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RASCAL sped across the riffled waters of Long Island Sound. Her mahogany foredeck glowed from the depths of its varnish, and her stainless-steel cutwater sparkled through drops of water streamlining into mist. Driver and passenger sat low on a simple rolled leather seat, legs stretched out nearly parallel to the cockpit sole. A tall person could reach over the side and touch the water as it rushed aft at better than 50 mph. Memories of my first ride in RASCAL still raise goose bumps after 15 years.

At 15′ in length and weighing about 1,000 lbs with a full fuel tank and cockpit, RASCAL is a cheeky little boat— “pleasantly mischievous” is one of the ways Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines the name—powered by a 60-hp Mercury outboard. If Colin Chapman had designed and built boats instead of Lotus automobiles, a boat of RASCAL’s character surely would have been among them—the Lotus Super Seven of the waterways.

Photo by Polly Brown

Rascal, a 14’10” outboard runabout that you can build in the backyard, strives to capture the cachet of big mahogany speedboats—without their mechanical complications and great expense.

Designed and built by Kenny Bassett, Onion River Boat Works, RASCAL offers more bang for the buck than just about any other runabout a father and son could build over several hundred hours of nights and weekends. They will build her of plywood—4mm for the topsides and decks, 5mm for the bottom—ripped into strips 1″ wide and laid diagonally over frames and stringers. That’s the easy part. If they want to capture the gloss and romance of traditional mahogany runabouts, they’ll plank the topsides with 1⁄ 4″ solid mahogany, perfectly lined off and set in epoxy. Although this method taxes the skill and patience of an amateur builder, it’s far from impossible. In fact, Tom Donahue, an electrical engineer living in Connecticut, recently completed a Rascal. Before this project, he’d built nothing more demanding than a couple of birdhouses. Donahue knows, maybe better than anyone, that whoever builds a Rascal must let patience guide them throughout the project, especially during the varnishing. The finishwork will likely require as much, or more, time than the construction.

The final result, though, is worth the wait. RASCAL rides atop a shallow-V bottom. Her steep entry warps into a flat run and ends at the transom in a deadrise of about 7 degrees. A delta-shape pad keel from station No. 2 aft to the transom provides a perfect planing surface, allowing RASCAL to make the transition from displacement speed to full plane in a single heave—absent the “hump” we associate with deep-V hulls and their slightly shallower modified-V sisters. Chine flats emerge from the waterline at station No. 4, which corresponds with the forward edge of the cockpit. They rise gracefully and embrace the stem about halfway up the bow, forming a line that plays with light and shadow to create visual interest forward of the cockpit. These chines also deflect spray.

RASCAL’s exceptional proportions mask her size when she stands alone in the slip or speeds across the water. Only when she’s parked next to a larger boat does she reveal her compact dimensions. The outboard’s power head, like a welt on the forehead of Julianne Moore, may diminish our first impressions from exquisite to merely beautiful, but familiarity ought to heal the wound. Bassett was aware of this possibility, so he painted the cowling of the outboard on hull No.1. A lustrous solid black accented by the name RASCAL in chromed script made the power head an integral part of the design, further defining the boat’s character and purpose.

I’d met Bassett at the Riverside Yacht Club in the town of the same name located two train stops east of Greenwich, Connecticut. He’d traveled from New Hampshire to demonstrate the boat to a prospective buyer and invited me to join him for a test drive afterward. Bassett fired up the three-cylinder Mercury, which was still warm from his demo, engaged forward gear, and idled us into the channel.

Photo by Polly Brown

Powered by a 60-hp, Mercury outboard motor, RASCAL scoots along at better than 50 mph.

At rest and under slow way, RASCAL lightly tap-danced to the rhythm of cat’s-paws stirred by the breeze. This lateral motion is common to other runabouts I’ve driven and seems to be a characteristic of the bottom’s shape and the boat’s low center of gravity. I love this little dance, because it conveys a restless energy—the promise of speed. Most runabouts fulfill this promise, whether they are blindingly fast or simply pleasingly rapid.

Few powerboats involve us in their playfulness as completely as does a fine runabout, and RASCAL’s length and light weight intensify all of the sensations—save one: the rumble of an inboard engine, V-8, or straight-six barking epithets from the chrome tips of a through-transom exhaust. When I drove the original RASCAL, a 60-hp Mercury two-stroke outboard powered her, and I admit to being disenchanted by the ring, ding, ding voice coming from the transom. Sure, I knew better. I had road-raced two-stroke motorcycles in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and understood their potential to entertain the speed demon in all of us. I knew also that this lightweight outboard was the key to RASCAL’s personality.

Never mind Gar Wood’s neat 16′ Speedster inboard runabout or, to be more contemporary, Donzi’s lovely Sweet 16 sterndrive, only an outboard would give Bassett everything he wanted—simplicity of installation, ease of maintenance, purchase price, light weight and performance. Although outboard-powered classics never gained the cachet of their inboard sisters, they’ve written a richly colorful history for themselves in racing and more sedate forms of boating. In RASCAL, Bassett has combined the spirit of the all-conquering Switzer Craft hydroplanes and utilities with the look and presence of a Gold Cup raceboat.

After we cleared the mooring field and the no-wake zone, Bassett trimmed the outboard’s drive leg and pushed the throttle to the stops, sending us in a single rush to a speed of 50 mph. In the open water, RASCAL skimmed atop a foot or so of chop, doing her best imitation of a Lotus Super Seven tearing along a country lane in the north of England. Hard left, hard right, the little boat put her shoulder into the turns and carved perfect arcs. A tiny skid fin, at the leading edge of the planing surface and projecting to a depth of 2 3⁄4″ from the pad keel, helped RASCAL hold her line and speed in these turns. Without the fin, she would drift wide—her way of asking the driver to back off the throttle. We played until our faces ached with indelible grins and the electric tilt and trim on the outboard quit working.

Photo by Polly Brown

Designer-builder Ken Bassett drives RASCAL at speed. The playful runabout isn’t the easiest boat to build, but she rewards careful work with fine performance and head-turning appearance.

We met again later in the summer—this time on Candlewood Lake, near Danbury, Connecticut. This lake is an impoundment and is very narrow in many sections. Wind-blown waves and the wakes of powerboats bounce off the shorelines and march directly back toward the center of the lake. Picture the inside of a washing machine, the agitator of which moves rapidly up and down. Even during the week, motorboat traffic on Candlewood resembles the madness of I-95 between New Haven and Greenwich, so we looked for relatively quiet water to time her acceleration and top speed in fresh water. We recorded 2.7 seconds from 25 to 35 mph and a maximum speed of 52 mph.

My turn to drive. The cockpit is intimate, the steering wheel small, and the gauges are located in a panel at the center of the dashboard, similar to the arrangement in a 1952 Jaguar XK120. The seat is a paragon of simple design and construction, a pair of leather-covered foam cushions resting on nylon webbing. As drawn, the cockpit ought to accommodate a reasonable variety of human heights and widths. If I were going to build a Rascal, I’d figure out a way to make the seat adjustable fore-and-aft.

The unassisted cable-operated steering was quick, and RASCAL’s response nearly instantaneous. At first, the boat’s quickness startled me, so I eased back on the throttle until I got the feel of her handling. In those washing machine waters, she preferred staying on top of the conditions, so the faster we went, the smoother was her ride. RASCAL reacted predictably to changes in the outboard’s trim. Trimming in brought the bow down to engage the waves; trimming out raised the bow, transferring the load to her planing surface under the cockpit. She never porpoised, chine-walked, or tried to get airborne. One owner of a Rascal has clamped a heavily modified outboard onto the transom and regularly sees 70 mph. He has reported that she remains free of handling vices.

Like a pleasingly mischievous friend, RASCAL defies anyone to resist her charm, her playfulness, and friendly manners. She may not be the easiest boat to build, but rendering the two-dimensional drawings into all her wonderful three-dimensional shapes may make you as giddy as does driving her.

Ken Bassett retired and closed Onion River Boatworks in 2017; there are no plans available for RASCAL. The review is presented here as archival material.

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!

With his Stir Ven design, a 22′ LOA centerboarder, François Vivier took first place in the “neo-traditional” category of a 1997 design competition organized by the French magazine Le Chasse-Marée. His main design objective was to balance the aesthetics and appeal of a purely traditional sailboat with a modern hull’s efficiency of construction, maintenance, and overall performance. Nine years and twenty-five boats later, it seems that he has fully reached his initial aim.

Designed at first with amateur builders in mind, Stir Ven has been refined several times, and the design is now being built professionally by the north Brittany boatyard Grand Largue, which produces versions ranging from a do-it-yourself kit to a fully equipped, ready-to-sail boat. Vivier’s very detailed drawings and instructions do not mean that Stir Ven’s lapstrake plywood-and-epoxy hull is an easy one to build, especially for beginners. Previous experience with a smaller lapstrake project—a Tom Hill design could be a nice training project—is more than recommended.

Photo by François Vivier

Under a single reef, a boat built to François Vivier’s Stir Ven design bravely beats to windward in a good breeze of the type that usually prevails during the Rencontres du Morbihan, a yearly meeting of traditional boats in south Brittany, France.

The Stir Ven hull is 22′ long, 7′ 3″ wide, and has a 397-lb cast-iron centerboard. Her lapstrake planking is 3⁄8″-thick marine plywood, with 5⁄8″ bulkheads. The main structural elements, including the deck, floors, watertight compartments, and frames, are all constructed of 3⁄8″ plywood. Her cockpit sole, rudder, and rear hatch are slightly thicker, using 10mm plywood (about 7⁄16″) that is easily found in France but may be less standard elsewhere. The backbone is made of the hardwood sapele, with wood-epoxy technology used all over, fillet joints included. Long common in America, such composite construction techniques are making some inroads among the traditional wooden boat builders in France, where even today a majority favors mechanical fastenings and cotton caulking. In old countries, things change perhaps more slowly than they might….

The Stir Ven sail plan shows a powerful, gaff-rigged mainsail of 204 sq ft. Two halyards easily hoist the high-peaked gaff, which sets nearly vertical. Her 75-sq-ft genoa gives her an efficient total of 279 sq ft of sail area. For working downwind, an optional asymmetrical spinnaker can be fitted to the end of a small—but not very aesthetically pleasing—bowsprit.

Photo by François Vivier

The boat is intended more for sailing than for rowing, but two healthy guys, each with a long oar, can maneuver in harbors or protected waters. A transom-mounted outboard, which stows in a cockpit locker, can take over when they’ve had enough.

Once launched, Stir Ven is quickly and easily rigged. When trailering, the mast, which is both light and short, lies flat on deck, resting in the tabernacle with the shrouds and forestay lashed down. Once the mast heel is fitted in the tabernacle, the mast can be hoisted by one crew member hauling on the forestay, which attaches to the stemhead fitting. After the shrouds and forestay have been tensioned properly, the sails have been hanked on, and the rudder has been shipped, you are ready to go. The tiller swings under the afterdeck, leaving plenty of free space on deck for the mainsheet tackle and the horse traveler. It’s difficult to imagine a simpler operation. Two people can get the boat from trailer to sailing in less than half an hour. Before setting sail, however, you have to remember to lower the heavy centerboard.

Photo by François Vivier

An amidships winch is needed to raise and lower the 397-lb centerboard.

After her initial heel, Stir Ven stays firmly on her bilges and holds a perfect trim until the wind reaches about 12 knots. If the wind is heavier, the huge main has to be reefed to keep the helm in balance, but even at high angles of heel the centerboard is heavy enough to keep the boat steady in the gusts. For ultimate security, Vivier has designed enough buoyancy in enclosed compartments forward and on both sides of the cockpit to make Stir Ven unsinkable. Some real-world testing has since demonstrated the efficiency of the design. Her tiller is always light and responsive, without any tendency toward weather helm.

To a purist’s eye, the optional spinnaker may seem to be an incongruity in conjunction with a gaff rig, but it greatly improves downwind performance and is small enough to be easily mastered, even in a good breeze.

Stir Ven’s rig is set up in a way very similar to a big dinghy, and deck hardware has been kept to a minimum for simple handling. It will not scare newcomers. For the construction, however, parts such as the stemhead fitting, the mast tabernacle, and the main horse traveler may have to be professionally manufactured in bronze or galvanized steel. The small traveler adds a traditional touch on the after deck and improves the set of the mainsail. The main and jib halyards are made off to cleats mounted on the tabernacle, but it is also possible to lead them through turning blocks to cam cleats mounted on the cabin roof on each side of the companionway, so that all of the lines will be within easy reach of the cockpit.

Photo by François Vivier

The Stir Ven cockpit is designed for two people to sleep on the sole, and a huge cockpit tent with full headroom can make the design into a comfortable camp-cruiser.

The small, cambered cuddy cabin is very low and does not protrude too much above the sheerline. The cabin is big enough to accommodate two usable bunks but lacks locker space. An optional cockpit tent erected on hoops greatly adds to the crew’s comfort when camp-cruising, providing a sheltered living area with full 6′ standing headroom in the cockpit. At night, two berths can be made up on the cockpit sole. The cockpit is not self-bailing, however, so any water remaining from the day’s sail will have to be pumped out. The cockpit’s size and depth, on the other hand, help children and beginning sailors feel immediately at ease and protect them from spray.

All heavy gear—water cans, fenders, and so on—find their natural place in compartments under the cockpit gratings, but they are not protected from water. The mooring line and anchor can be conveniently stowed in a forward locker, closed by a flush-mounted hatch. A bigger box just aft of the rode locker can be used to store the outboard motor, together with its portable gas tank. Because they contain heavy gear, those two lockers have been judiciously located far from the ends of the boat. Another detail betrays Vivier’s care in design: rather than using a conventional—and ugly—outboard motor bracket, he has provided a simple and stylish transom cutout for the motor, which can be removed and stored in the locker when not in use.

Photo by François Vivier

Some fittings, notably the bronze stemhead casting and the fairlead for the anchor rode, may have to be professionally made.

“I have been sailing since my childhood in the ’60s, a time when boats were mainly built of wood, designed by a naval architect, and built by experienced craftsmen,” Vivier says. “My passion for boats comes from that era, now considered as prehistoric. Since then, I have been studying ship engineering and architecture, and worked a long time for the biggest French shipyards and maritime transportation companies of the Atlantic west coast. My career ended as IRCN director (Institut de Recherches en Construction Navales— the Research Institute for Ship Building) where I have gained through experience a deep technical and practical knowledge of all types of boats, for leisure, fishing, commercial, or military uses. But for 25 years, my ‘secret garden’ has always been traditional boating, sail-and-oar, and amateur small-boat building. This led me to design for my pleasure various sailing or rowing boats, all inspired by tradition, but easy to build with simple tools at home. In 1981, I was one of the founders of Le Chasse-Marée, a yachting magazine that right from its first issue was promoting a new sailing philosophy, summed up in a simple slogan: ‘Naviguez autrement,’ which translates as ‘sail in a different way.’

“Soon after Le Chasse-Marée’s founding, I designed l’Aven, the first French sail-and-oar stock design, 80 of which have since left the yard in Loctudy. In 1985, I drew l’Aber with home-builders in mind and developed a large range of various sailing and rowing small boats. Today, the now affordable CNC technology (computer numerically controlled cutting) and yacht design software are the best tools to develop new building kits. Their high level of precision greatly simplifies and shortens a lot of usually painful and boring boatbuilding tasks, and in order to answer to an increasing international demand, I am now translating my building instructions notebooks in English—but the measurement system is still metric.”

With a jib, a genoa, a high-peaked gaff mainsail, and an optional asymmetrical spinnaker tacked down to a stub bowsprit, Stir Ven offers the sailor lots of variations. The jib sheet reeves through a fairlead to a cam cleat, but the design indicates that once the centerboard is lowered, the amidships winch can be freed to trim the jib.

This Boat Profile was published in Small Boats 2007 and appears here as archival material. Plans for the Stir Ven 22 are available from Vivier Boats.

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!

In 1987, as Chip Miller was learning how to build wooden boats at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, he became interested in Alton Wallace’s design for an open skiff. Contacting Wallace, Miller arranged to have a look at one of his original hulls. He measured that hull, carved a half model, and—using the model in the traditional way and working with another student—built a full-scale version of Wallace’s skiff in the museum’s shop. He liked the result, and after a few years’ work in various Maine boatyards, he concluded it was time to build this seaworthy design again, using up-to-date techniques.

Where to begin? He still had his half model, and the Maine Maritime Museum still had the set of molds Miller had made and used there for his student project. “They didn’t want them,” he was told when he inquired about the molds. He promptly retrieved them, presumably saving these critical ingredients of his own boatbuilding dreams from the kindling pile or the dump.

Photo by Doug Wood

Six River Marine based this tough and shapely skiff on a highly regarded workboat designed and built by Alton Wallace. Chip Miller gave the new boat more freeboard, less flare, greater breadth, and slightly increased length.

Six River Marine, the company Miller formed with Scott Conrad in 1994, got its start as a mobile marine service. Miller and Conrad “packed their tools in a van and set about letting folks know of their services,” according to Six River’s informative web site. They had to work under some fairly miserable conditions during this time.

The West Pointer came into the picture about 10 years later, long after a roomy former chicken house in North Yarmouth, Maine, had replaced the van as Six River Marine’s principal place of business. Miller and Conrad had built up a storage, repair, and restoration operation that concentrated on boats built from the 1920s through the 1960s, some of which had won show honors for the quality of the restoration work. The student half model of the Wallace skiff lay in Miller’s office, reminding him daily of the handsome boat he had built nearly 20 years before.

The boat Miller built at the Maine Maritime Museum in 1987 was conventionally planked and a few inches shorter than the version he began building in the North Yarmouth shop. “More freeboard, less flare, increased beam, and increased length” is how he describes the result, which is 18′ 6″ overall, draws 7″ with its outboard motor up, and displaces 1,100 lbs.

Photos courtesy of Six River Marine

Unlike its strip-built workboat predecessor, the new Six River West Pointer is cold-molded with cedar, mahogany, and epoxy.

The big difference between the West Pointer 18 (20′ and 22′ versions are planned too) and its museum-built predecessor, however, is in the construction. Miller settled on cold-molded veneers over laminated mahogany frames, using two 1⁄8″ layers of cedar and one of mahogany, sheathed on the outside with resin-impregnated Dynel cloth and coated with a one-part urethane paint. The veneers are laid at right angles to each other in “planks” of varying widths, glued together with epoxy while being clamped with a vacuum-bag. He describes the result as “a rigid one-piece structure made completely of wood not fiberglass.”

The resulting hull, Miller asserts, is lighter in weight than its conventionally planked ancestor, and considerably easier to maintain. The company’s brochure for the West Pointer notes that the cedar and mahogany used for veneers is rot resistant and completely sealed with epoxy: “The result is a solid, impervious structure. With proper maintenance, rot won’t have a chance to get started.”

Photo courtesy of Six River Marine

Vacuum-bagging the hull as the epoxy cures results in a rigid one-piece structure that is free from voids.

The 18’6″ model that came out of the shop in 2005 is decked forward with a curved coaming running down both sides, from the foredeck all the way to the stern. Side decks are about 8″ wide, and the coaming looks low enough to permit a person to sit on the narrow deck for a while without discomfort. There is a center console equipped with a stainless-steel destroyer-type wheel and throttle and the usual gauges, plus convenient grabrails to port and starboard. The helmsman’s seat—gray-painted plywood—is positioned far enough aft to allow the skipper to stand or sit at the console (company photographs always show the helmsman standing, suggesting the West Pointer’s roots as a traditional workboat). There’s storage in the locker under the helmsman’s seat and under the foredeck.

This is a custom-built boat, and the configuration of hull No. 1 is only one of the possibilities. “In keeping with Six River Marine’s reputation as a custom boat builder, every hull is built to order,” states the company brochure. Alternate configurations might include a dodger, more decking, a windshield, additional rubrails, a different style of coaming, various seating arrangements, even a steering arrangement other than the center console. And, of course, the level of finish— less paint, more varnish—is up to the customer as well. Hull No. 1 is white with gray decks and interior, set off with a varnished coaming, grabrails, and console trim—very workmanlike, with just enough varnish to make it interesting.

The company recommends a 50-hp outboard, although at the customer’s request the first hull was equipped with a somewhat larger four-stroke Honda. A 50-hp motor, Miller says, will push this hull at 25 knots. It may be too early to know much about customer satisfaction, but the Maine buyer who commissioned hull No. 1 reportedly sold it to another buyer after a season and the boat is now with its second owner in Stuart, Florida. The original customer, meanwhile, has returned to Six River Marine and ordered a second West Pointer for himself.

Despite its curvaceous topsides, the West Pointer 18 shows an essentially flat bottom. The good-looking skiff has great initial stability, which can be useful for work and play.

This Boat Profile was published in Small Boats 2007 and appears here as archival material. For current information on the West Pointer 18, contact Six River Marine, 160 Royal Rd., North Yarmouth, ME 04097; 207–846–6675.

There is always an air of anticipation (and anxiety) when contemplating building a new design that you have never seen (much less been on board). Such was the case a few years back, when WoodenBoat School shop manager Jerry Cumbo and I were casting about for another boat to use as a shop project for the Fundamentals of Boatbuilding courses taught at the school. The design needed to be technically interesting, with plenty of different operations, yet not so complex that it would take forever to build. It had to be safe and handle well enough that it might be a candidate to join the school’s waterfront fleet, and at the same time be practical enough that a student might actually want to build one. And it wouldn’t hurt if it looked good, too. We already had the usual suspects on the floor—the dory types and East Coast carvel pulling boat types. We were ready for something new, but what?

That’s when Mike O’Brien, WoodenBoat’s senior editor and design guru, suggested Skylark by Paul Gartside. Mike had recently reviewed the boat for the magazine and liked the cut of her jib (and other parts, too). Skylark was designed for day-sailing in the sporty estuary and ocean waters off the Oregon coast. Gartside’s customer had a preference for the lug-rigged older British sailing dinghies, and that’s where the design began. The resulting plans looked great. With a 14′ length and a 5’8″ beam and tipping the scales at a beefy 550 lbs, Skylark is one big, little boat with plenty of freeboard and stability. A quick look at the design reveals hollow waterlines forward, an easy run of planks aft, and a broad transom that barely touches the water. She has lots of rocker so she would tack easily, and if need be, would be efficient enough to move decently with either oars or small outboard. Skylark reflects her British Isles heritage with robust construction featuring a heavy-duty skeg-type backbone, lapstrake…er, clinker (in the British parlance) planking fastened with square European-type rivets, a plethora of frames, and a profusion of reinforcing knees—at the transom, stern, and thwarts.

Photo by Benjamin Mendlowitz

Paul Gartside designed Skylark, a 14′ daysailer, in the tradition of the sailing dinghies of his native Britain. The boat is heavily built and robust, and is also a fine sailer. Rig options include the lugsail shown here, and a marconi sloop.

Paul also penned in a handsome sheerline—this being the top edge of the boat’s hull, in profile. It’s an important element in a boat’s shape. Get it wrong, and the boat’s looks will suffer considerably. Oftentimes, small, wide boats can have sheers that look powderhornish—meaning their sheers dip precipitously up forward. They can sometimes look outright dumpy, but in this case, the sheer is elegant and, in profile, evokes the look of a svelte yacht dinghy. Best of all was her practical, near workboat ambiance. There was nothing that demanded expensive wood and 14 coats of varnish. Nor did it request a blue blazer or an ascot. Instead, it said, “Just jump in with a few friends and go—and don’t forget to bring the dog.” We were sold.

We did, however make few East Coast modifications to Skylark’s specifications. To wit: We planked the hull with Maine white cedar rather than the Western red cedar, for a couple of reasons. First, the Maine cedar is a tougher wood that resists impact and stress better than the red. Second, we had a good supply of it. We also made the planking a bit heftier as added protection from the occasional rocky beach landing. The knees were to be made of local hackmatack root.

Also, originally the plans called for a galvanized-steel centerboard. To standardize the boat with the rest of the WoodenBoat fleet, we opted for a Dynel-covered plywood board (ballasted with a slug of lead) that could be hauled up with a simple lanyard and cleated off.

Then, there is the matter of which sail rig to use. Skylark can be built with a deluxe gunter jib and main rig (94 sq ft) or the basic standing lug (88 sq ft). Again, opting for simplicity, we went with the free-standing lug.

The result of our modifications is a boat that is possibly somewhat more heavily built than the original design, but the difference is nothing to write home to mother about. We didn’t log the time required to build ours, and it wouldn’t be a meaningful figure if we had, for it was built in a classroom setting. However, designer Gartside suggests that the boat will require 600 hours of a highly skilled boatbuilder’s time.

Fast-forwarding, the boat was built over a number of summers in classes taught by a few different instructors and fashioned by literally hundreds of hands of students and alumni and shop staff. The resulting boat was even better looking than we had hoped for. She’s elegant, in a practical way, with an easy-to-maintain finish. Her topsides are painted with marine enamel, and the interior has a bright, oiled finish. That oil, it should be noted, will not remain as bright over the years as it appears in the accompanying photographs. It will weather to black, but will be far easier to maintain than varnish.

And how does she sail? The waterfront staff have all given Skylark universally high marks. Her inviting accommodations are comfortable to be in and can easily sail with four adults aboard. With her standing lug rig with a single halyard, she is simple to get underway. Just jump aboard and drop the centerboard, and off you go. That’s what Al Fletcher, WoodenBoat’s waterfront manager, did at the end of last summer. His shakedown sail resulted in the usual tweaks to a new boat’s rig, but he had high praise for the design.

Photo by Benjamin Mendlowitz

Despite her weight—which is rather high compared with other boats of her size—Skylark will keep moving in tiny zephyrs. When the wind dies all together, you can lift the boom above head-height and break out the oars.

On an outing in 12 knots of breeze, Fletcher reported good offwind speed. Upwind performance that day suffered as a result of a too-short mast, which produced a rather severe wrinkle in the sail. He said, “The boat tacked without hesitation and we were never caught in stays, even with minimal forward movement.” Al’s conclusion? “This is a roomy, quick, and stable 14′ open dinghy that I believe will give an outstanding account of herself once we get the rig sorted out.”

By season’s end, WoodenBoat’s new Skylark had a longer mast, and she was well through her teething problems. It seems nobody can pass by her without stopping and commenting on her beauty and grace. She has proven herself fast, sailing well with a good turn of speed (even in light air due to her tall lug rig). She tacks well without hesitation, feels stable both at the dock and under sail, and has a delightful chortle as water travels over the laps. Like all centerboard hulls, Skylark can cruise where no deep-keeled daysailer would dare to venture. Her draft, board up, is but 10″; with it down, it is 3′ 4″. She beaches handily with the kick-up rudder. Notes one passenger of the boat, “It even smells good.”

Granted, a single design will not be the perfect choice for all. In fact, Al Fletcher notes that Skylark was brought into the WoodenBoat fleet specifically to fill the niche between a 17′ Fenwick Williams catboat and a 12′ Beetle Cat. Four adults looking for a fine afternoon on the water will find the elegant yet working-class Skylark to be a delight. She is just a lot of fun to sail.

Designer Paul Gartside draws his plans with an unusual level of detail and artistry. He’s well known for small, ocean-capable sailing cruisers based on the fishing vessels of the west coast of England, but his portfolio is much wider than that. His Skylark design is filled with traditional elements, and is not a simple boat to build. But she is a simple boat to sail.

Plans for the Skylark are available from Gartside Boats.

Time passes and carries with it our memories of even the sweetest experiences. I admit to having forgotten a lot during the past 25 years, but every moment I’ve spent in the company of BLACKBIRD remains firmly burned onto the CD of my life in boats. She’s a nautical treasure and rubs up against the edges of perfection. She may be the most appealing example of her type, a minimalist outboard-powered cruiser for sheltered waters, and the reason (or reasons) she hasn’t spawned a single sibling remains one of the most baffling mysteries of our time.

Conceived in the early 1980s by Ken Bassett, Onion River Boat Works, and massaged into her final form by Phil Bolger, BLACKBIRD embodies the spirit of carefree mobility found in the lyrics of the Mort Dixon/Ray Henderson song “Bye Bye Blackbird,” “Pack up all my cares and woe, here I go, singin’ low, bye bye blackbird.” BLACKBIRD evolved on the image of the 40′ launch ESCORT, which Al Mason designed in about 1940 when he worked at Sparkman & Stephens. Bassett latched onto the notion of building a simple, lightweight variation of the theme, which ESCORT so beautifully represents, while he watched slides of a friend’s cruise on the Rideau Canal system in Ontario, Canada. His preliminary drawings showed a hardchined hull that Bassett planned to build from plywood. He sent the drawings to Bolger for completion. Bolger shared Bassett’s admiration for Mason’s graceful launch, and he drew plans for a round-bilged hull measuring 23′ 4″ long overall and 7′ 8″ maximum beam.

Photo by Benjamin Mendlowitz

Likely the most beautiful outboard cruiser ever designed, the shoal draft BLACKBIRD can cozy up to a secluded island beach and let her crew step ashore.

Approximately three times longer overall than she is wide and, on the waterline, only a few inches shy of her overall length, BLACKBIRD is all about curves—the shadows and highlights of which define her shape as she moves through the water or swings to her anchor. She’s beautiful from every angle, but her relatively short overall length pushes the aesthetic limits. If we chop off so much as a foot, retaining the beam as drawn, we’d be in danger of creating a caricature. If we scale down the design by a foot—which also requires narrowing the beam—we may cramp her interior volume beyond practical use.

On the other hand, scaling up or lengthening her on the same beam would add far more than the numbers indicate. She would be faster, roomier, more stable laterally and longitudinally, more elegant, and more expensive to build or have built. In spite of our preferences—as drawn or longer—we can’t ignore the sound reasoning that established BLACKBIRD’s final dimensions. A lightweight 24′ boat handles easily on the water, tows without protest, and readily cooperates during launching and retrieving. All of these characteristics extend her cruising grounds and enhance her usefulness. I’ve often imagined towing BLACKBIRD to some obscure body of water many miles from home and camping in her during rest stops along the road.

Belowdecks, BLACKBIRD serves up a cozy space for one or two adults. We’ll label the accommodations, which comprise a V-berth, enclosed head, and a galley opposite, luxurious camping. It certainly captivated me. BLACKBIRD and I met for the first time at a marina in Grand Isle, Vermont. I’d driven north from Connecticut to meet Bassett and spend an afternoon aboard the boat. Arriving early, I went aboard and crept into the cabin like a jewel thief slipping into madame’s boudoir. Bolger has referred to the layout as “shipshape.” I have to call the ambience magical. I went forward, collapsed onto the V-berth, closed my eyes, and let the boat’s polite motion lull me to sleep. Her original owner cruised the shallow waters of south Florida and lived aboard for a number of months. Before that, he and Bassett took the boat from The WoodenBoat Show in Newport to Grand Isle via the Hudson River and Champlain Canal. In the tropics or during the summer months farther north, we’d spend more time outside than in, lounging on a beach chair in the cockpit, a large umbrella sheltering us from the sun. We’d cook on a portable grill, sip espresso that we made on the stove in the galley, and then toast the sunset with a snifter of fine brandy.

In keeping with the theme of carefree mobility, Bassett specified outboard power for BLACKBIRD—originally a 50-hp Mercury. So equipped, the boat is easier to launch and retrieve, is lighter in weight, and doesn’t require all the plumbing and through-hull fittings that an inboard does. Installing an outboard also is orders of magnitude less intimidating to an amateur builder. Mounted in a watertight well, the motor doesn’t intrude on our peace as we cruise up the river, nor does it interfere with our appreciation of BLACKBIRD’s simple beauty.

Photo by Benjamin Mendlowitz

Requiring only moderate power, the 23′ 4″ hull efficiently slides through the clear water of Eggemoggin Reach near Brooklin, Maine.

Devoid of styling gimmicks, BLACKBIRD combines the purposeful look of a workboat with the grace of a gentleman’s launch. Although a cynic could argue that the complex shapes, especially in the trunk cabin, are hard to build and unnecessary to the boat’s function, she’d lose a lot of her emotional appeal if those shapes were eliminated—at least the love-at-first-sight part. The smitten enthusiast, emotions aside, could argue that the soft shapes allow the wind to flow more easily over the structure. He’d be correct. We’re not concerned with the aerodynamics of high-speed racing boats, but we are concerned with how the strong surface winds affect the boat’s directional stability in open waters and her maneuverability under slow way in close quarters. Rounded surfaces are slipperier than are flat ones.

The same idea applies to shapes below the waterline. BLACKBIRD’s barely plumb stem caps a sharp entry, which shows some hollow in the waterlines through station No. 2. Beyond station No. 2, the hull swells out, losing deadrise and gaining buoyancy as we trace the waterlines toward the transom. The run is flat, and the deadrise diminishes to zero degrees at the transom. Bolger worked magic in the flow lines, because the boat runs cleanly at all speeds, doesn’t need spray rails, doesn’t require more than 50 hp for a satisfying top speed (about 18 knots), and doesn’t roll enough to notice. Her light weight and flat run quicken the motion, but not uncomfortably so, as I discovered during a breezy day on Lake Champlain and in seas of about 2′.

Under way, BLACKBIRD happily slips along at any speed you select. At displacement speeds, her sharp entry splits the waves, letting her buoyant midsection ride gently over the remainder. She lifts to maximum speed in a deliberate rush, as though hurrying were beneath her dignity. At top speed, she carries her chin about 18″ above the surface of the water, waiting to engage the crest of another boat’s wake or a roguishly large wave that sneaked into the train. BLACKBIRD tracks well upwind and down but, like any lightweight boat, wanders a bit as she spars with the waves. Beam seas and wind nudge her this way and that, but not alarmingly so.

A fairly long skeg helps BLACKBIRD with her directional stability, in a straight line and in turns, but it limits the radius at which she takes a turn at the higher speeds in her range. The skeg robs the propeller of solid water; the engine revs, the boat slows, and the helmsman feels silly. BLACKBIRD isn’t a hot rod and should be treated accordingly.

Photo by Benjamin Mendlowitz

BLACKBIRD combines timeless design with modern cold-molded wood-epoxy construction. She looks fine even when standing still and should never leak a drop.

Bassett cold-molded BLACKBIRD of 1⁄8″ Western red cedar, the first three courses laid diagonally and the last longitudinally. He used Philippine mahogany for the keel, Honduras mahogany for the skeg, and ash for the stem. The method is well within the ability of amateur builders, and it produces a strong, stiff, and lightweight structure. Spiling—fitting the thin planks so they butt one another without gaps—and stapling to hold them in place while the epoxy resin sets require a great deal of patience. The bare hull, as Bassett and a handful of helpers lifted it off the molds, weighed about 500 lbs. The complete boat displaces 2,800 lbs.

Building the trunk cabin and windscreen taxes the craftsman’s eye and skills more than any other part of the boat. Bassett referred to the process as an exercise in free-form construction. The cabin’s delectable oval-shaped fascia rakes slightly aft, and its sides become perpendicular as they curve toward the cockpit. The coach roof slopes toward the bow and shows diminishing camber from the windscreen forward. Working in a relatively confined area, Bassett couldn’t get far enough away to really see the shape he was creating. “We would just put in a piece of wood and bend it until it looked like what we wanted,” he said.

Coaxing the many individual elements of a design into an engaging whole is the brass ring of design and construction. In BLACKBIRD’s case, the color scheme, working with the small riot of shapes, unifies the boat. “One thing becomes another,” Bassett said. “When you look at it, when you move around in it, when you steer it, you’re not just in a certain area—you’re in a whole boat.”

To meet BLACKBIRD is to love her, the way that strangers meet and, feeling as though they’ve known one another all their lives, stay friends forever.

Ken Bassett conceived the vision for BLACKBIRD based upon earlier work of Al Mason. Phil Bolger gave form to the idea on his drawing table, and Bassett brought the boat to life in his Vermont boatshop. The result: a truly classic design.

For plans contact:

Susanne Altenburger
Phil Bolger & Friends Inc.
66 Atlantic Street
Gloucester, MA 01930-1627 USA

(Contact information updated March 2022) 

Ken Bassett retired and closed Onion River Boatworks in 2017.

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!

PETITELISA is a synthesis of Gilles Montaubin’s long experience with sail-and-oar boats. Unlike many boats of this type, she is not reminiscent of any traditional working boat type. Instead, she incorporates some very contemporary features. Montaubin, for example, has intensively tested the use of water ballast on many boat designs, and its use on PETITELISA allows her displacement to be adapted to varying conditions: whether propulsion is by sail or oar, whether her crew is solo or accompanied, and whether the sea state is flat or rough. Adding water ballast while rowing in choppy seas increases inertia and makes boat handling easier. Yet this varying ballast is accomplished without changing her overall trailering weight: emptying the ballast tanks is a snap.

Since his childhood, Montaubin has had an acute point of view on the world of boating, a world from which he has always stood aloof. During the 1960s, his father, an orthopedic surgeon, was an enthusiastic racing sailor and boatbuilding fanatic. At that time, the La Rochelle area had few yachtsmen, so everybody exchanged a lot of technical information gathered from the various boatyards and naval architects working in the surrounding area. Gilles served his boatbuilding apprenticeship accompanying his father and decided, after receiving a doctorate of sociology in 1972, to establish himself as a boat designer and builder in the backcountry.

He already had in mind some strong building and design principles: one-off units, simple, cheap, and fast, designed to suit specific needs and developed following his personal experience and that of his customers. Since then, Gilles has never broken his own rules. After a personal experience designing and building a 30′ plywood cruising monohull, his professional career really began, and in 1977 he designed a 40′ cruising catamaran, with which he cruised around Spain and Portugal. Then he began to design boats based on the local types surrounding his location in the heart of le Marais Poitevin, a famous French swamp area of the Atlantic coast. These boats were flatiron skiffs, which here are called plate, which is French for “flat.” But instead of following the tradition of building this type of boat with heavy hardwoods, he switched to concepts he learned from multihull ultra-light composite technology. In 1986, he entered a design competition organized by the French magazine Le Chasse-Marée with his own reading of a traditional plate, built in foam sandwich and weighing only 150 lbs, ready to sail.

Photo by Jean-Yves Poirier

PETITELISA’s powerful chine (the angle where her bottom and sides meet) is above the load waterline while rowing, making her, in effect, a narrow boat that moves easily with her two 9’ oars. She also has a movable thwart, allowing any rower to find an efficient position.

In 1992, he saw a nautical magazine that carried reproductions of postcards showing a misainier vendéen, a traditional cat-ketch lugger from the Vendée region. These images inspired him to create a modern interpretation of the type, which marked the beginning of a long line of cheap and fast sail-and-oar boats, all tested in various “Raids,” rowing and sailing races that have become popular throughout Europe, including Portugal, Scotland, Sweden, and Finland. In the 2006 Blekinge Archipelago Raid in Sweden (see WB No. 187), she placed first in her class. Such boats remain in accordance with Gilles’s way of life: discreet.

PETITELISA’s rig can be furled very quickly to adjust to the variable and ever-changing wind conditions of her coastal and inshore waters. Here, easy handling is the key for small-boat sailing security. She has also been designed to sail well to weather, for upwind efficiency is another important security feature on board sail-and-oar boats. At her owner’s request, PETITELISA has a centerboard, although Gilles usually favors the use of asymmetrical leeboards or a daggerboard angled in a trapezoidal well, a feature commonly found on racing dinghies.

Photo by Jean-Yves Poirier

Furling is easily done by rotating the carbonfiber mast using a 1⁄4” line fitted at deck-collar level.

The unstayed, carbon-fiber mast is built with two tube sections, the lower one 3 1⁄2″ in diameter and the upper one 2 1⁄2″. Some care is required to fit the mast in its step, because of its overall length of 26′ 3″. The two parts, however, can easily be taken apart for stowage in the cockpit while trailering. A screw in a notch interlocks the two sections of tubing for sail reduction, which is done by rotating the mast, just like a conventional roller-furling jib.

Weighing only about 26 lbs—including the sail—the rig is completed by a long boom. At first, Gilles designed a simple sprit, used only under full sail and stowed on deck if the sail is furled. Because he sails alone most of the time, the owner chose instead a curved laminated boom, with a gooseneck—which is a little bit awkward— fitted on deck behind the mast collar. Designed to reduce sail handling, the system works well but needs very long control lines and numerous cheek blocks.

The first time you climb aboard PETITELISA, you feel immediately secure because of her hull’s high initial stability. Based on a narrow sole with deep-V side panels, her double-chined plywood hull is much more sophisticated than it seems at first glance. The shape is a rather subtle and very efficient compromise, balancing low wetted surface, a long waterline length for rowing, and stability at first degrees of heel under sail. You can move around in the cockpit with the same kind of confidence you experience on board heavier and bigger boats.

Since the helmsman can reach all her lines, there is no need to walk on the foredeck, which is rather narrow due to the very fine entrance of her waterlines. This can lead to some difficulties for mooring or anchoring, although the samson post can be reached by leaning over the cuddy—and maybe a small hatch would improve the maneuver without adding too much weight.

The 17-gallon water ballast tank has been built into the bottom around the centerboard trunk. Its operation is more than simple: after launching PETITELISA, you open the small cockpit sole hatch close to the companionway, unscrew the drain plug, and wait for the tank to fill. A few minutes later, put the plug back in place and screw the deck plate back down. The plug can be removed again when hauling out to save some weight on the trailer. That’s all!

Photo by Jean-Yves Poirier

PETITELISA is ballasted by water, and filling the tank is very easy to do with a simple drain plug fitted under the cockpit sole. When hauling out, the plug is pulled again to let the water drain.

The small cuddy gives the crew a good chance to get out of the weather when necessary, but the designed cabin is too small to accommodate two usable bunks. It’s possible that moving the main bulkhead aft 4″ or so could improve things, but at the expense of cockpit space. Because the rowing thwarts are removable and the cockpit sole is perfectly flat, self-draining, and measuring about 8′ 6″ x 4′ 5″, two people could sleep there in good comfort under a boom tent. All cruising gear—and even a small galley—stows in the forward compartment. Because gear is not stored in compartments under the cockpit sole, the deck surface is kept perfectly watertight while sailing, but inspection ports allow some access to the flotation compartments.

Photo by Jean-Yves Poirier

The cuddy is nice for storage but too short to accommodate a properly sized bunk.

Firm on her chine, PETITELISA is a delight to sail, even in light air. Her high-aspect-ratio sail plan and low wetted surface area have something to do with this pleasant behavior. Closehauled, she points rather high to the wind, but, as usual with a catboat rig, it’s better to keep her off a little bit. Downwind, she is very stable because of the forward position of the rig, which literally pulls the boat as if it were on rails—but mind that boom!

Photo by Jean-Yves Poirier

Under sail, the chine adds stability at the first degrees of heel, and PETITELISA is wide at deck level to provide good ultimate stability.

No sail-and-oars boat is perfectly balanced between both propulsion modes, but PETITELISA seems to have reached a high level of equilibrium between usually contradictory requirements. Not bad for such a simple girl.

Gilles Montaubin designed PETITELISA to be the simplest possible boat but with good performance under sail and easy to row. Her unstayed carbonfiber mast is made of two pieces for light weight and easy stowage, and the only lines she has are her sheet, halyard, and furling line. The unusual boom rotates on a fitting on the cuddy roof, although a variation (shown in the accompanying photographs) has a curved boom rotating on a gooseneck forward of the cuddy, near the foot of the mast.

Plans for the PETITELISA are available from Chantier Mer.

People are always drawn to the warmth and the visual texture of a varnished wood kayak, but the beauty of a plywood kayak can and should be more than skin deep. Not only do the sweeping curves of the Coho 17’s multichined hull and beveled deck offer up an elegance that sets a kayak like the Coho apart from mainstream composite and rotomolded plastic kayaks, but this stitch-and-glue kayak is also lighter and stiffer than fiberglass kayaks and plastic kayaks of similar size. Pygmy’s computer-generated panel shapes and laser-cut templates produce kit pieces that will come together in an exceptionally fair hull that will hold its shape for the life of the boat. [Update: Pygmy closed at the outset of the pandemic. —Ed.]

In Pygmy’s early kits, butt blocks were used to back up the joints required to make the full-length strakes. The blocks have been done away with, and the butt joints are now just glued and ’glassed. They are every bit as strong, a bit lighter, and make for a cleaner interior. The bottom of the Coho has a slight V through the midsection, enough of a crease to give the midsection plenty of stiffness. The triple-chined hull is lined off into four well-proportioned strakes. The deck has a central ridge that sheds water well and beveled side panels that keep the beam of the boat low and out of the way of the paddle.

At just under 40 lbs, the Coho is an easy lift and carry. You won’t find yourself muttering by the time you get it into the water. The cockpit opening was long enough for me (I’m a bit over 6′ tall) to get in seat-first. That can be an advantage over a small cockpit that requires you sit on the afterdeck and slide into the cockpit feet-first. If you bail out of the Coho after a capsize, you can crawl aboard, straddle the deck, and drop your weight into the seat. Most folks will have enough stability then to get their feet in without having to set up a paddle-float outrigger to stabilize the kayak.

Provided by Pygmy Boats

Striking from any angle, the Coho 17 kayak from Pygmy Boats weighs less than 40 lbs. The 17′ 6″ x 23″ boat will carry a paddler and his gear through rough water at good speed.

The self-inflating (Therm-a-Rest) seat pad is fairly comfortable initially, but the muscle tension required to keep the legs locked into the thigh braces can eventually lead to fatigue and numbness. The pad also makes for a slightly mushy connection to the boat. For one of my outings in the Coho, I replaced the pad with a minicell foam seat I’d sculpted for one of my own kayaks. My homemade seat is about 15″ long and about 3″ thick at its forward end. Its deep custom-fit contours are more comfortable in the long haul, and the support it provides under my legs keeps my feet from going numb. I also found that the solid connection of the sculpted seat made the Coho easier to control when edging the hull through turns or in surf. If you have rough-water paddling in your sights, carve your stern into a block of minicell.

Once afloat, I felt quite comfortable in the Coho. It has plenty of initial stability so I could set the paddle down and not have to think about keeping the boat upright. Even when the Coho and I were getting slapped around by waves breaking in the shallows, I was able to fiddle with my VHF radio while I had my paddle tucked under my elbow. The Coho has a strong righting moment when set on edge. Canting my hips, I could get the sheer submerged and still feel stable. Only when the coaming touched the water did I feel the stability taper off.

Underway, the Coho tracks well and the bow yaws very little between strokes. The long waterline and sharp ends that contribute to the Coho’s tracking ability will work against you when you try to turn, but a bit of edging will curve the waterline and lift the ends enough to get the hull to carve through a turn. Canting my hips to edge the Coho up to the limits of its stability allowed me to make respectably tight turns. At 17′ 6″ long, the Coho has an appropriate balance between tracking and maneuverability for performance touring. Pygmy offers a rudder as an option, but I don’t think the Coho needs one.

I did several speed trials in the still water using a GPS as a knotmeter. At a relaxed pace I could easily maintain 4.5 knots, a pretty brisk clip for not breaking a sweat. Taking my effort up a notch to an aerobic workout level, I could hold 5.5 knots. Going flat-out over about 50 yards, I could briefly bump up to 6.5 knots. That’s a good set of numbers for a kayak designed for cruising.

Provided by Pygmy Boats

This Coho enjoys a quiet day, but it will behave well in tough conditions. Should the worst happen, experienced kayakers can Eskimo-roll the boat. Solid stability and a relatively long (33″ ) cockpit allow for relatively easy re-entry if a paddler must take to the water.

On one outing I picked up a pretty good breeze, about 18 knots. Weathercocking is a common problem among sea kayaks. If you are paddling across the wind, the bow is pretty well locked in as it pushes forward into the water, but the stern, trailing in the turbulent water “softened up” by the passage of the hull, tends to get pushed downwind. The result is that the kayak veers into the wind. Rudders and skegs can easily neutralize this tendency by adding more lateral resistance at the stern. In a kayak that has neither, you can edge the boat to turn downwind or do sweep strokes to push the bow in line, but that can be tiring and annoying in moderate breezes, and dangerous in stronger winds if you can’t hold a course in the direction you need to go. Some kayaks are better balanced in the wind than others, and the Coho seemed to be among the former. The best test of weathercocking, oddly enough, is not out in open water where the waves have been kicked up, but in the lee of low-lying land where you’ll find wind without waves. In rough water the ends of the boat get lifted out of the water, and you can use these moments to make a quick sweep and a course correction. In flat water the entire waterline length is immersed and corrections are harder to come by. The Coho did very well in both circumstances, holding a course well with the wind on any quarter.

I moved out of the lee and into rough water, and the Coho was very steady and predictable in wind waves cresting at about 2′. I never had to slap down a brace for an unexpected loss of balance. In paddling around a point where crossing waves zippered over the shoals, throwing water well over my head, I often had so much water pouring over my eyes that I couldn’t see what was coming at me, but the Coho still stayed comfortably planted under me.

Provided by Pygmy Boats

Black elastic shock-cord deck rigging makes for quick and convenient storage of often-used or emergency gear. Note the red-and-gray bilge pump and the bright yellow paddle float tucked within easy reach on the after deck. Watertight hatch covers, each secured by three parallel straps, keep the large stowage compartments dry.

While I was paddling the edge of the shoal, a passing container ship threw its wake into the mix. The first wave to hit, the point’s shallow water pitched up behind me a steep 6–7′ feet. I didn’t get a perfect line down the face, so I surfed ahead at a bit of an angle. The Coho raced ahead of the wave and kept from skidding into a broach. At the end of the ride it was a bit of work to get the Coho turned around to head back out for more waves. It’s a lot of boat to spin around in the break zone. Once I got out for the next set of waves, the Coho accelerated very well so I didn’t have to work hard to catch good rides. In fact, I had so much fun surfing that when I saw a cruise ship coming up the shipping lane I stayed around to wait for its wake.

This latest version of the Coho has a recess in the after deck to bring the coaming down low. The extra clearance made it easier to do layback rolls. The Coho rolls easily but slowly—I think the sharp ends create a bit of drag to rotary motion. I did some wet-exit and re-entry drills. Dropping out of the capsized kayak was a cinch, and so was flipping the kayak upright and getting back aboard. Swinging my leg over the deck released some of the levers that tension the hatch-cover straps. You can easily remedy that by putting each lever in a vise and giving the end a solid whack of a hammer to put a bit of a bend in it.

The Coho is an easy boat to like. It looks good and is well-mannered in a wide range of conditions. The only quibbles I had with the Coho were with elements that the homebuilder can easily take care of when outfitting it. Give it the attention it deserves while you’re building it, and it’ll take good care of you.

The Coho assembles easily: Temporarily stitch together plywood panels with wire ties, then permanently “glue” the panels with fiberglass and epoxy.

 Pygmy Boats has been closed since the outbreak of the pandemic and isn’t filling orders. The review is presented here as archival material drawn from the back issue of the print annual, Small Boats 2007.

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!

Every sailor has his own vision of the perfect daysailer. For many, this ideal boat is based on the Herreshoff 12 1⁄2, Nathanael G. Herreshoff’s iconic daysailer, which debuted in the summer of 1915. For others, it’s the larger Fish class or the still-larger Alerion—two more masterworks from the hand of Herreshoff. These boats have been the subject of imitation and interpretation ever since they hit the water over 100 years ago. The Flatfish, designed in the early 1990s, is Joel White’s version of Herreshoff’s Fish.

In 1992, I was looking for a boat to build for my parents, then in their late 60s. They weren’t going cruising anymore, so I was looking for their perfect daysailer. The boat had to be big enough so that they wouldn’t get physically knocked around, and it had to be trailerable. My folks wanted something they could sail on the Hudson and take to both Maine and the Chesapeake. As with any daysailer, the destination becomes less important while the experience of sailing grows. In other words, she had to look good and perform well.

Picking a boat is always a balance of beauty, performance, cost, and, in this case, opportunity. A conversation with Maynard Bray, WoodenBoat magazine’s technical editor, led to an offer to build the first Flatfish, a design project he was working on with Joel White. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. The boat sounded perfect for my parents’ requirements, and I thought I could build it in a year of half-time work.

Photo by Alison Langley

Flatfish is Joel White’s adaptation of Nathanael G. Herreshoff’s century-old Fish-class sloop. The Fish class is a keelboat; the principal modification in the Flatfish is the addition of a centerboard—and the subtraction of some draft. The boat pictured above and on the opposite page was built by Chip Flanagan of Portland, Maine, who’s at the helm.

When I first spoke with him, Joel had just done the initial drawings. Joel’s objective was to make the Fish trailerable, while retaining all the wonderful qualities of the original. Designed toward the end of Joel’s career, the Flatfish incorporates his experience as a leading builder and designer, and “does no harm” to Herreshoff’s design. The result is a boat with elegant looks. Every curve is right. A few inches over 20′ long, she’s big enough to sail comfortably with six people, but small enough to be easily singlehanded. With a gaff main and a club jib, her simple sloop rig tacks with one move of the tiller and the change of a running backstay. The hull is heavy enough to stand up to a stiff breeze or to carry its way through flat spots and shoot directly into the wind up to a mooring. It’s also slippery enough to accelerate quickly and outpace most boats under 30′, and with the cockpit close to the water there’s a real feeling of speed.

The Flatfish is Joel White’s second direct interpretation of N.G. Herreshoff’s classic hull shape. The first, the Haven 12 1⁄2, has been built by hundreds of professional and amateur builders—my shop included. Shallower and broader than Herreshoff’s originals, both of White’s designs use a keel-centerboard arrangement to maintain performance while making the boats trailerable. There are differences between the Haven and the Flatfish, especially in accommodations, building time, and hull speed. The larger boat comfortably accommodates two more people, and the cuddy cabin allows for stowage and the possibility of a porta-potti. In use, the dockage and launching fees for the Flatfish will be higher. She’s trailerable, but not easily launched at a ramp. She really needs a lift to launch and some mechanical advantage to step the mast. Once rigged, both boats require the same work to get underway.

The building process of the two boats is almost identical and is well documented in Maynard Bray’s book Building the Haven 12 1⁄2. That said, the Flatfish is a lot more boat to build than the Haven. There’s more of everything— building molds, planks, frames, deckbeams. There’s also the cuddy cabin. Comparing the displacement of the hulls minus the ballast, one of White’s own cost-estimating techniques, provides a good indicator of the relative work involved in building the two boats. The Flatfish weighs 1,300 lbs compared to the Haven’s 800 lbs—a factor of 1.625. I found this ratio to be even a little low when applying it to building hours. The time required to build a Flatfish is closer to double that for a Haven, probably because the shorter boat can utilize more one-piece planks and smaller stock. Both the Haven and the Flatfish are designed to be built using the Herreshoff method, which involves one mold for each steamed frame. It’s a lot of work for a single boat, but it makes for a very fair hull and certainly works well for a production boat. It also makes a boat that lasts. There are many hundred-year-old Herreshoffs still sailing. This boat requires 22 molds for the Herreshoff method, while it probably take less than half that number for a conventionally planked carvel hull.

On the water the Haven is evenly matched with its sibling Herreshoff 12 1⁄2. Joel wasn’t able to achieve the same parity with the larger boats. The Flatfish is slightly faster than the Fish. We proved this by match-racing my folks’ Flatfish with an original Fish. Both had new sails and the better helmsman was in the Fish, yet the Flatfish just slightly outpaced the original. (I think the centerboard is the culprit, providing better windward ability.) The profiles of the boats are very similar; there’s a slight difference in the run aft. The real difference is the Flatfish’s broader beam. It’s especially noticeable when the two boats are side by side, on shore or in the water.

Another design goal was to make the boat trailerable for easy transport and storage. My parents’ boat has logged several thousand miles on its trailer. The hull seems no worse for the wear. She also has spent every winter stored in the backyard under a temporary garage. Having her at home allows for convenient maintenance and really makes the boat a part of the family.

Photo by Alison Langley

An original Herreshoff Fish, SHARK, near Noank, Connnecticut. The Fish is narrower and deeper than the Flatfish; the greater beam of the Flatfish compensates for the reduced stability caused by the newer design’s shallower keel.

The boat sails wonderfully well with its gaff rig. She points well, has real power on anything close to a reach, and has low heeling moment. White also drew a marconi rig, but I have no experience with it.

Almost ten years of sailing has exposed only one design flaw: We haven’t found a good way to add an outboard or other auxiliary power, aside from an oar. The transom rake is the main culprit. Electric motors can accommodate the rake, but they lack enough power to punch the boat into a real breeze. Side-mount brackets allow for a gas motor, but the motor swamps when the boat rolls. The stern-mount bracket used on the fiberglass 12 1⁄2 s built by Cape Cod Shipbuilding also tends to dunk the motor in any sort of sea. With all solutions, the motor needs to be removed for sailing and stored in the boat; otherwise, it fouls the mainsheets. Cutting an outboard well into the bottom planking has also been tried, but it’s very intrusive and it slows the boat. The best solution is just to sail off a mooring, plan well, and pay attention to wind and tide.

With the Flatfish design, Joel White followed the engineer’s maxim of not putting one extra piece of wood in the boat, and the designer’s rule of not placing one extra line on the drawing. The design does everything it’s supposed to do: It provides a sweet-lined, capable, transportable boat.

I’d certainly like to live in a house on a rock-lined coast with my boat on a mooring that I can see from my back window. I don’t. This boat’s combination of trailerability, good sailing qualities, and classic elegance (along with rental cottages) makes that world accessible. It’s a wonderful boat to sail off a mooring on the morning’s outgoing tide, take a picnic lunch, and catch the incoming tide as the breeze dies at the end of the day.

Aficionados of the Herrehsoff 12 1⁄2 and the Haven 12 1⁄2 will recognize these boats in the Flatfish’s lines and sailplan (just as the Flatfish is a modification of the original Herreshoff Fish, the smaller Haven is a modification of the 12 1⁄2 ). The Flatfish is trailerable, but most sailors will want to use a Travelift to move the boat onto a trailer.

This article appears here as archival material. Boat plans ere available from The WoodenBoat Store, but are currently out of stock  as of August 2024.

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The Boothbay Harbor One-Design is a particularly handsome boat that has proven itself in the choppy waters off Boothbay and Pemaquid, Maine. It’s an easy boat to sail, while being both maneuverable and fast, and its design is the product of some of the best boat minds of the 1930s.

Shortly after the J-boat RAINBOW successfully defended the AMERICA’s Cup in 1934, her designer, W. Starling Burgess, moved to mid-coast Maine and hired Geerd Hendel as his chief draftsman. Their primary work, funded by Alcoa and loosely overseen by Bath Iron Works, involved designing high-speed military craft made of aluminum. For recreation, both men focused on the emerging fleet of Boothbay Harbor daysailers, with which Hendel was already deeply involved. Starting with lightly built, plumb-ended centerboarders much like those that raced on lakes back in his native Germany, Hendel was in the process of converting four of them to keel boats when Burgess arrived. (As centerboarders, they had proven not to be up to salt water’s more boisterous conditions.) Hendel’s experimentation led to SANDERLING, built by Norman Hodgdon for the summer of 1936. She was the Boothbay Harbor One-Design precursor—and the first sizable boat Norman Hodgdon built.

Photo by Maynard Bray

The Geerd Hendel–designed Boothbay Harbor One-Design is a sporty and seaworthy short-ended daysailer-racer. It was designed in the mid-1930s, when limited overhangs and long waterlines were that region’s rage. Several designs of these basic proportions came out around the same time.

The mid-1930s were the bleak Depression years when small boats rather than big ones were receiving attention—quality attention—from Boothbay region designers, builders, and sailors. Boats with long waterlines and short overhangs began dominating the Boothbay racing fleet in those days, and top-echelon designers took notice. A long waterline means a faster boat; boats of these proportions came not only from Hendel and Burgess, but also from Charles Hodgdon of East Boothbay’s Hodgdon Bros. Yard, and from L. Francis Herreshoff.

Hendel introduced a boat called LOON late in the 1937 season, and was then asked to work with the Boothbay Harbor Yacht Club, and particularly with its selection committee, in refining LOON’s plans to become a one-design class that would be cheap to build and fast to sail, and whose plans would be available to any builder—as these sailors intended to shop for the best price. The parameters echoed the fleet average of 21′ overall, about 19′ on the waterline, and carrying 200 sq ft of sail. After testing and massaging LOON, they agreed on what became known as the Boothbay Harbor One-Design (BHOD). It was an immediate hit, growing to 15 boats by its second season, 20 by the start of World War II, and 37 boats when wooden construction ended in 1966. (The final count came to 53, including the two subsequent batches of fiberglass boats.)

Geerd Hendel’s wooden BHODs were built upside down, then turned over and set atop their outside-ballasted fin keels—an efficient way to build any wooden boat whose design allows it. The BHODs’ flat transoms, as well, were an economy measure. The initial cost of these boats was in the neighborhood of $850.

The original planked construction of the BHODs has not held up especially well, as the boats have rather small frames and deep keels. However, the cost-cutting virtues of the original boats also make the BHOD an ideal candidate for the more robust and lower maintenance cold-molded construction. This technique involves the gluing together of multiple layers of diagonally laid veneer-like planking. It was this realization as well as a lifelong fondness for the BHODs that brought a kind of ad-hoc group together at Brooklin (Maine) Boat Yard, a long-standing leader in cold-molding. Besides designing and building new boats with cold-molded hulls, the yard had rejuvenated two aging BHODs belonging to Ted and Sandra Leonard—one of them nearly 20 years ago. Ted’s BLUE WITCH was detached from her fin and ballast, turned upside down, her hull sanded and faired to good wood, given a two-layer sheathing of 1⁄8″ diagonally laid veneers set in epoxy, faired and painted, then set upright again atop her original fin keel. Despite many seasons of sailing, her hull remains flawless and tight. Not surprisingly, Sandra’s boat, INDIA, received the same treatment a few years later.

Photo by Maynard Bray

The original plank-on-frame construction of the Boothbay Harbor One-Design did not stand the test of time. Two of these boats, BLUE WITCH and INDIA, owned by Ted and Sandra Leonard, received cold-molded overlays. Their hulls are much smoother than the dew-soaked topsides seen here suggest.

Based partly on this track record and partly on the yard’s expertise, Ted Leonard (who raced BHODs as a lad, as did his father) chose to sponsor a new BHOD of cold-molded construction. With input from Steve White (the yard’s owner), Bob Stephens (BBY ’s chief designer), and a little from Ted and me, the details were worked out and depicted on a new construction drawing by Bob. Instead of 1⁄2″ cedar planking, caulked, the new skin will consist of three layers glued together—the inner being 1⁄4″ thick running fore-and-aft over steam-bent frames, followed by two diagonally laid 1⁄8″ veneers running at right angles to each other.

As of this writing, finished drawings have been worked up and approved by the BHOD Association. The building jig has been completed, and over the winter the new hull will take shape. Ted’s goal is to share the information so that anyone can build one of these fine little daysailers using a method that has been proven. Finished boats will have strong and dimensionally stable skins, so you can store these BHODs in your garage or under a tarp with assurance that they’ll keep well and not leak when launched. The hulls will hold paint well because there’s no swelling and shrinking with changes in humidity—no seams to open, shed their paint, and ultimately leak. Fiberglass boats have some of these same advantages, but because that material isn’t self-fairing between supports the way wood is, fully faired and waxed female molds are necessary.

Since this boat weighs under 2,000 lbs, you’ll be able to tow it from place to place over the road behind the family sedan, expanding your sailing venue without damaging your boat. If the boat is equipped with a mast that swings in a tabernacle, stepping and unstepping should be a do-it-yourself operation.

Photo by Maynard Bray

Ted Leonard at the helm of BLUE WITCH. The success of this boat’s cold-molded overlay (it strengthened the hull enormously) has inspired the construction of a new BHOD, to be launched next summer. The new boat will have conventional steambent frames, like the originals, but will have a cold-molded, rather than planked, hull.

It’s a thrill to sail a BHOD, either singlehanded or with a friend or two. You tuck a cushion under your fanny and sprawl on the floorboards, where you’re out of the wind and much of the flying spray, yet you can see all around since your line of sight is under the boom and not obstructed by it or the mainsail. In tacking, the mainsail takes care of itself. Although the jib has to be let go and resheeted when changing tacks, it’s a small sail that blows across to the new lee side and sheets in easily once there—hardly needing the winch except in strong winds. With half her total weight at the bottom of her keel, the BHOD can be driven harder than a centerboarder of equal size. A reef is seldom needed and capsizing almost unheard of. Nevertheless, flotation chambers in the bow and stern will keep the boat from sinking should a catastrophic knockdown and swamping occur.

The resurgent interest in BHODs comes largely from a fleet roster developed by Association secretary Alden Reed—a listing that accounts for all 53 BHODs. Alden’s roots run as deep as his research in tracking down the boats. His grandfather Alden sponsored some of the early boats to get the class on its feet, and his father, Edgar, while a youngster, often crewed for Starling Burgess during the late 1930s.

If you do not plan to race, and are not constrained by the one-design parameters, the design invites such modifications as a reduced keel and separated rudder, curved transom, small cabin or boom tent, and tabernacle mast. The boats are small enough to store in the garage, yet big enough to give one the thrill of sailing fast—a perfect balance between manageability and performance.

There’s a newly chartered Boothbay Harbor One-Design Association, open to anyone interested in the boats. It organizes the racing, and publishes a comprehensive quarterly newsletter that covers restorations as well as recent race results. Ordering details for the new Boothbay Harbor One-Design Plans were being developed at the time of publication.

For a displacement hull, top speed is a function of waterline length. That’s the beauty of a Boothbay Harbor One-Design: The waterline length is nearly equal to the boat’s overall length. The short ends also reduce the boat’s tendency to pitch.

This Boat Profile was published in Small Boats 2007 and appears here as archival material. If you have more info about this boat, plan or design please let us know in the comment section.

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The Christmas Wherry possesses two characteristics that should be critically important to anyone looking for a small boat to use in open waters. It displays classic beauty and, as the boat’s designer, Walt Simmons of Lincolnville, Maine, says, “It will take you out, and bring you back home.”

The wherry can trace its origins perhaps as far back as the 15th century. Superb pulling boats, wherries could be found fishing or carrying passengers on rivers and harbors throughout much of England. These working boats were often equipped with sailing rigs. The fast, all-purpose boats came to the New World during the earliest part of the Colonial era.

The Christmas Wherry can trace its design almost as far back in history. The boat is based on the salmon wherries developed on the shores of Penobscot Bay in the 19th century, a time when the fishery for wild Atlantic salmon flourished in Maine bays and rivers. Some 35 miles long and more than 20 miles wide, the bay lies at the mouth of the Penobscot River and is studded with granite ledges and islands. For decades, into the early years of the 20th century, the Penobscot was among the most productive salmon rivers in North America. As might be expected of boats relied on by fishermen working on the rugged Maine coast, the ability to go to sea in all weather, and to come back laden with salmon in all but the worst of it, was critical.

Corurtesy of Walter Simmons

Walter Simmons rows standing up when he takes out his Christmas Wherry, a shapely lapstrake rowing and sailing skiff.

Today, the salmon and the fishery are gone, but the value of a small boat that can carry a good load in tough conditions hasn’t changed. The difference is that the boats will be used for recreation, and that poses some design issues.

In developing the Christmas Wherry, Simmons was working within some very specific parameters. His customers wanted a shoal-draft boat in the 15′ length range that they could sail as well as row, with a rig that could be stored entirely inside the boat. The boat had to be heavy enough not to be “corky” in the water but light enough for one person to load on and off a trailer without assistance.

“That’s a taller order than you might think,” Simmons says, but the Christmas Wherry fills the bill.

At 15′ in length between perpendiculars, with a molded beam of 5′ and depth amidships of 1’6″, the Christmas Wherry can carry two or three people with ease, “and four in a pinch,” Simmons says. She’s long enough to sail well under her 102-sq-ft lug rig and beamy enough to stand up to a good breeze under a press of sail. A plank keel makes the boat maneuverable enough for the rower to skid sideways if necessary, but her planked-down hull aft means she’ll track well, too.

The Christmas Wherry shares the excellent seakeeping abilities of other boats of the type. The owner of a Simmons–designed 19′ Newfoundland Trap Skiff, a boat very much like the Christmas Wherry, sailed his boat from Massachusetts up the coast to Penobscot Bay, a trip that at times exposed the boat to the full sweep of the Atlantic. With her broad beam (her length-to-beam ratio is almost 3:1) and her flat ’midship sections, the Christmas Wherry isn’t at all tender. Simmons says the boat can support his 230 lbs standing on the rail. Under sail, with her nicely canted stem and full sections forward, the bow stays up even when the wind is blowing hard, and there’s enough flare in the planking to keep things dry.

The Christmas Wherry is planked up from 9-mm okoume plywood using glued-lap construction, with eight planks to a side. It can also be built with cedar planking and traditional boatbuilding techniques, but Simmons likes the way fastenings hold in okoume, which he also used for the wide plank keel and the centerboard. Simmons uses Honduras mahogany for the thwarts and oak for the wherry’s inwales and rubrails. He doesn’t use the traditional oak keel because it’s too difficult nowadays to find wide oak planks that won’t cup.

Courtesy of Walter Simmons

A plank keel allows the wherry to stand upright on the beach.

The boat has six pair of sawn frames rather than the seven pair traditionally found in wherries. Each frame is laminated from two layers of cedar. The joints are “broken,” as they would have been historically in a large vessel. Just as in double-sawn frame construction, which were bolted up of individual members called futtocks, Simmons staggers the frame’s butt joints in adjacent layers as widely as possible for strength. Using multiple pieces, Simmons says, all but eliminates any cross-grain. The Christmas Wherry’s frames are composed of two 5⁄8″-thick layers of cedar epoxied together to make the 11⁄4″ sided frame. That might mean three pieces on the forward side and two on the after side, for example, so that the butts are widely separated and each is fully supported.

Historically, wherries built in the area where Simmons has his shop used natural-crook cedar frames from trees cut along the banks of Duck Trap Stream. With today’s conservation ethic, that practice is no longer possible, but Simmons says that he utilizes modern technology to duplicate what cedar trees used to do all by themselves.

Simmons says that in a wherry built using glued-lap construction, the hull is so strong that frames wouldn’t even be necessary except for the wracking strain imposed by the sailing rig.

Although fitting sawn frames in a lapstrake boat is what Simmons calls “an interesting proposition,” he says they’re preferable to steamed frames, which have a tendency to exert a lot of pressure on the center of wide planks. Fitting the frames square to the planking makes the job easier, although there’s still plenty of beveling to be done.

The Christmas Wherry is not the boat for a novice builder. It has the shapely, extremely tucked-up stern sections characteristic of the salmon wherry and a fair amount of tumblehome. Springing the garboard into place requires a lot of pressure, Simmons says, and constructing a centerboard trunk adds to the complexity of the project.

The centerboard itself is built from 18-mm okoume, and carries 15 lbs of lead at the bottom to make sure the board stays down. For those occasions when the board doesn’t stay either down or up but gets stuck somewhere in between, the centerboard trunk has a removable cap. Plans for the Christmas Wherry show a kick-up rudder, but the latest version built by Simmons has a traditional fixed rudder.

Courtesy of Walter Simmons

The Christmas Wherry moves well under sail, and for a boat like this an appropriately sized and uncomplicated spritsail is one possible traditional rig.

Building and repairing wherries for more than 30 years, Simmons says, “I learned the hard way.” Getting the lofting right goes a long way toward simplifying the construction. To that end, Simmons offers complete loftings as well as plans and detailed building instructions either in printed form or on a CD. He’ll also build a finished boat to order.

Any boat designed for rowing is only as good as the oars used to propel it. Simmons prefers to stand to row the Christmas Wherry and uses a pair of 8’6″ curved-blade oars made to his own pattern. The boat is fitted with bronze horned rowlocks that Simmons designed especially for rowing in the standing position. A 10′ oar is recommended for sculling. The shorter oars can be gotten out of a 28 plank without any laminating. For the Christmas Wherry builder, Simmons offers plans and a full-sized lofting of the oars.

Moving the Christmas Wherry to and from the water should be an easy task, even for the singlehander. Even with her full rig and gear aboard, the boat shouldn’t weigh more than 300 lbs. She can be easily launched and recovered with a small trailer that has been modified to fit a round-bottomed wooden boat by adding a cradle to support the boat’s ’midship section and a substantial roller aft.

The Christmas Wherry may not be everyone’s cup of tea. She’s not a quick and easy building project, and even an order to Simmons’s one-man shop won’t produce a finished boat by return mail.

Still, seeing a Christmas Wherry on the beach or, even better, in the water makes it clear that she fulfills the aesthetic imperative of small-boat design. And she will take you out, and bring you home, in style and safety.

The Christmas Wherry packs a lot of enjoyment into a hull only 15′ long. In one of his rigging plans, designer Walter Simmons presents a standing lug rig, which permits better sheeting angles than the loose-fitted spritsail shown in the photograph opposite and also has the advantage of being easy to reef or douse. Two people can row when the wind fails.