarville, Michigan, located on the Upper Peninsula’s southeastern shore, a newly built Zimmer utility launch is secured alongside, waiting for sea trials among Les Cheneaux Islands—French meaning “The Channel Islands”—in northern Lake Huron. She has a comely shape and a graceful sheer, which is accented by white-painted topsides and a bright transom and deck. Interior surfaces are also finished bright.
Photo by George D. Jepson
The Zimmer utility launch, designed by Great Lakes area designer Nelson Zimmer, can comfortably carry six to eight passengers. At the Great Lakes Boat Building School in Cedarville, Michigan, instructor Pat Mahon and students built this launch over the course of a year.
At 20′ on the waterline, with a 7′ beam, 1′ 7″ draft, and displacing 3,467 lbs, the fetching, unballasted launch, with its round-bottomed displacement hull, is ideal for cruising among Les Cheneaux’s 36 islands and their sheltered channels and bays within the Straits of Mackinac. Steeped in North American history, the islands—offering an abundance of wildflower meadows, cedar shores, and wetlands—are the ideal environment for the launch.
Photo by George D. Jepson
The Zimmer launch was originally designed for diesel power, but Mahon calculated that the weight of an electric alternative power source meets designed displacement specifications and uses less space. Less bulk leaves more room in the cabin for napping or ducking in out of the rain.
Photos by George D. Jepson
Well-steeved bulkheads and steam-bent sapele coaming and seat details are among the many finely crafted components that imbue this gentleman’s launch with her classic ambience.
The Great Lakes Boat Building School chose the Zimmer launch as their class project, because she fit the needs of the school’s traditional boat building curriculum. Other factors were the boat’s overall appeal and Nelson Zimmer’s having spent his career as a Great Lakes boat designer. The school’s lead instructor, Pat Mahon, and a team of students built the boat over a year’s time.
Zimmer’s plans for the utility launch call for “advanced” boatbuilding skills. Before beginning work, students completed the first quarter of the GLBBS’s basic woodworking and small-boat building class—which involved the construction of two small skiffs—from lofting to launching. This gave them the skills needed to take on this more complex project. “All aspects of boat construction are first discussed during lectures and then practiced in the shop,” said Mahon. Although this launch was designed for carvel-planking on steam-bent frames, she could be given a cold-molded hull. This may be a good alternative, especially for freshwater use.
Photo by George D. Jepson
Pat Mahon and the GLBBS chose the Zimmer launch as a school project for the many traditional boatbuilding lessons she would provide to their students. She is carvel planked on steam-bent frames but could be built using cold-molded construction.
A variety of woods were used for her construction: purpleheart (keel), white oak (stem, horn timber, shaft- log, sternpost, transom, frames, and floors), solid red meranti (planking), Douglas-fir (deck frame, housetop beams, and decking), yellow cedar (ceiling, bulkheads, and housetop), solid sapele (house, coaming, and rubrails), and Northern white cedar (sole).
Although the boat generally was built according to Nelson Zimmer’s plans, “we made a few changes from the original construction [so that] they fit the methods we like to teach,” said Mahon. “The only significant change [to the hull’s construction] was to add a keel batten over the keel to make a rabbet for the garboard. The original used a beveled keel with no rabbet.”
Zimmer originally specified a 6–8-hp single-cylinder diesel, which would have been a dependable engine when compared to gasoline power. However, Mahon opted for electric propulsion. Elco Electric Launch Company of New York donated the motor and systems components to the GLBBS.
Either type of power would work well in the boat, depending on its intended use and the availability of re-charging facilities for the electric alternative. “The goal is always to meet the designed displacement,” said Mahon. “I calculated that the electric system weighed about the same as the original diesel engine and fuel tanks.” She floats on her designed waterline—an important measure of success.
A 48-volt, six-battery setup, installed under the cockpit flooring, powers the 4-hp electric motor for five to seven hours on a charge. The Group 8D batteries, which are available from marine suppliers, can be recharged over a period of approximately 14 hours with 110-volt electrical service, which is commonly available at marina docks.
Speed depends on how heavily she’s loaded; the launch will run up to 6 knots if kept light. The estimated cruising time at 75 percent power, with two charged battery banks, exceeds six hours. At 50 percent power, with two battery banks, the time increases to approximately 10 hours.
Although electric power may be sensible given the cost of oil and oil-based fuel in today’s world, being dependent upon the availability of electrical outlets may reduce range. Stops must be well planned to avoid hours of charging at inconvenient times or, worse, losing power altogether. She would make for a cumbersome row ashore. Yet she’s well suited to these relatively calm waters, which are dotted with marinas and offer plenty of mainland and island shoreline.
The launch is ideal for day-running from a dock or mooring, or transporting passengers and supplies between shore and an island. She provides a stable platform in a chop and is friendly to fishermen because of her silent running and relatively flat wake. The launch can be trailered, albeit with some difficulty and risk of drying out.
It is an unseasonably chilly early June afternoon, under pewter skies, when we step aboard. A light breeze sends ripples across the gunmetal blue waters of Cedarville Bay. The electric engine is switched on, and nothing more than a hushed hum disturbs the silence. Lines are cast off, and the slender launch slips ever so quietly into the harbor. Cruising off LaSalle Island, we pick up speed, with the swish of water along the hull the only discernible sound.
Photo by George D. Jepson
Though comfortable to operate, the Zimmer launch’s forward helm is unusual and requires practice for those who are used to steering from amidships or aft.
Steering from forward is a novel experience, with nearly 18 feet of boat behind me. Docking and maneuvering in close quarters or traffic requires practice for the uninitiated or those used to steering from aft or amidships. Answering the helm during sweeping turns to port or starboard, the launch’s motion is minimal. Maneuvering alongside the dock, she slips easily between forward and reverse.
The Jazz Age may be long past, but Nelson Zimmer’s legacy to new generations of wooden boat builders, designers, sailors, and admirers lives on. The Great Lakes Boat Building School has paid a befitting tribute to Zimmer, who, like the majority of the school’s students, grew up on the Great Lakes. In building this poetic launch, with all the skill and effort expended to bring her to life, it is clear that the school, now in its third year of operation, aims to engender many more like him. I think Zimmer, who crossed the bar in 2007, would be pleased.
Want to Build the Zimmer Utility Launch Yourself?
Get to know the Zimmer utility launch design first by reviewing the study plan. We review the basics and the line drawings like the ones below, and give you a direct link to where you can purchase the full set of plans.
The Zimmer launch’s buttock lines, rising to clear the waterline aft, will make her easy to drive at low speeds, while moderate deadrise contributes to giving her a comfortable ride in a chop.
Conceived at first as an 18′ open family daysailer for the Bryan family, this boat ended up growing a couple of feet in length and 6″ in beam to become a small cruiser with a cabin and overnight accommodations for two. N.G. Herreshoff’s Buzzards Bay 12 1⁄2-footer played a part, as those familiar with that design can readily see. These fine little boats have long captivated Harry and his wife, Martha, because they both grew up on the shores of Buzzards Bay, Harry in Westport and Martha in Padanaram and Naushon Island. Four of the original 121⁄2-footers of 1914 still sail from the island.
Joel White’s centerboard adaptation of the 12 1⁄2-footer’s larger sister (the Herreshoff Fish class), known as the Flatfish, also came into play since Harry’s new boat was more her size. For cruising, however, he needed something just a mite different. KATIE, built over a couple of years and launched in 2008, is the result.
Photo by Benjamin Mendlowitz
Inspired by N.G. Herreshoff’s Buzzards Bay 12 1⁄2-footer and Joel White’s Flatfish, this 20′ cruiser, designed and built by Harry Bryan, cuts a handsome profile underway.
KATIE and Joel White’s Flatfish measure close to each other in hull and sail area, with KATIE being lighter by about 500 lbs, and narrower on deck by 6″. Harry gave her more freeboard and a larger cabin, and opted for a bowsprit for ease in handling and carrying the anchor. Her shorter forward overhang results in about a foot more waterline length. The big difference, and one sought for in her design is shallower draft. With centerboard raised, the Flatfish draws 2′ 2″, but KATIE is shallower by 6″!
The Bryans’ New Brunswick home fronts on a cove that dries out at low tide, so Harry devised a nearly neutral-buoyancy cradle for KATIE that supports her and holds her upright while grounded. That’s why her keel is built level, without the usual drag, or downward slope as it approaches the rudder. It’s a setup that opens possibilities for others having access only to tidal waterfront. At only 2,400 lbs, this boat also offers a chance for distant voyaging as it can be towed many miles behind the family car or pickup to reach the mecca of one’s choice. Once there, you can overnight or go longer and enjoy exploring an entirely new area. Camping onboard while on the road makes sense and saves on motel costs. With a level keel to sit on, she’ll look just right on a standard flatbed or boat trailer without requiring special blocking to level her waterline. A couple of people should be able to step or unstep her 65-lb, 25′ mast without the aid of a crane.
There can be no doubt of a boat this shallow needing a centerboard, but Harry kept it small and shaped it, and the trunk in which it lives, to be as unobtrusive as possible. The trunk is so short and so low that it seems like a convenient footrest in the cabin. The higher, aft part of the trunk runs up under the bridge deck, out of sight and completely out of the way. Interestingly, but not surprisingly for one who values native cedar and avoids plywood, Harry has designed a cedar-cored, fiberglass-and-epoxy-sheathed centerboard.
Photos by Bryan Gagner
Two berths that run up under the foredeck provide comfortable refuge for short-term cruisers. The centerboard trunk, made as unobtrusive as can be, doubles as a companionway step or a footrest.
KATIE’s accommodations are minimal to be sure, but she’s set up with all the short-cruise essentials: Two berths run up under the foredeck and, aft, serve as settees over which there’s full sitting headroom. Against the cabin’s aft bulkhead on both sides are shelves and lockers that can be tailored to suit whatever galley gear a person chooses to carry or build in, while farther aft under the bridge deck on each side of the centerboard trunk is space for provisions and more cruising gear. Way forward, beyond the berths, is a platform for additional stowage under which (under hinged flaps) the anchor rode lives.
The plans show an afterdeck and bridge deck that are slightly higher than the fore-and-aft cockpit settees that run between them. But, in this first boat, the Bryans decided to bring all to a common height to encourage outside sleeping and napping. Storage spaces are located under the afterdeck and at the forward end of the cockpit, under the overhanging bridge deck, where gear will stay reasonably dry.
Because the cockpit is made deep for comfort and is therefore not self-bailing, rainwater collects there. But the bulkhead is watertight, so the cabin remains isolated and dry. In the future, to take care of the rain, Harry plans on an awning or a solar-powered bilge pump.
Photo by Benjamin Mendlowitz
Robust construction details like her square-sided, no-nonsense bowsprit and heavy toerails inspire confidence that she is well built and seaworthy.
How does KATIE sail? By observing her in moderate conditions when we photographed her last fall, I’d say fast and fine, completely under easy control the entire time. From the designer/ builder, here’s how Harry describes it: “The helm is perfect in the conditions we had for the photo shoot. Martha and I had her out in a puffy nor’wester and found that a single reef did much to ease the helm. Ultimately, if the helm should prove heavy, 8″ or 1′ added to the bowsprit and a larger jib should balance things. These are probably just the worries of a new parent hoping his baby isn’t defective in some way. She seems fast even before the wind is strong enough to ripple the water.”
The bowsprit adds shippiness forward, particularly with an honest-to-God stock anchor hanging from it, ready to be dropped instantly and retrieved without depositing mud on the deck. The gallows aft also gives a clear impression that this is a serious cruiser despite her small size. You have no worry about the boom whacking you on the noggin when lowering the mainsail; the boom gallows takes care of that and provides a secure support for the boom while tying in a reef. It’s a great, but largely unappreciated feature.
Photo by Benjamin Mendlowitz
At 2,400 lbs, KATIE is easily trailered and her 65-lb mast can be stepped and unstepped by two people, making her the perfect little getaway cruiser for adventures near and far.
KATIE has no engine installed. There’s a big, curved sweep (oar) in two pieces that can be used either for sculling or for single-oared rowing, with the rudder offset to compensate. Harry has also equipped KATIE with a self-contained Torqeedo electric outboard motor (see review in WB No. 205). Knowing Harry, and having a good idea of how well KATIE moves under sail, I doubt if either will ever see much use.
KATIE’s firm bilges, moderate deadrise, and decidedly “shippy” sheer relate the influence of N.G. Herreshoff’s Buzzards Bay 121⁄2 while her underwater profile indicates her kinship to Joel White’s keel/centerboard Flatfish. KATIE will prove a fine legacy to her forebears.
This Boat Profile was published in Small Boats 2010 — for more information, visit Bryan Boatbuilding.
Fritzie Sparks, my best friend’s mother, was fond of saying “Stress is the thing,” whenever the topic of illness came up in conversation. She’d tap the tips of her fingernails on the table or countertop to drive the point home. That was back in the ’70s, and it was just one of those things teenagers would find amusing about parents, but now that I’ve drifted into the older generation she once occupied, I can better appreciate her wisdom. In my teens the only things I recall being stressed about were acne and getting better grades than Mike Sharmin and Doug Shaffer, my high-school rivals. Now I have a long list of worries from an ongoing pandemic and pants growing ever tighter to meeting work deadlines and living in a 100-year-old house in an earthquake zone that’s bracing for the “big one.”
For the past month, as the gloom of winter’s coming has darkened the skies of shortened days, I’ve chosen to take refuge not from the rain but in it. I’ll put on a couple of pile jackets, a knit hat, and my cagoule and sit in the back yard on a boat cushion set on an upside-down 5-gallon bucket—an orange one from Home Depot. The raindrops falling on my hood sound like salt sprinkled into a paper bag.
With the sides of the canopy pulled up, I can row with enough shelter to keep my head and hands dry. Even though I have good rain gear, I feel less soggy with a roof over my head.
I recently read that the sound of rain has a soothing effect that’s related to an elevated level of alpha waves generated by the brain. It’s a response that is also associated with meditation. I’d first heard of alpha waves when I was in college in the late ’70s and I was swept up in two trends that made short-lived marks on my generation: Earth shoes and Transcendental Meditation. I wore a pair of the first model of those shoes—with lowered heels and wide, squared toe boxes that looked like cartoon duck feet—when I took an off-campus class in TM. In my early practice of TM, I reached the bottom of the bubbles, as my instructor called reaching a state of thought-free wakefulness, just once. Having experienced that state of quietude and then being unable to reach it again, I meditated only sporadically in the years that followed.
The Ship Canal where I often row has a few out-of-the-way places where I can sit in the Whitehall and enjoy the rain.
Now, when I hear rain outside of my study and see the bright scintillas of rain on the garage’s flat tar-black roof, I’ll sit in the rain and do a 20-minute session of TM. The double dose of alpha waves seems to work. In the rain, I get to the bottom of the bubbles with a reassuring frequency.
I move the canopy aft to make a cozy nest on the floorboards surrounded by the sternsheets.
On my first cruise up the Inside Passage, I frequently rowed for hours at a stretch and would often fall into a meditative state, listening to the metronomic rhythm of the oars. The memory of those pleasant days prompted me to switch my rainy-day practice from my orange bucket to the lapstrake Whitehall I’d built in 1983. I made a canopy for it not just as shelter from the rain but also as a resonator for it, to gather more sound than my cagoule can.
Snug in the stern, I had a cup of hot peppermint tea and a slab of banana bread with walnuts and dates, still warm from the oven.
When I go rowing on Seattle’s Ship Canal, the rain and mist mute sound and color. The wail of cars and trucks rolling across the metal grate of the bascule bridge adjacent to the launch ramp is no more than a murmur, and the trees and buildings on hills flanking the waterway appear as if dusted with soot and ash. On the smooth surface of the water, raindrops make their chain-mail pattern of interlocking circles. I row with the sides of the canopy slipped up on the hoops and the rainwater pools in the folds overhead. With just an easy effort at the oars, I warm up in a few minutes and I can take my gloves and hat off, unzip my jacket to cool off, and still stay dry.
There are a few sections of shoreline that aren’t occupied by wharves or marinas where I’ll stop and tether the boat to a piling or nudge it onto a sandy shore, before lowering the canopy to better capture the rain’s soft sounds. I sit in my boat, quiet, alone, and out of worry’s reach.
Canopy Construction
A reader asked how I made the canopy. I bought a lightweight 6′x7′ tarp (finished size 70″ x 86″) made of 210D Oxford and two 10′ lengths of 1/2″ CPVC water pipe. The CPVC pipe is more flexible than PVC pipe and more tolerant of temperature extremes. The 1/2″ nominal size has an outside diameter of 5/8″. The Whitehall has a beam of 50-1/2″ and a 86″ length of pipe (equal to the long side of the tarp)created an arch with the headroom I needed for rowing.
The pipes are the same length to the canopy will be taller where the span between gunwales is narrower.
Here the 2 1/2″-wide sleeve for the pipe is evident. The tan-colored rectangle below the corner of the tarp is to hold the tarp up when visibility to the sides is required. The blue cord is threaded through the the pipe and tied around the inwale.
I made a sleeves for the pipes by folding each of the long sides back 2-1/2″ and sewed the hem. The in the middle of the sleeve’s edge I used a hot knife to cut away a semicircle of fabric. The hole is needed for the guy lines that will pull the tops of the arches to the ends of the boat. Pulling directly on the pipes instead of a grommet or webbing loop is the only way to get a smooth canopy.
A section of the sleeve is cut away so the tensioning line can be tied around the pipe. A taut-line hitch tied close to the canopy makes it convenient to make adjustments.
To secure the pipes to the Whitehall’s open rail, I threaded a 1/4″ braided line through each pipe, cutting the lines about 6′ longer than the pipe. With the lines through the pipes and the pipes in the sleeves, I tie one end of each line around the inwale and snug the pipe up against the rail. The extra length of the line lets me thread its other end through the open rail before flexing the pipe. I can then pull the line to bring the pipe’s end to the rail. I had initially thought I’d put rods in the ends of the pipes and then set the rods in the oarlock sockets, but that limits where I can put the canopy. The cord is much more versatile and unbreakable. I tie other cords to the pipe at the top of the arch where I cut the semicircle of fabric away, taking a few wraps around the pipe for friction. I loop the other end around something in the boat and use a taut-line hitch to position the arch and tension the tarp.
The rubber slider holds the tarp up at any height.
I had a piece of 1/2″ thick soft rubber that I cut into 1-1/2″ squares and drilled with a 5/8″ Forstner bit. Slipped over the ends of the pipes, they hold the tarp sides up when I need to see out.
With the canopy set up in the stern, I can row from the middle or forward rowing station and carry a passenger curled up, under cover, in the stern. The line from the top of the forward arch is looped around the inwale on the starboard side, out of the way for rowing.
With the pipes and lines rolled up in the tarp, the bundle can be bent into place for storage rather than laid straight and flat on the floorboards where it would be underfoot.
Years ago, I had built and sailed a 14′ flat-bottomed skiff, but the time had come for something with more capacity, capability, and comfort. A few times my wife Ramona and I had been caught in rough conditions that made me feel more than a bit uncomfortable, and I didn’t feel confident heading out to distant shores with the little boat. And sleeping under a tented boom, well, I’d had enough of that. Still, it was nice to have a boat I could tow home and store in the garage where I could keep it in good repair.
Selway Fisher’s Ptarmigan 17, as drawn, met most of my needs and could be adapted to suit the rest. The options detailed in the plans took care of my wants, and the design appears to accommodate amateur builders with a range of skills and requirements. There are drawings for both stitch-and-tape and glued-plywood lapstrake construction. You can also choose between a simple catboat rig and a yawl rig. With all the options for customization, I wouldn’t be surprised to see 10 different boats built from the same set of Ptarmigan 17 plans.
Pat Beninger
The glued-plywood lapstrake construction accentuates the hull’s curves. Stitch-and-tape construction without the laps is an option included in the plans.
The boat’s optional yawl rig had piqued my interest. I liked the idea of sailing under a balanced helm if the conditions got too serious, and I thought that the smaller mainmast on the yawl rig would be a bit lighter to lift. The combination tabernacle-equipped mainmast, small cabin, and ease of trailering led me to finally choose this design.
The building package comes with seven sheets of construction plans and a 14-page booklet of instructions. Dimensions are metric. A concise building schedule outlines each step of the build with recommendations on the choice of plywood, instructions on using epoxy, and what fastenings to use. There’s a section on how to lay out and draw the side panels on the plywood, and how to draw curved elements using a grid pattern. Measured drawings for the molds, stitch-and-tape side panels, bottom panel, and stem are clear and easy to follow. You do not need to do any lofting to build this boat. There are detailed drawings and instructions on stitching and filleting. The plans are complete with details for building sub-components such as rudder, centerboard and trunk, and the tabernacle. The plans are cross-referenced with the instruction booklet and provide the recommended scantlings.
There are instructions for building an outboard well or a transom cutout. All specifications for the standing and running rigging are listed. For builders interested in making their own sails, there’s even a reference to a Selway publication on that topic. The booklet is light on details for the four-strake, glued-lap plywood version; however, there are several good books available on the topic.
Both of the Ptarmigan 17’s sail rigs are gaff-rigged. The single-mast catboat rig carries a sail area of 139 sq ft and includes the dimensions for an optional 24-sq-ft jib. The yawl rig’s total sail area is a little smaller at 135 sq ft, with a main of 79 sq ft, a jib of 36 sq ft, and a leg-o’-mutton mizzen of 20 sq ft. There are two reefpoints drawn on the mainsails. With the yawl rig you can douse the mainsail in high winds and sail with a balanced helm under jib and mizzen. The yawl—with bowsprit and boomkin —is almost 23′ in sparred length. The mizzen is self-tending and only requires attention when coming off the wind. The plans do not specifically address tackle, but we made our own blocks in keeping with the overall look and feel of the boat. There are several good articles on making your own blocks in various publications.
I found the plans for this boat detailed, complete, and accurate, and while a few questions did arise, they were quickly answered via email. When I started this build, I found many ways of keeping safe and saving time; the project took me five months of full-time effort.
The boat tows well behind an SUV or pickup truck, and the trailer does not require brakes for the boat’s 1,300 lbs. The flat bottom and shallow 6″ keel help keep the weight low in the boat. For trailering, I keep the bowsprit attached and secure the mast in a cross-framed 2×4 support; the gaff, boom, and mizzen are supported and strapped to the frame and the forward ends pass through the companionway.
Rick Crook
The yawl rig has an 18.9 sq ft mizzen, a 78.8 sq ft main, and a 36.6 sq ft headsail.
With some practice, the yawl can be rigged and ready to go in about 20–25 minutes. It saves time to tag the rigging to help remember where the stays go and in what order they go on. The mast is lifted with its three stays, three halyards, and the topping lift set in place. The foot of the mast is secured in the tabernacle. Lifting the rigged mast requires some effort but is manageable and made easier with the help of someone pulling on the headstay. I secure the jaws of both the gaff and the boom using 1/8″ braided nylon cord with several parrel beads threaded on. I lace on the sails, add the rudder and motor, take off the securing straps, and I’m set to launch. When hauling out at the ramp, I have a 2,000-lb single-speed hand-operated winch that handles the boat with ease. The boat always seems to attract a crowd filled with compliments, comments, and questions.
Steve Cormack
The plans call for open slats for the cockpit seating and sole. The builder’s modification to plywood enclosures provides convenient storage.
The 5′x 6′ cockpit will accommodate four but is most comfortable with one or two. With two, there’s plenty of room to hoist the sails and move around when coming about. The helmsman has a clear view forward of the small jib over the cabin. The mainsail is high enough off the cabin roof to have a clear view to port and starboard. All sheets and halyards are led aft into the cockpit and can be easily handled without the need for winches. The throat and peak halyards need a hefty tug. The plans call for 7mm (3/8″) halyards, which I find easy on the hands. The 65″ x 25″ footwell is 17″ deep. The trunk is 4″ wide and its cap is 12″ above the cockpit sole. It extends into the footwell 20″ and passes through the main bulkhead to within a foot of the forepeak bulkhead. The steel centerboard is raised and lowered with the help of a worm-gear winch that is operated from the cockpit. With the board down, the boat draws 3-1/2′.
Steve Cormack
The cabin has bunks for two. The centerboard trunk divides the footwell between them.
The cabin interior is 6-1/2′ x 5-1/2′ and is 52″ high at the crown. There are two bunks that run the length of the cabin and are 26″ at their widest. For sitting there is good headroom and ample legroom in the footwell between the bunks. Storage compartments are built into the underside of each bunk. It’s a simple interior, but it keeps you dry. The yawl cabin has a support post under the tabernacle that is about 16″ abaft the forepeak bulkhead. The tabernacle in the catboat version is supported by the forepeak bulkhead. The plans call for a sliding plywood hatch over the companionway, but I chose to make mine with a plexiglass top for added light in the cabin. There are two 12″ x 16″ windows on the cabin sides. If you wish to build a self-righting boat, the instruction booklet calls for adding buoyancy under the cockpit benches and forward of the forepeak bulkhead. An additional 160 lbs of lead can be bolted to the floor as extra ballast.
The boat’s 1,300-lb weight gives the feeling of stability—it is not tippy when you step aboard—and will carry through when tacking in light air. The Ptarmigan 17 was designed for inland lakes, estuaries, and coastal areas, and I have never felt uncomfortable in these waters. Adding one or two larger sails both on the jib and mizzen would be nice to have for sailing downwind and in lighter wind conditions. In windy conditions, the first reef goes in when the winds approach 20 knots. Anything above this and the main is doused and tied off. Even in these conditions the boat has never left me feeling unsafe; it feels stable and there is no need to put the rail in the water. The ride is generally dry, with little spray. Passengers in the cockpit can sit close behind the cabin to shelter from the elements. The rudder is shallow and extends 3’ beyond the transom. It controls the boat well in all conditions.
Steve Cormack
While the builder ultimately chose to use an outboard bracket, his Ptarmigan 17 has a built-in motorwell appropriate for a small outboard. The opening of the well is visible at the bottom of the transom.
The plans and notes describe an optional motorwell, set to starboard, but do not specify the size of the auxiliary outboard motor. A 2.5-hp is all Ramona and I need to get into and out of the harbor, or back home when the wind dies. I built the motorwell to house an electric trolling motor but found that I needed more power, so I switched to a small gas motor that I set on a transom-mounted bracket. The motorwell could easily accommodate the 2.5-hp outboard.
When I decided to build this boat there wasn’t a lot of information on how the boat would perform. A few pictures and a description by the designer were all that I had. My experience with a smaller boat helped refine my requirements for the new boat, which the Ptarmigan 17 met: capable of crossing the larger lakes in almost any condition, easily towed behind our pickup, and equipped with a dry bed to crawl into at night. I did make some modifications, such as building a self-draining footwell and building fiberglass-covered benches to drain the rainwater over the side. To provide more storage space, I extended the forward ends of the side benches, covering the centerboard trunk with more seating. Now I can leave the boat unattended at a mooring without having to worry about the cockpit filling with water.
If you’re looking for a small cruising sailboat to explore far and wide, that you can easily trailer and store at home in between adventures, then you should take a close look at the Ptarmigan 17. Just be ready for the many admirers you’ll meet along the way.
Steve Cormack is a self-taught amateur builder with a workshop in Pender Harbour, British Columbia. He started building boats nearly 40 years ago and has completed several small plywood kayaks and strip canoes. In addition to the Ptarmigan, he has built a Handy Billy motorboat (which he uses for day trips), and a Selway Fisher Blackswan 22 for cruising. He is currently finishing a 32′ Lake Union–style dreamboat based on a Katherine 30, designed by William Hand Jr.
Ptarmigan 17 Particulars
[table]
Length/17′
Beam/6′ 11″
Hull depth amidships/2′4.5″
Draft, board up/1′2″
Draft, board down/3′5″
Sail area, cat/139 sq ft
Sail area, yawl/135 sq ft
Maximum headroom/4′6″
[/table]
Plans for the Ptarmigan are available from Selway-Fisher (£195 print, £175 PDF) and Duckworks ($236 print or PDF).
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!
Kids grow up, and grow out of not only their clothes, furniture, and toys, but also the boats you build for them. Who knew? The first boat I built was a cedar-strip double-paddle canoe which could carry one of my kids and me comfortably. However, I had four kids at home. I built a second boat, a small skin-on-frame kayak, from plans for one of my daughters when she was a teenager. My two youngest daughters were the most interested in paddling, so the kayak worked well for several years until they outgrew it.
I wanted each of them to have their own boat to help them develop their paddling skills and independence. I could have built them each a cedar-strip, but I knew from experience that skin-on-frame would cost less, be ready sooner, and most importantly be something they could each easily carry on their own.
When I ran across a YouTube video of Brian Schulz of Cape Falcon Kayak using his 66 Canoe system to build three skin-on-frame canoes that nested together, I was immediately sold. I’d be able to transport three boats without having to purchase a larger vehicle or a trailer.
The 66 Canoe design is not simply a set of plans for a handful of different static models of various sizes, but rather a video class to guide the builder through a series of decisions about length, beam, depth, rocker, sheer and cross-section to create a custom-built canoe to meet the builder’s needs, all without the need for making and modifying molds. Brian gave the system its name after he found the double-paddle pack canoe that the pack canoe that inspired it involved 66 percent of the time, cost, and weight of one of his skin-on-frame kayaks.
Photographs by and courtesy of the author
Sitting in the canoe may seem more comfortable at first, but the kneeling position seen here provides more stability by keeping weight low and affords more control of the canoe.
His detailed plan sets and video courses are an interesting and very effective way to build compared to building from plans or even during an in-person workshop. I chose to build three solo canoes, and used the medium, large, and extra-large sizes recommend by Brian for nesting. I did’t have any hull-design expertise, so I just used his dimensions for my canoes, though. I reduced the beam of each by just 1″ built all three concurrently, which saved some tool-setup time, and allowed me to practice a task on my boat, before completing the same step on my daughters’ smaller boats.
I used western red cedar for the longitudinal members and stems, ash for the outwales, and white oak for the ribs. For steam-bending, Brian highly recommends white oak that has not been kiln dried. He notes a couple of sources that will mill and ship suitable-quality bending oak. I located a mill in my area of southern Michigan where I could pick out white-oak boards that were sawn just a day or two earlier.
The extra-large canoe can easily carry two paddlers.
Brian is continually innovating and shares his new developments almost immediately on his Instagram account, and once developed, works it into the plans and videos. After I finished my boats, he announced a method to incorporate some mild tumblehome into the design, and shared the results and methods.
The basic skills and operations for the 66 Canoe build are relatively simple, and while I have built both a cedar-strip and a skin-on-frame boat before, neither of those builds had the level of detailed instruction as in the Cape Falcon Kayak instructional videos.
The construction process begins with laminating three boards together to shape the stock for the gunwales in the vertical profile curve of the sheer. The two gunwales are then rip-sawn from this lamination; the rib locations are marked out on them and cut with a plunge router. Spreaders shape the gunwales in plan view, either symmetrical (maximum beam amidships) or asymmetrical (maximum beam forward or aft of center).
Stems and keel are lashed on and the amount of rocker is set. Then, based on the measured beam, sheer, and rocker at each rib location, Brian has a formula for calculating the lengths of the rib stock. A story stick records each measurement for easy transfer to the rib stock. The videos eliminate any confusion, as every step of the process is shown plainly. The rib-length formula can be tweaked slightly to create different hull shapes, which are explained in the plans. Since I was building three canoes, I stuck with the default formula on my extra-large canoe and then tweaked it slightly for my daughters’ canoes to give them a slightly fuller and flatter shape for extra stability.
The sailing rig’s mast is designed to be easily and quickly raised and lowered. While under sail, the canoe can be propelled as well as steered by the paddler.
With the videos providing guidance, steam-bending was simple. Brian explains how long to steam your particular bending wood and demonstrates how to bend the ribs without using forms to achieve the necessary shape in each area of the canoe. It’s easy to detect and correct asymmetry by eye. Any remaining small deviations are faired by lashing the stringers on immediately after steam-bending the ribs.
The amount of rocker can be adjusted slightly while lashing on the keel and finishing the stems. After the seat-mounting blocks are added, the frame is sealed with oil and allowed to dry. I used Corey’s Pine-Tar Boat Sauce; Brian strongly recommends a skin of 9-oz 840 X-TRA Tuff Ballistic Nylon and the two-part urethane coating also offered at The Skin Boat Store. The skin can be colored for a traditional appearance and the coating is very tough.
Stem bands of brass or plastic are added to protect the canoes’ most vulnerable parts of the skin from abrasion. I had used acetal-copolymer but later switched to a moisture-resistant HDPE on the middle-sized canoe to improve its tracking due to that material’s taller profile.
Seats can be installed right against the bottom of the gunwales, or a bit lower using spacer blocks. I use 1.25″ spacers in the extra-large canoe, and 7/8″ in the large. Dropping the seat in the medium canoe, the smallest of the three, makes it difficult to fit my size-11 feet underneath while in the kneeling position, and could create a safety issue.
To protect the lashings from abrasion, I use a closed-cell foam pad in the bottom of the canoe as recommended. Flotation is provided by securing 4″-diameter foam noodles along the insides of the canoe with ball-bungees, which can be easily removed to nest the canoes.
When boards are attached to the gunwales to create a catamaran configuration, the space between the canoes can allow for paddling between them.
Other optional items include a small pop-up sail, boards to catamaran canoes together, and a rowing outrigger and oars. I’ve made and used the sails and catamaran boards but have yet to make the rowing setup. I logged about 180 hours of construction time for three canoes, catamaran boards, and sails.
The ability to nest the three canoes and transport them on top of my compact hatchback is wonderful. The nested canoes made it possible to take all three plus my cedar strip on a trip from Michigan to Grand Teton and Yellowstone parks.
While it’s easiest to load the canoes with two people, I am able to do it alone because my vehicle has a low roof and the canoes are so light. At the boat launch people watch amazed as we pull off canoe after canoe from the roof. It takes 8 to10 minutes to install the seats and flotation in the two larger canoes.
I’ve paddled all three boats in the fully upright seated position, but mostly now only do this when the boats are connected as a catamaran. I just enjoy the kneeling position more.
The performance of my three nesting canoes is just graduations of stability and speed. Which one is just right probably depends on your size and weight. Brian had the three medium/large/extra-large variants listed as having ideal paddler weights of 125/175/225 lbs with maximum capacities about double each of those weights.
I’m 6′2″ tall and about 180 lbs, and I knew that the largest canoe was probably a bit too large for me, but I didn’t want to make the smallest canoe much narrower than 27″ for my youngest daughter. This is one of the trade-offs for the ability to nest the canoes. There is a 2″ minimum difference in width in order for the full-sized canoes to nest inside each other (1.5″ minimum for pack canoes). Similar minimum differences apply for length.
To my surprise, when paddling by myself, I found that in most conditions I enjoy paddling the smallest of the canoes. I thought it would be too unstable, but in the kneeling position the canoe is stable enough for me to feel confident and is very quick with a nice glide. It tracks well, as would be expected with my weight in this smaller boat.
The middle-sized canoe is a bit more stable and slightly slower, and the largest canoe marginally more so on both counts. And because it’s so lightly loaded with just paddler and no gear, the largest canoe can be more difficult to handle if the wind picks up. The largest canoe will likely be perfect for canoe-camping, something that my older daughter and I are eager to try out, and it will be the one that I build the rowing outrigger for first. Its stability and size make it ideal for this option.
The middle-sized canoe has more rocker than the largest canoe, a result of my experimenting with a bit too much progressive rocker at the ends. I immediately detected its loose tracking, but that was easier to correct than too little rocker. I improved its tracking with slightly thicker stem bands.
While I have only paddled the canoes for one season, I have not pampered them. I routinely run them up onto sandy or gravel beaches and treat them as I would any piece of outdoor gear: with respect to my investment of time and money, but not agonizing over every scratch or bump. They have shown no significant signs of wear yet. The lashed construction and tough, flexible skin absorb and spring back from impact rather than cracking as a more rigid hull might.
I built catamaran boards for the canoes, which allow me to connect two or even all three together. The speed seems marginally slower, but steering is easy. The minimum 18″ space between the connected canoes allows for paddling between them. This is an amazingly fun way to paddle together. The canoes essentially become a high-performance raft with excellent stability. You can see and chat with your companions face-to-face, rather than looking at their backs as in a tandem canoe.
The catamaran arrangement is very well suited to using the optional sailing rig.
I made sails for all three canoes of about 1.2, 1.6, and 1.7 square meters, following Brian’s video instructions and plans. I have no experience in sailing, but in my few sea trials the sails are a fun way to catch a downwind breeze and, when a nice, sustained gust comes along, it certainly pushes us at least as fast as workout-level paddling. I haven’t had much sailing on a reach likely due to my inexperience. In the catamaran configuration, and with over 3 square meters of combined sail area, a nice downwind run is pretty darn fun. My next project for the canoes will be making the oars and outriggers that are covered in another one of Brian’s courses.
The 66 Canoe plans and the video-course method of instruction are far more thorough than a book or plans only, and would be an excellent approach for a first-time builder. Brian’s system allows you to stick with a basic, general-purpose canoe, experiment with a sleek racing design, or a wide and stable fishing canoe. Access to his extensive experience is icing on the cake.
They are among the lightest canoes available and more durable than people assume. They nest together for easy storage and transport, and garner compliments wherever we go. They allow two of my daughters and me to paddle together or independently, and to explore sailing, and canoe-camping. It will be quite a while before we outgrow these canoes.
Adam Eckhardt of Flatrock, Michigan, has been a maker of things all his life. Prior to these three 66 canoes he built a Guillemot Kayaks MicroBootlegger and a Yostwerks Sea Pup kayak.
The Skin-on-Frame Canoe Building Course from Cape Falcon Kayak is a 12-hour online video course. It includes a downloadable 30-page PDF plan and licensing for the purchaser to build unlimited canoes for personal use.
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!
As always, there had been a rough sketch of a plan: a 7- or 8-mile row, heading generally northward through the meandering sloughs and backwaters of the Chippewa River delta, the largest contiguous floodplain forest in the Midwest. From there, it would be an easy float down the main river channel to its junction with the Mississippi. Two or three nights aboard, a wandering pilgrimage through 30 square miles of river bottom forest and wetland bisected by only a single road. No need to pack the sailing rig—oars alone would do.
The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. With no charts available, I downloaded a set of detailed topo maps, printed them at 2″ to the mile, and ran them through a laminator. A bit smaller than restaurant placemats, and stiffened nicely by the laminating, they’d be perfect for one-handed use in a small boat—a trick I filed away for future trips. Even better, the maps seemed to suggest that the route I had imagined might actually exist. From a launch ramp 50 yards off the south side of Highway 35, a reasonably open channel paralleled the road eastward for a mile or two, snaking back and forth beneath a series of bridges before entering a thin but apparently continuous ribbon of river leading farther north.
Photographs by the author
Many of the channels leading north from Highway 35 were so shallow that I could stop FOGG, my Don Kurylko-designed Alaska, in midstream, with no need to tie to shore. Sandbars and shallows were so frequent that wading upstream while pulling the boat behind me often turned out to be the only way to make any real progress.
This channel—Buffalo Slough—ran generally northward along the eastern edge of the delta for several miles, swooping through a series of bends and hairpins and pond filled backwaters to connect with another winding channel—Little Buffalo Slough—that diverged from the 300-yard-wide main channel of the Chippewa 10 miles upstream from the river’s confluence with the Mississippi. I’d anchor there, behind a half-mile-long island at the entrance to the slough, and then have an easy downstream row on the Chippewa. After a second night somewhere near the river’s mouth, I’d close the loop with a rambling track through the lower delta: up Government Light Slough to Smith Slough and on to the ramp, maybe. I didn’t overthink it. A certain degree of ignorance is a necessary component of these ventures, the best plans only vague brushstrokes to be filled in later, a new revelation at each stroke of the oars.
Heading south and into the delta, my route passed broad stretches of reeds and marsh grass at the upper reaches of Smith Slough, one of the widest channels in the Chippewa River delta. With the current giving me a substantial boost on this leg of my trip, I had ample time to stop ashore.
But there are plans, and there is reality. After two hours of rowing back and forth beneath the highway after launching from the ramp, I had failed to find the entrance to Buffalo Slough. Instead, I found a series of obscure channels blocked by downed trees, low water, and strainers, any one of which might have been Buffalo Slough. I hadn’t been able to go farther than a hundred yards up any of them to find out.
Trying to bring a boat like FOGG up Buffalo Slough was ridiculous, really. The channels were barely wide enough for oars as they were twisty, and thickly overgrown. It was the kind of delightfully pointless and uncomfortable outing I might have invented for myself as a kid, when every drainage ditch was a potential adventure, and every thicket an incitement to exploration. Long shallow stretches forced me to wade upstream, pulling the boat behind me like a dog on a leash—hard-earned, sweaty, knee-deep-mud-and-crawling-through-branches yardage. I had to climb ashore and line the boat through a few tight spots where logs or low branches prevented the use of more conventional tactics. This wasn’t a river—it was a forest. Craggy-barked cottonwoods lined the shore, with well-spaced silver maples, basswoods, and ash trees farther inland. Birds were singing everywhere, only occasionally visible as they flashed from tree to tree. Squirrels chattered loudly, scampered off when I got too close, and chattered some more.
Roger Siebert
.
No matter what my carefully assembled maps might have suggested, the sloughs and channels here were shifty things—erratic; devious; not to be trusted. The few inlets that weren’t blocked completely grew steadily narrower and shallower as I fought my way upstream, until all that was left was a trickle of muddy water between undercut banks. I finally gave up, leaving the boat firmly aground in a side channel to explore on foot.
Tall maples and basswoods broke the late afternoon light into a rustling green-gold shiver overhead, and the damp sand of the slough bed was a jumble of tracks: the split-wedge marks of white-tailed deer, web-footed beaver prints, and the peace-sign slash of blue heron feet. The forest floor was pure floodplain and flat as a parking lot, too damp and shady to support much undergrowth—only a scattering of mayapples, and a few trilliums just starting to open into bright three-pronged stars. Farther into the woods, knee-high ferns brushed my legs with a feathery shushing at each step. Circling back to the boat, I found more tracks in the riverbed behind it: the rail-straight line of a keel dragged through the sand, and my own barefoot prints at the water’s edge.
I eventually abandoned the idea of finding Buffalo Slough and headed downstream instead, planning to anchor a few miles south of the ramp in Smith Slough, or Government Light Slough, or some nameless adjacent backwater at the edge of the delta. I’d spend the night just above the Mississippi River and come up with a new plan for tomorrow.
It was still a few weeks to the summer solstice when I started my trip, but days were already growing longer. With more than 16 hours of daylight, I was in no hurry to find a campsite, so I pulled in here to watch two beavers on the opposite bank.
Now that I’d given up on finding a northward route, the channels grew wider—the size of small rivers, and easily rowable—and my map seemed accurate enough. The Burlington Northern rail line ran through the delta on a series of bridges and causeways, and the first bridge I passed under provided a reliable fix to confirm my admittedly hazy dead reckoning. I knew where I was, mostly, if not where I was going.
I let the boat drift along at a moderate pace, using the oars more for steering than for propulsion, stopping ashore wherever I felt the urge, or could find a relatively mud-free landing. Other than constant birdsong and the intermittent rumble of passing trains, I was caught up in a wide and rivery stillness: the faint drip of water off the oar blades, the hush of the current rippling along the banks, the breeze stirring through wide expanses of reeds at the water’s edge. After 2 or 3 miles, I pulled into a quiet backwater 20 yards wide, a still pond tucked beside the channel like a mirror sinking slowly into the mud. A few cottonwoods lined the bank, 40′ tall and leaning far out over the water. Their reflections broke into wavering ripples as the boat glided toward shore. I slid the bow up onto a low island at the edge of the pond and stepped out into thick mud.
Sleeping aboard FOGG involves a fair amount of gear shuffling to arrange the platform and tent, but it opens the door to overnight trips in areas where dry land isn’t available, or where shore camping is prohibited. While a kayak would have fared better in the shallow channels north of the highway, the added comfort of an onboard sleeping system more than makes up for a heavier, less maneuverable boat.
Even well back from the river, where bright green shoots of new grass created the illusion of a carefully tended lawn, the bank was too muddy for tenting. My camp chair, a recent and dangerously hedonistic concession to comfort, sank a few inches into the earth when I sat down, and wouldn’t settle onto an even keel. The “lawn” quickly became a cattle-pen quagmire of muddy footprints as I unloaded my gear. After a supper of rice and red beans, I dragged the boat to a level position, barely afloat at the edge of the pond, and set up a thwart-height platform and small tent for sleeping aboard. I scraped most of the mud off my feet—or some of it, at least—and crawled inside at full dark. I woke again well after midnight to see a foggy glimmer of sky just visible through the leaves, and a bright half moon caught in the treetops.
By morning, after a long scrutiny of maps in the flickering light of a dying headlamp the night before, I had decided on a new plan. I’d continue down Government Light Slough to the Mississippi—less than a mile now—and then upstream past the mouth of the Chippewa River and into the western arm of the delta, an inkblot swirl of channels, oxbows, meanders, and sloughs that might allow me to piece together a loop after all. Fortyacre Lake, Chimney Lake, Swinger Slough: a devious back-channel route leading to the western bank of the Chippewa River a few miles upstream, almost a mirror image of the route I’d originally intended. From there, I could continue down to the Mississippi, up Swift Slough, maybe, and get back to the car.
Shortly after leaving my first camp, I entered Government Light Slough, which connects Smith Slough to the Mississippi River. The floodplain’s fluctuating water levels are evident here, with bare muddy banks suggesting low water levels—probably the reason I hadn’t been able to work my way upstream to Buffalo Slough the day before.
I was happy there was still the chance for a continuous loop, however irregular and wandering it might prove. The thought of returning the way I had come would seem like a defeat, and a lost opportunity. But did the loop I saw on paper actually exist in the ambiguous and twisty delta? I had no idea.
The first leg of the day’s journey went quickly. Within 20 minutes of starting out, I reached the end of Government Light Slough and entered the Mississippi. Behind me, flat forest; ahead, wide open water, and the tall bluffs of the Minnesota side. Blue skies, bright sunlight—startlingly bright after the channels of the delta. I rowed 400 yards across the river to the mile-long ribbon of Drury Island and beached the boat as a passing barge tow sent its wake crashing onto shore. Once it was past, I headed upstream again. The current here was sluggish, and it wasn’t difficult to keep the boat moving.
Just past the western tip of Drury Island, a line of high dunes came into view on the Wisconsin shore, steep slopes of bare sand rising 70′ from the river, half again as tall as the cottonwoods lining the bank beneath. Fake dunes, I knew. The Chippewa River runs through the sandy soils of northern Wisconsin for almost 200 miles, draining an area roughly the size of Connecticut. Much of the sand it carries drops to the riverbed where the Chippewa empties into the Mississippi. Fifteen thousand truckloads of that sand are dredged from the Mississippi River here every year and piled onto the bank in a Sisyphean effort to maintain a 9′ channel depth for commercial traffic.
I couldn’t resist a climb to the summit of the sandpile. I beached the boat, buried an anchor on shore, and headed up the slope. The sand was rough and grainy on my bare feet, and I slipped backward at every step, losing momentum, but the sun-warmed sand was already too hot for me to stop moving. When I finally reached the top, I found a barren topography of sand stretching 500 yards from east to west, far above the floor of the delta. To the south, on the Minnesota side, steep bluffs rose 500 feet above the Mississippi, capped with a thin layer of pale sandstone. To the north, the sand heap dropped abruptly to the Chippewa’s floodplain, offering a view into the forest canopy from above, leafy and green with early summer growth. A bald eagle launched from a tree below me, climbed into the sky with a ponderous rhythm of wingbeats, and angled across the river toward Minnesota.
I had visited these dunes just downstream from the mouth of the Chippewa River years before, on a weeklong trip aboard a rented houseboat. While FOGG doesn’t offer the same level of comfort—no flying bridge or hot tub—I wouldn’t be paying $450 to refill the fuel tank at the end of the trip, either.
I returned to the boat in a series of gravity-boosted leaps and bounds that carried me an improbable distance downslope at each step, nearly sending me tumbling headlong a few times. I was tempted—briefly—to climb up again for another go. Instead, I shoved off and continued upstream.
After rowing another half mile up the Mississippi’s eastern bank, I beached the boat at the mouth of the Chippewa River, set up my camp chair under a canopy of cottonwoods on a stretch of flat, firm sand, and read a few pages from George Birkbeck Hill’s Johnsonian Miscellanies, Volume II, a collection of wide-ranging anecdotes and aphorisms related to Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the leading literary figures of 18th-century England. As an English teacher and writer, I had always felt a nagging obligation to learn at least something about him, so when I found the book in a dusty corner of a used book store, I bought it. With Volume I missing, I could appease my conscience without the bother of reading the whole thing. Besides, a collection to dip into at random seemed better suited to my lack of ambition than James Boswell’s 1,500-page opus, The Life of Samuel Johnson, which sat beside it on the same shelf. Perhaps most important of all, Johnsonian Miscellanies cost $4.50; the Boswell was priced at $65. A little learning may be a dangerous thing, but drinking deep seemed prohibitively expensive.
Some kind of waste-disposal system is essential for responsible camping, especially close to water. I use a simple plastic bucket with double-layer anti-odor liner bags that can be disposed of in the trash at the end of the trip. As an added bonus, the bucket makes a comfy footstool.
As it turned out, the unhurried pace of the 18th-century prose and the book’s lack of a continuous narrative thread seemed to mirror my erratic wanderings and ill-defined goals quite nicely, though I doubted Dr. Johnson would have thought much of my trip—at least, not if Hill’s portrait caught the true measure of the man: “He thought that that happiest life was that of a man of business…and that in general no one could be virtuous or happy, that was not completely employed.”
It would have been a nice campsite—level sand for tenting, plenty of shade, and a sheltered harbor for the boat—but the western arm of the delta lay just across the Chippewa River, and I was still fixed on the idea of a loop. A mile of rowing, maybe, would get me to Fortyacre Lake, the first possibility that looked worth exploring. I packed up my chair and the book and shoved off.
Fortyacre Lake went about as expected, a series of winding passages that were more forest than river. There were overhanging branches and leaning cottonwoods, side channels too overgrown or too shallow to enter, a few herons wading the reedy shallows, and finally, a dead end. I ate a late lunch aboard, grounded comfortably on a sandbar, and returned downstream to the delta’s edge to find Chimney Lake.
Fortyacre Lake looked like a dead end on the map, but I figured it would be worth checking out anyway. Despite my best efforts, though, shallow water prevented me from getting more than halfway up the channel before I had to turn around.
Here I had better luck. The channel leading into the floodplain was hidden behind a screen of reeds, and took some finding, but it kept going. Soon enough I was into a corkscrewing creek that I guessed must form the downstream end of Swinger Slough. I rowed from the aft thwart facing forward so I could weave around sandbars and downed trees without needing to turn my head to see where I was going, but it was a trade-off. The current was fast enough to require strong rowing, and pushing on the oars limited my power.
I was in no hurry, though. It was only about 3 miles along the slough from the entrance to Chimney Lake to the main channel of the Chippewa River, and the absence of downed trees and brush made up for the slow pace of upstream rowing. I pulled into a quiet corner of the woods at the foot of a railroad bridge—another definite position fix—and walked the tracks for a while, balancing on the rails as long as I could, looking for cast-off railroad spikes. The railroad causeway was the highest ground for miles, a long straight line slashed through the forest. Eventually I returned to the boat for lunch—or was it supper? I didn’t care.
The Burlington Northern rail line crosses the Chippewa River delta at the point where Chimney Lake fades into Swinger Slough. As I rowed under the bridge, a swarm of barn swallows dive-bombed me repeatedly. After a narrow escape from the birds, I pulled ashore for a break. Having made it this far, it seemed likely that I’d be able to reach the Chippewa River to complete my loop.
By 7 p.m., with plenty of daylight left, I made the turn into the upper arm of Swinger Slough. From here the route paralleled Highway 35 eastward to the Chippewa River, less than a mile ahead. By now, though, I understood that distance was not a relevant measure in the floodplain. After all, the dirt ramp I had launched from was just 2 miles farther down this same road. Through all my river wanderings, I had been covering an as-the-crow-flies distance of less than a mile per day.
FOGG, however, was no crow. No matter how twisty the channels were, I had no choice but to follow them. From here, though, it would be a straight run to the main channel of the Chippewa River. There was a fierce current against me, but with the end practically in sight, I kept rowing east along the highway, up Swinger Slough—until, with the bridge over the Chippewa River in sight 100 yards ahead, a series of downed trees blocked the channel from bank to bank.
Just after sunset, I emerged from Swinger Slough and re-entered the upper reaches of Chimney Lake. While I had an easy time here on the upstream leg, I wandered off course on the return trip, and ended up rowing through a wide expanse of water so shallow that FOGG’s keel was dragging through the mud.
Was the channel completely blocked? I didn’t want to believe it. It had taken me all afternoon to make it this far; I wouldn’t believe it. But there it was: three leafless and spindly fallen trees, spaced a boat length apart, just tall enough to stretch all the way across the slough—roots on the north bank, treetops on the south. Another dead end.
And yet, it might just be possible to drag the boat over the first tree, where the base of the trunk dipped low in the water. Once the idea had planted itself in my head, it proved hard to abandon. I rowed closer. Yes, it might be possible. I tested the depth with an oar—waist deep. It was probably stupid to try. FOGG weighs well over 300 lbs loaded, and I could barely flip the empty hull for painting, even with my wife to help me. But here I was, in sight of the Chippewa River, the last easy link of the loop.
It wasn’t easy. I managed to climb into the water and shove the bow up onto the first log, then scrambled over to the upstream side of the downed tree. The water there was neck-deep, with no firm footing to pull from. Fine. I climbed up beside the boat and manhandled FOGG farther onto the log. From there I see-sawed the boat up and down, and back and forth, walking it across the tree trunk the way you’d move a heavy cabinet across the floor, hoping the Douglas-fir backbone was strong enough to hold the hull together despite the wrangling. It must have been 10 minutes before the boat finally slid free on the upstream side of the log.
I had cleared the first obstacle—the first of three. And the next tree, higher out of the water, would be harder. I rowed up to it—awkward to do with so little room for the oars and with such a strong current flowing—and tested the depth. My 8′ 8″ oar sank all the way to the handle before touching bottom. There would be nowhere to stand for the initial heave up onto the tree trunk.
The bridge that crossed the main channel of the Chippewa was just ahead, a few yards off the right-hand bank. I could even read the green and white highway sign planted on the shoulder near the crossing: Chippewa River. It seemed a cruel blow to force an ending here.
Best to do a bit of scouting before committing to one option or the other, I finally decided. I tied the boat to the tree and climbed ashore. “Ashore,” I immediately discovered, consisted of a broad field of stinging nettles stretching 100 yards along the bank. I was wearing shorts and sandals, and a thin T-shirt. But the river was just ahead, so I waded into the nettle patch, crushing down the stalks with my feet, stomping a path. Nettles sprang back with each step to needle my legs and arms, burning and prickling my bare skin.
I finally reached the end of the nettle patch, hot, itchy, and tired. My survey from the slough bank proved that it would be nearly impossible to wrestle the boat over the second downed tree—I had known that all along, really—and the third tree was even worse. For a moment I had the mad thought of crossing the channel, dragging the boat onto the southern shore—it was cattails and reeds there, and relatively flat—and rolling it past the downed trees along the marshy ground, using my plastic boat fenders as rollers. In the end, it wasn’t prudence or foresight that saved me, but only the discovery that I had left the fenders back at the car. It would be an ignominious defeat, then, with just enough time to turn downstream and find a campsite before dark.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Except, sometimes, there isn’t.
The return trip—after I had dragged the boat back over the downed tree—was an easy downriver ride. I let the current carry me along mostly unaided, using the oars only for occasional course corrections. What had taken me several hours on the northward leg took less than an hour on the way back.
Even so, I had turned around none too early. The sun was almost hidden beneath the treetops as I emerged at Chimney Lake, with only a narrow arc of white-orange showing at the skyline. Soon it was gone altogether. I rowed past the delta’s shadowy wall of trees as the evening faded to a purple twilight. The surface of the water grew dark, a pitch of blackness interrupted by the glimmering reflections of the first stars appearing overhead.
I spent the night at the mouth of the Chippewa River, at the campsite I had found earlier. Flat sand, tall cottonwoods, a convenient downed log for a supper bench—perfection, or close enough to it. I sat for a long time outside the tent listening to the chuckle of water as the river slid by, and the murmuring of the cottonwoods, and the long sad whistling of passing trains along the Minnesota shore. Bats swooped and dodged at the water’s edge, and the stars seemed to pulsate with a distant hum. The boat rocked gently just offshore, the painter a long pale swooping curve from bow to riverbank. Somewhere a fish jumped and fell back into the water with a splash that seemed bigger than it should have been.
On the final morning of the trip, I got off to a slow start, brewing a batch of coffee—a rare treat—and taking my time packing up. The magic of a small boat is that you’re never far away from a quiet corner where you can spend the night unnoticed.
“Life must be filled up,” Dr. Johnson insists—a remark that had stuck in my head from the pages I’d read earlier that day—“and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.”
It didn’t seem like such a bad bargain to me.
Tom Pamperin is a freelance writer who lives in northwestern Wisconsin. He spends his summers cruising small boats throughout Wisconsin, the North Channel, and along the Texas coast. He is a frequent contributor to Small Boats Monthly and WoodenBoat.
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.
For some of us, the end of the boating season is the time to turn our attention to the maintenance of our small outboard motors. In our fleet, we have three motors ranging from 2-1/2 to 25 hp, and with the coming of winter we need to make sure they will run properly next year after sitting idle for several months.
SBM photographs
A bucket full of fresh water is sufficient for flushing the cooling system without the need for hose-fed muffs clamped over the motor’s intake.
Putting the outboard away for the winter begins with some basic maintenance. Flush the cooling system as you normally would by running the motor with either the lower unit in a bucket of fresh water or muffs clamped on the lower unit’s water intake with a hose supplying fresh water. Flush the motor long enough to ensure that water circulates through the entire cooling system. Running the motor will also warm the oil, making it easier to drain the oil for the change that will follow. Our 25-hp motor has a thermostat, so we have to run the motor long enough for the thermostat to open to let warm water flow out of the discharge port. Once finished with a flush, keep the outboard vertical for a bit and let the water completely drain out of the port, so that there is no water left inside to freeze over the winter.
The crankcase-oil drain plug for this outboard is set deep in a recess in the engine bottom. Be ready to capture the old oil when the bolt comes free.
Collect the old oil in a bucket and wear gloves to keep it off your hands.
While the engine is still warm, but not hot, open the crankcase drain port to drain the oil. A four-stroke’s oil must be changed every 100 hours, or annually. See the motor’s manual for what type of oil the engine requires and how much it takes to fill it. Two-stroke outboards do not have oil in the powerhead crankcase and don’t require an oil change, but the spark plugs can foul quickly due to the buildup of the oil that is mixed with the fuel. Spark plugs are cheap, and they should be changed during your winterizing maintenance.
Here the gear oil is flowing from the lower unit’s drain hole. The translucent green oil has none of the milkiness that would indicate water intrusion. Note the bolt siting on the anti-ventilation plate. Before it goes back into the vent at the top of the lower unit, the red gasket should be replaced with a new one.
The lower unit is refilled with gear oil from the bottom up. You can buy a hose that will connect the threaded lower unit fitting to the container of fresh oil, but a pump is easier to use. Note the green gear oil puddling on the anti-ventilation plate, indicating that the lower unit is full.
The lower unit’s gear oil must also be changed every year, or every 100 hours. There are two gasketed bolts: the top one is the vent only; the bottom is for draining and filling. Check to make sure the drained fluid is not cloudy, which would indicate water intrusion and that the propeller-shaft seal may need to be replaced.
Remove the prop to check for fishing line wrapped around the shaft. This prop is fine; there are just a few strands of weeds to clear.
Propellers must be removed at each service interval because the shaft needs to be lubricated and the shaft forward of the prop must be inspected for fishing line that isn’t otherwise evident and can damage the seal.
A gas siphon costs about $10 and is a quick and safe means of emptying the outboard’s fuel tank.
Gas degrades with time and is a common problem for outboards that have been improperly stored without being serviced first. Drain the gas with a siphon or hand pump (don’t invert the motor to pour it out) or run the motor to fuel exhaustion. Drain the carburetor, as well. The internal jets and orifices in small carburetors are sensitive to the gummy residue created by stale gas. Fuel that has been left in the tank for several months also loses some combustibility and will not make a motor happy come time to start in the spring. Remove the drain screw at the bottom of the carburetor bowl to drain any remaining fuel.
The bowl at the bottom of the carburetor has a drain for emptying remaining fuel before the motor sits idle over the winter.
To prevent corrosion inside the motor, consider using marine fogging oil for the cylinders if the motor is to be laid up for extended periods. The pressurized spray is injected into the air intakes while the motor is running and then, with the spark plugs removed, into the cylinders; pulling the starter cord distributes the oil.
The water pump is easily accessed by unbolting the lower unit and pulling it down until the driveshaft is free from the powerhead. A reluctant lower unit can be gently removed by placing a block of wood on the narrowest part of the anti-ventilation plate, close to the motor’s midsection, and tapping it with a hammer. Here, a new impeller has been slipped down over the driveshaft. The old impeller, set on the plate, has seen better days and four of its fins are permanently bent. The tip of a fifth was recovered taking the pump apart. The water intake needs to be checked to see if the sixth fin is hiding there.
The water-pump impeller should be changed every three years, whether it looks serviceable or not. The rubber vanes lose flexibility and effectiveness with age. The impeller maintains the water flow that is essential to cooling the motor, and nothing can kill a motor faster than excessive heat. Service manuals and YouTube videos are available online to illustrate the process of removing the lower unit to access the water pump for a variety of makes and models. Removing the lower unit also provides an opportunity to lubricate the mounting bolts so they don’t permanently seize in place with age and corrosion. You can also lubricate the lower unit’s driveshaft so that it does not freeze into the powerhead’s driveshaft. All threaded fastenings should be coated with a marine-grade Tef-Gel anti-seize compound.
The tip of the grease gun is pointed at a one of the Zerk fittings that need a new application of waterproof grease.
Check the steering and tilt mechanisms, and use a grease gun to lubricate points as needed. Look at throttle linkages, especially the mount’s retaining hardware, for general condition and corrosion.
The new fuel filter in the foreground will replace the existing filter behind it. Pinch clamps on the fuel line make the change easy.
The in-line fuel filter (or water-separator filter, if there is one), should be changed every 100 hours or annually. It is essential to keep fuel as clean as possible.
The sacrificial anode comes off with the removal of a single bolt. This one still has plenty of metal and just needs a bit of cleaning.
Check the sacrificial anode on the lower unit and clean it if it is scaly; replace it if a significant amount of it has eroded.
Make sure that the motor’s exterior gets a freshwater rinse; when it’s dry, touch up any paint chips, and put a coat of wax on the powerhead cover. Coat exposed metal inside the motors with Green Grease, a true waterproof grease, and treat external metal surfaces as needed with a corrosion preventative such as WD-40 but take care to not spray it onto rubber components. For rubber fittings and seals use a synthetic-based grease, not one that is petroleum-based.
When all of the winterizing has been done, the outboard is ready for hibernation. It’s best stowed upright on a sturdy stand.
Four-stroke outboards must be stored either vertically or lying down in the position shown in the manual. If you lay them on the incorrect side, the crankcase oil can get through the air intake and fill the cylinder, causing hydraulic lock and damaging the motor. Two-stroke outboards can be stored in any position. If possible, stow the motor on a sturdy stand and protect it with a non-abrasive cover in an area where critters can’t get into it, lest the motor become a food cache for mice and squirrels, who also like to chew on wires, or attract the wasp-like mud daubers, who are known to plug cooling-system discharge ports. If your motor uses a battery, put it on a smart charger.
With our three motors well taken care of, when the next nice day rolls around in the springtime, we will be ready to head out on the water, confident in the health of a vitally important propulsion system.
Audrey and Kent Lewis mess about with their small armada in the Tidewater Region of southeast Virginia. Steve Baum is a U.S. Coast Guard veteran who spent a career on the water surrounded by ships and small boats, and then embarked on another career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ensure that our waterways are safe for boating.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Magazine readers by sending us an email.
To do efficient and accurate work on a table saw, there are several accessories required beyond the miter gauge and the rip fence that ordinarily come with it. To secure feather boards, stops, and special fences, I’ve used clamps to hold them in place, but the undersides of the table and its extensions didn’t have flat surfaces to accommodate clamp jaws. The same problem makes it difficult to clamp accessories to my bandsaw and drill press tables. When I happened upon Magswitches on the web, they seemed to be the perfect solution, promising they could “secure custom jigs & fixtures anywhere on your table top” with just the twist of a knob.
The Magswitch company’s wide array of devices are built as magnets that can be turned on and off. Most of the products are meant for industrial use; the smallest of them, called MagJigs, are designed for the home woodworker. Inside the steel housings of a MagJig are two cylindrical magnets, one fixed to the housing and the other rotated by the knob at the top of the device. When the poles of the magnets are set north to north, south to south, the magnetic field is activated; when the poles are set in opposition, their magnetic fields almost entirely cancel each other. The steel housing takes care of the rest, and a MagJig that is turned off won’t even pick up fine steel filings.
Photographs by the author
The MagJigs I bought include two 60s (upper left), one 95 (lower left), and a pair of 150s with a universal base and reversible feather board.
I bought three sizes of the MagJig: the 60, 95, and 150. The pair of 150s came in a Starter Kit with a Universal Base and the Reversible Featherboard. There is one more in the MagJig series, the 235. The numbers for each device refer to what the company calls its “magnetic hold force” in pounds. That force is for pulling the MagJig straight up from the surface and will vary with the thickness of the ferrous metal it’s attached to. A thin sheet of steel won’t capture the magnet’s entire field and the MagJig won’t have its full holding power. The cast-iron top of my table saw might not capture the entire magnetic field either, but because it is where I’d use the MagJigs, that’s the holding power that matters to me.
I tested the listed holding power using a hanging scale suspended from a boom vang. In all cases, the MagJigs let go at forces less than listed. Those listings might be more accurate on a thicker table, which can capture the full depth of the magnetic field.
To test each MagJig, I used a digital hanging scale to see how much force it would take to pull the MagJigs off my table saw. I threaded a loop of nylon line through the magnet’s two mounting holes and used the scale connected to a boom vang to pull the MagJigs straight up from the table saw. The 60 popped off at an average of 31 lbs, the 95 at 62 lbs, and the 150 at 106 lbs. So for my purposes, the MagJigs all fell short of their nominal strengths.
The holding force that applies to the uses of the MagJig are lateral. I arranged the boom vang and the hanging scale horizontally to see how much force was required to slip the MagJigs sideways.
When using MagJigs for fences, guides, and feather boards, the holding force that matters is not vertical but lateral, so I anchored the vang to a point level with the table saw top. With a loop of cord around the base of each MagJig, I used the vang to pull it sideways. The 60 slipped at 9 lbs, the 95 at 16 lbs, and the 150 at 22 lbs. The company recommends that the MagJigs be used in pairs to keep forces from rotating them, so I made a loop for the feather board fixture with its two 150s holding to the table saw top. It slipped at 40 lbs.
I use the MagJig 95 to hold devices that I don’t need to count on to stay put. Here it is used to keep a vacuum hose in the drill-press table.
For practical applications I found the MagJig 95 and 150 useful in the shop. The 60 just had too little hold force; the note on the packaging—“secure custom jigs & fixtures anywhere on your table top”—overstated its abilities. The 95, fitted to a block of 3/4″-thick oak, made a useful stop for light work on the drill press. It also worked to hold a bracket for a vacuum hose. The 95’s packaging had a picture of a pair of them used with a feather board, a use I’d recommend only for light work.
The feather board arrangement can resist about 40 lbs lateral pressure. The MagJigs are partially over the miter slot, but still have a firm hold on the table.
The 150s, with their base and feather board, lived up to my expectations. They hold the feather board in place with enough pressure to keep the workpiece against the rip fence. The feather board offers stiff resistance to kickback, but I could pull the workpiece backward (with the saw turned off). The feather board I made from a 2×4 doesn’t let the workpiece move backward.
The back of the universal base can be used as a fence for the bandsaw.
To use the base as a fence on the drill press, I had to use 1/4″ plywood under the workpiece to prevent tearout when drilling. The 3/4″ plywood I usually use is just as high as the base.
The universal base, with the MagJigs in place and the feather board removed, has a straight back edge that can be used as a fence on the cast-iron tables of my bandsaw and drill press. My favorite application of the base is as a guide for ripping on the bandsaw. I can saw to my drawn pencil line until I have the angle of the workpiece set to accommodate any blade drift and then set the base and activate the magnets with one hand.
A shop-made fence uses the 150 MagJigs and its minimal size is better suited to the small drill-press table than the universal base is.
The universal base with the MagJigs does have limitations. The placement of the device is limited to the area of the table it is being applied to. The base takes up some extra room, especially when the back side is used as a fence. You can make your own jigs with 3/4″ stock. The 150s require a 40mm hole, and a Forstner bit of that size is available with some MagJig sets. I used a 1-1/2″ Forstner bit and elongated it by drilling the first hole, shifting the wood by about 3/32″ and drilling again to shave off one side of the hole.
I’m not sure what I’ll do with the MagJig 60s. I may put a bridle and a cord on one to fish for drill bits that roll off the wall side of the workbench. Their bigger brothers will answer a higher calling in the shop.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Magazine.
Here in Seattle, Washington, boating season officially opens on the first Saturday in May with a grand parade of decorated boats. Thousands of people turn out for the celebration. The end of the season closes without fanfare, and only a few of us keep boating as the months of cold and rain set in. Even in midwinter, the weather here isn’t often cause for misery as long as you dress properly.
Feeling the chill often stars at the extremities: the feet, hands, and head. Protecting these areas from weather has been the mission of Sealskinz since the company’s founding in 1996. Their waterproof, windproof, and breathable socks, gloves, and hats are designed and manufactured in Great Britain. I started using Sealskinz socks in 1998, and they have performed well and held up for many years of sea kayaking and bicycling.
I have a new pair of Sealskinz socks now as well as their gloves and a knit beanie. They are all composed of three layers; the inner and outer layers differ with the article, but the inner layer of all is a membrane that is waterproof, windproof, and breathable. While there are outdoor fabrics with the same characteristics, Sealskinz products set themselves apart with a membrane and fabrics that stretch.
Photographs by the author
The inside-out sock shows the thicker knit at the toe and heel. What appears to be a seam along the length of the sock is a small pucker of the knit on the membrane beneath it. It flattens when the sock stretches and is soft to the touch.
Sealskinz socks come in ankle length, mid length, and, my favorite, knee length. I find boots awkward for boating and prefer to wear low-cut boating shoes and let knee-high socks take care of keeping my feet dry. Apart from the cuff, the Sealskinz knee-highs have a seamless inner layer with a merino-wool blend in a continuous knit that varies in thickness from toe to heel to cuff. The uppers have a tight, nubby knit for warmth; the toe and heel have a thicker layer of looped yarn for cushioning and extra warmth. The outer layer is nylon with elastane. The socks slip on easily, fit snugly, and there’s enough stretch to tuck pant legs comfortably into them. In the cold and rain they’re very pleasantly warm, and they keep my feet dry while wading at the launch ramp.
The inside-out glove shows the seamless knit of the interior. The tabs on the cuff were used to secure the gloves to packaging. They are soft and seem strong and might serve to tether the gloves.
The Waterproof All Weather Ultra Grip Knitted Gloves are made of materials like those in the socks but have a finer knit. Like the socks, there is a seam at the cuff, but by some miracle of knitting machinery, there are no other seams. The seamless, stretch construction provides a noteworthy advantage over gloves sewn of non-stretch fabrics. The gloves don’t bunch up or crease, creating pressure points that can lead to discomfort and hot spots. The palm and fingers have small dots of rubbery substance for a non-slip grip without compromising the stretch of the fabric. When rowing on a rainy day, I have a comfortable grip on the handles with just as much grip as I have with bare hands. The tips of the thumb and index finger on both left and right gloves have a speckled gray material that is compatible with touchscreens. They work best when fingertips are pushed well into the ends of the gloves.
The beanie is especially warm for a knit cap. Like the socks and gloves, it is machine washable and requires no special detergent.
The knit acrylic exterior of the Waterproof Cold Weather Roll Cuff Beanie Hat looks just like an ordinary knit beanie, but it has the protection of the Seaskinz membrane. The interior layer is a polyester fleece. The hat is deep enough that it can cover my ears with the cuff, and although the cuff is sewn front and back, the sides can be unfolded for even more coverage. I have other beanies, but they’re not as warm and not effective when it’s raining or a strong wind is blowing; the Sealskinz beanie offers good protection no matter what the weather is doing. You can add to its uses with the LED-equipped version of the hat. It has an opening in the cuff that holds a USB-rechargeable headlamp.
These Sealskinz products have made my outings in the off season much easier to enjoy. They are well designed, perform well, and, if my previous experience with their ’90s-era socks is any indication, can last a long time. Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Magazine.
AMERICAN BEAUTY is a Whitehall Tender that was built by students at the WoodenBoat School and designed by the Rice Brothers from East Boothbay, Maine. Back in the 1800s, Whitehalls were used as a commercial craft, ferrying materials and crew to shore from large schooners and square-rigged ships. Eventually, the Whitehall entered the recreational world and remains a favorite of amateur boatbuilders to this day.
Ontario’s twin cities of Kitchener-Waterloo both have downtown parks that surround small lakes. Waterloo Park, founded in 1893, was built around Silver Lake and upon completion was dubbed the “Jewel of the City.” Three years later and two miles distant, in what must have been a bit of twin rivalry, Kitchener created Victoria Park by transforming a plot of swampland on the site into Victoria Park Lake. Kitchener officials declared that the park built around the lake was “The City’s Crown Jewel.”
Photographs by and courtesy of Matt Morris
For boating lakes that are outside of the bicycle’s range, the boat fits in the back of Matt’s car.
There was, unfortunately, a bit of a lapse in civic pride through the 20th century and both lakes filled with silt from the creeks that fed them. Waterloo’s “Jewel” became known as Mud Lake among the locals and was so foul in the summer of 1995 that hundreds of waterfowl that had settled upon it died of botulism. In the fall of that year, motivated by the dead ducks, the city created a seven-year plan to dredge the lake and restore the wetlands around it. Kitchener eventually followed suit and decided it was time to dredge Victoria Park Lake, and in 2011 scooped over 85,000 tons of sediment from the lake bottom.
Matt tows his trailer behind a folding bicycle. He used to be a teacher and rode the bicycle to get to school where he could store it out of the way in his classroom.
In between the two lakes, on the Waterloo side of the twin-city divide, is the home of Matt Morris. He’s an avid cyclist and the Iron Horse Trail, a bike path that connects the lakes, runs right by his house. The ride north to Silver Lake is slightly less than a mile; south to Victoria Park Lake is over 2 miles. He visits the lakes often and has been watching ongoing improvements to both parks.
Matt parked his rig at the Victoria Park sign that inspired the dream to build his boat and the trailer that transports it.
On one of his rides to Victoria Park he noticed a blue and white sign at the lake’s side. On it were three icons: one with a swimmer and another with a fish swimming under a hook and line. Each of those was crossed with a red X. The third icon pictured a sailboat—without an X. “Each time I was in the area,” he writes, “I started to dream of building a boat that I could tow behind my bicycle.”
Each pair of bulkheads is held together with four 1/4″ bolts, all set in holes above the waterline to avoid the need for gaskets to prevent leaks.
Matt’s dreams remained dreams until Waterloo announced plans for some dredging and the installation of a boat dock at Silver Lake. He would have two lakes he could enjoy with a boat. That set him in motion. While he first thought about buying a kit for a two-piece rowboat, he realized that designing his own boat, and making it nest in three pieces would make the project much more interesting. He began by sketching shapes and construction details for a skin-on-frame nesting boat in a blank book.
While the trailer gets locked up on shore at the lakes, the bicycle folds up small enough to have a place aboard the boat.
His first idea was to make a boat with transoms fore and aft and curved sides. He made scaled patterns from paperboard cut from a Froot Loops cereal box and a Blue Moon Belgian White Ale carton. Unhappy with the shape and the nesting function, he chose to work with an overall plan form of a trapezoid. He could divide it into three smaller trapezoids that neatly fit one inside the other. Packed for travel, the boat would fit in the back of his square-back car or ride on a bike-towed trailer.
Matt started out with a bench that spanned the bulkheads but discovered that a small seat supported by the aft bulkhead provided good trim for the boat. He made his economical oars with construction-grade 2×4s.
With his plans and patterns finished, he cut the boat’s six meranti plywood bulkheads at a friend’s woodshop; the bandsaw and belt sander made quick work of the largest parts of the boats. Stringers set in chisel-trimmed mortices established the shape of the three sections. Matt steam-bent ash frames inside of the stringers and clamped the intersections while they cooled and set. When the ash was dry, he epoxied the intersections of frames and stringers. Kevlar roving, applied on the diagonal like the pattern on an argyle sock, reinforced the framework. Matt applied a skin of 9-oz Dacron and coated it with a two-part urethane.
Boats certainly have a sculptural quality and Matt uses his UB1000 at home as an illuminated work of art in his front yard.
The boat goes by the name UB1000 as Matt’s first version of his Urban Boat. He equipped it with oars and a sail and built the trailer he had envisioned for getting it by bicycle to and from Silver Lake and Victoria Park Lake, documenting the whole process on his blog. He now enjoys rowing and sailing the lakes that are just minutes by bike from his home. The launching of his boat on the two lakes is, perhaps, the realization of the twin-city’s Field of Dreams vision: If you dredge it, they will come.
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.
There were three original Chebacco boats, all designed by Phil Bolger for Brad Story. Story was a friend of Bolger’s and a boatbuilder, now retired, of considerable talent in Essex, Massachusetts. All three boats feel very much alike on the water. I’ll make a point of differentiating between them when appropriate, but otherwise comments are true for all three. In fact, on a day of racing them against each other, and trading back and forth to see if any small differences were the result of the people aboard, it was really easy to lose track of which one I was actually on at any one time. They’re that similar. (A fourth, raised-deck version recently joined the fleet.)
The first was an extension—literally—of Bolger’s 15’ Harbinger catboat that Bolger designed for Story in 1975. It was done more to the New York style rather than Cape Cod so that it would row better and need a smaller sail plan. The lines are slack-bilged, especially below the waterline, with significant flare. It’s a fair, easy, dish-shaped, easily driven shape that developed into the sandbaggers. It offers amazing performance in the usual light air of New England (and New York) summers.
The first Chebacco was Harbinger with a 5′ stern fairing and a small mizzen. She was a cold-molded stock design built to order at Story’s shop. The added length gave Chebacco a significantly higher top speed than her predecessor, even better ghosting ability, and allows for a really big cockpit and a small, but quite comfortable cuddy.
Photo by Jamie Orr
The Bolger-designed Chebacco boat is an 18′ cat yawl based on an earlier Bolger daysailing cat.
Other than the mizzen, the rigs of the first Chebacco and Harbinger were essentially the same unstayed gaff cat with a very short luff, and a long gaff and boom. The shape of the main allows for a short mast, which in the cold-molded Chebacco is a very good thing. It passes through the cabintop and into a step on the sole of the cuddy. It takes some commitment to lift even a mast this short into place and luck or patience or another person to get it into the step. Lengthening the mast for a longer luff, or (even more to the point) to get a vang on the boom, only makes the process harder.
These are corky, light, playful boats on the water. They move effortlessly in light air, heel easily but slowly, accelerate quickly, and become very stable as they settle onto their flared sides. They balance beautifully until well off the wind. In fact, the boats can be steered with the mizzen sheet alone anywhere from a beat to a beam reach. They tack in 95 degrees steering with the mizzen sheet, 90 degrees with the tiller. They become harder-mouthed off the wind, but not offensive. The end plate on the shallow rudder works.
Despite how easily the Chebaccos move, they feel quite deliberate. The tiller is firm, her motions smooth rather than flighty. They feel more like keelboats than light trailer boats. Restful rather than athletic, but not boring, these boats feel much bigger than their 20′ and 1,000-lb displacement would suggest.
Above the waterline they are all volume and open, uncluttered space. The Chebaccos’ cockpits run almost the full width of the boats and about a third of their length. The cockpit size is enhanced by depth and a broad expanse of cockpit sole. The floor space and depth invite getting up and walking around, or sailing with the tiller propped against a hip.
The benches are chair height and width, and are angled down and outboard at just the right pitch. The coamings form high seatbacks. The forward faces of the seats are also angled—wider at the sole—to make for more foot room. The boats are delightful to be aboard.
These kinds of boats have to provide more pleasure than almost any other kind. The list of what makes them so wonderful is long, but let me indulge myself, as they also seem to be surprisingly rare.
They are small, simple, and light enough to launch, rig, and sail alone. They don’t need a slip or mooring, and so save the expense and open up many more areas to sail. They don’t waste a week of spare time fitting out in the spring or putting up in the fall. They don’t demand a whole day if there’s only an hour or two to sail, but they are plenty comfortable for the full day if it’s available. They are sailing within 15 minutes of reaching the ramp.
They’ll take a party to a low-tide beach for a picnic. They sail in the most delightful places: water that’s shallow and close to shore, full of minor dangers and great discovery and sport. They are light and shoal enough to push off a mud bank. They can tow a dinghy, but don’t have to. They can be rowed at a reasonable pace, standing, with long sweeps, or can be sculled over the transom, or can take an outboard.
They sail backwards steadily and predictably, or sideways for that matter, should you want to get into tight places or show off. They spin in their own length under sail. With some tweaking, they’ll steer themselves. These boats are capable enough for semi-open water. They’re fast enough to cover distance. They lie-to like a duck under the mizzen alone should a mistake be made with the weather.
They have a dry place for cold crew members, a shaded place for sunburned or sleepy crew members. They have plenty of storage to keep gear aboard and ready to go, but not underfoot.
Young children will find everything aboard to their scale and will feel much their own people, able to sail the boat and not be bored. Adults, too, will feel everything to their scale. What a difficult combination. Everyone aboard will feel safe.
They are strong, stable, dry, and capable. They’ll take adventurers off for a weekend of camping on the water in far greater luxury than most campers put up with, let alone backpackers. And at the end, it’ll only take a half hour to put the boat back on the trailer and pack it up. And everything is aboard, locked up, and ready for the next opportunity to get out.
Photo by Onne Van Der Wal
The Chebacco concept began life as a cold-molded, round- bilged boat (right). A sheet plywood version (left) followed, and on the heels of this came a lapstrake-plywood version (middle).
Despite all of the virtues listed above, the cold-molded boat got to be too expensive to build. Sales dried up. Story went back to Bolger for a less expensive design in plywood that had all the same properties, plus some added conveniences. It was an opportunity to improve a great boat.
The sheet-plywood boat that resulted retains the plumb ends, the broad transom, large cockpit, and uncluttered cuddy. The rudder was moved inboard to allow a free-flooding outboard motor well on centerline so the motor can be both convenient and out of the way. The huge centerboard of Harbinger was replaced with a much smaller board and a full-length, very shoal keel, though the draft remained at 1′. The keel allows some progress to be made with the board all the way up. It also stiffens and strengthens the flat bottom.
The mast on the plywood boat steps through a slot in the cuddy’s housetop. Place the heel in the step and walk the mast up. Since it’s so easy, the mast is 3’ longer, the boom and gaff shorter. Sail area is about the same, though the rig looks better. And it might be faster.
In almost all ways the plywood boat is more functional, convenient, and usable. Aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder. The sheet-ply boat is all angles. Her upper chines are very much in evidence, her sheer- strake plumb, like her ends. I find her, too, very beautiful, but in a different way than her cold-molded sister: where one is smooth and sensuous curves, the other is cutaways and angled flats. Perhaps an acquired taste, but striking from any angle.
Story liked her well enough, but wondered if he couldn’t do a more traditional-looking boat from lapstrake plywood for the same price and time in labor. There are some people who he thought might not like the look of the sheet version. What extra time he used in fitting the planks, he’d save by not having to ’glass and grind. Bolger drew the third Chebacco.
The lapstrake boat has an apple-cheeked, Brit- ish look to her. Her deck and rig are identical to the sheet-ply boat. The materials cost is the same. Labor time worked out to be about 10 hours more. On board, it’s hard to know the difference between the two plywood versions. The sheet boat might feel a little more tender initially, and harden up more definitely when she gets her upper chine in. But it’s hard to say for sure. We never had more than 12–15 knots of air. At 15 we might think about taking the first reef. At a steady 18 we definitely would. It would be interesting to see if the two boats still felt the same as the breeze came up.
Story did get Bolger to draw one more Chebacco boat. This one was a 25-footer, lengthened to provide better accommodations in the cuddy. It’s plywood lapstrake, and looks very much like the others. I’m not convinced that the added length is not a mistake, though. Too much of a trade-off in convenience, both on and off the water. But that’s the subject of another article.
Designer Phil Bolger passed away in May 2009. His legacy of great designs includes the three-boat, 18′ Chebacco series shown here. A later 25-footer, and a still-later 18′ raised-deck version, followed.
This Boat Profile was published in Small Boats 2010 and appears here as archival material. Plans for the 19′ 8″ x 7′ 5″ tack-and-tape version are available from H.H. Payson & Company.
The Ladybug pram, a small dinghy with a wheel permanently fixed in a case in its bow, allows for a nearly seamless transition from the water to a beach, all the while keeping its passengers’ shoes dry. The boat can be built in either a 6′ or a 7′ model. I first spotted it at The WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport, Connecticut, in 2008, on a visit to designer-builder Harry Bryan’s booth. The prototype Ladybug was perched on the grass in front of Harry’s display. Sitting there on its bottom, with oars-cum-wheelbarrow handles at the ready, the boat’s concept spoke for itself. Harry and I had barely exchanged pleasantries when I handed him $25 for a sheet of plans, and began set- ting up the project in my head. I needed this boat, as I’ll explain in just a minute. But first, allow me a short digression to illustrate this boat’s niche.
Fifteen or so years ago, I went on an evening outing with friends in a 24′ sloop in Maine; they were considering buying the boat, which the builder turned over to them for a few hours. We set out halfway through the tide’s ebb, rowing to the mooring from a gravelly beach—which had grown significantly wider when we returned to it at dead low tide after sailing. The prospect of lugging that dinghy up the beach after our pleasant sail was sheer drudgery. As we were considering our approach to the job, the sailboat’s owner-builder appeared on the beach in his pickup truck, drove to where we were standing, and stepped out of the cab without saying a word. He looped the beat-up fiberglass dinghy’s painter around his bumper hitch, returned to the cab, and stepped on the accelerator pedal. He hit stride at about 20 mph, the dinghy bouncing along behind him.
Photo by Bryan Gagner
The Ladybug pram, with a knobby tire permanently mounted in its bow, eases the transition from water to land for beach-based sailors.
It was an impressive, albeit utilitarian, approach to a common problem: Many mooring-based sailors and powerboaters work from the shore without a pier and float, and they need a reliable dinghy system. Some use outhaul anchors, leaving their dinghies afloat and hauling them in to shore when needed. Some use dollies. Some use pickup trucks. And some use brute force, straining their backs and compressing their lumbar discs into sciatic-nerve-tweaking protuberances (ask me how I know). Very few people these days use wheel-barrow boats—an old concept that Harry Bryan revives with the Ladybug.
My wife, Holly, and I live near a gravel beach at the foot of a field with poor road access. We maintain a fairweather mooring off this exposed beach, and for several years have accessed this mooring with a dolly-mounted dinghy. It’s an adequate approach to the beach-dinghy problem, though it typically requires a trip overboard in knee-deep water to secure the dinghy to the dolly. It also requires some awkward lifting of the boat to place the dolly under it. And, the boat must be strapped down before its trip up the beach, lest it be rattled frustratingly askew of the dolly.
The difference in using the Ladybug for this transition from water to land is profound. The boat’s bottom has a pronounced rocker, or longitudinal curvature, at either end, allowing it to settle on dry land before the rest of the boat grounds out. The flat bottom forces the boat to sit bolt upright when it takes the ground, making it easy to step out and onto the beach. If you’ve backed onto the beach—my preferred approach—then you simply feed the oar handles through their respective holes in the transom, cleat the oar blades to the boat’s thwart (the oars are retrofitted with wooden cleats for this purpose), lift the transom, and back the
rest of the boat out of the water on its wheel.
Photo by Bryan Gagner
Ladybug has ample freeboard when carrying a sole rower; she’ll carry an additional passenger in calm conditions.
Ladybug’s basic dimensions are based upon a William Atkin dinghy called Tiny Ripple. Holly and I built our Ladybug over the winter in an unfinished spare bedroom in our house. We borrowed the building jig from one of Harry’s WoodenBoat School classes, so I can’t comment on the moldmaking and jig construction—except to say that if you know how to use a tape measure, saw, and screwdriver, you probably won’t find this job too mentally or manually taxing.
The bow and stern transoms are laid out according to dimensions on the plans, fixed to the jig in their exact locations, and then beveled to accept the planking. The planks—just two per side—are likewise laid out according to dimensions shown on the plans, though their shapes can also simply be traced from the jig. The two planks are joined together by a riveted lap. Once they’re fastened, the bottom edges of the garboards are beveled to accept the bottom planking.
Harry offers three different options for the bottom: (1) a single layer of cross planking, with splined edges; (2) a sheet of plywood; and (3) two layers of thin planking, diagonally laid. The third option, in my opinion, is the best, as it makes economical use of short stock and creates a watertight panel that doesn’t rely upon swelling to achieve its watertightness, which is a good thing for a dinghy that spends most of its life on land. Holly and I took a slightly different approach to option number three. Since we had a stack of cedar of adequate length and generous width, we laid the first course of planking athwartships, and placed the second layer (each was 5⁄16″) fore-and-aft. Stuck together with thickened epoxy, the result is a two-ply sheet of cedar plywood.
With the transom, planks, and bottom in place, the boat is removed from the jig, flipped over, and fitted out. The fitout is pretty straightforward stuff: a handful of frames to improve the stiffness of the sides; a stern seat, a rowing seat and its supporting thwart, rails, oar-locks, and knees. The rowing seat is unconventional, as it is oriented fore-and-aft. This allows micro-adjustment to the boat’s longitudinal trim, without requiring the rower to switch thwarts.
The wheel is an off-the-shelf item from Seitech, manufacturer of small-boat dollies. For about $90, you purchase a knobby tire, a plastic rim, an aluminum axle, and nylon bearings. Then you make an axle bracket from plate bronze or stainless steel and oak or locust. The whole thing is affixed to the bottom with four screws, which allows for easy removal for servicing. The wheel lives in a case in the bow which, when viewed when the boat is in the water, could be mistaken for another seat or a gear locker.
Photo by Bryan Gagner
The boat’s bottom can be built in one of several different ways, depending upon available material and personal preference. Here, a Ladybug bottom is being cross-planked in a single layer of cedar, edge-fitted with splines.
How does this amphibious dinghy perform? To be fair, we should consider it in both of its media and in the context of its intended purpose; this is a utilitarian dinghy, not a performance rowboat. It rolls over coarse terrain and short meadow grass very well. One can actually load a fair amount of gear into it and use it as a cart. Launching, depending upon the slope of your beach, is easy, too. I’ve found it best to load and unload over the stern transom. Typically the boat is afloat by the time I’m aboard, and little poling is needed. But, if a shallow-sloping beach requires it, a push on the beach with one of the oars is usually all that’s needed to get into navigable water. I lucked into a set of beater oars a few years ago, and these now belong to our Ladybug; it would be rather hard on the conscience to press a pair of new Shaw & Tenney spruce oars into such service on a rocky Maine beach. A dedicated pole would be handy.
And how does she perform on the water? The rowing ergonomics are fine, she glides between strokes, and I forget the wheel is even there. Ladybug is a small boat. Harry has piled three adults into his, and recommends such loading only in dead-flat water. In chop, while settling ourselves into the boat, Holly and I took a small amount of water through one of the oar holes—just once, but enough to warn us of the possibilities if we pushed things too hard in poor conditions. I spoke with Harry about this, and he had been thinking of some sort of flapper cover to stem such flow. I think that’s a good idea, and am mulling over the possibilities in neoprene. The rails are closer to the water than I’m used to; I would not feel comfortable in this boat in a significant chop with a large passenger aboard. I have, however, rowed it in breeze and chop alone, and feel perfectly safe in such conditions.
As with any small dinghy, loading and unloading at the mothership require careful weight distribution. One must adhere to the convention of unloading the ends of the boat before the middle. I’ve found standing from either of the low-slung seats to be a bit of a chore, but I’ve also been spoiled over the years by higher thwarts and larger dinghes. I wouldn’t change the position of Ladybug’s thwarts, as her rowing geometry is quite good as specified.
Photo by Bryan Gagner
For overland transport of the boat, Ladybug’s oars must be retrofitted with wooden cleats; these notch over the thwart, securing the oars to the boat.
Ladybug tows well behind a bigger boat. Her bow is rockered so high that the wheel rides clear of the water—except when surfing downwind. Then, it does have a tendency to catch the surface and spin as the boat scoots down the face of a wave, but with no bad consequences. An ample skeg keeps her tracking straight.
This little dinghy lives up to its promise; it’s changed the way I get on and off the beach. Every time I slide those oars into their wheelbarrow position and roll the boat to the water, I feel a glimmer of satisfaction spiced with disbelief that the transition from shore to sea could be so easy.
This Boat Profile was published in Small Boats 2010 and appears here as archival material. For more information about the Ladybug Pram, visit Bryan Boatbuilding.
Swallow Boats is a purveyor of boat kits in Wales. Their SeaRaider combines the best features of the fastest and most seaworthy Raid boats into one new boat. The boat originated in Scotland—one of the best places on Earth to put a small boat through its paces. In the space of a week on this country’s lochs and coast, one is likely to meet a wide range of weather conditions, from varied wind strengths, both upwind and downwind, to sudden rain squalls or katabatic gusts coming off the mountains. This drama is always complemented by enough soft breezes and sunshine highlighting the dramatic Scottish scenery to make one wish to stay longer.
The week of competitive sailing and rowing originally called the Great Glen Raid, now Sail Caledonia, has given Claus Riepe from Hamburg, Germany, and many other sailors, builders, and designers a unique opportunity to watch small boats perform under sail and oar and against each other. Any design or building faults, any glitches or lapses, soon become obvious. Claus thoroughly enjoyed the Raid concept, a week of competition and camaraderie in cruising areas that can be deep sea, shallow lagoon, or narrow canal, and he enjoyed his present boat, but he’d never sailed it in company with other boats of similar appearance. All week he and his crew had sailed their best and rowed their hearts out but were effortlessly overtaken by one boat after the other, always ending up toward the rear of the fleet.
Photo by Kathy Mansfield
The SeaRaider, a new design from the UK-based kit boat manufacturer Swallowboats, was purpose designed for point-to-point small-boat racing events called Raids.
“It was a sobering shock,” he admitted. “I first tried to upgrade with every trick I could think of—taller rig with more sail, carbon spars, booms, sliding fairleads—but all to no avail.”
He ordered a new boat, but that didn’t work either. Now ready for a complete change, he remembered Swallow Boats near Cardigan Bay in Wales, known for their small boats with a lovely sheer and performance, and their offer to design and build custom boats.
It was about this time that Matt Newland joined his naval architect father, Nick, at Swallow Boats, after a stint in London, bringing with him an engineering education from Cambridge University, designing skills on 3D CAD software, and the experience of working for a time with yacht designer Tony Castro. Claus visited them and described his dream boat, similar to a Drascombe Longboat but with better upwind ability, a self-tacking jib for singlehanding, room for four oarsmen on Raids, a mizzen that can be handled from within the cockpit, a strong rudder that does not have to be removed before beaching, good watertight stowage, self-draining ability, excellent buoyancy and righting capacity, and more.
The Newlands relished the challenge. Quickly they realized that water ballast was a necessity to achieve a light boat for rowing and racing, and a safe boat with self-righting capability for shorthanded sailing in varying conditions. After just two hours of discussion, a firm order was placed. All through the design process designer and client stayed in close contact, and together developed some innovative ideas and solutions.
The water ballast, for a start, is carefully thought out. “A false floor,” Matt explained, “is sited just above the waterline and inclining aft slightly, so the cockpit can self-drain through self-bailers or a simple twist hatch into the outboard well. A tank underneath this floor can take up to 660 lbs(330kg) of water, equivalent to the weight of four adults lying in the bilges.” Two inflatable buoyancy bags in the tank can be partly inflated to fine-tune the amount of ballast water taken on, a far more versatile system than multiple tanks. “And in effect,” Claus points out, “the boat has several different personalities. I can fish off the west coast of Ireland in a steady boat, or race with a crew in a light boat with its sail area of 196 sq ft and 21′ 10″ length for plenty of fun and excitement.”
There is an ingenious method for filling and emptying the tank. A forward-facing self-bailer within reach of the helmsman means the water can be flooded in, and three self-bailers mounted the right way around can remove it when the boat is moving as little as 3 to 4 knots. The water can also be pumped out with a conventional bailing pump, a small electric pump, or drained off as the boat lifts onto a trailer. I watched a capsize demonstration in Scotland when the water-ballast tanks were full: the boat self-righted so quickly from a complete knockdown that little water entered the cockpit and the crew were back aboard and sailing within two minutes.
Photo by Kathy Mansfield
SeaRaider is water-ballasted. As this capsizing demonstration shows, the boat is extremely stable when in ballast. It self- righted during the drill, and the crew was back aboard and in a dry cockpit within two minutes.
Once Matt was happy with the design, he had all the plywood parts cut out by computer-controlled router. “This not only saves time,” he explained, “but also ensures the hull is designed accurately and fits together exactly.” She was built right-way-up over a four-mold construction jig. Her bottom panel is sheathed inside and out with heavy 16-oz (450g) biaxial glass, and the whole hull is epoxy-coated. The construction method is largely self-jigging and relies on internal structure like bulkheads to form the shape and provide stiffness.
Several custom-made pieces of stainless-steel hardware were commissioned for the boat, including the massively strong rudderhead (plywood blade), the tiller joint, and the mast tabernacle. Matt applied his engineering skills to the tiller design—always a problem when a mizzenmast is in the way. Under the aft deck a stainless-steel push rod with stainless-steel ball sockets at each end gives fine-tuned responsiveness without any slack. It feels slightly heavier than an ordinary tiller, but one quickly gets used to it.
The resulting boat is a modern classic, with the graceful looks and lines, lovely sheer, and elegant use of varnished wood for spars, gunwales, and slatted seats that are part of the ethos of the Swallow- boat range. It was important for Claus that they could both design and build his new boat. The SeaRaider has the lean shape and flat run aft of a racing dinghy of the 1960s, her transom narrowed to reduce wetted surface to improve rowing ability. Primarily she is a sailing boat; with a firm turn of the bilge, good form stability, and a flat run aft, she is well able to plane in the right conditions, as we found. She weighs just 716 lbs when the tank is empty, fully 440 lbs less than Claus’s old fiberglass boat of the same length. So, she’s lighter to maneuver, tow, launch, and retrieve, yet just as robust. The boat has an outboard well, sited inboard on the centerline where it should be, with a slit just for the propeller that simply closes with a flap when not in use. The maximum power is 5 hp, but a Honda 2.3-hp short-shaft is sufficient.
The boat, named CRAIC after the Irish word for a good sociable time, was so brand-new when Matt trailered her up to Sail Caledonia to test her, that even Claus had not seen her and was still sailing his old boat. I liked CRAIC’s slim shape and the versatile yawl rig that can cope with strong winds.
The gunter mast can be stepped or lowered down in its hinged tabernacle, its topmast and the mizzen spar being light carbon fiber enclosed in luff pockets like a windsurfer. This reduces turbulence on the leading edge and adds a bit more sail area, and CRAIC sails very close to the wind. The self-tacking jib is set on roller-furling gear and tacks easily with its club boom. For stowage, the mizzen wraps on its round carbon-fiber mast; the mainsail can be similarly furled if the gooseneck is disengaged. The sprit on the mainsail means that the spar is well above head height, yet the sail is well supported. Slab reefing is still possible, with cringles near the mast, or the main can simply be dropped. CRAIC rows well, her topsides are low enough, and the rudder slightly down gives directional stability. The thwarts are removable to clear space for sailing. Everything works so easily.
Photo by Kathy Mansfield
SeaRaider’s gunter rig is easily un- stepped and stowed aboard.While primarily a sailing boat, she can be rowed handily when conditions require.
I joined CRAIC the day of her first real trial early in the week on Loch Lochy, on a crisp early summer’s day, the mountains circling the loch rising blue-green into the sky. The wind was gusty, between 8 and 18 knots, and designer Iain Oughtred had been invited to take the helm. The wind died as the race started but then returned strongly, and we set off on an exhilarating tacking duel with the Beetle whaleboat replica MOLLY, 6′ longer than our boat. Claus watched with incredulity as his new boat took off through the fleet “like a knife through butter,” he later told us, and left the rest of the fleet behind.
Our delight simmered down as the unsettled weather and the mountains began to throw longer and heavier gusts our direction, and whitecaps became trailing spume. Gusts up to 33 knots were coming our way, but Iain was curious to see what CRAIC was capable of and kept heading up, spilling a bit of wind when needed. We could have reefed the main, of course, or taken it down entirely; she sails well under jib and mizzen.
We turned onto the downwind leg, and Matt clocked 8.7 knots on his GPS before the boat with its four crew suddenly rose up a few inches and started planing. There was too much spray to read the GPS, but Matt had already reached speeds of over 10 knots in her in Wales. “It’s like a Nantucket sleigh ride, coasting behind a whale,” I thought to myself as I held on tight to my camera. At the next buoy we stopped to put in a reef, and by the time we reached our destination, the wind was an indolent breeze.
But CRAIC’s star had risen, Swallow Boats had achieved their biggest design breakthrough, and Claus was bursting with pride that he had been part of the project. Since then the boat has sailed in Raids in France and Italy, its design adapted to the BayRaider and cabin versions, selling through Europe and now to the U.S., and Claus’s pleasure has only increased.
The SeaRaider’s lines show a narrow, easily driven, sheet-plywood hull that, due to its water-ballast tanks, is unexpectedly stable. The gunter rig’s spars are built of carbon fiber.
This Boat Profile was published in Small Boats 2010 and appears here as archival material. Swallow Boats is now Swallow Yachts and the Sea Raider is no longer in production. See their website for current models.
Richard Wilson is a boatbuilding instructor. His smart-looking wooden power dory, Kingfisher, grew out of his desire for a practical inshore craft suitable for sportfishing, flatfish netting, and scuba diving. As a bonus, it also happened to be a good boatbuilding project for his students, which could be completed within the time frame of his course.
Wilson, a master tradesman with years of experience, became a director of his family’s boatbuilding company, Brin Wilson Boats, in 1974, when his father died. In partnership with his brother, he ran the company until 2000, when they made the decision to sell. Today, Wilson is a marine technology tutor at Auckland’s University of Technology, UNITEC.
Photo by John Eichelsheim
Kingfisher is an outboard-powered skiff whose lineage can be traced back to New England dories. Her topsides are planked in lapstrake plywood, and she has a double bottom that provides both flotation and self-bailing capability.
Wilson owns a vacation home at Marsden Cove, north of Auckland on the shores of Whangarei Harbour, a large, deeply indented, flooded river valley with plenty of the shallow inlets, tidal rivers, and extensive sand flats typical of New Zealand’s northernmost regions. Finding himself without a larger boat for the first time in many years, Wilson decided to design and build a dory after being bitterly disappointed in a lightweight 14′ aluminum runabout he’d bought to explore Whangarei Harbour and beyond. “I hated it,” he explained. “It was noisy, hard-riding, and unstable. And there was no room in it!”
Wilson’s first love is wooden boats. He became interested in design at a very young age. Over the years, ten yachts and three launches ranging between 36′ and 41′ in length have been built to his designs. So designing and building a boat of his own was an obvious solution. The dory is his first small design.
“I wanted a boat with a stable hull that was easily driven by a 20-hp outboard, easily handled by just one person, and easy to build. Kingfisher fits all those criteria.” The boat is a traditional-looking dory with a flat bottom and a double chine. Its high bow, sweeping sheer, moderately raked flat transom, and an outboard motor mounted in a well all contribute to its attractive, clean lines. The decision to mount the motor inboard was partly driven by aesthetics—Wilson feels it’s a better-looking boat in profile if the outboard doesn’t show—and partly by function.
One of Kingfisher’s regular tasks is to set nets for flounder, sole, and other flatfish which abound in Whangarei Harbour, for which her shallow draft is ideal. With this in mind, a raised platform is fitted across the boat’s transom to facilitate setting and retrieving a net over the stern. Working nets over the transom is always the safest procedure, but difficult to achieve with a conventional transom-mounted outboard, which gets in the way and constantly tangles in the net. Aboard Kingfisher, working nets is easy, as is accessing the engine when the boat’s afloat. When the engine’s kicked up it remains inside the line of the transom and well clear of the bottom of the boat.
Photo by John Eichelsheim
Kingfisher’s outboard motor is mounted in a well—a decision driven largely by aesthetics. It tilts clear of the water while remaining entirely within the boat.
Kingfisher’s construction is in 9mm and 6mm plywood, her topsides lapstrake planked. The bottom is fiberglass-sheathed to just above the upper chine, and all the boat’s timbers are sealed, epoxy glued, and then painted. Wilson uses single-part paint rather than more advanced two-pack systems, as it is more environmentally friendly and requires a less complex application and touchup.
The main floor—the sole—is also fiberglass-sheathed and then painted with a mixture of one-part paint and Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) to provide an effective nonskid surface. The solid wood in Kingfisher is macrocarpa, a type of cypress, of which there was a supply in Wilson’s workshop at the time of construction. It is commonly used by boatbuilders in New Zealand; North American and European builders will no doubt require a substitute. A subsequent boat was built using yellow cedar, which bends well, is durable, and is a bit more dense than macrocarpa or red cedar.
Kingfisher’s trim is in mahogany, again because it was available to the school at the time of building. Wil- son prefers teak, which can be left to weather, but it’s expensive. The second boat doesn’t use teak either, for the same reasons. (Mahogany does, however, have the advantage from a boatbuilding perspective of requiring several coats of varnish—another skill for Wilson’s students to master.) The students also fabricated the boat’s solid-lumber details, like the knife holders and wooden bow roller, giving them experience in joinery details.
One of Kingfisher’s more interesting features is a sealed floor suspended 4″ above the bottom and 2″ above the upper chine line—effectively an airtight double hull with a volume of 0.5 cubic meter. Aside from offering a flat floor above the waterline inside the boat, which self-drains via two 2″ holes in the transom, it provides buoyancy and security should the outer hull ever be breached. The boat is also easy to clean, as it can simply be hosed down from the inside. Another benefit of the double-chine sealed-floor design is the form’s stability at rest. According to Wilson, a scuba diver can pull himself over the side of the boat with no risk of capsize. Indeed, the boat heels no more than a few inches. Certainly two adults can move around Kingfisher with impunity, barely altering her trim.
The boat is designed to be transported atop a conventional flatbed utility trailer. Most New Zealand households have access to light general-purpose trailers of this type, used to transport bulky or heavy goods, garden waste, and rubbish. The dory sits on the trailer resting on its twin timber keels, spaced 2′ apart and running the full length of boat’s flat bottom. The keels are 43⁄4″ deep and capped with aluminum rubbing strips to protect against wear and tear from contact with the trailer or when taking the ground.
The keels allow the boat to be pulled up a beach or left to sit on the hard when the tide recedes. They also provide lateral stability when the boat’s underway and give a certain amount of protection from damage in shallow water. When the boat’s on plane, air trapped in the tunnel between the keels acts as a cushion, softening the ride.
Photo by John Eichelsheim
Kingfisher’s twin keels funnel air between them, softening the boat’s ride.The keels also hold the boat upright when beached, and lend great lateral stability when underway.
Kingfisher made easy work of a short, wind against tide chop on Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour, easily soaking up the bumps and delivering a reasonably smooth, dry ride. With two people aboard she achieved a top speed of 14 knots, as recorded on the accompanying photo boat’s GPS. Wilson has managed a maximum of 15 knots with three adults aboard and 12–14 knots with four in ideal sea conditions.
Wilson likes to drive standing up, which is safe enough because the boat is so stable; this steering posture offers better vision forward. When planing, Kingfisher rides on the flat run aft with her bow well up in the air, an impression reinforced by her sheerline. If he’s by himself, the designer employs a simple tiller extension so he can stand or sit farther forward, helping to trim the boat.
In rough conditions, Wilson sits on the timber cross- seat just ahead of the engine box, one of two, painted, solid-wood thwart seats, each pierced with four holes to accommodate fishing rods. Additional angled plastic rod-holders are screwed to the gunwales for a total of 12. This man is serious about sportfishing.
Kingfisher is a remarkably large-volume boat. Unlike some dories, she carries plenty of beam, especially amidships, and her raised floor offers more usable surface area than would be the case if the outer skin were the floor, as is usual.
The interior layout is simple and uncluttered, but very workable: an enclosed locker—essentially an extension of the engine box/well—runs fore-and-aft between the seats down the middle of the boat. A lift-off watertight lid reveals stowage for a portable plastic fuel tank, life jackets, lines, fishing gear, and longer items such as oars and fishing rods. Two inspection hatches in the lock- er’s floor give access to the boat’s airtight under-floor compartment.
Between engine well and storage locker, and part of the same fore-and-aft structure, is an open-topped battery locker. The battery is housed in a proprietary plastic box to protect it from spray or water sloshing around in the lockers, which both drain aft into the engine well. Up under Kingfisher’s short foredeck there’s a self-draining anchor locker below floor level. The solid-wood anchor roller and bollard on the curved foredeck are attractive and functional features.
Kingfisher has been a successful design in every respect: she’s proven to be a capable, safe, stable, and seakindly boat with excellent load-carrying ability. She is economical to run. The design is relatively easy and inexpensive to build, and Wilson’s UNITEC students are able to complete the boat, from lofting to launching, working three days per week over thirteen weeks. Along the way, they learn a useful range of traditional and modern boat-building skills. Best of all, Wilson has created a great little boat that perfectly meets his needs.
Kingfisher’s combination of flat bottom and double chines provide ample planing surface and minimal pounding. The boat is built of sheet plywood.
This Boat Profile was published in Small Boats 2010 and appears here as archival material. The contact information in that Profile is no longer valid and we presume that plans are no longer available.
Clayton Wright, who built the pedal-and-propeller powered skiff featured as our Reader Built Boat in this issue, put an extraordinary effort into inventing a drive system for the boat only to discover during sea trials that it fell far short of his expectations. “The boat is back in the basement,” he wrote, “I’m going to throw a sheet over her and try to put her out of my mind.”
The original King Island kayaks were covered in seal or walrus skins. I used #10 duck and painted it with airplane dope.
Most of us who have built boats choose a design and a means of propulsion for it that have been well tested; the pride we take in the project isn’t dashed on launch day. It’s a rare occurrence to build a boat that is deeply disappointing, but it has happened to me too.
The hole in the upper bow is typical of King Island kayaks and gives the kayak an eye to see with and place to get a solid grip on the kayak.
The third kayak I built was a replica of a type built on Alaska’s King Island. A couple of years earlier, in 1979, I had built a Hooper Bay kayak and had developed an appreciation for traditional construction, and the King Island seemed like a worthwhile project. I don’t recall now what plans I used, but there were drawings and scantlings in Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America and I could study the specimen that the Washington State Historical Society had in its museum in Tacoma.
One of the few times my King Island kayak was afloat was for this gag photo I took to illustrate an article on bailing. My dad crawled in and I handed him a bucket full of water. I shoved the kayak out—with a line attached to the bow—and told Dad when to pour the water out.
King Island is situated 40 miles from the Alaskan mainland just south of the entrance to the Bering Strait. The waters there are notoriously rough, and the kayakers needed to travel long distances and carry heavy loads home after a successful hunt. Their kayaks have been described in glowing terms: “Of all the Bering Sea kayaks, this type was reportedly the best made and strongest…a great kayak for a person intent on distance paddling.” It seemed like the perfect choice to fulfill my dream of cruising among the San Juan Islands.
I carved the lower bow piece from an Alaska yellow cedar crook, the grain follows the curves extending upward from the keel and gunwales. Between those edges, the surfaces are hollowed out to reduce weight and provide airspace to keep the skin from rotting.
I wanted my King Island to be as close to the original as I could make it, so all the wood that went into it was driftwood that I gathered from the beaches near home. I split spruce for the gunwales and keel and Western red cedar for the stringers, cut the deck beams and carved the bow piece from Alaska yellow cedar crooks. I used power tools as little as possible and trimmed the pieces to shape with a drawknife, planes, and spokeshaves.
I added a maststep and partner and got so far as making the mast and yards for a small squaresail. I never sewed up the sail.
I made a few additions that I thought would be useful for cruising including accommodations for a foot-controlled rudder, a maststep and partner, and a mast and yards for a small squaresail. I couldn’t use seal skin to cover the kayak, so I used #10 duck and sealed the fabric with airplane dope. I’d already carved a single-bladed paddle for the Hooper Bay, so I was ready to launch.
Getting aboard at the beach was awkward, and when I shoved off I knew something was wrong. The King Island was very unstable. It would roll to one side, I’d brace, and it would roll to the other. The dreams I had for the kayak quickly evaporated.
The arched deckbeams were cut from crooks with gentle curves. The ribs were steam-bent from straight-grained yellow cedar.
Unlike the Hooper Bay kayak, which had ribs that were flat across the bottom, the King Island’s ribs were curved and the round bottom wouldn’t provide any stability until the hull had more than my weight aboard to settle deeper in the water and immerse the flare of its sides. With a cruising load the King Island might have offered the stability I needed, but I didn’t want to weigh it down every time I went paddling. I later read somewhere that the King Islanders put beach-stone ballast in their kayaks; I didn’t like the idea of filling a canvas-skinned kayak with rocks.
The framework of the King Island kayak is wonderfully complex and unfortunately gets concealed by the skin that turns it into a boat. With the skin removed, it’s sculpture.
My King Island kayak went into storage for decades at home under the eaves or a tarp. The skin eventually rotted and two years ago I tore it off and put it in the trash. I hadn’t had a good look at the frame in decades and I was pleased by what I saw, especially the beautifully curved yellow cedar bow piece. In every facet left by the spokeshave on the ribs and deckbeams I could see my 30-year-old self at work. It reminded me of the aspirations I had then while building the boat, not of the disappointment I felt after launching it.
Whether or not Clay gets satisfying performance out of his pedal-powered skiff, he may, in time, come to see and enjoy the beauty and ingenuity of the boat he built. Things may not always turn out as we intend, but doing good work is always its own reward.
Some 38 years ago, after a short career in the American Merchant Marine, my need to be on the water prompted me to begin looking for a small sailboat. At the time, I was living on a tidal river that had low bridges between me and open water, so I needed a boat with a mast that could be lowered easily. A friend told me about a Drascombe Scaffie, as the Devon Scaffie was then known, that was for sale in Portland, Maine. It turned out to be the perfect boat for my situation and now after thousands of miles, I am still sailing this very enjoyable and versatile boat.
Tom Hepp
The Scaffie has two unusual horns aft, which support a rope traveler for the mainsail sheet above the tiller and the outboard.
The Scaffie was designed by John Watkinson, founder of the Drascombe line of small boats, and has been in production in the U.K. since 1978. It is 14′9″ long with a beam of 5′9″ and, at 462 lbs fully rigged, ideal for trailering behind even small vehicles. Its 15″ draft allows access to almost any waters. The boomless standing lugsail has an area of 100 sq ft. Two uprights are set in sockets in the stern and support a shoulder-high rope traveler above the tiller. The mainsheet is led through a block on the rudderhead, then led forward along the tiller where it can be cleated or gripped with the tiller.
Michel Maartens
Heeling in a good sailing breeze, the Scaffie shows its windward bilge keel. The leeward bilge keel is providing lateral resistance to supplement that of the full-length keel.
A full keel, along with twin 36″-long bilge keels, leaves the interior of the Scaffie uncluttered by a centerboard trunk for added comfort and ease of movement in the cockpit.
A trailer to transport a Scaffie will generally support the full-length keel with a few rollers and outboard bunks to support the hull between the keel and bilge keels. It takes less than 15 minutes to rig the unstayed mast and sail to be ready to launch. Upon returning to the ramp, securing the rig and loading it onto the trailer is quick and easy. The mast partner is equipped with a gate, so the mast is set in the step, pivoted, upright, and locked by the gate. It is much easier than having to lift the mast to drop through a conventional partner. The partner has cleats for the halyard and the tack’s downhaul. There are two wooden rowing thwarts and molded fiberglass side benches with flotation that can accommodate up to four people.
Ole Helgerson
The center and bilge keels mean that the cockpit is unobstructed by a daggerboard or centerboard trunk.
It takes only a light wind for very relaxed sailing. In steady winds under 14 knots the boat is dry and an absolute delight to sail. The Scaffie was drawn with two reefs to reduce sail when the wind picks up. When I’m sailing solo, I set the first reef at around 14 knots. When double-reefed, the Scaffie can handle steady winds up to 20 knots, especially when there are two or more sailors aboard; that makes for very exciting sailing and you can expect to get wet.
Any small open boat is at risk to be swamped in certain wind conditions and the Scaffie is no exception, even when double-reefed, but with good judgment it can be avoided. In 38 years of experience, I have completely swamped my Scaffie only two times, but the boat remained upright and didn’t capsize. On both occasions the wind was strong and very gusty. The foam-filled molded flotation compartments kept the boat afloat and it only needed to be righted, bailed out, and I was back on my way.
Elizabeth Wade-Brown
The Scaffie carries a boomless 110 sq ft lug rig which can be set up at the ramp and ready to sail in about 15 minutes.
In my logbook is a passage that demonstrates the Scaffie’s extraordinary seaworthiness. I had spent a night high and dry on Steve Island south of Stonington, Maine; the forecast for the following day was for small craft warnings with winds to 20 knots or more from the southwest. The wind was already picking up. Staying among a group of islands that did not provide enough shelter would make for an uncomfortable day, and the best shelter was over 10 miles away with 8 of those miles crossing the open waters of East Penobscot Bay.
With the sail double-reefed, I set out into the bay one hand on the tiller and the other on the mainsheet, closehauled on a port tack. The wind was already at 20 knots or more and seas running up to 4′. Whitecaps were everywhere and one broke against the side of the boat. Spray filled the air but the Scaffie remained steady and rose to the crest as the wave rolled under the hull. For almost two hours, beating on one long tack, the Scaffie averaged 4.6 knots to windward into a heavy sea and took on very little water. At the time, I was in my early 50s and had 12 years of experience sailing the Scaffie. Now 77, I am still confident in my ability to handle this amazing little boat, but I avoid days when the wind is predicted to be 20 knots or more.
Elizabeth Wade-Brown
For rowing, the sail can be dropped and the outboard cocked up while still in the well. The tiller is lashed to the traveler to keep it steady amidships. Scaffie owners use oars ranging from 8′ to 9′ 6″.
The Scaffie normally carries one set of oars and is rowed solo from the forward or the aft station to maintain the best trim. A speed of 2 to 2 ½ knots can be comfortably maintained with the rudder set to ’midship. When not in use, the oars are stowed on the centerline under the thwarts.
An outboard of 2 to 3 hp can provide auxiliary power. The engine well is inboard making access to the outboard convenient and safe. The well is open aft so the outboard can pivot over obstructions as well as be kicked up for rowing and sailing, rather than removed. Scaffies are molded with a well but can be ordered with the opening in the hull not cut out. The Scaffie will cruise with the 2.5-horse at about 4 knots when set at half throttle for best fuel economy. The well is offset to port far enough to permit the use of the rudder for steering while under power.
With simple modifications for overnight, the Scaffie makes an ideal solo beach cruiser. There is plenty of space along the centerline in the bottom of the boat to lay out a pad and sleeping bag, but with such an arrangement there is limited space for gear. My solution has been to replace the thwarts with a 6′-long platform level with the side benches. It provides plenty of room for sleeping with a hatch in its center to provide access to gear stowed below. Crutches installed fore and aft support the mast as a ridgepole, for a cover to provide shelter from the elements.
Most of my overnight and multi-day cruises are on the coast of Maine where the tides are up to 10′. In some locations, I anchor in deep water to stay afloat through the tide cycle; in others, I like to plan overnight stays with high tides in the evening and in the morning, and set the Scaffie parallel to a soft bank to rest on the center keel and the shoreside bilge keel when the tide goes out. The bilge keels are not at the same depth as the center keel, so the Scaffie is made level by coming to rest across a gentle slope. Since the bilge keel on the water side doesn’t make contact with the ground, lines from the bow and stern to shore are tensioned as they are tied off to keep the boat secure and prevent it from rolling away from the bank. The rudder doesn’t extend below the keel line so it can remain in place when beached.
Michel Maartens
The keel makes it difficult to drag the Scaffie out of the water, but the twin bilge keels will keep it from heeling excessively if the tide drops.
The Scaffie is built to last and doesn’t require a lot of maintenance. Mine has always been kept inside when not in use, and at the start of each sailing season, I treat the inside and outside of the hull with fiberglass color restorer that provides UV protection and resists stains. The gelcoat on my nearly four-decade-old Scaffie is still shiny with only minor scratches. Every three or four years, I put a coat of spar varnish on the hardwood trim, tiller, mast, and oars. I am still using the original sail. This is a testament to the lasting quality built into this boat.
After 38 years of sailing the lakes, rivers, and bays of coastal Maine, I trailered my Scaffie to northeast Florida and we will begin to explore the sheltered waters of the St. Johns River, yet another chapter in the adventures of Scaffie hull #109. I take great comfort and security in the boat and enjoy all three ways of propelling it. If you like sailing, rowing or motoring, the Scaffie can do it all.
Tom Hepp has spent most of his life around boats and water. He is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and Merchant Marine and has worked professionally as a boatbuilder for over 10 years. He spends summers on the coast of Maine and winters near the St. Johns River in northeastern Florida. He designed, made cardboard mock-ups of, and built two take-apart pirogue-style boats (see “Nesting Boats”) to take in his van during summer vacations.
The Devon Scaffie is available from Honnor Marine for £12,995 ($17,869) and includes foam buoyancy, rudder, tiller, sail, Sitka spruce spars, and bronze rowlock sockets.
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!
Clint Chase of Saco, Maine, designed the Deblois Street Dory in the spirit of New England’s dories. The lapstrake hull, and graceful curve of the bow, the tombstone transom, and low sweep of the sheer are all Swampscott dory.
The first of the DSD dories was built in 2010. A few years later, at Maine’s annual Small Reach Regatta, Clint met JR and Mary Krevans, a couple from Bar Harbor, Maine. They were thinking about a new boat to build, one which could be rowed and sailed with ease, and keep up with the Caledonia yawls in the regatta. Clint modified his original Deblois Street Dory design slightly to fit JR’s and Mary’s needs by making it better suited for sailing. He kept the length at 18′8″ and the beam at 4′10″, but widened the flare on the frames in the stern to make the boat stiffer under sail and able to carry cruising gear. He also drew a bigger standing lug rig with a sail area of 90 sq ft. JR built the boat from a kit and launched it in 2015. The modifications became the current form of the boat.
The kit provides CNC-cut marine plywood pieces; additional kits are available for the hull and spar timbers, the hardware and the epoxy. The 34-page manual included has detailed step-by-step instructions illustrated with color photographs and drawings. For JR, “the kit components fit perfectly and the directions were clear.” The kit’s stem, frames, and transom are all made of multiple layers of precut plywood. Screws driven into predrilled holes keep all the pieces from sliding out of alignment when gluing the stacks together.
Sara Traynor
While the Deblois Street Dory was designed as a plywood kit boat, it is virtually indistinguishable from a traditionally built dory of the Swampscott type with lapped planks and gusseted frames.
Clint, inspired by John Gardner’s The Dory Book, wanted the DBD to be faithful to traditional dory construction, so assembling the hull begins with attaching the stem, frames, and transom to the bottom before setting that structure upside down on the kit’s precut plywood strongback. The 9mm okoume planks for the dory’s five strakes come in two pieces for the garboards and three pieces for the rest. The CNC-cut joints have three steps, with interlocking puzzle joints in the middle step, which will be invisible when assembled. The exposed edges of the joints are gently wavy, to avoid weakening the joints and present a more subtle glue line for a bright finish. Builders working from plans are provided with measured drawings for the planks; no spiling is required. In keeping with traditional construction, builders will cut bevels and gains in the planking laps before securing them with epoxy; battens and temporary screws hold the laps closed while the epoxy cures.
JR noted: “My previous boatbuilding experience was four kayak kits and a 15′ dory, all stitch-and-glue construction. My building time for Deblois Street Dory was about 300 hours spread over six months.”
Sara Traynor
With the aid of rollers, the approximately 225-lb dory can be launched or hauled out of the water. The rudder, with its blade pivoted up, doesn’t need to be removed for hauling out.
The interior is outfitted with three thwarts in typical dory fashion. Airtight tanks in the ends provide buoyancy. The plans include drawings for a daggerboard and a centerboard, both with blades made of three layers of plywood and sheathed with 6-oz ’glass, and a fixed rudder made of laminated plywood. JR built his dory with a daggerboard trunk and used solid white oak for the board. There are drawings for a fixed rudder and for a rudder with a pivoting blade. JR opted for the latter. Whether making the board and rudder blade from solid wood or laminated plywood, the plans and kit include templates for giving them effective foil shapes for low drag and better windward performance. The mast and yard on JF’s DSD are carbon fiber and weigh altogether less than 8 lbs. The plans give the necessary details for making the spars of Sitka spruce or eastern white spruce—solid spruce for the yard and boom; hollow bird’s-mouth construction for the mast.
The DSD plans offer several sail rigs: the 90-sq-ft standing lug that’s shown here, the 88-sq-ft balanced lug with 18-sq-ft mizzen, the 76-sq-ft standard sprit, and the 87-sq-ft sport sprit. JR opted for the lug rig for its acceptably high performance, and ease of singlehanding.
The DSD “trailers easily and is narrower than our Subaru Forester so visibility and tracking are good,” according to JR. “At the ramp, the flat bottom is easy to load on and off the trailer.” I joined JR for a sail on Mount Desert Island’s Somes Sound and I was impressed, once the boat was afloat, by how rapidly the mast, lug, and sprit boom could be raised in one 30-second swoop, and how quickly we could leave the dock, which was 30 seconds after that.
JR finds the dory “initially a little tender, but the flare carried back from frame 3 to frame 5 allows great use of the skipper’s body position to keep her steady. The hull is only about 220 lbs empty and we do not carry ballast, so the crew does definitely need to balance the boat.”
Sara Traynor
The dory is offered with four sailing rigs: standing lug (shown here), balanced lug with mizzen, standard sprit, and the larger sport sprit. Note the skipper is well positioned for solo sailing with one hand on the tiller, the other on the sheet, and weight close to the windward rail.
JR and I sailed out in 5 to 10 knots of wind, and I immediately felt like we were sailing in one of the modern racing dinghies of my youth, but, miraculously, we were also staying dry. We zipped around in the protected cove at the head of Somes Sound at up to 5 knots. The sprit boom is self-vanging and set high enough so it’s not likely to hit you in the head during an unexpected jibe. Closehauled, the DSD tacks through about 100 degrees. “Going off the wind in a breeze,” notes JR, “the hull starts to lift in the water and exceed 5 knots; that is the only time I feel a need to put down my coffee cup and keep weight low.”
I quickly got a sense of its excellent responsiveness. The boat reacted to every minor adjustment of the tiller and weight shift, tacked and jibed with ease, and came to a quick stop when luffed into the wind. JR finds that there is only minimal weather helm unless the DSD is sail-heeled well over. On a couple of occasions he and Mary sailed the lee rail under, but the dory rounded up nicely and took on very little water.
Though we didn’t need to reef, JR showed me the process, which took us only three minutes to lower the sail, reef, and raise it again. Color-coded lines eliminated confusion from the loose ends clustered on the floorboards. JR and Mary generally put the first reef in at about 10 knots of wind. They take the dory out in anything up to 15 knots, but they are double-reefed at that speed. When sailing downwind in heavier winds, they have an 18-sq-ft storm sail made from a tarp. JR reports they’ve “put three people on the windward rail and nothing has given out yet.”
Sara Traynor
The designer recommends 9′ oars for the dory. The stations for tandem rowing have plenty of space in between them to minimize clashes if the rowers get out of synch.
We could switch from sailing to rowing within a minute or two; the sail and spar easily fit in the boat off to one side. JR designed a plug that goes into the daggerboard trunk to help prevent water from splashing up through the slot. The plug projects below the hull about 1″ and is about 1 1/2′ long, creating a skeg of sorts that helps the boat track better while rowing. The dory glides along quickly with a low effort on the oars; rowing was very satisfying. JR has measured speeds around 3 knots with one person at the oars and up to 4 knots with both of them rowing over a distance. The blade of the rudder kicks up with a pull of a line next to the tiller, to allow the boat to navigate shallow waters.
Sara Traynor
The tiller detailed in the plans is nearly 7′ long and allows steering from the center section of the boat, where the beam can support the weight of the skipper and maintain proper trim.
JR and Mary have had their Deblois Street Dory, POLARIS, for six years now and in most conditions, they are able to keep up with the Caledonia yawls while rowing or sailing, falling behind only in heavier winds. Clint has joined JR and Mary a couple times, including for a 42-mile circumnavigation of Mount Desert Island, which took them about 13 hours. JR and Mary always carry a fair amount of gear in the boat, including extra safety gear, a throw rope, two bailers, and extra flotation in the form of a couple of big fenders. They find that they can sail the boat with a complement of three and some safety gear, or just the two of them and a lot of camping gear. They often beach the boat by rolling it up above the high-tide line on the large fenders.
After rowing and sailing the Deblois Street Dory, I came away thoroughly impressed. The boat’s aesthetics are rooted in tradition, but it moves with the quickness of a modern racing dinghy. I think the DSD would be an excellent boat for a single person, a couple, or a young family to enjoy in a variety of ways—from day sails in moderately protected waters to overnight coastal camping trips. JR and Mary enjoy the versatility of the boat, from rowing to sailing for the day, to loading it up with gear and going camping for a couple days along the coast and among the islands. “The hull is supremely seaworthy,” notes JR. “Using the boat is a joy.”
Arista Holden is a longtime seamanship instructor for programs including Outward Bound, NOLS, Atlantic Challenge USA, and WoodenBoat School. She is a frequent contributor to WoodenBoat, and is at work compiling a book about the Apprenticeshop and its founder, Lance Lee. She holds a 100-ton USCG license and lives in Belfast, Maine.
Deblois Street Dory Particulars
[table]
Length/18′6″
Beam/4′ 10″
Width on DWL/37 ½″
Depth amidships/18 ⅜″
Draft, loaded to DWL/6″
Hull weight (no gear)/225 lbs
Sail Area/90 sq ft
[/table]
Standing Lug
Plans and kits for the Deblois Street Dory are available from Chase Small Craft. Plans are delivered as a digital download and are priced at $250. The complete kit is $6,821.
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!
It was the fall of 1962, and I had just started my junior year of high school. I subscribed to Popular Mechanics magazine and was always excited when each new monthly issue showed up in my mailbox, since it contained all kinds of stuff that was interesting to this 16-year-old technically oriented guy. The cover of the August 1962 issue pictured “The Supersonic Helicopter of the Future” (well, that didn’t happen) and teaser—“Build a 38 m.p.h. Fun-Boat—for $38.”
SBM
The August 1962 issue of Popular Mechanics had 202 pages for just 35 cents. The top billing went to new cars and highlighted the ’63 Studebaker Avanti.
I immediately turned straight to page 140 and read the article. It described how to build a neat little 13′9″ outboard runabout, a PM-38. The “PM” was for Popular Mechanics and the “38” came from a boat speed of 38 mph, a materials cost of $38, and a build time of 38 hours. “Hey,” I thought, “I can do that!” I showed it to my dad, and he said that if I could build the hull, he would find an engine for it.
SBM
The article on the PM-38 packed a lot of information, drawings, and photographs into 7-1/2 pages.
Our home in the Sunset District on the west side of San Francisco had a two-car garage, but we had just one car, so I had space to build the hull. My grandfather Kelly had a construction business and much of the framing material came from his scrap pile; I saved my allowance of $3 per week to buy other materials and plywood, saving some money by Pa Kelly using his contractor’s discount for the Douglas-fir exterior-grade plywood used for the hull planking. I don’t know how much I spent, but it was likely less than $38.
Most every weeknight after dinner and homework, I would go down into the garage and spend an hour or two working on the boat. Not much got done on the weekends—Friday was “date night.” Dad didn’t help much with the construction. Although he was a very competent woodworker, he felt that this was my project and believed I would learn more by making mistakes and figuring out how to fix them. More than once, I had the unfortunate “measure once, cut twice” experience. Once or twice each week, Dad would look over my work, and explain what I was doing right, and point out where I could do better. Occasionally, my friends would drop by to see what I was up to; they were always amazed that I would even try to build a boat.
For the previous two summers, I had worked as an apprentice carpenter in my grandfather’s construction company, so woodworking was not completely new to me, but building the boat was a real stretch of my skills. I built it on a pair of sawhorses, instead of the two A-frame supports called for, and used secondhand power tools: an old 1/4″ single-speed drill, a beat-up circular saw that Pa Kelly had given up on, and a tiny jigsaw of my dad’s. I bought a carpenter’s framing square, a decent rasp, and a block plane.
The forward ends of the plywood bottom panels required steaming to bend and twist them into place. I borrowed my new stepmom Mildred’s steam iron for this task and managed to burn it out. She and my dad had been married less than six months, and she was not impressed.
There were nearly 400 screws in the boat, all driven in by hand. The magazine article called for caulk on all the joints below the waterline, and Weldwood waterproof glue elsewhere, but my dad suggested that I should use the glue for all the joints. Weldwood Plastic Resin Glue, a urea-formaldehyde formula, is nasty stuff. It’s a brown powder that, when mixed with water, turns dark, and has the stinging, eye-watering smell of formaldehyde. Unless just the right amount of water is mixed in with the powder and the joints are gap-free and put under a lot of clamping pressure, it won’t have any strength at all. At the right consistency it’s a sticky mess and gets all over everything. The only thing that was worse was Dad’s suggestion to fiberglass the hull. He did spring for the fiberglass cloth, resin, and catalyst, but he left the messy job of sheathing the hull to me. The polyester resin in common use then was “aromatic” to put it mildly, and everything in the house soon absorbed the smell of the resin. Again, my poor new stepmom was not impressed. I knew she was irritated by the situation, but she never made a big deal out of it. She knew that the project was important to me and was always supportive. She was an exceptional person, a great stepmother, and we eventually became very close.
Courtesy of the author
I have very few photos of my first PM-38, TERRY’S FERRY. I’d give a lot if I had a picture or two with the boat in the water, but they just don’t exist. Back then, in 1963, I didn’t have a camera, and my folks weren’t much into photography. That’s 16-year-old me at the helm. In this picture the lack of any paint on the interior is clearly evident.
Dad found a used 1959, 40-hp Elgin outboard motor in the boat department of the Sears store on Geary Street in San Francisco. Yes, our local Sears and Roebuck store did actually have a boat department. Elgin, the Sears in-house brand, was made by Scott-Atwater and would provide plenty of power. The Popular Mechanics PM-38 pictured in the magazine was powered by a 28-hp Johnson and could do 38 mph; and the boat was rated to take up to a 45-hp motor.
Courtesy of the author
These shots were taken in the driveway of our house, likely the day Dad and I loaded the boat onto the trailer and mounted the Elgin outboard.
It took me eight months to build the boat, working around six hours per week on it. The math says I spent somewhere around 180 to 200 hours total. I don’t think it could be built in 38 hours.
Terry McIntyre
My stepmom and my dad were impressed by what I had built and were proud to pose with the boat.
I finished the PM-38 in April 1963. We named it TERRY’S FERRY. After school on Friday, May 3, 1963, my best high school friends—Bill and Dave —and I towed the boat with my grandfather’s F-100 pickup to Lake Berryessa, a 15-mile-long reservoir in Napa County, about 75 miles north of San Francisco. We set up a tent in the campsite at the Berryessa Marina. It rained all that night; our campsite was a muddy mess. It was chilly the next morning, but the sun came out, we launched the boat without much fanfare, and all three of us piled into the boat and motored away from the dock. The first thing that happened was the propeller shear pin failed, and I had to get into the water to replace it. (Fortunately, I always bring a tool kit the first time out.) The hull was watertight, but in a tight turn, water just poured in through the hull-to-deck joint. On top of that, the old cable-and-reel steering system was wasn’t working properly. I muttered something like, “Well, what else could go wrong?” and leaned back; the helm seat snapped loose from the bottom and I tumbled into the back of the cockpit. In spite of all the problems, we all did get water-skiing that day—I conned the boat while kneeling on a flotation cushion.
Popular Mechanics did not lie about the boat’s performance: it was indeed fun and fast. The boat would show its transom to most anything; it would flat-out fly. It was a great ski boat, hardly any wake, although a good slalom skier—like my buddy Dave—could get the boat to fishtail a little when he made a tight cut.
I finished the hull with white oil-based house paint scavenged from Pa Kelly’s scrap pile. I had varnished the deck but it was made from interior-grade mahogany plywood and deteriorated quickly. After two summers, I ’glassed the deck and repainted the whole boat with pencil-yellow marine enamel. I also replaced the original bucket seats with a back-to-back bench, upholstered with slick black Naugahyde. Big mistake—the black seats got really hot in the California summer sun!
We did not have a good experience with the Elgin outboard. About every second or third outing, something went wrong. Scott-Atwater outboards have a reputation for being great runners when they run, but they are finicky. The Elgin 40 was a two-cylinder engine with twin carburetors, and the carb floats would often stick, and then the engine would simply refuse to start. I got into the habit of picking up the trailer tongue and dropping it on the ground prior to taking the boat out—this would sometimes unstick the carb floats. In the spring of 1965, my dad and I took the boat fishing on San Francisco Bay, and on the way back to the launch ramp, the engine suddenly developed a rattle like a handful of bolts being shaken inside a coffee can. The engine got us home, but in the garage, we took it apart and found the crankshaft had broken. Fortunately, the break was oblique and inside one of the engine’s main bearings so the shaft could still deliver power to the propeller. To its credit, the engine hobbled along and got us to shore that day, but it was a goner.
Not long after the Elgin died, I passed by a small boatshop in our neighborhood and noticed a used 1960 Johnson 40-hp Sea-Horse in the front window. I went in and inquired about the price: $200. I was then a freshman engineering student, but I had a part-time job that paid $100 a month and, to my amazement, they let me purchase it on credit—$20 down and then $16 a month for 12 months. The Johnson, unlike the Elgin, was bulletproof. It powered TERRY’S FERRY for the next eight years, and two subsequent boats, until I turned it in on the purchase of an Evinrude 75-hp engine on my first “real boat”—that is, one that I didn’t build myself—in 1982.
All through a five-year courtship with Antoinette, my college girlfriend, we often took the boat water-skiing at Lake Berryessa. Summer days with a hot boat and a pretty young woman in a red and white polka-dot bikini sitting next to you—well, if that doesn’t make you a happy guy, I don’t know what will.
In late August 1965, Bill, Dave, John, and I—inseparable friends from high school—got together for a day on the lake before heading back to our separate colleges for our sophomore years. By that time, Antoinette and I had been dating for 15 months, and were starting to get pretty serious and would eventually get married. Bill brought this cute redhead he had been dating for a month—they would get married three years later. John brought Rosie, a classmate whom we all knew. Dave didn’t bring a date, but he brought beer even though we were all 19 and below the legal drinking age.
It took three trips out to a small island near the marina with the people and gear: beach chairs, a couple of ice chests, a grill, and charcoal, not to mention the skis and ropes, and towels and the like. We set up our little day-camp site near the shore under oak trees for some shade. Four people was the most the boat could seat, so we used the campsite as a base while we water-skied with just the driver and observer aboard. We got all the girls up on two skis. Dave tried to teach me to do a “beach snatch”—getting up on a single water ski from the beach without getting wet. I just couldn’t get the hang of it—I either got the tow handle pulled out of my hands or did a face plant into the water. We barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs, ate Antoinette’s chocolate chip cookies, and drank Dave’s Colorado Kool-Aid (that’s Coors beer for the uninitiated).
It was a Sunday afternoon, and we had intended to pack up and head home around 4, but we were all having such a great time that we lost track of time. Around 6:30 or 7, sunburned, tired and happy, we realized that we needed to get going. Instead of the three trips that we took to get to our campsite, we ended up with all seven of us and all the gear in the little boat heading back to the marina. I was at the helm, all the equipment was in the cockpit, the gals were sitting on the side decks with their legs inside the boat, and the guys were sitting on the front deck. Maybe the boat had 6″ of freeboard. There was no way even the Johnson 40-horse could get the PM-38 on plane, and even if it could have, it would not have been safe with the boat so terribly overloaded! It wasn’t far, mostly inside the 5 mph “no wake” zone anyway, and we made it back to shore safely. We loaded the boat on the trailer, all hugged, said our goodbyes, and promised each other we would do it again next year. But by the next August the war in Vietnam would raise its ugly head. Bill and Dave, who were in the Navy reserve, would be called up to active duty, and I was in USAF Officer Candidate School. While my buddies and I remained lifelong friends, that was the last time the four of us would be together. It was one of my best boating days, ever.
By the summer of 1971, the PM-38 had seen the last of its good days. The inexpensive materials used in construction and the lack of paint on the interior led to framework decaying, particularly around the transom. It was also starting to leak badly. Antoinette was pregnant with our first child, so the boat didn’t get used much that summer. After eight years, its time was almost up, but it had been a great little boat, worth every bit of $38, and every hour it took to build.
Courtesy of the author
In May of 1972, I had nearly completed ORANGE CRATE– a Glen-L Rebel that was the PM-38’s replacement. My college lab partner, Ron, and I moved the PM-38 hull from my trailer onto his new trailer, and the Rebel off its building form and onto my trailer. Then we mounted my “bulletproof” Johnson 40 hp Sea-Horse on the transom of the new boat. Right after this, Ron and I took out a circular saw and cut the back end off the PM-38 hull. I don’t recall that Ron ever renamed the boat. The car in the garage is my 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air sports coupe. It was my car during my undergraduate college years, and I used it to tow TERRY’S FERRY for most of the boat’s life. After it cracked a piston, I had every intention of tearing down the engine, but life got in the way. When we moved to San Jose in ’73 I sold the car, not running. Big mistake—that car would be worth big bucks today!
Over the winter of 1971–72, I built another, bigger, ski boat—a Glen-L Rebel—to replace the PM-38. When the Rebel was near completion, I asked a college friend to help me put the new boat on the trailer, mount the engine, and take the old PM-38 to the landfill. Ron agreed to help, but then asked if he could have the boat instead of dumping it. “Sure,” I said. He bought a trailer and engine (a 40-hp Merc) and we used a circular saw to cut the back 6” off the boat to get rid of the worst of the rot. We fabricated and installed a new transom and put a new layer of fiberglass tape and resin on all the seams. Ron used the boat for another three summers. The last time he used the boat he was running it at speed when the joint between the front and rear bottom panels failed, and half the bottom peeled off. The boat sank like a stone. Ron and his wife were both wearing life jackets and were quickly picked up by a passing boat, and everyone was okay. As far as I know, my PM-38 is still at the bottom of Lake Mendocino.
A half century and several other boats have passed since the good times with my PM-38. I follow a couple of wooden-boat and boatbuilding pages on Facebook, and one day the original 1962 Popular Mechanics article popped up along with a story about someone building a PM-38. It brought back all these great memories. Today, Antoinette and I have a genuinely nice 27′ express cruiser that we motor frequently on San Francisco Bay—and I need another boat like a hole in the head—but the post about the PM-38 got my attention. I didn’t intend to build it, but the retired mechanical engineer in me got thinking about what I would do differently if I did. My original intent was to maybe build a 1/12 scale model.
Alan Scott, the designer of the PM-38, had gone all-out to minimize the hull weight, as the 1962 article put it: “Since everyone knows that weight is one of the most important performance factors, our designer laid out plans for a fast planing hull and then hacked off weight wherever possible.” In doing so, I think he built in some structural weaknesses. The original design does not have a true sheer clamp: the deck and sides are joined on a 3/4″-square sheer rail screwed to the outside of the hull. That seam nearly always leaked, and frequently popped loose. Likewise, the spacing between the rearmost frame and the transom was nearly 4′, and the side decks became a little spongy over that span. Outboards have also changed, and a 20″ shaft is now the standard, rather than the 15″ shafts they had back then.
The possibilities for improvements became my checklist. I started with sketches and then some scale drawings. When I got to the point of lofting some full-sized patterns for the frames and other components on heavy paper, Antoinette said something like, “Go ahead and build it, you know you will be unhappy if you don’t, and you want to take the grandkids skiing, don’t you? Just make sure that my car will be in the garage every night when you are building it!”
I got serious about designing. To make the sheer-to-deck joint more robust, I added a breasthook, deepened the hull by 3″ to accommodate a 20″-shaft outboard, and notched the top of the frames for a 1-1/2″-square sheer clamp. To bridge the gap between the transom and the original rearmost frame, I drew in an additional frame 18″ forward of the transom and tied it into the transom knee. With the deeper hull it was possible to add a self-bailing motorwell, and I added a drain plug in the transom. After a day of water-skiing in the original, we would have to use a bucket and sponge to get all the water out of the bilge. I’ve gotten too old for that.
Terry McIntyre
In March 2020 the boat was just about ready to plank. Here you can see many differences between my new version and the original—the framework was assembled on a stout building form on casters instead of scrap lumber A-frames, and the sheer rail and breasthook have been installed. The rear partial frame that I added is tough to see, but it’s there, connected to the transom knee.
These modifications only moderately increased the weight of the hull (from about 200 to perhaps 225 lbs) but made it far more structurally sound. The beam increased by almost 6″ and the length by 3″. When I ran these numbers through the formulas in the U.S. Coast Guard “Safety Standards for Backyard Boat Builders” I was pleasantly surprised to find that these seemingly minor changes would increase the recommended maximum load by nearly 500 lbs, and the maximum engine size from 45 to 60 hp.
I started construction in the fall of 2019. To meet Antoinette’s requirement that her car be safe in the garage at night, I built a stout, wooden construction frame on casters, so that I could roll the project outside and cover it with a tarp when I was not working on it. The boat turned out to be my COVID-19 “sanity project” during the lockdown.
I’m no longer a kid on an allowance, and money is not the issue it was for me in 1962; I used much better materials this time around. The framing is all kiln-dried clear straight-grained Douglas-fir, and the planking is BS1088 meranti marine plywood. Wood is still wood, but adhesives have greatly improved in 60 years. The entire boat was assembled with marine epoxy, with the screws all removed after the adhesive had set, since the epoxy alone provides the needed strength. The hull exterior is covered with fiberglass, and the entire interior is encapsulated in epoxy, to ensure that the wood remains dry and avoids the rot problems encountered in the original. This boat will likely outlive me.
My plan was to make the hull white with a mahogany deck, like the 1962 version, but when I got the hull planked, Antoinette looked at the meranti ply and said, “You aren’t going to paint that gorgeous wood, are you?” It was a lot more work preparing so much of the plywood to be finished bright. The results just scream the 1960s. The crowning touch would be a wraparound windshield similar to one from a ’57 Chevy—but I have not yet been able to find one.
Antoinette found some nice back-to-back pontoon-boat bucket seats online. I had to shorten them a bit, but they are serviceable and the brown and tan complement the hull’s finish. I also added floorboards to the interior, topped with faux-teak-decking carpet. The boat has running lights and full instrumentation, making it more complete (and legal) than the original.
Terry McIntyre
TERRY’S FERRY did have a bow light on the front deck. I have no idea where it came from—I must have salvaged it from somewhere—it never was connected to a power source. A speedometer or tachometer would have cost far more than I could afford. In the second PM-38, I installed the tachometer and engine monitoring that came with the new Evinrude, a trim gage, and pitot-tube speedometer. Switches for the running and anchor lights are to the right of the wheel. The steering is a modern no-feedback rack-and-pinion system instead of the cable-reel-and-pulley type I used in the 1960s. The handrail on the dash makes it much easier for a passenger in the front seat to hang on in a turn.
The cost for the hull materials, not including the hardware, seats, and steering, came to about $900, which was substantially more than I spent on the original. I took the article’s Materials List from the original PM-38 and priced the lumber, plywood, fastenings, and adhesives on a home improvement store’s website to see what they would cost today. An inflation calculator says $338. The big-box store materials came to $450. I spent about 300 hours building the new PM-38, about 100 more than the first one. Most of the increase over the original was in the work to prepare the hull and interior for a bright finish: eight coats of spar varnish, wet-sanded to 2,000-grit. It was far from a 38-hour build but worth the effort
I was initially undecided about how to power the boat. A period engine would carry the vintage look from stem to stern, but in the end, I decided that I’m too old to fight with a temperamental 60-year-old motor, and new engines are far more ecofriendly. I found a new 40-hp Evinrude E-tec which fit the new motorwell and promised plenty of power. It weighs nearly 250 lbs, over 100 lbs more than my 1960 Johnson. The original engine had a rope-pull start, and the new one has an electric start that requires having a 50-lb battery aboard.
We launched the boat for the first time in late April 2021. I considered towing the boat to the ramp with my classic ’69 Chevrolet Camaro, the car I bought new as my college graduation present to myself and used to tow my first PM-38 50 years ago, but decided on towing with my more powerful and less precious Chevy 4WD pickup. We poured some champagne on the bow and christened her RETRO-ROCKET. At the dock, the additional 200 lbs of weight of the engine and battery made the transom sit a little lower in the water than I would have liked. I was very glad I had added depth to the hull and its load-carrying capacity.
Terry McIntyre
When I got my undergrad engineering degree, I treated myself to a brand-new 1969 Chevrolet Camaro. I put a trailer hitch on the Camaro, and it became my tow vehicle for the summers of ’69, ’70, and ’71. I’ve kept the Camaro stock and original, and it still looks and runs great. I couldn’t resist hooking up the new boat to the Camaro and driving it around the block.
There were several folks on the launch ramp, and they immediately started commenting on how nice the boat looked and asking what it was. “That’s a cool old boat, what year is it?” has been the most common question.
Terry McIntyre
Tied up to the dock, the new PM-38 is overboard for the first time. Whenever we have it at the dock, it gets lots of attention. The accent stripe down the middle of the deck is unstained mahogany—I had to put the stripe in, because I wasn’t happy with the panel joints on the deck. I milled out the strip with my router and added the new piece. I was pleased with the result.
With just me aboard, the Evinrude brought the boat on plane nicely, but as the speed approached 30 mph it started to porpoise badly. I returned to the launch ramp and had Antoinette step aboard. While the porpoising was noticeably reduced with her aboard, I was not comfortable in pushing the boat any harder, and we called an end to the first sea trial.
Terry McIntyre
I was shocked by how fast the boat is. Here, Antoinette and I are running flat out with the speedometer showing 46 mph. The USCG allowable power calculation shows that the boat would be approved with a 60-hp outboard. I can’t imagine how fast it would be with that power.
On the web I discovered that porpoising is a common problem with late-’50s and early-’60s boats repowered by modern outboards. I moved the battery forward to under the front deck, and added a set of automatic trim tabs; the combination both eliminated the porpoising problem and improved the at-rest trim. Like the original, the new PM-38 “runs like a racer’s dream,” just as the Popular Mechanics article had promised. The boat is scary-fast— with just Antoinette and me in the boat, the pitot-tube speedometer indicated 46 mph flat out! With four adults on board, she hit 40. At speed, with the engine trimmed out, the boat throws a spectacular “rooster tail.” I haven’t tried to pull up an adult water-skier yet, but my teenaged grandkids get popped right up!
Terry McIntyre
My grandchildren were the raison d’être for the new PM-38. Here are three of my four grandkids with Moira, the eldest at the helm. Josh, to port in the back, was the most excited of the bunch, and was the first one we got up on skis.
Marion Speed
The engine is trimmed way out, raising the bow, and we are about to do a screaming 180-degree turn with an impressive rooster tail while three mid-septuagenarian “kids” relive a day from a long time ago
For our first real outing with the boat, we met with a group of old high school and college friends (including four of the seven who were there on that day back in 1965), for a day on the water in the California Delta. Racing along in the reincarnation of the PM-38 was a fabulous experience. For most of that day, I was 19 again. Not all the tears in my eyes were from the wind.
Terry and Antoinette McIntyre live in the small town of Morgan Hill, California, 75 miles south of San Francisco. They have been married for 52 years and have two grown children and four teenaged grandchildren. Terry holds mechanical engineering degrees from San Francisco State University, the University of California and Stanford University, and is a licensed professional engineer in California. He retired from General Electric Power Systems in 2002 after a 33-year career as a research and development engineer and project manager, designing and building nuclear power plants. He has been a boater since 1960 when his father got involved with a group of co-workers who were boaters and waterskiing enthusiasts. Terry has owned seven boats over the past 60 years, four of which were homemade wooden boats. Terry and Antoinette boat primarily on San Francisco Bay in their 27′ power express cruiser, and are looking forward to using the new PM-38 runabout in the California Delta.
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.
Many years ago, while building small craft, I sought a solution for securing a hull under construction in different positions. It occurred to me that V-shaped sawhorses would maintain a V- or round-bottomed skiff in a secure working attitude whether upright, inverted, or in between. This would also work for a flat-bottomed hull, as long as the bottom was narrow near the ends, as a dory is.
Consequently, I quickly and haphazardly conceived a simple design that could be implemented rapidly and cheaply, using standard 2×4 lumber. I build most of my sawhorses with legs cut to an acute angle on the flat on the upper ends, and cut to an obtuse angle on the bottoms, parallel to the shop floor. The upper angles are hard to cut through the width of a 2×4, so you rarely see sawhorses made this way. I do it because the horses are light, simple and strong, and use a minimum of material. I often gusset the ends with whatever scrap plywood is lying around the shop.
Reuel Parker
The drop-center sawhorses were an improvement on my standard sawhorses which have survived at least 15 years of use outdoors. The old and the new horses have the same beveled connection between the legs and crosspieces.
To make conventional horses, I cut four 2×4 legs to the height I desire—usually 24″ or 27″, and one 2×4 crosspiece to the width I desire, usually 36″ or 48″. To cut the upper ends of the legs, I use a bevel square set arbitrarily to an angle of about 25 or 30 degrees. I mark one side of all four legs and cut the line carefully with a circular saw set to near maximum depth. I cut the rest of the way through using a bandsaw with a wide blade (3/8″ or 1/2″). I screw the legs to the crosspiece using 2″ to 2 ½″ self-drilling exterior-grade screws or, in some cases, air-nail them with #10 ring-shank nails. I set the horses on a flat, level surface, and trace the feet parallel to the floor with a carpenter’s pencil or Sharpie pen. I set my circular saw to that angle and cut the feet. This makes them more secure but encourages rot from rainwater. If I am in a hurry, I just leave the bottoms of the feet square. These sawhorses seem to last well, and I have some that are at least 20 years old, having been in constant use, much of it outdoors. Occasionally, the bottoms of the legs rot, and I simply cut them a little shorter and keep using them.
Reuel Parker
Twenty years ago I used drop-center sawhorses while building a 14′ dory in my shop in Maine.
To make drop-center sawhorses, I make the legs the same way, but make the crosspiece from two components, joined in the middle by plywood gussets on each side. The angle of the V can be tailored for a specific boat project or can be generic for general use. I have only made one or two sets of drop-center sawhorses, and I can’t remember when, or for what project. They are more than 20 years old.
To make the V components, I cut my 2×4 crosspieces to an angle of about 55 degrees where the halves join, and I trim the top outer edges to 35 degrees for the 3-1/2″ width of the legs. I do this so that I have flat surfaces at each side of the finished sawhorse for resting plywood or temporarily adding a plank across the top to use as a conventional sawhorse. To protect the boat, I carpet the tops of the horses with synthetic carpet stapled in place.
This Sea Bright Skiff sits upright, safely cradled by a pair of carpet-padded drop-center sawhorses.
The horses are versatile in that they will secure a boat project in various attitudes and positions. The coarse carpeting aids this as it prevents slipping.
Reuel Parker is a yacht designer, boatbuilder, and author who regularly contributes to WoodenBoat and Professional BoatBuilder magazines. A lifelong cruising sailor, he currently lives in the Bahamas aboard PEREGRINE and sails seasonally between Maine and Florida. He ventures farther as time and tide permit.
Editor’s Notes
For many of my boat-repair projects I used ordinary sawhorses with straight crosspieces on top. To keep boats from rolling around, I used the foam cradles designed for carrying a kayak on a car’s roof rack. They worked marginally well but didn’t hold the kayak securely. Reuel’s drop-center sawhorses are perfectly suited to working on small boats, so as soon as I had his text and photos in hand, I made a pair for my shop.
I made a few departures from Reuel’s instructions for a better fit for me. I wanted the boat to be held a little bit higher, so I made the legs 32″ long. Angled at 30 degrees they would make an equilateral triangle with an equally wide base. A 32″ span between the feet seemed a bit wide. I settled on a 24″ span and, using an online right-triangle calculator, plugged in a 32″ hypotenuse and a 12″ base to get the 22-degree angle for the top of the leg and 68-degree cut for the bottom.
An 8′ 2×4 will provide three legs with no waste. A full set of eight legs will consume all but 32″ of three 2×4s. The leftover piece and a fourth 2×4 will provide the rest of the lumber required.
I opted to used a 12″ chop saw for most of the cuts. In retrospect, a band saw would well too, cutting by eye to lines drawn with a bevel gauge. The chop saw lent itself better to guides and stops for quicker, more uniform cutting.
A chop saw can’t be at 22 degrees to the fence for the acute angle at the top of the leg; angles are measured from 0 for a square cut. I set the saw to 22 degrees and cut a scrap 2×4, on the flat, to make a guide. With the chop saw set back at 0 degrees, I clamped it to the fence with a piece of plywood to serve as a stop. (Without it the saw could easily bind if the workpiece shifted, as it likely would if merely handheld.) I set the guide back about 1/8″ from the line of the cut to leave some enough of the 2×4 to stay secure against the plywood stop.
A longer guide assured the leg would be secure at the 22-degree angle. A block of wood clamped to the outer end served as a support.
With the chop saw set up to make safe, uniform cuts, it made quick work of the eight leg-top angles.
The chop saw’s 12″ blade can cut through a 2×4 on edge in one pass.
With the tops cut, the guides can be removed and the saw can be set at 22 degrees to cut the bottom angle with the 2×4 set against its fence. A stop speeds the work and assures uniformity.
These are my patterns for the 2×4 crosspiece components and the plywood gussets, two of each piece for a sawhorse. The diagonals are cut from a 22-1/2″ length of 2×4.
To align the two halves and mark the area for gluing, I drew lines at the top of the cut, horizontally out from the top corner.
I had lots of 3/4″ plywood scraps, so I used them instead of 1/2″ plywood. Titebond III and galvanized air-gun nails did the fastening.
A rectangle of plywood, with the ends cut square, gets temporarily screwed to the legs to hold them parallel and at the right spacing while the tops are screwed to the crosspieces. A tool tote holds the plywood high to get the legs at the right angle to be fastened to the crosspieces.
To make the two horse stackable, I put the braces on the inside of the legs of the bottom horse and outside on the top horse.
To keep the horses from having too tight a fit when stacked, I made 1/4″ spacers for one of the ends and glued and air-nailed them on.
Stacked, the pair of sawhorses take up half the space. For long-term storage, the horses can be taken apart by removing the screws holding the legs and crosspieces together. Mark the pieces so they can be reassembled using the same screw holes.
I did three major repair jobs of this Danish-built training K-1 on standard sawhorses. If I’d had drop-center sawhorses, the work would have gone much faster with fewer frustrations.
The rounded contours of the K-1 hull and deck make it unstable on ordinary sawhorses. The drop-center horses cradle it securely.
My 80-lb decked lapstrake canoe rests nicely on edge simplifying some tasks, including washing the interior and bailing out the water, which hides under the floorboards when the canoe is upright.
This 14′ New York Whitehall rests at a good height for working on the interior.
The Whitehall’s stout skeg puts the boat’s weight on the sawhorse while the planking just makes contact for stability.
When I first saw photographs of Reuel’s drop-center sawhorses, I knew it would be well worth building a pair. They exceeded my expectations and my only regret was that I didn’t know about them 40 years ago.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Magazine readers by sending us an email.
I have several roller stands that I’ve used to support long pieces of lumber and plywood as I feed them through the table saw. They work, but they’re not without shortcomings. On the infeed side, I have no complaints. I set the stand up with the roller at table height and feed the workpiece through. I do the same with the stand on the outfeed side but if the workpiece is flexible, the leading edge will sag and butt into the roller rather than cross on top of it. It’s an awkward moment when I have the blade whirring and I can’t finish the cut. And crosscutting with the stand out to the side of the table saw is out of the question. Last year I came across a better system, a washer roller. It’s easy to make and for many tasks works better than a roller stand.
Photographs by the author
Stacking three washers with the lower two providing a gap for the top washer’s hole establishes the spacing for the nails. Walking off the interval with dividers simplifies the process. If you’re marking the spacing with a ruler, you can use a more convenient interval if it is a slightly larger spacing.
To make one you’ll need a length of common 2×4, fender washers (either 1″ or 1-14″), and 1-1/2″ hanger nails. I made rollers 32″, 22″, and 19″ long. The longest one is the most useful. Start by cutting the 2×4 to length. Then, determine where to drill holes for the nails that the washers will spin on. Hold a washer on the side of the 2×4 with about ¼″ of it extending past the edge. Mark the hole. The circle will be larger than the hole you’ll drill for the nail; the top of the hole will be at the top of the circle. Mark the center point for the drill and draw a line through it parallel to the edge of the 2×4. Set two washers side by side and a third on top. Move the pair apart until the hole of the top washer no longer overlaps the washer beneath it. Measure the distance between the holes and with a divider set at that distance, pace off the locations of the holes along the line on the 2×4. Pressing the point of the divider into the wood will help center the drill bit, especially if you’ll be using a handheld drill. A 5/32″ bit will make holes just big enough for the hanger nails to be pressed in my hand. Drill the holes, stopping just short of going through the 2×4.
Drilling the holes accurately will keep the washers all at the same level. A drill press with a fence will make quick work of the drilling. The bottom edge of the fence is beveled back to keep drilling debris from pushing the workpiece out of position.
The drill press has its drilling depth set just shy of coming through the back of the 2×4.
The washers will be aligned best if you use a drill press with a fence. A wooden fence with its bottom edge beveled will keep any sawdust created by the drilling from pushing the holes out of alignment.
After drilling the holes, cut the kerf for the washers in the edge of the 2×4. Set the table saw’s depth of cut to match the diameter of the washers. If a single pass doesn’t provide a loose fit for a pair of stacked washers, move the fence slightly to take another pass, perhaps cutting with just a fraction of the saw blade. The washers need to be held loosely but close to vertical.
Washers are set on alternating sides to spin freely and guide the workpieces straight.
Set one washer at a time in the kerf and press the hanger nail into the hole and through the washer. The 1-1/2″ nails don’t need to be driven flush and thus poke out the back side of the 2×4. The heads can stand slightly proud. Alternate the sides of the kerf the washers are on.
I use a Workmate, which has a clamping table top, to hold a washer roller with a piece of 3/4″ plywood screwed to it.
To keep from adding more clutter to a crowded shop, I didn’t make dedicated stands for the washer rollers. I added a few pieces of lumber to one roller to slip over the edge of the top of a sawhorse. Another roller has screwed to it a piece of plywood that I clamp in my Workmate. A cleat screwed to the lower end of the plywood serves as a stop that sets the washer tops at the correct height. If I’m using my crosscut sled, a lift set under the cleat adjusts the height.
The end of a board dropping beyond the table saw can be picked up by putting a slope on the front end of the washer roller. A Workmate is holding this roller by clamping the piece of plywood that is screwed to the 2×4. A cleat screwed to the plywood sets the roller at the required height for a quick setup.
A few bits of lumber created a saddle to fit over the top of a Krenov-style sawhorse.
Washer rollers can be set at the back edge of the table saw to catch pieces immediately and continue to provide support.
The washer rollers can be set close enough to the back side of the table saw to catch the wood being sawn before it sags, and a roller set off to the side will work for crosscuts. With the end of a workpiece supported, I can focus on guiding it through the saw blade and not divide my attention and effort to pushing the wood down on the table.
A sled is a better table-saw accessory for many cross-cutting tasks. A washer roller helps it handle longer pieces of lumber.
I’m not sure where my old roller stands are. I haven’t seen them in months and haven’t felt the need to look for them, knowing the washer rollers are handily tucked under the table saw.
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.
When we moved and no longer had a waterfront of our own, we became trailer-sailors again and needed to make it easier to transport our various boats to the launch ramp. One challenge was our 17′ Grumman Double-Ender canoe. Trailering it seemed overkill, and cartopping would be the way to go if only the 70-lb canoe didn’t require pressing a crew of two or three to load or unload it. We purchased and installed the Reese Towpower Hitch Mount Canoe Loader, and now I load and unload the canoe by myself while Skipper supervises from a comfortable chair in the shade.
The loader weighs 18 lbs and consists of a lower receiver tube, adjustment tube, upright tube, a 21″ cross support with rubber strip, a shock cord, and a hardware packet that includes a hitch pin, hex bolt with locknut, and a 3/4″-diameter square-head bolt to attach the lower receiver tube to a hitch drawbar. The hitch drawbar must be purchased separately to fit the vehicle’s receiver. The cross-support can be adjusted from 36″ to 60″ above the center of the receiver. This height should be sufficient for most vehicles except for very tall vehicles with high roof racks.
Photographs by the authors
With the loader taking a bit more than half the weight of this aluminum canoe, loading and unloading it is a lot easier.
To load the canoe, I move the canoe stern to the rear of the car, with the bow pointing off to one side. I roll the canoe upside down, lift the stern onto the swiveling cross support, which has a rated capacity of 100 lbs, and secure the canoe with the shock cord. I then move to the bow, lift it high enough for the canoe to clear the roof rack, and walk it to the front of the vehicle. The canoe is then secured to the roof rack, and while the canoe loader can stay attached to the hitch receiver and canoe during transport, it is not intended to be used as the rear tie-down.
While the loader comes with a bungee with hooks to engage the loops in the cross bar, the boat must be secured to both roof racks to stabilize it.
Once the loader is installed, hatchbacks cannot be opened until the canoe and loader are removed. On a newer vehicle with an automated hatch, it is a good idea to disable the system while the loader is in place. There is an adapter included that can be used to offset the canoe loader from a hitch ball, so the loader can be used in conjunction with towing a trailer.
The loader is made of heavy-duty materials and assembles easily with basic hand tools. The loader has been easy to use, even one-handed once the aft end of the canoe is secured to the cross support. We are looking forward to exploring our local gunkholes with the help of this handy loader.
Audrey (Skipper) and Kent Lewis mess about in the gunkholes of the Tidewater Region of Virginia, following the paddle strokes of Pocahontas and the early English settlers to this region. Their adventures are logged at Small Boat Restoration.
The Hitch Mount Canoe Loader by Reese Towpower is available from retailers listed on their website. Prices vary from $50 to $80.
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.
It’s often said that necessity is the mother of invention, but even a casual look at early U.S. patents makes it clear that the needs were as much inventions as the inventions themselves. Did anyone ever really need a helmet with shelves inside for potted cactus plants to supply oxygen to the wearer? Probably not, but in 1986 Waldemar Anguita was granted U.S. Patent No. 4,605,000 for it. If not need, what? The British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead came closer to the driving force behind invention: “Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise.”
Clay Wright found that pleasurable mental activity in imagining ways to equip small boats with pedal propulsion. “I have a strong interest in unconventional human-powered boats and enjoy sketching offbeat propulsion systems.”
SBM
Clay’s HIYU is a Fiddlehead canoe, designed by Harry Bryan for double-bladed-paddle propulsion.
That interest led to his building of a 10′6″ Fiddlehead, a decked canoe designed by Harry Bryan. The canoe was designed to be used with a double-bladed paddle, but Clay had something else in mind for his Fiddlehead, which he christened HIYU.
SBM
The combination of pulleys in the cockpit with the gears beneath the hull give the system an 1:11 drive ratio, so pedaling at 50 rpm spins the prop at 550 rpm.
He devised a pedal drive that used a long V-belt from a large die-cast pulley on the horizontal pedal axle to a small pulley on the forward end of an outboard’s propeller shaft. On the outside of the hull was the outboard’s lower unit rotated 90 degrees with the skeg pointing forward and the driveshaft facing aft, with the propeller attached to it.
SBM
An old outboard motor gearbox was reoriented for use on HIYU. The skeg is pointing forward and the shaft that once was driven by the motor now drives the prop.
The mechanism was simple, but there was an ergonomic problem that could be easily overlooked in the design process: “Lifting one’s horizontal leg on the upstroke of a pedal-powered boat is an issue,” Clay discovered. “The first ten minutes of any cruise I take in little HIYU makes my quads burn, and I think there is no way I can keep it up.” In time Clay grew accustomed to the unusual cycling position, but HIYU’s performance was only a qualified success. HIYU, but the way, is a word in Chinook jargon, the 19th-century trade language of the Pacific Northwest. It means “plenty,” but in this case, plenty wasn’t enough for Clay.
Steve Navratil
CLATAWA is a Monk plywood skiff with a few changes Clay made to enhance the boat’s curves.
He started again from scratch and built a 9′ flat-bottomed skiff, designed in the 1940s by Edwin Monk as an easily built rowboat. Clay christened the finished skiff CLATAWA, a Chinook verb meaning “to go.”
His “vigorous exercise” of invention resumed with a new focus for the drive mechanism. “My main objective was to find an alternative to rotary input, i.e. bicycle pedals, which virtually everyone who builds these vessels employs, including me with my double-ended canoe. Reciprocating foot pedals and hand levers could provide linear inputs much like an elliptical exercise machine.” Clay recognized that reciprocal motion applied to a human-powered boat would be nothing new. Another Bryan design, the Thistle, is a slightly larger boat than the Fiddlehead and is equipped with a reciprocating-pedal drive that wags a flexible fin like a fish’s tail. And the highly successful Mirage Drive for sit-on-top kayaks uses pedals that move back and forth to power its flexible fins. But as Clay noted, “I’ve never seen reciprocal motion be converted to rotary motion to rotate a propeller.”
Clay Wright
Nearly complete but still in the works, Clay’s mechanism is wonderfully complex.
Clay made a mockup with PVC pipe for the frame that would occupy the bow of the boat and support the pedals and hand levers that would supply the power to a new drive system. The skiff’s power would come from the skipper operating the system like, as Clay put it, “a seagoing elliptical exercise machine.” He followed the mock-up with construction of working mechanical systems in metal. In the shop, everything worked as it was intended to.
Steve Navratil
The copper-pipe pedal system has pedal pads and hand grips for leg and arm power. The levers on the seat are used for steering by shifting each propeller between forward and reverse.
What Clay calls “the engine room” is even more complex. Here’s how he describes it: “The large pulleys are plagiarized from Phil Thiel; the near pulley is fixed to the copper shaft and therefore a driver. The far pulley is a freewheeling idler that returns the twisted V-belt. The little pulley is mounted to and drives a 1/2″ shaft which passes through the wooden tower. The aft small pulley receives the V-belt and turns a 3/4″ tube that encloses the 1/2″ shaft. Therefore, we have two shafts on a common center that are rotating opposite directions.”
Steve Navratil
The black drum at lower right is wrapped with the cord that is connected to the pedal system in the bow. These drums are equipped with bearings that spin in only one direction. One of the large pulleys transmits the power to the center fore-and-aft shaft. The other large pulley is free-spinning. The shifting between forward and reverse is accomplished by the upright pins that move the yellow drive belts between the center drive shaft and the propeller shafts.
The yellow drive belts move to switch the prop rotation from forward to reverse. Again, here’s Clay’s description: “The horizontal bars on the clutches move the nylon rollers forward or backward to shift the belts. Note the pulleys on the propeller shaft that have one wall sawn off. Mounted in front of them are simple bearings. When either of the belts is shifted to its respective pulley, the propeller shaft is driven. The other belt is simultaneously shifted onto the bearing, where it freewheels helplessly and doesn’t drive the shaft. In this way, forward and reverse cannot be engaged at the same time.”
Clay Wright
Twin counter-rotating propellers provide power and eliminate the need for a rudder.
CLATAWA’s early sea trials did not live up to Clay’s hopes. After the first outing, he reported: “I am very disappointed with the boat. She just wouldn’t cooperate. One problem after another (the drive is overly complex), weeds clogging the propellers, etc., and I could hardly get the boat to go at all. I’m feeling that the boat is a failure. The boat is back in the basement. I’m going to throw a sheet over her and try to put her out of my mind.”
Steve Navratil
While Clay may have been disappointed with his prop drive, his boatbuilding yielded pleasing results with a shapely hull that sits in perfect trim with him aboard.
If the boat were the point of the exercise and designing the drive was simply a means to an end, CLATAWA might well be considered a failure. But it took only a few days for Clay to recall the project’s beginnings: “I concocted this admittedly impractical design for the challenge.” And he confirmed the connection between “pleasurable mental activity” and invention: “I had a great deal of fun puzzling out the challenge of converting linear movement into rotary motion.” The poor performance of CLATAWA was not a dead end but a path to escape the disappointment by taking up the challenge again.
One of the factors that had hampered the drive system’s performance was the nature of reciprocating motion: while a circular motion can continue without interruption, a reciprocating motion comes to a brief stop every time it changes direction. This isn’t an issue with the Mirage and Bryan fin drives—the fins also have a reciprocal motion and it’s what makes them work. But the propellers have a rotary motion, and they come to a stop and create drag rather than propulsion when the pedals change direction. Clay considered a flywheel to store energy and keep the props spinning in between pedal strokes. Unfortunately, he estimated that a flywheel for his drive system “would need to weigh about 80 lbs to be effective, and the boat weighs a ton as it is with all that mechanical nonsense. I think what would help the most is maximizing the pedal stroke length so the propellers would get in a good, prolonged spin before slamming to a halt. I’ll ponder a little more over the winter.”
CLATAWA’s drive system is not yet finished, but it is being worked on even if Clay is only thinking about it. The creation of something new is an essential human pursuit. The pondering is the point.
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.
Subscribe For Full Access
Flipbooks are available to paid subscribers only. Subscribe now or log in for access.
