The Cornish Shrimper 19 is a successfully odd little boat. Odd because of its almost-plumb stem, square-shouldered bowsprit, near-vertical hull sides, a flush deck that wondrously scrunches a usable cabin underneath itself, a peculiar pair of deadlights peering like a shark’s eyes from just under the rubrail, a striking profusion of teak brightwork adorning its production fiberglass hull, and a proudly anachronistic gaff rig. But it’s likely these very features are what has made it a success with 1,168 built over a 43-year production run that still hasn’t ended.
British builder Cornish Crabbers says the Shrimper 19 was the best seller in its line of sailboats ranging from 17′ to 30′ for decades, though now the roomier and much costlier Shrimper 21 has ascended to top seller in its lineup. But the manufacturer is still building a handful of the 19s to order every year, says managing director Peter Thomas. It is not an inexpensive boat: current base price is about $40,000 for U.S. customers (not including engine or import duty).
All photographs by the author
The recessed foredeck serves as an anchor well and is self-draining. The Sitka-spruce mast is set in a stainless-steel tabernacle to ease the task of lowering the rig for trailering.
“The viability only comes because of the niche that we created,” Thomas said in an interview. “We have kept up a build quality that exceeds all those around us and not fallen into the trap of building them cheaper. The early boats are still very active and perfectly sound.”
The particular boat profiled here is among those early examples, built in 1985. Its owner for the last six years, Kent Zimmerman of Port Townsend, Washington, keeps it in immaculate condition; there’s no hint that it’s a 37-year-old boat. Zimmerman, a retired U.S. Navy and airline pilot, has owned a number of sailboats, though the progression is rather unusual. He started with a Crealock 37, which he lived on but rarely sailed; proceeded through a 25′ Atkin Eric Jr., a 12′ Beetle Cat, and finally the incumbent Shrimper. Although he enjoyed the Beetle Cat, he wanted a boat that was large enough to sleep on but small enough for comfortable singlehanding. And for reasons that are eternally inexpressible but entirely clear to those of us in the circle of gaff-rig enthusiasts, he just loves gaffers.
“I was just drawn to the Shrimper’s aesthetics,” says Zimmerman. “It’s not a wooden boat, but it really looks at home here in Port Townsend.”
The self-draining cockpit clears water through ports in the footwell and at the corners of the side benches. The low cabin keeps the view forward unimpeded.
Unlike many pocket cruisers, the Shrimper doesn’t strive for self-conscious cuteness; “businesslike” would be a better one-word description. Although its look is unique, it’s not because of a designer’s wayward indulgence: every feature carries an obvious rationale. The upright stem lengthens the waterline and thus enhances the potential hull speed. The squarish bowsprit resonates with the squarish aesthetic established by the stem and vertical hull sides. You understand the advantage of this hullform as you board: a 160-lb person stepping into the cockpit provokes barely a bob, and hints at a very stable ride. There are 700 lbs of ballast, part of it provided by the galvanized steel centerboard. The rudder, a plywood laminate, houses a stainless-steel drop plate to extend its effective area below the keel.
The recessed foredeck provides large, easily accessed anchor and rode storage. The unusual flush-deck cabin is a compromise between living space below and low windage/great visibility above. Whether it’s a workable compromise may depend on your personal dimensions. Cabin headroom is only 43″ in the middle. Seated on one of the quarter-berth settees, my hair is less than 1″ from grazing the overhead—and I’m only 5′ 7″. However, both berths extend through the aft cabin bulkhead and under the cockpit seats for a total 6′ 7″ length. This Shrimper is a Mk I model; the Mk II offers 6″ more headroom.
The forward end of the cabin has accommodations for a compact galley. An optional removable tabletop—the plywood to starboard of the centerboard trunk—sits on top of the trunk for dining.
The advantage of the flush deck becomes evident in the cockpit: a glorious, sweeping, 360-degree view. Even a shrimpy helmsman has no trouble seeing forward. And there’s no difficulty clambering onto the deck to get to the mast and the bow.
Mounting an outboard motor is an everlasting problem with small daysailers and pocket cruisers. The Shrimper addresses it with a well in the cockpit, which easily accommodates one of the single-cylinder 4- to 6-hp outboards from various makers. Keeping the motor’s weight low and inboard helps the boat’s balance, but the Mk I’s transom cutout isn’t tall enough to allow tilt-up. Zimmerman’s 6-hp four-stroke Tohatsu outboard, at 60 lbs, is heavy enough to discourage lifting it out for everyday sailing. The Mk II hasn’t remedied this issue, but the builder does now offer inboard diesel and electric outboards as options.
While the Shrimpers are production boats, they’re built to order and each offers a sprawl of options. The current 19 provides more than 40 choices, including a chartplotter, autopilot, carbon-fiber mast, and custom hull colors and fabrics. It wouldn’t be hard to kick the price beyond $50,000. As with most of the Cornish Crabber line, the gaff rig is not open for negotiation: the builder has an unwavering enthusiasm for it. “At the sizes we are building, the gaff rig is far easier to handle shorthanded than a Bermudan-rigged boat,” Thomas said.
So, let’s go sailing.
The gaff-sloop rig carries 194 sq ft of sail.
As is typical for a gaffer, the mainsail is a bit of a snarl to hoist and set properly, but once it’s sorted, the Shrimper seems to gravitate to its comfort zone and sail with confidence. And the zone is wide and forgiving. The tiller is all but neutral; fingertips are all it wants or needs. We have an 8- to 10-knot breeze, and on a close reach we’re logging 4.8 to 5 knots. The Shrimper’s theoretical hull speed should be 5.6 knots (I suspect the prop drag is robbing us of a few tenths). The Shrimper clearly has no inclination to go racing, but in compensation it’s remarkably well-behaved. In gusts, the Shrimper heels to about 15 degrees and there reassuringly stiffens up. After a while the gusts seem to be intensifying, so we tuck in a first reef (the Shrimper has two). The boat speed drops only 0.2 knot, and the balance doesn’t change.
I have a gaff-rigger very close to this same size (a Devlin Winter Wren), which seems a little faster and slightly more tender than the Shrimper—exactly what I’d expect, since it’s less beamy, some 300 lbs lighter, and its transom-mounted motor tilts to get the prop out of the water. Both boats tack through about 110 degrees. I’m pretty sure I could coax the Shrimper into tighter upwind sailing with more time and practice. It offers a stout hook for a boom-vang tackle on its galvanized tabernacle—a fairly unusual feature on a boat this size. A gaffer typically sails upwind reluctantly because the head of the mainsail twists away from its alignment with the boom, spilling air and reducing lift in its upper area. If a vang is available to tug the boom downward, the tightened leech will force the gaff into improved alignment. The Shrimper also has a mainsheet traveler mounted just forward of the transom and movable jibsheet fairleads, rounding out a dazzling array of fun tools to tweak sail shape.
The Shrimper turns into a tack rather lazily, losing more momentum than it should as it crosses the wind. Zimmerman says that in light wind he’ll leave the jib backwinded most of the way around to help accelerate the bow into the new tack.
As an experiment, we roll up the jib and try sailing on reefed main alone. The Shrimper still tacks, though it’s now very slow on any point of sail—it clearly craves its jib. The cupcake-sized Harken furler spools the canvas around a flexible cable in the jib’s luff rather than around a rigid tube, so partial furling to reef the jib doesn’t really work. It is possible to leave a hankie-sized scrap of jib flying, which can help with a small boat’s helm balance but doesn’t provide useful thrust. There’s a shortage of affordable small furlers with reefing capability—something small-boat sailors would really appreciate.
The Shrimper 19 is well balanced under sail with or without reefs and needs only a light touch on the tiller.
There’s a shortage, too, of production pocket cruisers like the Shrimper. Most manufacturers were dropping out of this market segment around the time that Cornish Crabber was slipping in. The reasons are obvious. Most buyers with $40,000 to $50,000 to spend would rather have a good used 30′ boat than a new 19′ boat. And for the manufacturer, big boats are more temptingly profitable than small ones.
By contrast, there’s a galaxy of plans for the amateur builder drawn by very capable designers. In a quick survey of well-known names, I counted 30 available plans for 18′ to 22′ trailerable sailboats with cabin accommodations. And while it’s deeply satisfying to build such a boat, not everyone has the time, space, tools, or perseverance to take it on. There’s also something deeply satisfying about sailing an excellent production boat like the Shrimper, where professionals have spent years—even decades—refining it.
While its aesthetics might not appeal to everyone’s taste, the Shrimper 19 seems to cover all the bases functionally. It’s so easy to sail casually and so well-mannered that a beginner could enjoy it and quickly build confidence. At the same time, it has enough sail-management tools that an expert could stay happily busy and sail like a demon. All this and a cabin, too? Hard to ask for more.
Lawrence W. Cheek is a journalist and serial boatbuilder (two kayaks and four sailboats to date) who writes frequently for WoodenBoat.
When my wife wrote “Love it!” on the study plans for Ken Bassett’s 18′ Firefly, a performance rowing boat, it seemed I had the green light to build it. My boats had already filled the garage, barn, crawl space, and shed, and my wife, being more reasonable than passionate about my boatbuilding, drew the line at eight boats. When she began to get interested in rowing and having a rowing boat for herself, it became my opportunity to build another boat.
The Firefly, 18′ overall, has a waterline length of around 16′ for performance rowing. Its beam of 34″ means it can easily balance itself without the need for oars to be in the water. The low 7″ of freeboard would present a small profile to the wind, and the long chines and skeg would give it good directional stability. The Firefly has all the attributes for a fast boat appropriate for novices focusing on rowing for exercise or sport. The panel-on-frame construction lends itself to backyard boatbuilding, and the low count of individual parts signals a reasonably quick construction.
I ordered the plans from The WoodenBoat Store. They consist of five sheets of drawings: profile and inboard arrangement; lines, offsets and construction, and rigger details; sliding-seat mechanism, full-sized mold patterns, stem and keel details; and transom pattern, construction sequence, transom dolly, and keel details.
Photographs by the author
The plans include drawings for a sliding seat and outriggers, but a drop-in rowing unit, like the Piantedosi Row Wing here, is a ready-made option. The bare hull, weighing about 85 lbs, can be cartopped, but with a small, lightweight aluminum trailer the heavy lifting can be avoided.
I got to work setting up a strongback and cutting out the molds. The full-sized mold patterns eliminate the need for any lofting. The hull frame is very simple in construction: a laminated stem, a keel, two chines, two laminated frames, a transom, and a knee. The frame is covered by bottom and side panels cut from 6mm marine plywood. A skeg, breasthook, knees, and gunwale complete the hull. I chose Aquatek’s meranti plywood for the panels, spruce for the frame, and local black walnut for the transom, knees, breasthook, and gunwales.
The chine makes a sweeping curve that starts at the stem, drops just below the waterline amidships, and ends at the transom. As the beauty of the boat lies in that line and the sheer, I wanted those chines to be very crisp and fair. The joint of the sheer panel and the bottom panel would have to join in a perfectly smooth, unwavering sweep for about 17′. I knew from experience as the chines get beveled, the pencil-drawn centerline that defines the sweep would get planed away and be tedious to reestablish. I needed a better way.
The 34″ beam provides good stability for getting aboard from either a beach or a dock.
To make a lasting centerline in the chine, I routed a 1/4″ groove about 3/8″ deep down the center of the outer face of each log. I then mounted the chine logs into the molds and planed them to create the bevels for the bottom and side panels. There was enough of each groove left to glue a 1/4″ × 1/2″ wood spline into it. The spline perfectly defined an accurate curve of the chine. Then, rather than butt the planking panels to each other, I butted them to the spline. With the spline carefully planed flush with the plywood, voilà, a perfect chine!
I sheathed the hull in 6-oz fiberglass cloth set in epoxy. After painting, the bare hull came in around 85 lbs. Although I didn’t keep track of time, I would estimate it took 150 hours of off-and-on evenings and weekends work to complete.
The plans detail a sliding-seat setup made of cherry wood and riggers constructed from 3/8″ stainless-steel tubing. Rather than fabricate all that, I chose to purchase a Piantedosi drop-in rowing frame. I thought the off-the-shelf solution would probably be cheaper than finding a metal shop to fabricate and weld the tubing, and I’d eliminate the time making the sliding-seat system.
At the catch, with the rower’s weight at the aft end of the slide, the transom just kisses the water.
At the finish, the bow supports the rower’s weight at the forward end of the slide without the hull going out of trim.
I mounted the rowing frame so that it could be easily detached from the two ribs. Separated, it would fit in the pickup bed and I could hoist the boat, right-side up, onto the boat rack above. With ratcheting tie-down straps and some auxiliary foam wedged around the shallow V-bottom, the boat rode secure. Although the plans detail a transom dolly for moving the boat around inverted, I simply shouldered the hull to the water and then attached the rowing frame to it. Eventually this car-topping approach got awkward, and I purchased a lightweight aluminum trailer to make a simple package for towing and hand launching off the beach.
Getting into the boat off a beach is simply a matter of floating the boat, reaching for the opposite gunwale, and hopping in. The boat keeps its balance while you grasp the oars and get adjusted. No need to rush. Getting off a dock is another matter. The rigger not only positions the boat 14″ away from the dock, but it can also wedge itself into the dock structure in a variety of ways and be quite a nuisance. Attention is necessary to ensure that the boat is not trapped by the rigger. One can step onto the bottom panel and once aboard, the boat balances itself and is as stable as a canoe.
On the water two pulls at the oars brings the Firefly up to speed. That is once you clear the dock or the beach shallows. The 298cm recreational sculls recommended in the plans (racing oars are measured in centimeters, 298cm is 9′ 9-1/4″) and 62″ outrigger spread are amazingly awkward in tight situations. Since the boat has good stability without relying on the oars, I sometimes use a kayak paddle as auxiliary propulsion to help maneuver in and out of tight spots to avoid using the oars.
The boat cruises easily at 4-plus mph, demanding no more effort than a brisk walk, and is surprisingly seaworthy. Once caught out in 1′ to 3′ waves by a sudden change in the weather, the boat found its way through the chop without shipping water. It stays where you point it; it takes a bit of coaxing on the appropriate oar to change direction. Underway, the boat feels fast and nimble, comfortable and stable.
I had no experience in performance rowing and at the time knew no one who had, so I set up the rowing frame according to Piantedosi’s directions. The first few rows were frustratingly awkward and brief, but there were one or two brief moments when it all came together and the boat flew along the water with such grace and ease that it seemed effortless to propel it. I felt a spiritual lift and delight and I had to have more of that. Those brief moments were enough to keep me engaged as I made guesses as to what were issues with the boat, rowing frame, or me. Over time, by trial and error and with incremental adjustments, the Firefly became comfortable for me to row. During the winter, workouts on the gym rowing machine got me in better physical condition. Some coaching tips from an experienced rower got me to the point where I could put miles on the boat.
The drop-in unit has a span of 62 1/2″, just 1/2″ greater than the outriggers drawn in the plans. The sculls used with the Firefly are between 9′ 6″ and 9′ 9″ in length.
The Firefly started out as a boat for my wife, but in the prolonged tune-up phase, I monopolized the boat to make the setup work for my tall stature. I thought I could dial it in for her smaller size, but after seeing me get used to rowing the boat, she was reluctant to take on the learning curve I went through. Casual rowing with a fixed seat and drifting were more to her liking. She’s now talking about a St. Lawrence Skiff, a boat more like what she had in mind from the beginning. No problem, it’s another opportunity for me to build a boat!
Coming from a boating background where each of my boats had multiple uses, it took time to recognize that the Firefly is a thoroughbred: it does only one thing and does it exceptionally well. It is meant to fly across the water in light wave conditions with grace and ease. It has the speed to put the miles behind without exhaustive effort, and when it’s time to rest one can drop the oars, unpack a snack, and comfortably drift while watching the scenery. Back at the beach or ramp the boat’s good looks draw comments from the passersby. The boat’s simple construction will get you on the water quickly and introduce you to lively, nimble performance. I’d call that joy.
Ed Neal of Cleveland, Ohio, started his interest in woodworking as an 11-year-old Boy Scout, whittling neckerchief slides. Twenty-something years ago he came back from a wilderness canoeing trip in Canada wishing to add an outrigger to the canoe for additional safety. He went to the downtown Cleveland Public Library looking for a book that might be helpful. There he fell down the boatbuilding hole and has yet to surface. He is now the executive director of the Cleveland Amateur Boatbuilding and Boating Society.
Firefly Particulars
[table]
LOA/ 18′
Beam/ 2′ 10″
Draft/ 4″
Weight/ 90 lbs
[/table]
Plans for the Firefly are available from The WoodenBoat Store in print and digital format for $60.
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 a Thursday in mid-June when Eric Vance and I brought our Chesapeake Light Craft Autumn Leaves solo cruisers to Cambridge, Maryland, at the mouth of the Choptank River. Our goal was simple: sail from the mouth of one of the bay’s many tributaries up to the farm town at the head of navigation. The weather here in the Chesapeake Bay area can be expected to take a turn to a calm, even sultry mood, and we expected to have leisurely sailing.
Sailing to the towns well upstream on the Bay’s tributaries was once routine. Travel up any of the many rivers that empty into the Chesapeake as far as a cargo schooner can go, and you’ll find a town. And in each of these towns, there are stories of the days when the schooners would sail in frequently, bringing goods from Baltimore and picking up wood, grains, tobacco, and other farm products to be hauled back over these myriad watery roads to the city. But what would it be like to do a motorless cruise up one of these rivers today? Eric and I wanted to find out.
Roger Siebert
.
Our boats seemed suitable—shoal draft, nimble under sail, and easy enough to row, while having comfortable accommodations for overnighting. Eric’s boat, INDIGO, had no motor, so he was fully committed to oar and sail. Mine, TERRAPIN, has an electric trolling motor on a bracket, but I was determined not to use it.
At the Choptank’s mouth: Cambridge, seat of Dorchester County and historically one of the principal ports and boatbuilding centers on the Chesapeake. Upriver, at the head of navigation: Denton, seat of Caroline County and through the 19th century a major export point for lumber and farm produce. With 35 winding miles of river between the two ports, it promised to be an interesting challenge for a four-day weekend.
At the ramp on Cambridge’s Eaton Point, where we were preparing the boats to launch, the wind was brisk and out of the south—a wind advisory had already been broadcast. While TERRAPIN was still on her trailer, I tied the second reef in her 150-sq-ft balanced lugsail. Eric was ahead of me, having already put the second reef in his 114-sq-ft jib-headed main.
All photographs by Eric Vance
TERRAPIN showed all the speed she can muster, double-reefed on her way up the Choptank. A small-craft advisory was posted and would remain in effect for days to come.
Once we got under way, we scudded to the northeast on a reach and passed under the 1-1/2-mile expanse of the Route 50 bridge, a gently arching ribbon of concrete girders resting on countless cylindrical piers, and 50 yards farther on, through the gap in the old Harrington Bridge, now a pair of fishing piers. A chop was just developing mid-river. The starboard bow caught the bigger waves, tossing spray into the air, and once or twice, the cool water found my face. It was exhilarating. Less than 2 miles beyond the bridge, we veered north and with the wind now at our backs, everything quieted down. The boats’ motion eased. The weight in the helm, the solid chunk and thump of the wooden hull slashing across the chop, and the strain in the rigging all melted away as we eased the sheets to follow the river through its left-hand sweep. We passed large homes with expansive, immaculate lawns spread along the riverbanks. Signs of the city and highway rumble dropped away.
A few miles on, beyond the outskirts of Cambridge, the estates disappeared and the houses looked like they had been here for quite some years. The river was bounded almost entirely by marsh and woodland; breaks in the trees revealed farm fields beyond the banks. This time of year, the winter wheat is tall and ready for harvest; the corn is just getting a foothold across this low-lying, verdant landscape. In this low country, the subtle irregularities in the horizontal landscape give way to an immense arching, hazy blue sky.
The tide was with us. Our narrow yawls held between 5 and 6 knots hour after hour, churning up fine, frothy bow waves and leaving easy, flat wakes behind their double-ended hulls. As we carved our way up the river, it narrowed, and the nascent chop of the open stretches was left behind. Now, just smooth, easy speed as we slid past the bright green of the saltmarsh cordgrass backed by the mottled and darker greens of the scalloped treeline. The Chesapeake water is usually the color of lightly creamed coffee, but as the day progressed, the sunlight played games over the river—a soft tan coloring the corrugated surface one moment, reflecting the blinding, unfocused glare of an old mirror the next.
A thin cloudbank slid in from the southwest, turning the sun into an orange smudge, softening the riverscape’s textures and muting its tones.
On Thursday evening, I settled in after anchoring in Hunting Creek. We found quiet anchorages in creeks like this one all the way up the Choptank River.
We were making good speed but were in no hurry. When we reached Choptank Landing, we swung east into the mouth of Hunting Creek and nestled into a small cove next to the low bridge that leads into the village of Choptank. The north-facing cove shielded us from the bluster out on the river, and we were well situated for a relaxing evening. A turtle, likely a terrapin, poked its thumb-sized head above the water for a moment. Schools of finger-sized fish churned the surface—first off the bow, then to port, and again by Eric’s boat. To the east, a mourning dove endlessly cooed its low, sad five-note tune. On the opposite bank, a Carolina wren sang its lively soprano trill.
At the anchorage in Hunting Creek, I watched the sun drop. It was just before the summer solstice, and the days were long.
The ever-changing light over the Chesapeake is one of the things that attracts me to the bay. Here, at about 8 p.m., a golden hue is cast over the landscape.
At day’s end we retreated to our snug cabins. We weren’t troubled by biting insects and could leave hatches open through the hot nights.
Friday morning, we rowed over to Choptank’s marina, a modest 70-slip harbor protected by wooden bulkheads. There once was a wharf here, one of many built along the length of the river. The banks of the Choptank are by-and-large low and muddy, often banded by marsh that could not be traversed by horse or cart, so where there was a stretch of solid bank next to deep water, as there is at Choptank, schooners of the 18th and 19th centuries could deliver and load goods.
We tied up and took the opportunity to stretch our legs. A few kids were swimming at the tiny crescent beach next to the marina, but otherwise it was quiet. It was approaching mid-morning and the wind was building out of the west. TERRAPIN, like INDIGO, is well-ballasted and displaces about a ton, but when I stand to row, I can put all my weight into the stroke and get the boat moving. With some effort, we rowed free of the marina and got our boats into deeper water, clear of obstructions. With mizzens set taut to hold our small yawls head-to-wind, we raised sail and were soon able to bear off, under sail once again. Below a blue sky becoming washed by a developing summer haze, the wind was nonetheless brisk, offering relief to temperatures already in the high 80s. We wore light, long-sleeved shirts and wide-brimmed hats. Eric pulled an orange and black bandanna up over his nose. The glare of the sunlight glancing off the river surface was blinding. But the sailing? In this wide, open stretch of the Choptank, the drive was solid and steady; our boats dug in and took off with vigor.
As we approached Frazier Point, the tide was beginning to ebb and we were forced to cover a short leg straight into the wind–a wind that had now become unsure about its speed and direction. Our two Autumn Leaves are rigged differently but sail almost exactly the same. TERRAPIN, with her big standing lug main, shows some advantage downwind.
INDIGO’s jib-headed yawl rig gives her an edge into the wind. But when we attacked the 100-degree bend around Frazier Point, working to clear the point and fall off onto an easy reach, Eric edged well ahead of me, putting more than a quarter mile between us. (That evening, I learned that Eric, a whitewater canoeist well versed in reading currents, had spotted a broad, gentle eddy circling behind Frazier Point, slipped into it, and let it pull his boat halfway around the bend.)
As we headed north, the cordgrass gradually gave way to marshlands with a mix of reeds that thrive in the brackish upstream environment of estuaries. Up ahead, two watermen in an outboard skiff were working a line of crab pots. Their voices and the putter of the motor broke the stillness of the day. We had seen very few boats on the river, which was not my experience in other parts of the Chesapeake. As we followed the river around another bend, the wind jibed the main to port, but left the mizzen out to starboard. I was sailing wing on wing. The Chesapeake schooner captains sometimes called this “reading both pages.”
It was early afternoon and we had reached the bend around Hog Island, a low marshy headland on the inside of a long, quarter-mile curve in the river. On the outside of the bend, the river has carved itself into a high bluff topped with a line of trees. The tide was now driving against us with authority: our tacking angles felt good, but we were barely advancing against the building current. A red buoy marking the starboard turn in the channel teased us–it refused to get closer despite our best efforts to advance on it. I hailed Eric on the VHF and suggested nosing into the steep left bank to escape the wind and take a lunch break. He was quick to agree. Once his hook was set, I dropped sail and rowed over to tie up alongside. As we lunched, a bald eagle glided by. The heat built to 90, then 94. Cumulus clouds formed overhead but offered scant shade. We sweated it out, waiting for the current to abate.
I rowed TERRAPIN around a shoal on the way to the town of Choptank. Contrary to the forecast, the air was calm early in the day.
At 3:30, we decided to get going. Eric commented, “At least it’s not so hot.” I checked my thermometer. “No, still 94. You’re just getting used to it.” The wind was building back to the unvarying forecast: northwest, 15 knots with gusts over 20. We still had the double reefs we’d tied in at the ramp, and we’d leave them in.
Once we cleared the bend around Hog Island, the banks opened up and a tailwind, channeled by the local geography, found its way down to the water. TERRAPIN and INDIGO took off. I was initially ahead, and looked back to see INDIGO throwing up a thick and frothy bow wave, a big wide mustache of water breaking across the river. She heeled to the breeze, her three sails taut and trimmed to perfection.
The breeze freshened further. We were sailing our little cruisers like racing dinghies, sheet in one hand, tiller in the other, working constantly to get all we could from our boats and trading the lead frequently. Where the river turned into the wind, we tacked carefully, playing the puffs for boat speed. Where a wall of trees all but shut down the breeze, the treetops continued to bow, rustle, and swish to the wind, but down on the water it was touch and go for us to maintain momentum.
Another bend and the Dover bridge came into sight at the far end of a widening expanse of the Choptank. It’s a new steel and concrete girder bridge that rises 50′ over the river. Just a few yards upriver, the old steel-truss bridge that it has replaced remains, freshly painted a bright blue, its swing span left open. We slid under the new bridge and then between the bulkheads of the old one.
After clearing the Dover Road bridges, Eric heaved-to in INDIGO to catch photos of TERRAPIN running downwind past the two spans. Overhead, the leading edge of a fast-moving storm cell approached from the southwest.
Eric was a few hundred yards ahead of me when I felt a few drops of rain on my back. Seconds later, Eric was on the radio. “Weather alert. Thunderstorm warning and risk of 35-knot winds.” This, on a day with no mention of rain in the forecast. I checked the chart. There was a 100-yard-wide cove, the entrance to Mitchell Run, just ahead on the river’s left bank. A shallow bar guards the entrance, but it was the only shelter available. I hailed Eric on the radio and told him where to look for it. “I think I see it,” he called back.
INDIGO hit the bar first, slid to a stop, but then shifted forward and worked herself free—Eric would reach shelter in time. I tried closing with the shoreline farther downstream, hoping the bar would be deeper there, but it was not.
TERRAPIN’s bilgeboards kicked up when they contacted the bottom and she stalled out. I dropped the sails, raised the boards fully into their cases, and shipped the oars. Over my shoulder, I could see a tall, thick gray mass of cloud flashing with lightning approaching from the southwest. I pulled hard on the oars. At first, there was little response, but then TERRAPIN began to edge forward. A few more strokes and I was free.
With the wind behind me, it took little time to row into the cove and get the anchor down. The water was shallow and surprisingly clear; I could see the anchor hit the bottom. We were secure close behind a line of trees and as ready as possible for the onslaught.
The thundercloud approached, boomed, cracked, and flashed. Sharp bolts of lightning broke the increasing gloom as the heavy cloud eclipsed the sun. But the storm’s track took it just south of our little haven. I breathed a sigh of relief. Not long after, to the east, the thundercloud, as white as whipped cream, was brightly illuminated by the sun descending to the west.
By 6:30 p.m. the wind had all but died. Even so, forecasts for gusty northwesterlies would persist through the night and the next day. Should the wind return, we could become pinned in Mitchell Run. Eric and I rowed back into the Choptank and found the breeze slackening and the upstream current building. We saw our chance. Steady work at the oars can push TERRAPIN at 1-1/2 knots, but with the current the GPS showed she was moving along at a steady 3 knots. It didn’t take long to cover the mile to the point where Kings Creek empties into the Choptank from a wide marsh. Next to the marsh lies Kingston Landing, another spot of solid ground, once an access to trade but now a single boat ramp. As we rowed past the marsh, dozens of swallows rose and darted across the darkening sky that was first a deep blue, then a muted purple, before all settled down for the evening. Far to the east, the storm clouds had collected in a long band. Lightning flashed erratically as the front swept off to the east, the mountain range of clouds showing its peaks behind the distant treeline.
Anchored about 50 yards apart, we settled into our evening routines. Eric brought real food, fresh goods that require actual cooking, while I took the minimalist approach–boiled water poured into a freeze-dried dinner bag or just cheese, crackers, nuts, fruit, and cookies. After eating, it was time to settle down to the forecast and charts for the next day’s progress, and then opening a book for an hour or two. The Autumn Leaves design includes an especially comfortable reading chair that folds away under the aft end of the berth flat. I settled in to read a few more chapters of Chesapeake Bay Schooners by Quentin Snediker and Ann Jensen, the best account I’ve found about the heyday of commercial sail on the Bay.
The vistas rarely disappointed up the full length of the Choptank. Here, anchored at the mouth of Kings Creek, we had a fine view across a wider stretch of the river.
Saturday morning, I checked the forecast on my cell phone. The small-craft advisory persisted, but I was hard pressed to believe it—the temperature had dropped to 67 degrees and the air was dead calm—but I was not going to shake out the reefs. I stood up in the companionway and saw INDIGO riding to her anchor, reflected in the glassy calm of the morning. Eric was busy readying for our next leg. As we got under way, the forecast began to show itself. Heavy gusts plowed in from the northwest. I looked at the chart. In these conditions, exiting the 90-degree bend at Williston might prove difficult.
By mid-afternoon, it was gusting into the upper 20s, whipping down and across the river at random angles. But the shifts had not brought the wind head-on and we made good time until we encountered the bend at Williston. Eric had been working his way up the river just ahead of me, but as the village came in sight, INDIGO did an odd shuffle into the mouth of Mill Creek, something clearly amiss. Frequent tacks in the erratic air had tangled Eric’s jibsheets on the bow cleat, and he needed to pause to sort them out.
I pressed on, hoping to find a sheltered spot to drop anchor until Eric was ready to move on. But as soon as I followed the river’s turn to the northwest, I felt the full force of the wind the small craft advisory had warned about. I was knocked back on every tack, unable to gain ground before I was across the river and forced to come about once again. Frustrated, I doused sail and dropped the anchor.
The fetch here was short, but the whitecaps were seething and the tide had begun to ebb. Progress was no longer possible. The broad palm of the claw anchor was reluctant to grab the soft, muddy bottom. I fed out more rode. TERRAPIN continued to drag backward 20′, 30′, then took hold. The bow bucked and pounded on the chop and the mizzen, left standing to keep the boat’s head straight, rattled loudly on and off as TERRAPIN swung and fought her anchor but I had a moment to catch my breath.
A hundred yards behind me, Eric had put his anchor down and decided to wait for the tide to ease. His boat came to rest just off a vacant private dock, so he eased her back and tied up alongside.
I had the anchor down after failing to advance against tide and wind at Williston, but TERRAPIN dragged her hook through the mud until she was just off the fallen tree at the right side. The Choptank narrows significantly in this bend, amplifying the effects of the 4′ tidal range.
We sat tight for several hours, watching and waiting for wind and tide to ease. The current began to slacken as the tide approached the low mark, and we were itching to get on our way. The gusting had moderated slightly as well and five turkey vultures that had been sheltering in the trees next to me took flight.
The whitecaps were almost gone altogether, and there was a well-protected anchorage at Watts Creek, about 2 miles upstream. If we could reach it, we would enjoy a peaceful night. But my situation was difficult: I was anchored close to the northeast shoreline and a treeline that periodically blanketed the wind. Halfway across this narrow stretch of the Choptank, there was no protection at all from the still frequent blasts of wind. And spreading out from the far shore lay a mudbank barely covered by the receding tide.
I hauled up the anchor, raised sail, and turned TERRAPIN’s nose across the river. First, there was a gentle nudge from the light air behind the trees. She moved forward two, three boat lengths. Then the next gust hit. She heeled hard to port and began to accelerate. But before there was way on enough to tack back, her port bilgeboard grabbed the mud on the west side of the river. She heeled hard, farther over than I’d ever experienced, then came to a dead stop, still at a sharp angle despite the boat’s flat bottom.
I frantically let the sheet go and freed the halyard from its cleat. The sail swung off to port, but in this wind, friction tied up everything and I was forced to go forward to pull the yard down to the boom, which is supported by lazyjacks. The boat leveled out some, but not until I pulled up the leeward bilge board did she straighten, her belly now flat on the muck.
I looked back down the river to see how Eric was doing. He appeared to be tied up to a bulkhead. Would I be stuck here, glued to the bottom, until the tide freed me?
I shipped my oars and, standing in the cockpit, started pulling astern. The blades locked in the mud and bent alarmingly. I eased off; I didn’t need broken oars, too. Getting back to the rowing with more care, there was some perceptible movement. Then a little more. The wind was still a solid 20 knots, the trees still hissing and swishing, leaves turned bottom-side up, and that pressure was now helping slide the boat along the bottom as I forced it away from the bank. Five minutes of work and she eased free. I raised the main. I was determined to round that bend, but two tacks later, I realized that anything gained through the water had been lost to the still-ebbing tide. Defeated, I sailed TERRAPIN back down around the bend and anchored in the partial lee of a mixed stand of thin, vine-woven trees arrayed along the northwest bank.
Eric had pushed off his dock at the same time I had raised my anchor. INDIGO, rigged as a jib-headed yawl, was promptly spun around by the unpredictable gusts. His attempts to tack proved no better than mine. As his boat was turned, he released the mizzen sheet to regain control, but it didn’t work. INDIGO took another turn, this time twisting the freed mizzen fully forward, where it jammed against the main, locking the sails together. INDIGO was out of control and driven headlong into the aging wooden bulkhead. A few neighbors wandered down the lawn behind it to say hello, unaware that this hot, breezy day was sorely testing our two little boats and their skippers, too.
As the sun dropped so did the wind. Eric was eager to move on to escape the horseshoe turn at Williston. He started rowing into the setting sun. I squinted to watch him disappear into the orange glare reflected off the river. Five minutes later he hailed me on the VHF. “Come on, it’s great!” That was all the encouragement I needed.
After an utterly still night, Sunday dawned cool and calm on Watts Creek, a welcome salve for Saturday’s blisters. This was the best-protected anchorage along the river, but at low tide our boats, even with their 8″ draft, touched the bottom on the way out.
After a second stretch at the oars through the darkening evening, we anchored in Watts Creek, satisfied that we had escaped from the bend at Williston. We rafted our boats together as the day’s last light slipped away. It was a remarkably quiet evening and felt all the more calm in contrast to the day’s relentless wind. We toasted our little success with a shot of rum.
We stirred Sunday morning before the sun was over the trees. The sky was brilliantly clear, the humidity thankfully down and, at that moment, the air light. We had anchored just 2 miles downriver from the landing in Denton and Eric was determined to row the last stretch. He got INDIGO under way first and soon disappeared around the headland at the mouth of Watts Creek.
I savored the adventure, and coffee, Sunday morning in Watts Creek. Eric paddled my inflatable packraft to capture the image.
A few minutes later, I rowed out from the creek to deep water and found just enough breeze to get TERRAPIN moving. Looking upstream, I saw Eric standing between his jib and jigger, swinging the oars steadily. His progress was good and before long he disappeared, first half-obscured by the marsh grass, and then lost around a bend.
The Choptank quickly narrowed from one-third mile at the creek to 150 yards just a half mile to the north. There was a wide stretch of marshland on both sides; thick stands of jade green arrow arum along water’s edge, its broad spiked leaves pointing to the sky, a mottled mix of marsh grass behind it. Beating to windward in this narrow passage to Denton required short tacks all the way. I didn’t dare test the depth close to the exposed mud banks. I needed to maintain boat speed to guarantee the tacks. Twice, I stood to hold the boom out to windward to bring TERRAPIN’s head across. After 1-1/2 miles of this zigzag route up the river, I reached the concrete-and-steel girder bridge at Denton. I sailed to within 10 yards of the span, where the bridge and surrounding buildings killed the wind. I took to the oars to pass under the span and pulled into the wharf. Eric was standing by to grab a line.
I arrived in Denton on Sunday morning. The mural on the bridge piling is an enlargement of a photograph of Denton’s wharves in 1904, the waning days of river commerce under sail. TERRAPIN had already passed under the bridge, and Eric had rowed her against the current to edge her over to the bulkhead. TERRAPIN’s electric motor remained in its stowed position the length of the cruise, and the double reef in the mainsail was never shaken out.
As we secured our boats Mike Reese, a longtime Denton resident and retired boatbuilder, walked down to say hello and have a look at our boats. He said the Choptank has been gradually silting for hundreds of years, ever since the forests were turned to farmland, and the river, which was once deep enough for cargo-laden schooners, is now so shallow that access to the town docks is difficult. Powerboaters still come upriver because the fishing is good. I asked, “Do boats reach Denton by sail anymore?” He said we were the odd exceptions.
David Dawson is a retired newspaperman who has been hooked on boats since he was a boy, when his dad built a plywood pram. He does most of his cruising on the Chesapeake Bay, but has taken a variety of trailerable boats elsewhere to explore waters from New England to Florida. Nearer to home in Pennsylvania, he enjoys kayaking the local rivers, lakes, and bays.
The Choptank River and the Underground Railroad
In the early 19th century, the Choptank River was a busy place. Schooners tied up at Denton’s wharf to take on lumber, wool, tobacco, grains, tanbark, and other cargo to be shipped to Baltimore. A constant stream of sailing vessels ran up and down the river. While the age of sail casts a romantic light on the region, it’s important to remember that the early economy of the Choptank—like the rest of the Eastern Shore—was built largely on slave labor. The cargo carried by those vessels, and even the wood used to build some of those ships, was produced by enslaved people.
During the middle of the 19th century, a network of resources for escapees, known as the Underground Railroad, developed and Caroline County became dotted with safe houses in the area surrounding the Choptank River. But outside the courthouses in Denton and Cambridge, people were bought and sold; inside, severe sentences were handed down to any who helped those who sought their freedom.
In March 1822, American abolitionist Harriet Tubman was born into slavery about 10 miles south of where we launched in Cambridge. She and two of her brothers, Henry and Ben, later worked on a plantation at Poplar Point, just upstream from the town of Choptank, adjacent to the old landing that is now the Choptank marina. On September 17, 1849, she escaped with her brothers, but she returned to the Choptank area several times to help dozens of others escape. The tracks of most of those she helped free ran parallel to the river as the escapees headed north toward Philadelphia and, in some cases, on to Canada.
Our visit to the Choptank fell on the 200th anniversary of Tubman’s birth and we reached Denton on the Juneteenth holiday commemorating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in America.
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.
Several years ago, I built a stand for the only outboard I had at that time, and it made itself useful for maintenance and for flushing the cooling system with fresh water after an outing. When I got a second motor, I put off making a stand for it because I was running out of room and had the two motors share the same stand. That was awkward and I soon grew tired of shifting motors around. For off-season storage of the motors, a 2×4 screwed to the studs of the garage could hold the motors in a minimum of space and with no footprint at all on the floor, but the stand still took up a lot of space. If was going to have a stand for each motor, the second one had to fold so I could hang it up somewhere out of the way.
I made a few sketches, bought a few bits of lumber, and after a few false starts, came up with a stand that works well when I need it and takes up very little room when I don’t. I had seen several stands on the web that were made of 2×4s, but I felt that was overkill for the weight the stand needed to support, so I used 2×3 and 1×3 stock. The nuts, washers, and bolts are all 3/8″, though 5/16″ or even 1/4″ could work. The stand is tall enough to take my 2.5- and 4-hp Yamaha four-stroke outboards, weighs under 25 lbs, and can support my full weight.
Photographs by the author
The base is made from 3/4″ plywood, 18″ × 24″, with a pair of 18″ 2×3s (all dimensions in the photographs are measured, not nominal) screwed along the long sides of the plywood. The swivel casters are screwed to the bottom corners. The ends of the 2×3s have 3/8″ holes drilled on the centerline and 1-1/4″ from the end. The holes on one end of the base are countersunk 1/4″ on the outsides, and on the other end the countersinks are on the inside faces.
The uprights are 34″ lengths of 2×3 with a pair of 21″ 2×4 crosspieces screwed at the upright tops. A 21″ length of 2×6 would serves as well for a crosspiece. The bottoms of the uprights are sawn and disc-sanded semicircles with 3/8″ holes at the centers.
The diagonal brace is made of 32″ lengths of 1×3. Each has at its top a 7″ length of 2×3 screwed to the outside face. The crosspiece is 3/4″ plywood cut to a width of 3-1/2″ and a length of 18″. Its ends are screwed to the 7″ 2×3s. The ends are semicircles and have 3/8″ at their centers.
The uprights are connected to the outside of the base’s 2×3s with 3″-long 3/8″ hex-head bolts with nuts and washers on the opposite side of the connection. The bolt heads are recessed in the base’s inside countersinks.
The diagonal brace has its legs bolted to the outside of the other end of the base. The bolt heads are set in the countersinks on the inside faces of the 2×3s.
The upright can be set and angled to match the transom of the boat that uses the outboard. The mark on the white tape is where a hole would be drilled through the upright and the brace. The hole should be oversized to create an easy slip fit for a 3/8″ bolt. I have a 13/32″ drill bit, but widening the hole with a 3/8″ bit or a rat-tail file would work, too.
Because the stand is designed to fold, the 4-1/2″ bolt joining the brace to the diagonal gets a wing nut.
The transoms and motorwells on my boats are all plumb, so I drilled the hole through the brace and upright for a vertical mount.
When the upright and brace are folded flat, the 4-1/2″ bolts hold them against the base’s 2×3s. The hole is drilled at the middle on the base’s 24″ length. These holes also should have a loose slip fit.
To drill the holes accurately, I flipped the folded stand upside down. A piece of 2×3 with a hole drilled on the drill press serves as a guide. It gets the hole started centered and square.
Two 3/8″ holes at the tops of the uprights get a length of cord that is used to hang the folded stand out of the way.
A pail of plywood rectangles with matching slots makes a stand to hold a 5-gallon bucket for a freshwater rinse.
The plywood support is made tall enough to put the bottom of the bucket close to the fin at the bottom of the outboard.
While folded, the stand can be used as a dolly.
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Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Magazine.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Magazine readers by sending us an email.
There is a tool for every use and a use for every tool, maybe multiple uses. That is what we look for when purchasing new tools and equipment for our small-boat fleet. Myerchin’s Sailor’s Tool serves several needs in a small package. Its construction quality is excellent, and it is lightweight and surprisingly affordable.
The P300 Sailor’s Tool Generation 2 was designed for sailors by bluewater sailor John Myerchin, who has designed nautical knives for 38 years. The Sailor’s Tool has aluminum handles on a 440C stainless-steel frame and blade. It weighs 4.5 oz and has an overall length 5″ closed, and 9.25″ with both blade and spike open. The sheepsfoot blade is 2.25″ long and has a liner lock that positively engages the blade to keep it open. The liner lock can also be released one-handed, and there is no spring to snap the blade closed, so accidental injury from closing the blade is minimized. The thumb pin on both sides of the back of the blade is of good size and well placed for smooth one-handed opening. The end of the blade is straight and useful for small work such as cutting whipping twine. The remainder of the blade is serrated and cuts line easily, and the tip shape minimizes accidental puncture of people and gear such as inflatable PFDs and life rafts.
Opening photograph, SBM; all others by the authors
The marlinespike doubles as the upper handle for the Sailor’s Tool pliers. The spike tip is rounded to keep from piercing skin but still serves well as a marlinespike.
The stainless-steel marlinespike is 3″ long. It also opens and closes one-handed, with the fixed jaw of the pliers becoming a convenient thumb rest when open. The spike is curved and along with the scalloped handle shape, we find this gives a more comfortable and secure angle than a straighter folding marlinespike to work into tight knots. The spike point is smooth but not sharp and will not puncture skin unless excessive force is applied.
The spike serves as a handle for the pliers, which have 1″-long plier jaws and are very handy to tighten and loosen shackle pins, saving the spike from shackle abuse. The pliers are also useful to remove small nuts and bottle caps and when pulling a reluctant sailmaker’s needle through several layers of cloth.
The marlinespike, like the knife blade, has a liner lock to keep it from folding unexpectedly. The belt clip can be removed with a Torx-bit screwdriver.
Both the knife and the spike are designed with spring detents to stay closed when not in use. Scalloped edges along either side of the tool’s body provide a secure, comfortable grip. The body of the tool forms an open slot, making it easy to clean and maintain. There is a removable belt clip on one side and a lanyard bail on one end, good to keep the tool tethered to a boat, PFD, or a person. The Sailor’s Tool comes with a ballistic nylon sheath with Velcro closure that also offers one-handed easy opening.
We are impressed with the Sailor’s Tool but don’t know where to keep it—pocket, PFD, boat, or toolbox? Maybe we need four (or more) considering the size of our small armada and how handy this multipurpose knife is.
Audrey—aka Skipper—andKent Lewis are motoring, paddling, rowing, and sailing the Tidewater Region of Virginia in their menagerie of small boats, ranging from an 8′ punt up to Skipper’s 19′ gaff-rigged yawl. Their adventures are logged at www.smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com.
The P300 Sailor’s Tool is available in silver, red, or blue from Myerchin for $44.95. Prices vary with other online retailers.
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.
Power tools are noisy. They can be unpleasant to listen to at best, and at worst they can lead to permanent hearing loss. My hearing has always been pretty good, and I find loud noises painful, so I always put on hearing protectors before I fire up a table saw, bandsaw, shop vac, router, sander, or any other noisy power tool. While foam plugs have good ratings, reducing the sound by 29 to 32 dB, they take time to insert in the ear canals. Muffs are more convenient to put on a moment before I turn on a machine.
For many years I’ve been using AO Safety WorkTunes muffs with a 22 dB noise reduction rating and a built-in AM/FM radio. They have worked well, but they were getting rather beat-up, and I finally got fed up with the painfully loud squeal of the low-battery warning signal.
The 3M WorkTunes have been a pleasing upgrade from my old muffs. They have a 24-dB noise reduction rating and comfortable pads that provide a good seal around my ears. The headband has a soft pad at the top; it’s removable, a nice feature if you like to wear a baseball cap and don’t want that button on top pressed against your skull. The left cup houses the two AA batteries that power the unit. There is an optional lithium-ion battery pack that can be recharged while installed in the WorkTunes by way of a common micro-USB cable.
Photographs by the author
The controls on the WorkTunes are easy to operate by touch. An instruction booklet details all of their functions. The cushions are soft and make a good seal around the ears.
The right cup has a power button that turns the muffs on and off when held for two seconds. Twisted, it controls the volume. When the noise of the tool is loud, the volume in the stereo WorkTunes speakers can be cranked up, but built-in software will protect your hearing by turning the volume down if it is kept too high for too long.
There are also two small buttons on the right side: source and function. The source button makes selection between AM radio, FM radio, Bluetooth, and Line-in. It also controls the music equalizer settings of Flat, Pop, and Rock. The function button will save and recall radio stations and pair Bluetooth devices. A large dial below the button tunes into radio stations; stops, starts, and scrolls through YouTube videos on Bluetooth; and answers, rejects, and disconnects telephone calls.
With each function of WorkTunes a woman’s voice announces the selection. It’s a great improvement over my old muffs’ eardrum-piercing signal.
A rubber cover at the left protects the USB ports for charging the optional lithium-ion battery pack and for a four-pole stereo audio cable.
The WorkTune’s sound attenuation in the workshop takes care of all my loudest power tools and yet I can still hear someone speaking in a normal voice. The fit is comfortable, and I could wear the muffs for a long spell of power-tool use. The sound quality of the integral radio is good, although if the FM is in stereo, I find it hard to distinguish separate sounds coming from left and right. With Bluetooth, YouTube music videos playing on my smartphone have obvious and excellent stereo sound. The WorkTunes can be up to 25′ away from the Bluetooth signal source; beyond that, the signal breaks up. That’s enough to give me free range in my shop.
If a phone call comes in on my smartphone while I have the Bluetooth connection on, I’ll hear the ring tone and I can answer with a press of the tuning dial. I can hear the callers clearly enough, but I come across to them echoey and distorted and the sound of my own voice is muffled. Of course, I’d often be wearing the muffs when making noise in the shop, and that background noise would only make matters worse. The most important thing is hearing a call come in and being able to pick it up. Then I can tell the caller to hold on a second while I shut down the machinery and use the phone normally.
The WorkTunes hearing protectors will see a lot of use in my shop and will almost certainly be at the top of my list of most-used tools. My hearing is good enough to hear a straight pin drop on a rug at ten paces and I intend to keep it that way.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Magazine.
"I’m a pretty lucky guy,” says Richard Honan, 74, of Winthrop, Massachusetts. He has been building one boat after another since 2002, and in 2020 he had begun work on his 13th boat, a peapod, the Beach Pea designed by Doug Hylan, when the dark cloud of the pandemic hit , it had a silver lining for Richard. “My grandkids couldn’t go to school, and they would spend all that time with me building that peapod. Otherwise it never would have happened to have all day, every day, for weeks on end, for them to come work with me.”
In addition to granddaughters Anna and Emily, one of the boys in Richard’s neighborhood, joined the project. “Christian Buonopane was getting dropped off from school. I didn’t even know him. I introduced myself and said, ‘Do you want to learn how to build a boat?’ He spent a year and a half with me.” Richard’s grandson, Ben, also joined in with the boat building and was instrumental in helping make the mast. “Ben is very quiet, sometimes even withdrawn. I got him to come to the shop to help me make the poor man’s hollow mast. He really got into it and couldn’t believe that with just hand tools, planes, and a sanding belt turned inside out we could make something as perfectly round as we did.”
Photographs courtesy of the Honan family
Christian, one of Richard’s neighbors, took up his invitation to build a boat and stayed with the project for one-and-a-half years.
Richard began building boats in 2002 while he was in business making signs. In 1971, after serving in the Army in Vietnam, he started the Richard Honan Sign Company, specializing in hand-carved wooden signs, hand-painted and often highlighted with gold leaf. Some of the tools in his shop were handed down to him from his father and grandfather.
His first boat was a 7′ 8″ Joel White-designed Nutshell Pram, built with a son-in-law, Elvin (Emily’s father). Elvin didn’t have a lot of experience using woodworking tools before and had never previously built a boat of any kind. They named the boat R&R, for Rodriguez (Elvin’s last name) and Richard to commemorate their time together. The name also recalled the free time Richard had while serving in Vietnam.
Among the other boats Richard built were a 14′ Reuel Parker sharpie, a 16′ Ducktrap Wherry by Walter Simmons, two David Nichols Indian Girl canoes, an Adirondack Guideboat, two kayaks, and a strip-built 16′ Marc Barto gaff-rigged Melonseed skiff, which won the I Built It Myself “Best in Show” at the WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport. “Let me tell ya,” Richard said, “you get Best in Show at Mystic Seaport, and there’s nowhere else to go.”
The peapod was built in the cellar of the building that is the home of the Richard Honan Sign Co. The boat’s only way out of the shop is up the stairs at left. The shop is well equipped and has no shortage of clamps to hold the outwales Christian and Richard glued to the hull.
Two of Richard’s granddaughters, cousins Anna and Emily, were devoted to the peapod project. Using the long-reach planking clamps that Richard made, they secured the sheer-plank guards.
Emily and Anna occasionally worked under the supervision of Adam, a driftwood sculpture Richard made. “He’s life size,” Richard notes. “He was actually modeled after me, although I don’t know if I was that thin even when I was in the Army.”
Richard’s grandson Ben, Anna’s brother, pitched in during the construction of the peapod.
For Richard, there was “nowhere else to go” but back to the shop to build another boat. “I’m lucky I’ve got a wife who is patient with me and doesn’t even know how many boats I have.” While Mary’s glad that all the grandkids have become good swimmers while horsing around with Richard’s boats, “she’s not much of a boater. As far as sailing goes, she thinks that when boats heel, the next thing is you’re gonna die. Even so, Mary has had two boats named in her honor: PROUD MARY, a 24′ 4″ one-design Raven class, which Richard bought before he started building boats; and PROUD MARY II, the prize-winning Melonseed.
Richard has an enthusiastic worldwide following on his social media postings. An old family friend, Charlie Kitson, gave Richard the Atlantic white cedar that became the peapod’s planking. Charlie had planned on building a boat with the wood but, as he told Richard, he was getting too old and recognized “it’s not going to happen, Rich. I’d rather watch a boat get built with stock that I’d provided for you.” He gave the stack of flitches, a whole log’s worth, to Richard. It was more than enough to make all the strips he needed to mill for the peapod. He has also inherited lots of stainless-steel and bronze boatbuilding fastenings they were never going use. “I have boxes of fasteners that look like boxes of gold.” “Someday” he mused, “someday, I’m going to be doing the same thing, donating fastenings and hardware to somebody else.”
The peapod negotiated the trip up the stairs and emerged from the shop, ready for outfitting with the sail rig.
Benjamin, the cocker spaniel Lucky, and Popi—as Richard is known to his grandkids—get ready to trailer the peapod for the launch and christening. WAYLO-WAYLO is the way Richard’s brother Steven used to announce his arrival, whether at the basement shop or at the yacht club. Lucky passed away after the peapod was launched. Richard noted, wryly, “My daughter, who thought I was emotionally unstable without a dog, got me another, named Sunny, that looks just like Lucky. He’s going to be a boat dog too.”
The Honan family and friends gathered at a beach on the outskirts of Winthrop for the christening of the peapod. Richard is at the left edge of the group at the water’s edge. His brother Billy tends to WAYLO-WAYLO.
The peapod was christened WAYLO-WAYLO in honor of his late brother Stephen. Whenever Steve visited Richard at the basement woodworking shop, he’d stop at the top of the stairs and announce himself: “Waylo, waylo!” He’d do the same when he entered the local yacht-club bar to let the regulars know “Steve’s here!” Stephen was not only Richard’s brother, he was Richard’s best friend. He was like a silent partner, helping out with the boat building and helping prepare the boats for launching in the spring. Steve often took visiting friends sailing into Boston Harbor. As they were leaving Winthrop Harbor, they were always curious to know where he was taking them. “Hey, Steve, where are we goin’? Are we goin’ to the harbor islands? Or we goin’ into Boston Harbor by the USS CONSTITUTION? Where we goin’, Steve?” and Steve would say “Where’re we goin’? We’re there! We’re there!”
Bill and Richard celebrated the launch of Richard’s 13th boat. Bill is the lucky recipient of one of the Nutshell Prams Richard built.
At the launching, Richard got Christian underway to enjoy the sailing the boat he helped build. Richard enjoys having his grandchildren and other youngsters sail more than sailing his boats himself.
Richard has now built 14 boats, and while he has kept track of the number of boats he has built in the past, the accounting that matters most to him now is in the boats he’ll build in the future: “I measure my life now in how many boats I have left to build.” He has kept only four of the boats he has built. He sold several for the cost of the materials and he has given others away to family, friends, and boating clubs. He gave a canoe to a neighbor who had some young kids. The neighbor was reluctant to take the boat without paying something for it. “Listen,” Richard told him, “if you have half the fun that my grandkids had in this canoe then it’s a good deal.”
He’s not in boatbuilding to make a profit that can be measured in dollars. “I’m the richest person you know. I’m retired, I have enough money, just enough money to live on. I own my own house. I build boats, create driftwood art, and do stuff with my grandkids. I’ve been married 50 years and I’ve been with my wife 56 years. I’ve got two daughters and five grandkids, and I see them all the time.” That makes him a wealthy as well as a lucky guy.
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Whenever a simple and delicious Mexican idea migrates north across the border, it tends to get fancied up, often to its detriment. Consider the nacho, once an unpretentious tortilla chip crowned with a slice of jalapeño and melted cheese, now a heaping muddle of meat, sour cream, onions, olives, and herbs. Herbs! Sam Devlin’s new Pelicano, a liberal translation of the Mexican panga workboats, has likewise been garnished with such gringo delicacies as windscreen and wheel steering, but it’s hard to complain that it’s been spoiled in the process. Devlin’s version is saucy-looking, efficient, and seaworthy, and still unfancy enough that an ambitious amateur can realistically aspire to building one.
Devlin got acquainted with pangas on his occasional winter trips to Mazatlán, one of which also acquainted him a few years back with a delightful woman named Soitza, who became his wife. Mazatlán glares out at the open Pacific, and Devlin says he was impressed by the pangeros’ willingness to motor out into the big water to fish—at least in the mornings, before the afternoon trades boil up—and then drive the boats right up onto the beach around noon. He liked the pangas’ no-nonsense functionality and tough character, but the all-fiberglass execution left him cold.
For his interpretation, Devlin shortened the hull from a typical 22′ to 18′ 4″ for handier trailering. He added a deck, kept the beam slender at 6′ 6″, and gave the bow an arrowhead-fine entry with a prominently extruded stem. “I’m a big fan of parting the water,” he says. It’s a semi-displacement hull, so its transition to plane is gradual and subtle, and Devlin’s design objective is the best possible compromise between low-speed fuel efficiency and high-speed—well, speed.
Neil Rabinowitz
The Pelicano shrimper offers an impressive level of accommodation and ease for an 18-footer, for it has sheltered steering and bunks for two adults, while also being easily trailered behind a small pickup truck.
Devlin never undertook any formal education in naval architecture, but has quietly amassed 35 years of experience designing everything from kayaks to motor cruisers now threatening 50′. (He recently moved into a vast new industrial park-type shop, in part so he could bid on regional ferry projects—stitch-and-glue ferries, of which he’s already built one.) He loves to riff on historic boat types, everything from melonseeds to classic wooden tugs, but he’s always thinking contemporary practicality, efficiency, and simple beauty. Two things about a Devlin design: You’ll never see any fussy, superfluous gimmickry. And unless you have a practiced eye, you’ll never guess they all start out as a pile of plywood. Devlin’s boats are closer to the sculpture garden than the lumberyard.
Pelicano plans are available in three configurations: center-console, bassboat, and shrimper. The center-console edition shaves the building time by about 150 hours and provides, in effect, tandem cockpits separated by a bridge deck. The shrimper features a tall pilothouse rising over a rudimentary cuddy, and a longish cockpit. Either of these would make a versatile fishing boat. Devlin’s personal favorite is the bassboat, which is really more of a picnic cruiser. The cockpit provides space enough for only three or four people, and the cabin is slightly higher than the shrimper’s, providing sitting headroom for a fireplug-proportioned person and camp-style sleeping room for two. It might be the least versatile of the three, but it’s the most fetching: a simple, exquisitely proportioned classic design that stands proudly aside from transient commercial trends.
Neil Rabinowitz
The Pelicano bassboat (foreground) is Devlin’s preferred layout; it has room for (in addition to two berths) a galley and stowage.
On a crisp, calm summer morning we splash the bassboat into a southern finger of Puget Sound near Devlin’s shop and play for a couple of hours. The wavelets are all of two inches high, so we have no chance to test her in a chop, but Devlin spots a big cruiser and arrows the Pelicano across her wake. It isn’t much of a challenge, but the very steep V of the entry seems to settle the bow back into the water with cushioned delicacy. The hydraulic trim tabs—another unlikely garnish on a Mexican workboat—negotiate the bow downward so we can easily peer ahead over the deck at speed. This boat’s 70-hp Yamaha—about the maximum motor Devlin recommends—yields a 17-knot cruise at 4,000 rpm. Top speed is about 25 knots. A water-skiing indulgence would be a foot beamier and faster on plane, but this hull’s skinniness renders it more efficient at fishing velocities. A 25-hp motor, Devlin says, wouldn’t be a bad choice.
The flat, two-piece windscreen is surprisingly efficient at deflecting the breeze from the cockpit, even for aft passengers. The stem extension poking over the deck makes a jaunty gunsight for holding a course. The one aesthetic quibble I’d present is the factory-made aluminum deck hatch, which seems as appropriate on a wooden boat as an electronic organ in a Baroque cathedral. This Pelicano cries for a handcrafted hatch cover to echo its windscreen frame. Devlin, however, is no sentimentalist. While he’s meticulous about the artistic issues of line and proportion—a home builder will wreak remarkable damage by sneaking an extra inch of height into a Devlin cabin—he doesn’t like anything that causes extra fuss, either in construction or maintenance. His philosophy is: simple, strong, durable. On this boat, sprayed-on polyurea truck-bed liner, which has the texture of lizard hide, covers every square inch of deck, cockpit, and most of the cabin interior. It hardly offers the warm-blooded allure of teak or mahogany, but it’s no trouble, either. “It’s just the coolest stuff,” Devlin raves. “I love how much protection it gives the epoxy.”
In fact, on this Pelicano from Devlin’s shop, only the sapele windscreen frame and companionway slides suggest “wooden boat.” Indeed, most casual onlookers wouldn’t guess that the heart of this boat is wooden, given the high-gloss topside paint and professional-quality fairing. Most amateur builders, however, won’t have that problem: Our fairing will not be so fair, and we’ll be tempted to allow more brightwork than Devlin does, despite the penalty in maintenance. It really distills down to how one wants to balance “boatbuilder” with “boat owner” and “boat user.”
Neil Rabinowitz
Designer Sam Devlin and his wife, Soitza, enjoy an outing in the Pelicano bassboat
Let’s talk about building for a minute. Like all the 90-odd designs in Devlin’s current catalog (www. devlinboat.com), this boat is made of stitch-and-glue plywood with exterior fiberglass-and-epoxy sheathing. The ply is ½”. Unlike many of his earlier designs, however, this hull is intended to be built upside down over four bulkheads on a strongback, then ’glassed and faired before righting. The advantages, Devlin says, are easier fairing and the need to convene neighbors only once for flipping. The keel is a beefy slab of purple-heart, 1¼” thick, capped with a stainless-steel or bronze quarter-round. “Sometime in the life of this boat it’s going to get beached,” Devlin says. “Might as well prepare for it.”
Although this is basically a simple boat, the amateur should not expect to begin building in the fall and happily launch in the spring. Devlin says there are about 1,400 shop-hours in each of the two Pelicanos his crew has built to date, and let’s note that those are professionals’ hours. Based on my own experience building a Pelicano-size sailboat of Devlin’s design (the Winter Wren II), I venture that a typical amateur will need about twice that long, and Devlin readily agrees. However, the cabin is a monumental labor pit on any boat, so the center-console version of the Pelicano should be substantially simpler.
Neil Rabinowitz
Inspired by outboard-powered skiffs—pangas—he’d encountered in Mexico, Sam Devlin drew the 18’ Pelicano hull. He offers three different layouts for the boat: center-console, bassboat, and the shrimper seen here.
As with some other designers, we have our choice whether to commission a Pelicano from Devlin’s shop or buy the plans and attack the task ourselves. The Pelicano teeters on the cusp of being an appropriate first boat for the amateur: probably accessible to the moderately skilled and highly determined, probably not to the woodshop-clueless and easily distracted. The question then becomes one of balancing the prize of flawless finish and detailing against personal growth through accomplishment. Spending a morning with Devlin’s Pelicano made me a little dejected and irritable with my amateur craftsmanship on the Winter Wren, but also determined to keep improving.
Which is exactly what seems to keep Sam Devlin cranking out boat plans. After two boats and a number of long conversations, I know him pretty well, and I’m convinced that he enjoys seeing his customers grow into real boatbuilders at least as much as he savors the beauty—and revenue—of finished boats rolling out of his own shop. “I’m interested in boats, my customers, and making money,” he says. “Probably in that order.”
The Pelicano center console is the simplest of the trio. This boat’s center console is hinged; when it’s pivoted forward, a large cargo hold is revealed in the hull.
Pelicano Particulars: LOA 18′ 4″, Beam 6′ 6″, Draft 12″, Dry weight 1,490 lbs, Recommended power, 25–70 hp outboard
Finished boats and plans for the Pelicanos are available from Devlin Designing Boat Builders. This Boat Profile was published in Small Boats 2012 and appears here as archival material.
The Norwalk Islands Sharpies are the product of more than a century of evolution. Their pre-cursors are believed to have originated in New Haven, Connecticut, where there was a need for light, shallow-draft boats that could carry loads of oysters safely across bars to market. I say “believed” because there is some evidence that similar types were used in Ireland even earlier.
Working sharpies were flat-bottomed, slab-sided center-boarders rigged as cat-ketches with unstayed masts. They were perfectly suited to their environment, so when Bruce Kirby was thinking about a boat to use in his own slowly silting-in waterway at Rowayton, Connecticut, he turned to the local sharpies for inspiration.
The sharpie he drew for himself was a 26-footer (see Small Boats 2007). He was so pleased with her performance that he began designing a range of similar boats in varying sizes. He called them the Norwalk Islands Sharpies, and they’ve been around now for more than 20 years. In 1987 an Australian boatbuilder, Robert Ayliffe, came for a visit. The two hit it off, and when Robert returned home he set up NIS Boats to market the sharpies worldwide. About 250 Norwalk Islands Sharpies have been built from plans, over 60 of them in Australia. Their well-proven success is perhaps not surprising when you consider that they are designed by Kirby, whose credits include such diverse craft as the Laser, the Olympic Sonar class, and various Canadian challengers for the AMERICA’s Cup.
There are six designs in the NIS fleet, ranging from the 18-footer, which I sailed for this article, through 23′, 26′, 29′, 31′, and 43′. All except the two largest can be trailered, although the 29-footer is a ponderous beast on the road.
Traditional sharpies had their drawbacks. Their shallow, radically balanced rudders mounted under the rockered aft end sometimes made them tricky to steer. The NIS boats have retractable blade rudders mounted on the transom. The foil-shaped blades are designed to kick back against a bungee shock absorber if they hit something. You might think that the flat bottom would make the boats pound sailing to windward, but this is not so. They are initially quite tender before the hull shape firms them up, so even in light airs they sail slightly heeled. Owners report that once sailing, the boats present a chine to the waves, and the ride is remarkably soft and quiet.
The shallow draft means that you can take these boats into places that are off-limits to normal yachts. The NIS 18 draws 10″ with the board up. The 31 draws only 12″. In calm, sheltered conditions you can literally run the bow onto the beach and step ashore.
Courtesy of Stray Dog Boatworks
The Norwalk Islands Sharpies are built of readily available marine plywood, and a dedicated amateur should find the project both accessible and rewarding.
It’s probably fair to say that most people do not think of sharpies as seagoing boats. When Robert Ayliffe built his own 23-footer 23 years ago, he had no doubts about their capabilities. He had read the works of Commodore Ralph Munroe, who designed the sharpie yacht EGRET in the 1880s. The Commodore was one of the pioneer settlers of Miami, and his EGRET earned an enduring worldwide reputation while sailing on Biscayne Bay. Ayliffe was particularly impressed by an account of Munroe riding out a hurricane in EGRET without mishap.
Ayliffe’s first offshore passage in his 23-footer, CHARLIE FISHER, was from the South Australian mainland to Kangaroo Island, across the notoriously rough Investigator Strait. He and a companion beat to windward for eight hours in a gale that was recorded locally at 60-plus knots. “It was frightening,” he recalls, “but the boat sailed very well.” When they reached their destination, in true sharpie style they nosed up to the beach to rest and dry out. Other yachtsmen couldn’t believe that the little boat had been out in such weather. That was in 1988. Since then Ayliffe has weathered other Southern Ocean gales, including a protracted 45-knot howler in Bass Strait.
Courtesy of Stray Dog Boatworks
The deceptively sophisticated NIS 18 is easy to build and exciting and seaworthy under sail. The design includes the choice of two rigs: an unstayed gaff and an unstayed, fully battened marconi.
Bruce Kirby commissioned an independent marine consulting firm, Aerohydro Inc., of Southwest Harbor, Maine, to do an analysis of the righting moment of the 31-footer. He asked for righting moments for every 10 degrees up to 180 degrees (upside down). He was pleased and just a bit surprised when the results indicated that the 31 could roll to 143 degrees and expect to come back upright. A point of no return of 110 degrees is considered good for a small cruising boat; 143 degrees is remarkable.
The sharpies have fairly wide side decks combined with a high, crowned cabintop, so if the boat is knocked down the house supplies considerable flotation. The cockpit seats and the enclosed coaming seat backs also add buoyancy. Kirby notes that the self-righting chaacteristic applies to all sizes, but the smaller boats are more affected by crew distribution.
The Aerohydro study assumed that the hatches were closed. Ross Henderson, the Tasmanian owner of a 23-footer, was racing in Bass Strait recently when, through an odd combination of wind and wave, the boat was knocked flat. The masts were lying in the water; Henderson estimates that the boat was lying at about 100 degrees. The cockpit filled with water and, although the main hatch was open, not a drop went below.
While Robert Ayliffe hesitates to urge offshore adventures upon his customers, he says that with proper preparation and a skilled crew he has absolute confidence that these boats are up to the task.
Courtesy of Stray Dog Boatworks
The smaller Norwalk Islands Sharpies are uncluttered by sailbags and poles, since the two sails live on the booms and there are no bagged headsails needing stowage.
The NIS boats are built of marine plywood, sheathed with fiberglass and sealed inside and out with epoxy. Their simple, hard-chined hull shape places them within the abilities of amateur builders.
While the accommodations in the smaller boats is necessarily spartan, it is worth noting that the sails always live on the booms and, since the unstayed rig means that the boom can swing past 90 degrees, there is no need for spinnakers or spare headsails. Therefore, there are no sailbags down below. Some may find the presence of a centerboard trunk obtrusive, but on the 18-footer the accommodations have been left clear by cleverly placing the trunk slightly off-center and hiding it in the furniture. It seems to make no difference to the performance on either tack.
The cat-ketch is about as simple a rig as you can get. With the optional tabernacles, one person can step the unstayed masts easily. While the boat is being trailered, the sails can be left furled on the booms with the lazy-jacks and halyards in place, as the booms are attached to the tabernacles, not the masts. Upon arrival at the launching site, you simply winch the masts upright, slide the boat into the water, and go sailing. The masts on the original Norwalk Islands Sharpies were spun aluminum; there is now a carbon-fiber option, which is 35 percent of the weight of aluminum.
Having no jib, changing tacks on a sharpie is a matter of simply pushing the tiller over. The two sails look after themselves. You can sail these boats around in circles without touching a sheet, though there are control lines—vang, outhaul, and cunningham—for fine-tuning the sails’ shapes.
Courtesy of Stray Dog Boatworks
The Bruce Kirby–designed 18’ Norwalk Islands Sharpie is the latest and smallest in a family of boats ranging all the way to 43’.
The baby of the fleet, the NIS 18, originally had a single mast. The rig was recently reworked so that there is now either a ketch or yawl available. During a recent sail on board the first 18-footer with a ketch rig, I discovered that there were certain idiosyncrasies to get used to. Going to windward, you do not harden the mainsheet right in as you would expect to; instead, you ease it slightly so that the draft from the mainsail does not interfere with the mizzen. I found that the mizzen, sitting right in the middle of the cockpit, gets in the way a bit. The yawl, with the mizzen stepped on the transom, would free up the space nicely. There would be a slight loss of sail area and the sail would have to be sheeted off a boomkin, which could be prone to damage when maneuvering in marinas. At the time of writing, the first two yawls are being built, but none have hit the water yet.
When running wing-and-wing, one might instinctively choose to have the main setting normally and the mizzen slightly by the lee. Experienced NIS sailors do the opposite, running the mainsail by the lee and allowing the main boom to swing about 10 degrees forward of the mast. Wind hitting the mizzen is deflected into the main so that both sails keep filling beautifully.
There’s a lot to be said for a split rig in small cruising yachts. The center of effort is kept low, thereby reducing heeling. There are endless combinations available to balance the boat. One great advantage is that with the mizzen sheeted in hard, the boat will lie docilely head-to-wind while you take in a reef or go below to check the chart. The full-length battens ensure that the sails sit quietly.
These boats move in the slightest breeze. There’s no need for heavy, complicated, space-consuming inboard engines. Auxiliary power comes from an outboard motor mounted on the transom on the 18- and 23-footer, and operating through a well in the larger boats. But these motors don’t log many hours, for the Norwalk Islands Sharpie is truly a boat that is meant to be sailed.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, conveys the joy of being afloat quite so purely as a light paddling boat. We can build the Fox canoe in our garage, carry it atop our car, and paddle it across open water. At the far side of the bay, the little double-ender might take us to the head of a forgotten creek that nature has reclaimed from industrial intrusion.
Bill Thomas
The 14’7” Fox double-paddle canoe, which weighs only 44 lbs, is casually portable. Its 6’8”-long cockpit offers considerable room, yet can be securely sealed with a spray skirt.
Readers of these pages will know that the past three decades have seen kayaks take to the water in great numbers. Indeed, some manufacturers might be tempted to market Fox as a “recreational kayak” in order to boost sales. To his credit, Bill Thomas, designer and builder, describes this nifty little boat as what it really is: a decked double-paddle canoe. At 14′ 7″ in length and measuring more than 30″ ″across the rails (to say nothing of its commodious 6’8″-long cockpit), this is no kayak. It will do things that no true kayak can…or at least it will do them more comfortably.
If you paddle kayaks, the first thing you might notice upon stepping aboard Fox is that you can, in fact, step right aboard. You will find no need to jackknife into a dark wormhole of a cockpit while leaning on a paddle for stability. If any unfriendly creatures have taken up residence in the boat since your last visit, they will be right out in the open. You’ll see the snake before it begins to climb up your right leg.
The caned canoe seat in Fox rests about 1″ above the hull’s narrow, flat bottom. This seat, combined with the flexible slatted backrest, offers hours of good comfort. Although no footrests are provided, we can brace our knees against the cockpit coaming. As an old kayaker, I’d be inclined to install adjustable and removable foot braces in this boat. They would add power to our paddling stroke and enhance feelings of security in rough water.
Bill Thomas
This stable canoe comfortably accommodates a mother and child.
Part of the comfort and ability of this boat results from its relatively generous freeboard. The point where our paddle shaft crosses the coaming measures about 13″ above the floor. We’ll likely hit it with our knuckles if we employ our favorite short kayak paddle. Let’s buy, or make, a wooden paddle with a long shaft and small blades.
How long should the paddle be? A few rules of thumb exist for determining paddle length, but experience has shown that they’re not worth repeating here. If we’re making our own paddle, we can put together a rough preliminary version that will let us experiment with shaft length, blade shape, and angle of feather. If we’re purchasing a paddle, we can test-drive several models at the local outfitter’s pond. For this boat, I’ll wager that we’ll favor a paddle that measures 8′ to 8 ½’ in length.
Designer Thomas has given Fox a multi-chined hull with a flat bottom that shows just a little rocker (longitudinal curvature). The resulting stability curve seems friendly. As we lean to the side, this canoe heels easily at first. Then it stiffens up nicely. A relatively long waterline and fine entry allow the boat to move right along. Can we keep pace with the local kayak fleet? Well, that depends. Yes, we can cruise easily alongside most sea kayaks, and carry a bigger lunch as well. But we cannot change the laws of hydrodynamics, so let’s not get drawn into racing against one of those 20′ × 18″ torpedoes.
Fox appears to have just the right amount of directional stability. It likes to keep going where we point it, yet it turns easily and predictably. This canoe needs neither a skeg nor a rudder, and our paddling technique will improve if we travel without these complications. The good maneuverability lets us play in river currents and on the faces of standing waves. Most of the time, we’ll feel no need for a sprayskirt, yet the tall cockpit coaming will easily accept one—inexpensive insurance against a wet lap, or a cockpit full of water. Should the worst happen, large watertight compartments forward and aft will keep the flooded boat afloat. They will hold plenty of food and gear as well.
At the end of the day, we can bed down in the huge cockpit. I’ve spent many nights sleeping in the bilge of my 17′ sea kayak, and the accommodations aboard Fox seem plush by comparison.
Bill Thomas
This canoe also comfortably accommodates designer-builder Bill Thomas and all his camping gear.
We’ll build this canoe in stitch-and-glue fashion. The plans set includes full-sized patterns for almost all the pieces, and a particularly well-illustrated 36-page Builders Guide comes along as well. No true lofting will be required. After transferring the paper patterns to sheets of okoume plywood (4mm for hull sides, deck, and bulkheads; 6mm for bottom and deckbeams), we’ll cut out the parts. Then we’ll drill holes along the edges of the sides and bottom, and pull the pieces together by twisting 3″ lengths of 18-gauge copper wire that’s been poked through the holes. This is quick work. After cutting out the parts, we can assemble the hull in less than a day. The cockpit coaming and deck will follow.
Then comes a lot of filleting (with filled epoxy), sanding, fiberglassing, sanding, priming, painting, and yet more sanding. This little canoe has a nice shape, and time spent obtaining a yacht finish would seem well spent. The process should move along at a satisfying pace.
Thomas teaches a class in how to build the Fox canoe at WoodenBoat School here in Brooklin, Maine. Starting with kits, the students put together their own boats. At the end of the six-day course, the boats are essentially complete and require only final finishing before hitting the water.
Decked double-paddle canoes are nothing new. John MacGregor, a Scotsman, usually received credit for the introduction and early development of these light double-ended boats. He might have taken inspiration for his well-known Rob Roy canoes from kayaks he had studied while traveling near the Bering Sea in 1859. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the type enjoyed great popularity. Later in the 20th century, L. Francis Herreshoff, from whose drawing table floated the 72′ TICONDEROGA (all 108,300 elegant pounds of her), took much of his waterborne pleasure in double-paddle canoes of his own design.
Compared to sea kayaks, these canoes offer greater stability and comfort. For inexperienced paddlers, they can prove safer. Folks who have no intention of learning more than the first 180 degrees of the Eskimo roll, might be better served by double-paddle canoes. Compared to the common open “Indian” or “Canadian” canoes (usually driven by single-bladed paddles), Fox and its relatives offer better rough-water capability. In addition, double-bladed paddles tend to be inherently efficient, as our power strokes are virtually continuous. Nothing is lost to recovery.
In drawing Fox, Bill Thomas has created a capable and forgiving boat that will take us on grand adventures. Perpetually watertight and coated with epoxy, it will prove easy and inexpensive to keep. At 44 lbs finished weight, it is casually portable. If we build Fox, we certainly will paddle it—and more often than we might think.
Plans, kits, classes, and completed boats are available from Bill Thomas Maker. This Boat Profile was published in Small Boats 2012 and appears here as archival material.
It is hard to know why a particular style of boat appeals to a sailor. A hardcore racer looks at Paper-Jet and can’t wait to strap it on, a khaki-clad prepster can’t see beyond white hulls and varnished mahogany, and a dreadlocked steampunk needs linseed-oiled interiors and a three-day grunge to feel authentic. But the nascent 19th-century romantic responds to lots of rope, multiple sails, and belaying pins, and those of us so wired are the audience for Don Kurylko’s D-18 Myst design (18′ 3″ LOA, 5′ 7″ beam). I think I can see why. The designer has worked up a robust, capable camp-cruiser or adventure expedition boat with the aesthetic appeal and features of a British working boat of a certain age.
Geoff Kerr
The D-18 Myst has a striking profile and sail plan, and her general appearance prompts thoughts of British fishing boats of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
She grabs you with her distinctive profile, offering the nicely scaled features of a much larger boat. The plumb stem and the bowsprit mimic those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but rather than twee whimsy they are the most obvious features of a very deliberately functional boat whose dominant impression is its low yawl rig. This setup drives her character and her purpose, giving a skipper many, many options for matching sail area and configuration to the wide variety of conditions one will encounter when cruising. That the design hearkens to the 19th century is less a romantic appeal than it is recourse to the days when sail was at the height of its commercial development.
Geoff Kerr
D-18 Myst is meant for adventure and exploration. Her owners, Ted and Ruth Cody, are seen here moving up a waist-deep, winding creek seeking shelter and a perfect campsite.
The D-18 Myst’s 160-sq-ft sail area is generous for a boat of this size. Ballast and her low rig keep her on her feet, and at 100′ her mainsail is man ageable singlehanded and without winches. Her relative narrowness and shallow draft (a mere 9″ with her centerboard up) make her versatile; easy trailering, storage, and rowability are desirable elements in a camp-cruiser. The tiny mizzen might appear silly until one discovers the myriad advantages of that 20′ sail when heaving to, balancing the helm, using it as a riding sail, and in helping to tack the boat in a hard chance.
An important test for the practicality of a camp-cruiser is the complexity of launch and recovery. The D-18 scores well here, with simple deck cradles for the mainmast, and all the rest of the gear simply stowed in the cockpit. Her height on the trailer makes setup possible without a ladder, with much of it, other than stepping the main, being accomplished from the ground. Only a wrench for a couple of nuts and a pair of pliers for a stubborn shackle were needed. The trailer package is clean and neat, and aerodynamic, so no cover is needed to keep gear in the boat. The rig is compact and light enough to be drawn by a sensible vehicle. The logistics on my visit were at a minimalist ramp with about 30″ of water; shallow draft and a long bowsprit for a handle make such launches a breeze. And a practical note for boat owners: a pair of 2 × 6s mounted on the trailer make great walkways. You still get your feet wet, but not much more, and you won’t stumble over axles and sea monsters.
In preparation for a daysail, the owner can do his bowsprit work in the parking lot while the boat is still on the trailer. Once rigged, the jib is set and struck, flying from the cockpit. Frankly, the rig looks (and is) busy. Sheets, halyards, running backstays, outhauls and downhauls, and cleats and belaying pins—all those components that make her a marlinespike codependent’s dream—probably make her a bit fiddly for those who are out for a mellow, social sail. The fact is, this is a real working rig, and that web of sails and control lines render Myst capable of some serious sailing. She will be upright and making progress when most boats her size have called it a day.
Auxiliary power comes in the form of oars or a small outboard. The boat’s weight and the owner’s experience call for rowing her double if an actual passage is to be made. As such the boat’s owners make regular use of a 2-hp outboard mounted on the transom. This setup moves the boat admirably, and the motor remains well out of the way perched back there. In the limited space available on this narrow transom, one must give up any thoughts of a larger engine or indeed steering with the engine rather than the rudder, so don’t plan on reverse or a sharp turn.
The designer put a lot of thought into the boat’s interior layout. There seems to be not a single square foot of space without some sort of furniture-type accommodation built into it. Thwarts double as storage lockers and the forward side benches hide bays for flotation bags or duffels, then hinge over to complete a full-beam berth flat or lounge deck. The short decks forward and aft have bulkheads forming flotation chambers large enough to compensate for the ballast. These individual features are sensible and practical for hardcore camp-cruising, albeit a bit overwhelming in the aggregate. The interior, like the rig, is busy—perhaps too busy for a sunset cruise. The owners and I sailed the boat in variable light air on a New Hampshire lake, with the furniture in the sprawling mode. I never quite found my joy, as the coaming and rail are too low to be much of a backrest, but surrendering to the supine in the sunshine was pretty sweet. Skippering aft was much more conventional and comfortable, with an ample well for feet and legs.
The nicely modeled hull is intended to be strip built, which is a practical construction choice for both hard use and the home builder. That home builder will find a complete and very detailed set of plans; Kurylko includes full-sized Mylar patterns for key components such as the molds. His drawings are logically organized and presented, with instructions that outline logical sequences and provide helpful hints. He gives manufacturers’ stock numbers and scaled details for the fabricator for such arcane bits as the cranse iron. Ted Cody, the builder of the boat I sampled, chose to mill his own square-section strips and edge-nail them, and then opted to sheathe the hull in fiberglass—a wise choice for an adventure-bound boat. This four-year undertaking by a minimally experienced boatbuilder is a testimony to the design, not to mention Ted’s patience and chutzpah.
Geoff Kerr
A centerboard, a kick-up rudder, and an easily unshipped bowsprit make launching and recovery simple. Note the modest-sized tow vehicle and stock trailer customized with 2×6 walkways.
As built, the boat carries a heavily ballasted centerboard (75 lbs), requiring a multi-part pendant, and movable lead “muffins” in vinyl bags under the floorboards, totaling about 120 lbs. Their combined effect is a stable, comfortable boat—still subject to crew trim—but deliberate rather than flighty underway.
The D-18 Myst cannot be to everyone’s tastes. But she merits high credit and consideration for aspiring camp-cruisers and adventurers. She is dramatically more functional than a “character” boat, much more complex and capable than a daysailer, and she offers plenty of strings, jewelry, and challenge to satisfy the inner shipwright and master mariner in all of us.
Plans for the D-18 Myst are available from Duckworks. This Boat Profile was published in Small Boats 2012 and appears here as archival material.
The Whitehall I built in 1983 is the finest bit of boatbuilding I’ve ever done. It began with a commission, so I wasn’t driven by daydreams of cruising as I had been with other boats I had built. For the Whitehall, I focussed on craftsmanship. Halfway through the project, my customer backed out on the deal, but at that point it didn’t change the nature of the work—I was building the boat for boatbuilding’s sake. I was deeply committed to traditional construction and put my best work into the best materials I could find: Port Orford cedar for the planks with mahogany for the sheerstrake, white-oak for the frames, and copper and bronze fastenings. I fashioned the breasthook, quarter knees, and boom jaws from crooks that I gathered and cured. The fruitwood crook that provided the book-matched pair of quarter knees was a once-in-a-lifetime find, perfectly suited to the angle and the curves.
I finished the Whitehall bright. The wood was too pretty and noteworthy in its rarity to hide under paint and I didn’t want to conceal the work I had taken such pride in. I launched the boat without christening it, leaving the naming to a buyer I hoped to find. A young couple living in one of the tonier parts of the Seattle metropolitan area purchased it and over the years I lost track of them and the Whitehall.
Thirty years later it resurfaced when its second owner sought me out. He’d had the boat for several years and loved it but was no longer able to use it. Feeling very strongly that it belonged back with me and my family, he let me buy it at a fraction of its value. Its transom had remained just as I’d made it, unadorned; the Whitehall was still without a name.
Between 1980 to 1987, four other boats I had built for months-long cruises got me through all the adventures that had captured my imagination and ambitions, and I was ready to settle into a career and raising a family. When I brought the Whitehall home in 2014, my kids were on their own and I had just been hired by WoodenBoat. Later that year, the Whitehall became a valuable asset for my work as the editor of Small Boats. It made its first appearance in the November 2014 issue in an article on Beaching Legs and has since appeared in one way or another in at least 54 more articles.
I enjoyed the attention the boat attracted at the launch and in my driveway, but all too often I treated the Whitehall very much like a trophy, brought out only for show and for polishing. That was until Nate and I spent this year’s Father’s Day together aboard it exploring Mercer Slough, a backwater surrounded by a park just south of downtown Bellevue, Washington.
The entrance to Mercer Slough lies under the spilled-spaghetti tangle of elevated off-ramps, on-ramps, and through lanes of Bellevue Way and Interstates 90 and 405. Beneath the widest expanse of concrete, the air is still but the traffic sounds like a gale blowing.
We started out from the launch ramp rowing tandem, but once we reached the slough it was best to take it in with a slower pace. We took turns rowing from the forward station and steering from the sternsheets. The nearest bridge here is part of a bike path that I’ve crossed often, looking down at the slough and wishing I were rowing or paddling rather than pedaling.
The center section of the slough runs straight for 1/2 mile and offers a glimpse of high-rises 2 miles away in downtown Bellevue, visible here just above Nate’s right elbow. At the next bend the city disappears from view.
Like me, Nate is eager to raise sail whenever there’s a breeze that can be put to good use. The spinnaker I made to fly from an oar stepped as a mast has become an essential bit of our kit.
Nate quickly took to stand-up rowing with oarlock extensions. To his left, on the far side of the fence is a blueberry farm that operates within Bellevue’s Mercer Slough Nature Park. Blueberries have been cultivated in the area since 1933.
Nate was in the stern, sailing the Whitehall, when my daughter Alison called to wish me a happy Father’s Day. When I handed my phone to him so he could talk with his sister, he took the phone in one hand and with the other slipped the spinnaker sheets between the toes of his right foot and the tiller-yoke lines between the toes of his other foot.
One of the trails that meander around the park curves through this atypical clearing at the edge of the slough. Nate and I pulled ashore and took a lunch break at a bench situated there. The grass beneath the boat grows on floating sod that sinks when stepped on. I took a short walk along the trail to look in the woods for windfalls that might make a taller mast for the spinnaker. The growth was too thick to venture into and I returned to the boat empty handed.
The upstream extremity of the slough leads to the concrete-and-steel Kelsey Creek fish ladder. It climbs to a culvert that was large enough for the Whitehall, but the baffles in the ladder leading up to it were impassible. (There were no signs of any fish.)
Nate took a close look at the culvert. At the far end, about 40 yards away, there were signs of a cattail marsh. The water was cold, and we decided to turn back.
On our way back from the fish ladder we found a stand of bamboo on land outside of the park boundary. Two of the stalks had fallen and were half submerged. A third arched out just a few feet over the water and I used a serrated folding knife to cut it off a few feet from shore. Nate and I trimmed the branches and we had our new mast.
The north end of the slough loops back to itself around a 1/2-mile-long island. Just 100 yards into our return along the alternative route, we passed under a concrete bridge, low enough that we had to duck to pass under it. Between the concrete girders were steel pipes within easy reach and Nate abandoned ship.
On our passage south back down the slough we found the breeze had switched directions since we last sailed it. The spinnaker went up on the new 9′ bamboo mast to catch the breeze above our heads and pull us part of the way home.
The change in my feelings about the Whitehall and my relationship with it happened as Nate and I tethered it at the bottom of the Kelsey Creek fish ladder. I had only one fender and, before I could get it properly situated, the gunwale grated against the rough concrete wall. The gouge in the oak outwale would leave the boat scarred, but I realized that it would be a memento of a day I’d be happy to remember. My own scars have made the events that created them impossible to forget: the crescent scar on my left index finger I got while learning to whittle when I was 10 years old, the stitch-puckered scar on my right knee where a scalpel-sharp flake of obsidian sliced into it while I was making arrowheads at 14, and the pale V at the base of my right thumb I got at 23 when I was running around Green Lake, tripped and tumbled, gored my hand on a jagged edge of broken concrete, and fell into the lake.
The only scar the Whitehall had carried before Mercer Slough is one that you might not notice. It’s a scarf joint 18″ back from the forward end of the third plank up from the garboard on the port side. I’d split the plank’s hood end while trying to nail it into the stem rabbet without steaming. I had to patch on a new piece. For the 39 years after I’d launched theWhitehall, it had been so gently used and so well maintained that there wasn’t another scar anywhere, no visible sign the boat had ever been subject to the mishaps that are inevitable when venturing out into the world. It’s tempting to coddle beauty, but it comes at the expense of character.
My other boats have scars that bring their histories to life. My sneakbox LUNA has a patch on the bottom where I hit a submerged rock when I stopped on the muddy Kentucky shore of the Ohio River to meet Shantyboat legends Harlan and Anna Hubbard. My Gokstad faering ROWENA has a gouge in the garboard where she slipped off a rail cart at the end of a remarkable portage across Alaska’s Admiralty Island. One of my Greenland kayaks has a patch where a harpoon I’d thrown during a traditional skills demonstration didn’t make it past the foredeck.
I’ll still take good care of the Whitehall, but I’ll seek out more opportunities to enjoy using it with my kids and those close to me. We all have scars, boats and boaters alike, and with its recently gouged gunwale the Whitehall seems more like a member of the family just like BONZO, HESPERIA, and ALISON, the other boats in our fleet that share in making memories. It may be time to give the Whitehall a name.
I first got interested in sharpies after building an Arch Davis-designed Laughing Gull and sailing it for some 10 years. I became enamored with its speed and shallow draft. When I moved from Miami to New Orleans, I found that the best sailing here is during the cooler months, but it was hard to find crew willing to take spray on that 16′ open boat on chilly days. I needed a bigger boat, and I wanted it to be a sharpie.
When I discovered the Norwalk Islands Sharpie 23 (NIS 23), I knew that it was the one for me. The NIS class ranges from 18′ to 31′ and was designed by the late Bruce Kirby, who is best known for creating the globally popular Laser. He deemed his Sharpie-class boats “cruising Lasers for grown-ups.” Kirby’s sharpies are flat-bottomed, centerboard cat-ketches with unstayed masts. Prior to getting my hands on a Norwalk Islands Sharpie 23 for myself, I read an article by Robert Ayliffe, arguably the world’s foremost advocate for the class, in Australian Amateur Boat Builder in which he described crossing the treacherous Bass Strait in his NIS 23 and reaching 17.5 knots surfing down swells. The NIS 23 seemed like an affordable way to have a high-performance cruising boat, and I wanted to experience this speed for myself.
W. Peter Sawyer
The mainsheet is anchored to a traveler forward of the mizzenmast, and the mizzen’s sheet leads forward to the base of its mast. Both are within easy reach of the helm.
My NIS 23 was built in 1996 at Sea Island Boat Works in South Carolina, though many have built their Norwalk Islands Sharpies at home. The single-chine plywood hull is built over plywood frames and sheathed in one layer of epoxied fiberglass. Ballast is supplied by 2″ of lead that surrounds the centerboard slot on the bottom of the boat, reportedly weighing about 600 lbs. The centerboard is made of aluminum. The construction is solid, and I have felt secure in all conditions.
I keep my NIS 23 in the water, but it is easily trailered. Since it has a centerboard and flat bottom, it comes up on the bunks with no trouble at all. I have towed mine with a Honda Pilot, but I feel much safer on the road when it is behind a pickup truck.
Early versions of the Norwalk Islands Sharpies had aluminum masts; later ones, like mine, carry carbon-fiber ones. They’re stepped in tubes just as you would drop in a mast on a Laser. There are no stays. The mainmast can be stepped by just two people, who are always relieved when it is in—and not lying fractured on the pavement. Ayliffe has designed an optional tabernacle system that would greatly reduce the stress associated with getting the masts into place. Maintenance has been easy—with its simple cat-ketch rig, there is not much to keep up. Varnished wood is at a minimum. Getting the boat from highway and ready for sailing from the dock takes about an hour and a half.
The boat is tender at the dock. When welcoming guests on board, I always stand on the opposite side of the boat so their side does not settle in the water so much when they step in.
The cockpit is generous for a boat of this size, and four adults can sit comfortably forward of the tiller. When out for a sunset cruise carrying a conservative amount of sail, the cockpit remains comfortable even while heeling. If I’m looking to maximize speed, I release the lifelines and sit on the gunwales. A short hiking stick is needed. Visibility from the cockpit is excellent.
W. Peter Sawyer
The custom forward V-berth for two, here with cushions in place, is spacious and frees up the aft part of the cabin for storage. The berths flanking the centerboard trunk e have had the cushions of third and fourth berths removed to reveal the plywood panels that cover the footwells either side of the trunk.
Once underway, the NIS 23 is simple to sail. Being a cat-ketch, it does not carry a jib, but rather a main and mizzen. Both sheets can be managed by the skipper. Tacking involves merely pushing the tiller to the lee side of the boat. With no jib, no handling of sheets is required. I’ve had difficulty making it through irons only in winds above 20 knots and with a steep chop.
The NIS 23 carries plenty of sail, and I am quick to put in a reef if upwind sailing is required. I have two reefing points on the main and one on the mizzen. When the windward chine lifts from the water, it is time to reef. Most NIS have a reefing system that can be controlled from the cockpit. I’ve not taken the time to set it up on mine, but should.
The boat does not love to go upwind—it points to about 55 degrees off true wind and, in a chop, it needs another 10 degrees or so off to maintain boat speed. That said, the NIS 23 will make 5.5 to 6 knots on a closehaul in as little as 12 knots of wind.
Emily Woodruff
The NIS 23 carries a 150-sq-ft mainsail and a 64-sq-ft mizzen.
The boat shines on a beam reach to broad reach when it maintains 6.5 knots boat speed in about 12 knots of wind. It can carry considerably more sail downwind. Its maximum speed I’ve seen was 10.7 knots running a broad reach in 20 to 25 knots of wind with full sails up. It becomes easier to control the boat after coming up on plane, though she only stays on plane while surfing down a wave. When not on plane, the boat’s weather helm is an annoyance. This can be reduced by dropping the mizzen and reefing the main, though the thrill of getting on plane means I don’t use this option much downwind. However, in 30 knots of wind, I’ve made 10.4 knots with the mizzen alone (though the carbon-fiber mizzenmast was bent like a parenthesis).
If the wind is more than 15 knots, the NIS 23 likes being on a run, too; the cat-ketch sail plan makes running wing-on-wing straightforward. If the wind is less than 15 knots, trading broad reaches is faster and more enjoyable. I keep the centerboard down for stability while running downwind.
I’ve sailed the boat extensively on the north Gulf Coast, particularly in Mississippi Sound, in winds up to 40 knots. With two on board, it can continue sailing on all points of sail up to about 20 knots with a double-reefed main and single-reefed mizzen. Upwind, I drop the mizzen at 25 knots and sail with just the double-reefed main. Caught in a squall, alone, I had to go to bare masts when the winds pushed over 35 to 40 knots.
With its flat bottom and centerboard, the boat’s motion in heavier seas is surprisingly comfortable. There is none of the laborious lumbering that’s felt on keel boats.
The sharpie is stable under sail, and I’ve never worried about a capsize. However, it is quick to heel, making early reefing important. The carbon-fiber masts mitigate gusts by flexing and thus dumping excess wind, reducing heel. Crew can move about while underway, but not without being alert. This is particularly the case when sailing upwind.
Despite their flat bottoms and relatively high-placed ballast, the Norwalk Islands Sharpies are claimed to be self-righting. I have never felt remotely close to a knockdown in mine, even while carrying too much sail in high winds.
The mizzen is an excellent sail for maneuvering in the marina. After getting comfortable with how far the boat drifts, I rarely use the engine for anything but backing out of my slip. When returning, I drop the powerful main about 100 yards from the dock and then amble toward the slip under mizzen alone. The mizzen is easily doused while holding the tiller, and I do this about 10 to 40 yards from the slip, depending on the wind. We then glide into the dock, and I arrest the remaining motion by placing a hand on a piling.
Emily Woodruff
The aluminum centerboard and 600 lbs of interior lead ballast help the NIS 23 stand up in a breeze.
Overall, I rate the NIS23’s sailing performance as nothing short of thrilling on a beam reach or broad reach. She is fair upwind and strong on a run—as long as you have a stiff breeze. My favorite characteristics of the boat are its speed and the shallow draft that enables the exploration of marshes and flats.
I have a 6-hp outboard on a bracket off the stern, which is more than adequate. The boat doesn’t need more than half-throttle to reach hull speed, which is around 5.5 knots.
At anchor, the NIS23 is pleasant. I have so far spent about 45 nights on board and, while many have criticized sharpies for pounding at anchor, that has not been my experience. Its extremely shallow draft of just 8″ allows access to very protected anchorages inaccessible to deeper-draft boats. In my cruising grounds, marshes are abundant. My approach is to anchor just 50′ or so off the windward marshland or even in a narrow marsh creek.
One night while anchored off Cat Island, Mississippi, a large storm brought 45-knot winds. Despite my taking cover in a marsh creek, the winds whipped the boat back and forth at anchor all night, making sleep all but impossible. Around 3 a.m., I awoke, and while the wind roared, my berth was paradoxically motionless. Fearing that the anchor had dragged and the boat had been driven into the marsh, I peered out of the hatch. My headlamp illuminated black mud all around me. The wind had driven about 3′ of water out of the marsh and the boat was resting contentedly on its flat bottom. I slept well the rest of the night, and then had to wait about 8 hours for the water to come back.
Accommodations in the cabin are limited; I liken the experience of time spent in the cabin to a spacious, floating tent rather than a yacht. If your NIS 23 don’t have the curved-hatch option, which provides 5′ 11″ of headroom, don’t count on standing up. In the after part of the cabin, there are two full-length single berths; I removed part of the cabin’s forward bulkhead to allow for a V-berth for two more crewmembers. Kirby’s drawings have options for a similar arrangement of four berths as well as sleeping accommodations for two with open space for a galley and a head. I have three overhead lights and a ventilation fan powered by a solar panel/battery. For cooking, I bring along a Coleman stove and place it in front of the cabin hatch in the cockpit, which is a good arrangement even when it is raining. Even for a nine-day Gulf Coast cruise, there was plenty of space for provisions and enough sleeping area for two.
The Norwalk Islands Sharpie 23 is a simple, fast boat with exceptionally shallow draft. I bought mine after having done quite a bit of camp-cruising in a 16′ open boat, and while the NIS 23’s cabin is nothing fancy, it is quite nice to not have to worry about finding a campsite at the end of the day, just a protected spot of water.
Peter Sawyer is a general surgery resident in New Orleans, Louisiana. He learned to sail when he was 11 years old at Camp Sea Gull, a seafaring summer camp on the North Carolina coast. He has been at it ever since.
Norwalk Islands Sharpie 23 Particulars
[table]
Length/23′
Load waterline/18′ 9″
Beam/7′4″
Draft, board up /8″
Draft, board down/4′ 6″
Weight/1,540 lbs approx.
Sail area, main/150 sq ft
Sail area, mizzen/64 sq ft
Sail area, total/214 sq ft
Power, outboard/ 2 to 3.5 hp
[/table]
Plans for various arrangements for the NIS23 are available from Norwalk Islands Sharpie. Options include plans for a “from scratch” build, a precut “plywood only” kit, and an “everything you will ever need, including trailer” kit.
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!
After seeing a strip-built kayak being paddled many years ago, I started dreaming of building one for myself. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I found myself working from home with a little extra time on my hands: it was my opportunity to fulfill my dream, and I started looking seriously at companies that offer complete kits. I had little woodworking experience and wanted a basic beginner-friendly kit, as I had no interest in lofting, building from scratch, cutting lumber, milling strips, etc. I had dreamed of this for years, but strictly as daydreaming. The idea of building my own boat was intimidating, and I never thought I would have the time or skills to make the dream into a reality.
After spending many hours on the water over the last 15 years, I consider myself an experienced kayaker and knew I wanted a recreational boat for easy paddles on my local lake. I am a fair-weather paddler who does not look for whitewater adventures—just lazy days on the water with a sandwich and a few cold drinks. After comparing kayak kit packages and manufacturers, I decided on the 12′ 8″ Excursion model from Newfound Woodworks of Bristol, New Hampshire.
I had many questions about the build process, no prior working experience with epoxy and fiberglass, and was interested in building my first boat in a classroom setting, but when the pandemic hit, all in-person classes were canceled. I really wanted some hands-on experience before taking on the build, and the folks at Newfound, Alan Mann and Rose Woodyard, listened to my concerns and scheduled a day of one-on-one instruction with me. They shared techniques and tips as we worked with the materials, which gave me the confidence to tackle the project and was key in my decision-making process.
Photographs by and courtesy of the author
Built according to the instructions, the Excursion can weigh as little as 37 lbs. Extra fiberglass on the author’s kayak brought its weight up to 44, which is still easy for him to carry to the water’s edge and back.
A Newfound “Pre-Kit” arrived first with instructional DVDs that demonstrated and clearly explained the construction methods step by step; the DVDs proved to be invaluable.
The pre-milled cove-and-bead strips arrived in a 14′-long plywood shipping crate designed to be used as the box-beam stand during the build–a great way to save time compared to building one from scratch.
The Newfound Ladder-LOC Strongback system of brackets and forms was easy and straightforward to assemble—just center each form and square up. The forms are precision-cut from MDF (medium-density fiberboard) on a CNC machine and milled with a slot in the perimeter for clamps, so the boat is stripped without using staples. To me, the finished boat looks much nicer without staple holes.
I wanted full-length strips for appearance’s sake—there would be no joints on the finished boat—and to eliminate spending time to scarf-join every strip. I also ordered extra strips to cover anticipated mistakes. I purchased many of the tools and supplies that I needed from Newfound. Rose and Alan have simply been great folks to work with: always available by phone to discuss concerns, answer questions, offer great advice, and happy to share their knowledge and experience. They’re an invaluable resource for a novice builder.
With an overall length of 12′ 8″, the Excursion is not designed for a high top-end speed, but with its light weight it is quick to accelerate and carries satisfying speed.
For the most part, I stayed true to the Excursion design and did not modify the hull. I deepened the recess for the cockpit coaming by a couple of inches for ease of entry and exit. The cockpit is now large enough that I can bring my feet and legs out and recline in my seat with my feet up on the front deck and my head resting on a rolled towel on the rear deck just behind the cockpit. My foredeck is a bit more peaked than designed—an unintended amateur mistake on my part—but it made it a little roomier under the deck for my cooler bag and I can stretch my legs out. I used magnets in the hatch coaming and flush-mounted the hatch cover to minimize deck hardware and keep the deck as clean and open-looking as possible. The rear bulkhead is marine mahogany plywood, supplied with the kit, but I omitted the front bulkhead for extra legroom and open storage under the foredeck. I can add inflatable float bags when needed
The kit package includes a mini-cell seat bottom pad and a back band, which is mounted to the cockpit coaming, but I wanted a one-piece seat and minimal hardware. I researched various seats and back band combinations but did not find anything on the market that I really liked. However, Redfish Kayaks offers custom seats made from a few pieces of minicell foam glued together and shaped to fit. Its molded sides and good backrest eliminate the need for a separate back band and hip braces. I have not added thigh braces under the deck. The seat is comfortable to sit in for hours on the water and is easy to clean and maintain. It easily pops in and out of the kayak when I want to hose off and wipe down the boat after use.
While the standard Excursion kit includes a seat and back band, the author opted for a custom-made foam seat from Redfish Kayaks. The cockpit coaming will hold the optional Newfound Woodworks spray skirt securely in place.
I added several types of wood as accent and trim pieces, including a nice piece of curly maple plywood for the cockpit coaming, teak veneers for the hatch lip coaming, and Spanish cedar pieces for inlays that I decorated with high-voltage electrical-current burn patterns (see LAZY LIGHTNING). The bow stem is western red cedar and the stern stem is red oak.
With the Newfound Woodworks construction system, the strips are held to the molds with clamps rather than staples, so the finished kayak isn’t marred by speckled bands of staple holes.
The kit kayak as designed should weigh around 36 lbs, but with extra layers of ’glass on the hull bottom and stems, my finished boat is about 44 lbs.
I use my pickup truck to transport the Excursion and can load and offload it by myself, but it is easier to handle with someone to help. I have never had to portage over distances or obstacles, but the kayak is easy to balance on my shoulder and solo carries over short distances are no problem.
The 36″ × 17″ cockpit opening is large and the Excursion has a 24″ beam, making it easy to get in and out. The kayak is very stable and makes a good platform for fishing, photography, birdwatching…or just daydreaming and floating the afternoon away. The Excursion is fast and glides well; it’s a sports car compared to my 12′ 8″ rotomolded plastic kayak. It tracks nicely and handles a cross breeze well for a shorter boat. Newfound notes that the Excursion is “designed to be used in a recreational setting such as day trips on inland lakes and quiet water.” I would not choose to take it out in rough weather, but it does okay in a stiff breeze on the open water of my local lake (I have been out in swells and a couple of feet of chop, and the kayak rides nice and high).
The Excursion has a long cockpit, and paddling without a spray skirt is appropriate for the quiet waters the kayak is designed for. While it has good stability, in the event of a capsize, the large opening makes it easy to exit the cockpit.
I cannot speak to rolling, self-rescue, or wet exit as I have no experience with these maneuvers. As a 60-year-old man, I am strictly a lazy-day-on-the-water paddler and too old for rough water, rapids, or whitewater. More important, I don’t want to bang up my boat, so—no rocky streams.
The whole experience of building the Excursion was interesting, enjoyable, and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. The custom kit package enabled me, a complete novice, to build a beautiful recreational kayak that I am proud of and will be happy to paddle for years to come.
A Philadelphia kid at heart, Dave Feder discovered his love of water while spending childhood summers at the Jersey shore and as a young sailor in the U.S. Navy. He has been a recreational kayaker most of his adult life. An electrical engineer by profession, he also enjoys hiking and trail-walking with his dog and playing with his grandkids. In his spare time, he is an amateur woodworker. Building his own boat was a longtime dream.
During 1940 and 1941, the first two years of the German occupation of Norway during World War II, 21 small wooden boats set out across the North Sea to Great Britain. Those who attempted the dangerous voyage, known as Englandsfarere—England Sailors—had one goal in mind: to join the Allies in the fight against Nazi Germany. Over the course of this effort to liberate Norway, nearly 100 people in those 21 boats left from the Agder region in southern Norway. Eighteen of the boats arrived safely. Two boats, each with two men on board, disappeared, and one boat was captured by the Germans—all five who were on board were executed or died in captivity. These escapes were undertaken by heroic young men who put their lives on the line, but in the postwar years they received very little recognition.
More than eight decades later, Jarle Føreland wanted to re-create the North Sea crossing to acknowledge the Englandsfarere who risked all to join the Allied side in the struggle for peace and freedom in the Second World War. I joined him in this vision and became the project leader. Frode Stokkeland and Willy Pedersen were soon on board as crew members.
We would travel in FRI IV, a 22-year-old wooden motor launch, the third boat we had tested. The two previous boats, a 1934 model and a 1954 model, had both proved unreliable during sea trials. FRI IV is a Visterflo sjekte, built in the Østfold region of southeast Norway and powered with a Volvo Penta three-cylinder 18-hp marine diesel engine. It would be an appropriate boat, similar in age to the boats used during WWII. We carried out many sea trials, training to work as a crew in a small boat, getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of our equipment, and strengthening our confidence that we would succeed. Our plan was to follow the route and the story of Finn Narvesen, who fled with Finn Frodesen, Thorleiv Moe, and Hans Syvertsen in SWAN, a 22′ sjekte, from Kristiansand in Agder on September 21, 1940. We would carry Norway’s official postal flag as a sign that we had a letter from the Norwegian government on board.
Courtesy of the author
We left from Randesund, near where Finn Narvesen embarked in WWII. It was nice weather, and we were all excited to leave after four years of preparation. From left: Tony Teigland, Willy Pedersen, Jarle Føreland, and Frode Stokkeland
On Tuesday, April 12, 2022, at 9 p.m., the message we had been waiting for from Frode, our captain, came: “THE WEATHER WINDOW IS ACCEPTABLE. We leave at 2 p.m. tomorrow. Arrive at the agreed place with your luggage.” A few days earlier, we had prepared and readied FRI IV to depart from the same place near Kristiansand that Finn Narvesen had, which was described in the report he later wrote about his escape. A compass was the only navigation equipment he had; we had not only a compass but also AIS vessel tracking, VHF, GPS, an autopilot, and a satellite phone. For safety gear we had survival suits, a life raft, and an emergency beacon transmitter.
Before I left my house, I checked our document folder for the fourth time to make sure I had the letter from the Norwegian Minister of Defense to be delivered to Britain. Narvesen had smuggled maps of Norwegian airports, stolen from the Germans and very useful to Allied military forces. I filled my car with my luggage and food for the crossing. On my way to the boat, I stopped by the flower shop and collected the wreath we had ordered. It was beautiful, with roses and ribbons with the Norwegian colors. We would lay it midway in the North Sea, to commemorate those who made the crossing to fight with the Allies in World War II.
When I arrived at the rendezvous, Jarle was already there—he is always early. Willy and Frode arrived shortly afterward. We were quiet but excited. After four years of planning, organizing and training, it was happening.
We had a short chat to set the mood close to what Finn Narvesen and his crew felt in 1940 when they put their lives on the line. They had no weather forecast, no life jackets, and no communication. If they were seen by a German plane outside the legal zone along the southern coast of Norway, they would be reported and inevitably captured.
We concentrated on our tasks and exactly at 2 p.m., we got underway and set our course southwest along the coast. We traveled a nearshore route from Kristiansand headed for Lindesnes, Norway’s southernmost lighthouse.
Roger Siebert
.
Narvesen wrote in his report:
Norway is occupied, there are German patrol ships along the coast. Those we meet must assume that we are out fishing, we relax, acting that we have nothing to hide. When we see them, we must keep our course, we must not arouse suspicion. We pass German boats a few meters away, wave to the Nazis—our hearts racing—and the bag with the maps is ready to be sunk in the sea. It would reveal everything if we were stopped.
After about 2 hours, we stopped by the home of Ingrid Juell Moe in the village of Ny Hellesund on the island of Monsøya. She met us with her husband, daughter, and son-in-law, as well as two grandchildren. In November 1941, her uncle, Sven Moe, was the last known Englandsfarere to escape. She told us about his achievement, and of the silence in the postwar years about his fate during the war. After reaching Scotland, he trained as a radio telegraph operator, and in April 1945 the plane he was working aboard crashed on a mountaintop in Sweden. Ingrid, honoring us with Norwegian flags and wishing us good luck with tears in her eyes, was clearly moved by our adventure and the memories it rekindled.
At 6 o’clock in the evening it started to get dark. After 7 hours of motoring from Kristiansand we reached Lindesnes, and the wind was increasing to 15 to 20 knots. We turned on a course of 270 degrees west, navigated through the Norwegian Trench and out into the North Sea to settle on a direct course for Buckie in Scotland, some 260 sea miles away. The waves grew to 6′ to 9′. It was dark. We raced along at 6 knots. On the high seas, had we been trying to elude the Germans, this speed would have felt incredibly slow, like a snail on an open meadow with hungry seagulls circling.
We put on survival suits. We brought them in case something drastic should happen, and they were good and warm. We turned on the autopilot, which would make the trip more passive than I would have liked, but the crew democracy had spoken. The time was now 10:30 p.m. and we started the watch, four hours on, four hours off, changing on the hour. Jarle and Willy were one watch, Frode and I were the other. As Jarle and Willy started their first shift, Frode lay down between the engine box and the galley and I crawled into the forepeak.
There was more sea and wind now than what I had experienced in the many training trips we had done, and there were some sounds I had not heard before along with some abnormal vibration in the hull. Would the repair we did on the drive shaft and bearing hold? Was the propeller secure? The sounds came and went and sometimes it sounded as if the engine had stopped completely before it shook again. I was tired and restless but eventually fell asleep.
I was nudged at midnight for the change of watch. It felt like I’d been kicked in the face. My gums ached; I must have been gnashing my teeth as I slept, tense about everything that could go wrong. When I got out of the cabin, I heard the engine roaring like a lion and realized that everything was beautifully in order.
We were still in rough seas and the autopilot had stopped working so we steered manually by compass. As the boat’s electrical manager, I checked out the equipment failure and found that a fuse had blown. I replaced it with a new one, but there was still no response. On the autopilot’s cover I saw a patch of melted plastic. The actuator had burned and it was beyond repair. I felt relieved; finally, we can navigate more like the Englandsfarere crews did. There would be more work for us to keep on course, but we could get to know better how it was in 1940. Ingrid had said that her Uncle Sven stole jet fuel from the Germans and used it for his boat’s engine. While crossing the North Sea, he and his crew had to stop every hour to clean the carburetor. Our having to steer by hand and compass was a trifling inconvenience.
Tony Teigland
I was happy that the autopilot had destroyed itself so we had to steer manually as our predecessors had. During the night watch we used a red light to see the compass and maintain our night vision.
Frode and I steered through the darkness. There were still 3′ to 6′ waves from the southwest and the boat rolled from side to side, requiring constant work at the tiller to keep our course. We saw some vessels in the dark, set a new course, and managed to get clear of them with a good margin. The biggest threat to us was a collision with workboats or shipping containers that had fallen overboard from freighters and were floating at sea level. While these potential hazards kept us alert and on the lookout, it wasn’t like evading Germans warships in 1940 and ’41. Frode and I had an uneventful watch and at 4 o’clock it was time for us to rest again.
Tony Teigland
In a small boat you need to sleep where you can. Jarle and Frode had their spots between the engine and the galley where we prepared all the food and coffee.
I was nudged awake at 8 a.m. for hot coffee. I peed dark yellow; I hadn’t been drinking enough water. I was also nauseated, and my salivary glands were gushing; it helped to stare at the horizon.
It was Thursday, April 14. There were still some waves, but the wind had gone down a bit, to about 12 to 15 knots. A workboat appeared in the distance on a collision course. We made a dramatic change of course to indicate to the boat’s crew that we had seen them. The vessel, which we now recognized as a trawler, changed course, and we were on an intersecting course again. We changed course a second time and the same thing happened. I wondered how I would have felt if this had been a German ship that had discovered us. Our VHF came to life and a voice on the radio identified the approaching boat as SILLE MARIE, a trawler from Flekkerøya in Kristiansand. The crew had heard about our voyage on the news and wanted to get a close look at us and to wish us good luck on our journey.
Tony Teigland
Willy was a good chef and cooked us pancakes with bacon mixed in. This was our breakfast for two days, but after that the batter started to ferment.
We woke Jarle and Willy at noon, and Willy cooked pancakes and bacon. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing. I thought of those at home: my wife at work, my son competing in a bicycle race in Denmark, and my daughters visiting my mother in Spain. For the Englandsfarere, there could only be worry and fear for those they’d left behind. If their escape was discovered, families at home could be arrested and brutally interrogated by the Nazis as accessories to the crime committed by those who had left Norway without permission. Finn Narvesen’s brother Emil and his father Rolf had both been arrested in Norway, likely for that reason.
Marcus Karlsen
On the second day on the North Sea we were visited by SILLE MARIE from Kristiansand. Her crew had heard about us on the news and wanted to wish us a successful trip. One of the crewmen, Marcus Karlsen, had a drone and took this photo of our two boats. Another crewman told us that they often feel small at sea in their 120′ trawler
At 4 p.m., I crawled feet first from the forepeak and stuck my head out: the sun was still shining, the wind was calm, and the water in the middle of the North Sea was as smooth as oil. There wasn’t a gust of wind. It was the perfect time to honor our WWII heroes.
When we stopped the engine, our whole world fell completely quiet. The smell of salt water tingled in my nostrils. Jarle picked up the flower wreath, kneeled on the after deck, and said solemnly: “We will remember and honor the 321 people who did not succeed in the effort to escape from Norway, cross the North Sea, and reach Great Britain. They all had a desire to fight the Nazis. For courage, peace, and freedom. Never forget.” After he carefully cast the wreath into the North Sea, we were quiet for several minutes. The wreath stayed by the boat at rest on the sea. We quietly began to sing Norway’s national anthem “Ja vi elsker dette landet” (Yes, we love this land). Our singing went well for the first few lines, but then Jarle and I were suddenly quaking with laughter. Neither he nor I have a habit of not being serious when we should be, but we were tired and perhaps overwhelmed by the emotional weight of the ceremony or releasing the anxiety of the crossing and all the preparation that went into it.
Tony Teigland
The North Sea grew still for one of the highlights of the journey. Jarle held the wreath as we paid our respects to the young men who tried to escape to fight alongside the Allied forces. Not all survived the crossing, and for them we laid flowers on the sea.
We had stopped the engine after 28 hours of continuous operation and didn’t know if it would start again. We checked the oil and cooling water, and it looked good. The oil level was down by about half a pint, which was about right for the run we’d made. Jarle topped off the oil. Willy turned the ignition key to “glow” then to “start.” The engine turned over and ran well. We continued our crossing on smooth water, steering 270 degrees west.
Several of the Englandsfarere kept logbooks about their crossing of the North Sea, and in one of them was described a traditional canned meal that we had decided to repeat: erter, kjøtt, og flesk (peas, pork, and beef).
We heated two cans over the galley stove, and it tasted great—hot, salty, and filling. After dinner the dishwashing was easy at 6 knots: Jarle just held the saucepan in the water for a few seconds and it was clean! The sloshing created by the rolling and pitching boat provided effective wash and rinse cycles.
Frode Stokkeland
We had worn our survival suits since we went offshore. They were warm and if an emergency should arise, the zipper was the only thing to fix before entering the water. I’m at the helm, enjoying the view across the water.
It was Thursday night, and I was on watch. The sea was still calm, with only small ripples disturbing the water. Frode was seasick and had thrown up until there was nothing left. He sat on the port side bench with his eyes closed. It was quiet and dark. While I was at the tiller, looking out over the starboard side, a dim shape slipped up from the water, almost within arm’s reach. Only the starlight and moonlight illuminated the black water. What I then recognized as a dorsal fin broke the sea surface and disappeared again. Then another. Two dolphins were following us. I called Frode. He looked across the water with me for a moment, then retched over the side.
Soon after, scattered lights marked the line of the horizon in the darkness beyond the bow. We were about halfway across the North Sea. At first, I thought the lights were workboats that we’d have to watch closely, but as we drew closer, the lights appeared to be stationary—oil-drilling platforms. Their lights worked as well as any landmark and made it easier to stay on our course without staring constantly at the compass. It took a couple of hours to get close enough to see the lights were flares of burning natural gas.
Tony Teigland
Willy peeked out from the forepeak where he and I had our resting place. Taped to the bulkhead to the right of the companionway is a photograph of the Norwegian royals, King Harald and Queen Sonja.
Jarle woke up at 4 a.m. to a cool and humid nascent Friday morning, and I could tell that we were all getting tired and a bit irritable. Jarle insisted it was time to refuel FRI IV and we had to do it now. He was worried that without enough fuel in the tank, the high seas would cause the fuel line to take in air and the resulting airlock would cause the diesel to shut down and refuse to restart. I was getting a little annoyed but kept my peace and let it go. Jarle is a man I would trust with my life, so I thought it best to follow his instructions.
Friday went slowly. More huge buildings on more oil platforms appeared in the middle of the sea and many hours passed before we got close to them. We passed more platforms on the North Sea’s British shelf and kept our course toward Buckie.
Tony Teigland
Frode steered FRI IV around the oil platforms. In the distance they didn’t look so big, but when we got near them they were as huge as skyscrapers. Visible from miles away, the platforms provided welcome relief from holding the course by staring at the compass.
I called Connie, our weather assistant in Norway, on the satellite phone to get the weather forecast for the last leg to Scotland. She reported that an increase in wind up to 23 knots and waves 3′ to 6′. Wind south-southeast and rain. We calculated an arrival in Buckie around 11 a.m. Saturday. It was 10 am and we had about 25 hours left to go.
It must have been in this area that Finn Narvesen observed the first contact mines floating in the water. The British had laid them out around the coast as a defense against German warships. It would have been the end of the trip for any of the Englandsfarere if they had hit one of them. Most of the crews stopped in this area and waited for daylight to be extra-sharp while navigating the last hours to the mainland.
At 5 p.m. on Friday, the wind increased. None of us had ever been at sea for so long without seeing land. As the waves grew bigger our senses sharpened and the work at the helm to keep a steady course intensified.
At the 8 p.m. watch change we got a call on VHF from an operator on an oil platform who told us to change course. He wanted us to stay a good distance from the platform. After we veered away, we paused to refill the fuel tank and, with the boat rocking, we spilled a good deal of diesel into the boat. It was as slippery as soap on the cockpit sole. When the boat heeled sharply with a wave on the beam, Jarle slipped and landed on his side on the bench. He gave a long groan and sat on the sole for a while to check for injuries. He ached but had no broken ribs. After three-quarters of an hour, the platform operator called again to say we could resume our course. I lay down and listened to the waves crashing against the sides. It sounded like the sea wanted to break through the hull just 1″ from my head, but the boat was solid and built for this. And we were not the first to have sailed a small boat here. I could relax and fall asleep.
Frode and I went on duty again at midnight. The platforms were behind us, and it was completely dark. The sea was still rough and Frode continued to vomit. I was starting to get tired and to feel out of sorts. Sitting at the helm and steering by the compass my thoughts drifted aimlessly, and I found myself getting annoyed that some of the equipment we had agreed to bring wasn’t on board when we started the journey. We didn’t need them now and we had picked up the missing supplies on the way out of Kristiansand, but I was feeling irritated anyway. Frode was in a better state of mind and took over the steering.
I looked ahead over the bow and saw a light. It had to be the lighthouse at Peterhead. A feeling of relief swept over me upon seeing that first glimmer of Scotland. I couldn’t imagine what the Englandsfarere had felt as they finished their crossing of the North Sea and saw that Great Britain was within reach. The four of us had reached our goal, but those who had fled in the 1940s had only completed the first step in their fight against the occupation of Norway to secure peace and freedom.
Tony Teigland
It was an unforgettable feeling to see the lights of villages near Peterhead, the easternmost point of the Scottish mainland.
At 4 a.m. we awoke Jarle and Willy, and we were all in a good mood despite the rough seas and strong winds. We saw light from towns on land. I took a 1-hour rest and woke up suddenly when the bow slammed into a wave. The seas had become stronger and were coming from straight ahead now that we were northwest of the mainland. In the forepeak I was flying up and down like a piston. A helmet and a mouthguard would have been good to have. Trying to sleep was pointless, so I got up in the gray light and joined the others.
The boat hit hard against the waves, so we slowed down to 4 knots and set the course closer to land. The clouds burst open, the sun broke through, and we were embraced by warm spring air smelling of land. It was only 7:15 a.m. and we would be in Buckie by 11 a.m.
Tony Teigland
The sun broke through and gave us perfect conditions for our final approach to Buckie. Behind Jarle, already changed into his wool sweater, rise the cliffs along the Moray Firth shore.
The sea in the Moray Firth was quiet, and the sun warming. With a mile left before reaching Buckie we landed on a sandy beach in a small cove and Jarle and I were the first to jump ashore, greatly relieved to be on land again.
We took the canopy off the boat and changed into wool sweaters, the kind many Norwegians wore in the 1940s and still do. We were excited about reaching Buckie and knew we would be formally received there, but not how. At 10:45 a.m., RNLI 17-37, the 56′ Royal National Lifeboat Institution search-and-rescue vessel stationed in Buckie showed up and escorted us the last nautical mile to the harbor. On the way in we heard bagpipes, a dream come true. There were two pipers in their beautiful kilts on the pier, and lots of people—at least 100—had come to welcome us, bearing Norwegian and Scottish flags. Many were wearing wool sweaters like the ones we had on. Numerous residents of Buckie are descendants of Englandsfarere who established themselves in Buckie during the war. They kept their Norwegian traditions, and the town became known as Little Norway.
Courtesy of the author
At Buckie, RNLI 17-37, our escort to the harbor, stood by as we faced a quay crowded with people gathered to welcome us. From left: Frode Stokkeland, Jarle Føreland, Tony Teigland, and Willy Pedersen.
Some even came with photos and newspaper clippings saved by their fathers and families during the war and in the postwar years. We were overwhelmed by this warm reception. I was led to meet Frances McKay, Deputy Lord Lieutenant, a representative of Her Majesty The Queen. Frances gave me a letter on behalf of The Queen, and I read aloud the letter we brought from the Minister of Defence in Norway, Odd Roger Enoksen. I handed it to Frances together with the Norwegian Post Flag and a can of erter, kjøtt og flesk. Still on my sea legs I swayed as if drunk. The bagpipes played again, and we marched to a food truck for food and drink.
After the reception we moored the boat and were driven to the Kintrae B & B. The building served as the Norwegian consulate during the war and was visited by King Haakon VII during the war. Here, too, we were warmly received and were accommodated in a four-bed room.
On Sunday morning, we went down to check on our boat and found her afloat a dozen feet below the quay. We were told that the tide ranges through 14′ here and that the harbormaster had made sure that her docklines were eased during the night, saving FRI IV from major damage.
Finn Narvesen did not end up in Buckie and we intended to continue following in his wake to Aberdeen—another 15 hours of motoring. At 9.30 a.m. we set our course east, back along the Moray Firth coast, past bird cliffs and green cliffs that rise straight up from the sea. At the coastal town of Banff, we dropped Frode off to return to Norway before us. Jarle was appointed to replace him as our new captain.
As we turned south and approached Peterhead, we passed a 9-mile-long sand beach running the length of a cusped coastline. The sea and the wind picked up and we felt the tidal current working against us as FRI IV went from 6 knots to 2.5 knots under the same engine power. The conditions were demanding to manage, but we had gained good experience with the boat. South of the headland, a sandy shore stretched out along an 11-mile-long arc, which led us to Aberdeen.
We arrived in the dark at 12:15 a.m. Large- and medium-sized ships were on their way in and out of the harbor, while others were swaying on their moorings and waiting. There were red, green, and white lights everywhere. We called the port on VHF and were told to wait. We steered away from the traffic and found a quiet spot to idle. In 1940, Narvesen had a bit of a wait, too: his boat ran out of gas just outside Aberdeen Harbor and he was eventually brought in by the British Coastguard.
Our call to proceed came at 12:45 a.m., and we motored into the harbor and moored alongside the pier of Alber Quay. It was low tide, and we scaled a ladder 12′ up to the quay.
Willy disembarked with his gear and took a taxi to the airport while Jarle and I stayed in the boat that night. In the morning we prepared FRI IV to be shipped back to Norway.
Tony Teigland
FRI IV had been well mannered for the entire crossing, and here in Aberdeen Harbor, she waits to be shipped back home to Norway.
After Finn Narvesen had arrived in Scotland, he enlisted as a seaman and participated in several high-risk convoys with supplies for the Allies throughout the rest of the war years. Frode, Jarle, Willy, and I all returned to Norway to enjoy the peace and freedom that Englandsfarere like Finn fought for.
Tony Teigland, 55, lives in Kristiansand in southern Norway where he is a social worker working with people who struggle with drug addiction. He loves the sea and is an enthusiastic kayaker and open-water swimmer. He also enjoys waterskiing and scuba diving. In 2017, the North Sea project introduced him to wooden boats.
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.
Before I took to small-boat cruising in 1980, I did a lot of backpacking and was acutely aware of the weight of everything I had to carry. The longer I planned to stay out on the trail, the more food I needed to pack and the lighter it had to be. Ready-made backpacking meals in the ’70s were expensive and not very interesting, which is putting it mildly for TVP (textured vegetable protein), then a popular camp staple.
Fortunately, I could instead carry real food, thanks to the dehydrator my mother used to preserve some of the fruit and vegetables we grew in our backyard garden. For backpacking, I dried a lot of fruit, especially bananas, and my mother’s black-bean soup, which instantly came back to life with a bit of hot water.
Photographs by the author
Black bean soup—made of canned black beans, boxed vegetable broth, diced onions, minced garlic, cumin, salt, and pepper—takes 15 minutes to make, 30 minutes to cook, and a few hours to dry. Puréed and spread on parchment paper, it dries feather-light and is just as tasty when reconstituted.
A food processor makes quick work of pulverizing dried soup.
The smaller the particles, the quicker they can rehydrate.
Basmati rice takes about 5 minutes to rehydrate and the black-bean soup reconstitutes almost instantly. I chopped some dried onion and added it to the mix without rehydrating. The rice-and-bean pairing adds protein to the diet.
For cruising, the boat takes the load off my back, so I’m not concerned about the weight of the food I carry aboard, but there are many soft foods such as tomatoes, bananas, and strawberries, that don’t travel well even when packed in rigid containers to protect them. Those containers take up a lot of space, even when they’re empty, while resealable plastic bags filled with dehydrated food require minimal space and take up progressively less room as the contents are consumed.
A 16-oz jar of salsa can be spread out on a single parchment-covered rack. Dried, it becomes leather-like and can be reconstituted with lukewarm water in about 10 minutes, faster with hot water. It’s a rather tasty snack, albeit a bit salty, when eaten dry.
To dry foods that are largely liquid—soups, salsa, and pasta sauce—spread them on a sheet of parchment baking paper placed on the dehydrator’s racks. Metal cans and glass jars can be left at home and the dried contents consumed over the course of several days without requiring refrigeration. For the sake of the environment, use compostable unbleached parchment paper. The paper can be used repeatedly, so one roll will last for a long time. It doesn’t transfer flavors from one drying to the next, so you don’t need to keep track of what each sheet was used for.
An entire 25.5-oz jar of pasta sauce takes two racks to dry and the leather it produces folds to fit easily in a small resealable bag.
A bit of water and about 5 minutes on the stove is all it takes to turn these dehydrated ingredients—diced onion, tomato slices, precooked elbow macaroni, and pasta-sauce leather—into dinner.
Parchment paper works for rice and quinoa, too. When those grains have been cooked and dehydrated at home, they require shorter cooking times and use less camp stove fuel when reconstituted during a cruise. To rehydrate rice, for example, bring 1 cup of water to a boil, add 2/3 cup dehydrated rice, turn the stove off, and let the pot sit, covered, for 10 to 15 minutes while the rice absorbs the water. You can turn the stove on for a short while before eating to heat the rice to your preference.
Cooked quinoa dehydrates well on parchment paper. Fully dried, it makes a very crunchy snack.
If you don’t have a food processor for breaking up dehydrated food, a rolling pin works well. Here it’s breaking clumps of basmati rice into individual grains.
Some foods can be quite sticky and difficult to remove from the dehydrator’s trays. Watermelon, which becomes a delicious taffy-like candy when dehydrated, adheres to steel racks. A stiff-bristled fingernail brush (never used for fingernails) can push food off from the back side of the rack. Parchment paper can slow the drying a bit, but it makes it easier to remove sticky food.
If you find that some foods stick to the racks and are difficult to pry loose, a stiff-bristled brush can press them off from the back side of the rack. After this first try with 1/4″ slices of watermelon, I dried the next batch on parchment paper which made it easy to remove.
Dehydrators can also be used for meat—whether beef, chicken or fish—but in the form of jerky. I haven’t yet explored that possibility. There are many books devoted to dehydrating, with instructions and recipes for making different kinds of jerky and drying foods of all kinds.
A sampling of dehydrator projects, from left to right, top to bottom: pasta sauce, salsa, strawberries, onions, homemade black-bean soup, deli Bombay potato soup, Roma tomatoes, bananas, watermelon, croutons, lemons, apple.
There are many makes and models of food dehydrators on the market with prices starting as low as $35. The less expensive ones are made of plastic, with many using BPA-free materials for the food trays. I prefer a stainless-steel type for durability and to minimize my use of plastics. The Cosori 267 I bought has a digital control panel for setting the temperature from 95 to 165 degrees F, and the time up to 48 hours. It has an automatic shut-off to prevent the unit from overheating.
A bonus to dehydrating foods during the cooler months: the dehydrator produces heat, and rather than let that go to waste, I keep it in my study rather than in the kitchen. When I’m at work at my desk, the dehydrator can take the chill off the room, and I don’t need to use a space heater. The only sound is the rush of air moving through the unit, a pleasant whisper of white noise that is not at all distracting.
The 600-watt Cosori dehydrator has six stainless-steel racks and works quietly at 48dB, the range of average room noise. If my house is cold, I’ll move the dehydrator into the study to take the chill off while I work and make it easy to grab an occasional bite to eat.
Dehydrating food will add some time to your preparations for a cruise, but it’s well worth the effort. Some foods, like black-bean soup, are every bit as good when reconstituted and others, like watermelon, are transformed and intensified by dehydrating. And you can save food that might otherwise go to waste languishing in the kitchen.
The banana bread I make with dates and walnuts turns into biscotti when dehydrated. It needed chocolate (of course) and I found I could warm semi-sweet chocolate chips in the microwave for 90 seconds, then apply the melted chocolate with a spatula. A half hour in the refrigerator cools and dries it.
Drying food has a long history, and the possibilities are virtually endless. Turning banana bread into biscotti was a delightful discovery; I’ll do that often, whether I take the biscotti cruising or enjoy it at home.
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.
We are building a Joel White 7′ 7″ Nutshell Pram and will rig it with a 37-sq-ft lug main. We ordered the Nutshell lugsail kit from Sailrite, pressed Skipper’s sewing skills into service for the construction, and are very pleased with the result.
The kit comes with nine pages of instructions, five precut sail panels and six sets of corner and reef reinforcements pre-cut from 4-oz Dacron. Also included in the kit are telltales, a Sailrite logo sticker, spur grommets, a roll of 1/4″ Seamstick double-sided adhesive basting tape, V-69 UV-resistant polyester thread, and 3″ non-adhesive Dacron tape. All the materials were well packaged, and shipping was prompt. When we had questions along the way, Sailrite’s crew and sailmaker were very responsive to our phone calls and emails.
The sail panels are computer plotted with seam lines, hem lines, and reefpoint placement. The sides of each panel are curved to different degrees, so when they are sewn to the 1/2″ marked on the cloth, this broadseaming, as it’s called, helps give the sail its “belly,” and together with the curves in the sail’s perimeter of the sail, create a wonderful three-dimensional aerodynamic shape for driving power.
Photographs by the authors
The main panels in the sail are cut with a curve along one edge so that the seams will give the sails a three-dimensional curve. While the seams joining the panels are uniform in width, the technique is called broadseaming, a holdover from the times when panels had straight edges and the curves were produced by making the seams broader as they approached the sail edges.
Armed with a basic home sewing machine, scissors, and a #2 spur-grommet die set, Skipper was able to assemble the sail in just a few hours (even with my “help”). We used Skipper’s home-sewing Janome machine instead of her Sailrite LSZ-1 walking-foot machine, to validate Sailrite’s assertion that the kit can be assembled with a home sewing machine. A zigzag stitch 3/16″ wide and long is used throughout. The seams between panels get two rows of stitching, each 1/8″ from the nearer edge. If your sewing machine cannot stitch zigzag, the Sailrite instructions say those panel seams get three rows of straight stitching.
Double-sided basting tape holds separate sailcloth pieces together and secures folded edges for sewing. Tearing the tape instead of cutting it with scissors makes it easier to separate the tape from its backing. With a bit of practice you can snap the backing and stretch the tape to make a small tab you can pull.
The corner patches are three layers thick and, when the double hems for the leech and luff are folded and sewn, the corners have a total of six layers to sew through. A light-duty machine will work its way through the layers—a little help with the hand wheel may be required—and extra care must be taken to advance the sailcloth under the presser foot to get an evenly spaced stitch. If you have a heavier-duty machine with a walking presser foot, like Sailrite’s LSZ-1, it controls the slippery sailcloth for you.
The 2″ squares for the optional reefpoint patches must be cut by hand using sharp scissors. The Dacron sailcloth is treated with resins that minimize if not eliminate fraying, and edges don’t need to be cut with a hot knife. The precut pieces from Sailrite are cut with a sharp rotary cutter on a computer-controlled plotter.
Zigzag is the traditional machine stitch for sails. Most home sewing machines have straight and zigzag settings as the most basic selections, but if your machine does only straight stitches, modern Dacron sailcloth in Sailrite kits is well stabilized with resins so that whatever stretch might occur in a small sail is not likely to break the stitching.
The instructions explain the markings on the sail and the sequence of construction. Sailrite has done a good job with the assembly sequence of the five panels and the reefpoint, peak, clew, tack, and throat patches to minimize the number of times that large amounts of sailcloth must be rolled up to run through the sewing machine’s throat, which can be a challenge on a small machine. After the five panels and all of patches are sewn together, the leech and foot are folded twice and sewn with a double hem to reinforce the perimeter and to cover and protect the cut edges of the cloth and lock the ends of the seam stitching. The head and luff are not hemmed but have the Dacron tape folded and sewn over the edges to cover them and serve as a reinforcement for grommets. The brass spur grommets included with the kit provide extra grip on the sailcloth.
The Nutshell pram has not yet left the shop, but with the spars roughed out, the finished sail can show its curves.
The finished sail is laced to the yard and mast, and the sail is set loose-footed on the boom. The vertical seams between the sail panels give the sail a classic look, and the shape will provide good performance for the small pram.
Audrey and Kent Lewis mess about in the Tidewater Region of Virginia, and look forward to the launch of their mighty pram, EXCUSE ME. Their adventures are logged at www.smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com.
The Nutshell sail kit in white Dacron costs $169.90. It is also available in cream ($289.20) and tanbark ($295.20). Sailrite offers sail kits for a wide array of boats as well as fabric, hardware, and sewing machines. If a sail kit is listed as “Out of Stock,” it is still available, though perhaps with some substitutions of materials; call or email Sailrite for further information.
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.
If you ever pack more than you could possibly need for a cruise, you might say that you have everything but the kitchen sink, which is a good reminder of the one thing you don’t have: a kitchen sink. None of my boats have a built-in galley, so instead I have two well-appointed galley boxes, a compact one for solo travel, and a larger one to accommodate cooking for a crew. They each hold cookware, tableware (including a tablecloth), and a stove and its fuel, but while both are equipped with dish soap and a scrubby sponge, neither has had room for a sink for dishwashing. I’ve used a collapsible bucket for doing the dishes, but it’s not well suited to the task. It is awkwardly deep and awkward to work in, and even when it’s collapsed, it still has the same broad footprint and takes up valuable storage space.
When I happened upon Ortlieb’s 10-liter Folding Bowl at one of the Seattle marine hardware stores, I knew I’d found a better sink. (Ortlieb’s original name for it in German, is faltschüssel, folding bowl, but a better term for it would be from waschschüssel, washbasin or sink. I’ll refer to it as a sink.) The sink is made of PVC-coated polyester fabric with 1/2″-wide seams bonded by high-frequency welding, an electrical process that works in the same way a microwave does: it creates heat internally by vibrating molecules, so there is very little deformation of the material on the outside. The seam connecting the bottom to the sides is rounded at the corners, which will add to the life of the Folding Bowl by eliminating sharp points that become focal points of wear. Four semi-rigid rods set in sleeves at the top hold the sink open when it is in use. The 10L size has an opening 11-1/2″ square and is 5-1/2″ deep. The corners are flexible and allow the sink to be folded into a compact package—held snugly together by its webbing handles—that weighs less than 9 ounces.
Photographs by the author
Folded up, the sink takes up very little space and fits nicely above the stove in the smaller of my galley boxes. It can even be carried in a pants pocket.
The sink is a good size for dishwashing at camp or at anchor and makes the job much tidier. I’ve often used my cookpot as a sink, but it is too small to hold anything and soapy water gets all over the place, adding to the post-meal cleanup. The 10-L sink neatly contains the mess. If you cook ashore over a campfire, It can carry just over 3 gallons of water when you’re ready to extinguish the fire. The 10 L/2.6-gal rating is for the sink when set on a flat surface; when carried, the bottom adds capacity by turning from flat to rounded. A full load of water weighs 27 lbs, and the handles are just long enough to make it possible to carry that load with one hand.
The Ortlieb Folding Bowl is just right for washing dishes. I can wash them with soapy water in a cook pot, set them aside in the sink, and then rinse them. It’s very tidy and I don’t get water all over the seating areas.
On board, the Folding Bowl can help keep the boat tidy by providing a place for muddy footwear or a dripping anchor rode. Ashore, it can also serve well for foraging—I like to gather nettles in the spring and blackberries in the late summer. Hand-washing laundry is an option, too, though I don’t ever care much how dirty my clothes get while cruising.
The two webbing handles are just long enough to carry the sink, like a bucket, with one hand.
Now, when I pack for a cruise and look at the mountain of gear it takes to do even a three-day cruise, I can take some satisfaction in knowing that I’ve got everything and the kitchen sink.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Magazine.
The Folding Bowl comes in four sizes: 5-, 10-, 20-, and 50-liter. Ortlieb is based in Germany and has retailers around the world, particularly outdoor stores and bicycle stores. I purchased the 10L from Fisheries Supplies in Seattle for $36.
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Ernest Pattillo was born into a corn-milling family in Tallassee, Alabama, about 30 or so miles from Montgomery, the state capital. The mill and the creek running by it offered everything a boy could want: scrap lumber, nails, hammers, and saws; turtles, catfish, and swimming.
In the mid-1950s, when Ernest was 10 years old, he and his cousin Alton, mindful of summer’s passing, wanted to do something exciting before school started. The creek suggested a boat, and the cast-offs littering the mill suggested building one. They started with a bent and rusted sheet of corrugated metal roofing and a 2×4 bristling with old nails. The boys pulled nails and sawed off two lengths of 2×4 for stems. After they folded the ends of the roofing around the stems and nailed them home, they applied tar to seal the gaps there and the buckshot holes everywhere else. The canoe was only 5′ long and could only hold one of them, so they built a second.
When the cousins got their canoes to the creek, they quickly realized they would have to scale back their dreams for the first expedition. The canoes were unstable and had barely an inch of freeboard. They only had their hands for paddling and had to reach carefully over the sharp edges of the roofing to keep from cutting their armpits. Ernest and Alton used the canoes until their youthful enthusiasm took them in other directions.
Roughly 37 years went by before Ernest seriously considered building another boat. An article by Mac McCarthy in the May/June 1991 issue of WoodenBoat was an illustrated guide to the construction of a strip-built version of Henry Rushton’s Wee Lassie double-paddle canoe. The article included Rushton’s lines for a 10′ 5-3/4″ by 27″ canoe. The drawings on the magazine page were small and without offsets but they were enough to inspire Ernest to take measurements from the picture and stretch the canoe to build a 12′ version.
Ernest stripped his Wee Lassie with fir, gave it a sturdy sheathing of fiberglass, and wound up with a canoe that looked good but was “heavy as lead.” When he launched it for the first time, he got aboard gingerly and was surprised and alarmed when his wife-to-be, Megan, “plopped herself in right behind me. That scared me, as I had no idea if it would even float, much less carry two. But it did, and we paddled upriver and down on the Coosa River, right here in central Alabama.”
Ernest never grew to feel at ease in the canoe, even though it was a significant improvement on his first canoe with its nonexistent freeboard and sharp, rusty gunwale. He put it up for sale and it went quickly.
Ernest and Megan eventually married, settled down, and before long the urge to build another boat struck again. Ernest thought his son from his first marriage might enjoy having a boat for fishing. He read up on marine design, “understood some of it,” and drew up a 12′ flat-bottomed plywood skiff. It looked good, kept the water out, and made good speed with an electric trolling motor. His son was pleased to have it but had no place to store it out of the weather. The boat moldered away. “Sometimes,” Ernest sighed, “all the work in the world seems to be for naught.”
His fourth boat fared better, though it might not truly qualify as a boat because it never got wet. A wealthy stockbroker had heard that Ernest had built a canoe and commissioned him to build one to keep at his lakeside cabin. Ernest studied Mac McCarthy’s book to expand his strip-building knowledge and put his best work into the canoe. When the customer picked it up, he was delighted with the beautiful colors of the western red cedar strips, the mahogany sheer, and the woven cane seat. A few weeks later, he sent a picture to Ernest, showing the canoe, forever high and dry, hanging upside down from the 30′-high living room ceiling of his “cabin” mansion.
Ernest’s fifth boat was another flat-bottomed fishing boat of his own design. It was a 15-footer for a 25-hp outboard. He built the boat to last: 1/2″ plywood on oak frames, fiberglassed inside and out, and painted with baby-blue epoxy paint. It looked great and would last for decades, even if left out in the weather. After launching it, Ernest went fishing a few times and decided to build casting decks for it. Before he finished the decks and had a chance to install them, a storm rushed through and blew a neighbor’s towering pine tree down. It fell across the fence and smashed across the boat from gunwale to gunwale. “It was ruined. I gave it away. I guess it could be made to still float, but I was practically in tears when they hauled it away. And it really killed me when the guy just dragged it on the concrete driveway as he was loading it.”
Photographs by and courtesy of Ernest Pattillo
Ernest drew his runabout as a scale drawing and took careful measurements to scale up to the 14′ boat. A bit of tumblehome at the stern would provide a distinctive touch.
Ernest says that his sixth boat, a 14′ inboard electric cruiser, was his last. He drew a rough plan for a flat-bottomed boat with flat, nearly plumb sides, and tightly radiused chines. He set up closely spaced 3⁄4″×1″ white-oak frames, half-lapped at the chines, and prepared for strip planking.
The white-oak frames were supported by 2×2s screwed to the strongback.
He could get cypress for the 1⁄4″-thick strips from a bandsaw mill not far from his home. He did the bead-and-cove milling on the strips himself and set up a low-angle sanding jig on his standing belt sander to cut the scarfs. After ’glassing and painting the finished hull’s exterior, Ernest flipped the boat right-side up and outfitted the boat with bow and stern decks, bass-boat seats, and a trolling motor.
The cypress strips were light and easily worked. The flat sides and bottom might have been more quickly worked with plywood—yet boatbuilding is not always a means to an end, but often so pleasing a way to spend time that there’s no need to take the shortest path to finishing.
With the strip-planking finished, Ernest applied some fairing compound, a keel, and fiberglass sheathing.
With the exterior painted, the hull could be righted and set outside for a good view before work on the interior began.
Rather than clamp the motor on the transom, he removed the telescoping motor control from the shaft and installed the motor beneath the hull. The twist-grip throttle went forward and to the right of the starboard seat. A mahogany wheel is connected by cables to a tiller on the motor shaft.
Ernest used mahogany for the decks and the inwales. The port inwale lies in the boat ready to be set in the notches at the tops of the frames. He was “really pleased not only with their appearance but the strength the inwales added.” In the stern, visible between the seat backs as a black upright, is a tube sized to fit the trolling motor shaft. It’s welded to a steel plate that’s bolted to several frames. Several O-rings keep the water out, and the top of the tube is well above the waterline.
With the interior only partially complete, Ernest and his friend Jon took the boat out for an early sea trial. There would be an insulated box between the seats for cold drinks, and the trolling motor’s shaft has not yet been cut to its finished length.
Ernest and Megan enjoyed a brief outing on the boat’s first time afloat. The transom is adorned with MEGOLA, a pet name he has for Megan.
With MEGOLA finally finished, Ernest took his grandkids out for a ride.
The boat was christened MEGOLA, one of Ernest’s pet names for Megan. The two of them have enjoyed the boat, and it has been popular with their friends and grandchildren. But now, at 78, Ernest says, “I’m getting a little old to get in and out of it.” When MEGOLA goes to someone else, Ernest will be without a boat. But all of his work will not be for naught. Every boat he ever built will always be his wherever it is and, with the memories he created along with them, Ernest will never be boatless.
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 readers.
If ever there was a toy for big boys (and girls), the Goliath mini-tug is it. While some boats of this type are impractical, the Goliath, with an 18′ LOA and an 8’2″ beam and a draft of 2′ 9″, promises enough room for short cruises and excellent stability for a comfortable ride.
As with most mini-tugs, the Goliath is a character boat and is not intended for use as a true working tug. It does not have the agility and strength for corralling larger boats, and it does not have superior towing ability. The Goliath is made for having fun.
I have always found mini-tugs to be both fascinating and curious. For me, they bring childhood books such as Little Toot and Scuffy the Tugboat to life—and I love that. A lot of mini-tug owners share this desire to capture a childhood fancy. Yet, often the finished boats of this type seem to be too small for their owners; a man at the helm can look oversized and out-of-place, like a circus bear riding a tricycle. Caricature overwhelms usefulness. But that isn’t the case with the Goliath, a Ken Hankinson design now carried by Glen-L. While an attention-grabber on the water, she also earns her keep as a family boat.
Hankinson designed a stable of well-regarded powerboats during his 22-year career (1965–1987). His boats remain popular, particularly among hobbyist builders, who appreciate his well-detailed plans.
On a brisk but sunny afternoon in late spring, I boarded ANDIAMO (Italian for “Let’s go!”) with owners, Tom and Connie Hammermeister, as they launched her near their home in midcoast Maine. The Hammermeisters chose to hire their local hauler for the job of transporting the boat from storage to shore, but the Goliath can be successfully trailered behind a large pickup or SUV.
ANDIAMO is a hefty boat, displacing about 3,200 lbs. She feels solid underfoot and recovers quickly from rolling—even the heavy rolling from the walls of water that peel off the sterns of nearby lobsterboats. She can attain 51⁄2 knots but feels most comfortable underway with her diesel rumbling along at about 3 knots.
Tom, an accomplished hobbyist boatbuilder, took some well-thought-out liberties with the design but stuck to the plan through most of the construction. The hull is plywood over sawn frames as per the plans.
In building the bottom, Tom used plywood near the stem, and then, where that piece leaves off (about a foot or so aft of the stem), he cold-molded the hull down to the amidships area to accommodate the compound curvature of the bottom in that section. He then finished the bottom using plywood from amidships on aft. (Boatbuilder Harry Bryan explains a similar method in WoodenBoat No. 217.) The hull has a hard chine and the topsides are also plywood. Once the wood was fastened in place, the hull was sheathed, inside and out, in fiberglass cloth and epoxy.
Goliath is built in “traditional” plywood construction, which is to say that the topside and bottom panels are joined by chine logs, and permanent transverse frames support those panels.
Then, departing from the plan, Tom redesigned the cockpit coaming to mimic the graceful curve of the stern. This required some judicious laminating, but the result is spectacular. Tom also made some clever additions inside the cockpit. First, he reconfigured the engine box for better access to the boat’s Yanmar 3GM30 (27-hp) diesel. Next, he built two extra boxes at this same height and width. They are placed in a row adjacent to the engine box, reaching aft into the open air of the cockpit and giving quick and easy access to the fuel tank and seat cushions; the boxes double as seating for guests. I think this is a good idea for this boat. It doesn’t crowd the cockpit in any way and it creates a comfortable, central place for several passengers to gather or for one to stretch out and enjoy the ride. Although standing is the preferred position for steering ANDIAMO, Tom built and installed a modest fold-up seat in case the helmsman wishes to sit down.
Steering is velvety smooth and responsive but without wandering. The plans aren’t specific about the steering, so Tom installed a Teleflex system, which includes a hydraulic arm with two-axis articulation that slows recovery and reduces wandering. While it is one of the boat’s more expensive components, it is worth it for the added comfort it provides.
The Goliath featured here, ANDIAMO, is powered by a 27-hp Yanmar diesel, cleverly hidden in a box that doubles as a seat.
The arrangement plan shows a berth in the forward cabin, but Tom chose to leave this space bare for additional stowage. The cabin extends well forward beneath the foredeck and there is good headroom down below. It could easily accommodate two berths and a Porta-Potti if someone wanted to outfit the boat for weekend cruising. The plan suggests a galley inside the pilot-house, but Tom opted not to build one in ANDIAMO. He also decided against cutting holes for the deadlights that the plan details show on the cabin sides and pilot-house. Those could be cut at any time and, if this were my boat, I would install these appealing and well-placed deadlights, especially if I planned to outfit the cabin; it’s nice to look out on the morning from the warmth of the bunk.
I’m not as familiar with tugboats as I’d like to be, and I wondered how this design would hold up under the scrutiny of an honest-to-God tugboat man. Knowing this is a character boat and that I could be in for some chiding, I nevertheless sent the design to a man who has worked tugboats off the coast of Maine for decades. He found the boat appealing and was kind in his remarks, saying, “…picture this design with a small black stack and a rope beard on the bow. Maybe [add] a few lawn tractor tires attached to the port and starboard rails. Throw in a crusty old guy wearing a Greek fishermen’s cap and a cigar in his mouth and screaming four-letter words at his crew—and then you’d have a ‘real’ tug. It’s a cute design, but I’d stay within sight of land if I were running it.”
Tom Hammermeister shies away from falling into character that so departs from his genteel personality, but he did give ANDIAMO a rope beard. He chose not to add tires—and a smokestack was out of the question—but in keeping with that playful outlook he did search out and install an airhorn (a steam horn being too elaborate) that bugles stout and clear over the water. Tom agrees that keeping the boat close to shore is a good idea; he uses her for afternoon excursions with Connie, family, and friends, rarely losing sight of land.
There’s no denying that ANDIAMO was created to fulfill the dreams of childhood whimsy. But her underlying strength, seaworthiness, and sensible construction that are hallmarks of Ken Hankinson’s designs make her a worthwhile choice for years of family fun. As her name implies, everything about her says, “Let’s go!”
Goliath’s plans include full-sized patterns for frames and the stem, detailed instructions, and a materials list. Glen L also sells an optional fiberglass kit, which includes 2 1/4 gallons of epoxy, fiberglass cloth, and application tools.
The Marsh Punt is a humble gem that may not grab you right away, but will quietly grow on you. Designed and built by Tad Lyford, the compact craft has a 13’6″ LOA and a 42″ beam; she weighs about 100 lbs and draws 12″. Like a miniature island in tranquil waters, she provides respite that is quieting to the spirit. Tad and his wife, Ellen, row and pole their punt, exploring peaceful marshlands and other calm waterways that are plentiful in southern Maine and other parts of New England.
When the Marsh Punt appeared in WoodenBoat magazine’s Launchings (see WB No. 213), she drew throngs of admirers. Her simple lines portending an uncomplicated build, thoughtfully placed sparse interior components, and plain finish of linseed oil and paint all come together in a package that is as refreshing as a cool breeze on a hot day.
Tad has been fascinated with punts since childhood. Growing up in Maine and playing on and exploring in small boats led him to create this comely punt, which represents an amalgam of his favorite designs and building techniques.
He holds many designers and builders in high regard, but three who stand out are Reuel Parker, John Gardner, and Hannu Vartiala. Taking Parker’s lead from The Sharpie Book, Tad used plywood and kept the building process as simple as possible. He took cues from John Gardner’s comments on the 18′ Light Bateau that appears in The Dory Book as he developed proportions for rowing. He also found inspiration from Hannu Vartiala’s website, Hannu’s Boatyard, which offers creative approaches to utilizing plywood to make the best use of every last scrap. These concepts, which are central to the boat’s design and construction, coincide with Tad’s desire to build a strong, stable, and enjoyable boat and to do it as frugally and as efficiently as possible.
Even an inexperienced builder will not find this project too difficult to take on. Over a simple ladderback and central mold, Tad bent on white pine chine logs and then attached the boat’s bottom to the chines. He used meranti plywood for the bottom and side planks and secured these components in place with stainless-steel screws. Since there is barely any twist to the single plank that makes up each of the boat’s sides, it can be built without spiling (measuring a complex plank’s shape) or steaming.
The boat’s rocker (the lengthwise sweep along its bottom) is slight—but even a small amount of rocker can create difficulty when bending on the meranti bottom. Meranti is tough but unforgiving under bending pressure.
Marsh Punt’s low sides require an elevated oarlock pad, in order to keep the oar handles out of the rower’s lap.
The boat’s flat bottom and light weight make launching and recovery easy.
With the bottom and side pieces screwed in place, Tad fortified the seams along the bottom, chines, and sides with fiberglass tape and epoxy. Then he added the boat’s two white oak transoms. Once the hull had taken shape, he removed it from the ladderback and coated it with epoxy inside and out. Then he fitted it out with white oak frames, deck framing, and rubrails, and built and installed meranti decks (fore and aft) and white pine risers and thwarts.
With the boat nearly finished, Tad attached a white oak strip down the centerline of the boat’s bottom. This tiny strip (3/4″ thick × 2″ wide) that runs the full length of the bottom may seem insignificant, but it gives the boat remarkable tracking ability underway. It also acts as a skid strip, which protects the bottom when the boat is dragged.
“The Marsh Punt is pleasant to row or to pole and is comfortable for reading, picnicking, or stretching out for a mid-afternoon nap.”
Marsh Punt’s overhanging ends and short decks ease the task of stepping aboard from the shore: The boat can be nosed right up onto the beach, and a passenger can make the short step onto the deck, with dry feet the whole while.
When it came time to install the oarlock pads, Tad found himself in a dilemma. He had already designed the boat with thwarts placed a mere 3½” down from the sheer. This is desirable because it prevents the rower from feeling like he is seated too low in the boat. Tad remarked, “I didn’t want to feel like I was sitting in an open kayak.” That being the case, he found that the combination of traditional oarlock pads and his chosen thwart height caused his oars to land too low in his lap for pleasant maneuvering. His solution was to create tall, scalloped oarlock pads made from white oak. These handsome oarlocks are fine for Tad’s purposes.
However, if I were to build this boat, I would beef up these oarlock pads, adding about 3 ⁄8″ in thickness to better accommodate the inboard step where they attach to the plank. I would probably also forgo the white oak and instead build them in plywood and then paint them. Because these oarlock pads are designed to take the vast majority of the strain with little reliance on the rail to share the load, anything but the quietest rowing on calm waters could snap these oarlock pads along a grain line, especially between the oarlock location and the sheer, where the wood is not supported. White oak is strong but in this application it is only as strong as its weakest grain line between the oarlock and the sheer. Plywood, with its multi-directional strength, would be a better choice for the pads—even though I concede that they wouldn’t be as pretty. One could also laminate some hardwood pieces to create the needed strength and still come close to the nice look that Tad has achieved.
Throughout the design process, Tad kept Ellen’s enjoyment in mind. This leads me to one of my favorite features: the step-aboard decks at each end. There was a hard chill in the water the day I visited Tad, and when it came time to board the boat, I realized that I had forgotten my rubber boots. Not to worry—Tad brought the boat right up to the water’s edge. The deck overhung the shoreline, enabling me to step aboard without dampening a toe. The Queen of Sheba never had it better.
A boat that must be trailered to and from the water may be left in a driveway for weeks at a time between outings. Since trailering is Tad’s only option, plywood was a good construction choice for his hull because plywood doesn’t shrink and swell like solid wood. But the Marsh Punt boat could be built in solid woods, and that would be a fine choice too, especially if the boat were kept in the water or on tidal mudflats all season long.
The Marsh Punt is pleasant to row or to pole and is comfortable for reading, picnicking, or stretching out for a mid-afternoon nap. Like love that comes on softly, the Marsh Punt will be a pleasure to build, and she’ll give her owner great pride in stewardship over the years.
Marsh Punt’s overhanging ends and short decks ease the task of stepping aboard from the shore: The boat can be nosed right up onto the beach, and a passenger can make the short step onto the deck, with dry feet the whole while.
The Sharpie Book, by Reuel Parker, and The Dory Book, by John Gardner, are available at The WoodenBoat Store.
When I think of powerboats I don’t usually equate them with a relaxing ride and quiet conversation, yet the Starry Nights design (20′ LOA, 57″ beam), a new torpedo-sterned electric launch from designer and builder Ken Bassett, handily fulfills those purposes. Her six 12-volt AGM batteries power her 3-hp electric motor, enabling her to cruise at 5 mph for up to six hours.
Karen Wales
The 20′ Starry Nights launch from Onion River Boatworks is a picnic launch in the finest tradition. Powered by a 3-hp electric motor, she is a gentle, quiet presence on the water.
Ken Bassett works out of his own shop, known as Onion River Boatworks, in North Hero, Vermont. He has been designing and building boats for decades. I have long admired his work, such as the lapstrake Whitehall-like pulling boat Liz and the jovial little batten-seam-constructed runabout he calls Rascal. His plans are remarkably detailed and easy to follow, making them accessible to a wide array of builders. Even some first-time builders have had success building Rascal—a tribute to Ken’s abilities as a designer and a communicator. A great plan maker is a great teacher, and Ken’s plans put him among the very best.
Embarking on this article, I found it difficult to understand how a lone designer could be successful with such seemingly disparate areas of boat design— and this new design, as complete as it is, couldn’t have simply appeared out of thin air. I knew that the Starry Nights launch must be rooted in a vast knowledge of boats. But I had no idea just how vast, until meeting Ken one bright morning last July.
We met in New Hampshire, at a lake that runs along the old New England mill town of Laconia. Heads turned as Ken backed the launch down the town’s boat landing. Seeing her on the trailer gave me a good look at her underbelly. Starry Nights is a displacement boat with a round bottom that is nearly flat for much of her length; forward sections are gentle curves that become increasingly tighter at the turn of the bilge and flatter underneath, the farther aft you go. Her keel, which deepens as her hull flattens out aft, accounts for her superb tracking ability.
Starry Nights is steered by a MacLear Thistle Rudder (see text at left for description), which allows for surprisingly good maneuverability at low speeds and in tight quarters.
She has a fishtail rudder—a MacLear Thistle Rudder, invented by the late Frank MacLear, a naval architect. Ken learned of this breakthrough rudder design from an article by Dave Gerr that appeared in Professional BoatBuilder magazine, a sister publication to Wooden- Boat (see PBB No. 102). In his article, Gerr said, “… MacLear had set out to improve low-speed maneuvering in close-quarter conditions, as well as to enhance steering response at speed. As stated, almost all ordinary rudders are ineffective when the helm is put over more than 35° port or starboard. Turn a normal rudder farther than that and it just acts like an unpredictable brake. It can even create eddies that throw the stern about randomly…. The [rudder] shape is essentially a standard airfoil rudder section flared out in a fishtail at the trailing edge. What does all this shaping accomplish? At normal cruising speed the rudder doesn’t change vessel performance much, though it does increase steering response slightly at small course-keeping helm changes. But, during low-speed maneuvers, you can turn the MacLear Thistle rudder over as much as 40°. Water flow is guided around the leading edge and midsection by the rudder’s section shape; then, the flared-out end makes water flow continue to do useful work at the higher angle. The result is a rudder that acts like a stern thruster, allowing very tight turns at low speed.”
I tried it—it’s awesome. Combined with the buttery smoothness of the electric motor and the seakindliness of the hull’s underbody, the MacLear rudder is the icing on the cake, making Starry Nights one of the easiest boats I have ever piloted. She rides like a magic carpet on the water.
Unlike most gas-powered boats, where slow maneuvering is a dance between often-abrupt thrusts and calculated drifting, this intuitive boat is super-responsive with an almost road-traction feel. Even a complete neophyte could land her dockside with confidence.
While she is nearly silent like an electric launch and glides along like an electric launch, I couldn’t get away from how much she reminds me of the torpedo-sterned runabouts of bygone days. Her sheerline and deck treatment in particular show a strong relation to the runabout family. I was about to learn why.
After a relaxing morning boat ride we grabbed a bite at a local diner. There we happened to meet Mark Mason, a heavy-hitter in the runabout world whose accomplishments include the restoration of BABY BOOTLEGGER (see WB No. 150). Previously unbeknownst to me, Ken and Mark had worked together for several years. Mark attributes part of the success of some of his best work to critical participation from Ken. Then it all became clear to me; that long experience with runabouts is what gives this boat its panache.
Karen Wales
Durable strip-planked construction, sheathed in fiberglass, allows Starry Nights to be hauled out when not in use, with no fear of drying out.
The Starry Nights design is a complex-looking boat to build, but the hull actually isn’t overly complex. Strip construction makes it a doable project for even a less experienced builder. Ken used 3⁄8″ cedar strips to create the hull, and then sheathed it inside and out in 20-oz fiberglass and epoxy. While a builder will have an easier time if he comes to this project with an experienced eye, some hand skills, and a familiarity with systems, a dedicated amateur can simplify this enough to have a nice boat, while keeping it honest to the designer’s intentions. I know that amateur builders have been successful with far more “advanced” boat types from this designer—the batten-seam-constructed Rascal runabout being one good example. The clarity and exceptional detail of Ken’s plans greatly reduce the intimidation factor. At the same time, built as shown, his attention to detail can provide enough of a challenge to satisfy the more seasoned builder as well.
Karen Wales
Starry Nights is steered by the simple side-mounted tiller seen here; another lever controls the motor’s RPMs. She’ll cruise for six hours at five mph.
Look closely at the details. Coaming pieces are bookmatched cherry with quilted figure. The turned tiger-maple tiller handle is the result of long experimentation with a variety of materials in order to get the best-looking—and feeling—result. The ventilation register is caned. Each component represents careful study and carries the mark of experience.
When we learn to fish, we often want to snag the largest, then the most, then the best, whatever our tastes deem that to be. Our boat-owning desires are not entirely different; at the onset we may be drawn to size, speed or flash, but when we know more and understand our true desires in a boat, then we are drawn to a specific type. The Starry Nights design is not for everyone, to be sure, but for those who would like a comfortable boat for quiet exploration and pleasant gatherings, this boat has a lot to offer. Sexy enough for the runabout crowd yet with the serenity that could satisfy book club types, she’s a true original—my kind of girl.
The lines plans shows an easily driven hull, with topsides that spiral aft into tumblehome sections, and terminate in a torpedo stern. Starry Night Particulars LOA Beam 4′9″ Draft 15″ Weight 1,100 lbs
Ken Bassett retired and closed Onion River Boatworks in 2017; there are no plans available for STARRY NIGHT. The review is presented here as archival material.
The Old Town dinghy, a classic yacht tender, was once a staple offering in the catalog of the Old Town Canoe Company. It’s a lightweight beauty with a bright-finished interior and a painted, canvas-sheathed hull. Structurally, it looks like a canoe, but it has the shape of a versatile small boat—one that motors, sails, and rows respectably.
I’ve had one of these boats in my life for about as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, my grandfather had a 9-footer in his basement. Nobody knows exactly where it came from, but he’d owned an ACF cruiser in his younger days, and I’d guess that the dinghy conveyed with that boat when purchased, but not when sold. It must have spent a decade or two in that basement, out of the elements, when my parents adopted it as a tender for our 35′ Lion-class sloop.
Island Falls Canoe
For many years, the Old Town Canoe Company of Old Town, Maine, built a line of canvas-covered cedar dinghies using the same construction as that of their legendary canoes. Today, canoe builder Jerry Stelmok, working with his colleague Jonathan Minott, continues that tradition. Shown is a newly built 10-footer.
That was in the mid-1970s. We strapped a 3 1⁄2-hp Eska outboard from Sears on the dinghy’s transom, and I spent uncounted hours tearing around the harbor in that little boat, often with two or three friends as crew. The boat also ferried kids, adults, and supplies ashore for beach picnics. It served us well for several years as a tender, as it towed well and it carried a load, but with a new cruising boat came a new dinghy, and the old Old Town went back into storage. By my mid-teens, I’d laid claim to it, and my ownership has been uncontested for the past 30 years.
The boat was in excellent shape when I decided it was mine—though it needed refinishing. I had the time and inclination to do this back then, and so I spent many evenings—and a fair amount of methylene chloride—removing the old finish, bleaching the bare wood, and building nine coats of varnish. I relaunched that boat with a vintage pair of oars and a British Seagull outboard purchased with my high-school graduation funds, as the old Eska had become something of a lab cat for my older brother and me: We’d learned about internal combustion by taking it apart and putting it back together one too many times.
Thankfully, I did not indulge my youthful impulse to tinker with the Old Town. I’d thought about adding a sailing rig—and thus cutting a daggerboard slot and mast partners, and mounting a rudder. But I didn’t do that, and so the boat is still configured as it was the day it left the factory. Old Town did make a sailing model of this boat, but my bastardization of it would have sullied the boat’s originality. The Old Town dinghy has a design pedigree that I learned of only last year: B.B. Crowninshield, the great early-20th-century Boston Brahmin naval architect, designed it. Originality is paramount for a boat of this lineage and, as luck would have it, you can still have a brand-new— and original—Old Town dinghy if you order one from Jerry Stelmok.
Island Falls Canoe
An Old Town dinghy in Jerry Stelmok’s Island Falls Canoe Shop, nearly ready for its canvas sheathing.
Jerry Stelmok carries forward the tradition of the Old Town Canoe Company, a business named for its location: Old Town, Maine, near the university town of Orono, which itself is home to the legendary oar- and paddlemaking company Shaw & Tenney (see page 40). Old Town Canoe today manufactures a big range of canoes and kayaks in molded plastic. Stelmok, on the other hand, builds wood-and-canvas canoes, and Old Town Dinghies, at his shop in Atkinson, Maine.
Wood-and-canvas canoes are an evolution of the famed Native American birchbark canoes. They are framed in thin cedar (1⁄4″ or so), planked in a similar thickness of cedar, and, instead of birchbark, are sheathed in stretched canvas. The weave of the canvas is filled with a proprietary compound, and the hull is then painted. The result is a strong and light boat, watertight—and heavier than when dry—after a short period of swelling.
Island Falls Canoe
Jerry Stelmok at the oars of a 9’ Old Town dinghy. Old Town’s distinctive oarlock type may still be purchased new from Shaw & Tenney in Orono, Maine.
The woodworking portions of this operation require a robust building jig—a labor-intensive affair justified only by the promise of a healthy production run. The Old Town Canoe Company can no longer justify this sort of handwork, but Stelmok builds and sells Old Town’s dinghies. The dinghy line consists of a 7′ 6″ hull, a 9′ one, and a 10′ one. Stelmok also builds Old Town’s cedar-and-canvas canoes; those boats are marketed by Old Town itself.
Stelmok builds his boats exactly as Old Town did in the 1920s. He fits them out with Old Town’s distinctive patent swivel oarlocks which, in effect, reverse the mechanics of common oarlocks: A plate-mounted pin is permanently fastened to the boat’s gunwale, and the oarlock itself has a hole in it, to slip over and rotate on the pin. Set in a fore-and-aft position, the oarlock is captured by the gunwale hardware; turn it athwartships, and it can be easily lifted free. The boat’s rails— and nearby boats—are protected by a rope fender set into a cove in the outwale. While this arrangement is not as protective as the ubiquitous rubber-cored can- vas gunwale guard we see on many dinghies today, it just looks right on an Old Town dinghy. And it performs well, too, as long as the screws used to fasten the rope guard are set well below the surface.
Island Falls Canoe
Island Falls Canoe builds a range of Old Town dinghies, including 7′ 6″, 9′, and 10″ models.
It’s been said time and time again that every boat is a compromise. If you want a pure rowing boat, efficiency is the key, and the key to efficiency is a narrow, lightweight hull. If you want a motorboat, you might add some buoyancy, or “bearing,” aft to float a motor and to keep the boat from squatting as speed builds. For a sailboat, a clean entry and a fine stern are two factors that contribute to good performance.
The Old Town dinghy is a beautiful average of these three traits. It is somewhat bluff bowed, so it doesn’t grow tiddly when one ventures into the bow to tend the painter. But the waterline entry is sufficiently fine to allow easy progress through the water without plowing it up. Firm bilges keep the boat on its feet when lightly loaded, and the load waterline tucks in slightly at the stern, reducing drag. This tucked-in waterline is complemented by a handsome tumblehome shape in the transom. A shallow cutout in the transom confirms that this boat is, indeed, meant to carry an outboard motor if one is desired. If my earlier memories of this boat are to be trusted, I recall that the boat motors rather well. But I’ve become jaded to the concept of low-horsepower outboards on dinghies, finding them a loud and unnecessary storage burden for short trips between ship and shore. A pair of 7′ oars will give that old Eska a run for its money, and the oars always start.
With only the rower aboard, the boat responds quickly to the oars and carries easily between strokes. A single passenger complicates things, because my boat does not have a forward rowing station. The added weight, therefore, immerses the lower portion of the transom, making rowing, literally and figuratively, a drag. A third passenger cleans up the trim—as would a forward rowing station. I could add this station, I suppose, as Old Town oarlocks are often available where used bronze hardware is sold; indeed, two separate pairs of them on eBay are the subjects of fierce bidding wars as I write this. Perhaps I’ll consider this addition during my next overhaul of the boat, though I’m loath to change anything now. But I would add floorboards, as these dinghies have no floor timbers, and the bilge, built of nothing but soft cedar, could use a little protection—and more even weight distribution. At the moment, I ask my passengers to keep their weight on the keel batten until they’re seated.
My dinghy lay in storage for several years until I needed a tender about 15 years ago. I blew the dust off, gave her a coat of paint and varnish, launched her, and towed her behind a 28′ sloop for 150 shore-hugging miles from Massachusetts to midcoast Maine. After a day of swelling, her cedar planking was tight and she nearly doubled in weight—which is not a bad thing, since, when dry, the boat was shockingly light. She has stood up well to periods of intense use punctuated by dormancy. Despite its light construction, it’s a tough and durable boat—a fact well proven by whitewater canoes built in similar fashion. If you’re seeking a classic yacht tender in this size range, the Old Town dinghy deserves serious consideration.
Courtesy of Benson Gray
Over the years, the Old Town Canoe Co. offered several versions of its cedar-and canvas dinghy. The first, designed by B.B. Crowninshield and shown here in this 1907 catalog, was 9’ long and 45” wide. The boat’s dimensions remained unchanged until 1927, when the “Depth Amidships” was listed as 16”; the 1928 catalog lists the width as 46” with a depth of 18”; catalogs from 1929 until 1971 (and 1983) list the width as 46” with a depth of 19 inches. Naval architect John G. Alden designed three sailing dinghies for Old Town in the 1930s, in 14’, 11’6″, and 10‘ lengths.
Thanks to Benson Gray for sharing details of the Old Town Dinghy’s design history.
I’ll put a case to you, as lawyer Jaggers did hypothetically to young Pip in Great Expectations. Put the case that a boat should be designed, and that this boat should be handy under oars. Put the case that this boat should also sail well, and further that it should accommodate a small outboard motor off the transom, should some unknown person desire to do so. Put the case, as well, that this boat must be detachable into two halves that may “nest” one inside the other so as to be hauled aboard and lashed down in the smallest possible space on the crowded deck of a long-distance cruiser, and therefore must be very light yet equally very strong. Put the case that this boat must also be attractive, and put that last case to yourself very carefully. These expectations are great, indeed.
Compromising to resolve such thorny conflicts is the intellectual challenge that Russell Brown, a designer and boatbuilder of Port Townsend, Washington, took on in working up a nesting dinghy that has one further twist: he wanted his company, PT Watercraft, to be able to market the boat as a kit that could be built by amateurs.
The result is impressive. Brown has been working a long time in lightweight boat construction, with an eye toward engineered solutions tending toward minimalism. Using thin plywood and powerful epoxy to best advantage, he strives for construction that is light in weight yet very strong, as many others have in using these techniques. He also spent a good part of his youth cruising the world’s oceans, first with his parents and later on his own, so he has direct practical experience of what works and what does not.
Tom Jackson
By extensive ocean cruising, Russell Brown came to know what he valued in a nesting dinghy, and his PT 11, which weighs just 85 lbs, balances conflicting purposes of sailing, rowing, light weight, and compact stowage while still remaining a handsome boat.
For light weight, Brown chose 6mm okoume plywood for the topsides and the bottom panel. Almost every part of the boat is made of plywood, sheathed in fiberglass cloth set in epoxy. Though 11′ long when joined, the hull weighs only 85 lbs. With its low weight, this boat’s halves can be manhandled ridiculously easily by two people, and probably very easily by a fit person working alone. To keep the dinghy to a minimum size for hauling aboard, Brown chose to make the hull flat-bottomed, with but slight rocker and a skeg of minimal depth. Plus, he made the boat’s profile very flat at the sheerline, that critically important curve formed by the top edge of the uppermost plank. Giving a boat a flat sheerline risks ungainly appearance, but to Brown it was imperative to do so to allow the boat to stay compact when nested on board: the bundle is only 5′ 10″ long and 1′ 8″ high at one end and 1′ 5″ high at the other, and more sheer would have made for a taller nested stack. Brown anticipates that most cruising sailors will lash down the boat under the swinging mainsail boom, so height is critical.
Brown developed custom stainless-steel hardware to join the two halves together, and the system seems to work well in the water or on land. In this type of boat, the hull is usually constructed in full, then two bulkheads are installed at or near amidships, and then the builder—no doubt after taking a deep breath—cuts his hull in half, a process fully described in the kit’s extensive instructions.
Tom Jackson
The 11’ hull divides to form a bundle only 5’10” long, 4′ 2″ wide, and a maximum of 1′ 8″ high, and the flat bottom makes nesting them easy.
The forward of the two sections is completely decked over at thwart height, which provides necessary hull stiffness and also sees to it that any water coming aboard is directed to the after section for easy bailing. At the top of the sheerstrakes, plywood pieces scarfed together and set perpendicular to the sheer planks make L-shaped gunwales that stiffen the topsides, deflect spray, and provide a flat surface to receive a glued-on continuous, low-profile rubber fender that actually accentuates the boat’s appearance. Brown kept his ’midships bulkheads low, so that the foredeck extends aft of the joined bulkheads when the hulls are assembled. This provides a comfortable rowing position, with no need for a thwart.
The joining hardware, meanwhile, consists of four knobs that screw through bushings in the after bulkhead and into threaded receivers in the forward one, with O-rings making the fittings waterproof. The sequence for attaching the hulls together is well thought out. The forward hull has two custom carbon-fiber brackets mounted on the deck and tight against the bulkhead sides. These brackets extend aft just far enough to have the after bulkhead slip behind them, which is easily managed. They hold the hulls together and in the right alignment while tightening first the lower knobs and then the upper ones. The hull halves join together surprisingly tightly, and in rowing and sailing (admittedly in light conditions) I never saw any water come through.
Tom Jackson
The two hull halves assemble easily while afloat.
Technology and innovations seem to have come together to make nesting dinghies more viable than ever. Lightweight plywood-epoxy construction makes a stiff hull, which is especially important when introducing the added complexity of cutting it in half. The challenge of lightweight structural design is what got Brown thinking about nesting dinghies in the first place. “A dinghy is really a tool, it’s not a pleasure boat. If you’re talking about a dinghy being a tender for a cruising boat, it has to be light, it has to be really tough, it has to be abrasion resistant, and it has to perform all the other functions it has to perform.
“The intent was to make a dinghy for serious cruisers,” Brown said. “I have a nesting dinghy that I built in ’85 that I took on most of the cruising I’ve ever done. It didn’t have the kind of sophisticated attachment hardware that this one does, but it’s what really got me into the whole idea of nesting dinghies. And cruising really led me to see the interest and need for a serious nesting dinghy. There’s more nesting dinghies out there than you can shake a stick at, but none of them that were ever really highly developed, as far as easy assembly in the water, light weight, complete kit package, good sailing characteristics, and really good rowing characteristics.”
Tom Jackson
Two carbon-fiber brackets (visible at the edge of the foredeck near the bulkheads) hold the hulls in alignment while knobs are tightened to hold them firmly together.
Brown started with pleasurable rowing in mind. He noticed other cruisers needlessly struggling with dinghies mainly because they were miserable to row, while his was comparatively easy. “That’s what I ended up doing with my nesting dinghy. I loved it. Other people had these god-awful inflatables, they were hoisting these 18-hp engines on and off, and going for gas all the time. It was my experience that got me going in this direction. This boat’s not a sprinter of a rowboat, but it really has very good cruising speed capabilities.” Brown earlier considered all-carbon-fiber construction for even lighter weight, but actually building a prototype gave him experience that came to the rescue: “I actually didn’t like it because it’s too loud. I don’t like rowing it, I don’t like using it. If you dropped the bow painter snaphook into the boat, the whole anchorage woke up.”
Tom Jackson
Coming onto a beach, the boat’s flat bottom, which is well sheathed in fiberglass cloth set in epoxy to resist abrasion, allows her to stand upright, and the long foredeck makes it easy to step ashore.
During my row, I found that the new boat, largely because of its light weight, feels a bit squirrelly at first, but in short order it’s very simple to find her sweet spot. The boat tracks well enough. The combination of light weight and slight rocker, or longitudinal curvature, to her flat-athwartships bottom, meanwhile, make her extremely maneuverable. She’ll turn with just a flick of the oar. That’s an excellent characteristic in a crowded harbor, where responsive turning and quick stops are often necessary. However, in my judgment she would be plenty able for gunkholing expeditions and amply commodious for ferrying supplies from shore. “We’ve rowed the boat with four 200-lb guys, and it still goes right along,” Brown said. I found her quite a pleasure to row; I could see Canada over my shoulder, and Brown coaxed me back to shore only with some difficulty.
Nosing into shore, the flat bottom proved its worth once more. The boat comes easily to the beach, and it stands upright prettily. The foredeck makes it exceptionally easy to step forward and out of the boat, dry-footed.
The sailing rig is deliberately simple, a modified windsurfer rig with the sail’s sleeve slipping over a two-part carbon-fiber mast, which needs no standing rigging. The mast itself fits easily into a tube mounted between the foredeck and the bottom. The entire rig weighs but a few pounds. Brown, who has long experience in developing foil sections in plywood, has also designed a daggerboard and a kick-up rudder, both of which would be very familiar to any dinghy racer. The designer likes to sit right on the boat’s bottom while sailing; in light air, I found kneeling amidships to work all right for me. It was a light-air day during our rendezvous, so I can’t say much about the boat’s sailing characteristics, though I found her quick for what little breeze we had. Heeling to the few puffs that materialized, she held out the promise of surprisingly good performance. Later, when Brown found a bit more breeze during his time at the helm, I observed that she accelerated quickly and tacked easily. Like any lightweight dinghy, she is very responsive to crew weight, yet she feels stable. An old dinghy racer would be at home here and would not be displeased by her sailing qualities.
Tom Jackson
The dinghy attains good speed quickly, tracks reasonably well, and rows very comfortably. Unlike many dinghies, she’ll make rowing ashore from an anchorage a pleasure.
As I sailed, in my imagination, I thought of anchoring down in some pretty harbor somewhere and spending the few minutes necessary to get the boat launched, rigged, and ready to sail into the golden light of evening. I put the case, further, that doing so would allow anyone so fortunate to enjoy such a harbor in a boat that is fine-looking beyond all expectations.
Russell Brown
To keep the PT 11’s nested dimensions to a minimum, Brown made the boat flat-bottomed with only slight rocker and also quite flat-sheered. Nevertheless, the boat is handsome and sails smartly with her modified windsurfer rig. The boat is available in kit form only, and the designer has developed an extensive instruction manual for builders.
Christo wrapped buildings in fabric and created art; I wrap boats in tarps and I get what looks like an encampment. When I moved into my home in 1993, I had a lawn surrounding the house, a garage in the basement, a detached garage, and two off-street parking spaces in front. There wasn’t a hint of my boatbuilding habit to be seen. Now, 29 years later, my cars have been exiled to the street, the detached garage has eight boats in it, the other garage is my workshop, the off-street parking is occupied by a canal boat and a Garvey cruiser on their trailers, the east yard has a kayak, the west yard a gunning dory, and the lawn in the back yard is all but covered by a Caledonia yawl, a sneakbox, and a teardrop trailer.
Almost all of the back yard is occupied by the Caledonia Yawl (left), the sneakbox (front), and the house for the cabin of my teardrop trailer (back). The sneakbox and the yawl both have ridgepoles to create some airspace under the tarp. The teardrop’s tarp has a hole for the woodstove’s chimney for warming my retreat on cold days.
Each of those vessels has at least one tarp covering it and unfortunately it’s not a storage system I can turn my back on. In the winter I have to sweep snow off the tarps to keep its weight from tearing them. When it rains, I have to bail the water that gets into the boats from the leaks and pull tight the tarps that have sagged and pooled water. When it’s windy, I have to make the rounds and check the tarps for loose lines. On the plus side, I only have to mow half the lawn that I used to. And crawling under a tarp that’s pulled snug against the hull helps keep me agile and forces me to practice patience. I can squeeze my head under the tarp and scrape my midsection around the gunwale, but my trailing foot always get captured by the edge of the tarp, which inevitably gathers in tight creases at my ankle. I can’t see what’s happening back there, so I just trace circles with my toes until my heel pops free.
The 20′ × 12′ 10-mil tarps I bought for HESPERIA, left, and BONZO, right, started out waterproof, but eventually began to leak.
The two tarps covering the boats in the front of the house have cords connecting the tarp of one boat to the trailer of the other. Making my way along the passage between the boats is like ducking under and stepping over laser beams in a jewelry-heist movie.
ALISON, my Caledonia yawl, has a tarp that is 3-1/2 years old covering its full length. I added a second tarp to stop the drips coming through, but it only covers half of the boat. I have to crawl aboard to pump out after it rains.
I keep a pump and a sponge aboard each of the boats that collect water, and once I settle into dewatering, I enjoy the time aboard them, especially on warm days when the heat trapped by the tarp brings out the aroma of varnish and enamel.
My 18′ plywood Greenland-style kayak has a 16′ 2×4 supported above the hull by plywood brackets. With the hull upside down, any water that gets through runs off.
I used to buy the cheap blue 5-mil poly tarps. They’d hold up for a few months, but they didn’t stand up to a summer of sunlight. In less than 2 years they were letting water through with alacrity and beginning to disintegrate. I left one tarp on well past its useful life and a windstorm tore it apart and scattered pale-blue plastic confetti flakes and streamers across the sidewalk and up the street. I spent nearly an hour sweeping it all up.
The gunning dory I built for my dad in 1983 is covered by two tarps. The black one is the back side to a piece I cut from a vinyl billboard. The dory is kept at an angle that lets water flow to the stern and then out the drain there.
I now use 10-mil tarps, and after 3-1/2 years the two oldest of them have begun to leak, but they’re not yet falling apart. The most durable tarps I had covering my boats came from a 48′×14′ 12-mil vinyl billboard for Coors Light Beer. I found it neatly folded and abandoned by the side of the road. It was so heavy I could barely lift it. I spread it out on the less trafficked side street at home and cut it into pieces to fit the boats. The section for the canal boat had on it FRESHM—six letters from “refreshment”—printed so large it could be read in satellite photographs on Google Earth. Eventually, even those tarps grew brittle with prolonged exposure to sunlight and their coating cracked and leaked.
The cockpit of the Escargot canal boat can take on about a gallon of water during a heavy rainfall. I keep a pump and a sponge handy to get it out. It puddles in the corner at right, and I leave the floorboard out to get access with the hand pump.
Until I move out of the city to farm country where I’d have outbuildings or a barn for my boats, I’m stuck taking care of my tarps. I suppose it’s like owning dogs. I see neighbors walking their dogs and tidying up after them every day, year after year, and they don’t seem to mind the demand on their time and attention. The difference is that tarps are outdoor pets, and they never seem happy to see me.
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All photographs by the author
