Small boats limit what can be carried aboard and gear that has multiple purposes saves valuable space. We always carry a paddle and a means to bail, so when we came across the Paddle Pump, we were eager to give it a try.
Kent Lewis
With the shaft fully extended and locked with the collet, the Paddle Pump is 60″ long.
The Paddle Pump was created by two Maine seaplane pilots, who often had a need to pump out a pontoon or move a plane a short distance to or from a dock. The beavertail blade offers good power and the locking collet facilitates a range of shaft length adjustments from 36″ to 60″. The compact storage length of 36″ makes it easy to store in the small cockpit of our Sunfish and is a good length for paddling our Grumman 17 Double-Ender canoe. The blade measures 7″ wide at the widest point and is just over 17″ long. Overall, the paddle has a nice balanced feel.
The Paddle Pump ejects water on the downstroke. Here at the end of that stroke, the paddle is at its shortest length, 36″, which will fit in even this Sunfish’s small footwell.
The Paddle Pump weighs just 1.4 pounds, and while that is more than our custom-made spruce paddle, the durable materials used can take a beating whether inside a bilge or while fending off docks and obstacles. The pump valve is designed to tolerate sand and grime from bilges. The shaft is made of anodized aluminum and the blade and handle are made from an ABS mixture of recycled plastics. Plans are in the works to source future blade materials from captured ocean waste.
The Paddle Pump can move 5 gallons of water per minute at 10 strokes per gallon. The valve action is smooth and, unlike the more common small-boat pumps, the Paddle Pump discharges water on the downstroke and through one side of its T handle. The stroke length and rate can be varied to suit the user. Skipper prefers shorter strokes with a faster turnover rate while I like a full draw of water for each pump. The shorter stroke can also allow the pump to be used in constricted spaces. A hose extension is available to help move water overboard in larger boats. That said, we found that the pump can shoot water, without the hose, well over 20′—handy for summertime water fights. The T handle provides a secure/firm grip, and we found that the optional float sleeve accessory gave us a more positive grip on the metal paddle shaft. The paddle will float for a couple of minutes without the sleeve; by adding the float sleeve we ensured that the paddle will stay afloat ready to help keep us afloat.
Audrey and Kent Lewis have pumped bilge water from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific and now in the Tidewater Region of Virginia. Their small boat adventures are logged at Small Boat Restoration.
In the late 1970s, when Gore-Tex garments were just coming on the market, I was newly out of college, happily jobless, and devoted to outdoor adventures. I did things on the cheap and made a lot of my own gear, so I bought a few yards of Gore-Tex fabric and sewed myself a rain jacket. I kept the project simple and didn’t add pockets, armpit zippers, or any of the fancy features that are available now in foulweather gear. I didn’t miss any of the extras. The PFD I wore while rowing and sailing would have covered any pockets if I’d had them, backpack straps did the same while I was hiking, and the smooth shell was free of flapping pockets while on bicycle trips.
In the simplicity of its design, the Taku Essential waterproof jacket, made by Mustang Survival of Burnaby, British Columbia, brought back fond memories of that jacket I made almost 50 years ago. As the name suggests, the Taku is pared down to the essentials. It has a clean exterior with only two pockets, flush with the jacket body and evident only by the zippered openings discreetly incorporated in the side seams.
The fabric used in the making of the Taku is Mustang’s Marine Spec SP, a laminate that has an inner layer of nylon tricot and an outer layer of 70D nylon coated with a PFC-free hydrophobic polyurethane. In between is a windproof, breathable, and waterproof polyurethane membrane.
Christopher Cunningham
Clamped to the perimeter of a storage bin, the jacket’s fabric and taped seams could be immersed in water to confirm they are waterproof.
In a rainfall, the drops beaded up on the fabric and rolled off, which showed the effectiveness of the fabric’s durable water repellent (DWR). Testing the waterproof/breathable polyurethane membrane sandwiched inside the jacket’s fabric required more than rainfall or a stand-in-the-bathtub shower. I used a plastic storage bin and some spring clamps to pool water on parts of the jacket’s back, sleeves, shoulders, and some of the seams between them. After more than five hours, no water had seeped through the jacket. That was enough to give me confidence in the Taku’s ability to keep me dry.
Christopher Cunningham
With the back of the jacket between a pot of warm water and boot driers filed with desiccant, the fabric’s breathability could be confirmed and quantified.
The jacket seemed as breathable as other garments I wear with different waterproof/breathable fabrics, and perhaps even a bit less clammy because the Marine Spec SP has some firmness that keeps it from clinging and allows air to circulate. During a 30-minute workout on my elliptical trainer, I broke a sweat at about the same time as I do without the jacket and not noticeably earlier as I thought might be the case while wearing an extra layer. To take a homespun objective measure of breathability, I filled an 8-quart cookpot with water at 96°F and stretched the back of the coat over it. I rested two newly recharged desiccant-filled boot driers on the jacket and cinched a plastic bag over it all. I had weighed the two driers at the start and after an hour the desiccant had gained 4 grams from the water vapor that had passed through the jacket. That figure by itself isn’t sufficient to compare the Marine Spec SP with other like fabrics, but it showed that it was breathable.
Christopher Cunningham
The front of the Taku is uninterrupted by pockets or storm flaps.
The jacket front and outside pockets have YKK AquaGuard zippers, rated by the manufacturer as “water repellent, not waterproof/watertight.” The zippers are not covered by storm flaps, though they have small hoods at their tops that the sliders, which are vulnerable to leaks, can be tucked into. The front zipper is backed by a placket. I sprayed the front zipper with my kitchen-sink sprayer for several minutes. No water flowed through, and the only sign of it was a glistening in between the interlocking zipper teeth and a few nascent drops. Nothing got past the placket.
The hem has an adjustable stretch drawcord to minimize drafts and a small webbing loop to anchor an outboard-motor kill switch. The side pockets have a light fleece liner on the outside surface to warm the backs of the hands. The cuffs can be cinched tight around the wrists to keep the water out, though the pleat formed when the cuffs are closed allows water to trickle in if the hands are raised above elbows in a downpour. The neoprene gaskets I have on another jacket make a more complete seal, but I rarely need them.
Christopher Cunningham
The Marine Spec SP fabric has a firmness to it that creates space underneath it, lending an airy feel to the jacket.
The Taku Essential has a small pocket with a coil zipper inside the left front chest. Mustang notes that the pocket secures essentials. For me, that includes car keys, and it will be easy to sew a bit of webbing and small plastic clip in the pocket to make sure they won’t fall out if I forget to close the zipper.
The hood has a visor stiffened just enough to do its job and a cinch to snug the opening against the face. A second cinch pulls the sides of the hood back to keep it from obscuring the view to the sides. When I turn my head, the hood comes with me about halfway and then stops, but even as I turn further, it doesn’t block my field of view. When not in use, the hood rests on the jacket back. There isn’t a zippered pouch in the collar for stowing the hood, a feature I don’t miss. I can pull the collar, fully zipped, up to my nose and keep my neck and much of my face covered. The jacket’s fit is excellent. My arms have a full range of motion without restriction. Only if I cross my arms in front of my chest, elbow to elbow, do I feel the jacket tighten against my back.
Jenny Bennett, executive editor of Small Boats, had an opportunity to try the women’s Taku, with a few more features than the men’s Taku Essential, and made some observations:
I’m usually a medium but don’t like clothes to be tight, so when I saw on the Mustang website reviews from “medium” women who were happy they had sized up to a large, I did the same. I’d say the jacket is true to size but while the fit of the large is definitely generous on me and doesn’t show its shape well, it’s very comfortable and I’m fine with it: in summer it won’t feel restricting and in winter I will be able to wear layers underneath.
Laura Harrington
At the back of the hood is the drawcord that pulls the sides out of the wearer’s field of vision.
The hood seemed enormous, but three cinch cords allow you to pull it both backwards—lifting it up and away from your face—and against the side of your head to prevent it coming off in a headwind. I like the hood’s two-way adjustments.
Laura Harrington
Wearing a larger size than that on the Mustang sizing chart masks the tapered waist of the women’s Taku, but pays off in comfort and extra room for adding warm layers underneath in cold weather.
The length is perfect (I’m 5’5” and the tail hangs just below my butt), and the sleeves, which are perhaps a tad long when my arms are hanging down, can be cinched in at the cuffs and, when I extend my arms out in front, don’t ride halfway up my forearm. The Taku has two chest-high pockets, cinchable neoprene cuffs inside cinchable outer cuffs, and a stretch-nylon pocket just inside the zip on the right-hand side at the bottom of the jacket. I walked outside in heavy rain for about an hour and came home with dry shoulders.
I made my jacket in the ’70s without all the extras because I didn’t want to do more sewing than I had to, but it turned out to be all that I needed for my adventures on roads, trails, and waterways. With the Taku Essential, Mustang has created a much finer example of “less is more,” achieving its goal of designing a “jacket for exploring inshore and coastal environments when you want the essentials and nothing more.”
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.
The Women’s Taku Waterproof Jacket ($399.99 USD) and the Men’s Taku Essential Waterproof Jacket ($359.99) are available from Mustang Survival and their associated retailers. The Men’s Taku Waterproof Jacket ($399.99), not reviewed here, has features similar to those of the women’s model. The jackets are on sale in observation of Canada Day and the Fourth of July, ending at midnight Pacific Coast Time July 4, 2024: Women’s Taku $279.99 USD, Men’s Taku Essential $251.99, and Men’s Taku $279.99.
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.
Quentin Verhaegen lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. He describes it as “a Pacific island with a microclimate,” a place that is “more than beautiful most of the time.” He has lived there for 31 years with his wife and daughter (who’s currently working in London), but he was born in Belgium and his journey to Canada was far from linear. As Quentin puts it, his life has been “full of adventure.”
When he finished school in Belgium Quentin was required to do national service, either military service or civic service in an underdeveloped country. He chose the latter and went to be a teacher in Morocco. While he was there, he built a boat, a 50-footer (37′ on deck) with “an enormous bowsprit, telephone poles for masts, and hand-built sails.” Then, in the middle of his tenure in Morocco, he went to Bermuda to take a course in marine biology. He met a young Swedish woman doing the same course and some time later invited her to visit him in Africa. “There was a group coming to Morocco for an expedition and I asked her to join. There were supposed to be six of us, but luckily the other four canceled. Ingrid came out, went home to finish her studies, and then came back and helped me to finish the boat.”
Photographs by Ingrid Holm
The 24’ MacGregor sloop has a partial keel—visible here just to the right of the trailer fender—which makes it easy to launch at an ordinary boat ramp. The pivoting centerboard it housed wouldn’t be needed, so Quentin fixed the board in its raised position and ’glassed over the slot.
The two adventurers left Morocco to sail the world, ending up in Australia where they sold the boat and moved ashore. Ingrid found a well-paid job that she enjoyed, and Quentin built houses. Seven years later they were off again, this time on a 47′ Bowman, a cruising sloop that they fitted out from a bare hull and deck.
They sailed for Canada because, says Quentin, “we’d decided to have a baby and that meant we had to be serious, and we thought British Columbia would be one of the best places to settle down.” They arrived 18 months later with a baby daughter and “not much else.” They sold the boat to buy a house and Quentin found work building caskets. Over the ensuing years he went through many jobs before eventually joining a small Victoria ferry company where he worked on maintaining the boats. He and Ingrid were, he says, “typical itinerant boat people.”
Backyard boatbuilding is often a challenge, especially when space is tight, but with most of the work being inboard and below the waterline, Quentin, here wearing white coveralls and ear protectors, would make it work.
As their daughter Kristina grew up, there was always one boat or another—always sail, never more than 27′, “just your typical inexpensive fiberglass sailboats.” But in recent years the family has been without a boat. “We missed it, though. It’s wonderful sailing here. We needed to have a boat.”
As strong as the desire to get afloat was, Quentin and Ingrid were also sure they wanted to do things differently. They love to sail but were tired of sailing into beautiful anchorages and not being able to see the view from within the cabin: “The seats are always too low, the windows too small. We wanted a motorboat, not necessarily because we didn’t want to sail, but because we wanted to wake up, sit in the cabin, have a cup of coffee, and see the beautiful land and seascape around us. We wanted it to be economical, low-maintenance, trailerable, and we wanted to be able to use it year-round in the Gulf Islands. We wanted it to have heat but not be a gas-guzzler, and because I snore loudly, Ingrid said I needed my own separate cabin.”
The re-purposed bow with straightened stem, sharper entry, and raised bulwark gave the boat the “motorboat/tugboat” appearance Quentin was striving for.
They started searching for the right boat at the right price. “But we couldn’t find it. Typically,” Quentin says, “old motorboats around here have a big captain’s seat with a big wheel, big engines…big everything. We didn’t want that, so we thought we’d build our own boat on a very low budget. But again, we couldn’t find anything suitable. So instead, we decided to buy an inexpensive secondhand sailboat and convert it. The problem of what to do with old fiberglass hulls is growing, and around here there’s a lot of used trailerable sailboats in reasonable condition that people just don’t want. Converting seemed like a viable alternative to building from scratch, and an affordable solution both for us and the landfill issue. But you can’t convert any old sailboat into a motorboat; it has to be the right shape.”
They settled on a 1973, 24′ MacGregor, a trailerable sloop with retractable keel and transom-hung rudder. “It was perfect,” says Quentin. “First there was the price: $1,600CAD with a trailer in late 2022. Then there was the shape: beamy, about 8′ carried well aft. The hull’s bottom is flat from amidships all the way aft…it’s the perfect combination for motoring.”
Rather than removing everything in the cabin and starting from scratch, Quentin worked with much of the original structure. He installed the settee berths along the same lines as the originals but raised them substantially to provide both storage under and good seated views through the cabin windows. He also lowered the foot of the companionway opening to reduce the “up-and-over” step when coming from the cockpit into the cabin.
Over the next 18 months, Quentin and Ingrid set about converting the MacGregor from tired sailboat to “new” motorboat in the backyard of their island home. By choice, Quentin worked alone, and for the most part stayed hidden when casual visitors came by. “If people called in to see me while I was working, I wouldn’t stop, I wouldn’t lift my head. I’d see their feet and then, after a while, they’d go away. And I didn’t go to too many people for ideas because that slows me down. I really do have all the experience I needed, but I work in an unorthodox way. I don’t cut corners, but I also don’t ask myself too many questions and get bogged down.”
The interior quickly took shape. Quentin used construction-grade plywood, ’glassed and epoxied both inside and out, with solid cedar for framing. He chose cedar for its ease of working and light weight.
For all his solitary inclinations, Quentin has an engaging manner, a ready smile, and an infectious sense of humor. He smiles as he reveals that Ingrid is very capable of doing all the work that he did, but “she pretends she doesn’t know how. She can do fiberglass work, cut bulkheads, apply epoxy, build anything…I’ve seen her. But she’s very smart, she leaves me to get on with it. Then before I can make a mess, she jumps in to do all the finishwork.”
The project would consume 400 hours over a year and a half, working at what Quentin describes as a “retired slow pace.”
Quentin painted most of the interior plywood but varnished the cedar frame. The large windows and light colors resulted in a bright and airy cabin. Up forward is Ingrid’s master V-berth with a portable toilet under and an opening coachroof hatch above for maximum ventilation. The galley holds a simple propane stove and a small sink fed by a 10-liter jerry can with a spigot. The foot of the starboard side berth extends beneath the galley countertop.
After he got the boat home, he pulled everything out of it until he had just a bare hull. Then he chopped off the bow about 18″ back from the stem and, using solid wood and fiberglass, both inside and out, rebuilt it “motorboat/tugboat style with a high bulwark.” He set the swing keel in its raised position, which left the 18″ of fixed keel still protruding from the hull, and determining that this would be ample for tracking, he ’glassed over its slot. He added two 6′-long, 12″-deep bilge keels that would counteract any rolling and allow the boat to be beached.
From inside the hull, he filled the void between the retracted keel and the sides of the trunk with tar and then fiberglassed over the entire structure. “Tar is cheap,” Quentin says. “When it’s heated up it flows into all the gaps and fills any voids. Then, as it cools, it sets rigid so that all you have to do is ’glass over it to keep it stable.”
The 9.9-hp outboard is concealed within an oversized well with hinged lid to provide easy access. The motor will push the boat up to 6.5 knots. The auxiliary 2.5-hp outboard, which can push the boat at 3.5 knots at half throttle, is fixed to an articulated bracket to keep its lower unit out of the water when it’s not in use. Both outboards are operated with their tillers, so the visibility forward, says Quentin, is not great, but he wanted to keep things simple rather than add a center console with cabling. He does use a tiller extension so he can stand up on either side bench, or on the side deck, and look above or around the cabin top.
Confident that the keel and bilge keels would provide the converted hull with good directional stability, Quentin decided not to fit a skeg. “We wanted the engine low down in a well, and for the prop to stay deep so that it would not come out of the water in any seas. A skeg would simply have complicated things.”
To accommodate a new 9.9-hp four-stroke Mercury outboard, along with two 20-lb propane tanks for cooking and heating, and two 6-gallon gas tanks, Quentin converted the lazarette into a combined engine well and airtight fuel-and-propane locker. Then he turned his attention to the accommodations. In the cockpit he created two spacious storage lockers beneath side benches. One of the lockers serves as his berth. “It’s wonderful,” he says. “I have everything I need, a cozy bed, light, soundproofing, ventilation. I can sleep with the hatch open and look at the stars and listen to the wildlife, and Ingrid is in her own heaven, up forward with the heater, far away from my snoring.”
Quentin enjoys tight but comfortable quarters in the “captain’s cabin” where his snoring doesn’t bother his wife who sleeps in the V-berth in the bow. He has all he needs: a bed, light, ventilation, and an unobscured view of the night sky.
The cabin is built of 1⁄4″ construction-grade plywood with solid cedar framing. “The difference between construction-grade and marine-grade,” says Quentin, “is that it does have some voids. But if it’s used above the waterline, and well-sealed with epoxy inside and cloth and epoxy outside, it’ll last forever.”
With the exception of the captain’s quarters, the accommodations are spacious for a boat of this size. In the bow, Ingrid has a generous V-berth, while in the main cabin there are two settee berths from which “you have a full view through the large windows when you’re sitting down.” To starboard there is a two-burner gas stove and sink.
In her home slip, SCOUT looks every part the comfortable coastal-cruising motorboat. The red tender that sits atop the coachroof was designed and built by Quentin. It has a center buoyancy tank that doubles as a seat, and two rowing positions to accommodate either a lone rower or a rower with passenger. It weighs about 60 lbs and is 6’ long with a 4’ beam. When the crew doesn’t feel like rowing, the tender can use SCOUT’s 2.5-hp auxiliary outboard.
The cockpit sole is above the waterline and self-drains through a lateral pipe above the waterline. There are no other through-hulls. “There’s a Porta-Potti under the forward berth, and the water for the sink is a 10-liter jerry can with a spigot; it sits on the shelf above the sink. No through-hulls, no pumps, no hoses, no complications.”
Quentin and Ingrid launched SCOUT in early 2024 and quickly used her on eight occasions for overnight trips around islands near Victoria. “We’re very happy,” Quentin says. “We’re not familiar with motorboats, so it’s going to take us some time to get used to the maneuverability. For instance, we’re used to approaching docks and moorings slowly, leeward side, head-to-wind. Now we can turn on a dime and use reverse and increased revs. We’re learning to enjoy that power!”
With the MacGregor’s transformation complete, there is little to suggest SCOUT’s past life as a sailboat. With her shoal draft, she can be anchored close in shore, and Quentin is looking forward to the day when they anchor off and he can wade to a beach.
With the 9.9-hp outboard they can make 6.5 knots (hull-speed) at almost-full throttle, and an easy 5.5 knots at half. While they have been cautiously sea-trialing in decent weather, the last time they went out, Quentin says there was a 20-knot wind funneling between the islands with a “fairly big chop and we did roll a bit, but not excessively, and it did well. But it’s definitely a boat designed for relatively protected, coastal waters. For example, between the cockpit and the cabin the threshold isn’t very high—I didn’t want to have to negotiate a big step up and over. So, if the cockpit were swamped by a big wave, it would swamp the whole boat.”
But Quentin and Ingrid have no desire to go ocean-voyaging. For them, the many nearby Gulf Islands hold the promise of endless days of pleasant cruising. “At half-throttle we use 1.7 liters of gas per hour. Each of our two gas tanks holds 24 liters, so we should have close to 30 hours of cruising time before we run out of gas. With all the islands to explore, we’ll go for maybe five-day trips and by then we’ll have had enough. But before that we’ll have had days of comfortable cruising, relaxing in beautiful anchorages in the warmth and shelter of the cabin, and still being able to see the amazing view. You can’t ask for better than that.”
Jenny Bennett is managing editor of Small Boats.
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.
The winter of 1913 saw the great Nathanael G. Herreshoff wintering in Bermuda, with a new boat, ALERION, designed for his own use. He was so pleased with this new design that most of his subsequent small sailboat designs could trace their lineage to her.
In 1914 came the wonderful 12½-footer, and the next winter brought a somewhat larger version, known as the Fish class. The boats in Alerion’s extended family, including the Buzzard’s Bay 25s, the Newport 29s, and the Fishers Island 31s, share certain traits-shapely hulls, fast sailing, impeccable manners, and long lives.
Flatfish Particulars
In 1986, WoodenBoat introduced the Haven 12½ footer, designer Joel White’s centerboard version of the Herreshoff 12½. These boats were so successful and the design so well received that Joel was persuaded to design a similar centerboard conversion of the Fish class boat, which he has named Flatfish.
Like the Haven 12 ½, the Flatfish will require an accomplished builder. With the exception of the centerboard and its case, the original scantlings and construction details are used throughout, and Herreshoff drew his designs with the skilled builders of his day in mind. In addition, this hull must be carefully lofted if the full beauty of Flatfish’s hull is to be realized. Wooden Boat’s monograph How to Build the Haven 12 ½-Footer will provide valuable help to the Flatfish builder as well, as the two boats are very similar in construction.
Flatfish Drawings
The result will be more than worth the effort, as this boat must surely be one of the most lovely and able daysailers ever conceived. Yes, a well-built Flatfish, with proper care, will be a cherished possession for generations to come.
Plans for the 20’3″ Flatfish Class Sloop are printed on six sheets, and include lines and offsets, construction, gaff and marconi sail plans, and details for spars, hardware, and ballast keel. WB Plan No. 129, $150.00. (Note: Plans are currently sold out for the Flatfish.)
Flatfish Plans
Plan 129
DESCRIPTION
Hull type: Round-bottomed. keel/ centerboard
Rig: Gaff or marconi sloop
Construction: Carvel planked over steam-bent frames
BUILDING DATA
Skill needed: Advanced
Lofting required: Yes
* Alternative construction: None
Helpful information: How to Build the Haven 12 ½-Footer, by Maynard Bray
PLANS DATA
No. of sheets: 6
Level of detail: Average
Cost per set: $150.00
WB Plan No. 129
*See page 96 for further information.
Completed 20’3″ Flatfish Class Sloop Images
Photo by Alison Langley
An original Herreshoff Fish, SHARK, near Noank, Connnecticut. The Fish is narrower and deeper than the Flatfish; the greater beam of the Flatfish compensates for the reduced stability caused by the newer design’s shallower keel.
Nowadays Maine lobstermen work from boats that are industrial-scale fishing platforms: they are long, wide, and powered with many hundreds of diesel-fueled horsepower. Many tend some 800 traps apiece. But there was a time when the typical lobster fleet was in large part made up of vessels similar to this able workboat. Joel White’s Jericho Bay Lobster Skiff is intended to serve as an efficient tool to get out on the water to work. At nearly 16′ long, she would have served an entry-level lobsterman or high-school student tending a smaller number of traps and learning the ropes. However, she is equally well-suited to recreational pursuits—trolling for mackerel, casting for stripers, or just buzzing about.
15’6″ Jericho Bay Lobster Skiff Particulars
Her classic lines recall the days of the mid-twentieth century when Maine lobsterboats were slim and svelte, envied for their seakeeping qualities and efficient speed. Unlike her larger sisters of that era, which would have been propelled by automotive gasoline inboards adapted for marine service, the Jericho Bay is intended for outboard power—and not too big an outboard. Her narrow beam and narrower stern will deliver best performance when moderately powered—say 15-hp as a minimum to plane, and a maximum no greater than 25-hp. Any more and the boat’s trim will suffer from the weight, and safety will suffer from the speed.
The plans for the Jericho Bay Lobster Skiff are extensive in number and adequate in detail. Many of the 15 sheets are full-size patterns taken directly from the building jig for the prototype, so accuracy is assured. Missing is much detail about how the boat goes together—but the build is simple enough that this is not a big hindrance. The full-sized molds are erected on a simple ladder-frame, a laminated stem and transom are secured to the jig (all parts are patterned), and ½” strip planking is edge-glued over the molds and sheathed inside and out with fiberglass and epoxy. The result is light, sturdy and low-maintenance.
Although the full-sized patterns mean that lofting is unnecessary, lines and offsets are included with the plans, and make interesting study. A noticeable “hook” is evident in the buttock lines of the bottom, just forward of the transom, serving as a built-in trim tab or “shingle” (as the old-timers used to call them), preventing the bow from rising abruptly as the boat comes on plane.
BUILDING DATA
Skill needed: Intermediate
Lofting required: No
PLANS DATA
No. of sheets: 15
Supplemental information: 1 page
Level of Detail: Above average
Plans Format: Print or Digital
Cost per set: $90
Related Publications:
WoodenBoat Nos. 210, 211
Completed 15’6″ Jericho Bay Lobster Skiff Photos
Matthew P. Murphy
The Jericho Bay Lobster Skiff seen here is a strip-planked, fiberglass-sheathed copy of a plank-on-frame hull designed by Joel White and built by Jimmy Steele in the 1970s.
Bulkheads under the seats enclose storage compartments and serve as framing to reinforce the glued-lap plywood construction.
James’s lapstrake version of the skiff made it lighter and easier to maintain than the carvel originals.
Photographs courtesy of Bob and Beth Burns
On it’s inaugural outing LIBBY B lived up to her builder’s expectations.
The 19th-century Scot, John MacGregor, is generally credited with devising the decked, double-paddle sailing canoe, then popularizing it by writing of international cruises he made aboard his canoe ROB ROY. The Iain Oughtred design presented here is the larger of two Oughtred-designed canoes offered by WoodenBoat. Although at 13′ 7″, it is a bit smaller than many first-generation boats of this type.
The MacGregor canoe can sail with a single balanced lug or rigged as a yawl.
Unlike the original models, Oughtred’s MacGregor can be built on a tight schedule and with average skills, thanks to the recent development of glued-seam lapstrake plywood construction. To further ease and accelerate the building process, Oughtred has provided lofting-free full-sized patterns, and a companion instructional booklet on methods and materials.
The MacGregor shares much with her smaller sister, Wee Rob (WB Plan No. 79). Both are ultralight, traditionally attractive, versatile canoes. Both offer decked/undecked options; both can be expanded to longer lengths on a fixed beam; and both have been given the seakeeping benefits of greater flare, freeboard, and keel rocker than were typical of the old canoes of this kind.
Adjust mold spacing and stem profiles to build MacGregor at 13′ 7″, 15′ 8″, or 17′ 3″.
A further refinement in Oughtred’s design is the marked reduction of excesses in joinerwork and rigging often seen in the older boats. A simple bulkhead opening has replaced deck hatches; a quick-change leeboard replaces a complex, folding centerboard; and simplified (but still authentic) sail plans — a single lug or a battened lug yawl — eliminate a snarl of “strings” to pull.
Early double-paddle canoes were classified according to their order of abilities: paddle, sail, cruise or race. Oughtred’s pair of canoes follows that convention. Given her longer waterline length and larger sail plan, the MacGregor is more of a sailer than her sister, but each of these canoes will perform capably with double paddle or sail, and is cruising, rather than racing craft.
Build MacGregor undecked for lightweight or half-decked for big water.
The designer has specified scantlings for those who prefer conventional plank-on-frame, lapstrake construction (see WB Nos. 36 and 37). He has also provided offsets and stem patterns for building this boat at 15′ 8″ and 17′ 3″. The MacGregor Sail-Paddle Canoe design package includes five sheets of plans containing lines and offsets, two sail plans, plus mold and stem patterns showing plank lands. Additional items include a comprehensive materials list and the 14-page illustrated text on building procedures (WB Plan No. 80).
The Martha’s Tender is a particularly well-proven design because so many boats have been built from it over the years. Both fishermen and yachtsmen have found what they were after in these boats: robust carrying capacity, reasonably light weight, and reasonable initial cost. With its firm bilges and a full-length outer keel, people have found through experience that this is not a boat to scoot out from under them while stepping aboard. They’ve also found that she tows well and doesn’t become a liability in a following sea.
Martha’s Tender Particulars
WoodenBoat has been partial to this design for some time, and upon establishing its summer boatbuilding school in 1980, arranged to teach the building of Martha’s Tender as one of its courses. From this experience, we have learned how quickly a beginner can build such a boat; the class averaged about one ready-to-be-painted boat for every two students each week — with capable instruction, of course. Working alone, you’d no doubt take longer, except that you’re not really alone; a photo essay on building Martha’s Tender, featured in WB Nos. 45, 46, and 47, provides very complete and well-illustrated building instructions. By following them, you’ll be guided through each step of the process, and you’ll find it’s the next best thing to attending the WoodenBoat School.
Martha’s Tender Plan of Half Breadths and Profile
This V-bottomed plywood tender can be constructed from readily available materials. Her design was developed to make use of 10′-long panels of plywood. But if more length is desired, longer panels can be made up, and the building molds can be spaced out for a hull as long as 14′. The hull is built upside down over a temporary jig, making the usual sawn frames unnecessary and keeping the interior of the finished boat free from much of the structural clutter. Inside, she’s fitted with three thwarts and two rowing stations. Outside, the hull is sheathed with fiberglass over its fir plywood planking for extra abrasion resistance and for a good surface for painting. Her transom can be notched for sculling, and she could even be fitted with a sailing rig and centerboard.
Plans for Martha’s Tender come in four sheets, which include lines and offsets, construction, sailing rig, and jig detail. WB Plan No. 25. $45.00. Originally, this was a three-sheet set of plans, but a sailing rig was added. So, the fourth sheet includes spars, sail, tiller, rudder and trunk. You can always use the Shellback Dinghy book if you want to know how to build spars.
Martha’s Tender Body Plan and Section Drawings
Additional Reading
For more details on the plans for building Martha’s Tender, as well as a step-by-step how-to on constructing a sail for her, purchase a digital copy of the Build-a-Boat guide.
It’s a pity that so many people seem to think a dinghy should be a tiny boat. A bigger boat will almost always be easier and faster to row, carry a bigger load, and be more seaworthy. Of course, this holds true for any small boat: bigger is usually better, up to a point. For most small-boat users, that point comes when two people can no longer lug the boat around.
Pooduck particulars.
Joel White’s Pooduck Skiff is a big little boat — about as large as two average people would want to carry on shore. As a big sister to the 11’2″ Shellback Dinghy, she has a lot of the same great qualities: excellent rowing and sailing ability, easy construction, and mannerly towing habits. But you’ll be surprised at how much bigger she is. At 12’10” LOA with 4’6″ beam, she’ll easily carry an extra person or two. And when the weather looks questionable, you’ll be glad for her extra size. Her scantlings are ruggedly reassuring as well — she’ll be able to take her share of knocks.
As befits her big-sister status, Pooduck sports a grownup rig: at the captain’s discretion, a jib can be added to her lug rig, to provide a little extra speed or just to keep the crew happily busy.
Construction profile (top), body plans (middle) and midship section (lower right).
The first-time builder can, with some effort, make a fine boat from these very complete plans. If a little extra guidance is desired, the 53-page monograph How to Build the Shellback Dinghy will prove almost as helpful for Pooduck as for her little sister.
General arrangement plan.
Plans for the Pooduck Skiff are printed on six sheets, including lines, construction, full-sized patterns for molds, stem and transom, and plank layouts. WB Plan No. 102, $75.00.
PLANS DATA
No. of sheets: 6
Level of detail: Above average
Cost per set: $75.00
WB Plan No. 102
Completed 12’10” Pooduck Skiff Images
Thomas Guertin
While this skiff has a single rowing station, the plans call for a second station at the thwart that serves as the mast partners.
Pam Payson
When taking the helm, sitting on the bottom is the most convenient position. Floorboards make that a more comfortable option when some water gets aboard.
Designer Iain Oughtred is known for applying an artist’s touch to his light lapstrake creations. He admits to having been under the influence of Shetland ness yoles and sixerns while drawing this handsome double-ender.
Particulars
The Caledonia Yawl has relatively high ends and shows considerable reserve buoyancy above the waterline throughout its length. The hull lines resemble those of many surfboats that have evolved to meet the rigors of working off exposed beaches. Oughtred gave her a run that is finer and shows more deadrise than might be ideal for extremely high speed under sail, but the resulting gains in helm balance and civilized behavior in waves make the compromise worthwhile.
Caledonia’s builders can rig their boats with either balanced lug or high-peaked gaffheaded mainsails. The balanced lug has the advantage of being self-vanging and simple. It sets on an unstayed mast, and it requires less time for raising and striking than does the gaff rig.
Plans
Caledonia’s lapstrake and epoxy hull is built in an inverted position. The backbone and building jig are fairly conventional. Drywall screws clamp the plywood strakes together until the epoxy sets. (Lack of cross-grain strength makes solid timber unsuitable for planking this boat.)
As for accommodations, Oughtred shows a version with considerable built-in closed space (similar to a Drascombe Lugger‘s interior) and a more open model. The open boat will be simpler and lighter, but builders can choose various combinations of the two layouts. In all cases, the decks are kept below the rails. This arrangement gives better access to the yawl’s ends, and it permits secure on-deck stowage of light gear. Also, the sunken decks allow your eyes to follow the full, unbroken sweep of the sheer from stem to stern-and a lovely sheer it is.
Plans
Plans for the Caledonia Yawl consist of eight sheets: hull lines, construction, mold patterns, stem and sternpost patterns, and sail plans. Also included are three sheets of specifications and 13 pages of lapstrake-plywood building instructions. WB Plan No. 103, $291.00.
What Is Glued Lapstrake?
The glued lapstrake boatbuilding technique uses epoxy rather than mechanical fastenings to secure plank overlaps. This makes for a very strong hull and an exceptionally clean interior. Glued lapstrake has become a popular construction method for small sailing dinghies, rowing boats and canoes.
There are plenty of benefits to glued lapstrake construction. The resulting product is lightweight, rigid and excellently sealed against water and weather. The downside is major repairs will be difficult. And for anything larger than 10 feet, the marine plywood used for planking needs to be scarfed.
Drew’s work on the boat has put her back to rights and, as BONNIE LASS, she has much to offer to her new family in the years, if not decades, to come.
Courtesy of Peter Mumford
When Peter Mumford sailed ERIKA, she her mainsail was a standing lug. It was later replaced with a balance lug. The Caledonia Yawls that followed carried a balance-lug main, which had a boom that increased the spread of the sail for better performance off the wind.
Leni Danner
The Caledonia Yawl’s well mannered hull and simple lug rig made it easy for us to learn how to sail.
Jim Danner
SPARROW sits at the entrance to the lagoon.
With well-balanced, relatively high ends, this lean and long yawl shows considerable reserve buoyancy above the waterline throughout her length. Check out our own Caledonia Yawl, SWIFTY, built right here at the WoodenBoat School.
Yesterday morning, while I was in the busiest part of putting this issue together, I got an alert on my iMac telling me that my average daily screen time had increased. My computer had never expressed any concern for my wellbeing, so I couldn’t dismiss it as a worrywart. To be sure, in the past two weeks I had been spending a lot of time in my study and of late hadn’t been feeling myself but logy and more forgetful than usual. I logged off, loaded my coracle and a bit of gear into the truck, and headed for the nearest body of water, less than a mile to the east of home.
With my paddle, umbrella, and camera tripod bungeed to the thwart and the rest of my gear in a sling tote, I made the 100-yard portage in a single carry. The coracle goes overhead, upside down, with the thwart resting across my back and shoulders.
I hadn’t paddled my coracle since I’d tested it with a temporary skin two-and-a-half years ago and now its hull, as rounded as a walnut shell half, slipped away from me every time I stepped in it with the least bit of weight. When I did get myself planted on the thwart, it felt like sitting on an exercise ball, and my hips were in constant motion maintaining balance. There was a bit of a breeze, barely enough to quiver the slender leaves of the willows lining the shore, and the ripples on the lake were too smooth to darken the zinc-gray water.
A light rain was falling as I sculled away from shore and, where the drops fell, the rings made by their impact expanded and wove themselves into the rings of other drops, covering the surface with an ever-changing chainmail pattern. The island I was headed for, the only one on the lake, was only 150 yards from the beach, but I took a meandering course to its shore, an overhang of burnt-umber mud and exposed ebon-hued roots.
The crossing to the island was a short one, just 150 yards from the launch site on the lakeshore visible in the distance.
I’d brought lunch and backed away from the island to float in its lee while I ate. Putting up the umbrella and taking my sou’wester off changed the sound of the rain. The muffled pattering on the hat’s soft waxed canvas was replaced by a staccato tapping as sharp as fingertip snaps of static electricity. The curve of the umbrella surrounded me with rain’s music, a sound that can capture my full attention and push aside thinking as surely as gazing into the flickering flames of a campfire.
Drifting in the lee of the island, I had a quick indulgent lunch: a deli sandwich, a can of ginger ale, and a chocolate truffle.
My iMac was right to caution me about accumulating screen time. Sitting in one place focused on the same thing for hours on end day after day dulls the senses and the connection they create to whatever is around us. In psychology, that’s referred to as sensory adaptation, the process by which we become less sensitive to constant stimuli. It is not without benefit. To get constructive work done, it helps to insulate ourselves from distractions. And it happens without our knowing it. My refrigerator makes a humming noise while it’s running. I’m often unaware of it until the instant it stops. What I hear is the absence of the noise. I have tinnitus and, fortunately, that unending whine slips from my consciousness most of the time. Similarly, I’m unaware of the taste of my own mouth or the scent of my own breath. It’s not so easy to experience vision lost to sensory adaptation, but I’ve done it a few times by lying in bed motionless and staring at the light fixture on the ceiling. If I can keep from shifting my eyes, I can make it disappear into gray.
The screen time isn’t just about the time looking at computer-generated images. It’s what happens to the other senses and the potential of their growing dull with disuse. Boating, especially in a small open boat, can be an effective remedy. The five senses, six when you include the proprioceptive sense, are all heightened by surroundings that are never the same from one moment to the next.
The umbrella made a surprisingly effective downwind sail and could pull the coracle faster than I could paddle it. (Time lapse photo)
When I left the island to head back to the launch site, I paddled out of the lee into the wind and lowered my open umbrella. As it caught the wind, I held the paddle over the starboard side to serve as a skeg and point the coracle in the right direction. As I approached the shore, a gust diverted by the trees and brush spun the coracle around like a teacup ride in an amusement park. I was ready to face the screen again.
The Waterlust sailing canoe designed by Dillon Majoros of Chesapeake Light Craft (CLC) is a 17′ decked sailing canoe designed for “high-performance expedition cruising.” It was developed in 2016 in partnership with Waterlust, a group of environmentally focused scientists, for a journey along the Intracoastal Waterway. It has a choice of rigs, and the option of a Hobie MirageDrive for auxiliary power.
I fell in love with the graceful sheer and reasoned that the boat was not so big, and I would not have invested too much time, money, and energy if I found out that either I was not the boatbuilder I had hoped I might be, or that the boat was not right for me. The boat did turn out to be the right one, and the sheer still gets me every time.
The boat is available as either kit or plans from CLC or their partners around the globe, as part of their Pro-Kits range, which is aimed at people who have some degree of competence with epoxy-plywood construction. I sourced my kit and instruction booklet from Fyne Boat Kits in the U.K. The kit contained precut plywood parts, resin, ’glass, and most of the hardwood required machined to the right dimensions, with precut puzzle joints—just what a builder needs to make rapid progress. Sails and hardware can also be provided, although I sourced mine elsewhere. This was my first build, but it went together very easily, and the 28-page instruction booklet is well illustrated, clear, and easy to follow. The few questions that I had were quickly addressed either by Fyne or CLC.
Photographs by the author
The cockpit extends beneath the aft deck and can be used as a berth for the crew. Forward of the centerboard built-in compartments to both port and starboard give accessible, dry stowage space, and in the canoe’s ends watertight compartments provide excellent flotation.
The construction is typical for a modern kit boat, with hull planks and frames being stitched together, then bonded with thickened epoxy, and the resulting structure reinforced with ’glass cloth. I was astonished by the precision of the cutting—all the predrilled holes for the stitches lined up perfectly, and the LapStitch hull came together quickly and easily. My kit arrived in early March 2020, and the hull was ready to launch in late May.
Even during the build, it became apparent that the Waterlust is a substantial canoe. With a beam of 36″ and full ends, the hull’s load-carrying potential becomes clear as soon as the last planks are stitched to the bulkheads.
There is a watertight compartment built into each end, and forward of the cockpit is a large storage locker accessed through a watertight hatch cut out from the deck. The deck is supported by a combination of the plywood frames, bulkheads, and carlins. I added two additional deckbeams fore and aft of the hatch opening, strengthening this area to support sitting on the deck.
In the forward part of the cockpit is the slot for the daggerboard, and the well for the drop-in MirageDrive. We opted to use paddles for auxiliary power and to use the well, with the hull left intact at the bottom, as an additional storage locker. The main cockpit area is large and divided by the longitudinal stringers that provide strength to the hull. The spaces to the outside of the stringers provide convenient open-top storage areas and keep loose items handy but out from underfoot. Between the stringers, the center cockpit space extends unimpeded under the aft deck, creating a 35″-long space for more storage. As this is open to the cockpit there is more chance things stored here will get wet, so I use dry bags or sealed plastic boxes in this space; when cleared, it is large enough for sleeping. I have not tried sleeping on board but know others who have with success.
The amas increase the canoe’s buoyancy by 70 lbs on each side and offer yet more options: on windy days the canoe can be sailed with full rig, while on less windy but gusty days they provide stability for a more relaxing sail. A single-blade paddle is useful auxiliary power in a difficult turn or very light airs.
A suggested hardware layout is provided in the construction manual, and I used this with minor modifications. My spars are all solid wood, as suggested in the plans. A hollow mainmast may be advantageous to reduce weight aloft, with the caveat that a standing lug benefits from a stiff mast, so a hollow one must be sufficiently stiff to handle the high loads needed to flatten the sail as the wind picks up.
Steering is with a push-pull Scandinavian-style tiller attached to a yoke fixed to the head of the rudder. I have found this to work quite well. It is necessary to tie the tiller into the boat: if the tiller is dropped into the water untethered, it is quite an exercise to get it back while underway as it will be dragging behind the boat! I have also added a simple tiller tender, which I find very useful as it enables hands-free sailing for short periods.
The hull is both elegant and strong. I have dropped my Waterlust off a dolly onto concrete, and it appears none the worse for it. The ’glass-and-epoxy coating is very wear-resistant, which is useful on a boat meant for hauling-out on beaches. According to the specs, the fully rigged canoe should weigh about 115 lbs. I have not weighed mine, but I routinely walk about 800 yards to my launching beach with her on a dolly. I cannot, however, lift her onto a car roof without assistance of some kind.
An outrigger package is also available, and is put together in much the same way as the main hull. The crossbeam (or aka), which is laminated from four layers of 9mm ply, is reassuringly substantial. The outriggers are attached by lashing the crossbeam to mounting points fixed to the main hull and then bolting the floats or amas to the crossbeam. Each ama provides 70 lbs of buoyancy, which makes it possible to power-up the rig or simply have a more relaxing sail in gusty conditions. The amas touch the water at about 8 degrees of heel and, when the boat is flat, cause no drag at all as both sit clear of the water.
Courtesy of Chesapeake Light Craft
A custom cane-back cockpit seat is the perfect addition for an easy sail in the gentle breeze of a late afternoon. The push-pull tiller and shorter balance-lug boom allow the skipper to sit facing forward and upright, while the Hobie MirageDrive provides some welcome auxiliary pedal power.
The whole package of outriggers and crossbeam weighs in at 27 lbs and is cleverly designed with storage in mind. The amas fit neatly inside the cockpit, and the aka, when lashed to the deck for storage, does not extend beyond the perimeter of the hull. This is very neat and a testament to the thoughtfulness and attention to detail of the designers, as it makes the package exceptionally easy to live with off the water, as well as on.
One of the great pleasures of sailing a canoe of this type is that it can be sailed from a seat, facing forward. I use a folding cane seat, which was recommended by Phil at Fyne Boat Kits, and I have been delighted with the choice. Although not officially part of the kit, this seat is the one shown in the illustrations in the CLC build manual. The height of the seat is important: it should be low for sailing, but I find it needs raising a little when paddling to allow me to get the blades comfortably in the water without hitting the gunwales. Although nothing is suggested in the build manual, two quickly removable wooden beams resting on the longitudinal stringers have proven to be an effective solution.
At its simplest, the Waterlust can be used as a canoe, powered by a drop-in MirageDrive, or a double-bladed or single-bladed paddle. I have opted for the paddles as I prioritize sailing over other forms of power, but I understand that the MirageDrive option works well, too, and can propel the boat at hull speed—over 6 knots has been measured. The plans also suggest that a sliding-seat rowing unit with outriggers could be installed.
For passagemaking under paddle, I raise the rudder, take out the daggerboard, and apply myself to my 240cm-long double-bladed paddle, which gives me a good reach over the relatively wide deck. With a loaded boat and no wind, I can comfortably cruise at 2 knots all day. As a canoe the Waterlust is stable when boarding and underway. It is comfortable and there is plenty of space to find a good sitting position. It’s no problem to stow the paddle, sit and enjoy the view, dig around to find the camera, or pour a cup of tea. This stable, beamy hull is well-suited as a platform for exploring or birdwatching: take the time to enjoy going slowly, and you will be rewarded.
A surprisingly versatile craft for one so small, the Waterlust canoe is equally suited to sailing or paddling.
There are two maststeps forward for the 11′ 4″ mainmast, and one aft for the 6′ 10″ mizzen. The Waterlust can be sailed either with the main alone, a balanced lugsail of 62 sq ft set in the aft main maststep, or with the main set in the forward maststep and the 18-sq-ft mizzen added, taking the sail area up to 80 sq ft.
Handling the boat on land is a one-person job, though some may need help (or ingenuity) if the boat is to be transported on a car roof. For rigging I have found it best to get the hull in the water, or ideally drawn up on a beach where it will sit solidly on her flat bottom. The masts simply drop into their steps, then sails and daggerboard and rudder are made ready. This whole exercise takes me about 20 minutes, 10 minutes more if the outriggers are to be used. If using the outriggers, a beach is a much easier proposition than a pontoon or floating dock, as the outriggers get in the way and make tying to the dock a bit tricky.
The character of the Waterlust canoe under sail varies considerably depending on the choice of sails—main only or main plus mizzen—and whether the outriggers are deployed. Under main and mizzen and without the outriggers the Waterlust is a sporty proposition, and rapid reactions to changes in wind speed are called for. The sail area is slightly larger than that of a full-rigged Laser, and on a hull with a beam of 36″ (compared with the Laser’s 55″) hiking out as the wind strengthens is necessary to keep upright. When the wind pipes up, I find the sailing experience almost closer to windsurfing than dinghy sailing as one has a very immediate connection between the power in the sail and the counterbalancing weight of the skipper. While the rig can easily be matched to a steady breeze, rapid changes in wind strength are the main challenge. A capsize to windward if the wind drops suddenly is more likely than a capsize to leeward in a gust. It’s a lot of fun, though while gaining experience it would probably be best enjoyed with an empty boat in warm water. The addition of ballast has a marked calming effect; the canoe is an expedition boat, designed with carrying cruising gear in mind, and behaves well when loaded.
Courtesy of Chesapeake Light Craft
With its full decks, lapstrake hull, and split lug rig (technically a ketch but with the appearance of a yawl), the Waterlust harks back to the sailing canoes of the 19th century.
The outriggers are described by CLC as “training wheels to help keep the boat upright in gusty conditions” and do not convert the canoe into a fully fledged trimaran. Even so, the difference in character is substantial, and the sailing experience with the outriggers is more relaxing. The 70 lbs of buoyancy from each ama has a great impact on secondary stability, and the skipper can enjoy the best of canoe sailing safe in the knowledge the boat will stay right-side up under all but the most extreme situations. With the outriggers mounted, the Waterlust shows the best of itself as a well-thought-out cruising machine. When the canoe is being paddled, the amas are above the water and don’t add drag. When the wind fills in, the leeward outrigger gently limits the heel, with the righting force increasing as the ama is forced deeper into the water.
Tacking and jibing are straightforward with or without the outriggers, but it is important to enter a tack with sufficient speed to avoid being caught in irons. The remedy, if required, is a stroke or two with a paddle, and this is quickly done if the paddle is accessible. The use of auxiliary power when sailing is a great plus of this design, and either a single-bladed paddle or the MirageDrive serves well for this purpose. If beating in light airs to get round a headland to windward, I can pinch slightly and start paddling; this “paddle sailing” can be effective and perhaps avoid a tack or two.
Under sail with the outriggers mounted, the Waterlust skipper is free to enjoy the surroundings, and operations such as reefing, pouring coffee from a thermos, or looking at a chart are straightforward. I have even broken the golden rule of canoe sailing: never cleat the mainsheet. In the right conditions, I can make the mainsheet fast to the cleat I installed on the after face of the daggerboard case, engage a tiller tender to fix the rudder, and make long tacks with the canoe sailing itself.
For passagemaking, I plan for around 2 knots made good over the day, slightly faster with a fair wind. In a good following breeze of Force 3 or more, an average of well over 4 knots can be maintained for many hours. When sailing in company over an extended period, I found the Waterlust well-matched with a Welsford Navigator, and noticeably quicker than a Drascombe Lugger.
The Waterlust sails well under just the mainsail so the skipper has many options depending on the strength of wind.
The long hull is directionally stable and very forgiving with little tendency to broach even with a following sea. When significantly overpowered off the wind, the Waterlust remains remarkably docile and any tendency to roll is quickly dampened by the outriggers. The hull is easily driven, so reefing early does little to harm progress while making for a more comfortable ride. The deck protects the cockpit well, and I usually remain dry unless beating into a chop.
The Waterlust epitomizes the small-boat advantage: it is quick to build, easy to store, and light enough for one to handle alone. Because of its small size, all the hardware, sails, and spars are smaller, lighter, and less expensive than for a larger boat. It is a remarkably capable and, in my mind, elegant vessel.
The type is adaptable, and very much what you want to make of it: it can be a fast and exciting daysailer, a seaworthy expedition boat, or a platform for exploring. I know that many owners have adapted their Waterlust canoes to suit their own needs. Some make arrangements for a crew of two; others add ballast and reduce the sail area to make for more relaxed sailing without adding the outrigger package. I have stuck close to the standard package, usually using the outriggers and full rig, but I sometimes press my Waterlust into service as a paddling canoe with three or more kids on board, and it takes it all in stride.
Guy Hall lives and sails on the west coast of Norway, near Bergen. In his youth he sailed extensively in the waters around the U.K. in boats large and small. His Waterlust canoe, christened SVALE, represents a first step back on the water after a career-induced break, and a way of introducing the next generation to the joys of small boats. He is a member of the Dinghy Cruising Association.
Waterlust Particulars
LOA 17′
Beam 36″
Draft 4″
Draft, board down 32″
Hull weight 115 lbs
Sail area, lug yawl 80 sq ft
Sail area, cat-rigged 62 sq ft
Maximum payload 400 lbs
The Waterlust Sailing Canoe is available from Chesapeake Light Craft as basic hull kit for $1,730. The sailing component kit is priced at $1,545, and the outrigger base kit at $598.
Building the Waterlust Sailing Canoe by Martin Cartwright is a 90-page book about what he, Guy Hall, and Stephen P. Clark learned while building their Waterlust canoes. It is available from Amazon for $18.85.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
When I first saw the Scout 10, pulled up on the beach with its sail luffing, I quickly took a liking to it not for something I saw but rather for the absence of something: a trunk for the daggerboard. In most sailing skiffs, a trunk for a daggerboard or centerboard usually occupies some very valuable space in the cockpit. Neither board cares all that much where it is in the boat so long as it balances the sail rig above it. The polite thing for either one to do is scoot a bit to port or starboard and get out of the way of the crew. I’ve built three boats with offset boards and none of them has a detectable difference between port and starboard tacks.
The other feature that drew me to the Scout 10 was the use of slip thwarts that can be set on the parallel edges of the side benches anywhere in the cockpit and removed when not needed. I incorporated the same arrangement in my two beach cruisers.
Duckworks
The slip thwarts can be placed anywhere between the side benches. Removing them opens a long unobstructed footwell that can be used for a berth.
The Scout 10 was developed in Port Townsend, Washington, by Duckworks and Turn Point Design. Their goal was to create “the smallest possible camp-cruising sailboat.” It had to be light enough for cartopping, have plenty of built-in flotation, be easy to rig, sail and row well, have ample dry storage, and be roomy enough to sleep aboard. They squeezed everything into a 10-footer with a 52″ beam. Its weight was kept down around 70 lbs with the use of ’glassed closed-cell foam in lieu of plywood for several structural elements.
The boat is available from Duckworks in kit form. The plywood and foam pieces are CNC-cut and have puzzle joints where they are required to assemble full-length pieces. The rudder and daggerboard are made of foam, cut to precise foil sections that require only finish-sanding and sheathing with ’glass and epoxy. A 120-page manual details every step of the construction with clear instructions, drawings, and photographs.
Christopher Cunningham
The kick-up rudder blade, with its CNC-carved foil shape, has a bungee to hold it in the down position while sailing.
The first step in the Scout 10’s construction is to make a flat work surface for assembling, gluing, and fiberglassing the foam and plywood panels. The table consists of two sheets of 3⁄4″ melamine-faced particleboard supported by three straight 2×4s spanning three sawhorses. The surface is leveled and coated with mold release or paste wax. The preparation ensures that all the pieces are flat and take fair curves during the assembly of the boat. The pieces are temporarily joined with zip ties in predrilled holes. Tabs on the interior structural piece fit into notches in the hull to make them self-positioning.
The bottom and first two strakes are joined in the typical stitch-and-glue fashion. The bottom of the sheerstrake is lapstrake and casts a shadow that provides a nice accent to the curves of the hull.
Christopher Cunningham
A loop of bungee cord around the daggerboard allows it to be easily adjusted and holds it in place whether up or down. This seat, positioned for the rower, is one of two. The other seat would be set aft with its angled flange facing the rower to serve as a foot brace.
The inwale is made strong and light by boxing-in a foam core with plywood. There are 5⁄8″ holes predrilled in the plywood top and bottom pieces and after the gunwale is assembled the builder will drill through the foam in between. Phenolic tubes with a 1⁄2″ inside diameter inserted into the holes, epoxied in place, will accept the 1⁄2″ shanks of standard oarlocks or, as was the case in the boat I rowed, Gaco oarlocks with the adapter sleeves. The lined holes also provide soft-shackle attachment points for the mainsheet blocks and ends and can be used to anchor arched supports for a cover or canopy.
The deck, which is composed of the foredeck and side benches, is made of 1⁄4″ closed-cell foam ’glassed on both sides prior to its installation. A slot in the deck on its starboard side provides the opening for the daggerboard trunk, which is built on the side of the footwell bulkhead that is enclosed and concealed beneath the bench. During the time I was rowing and sailing the Scout 10, I was unaware of the foam used in its construction and assumed the benches were plywood and ’glass. They felt every bit as solid.
Christopher Cunningham
The Scout 10 is a good size for young families with kids eager to learn to sail and row.
The movable/removable seats are more complex than slip thwarts made from straight pieces of lumber. The seat top, which is set below the level of the side benches, provides good clearance for rowing and requires some bridge-like engineering to make the 4mm plywood a solid platform. One of the flanges that provides the strength is oversized and angled outward and serves as a foot brace for the rower. Both seats are equipped with devices that clamp on the side-bench flange to keep them from slipping out of position whether serving the rower as the seat or foot brace.
Christopher Cunningham
A 10″ hatch provides access to a large airtight compartment in the bow. The halyard and a powerful downhaul are both anchored on the mast so the whole rig can be dropped almost instantly. The mast has a core of carbon fiber and a silvery, abrasion-resistant outer layer of Texalium, a fiberglass cloth with an aluminum coating.
The footwell is 20 3⁄8″ × 81 1⁄2″ long and unimpeded by the daggerboard trunk so it can be used as a place to sleep although the manual cautions that it is “not a luxurious berth.” Its width is a perfect match for my 20″ × 72″ self-inflating sleeping pad. I’m 6′ tall and a side sleeper and can tuck my knees up at a comfortable angle and, if I set my back to one side, I have room for my elbows on the other side. For stargazing while lying on my back, I’d have room for my shoulders, but my elbows would have to be someplace other than at my side. Even so, as a quickly made nest, it would be welcomed by a tired cruiser for a midday rest or overnight sleep. Duckworks suggests using “a cloth, hammock or filler boards over the footwell to create a double bunk.” On three of my camp-cruisers, I’ve used the same approach and made floorboard panels that can be raised to cover the footwells. The sleeping surface provided by the hull’s flat bottom, by the way, allows the Scout 10 to sit upright on the beach.
Collection of the author
The Scout 10 comes up to speed quickly and is a pleasure to row.
The enclosed spaces under the deck can be equipped with watertight hatches. The Scout 10 I rowed and sailed had been equipped with the three round watertight hatches—two 8″ and one 10″—that Duckworks offers in its kits for the Scout. For easier access to cruising gear, I’d consider the larger rectangular 10″ × 14″ Sealect hatches that are recommended in the manual as an option.
The 58-sq-ft sail has a sleeved luff and slips over a two-piece tapered carbon-fiber mast. There is no boom, so the rig is simple to set up. The sail has four battens. The top one supports a squared-off head, which adds sail area, and the other three shape the sail and maintain its spread on a downwind run. The rudder has a pivoting blade held down with a bungee and retracted for beaching by an uphaul with a jam cleat. While the rudder will kick up if it touches bottom in a shoal, the daggerboard must be raised by hand. A bungee looped around it holds it in position whether raised or lowered.
Collection of the author
In the quick turn here, the stern snaps smartly around. The transom has two handholds for getting a sure grip for dragging or carrying the boat and also has a notch for sculling.
The Scout 10, with the sailing rig left off and just me aboard, is a bit tender but the firm secondary stability kicks in readily. I settled in quickly and enjoyed the boat’s lively, responsive feel. I could spin it through 360 degrees with just five-and-a-half strokes and make crisp turns with a harder pull on one of the oars. The boat trimmed well, with the bottom of the transom just touching the water. The skeg, fully immersed, did its duty, keeping the boat from wandering off course. The wide range of options for the placement of the seat and the oarlocks would make it easy to adjust the trim to accommodate the load and even tune the trim for upwind or downwind rowing. With a GPS measuring my speed, I maintained 3 knots with a relaxed effort and 3 3⁄4 knots at a moderate workout pace. Rowing all out, I could get the Scout 10 up to 4 1⁄4 knots. With a passenger aboard, I moved the seat to the forward end of the footwell and relocated the oarlocks to the appropriate holes in the gunwale. The measured speeds, respectively, were 2 3⁄4, 3 1⁄4, and 3 1⁄2 knots. The additional weight in the boat also nicely firmed up its initial stability.
Christopher Cunningham
The 14′ mast weighs just 5.2 lbs and breaks down in two pieces for easy stowing on board. The uppermost of the four battens supports a bit of extra sail area up high.
Rigged for sail, the Scout 10 was easy to manage. The sheet is led through a small block at the clew, through blocks at each stern quarter, and forward along both gunwales to another pair of blocks; it ends in stopper knots. The system allows the skipper to sit facing forward, with one hand on the tiller, and the other taking hold of the sheet by its leeward stopper knot. The boat was well behaved in the light and occasionally fluky winds I had and absorbed the puffs without requiring me to respond dramatically. The hull carried its speed well enough to get through tacks without getting caught in irons. On the new tack, the battens were limber enough to snap to the new leeward side without requiring a sharp tug on the sheet.
Christopher Cunningham
The Scout 10’s 58-sq-ft sail is boomless so an accidental jibe is forgiving to a crew caught off guard.
I didn’t do a capsize drill with the Scout 10, but Small Boats reader Daniel Patterson did. In his video we can see the boat coming to rest on its beam ends, prevented by the mast from turning turtle. The airtight storage compartments float the footwell above water level and when the boat is righted, the only water in the bottom is what is scooped up in the angle between the side bench and the sheer and that’s not enough to affect stability or even require bailing before getting underway again. The built-in flotation also provides support for crawling over the gunwale to get back aboard.
Common wisdom is that the size of a boat is inversely proportional to the frequency of its use, and a boat as small, light, and as versatile as the Scout 10 is likely to lead a busy life. It can be made ready for the road in short order and can explore waterways near and far whether for a few hours or a few days.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.
Scout 10 Particulars
LOA 10′ 4″
Beam 50″
Draft 4 1⁄2″
Sail area 58 sq ft
Capacity 2 to 3 people
Weight 65 to 75 lbs
The Scout 10 is available from Duckworks in kits ranging from the CNC kit of precut plywood and foam pieces for $2,099 to the complete package with the full sailing rig for $4,299.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
After enduring three long pandemic years without any summer paddling trips, I had some surplus vacation time and set my sights to the Erie Canal, the 363-mile-long waterway that took eight years to carve across New York before it opened in 1825. Within three weeks I had planned my itinerary and organized my food. I was happy to see that all my gear and supplies fit in my 14′ 6″ composite solo canoe. While my guidebook for the Erie Canal had lots of useful information about its natural and manmade passages and the 35 locks, it offered little advice for a paddler needing to come ashore every night. I was unsure as to exactly where and how I would be able to camp each evening but, knowing that other canoeists had done this trip before, I’d figure it out.
I launched on July 15, 2023, from Eastern Park in Tonawanda, New York, and followed Ellicott Creek downstream to the west end of the Erie Canal where I turned right and headed east, following Tonawanda Creek, which serves as the westernmost 11 miles of the canal. Still air and overcast skies meant good paddling weather, and I was eager to cover some miles before the heat of the afternoon and the forecast rain arrived. Even though there was little boat traffic, I paddled close to the side, gliding under overhanging branches and around numerous piers and docked boats. Hanging from the limb of a white poplar tree, half concealed by its leaves, was a bald-faced hornet nest, as big as a basketball and just above eye level. I spotted it just in time; it wasn’t the kind of adventure I wanted for the trip.
Roger Siebert
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I paddled 11 miles of Tonawanda Creek’s serpentine curves to a fork where that natural waterway headed east, and the manmade canal headed north in elongated bends. I reached the first of 19 guard gates, paired steel hanging barriers, each 60′ wide by 20′ tall, which can be lowered to block the canal completely to protect it from floods or breaches. The gate was open and I paddled through to start a 3-mile stretch of the canal that was so straight I couldn’t see the turn at its end, only the notch in the horizon where the canal disappeared.
In the town of Lockport, 18 miles from Eastern Park, I arrived at my first locks, numbered 35 and 34. Having never paddled through a lock before, I stopped at the side of the canal and waited as a 65′ double-decker tourist boat came out of the lock and passed me by. I approached the lock entrance where there was a small white control-house with the lockmaster, dressed casually, standing next to it. He pointed out the ropes that hung down the lock walls. I would need to pick one, he said, and hang onto it as the gates closed and the water lowered. I grabbed onto the wet, algae-covered rope and waited. The tourist boat, already on its way back after its stop just outside the lock, joined me in the chamber and tied up on the other side. The gates closed. As the water ebbed away, I let the rope slip through my hand as the lock walls rose around me. It took about 10 minutes for the water to fall and the lower gates to open; I followed the tour boat out of Lock 35 and into Lock 34 to repeat the process, and then followed the tour boat out the gates and down the canal.
Photographs by the author
When I first started east on the Erie Canal, it was calm and quiet but there was rain forecast for the afternoon and evening. There were many powerboats moored along the canal-side docks. As I paddled along one side, I wondered how busy the canal would turn out to be.
As I paddled away from Lockport, I was tired and began to look for a suitable place to camp. The canal sides were 3′-high riprap sloping up at a 30-degree angle, topped on the north side by a bicycle path and on the south side by a grassy access road. Trees, but little else, were visible above the canal sides. In the late afternoon, I pulled the canoe up the south bank onto the access road, which was flat and recently mown. I set my tent up off to one side of it, ate dinner, and settled in for the night.
It was a restless first night, listening to rain pattering on the tent, but at least the wet weather rescued me from having to rise early. By 6:30, a lull in the rain galvanized me into action. I lowered the boat into the canal, climbed carefully down the riprap, and headed out.
I paddled through Gasport and Middleport, each with a single steel-girder lift bridge so low I could reach up and touch them as I passed beneath. Gasport and Middleport had only high docks, so I didn’t stop, but Medina had a low one and I tied up to explore the town, eventually stopping at a small pastry shop. With scone in hand, I finished my wander around downtown and headed out.
Just beyond the Medina city limits I stopped where Bates Road crosses the canal near a boat ramp flanked by a grassy area with three picnic benches. I set up camp next to one, cooked dinner, and turned in for the night.
By 6 a.m. the next morning I was up and underway. The day ahead was to be one of long, straight stretches beneath high gray haze from the Canadian forest fires. Wildflowers were in bloom on the berms flanking the canal. I pulled ashore on the north side and climbed up to a view of agricultural fields and woodlands sweeping beneath the haze that hung low and obscured Lake Ontario 10 miles distant to the north.
Like all but one of the 19 guard gates on the canal, this first and westernmost one was open. The barrier gates can be lowered to isolate portions of the canal in the event of flooding. As I paddled by, I looked to see if there was a spot by the gate to camp. By the end of the trip, I had become very comfortable camping on canal property, but starting off I was unclear what was either possible or allowed.
I paddled on to the Sans Souci Park boat ramp and set up camp in an empty gazebo overlooking the canal. Two teenagers wandering the grassy field stopped to hang out with me; they were worried about me sleeping in the park where people driving by might see me. Toward dusk, they went on their way, and I was alone with only the frogs croaking in the adjacent wetlands to keep me company. Fireflies, flashing pale-green lights, traced the spaces between the dark trunks of the nearest trees.
It was barely 5:20 a.m. when I was up and breaking camp. Camping under the gazebo had kept the tent dry and made for easy packing. As the morning passed, clouds built and by the time I reached Spencerport, 11 gently winding miles to the east, both my paddle and my canoe were trying to veer off in the strengthening gusts. I tied up at the dock, took a shower in the visitor center, and headed to the grocery store. My timing was perfect—the blustery weather turned into a downpour just as I got back from the grocery store, so I sat on the visitor-center porch and watched the deluge. The storm passed in an hour, clearing the wildfire haze, and the sky was truly blue for the first time since the trip started.
I paddled on for 3 miles to Henpeck Park, but it was noisy with traffic rushing along an arterial to the east and rumbling across a pale-green girder bridge to the west. I backtracked a quarter mile to Greece Canal Park, which had a dock right on the canal. I clambered up and tied off the canoe to the weathered pilings. A mown grassy area led downhill into the park where I found a bathroom and washed some clothes in the sink. I set up my tent and ate dinner on the dock before turning in.
At 4 a.m. the following morning, I woke up groggy and shivering in my lightweight sleeping bag, annoyed that I had not pulled on my fleece the night before. I curled up and suffered through till I got moving a couple of hours later. As I packed up the tent, my lower back was smarting—weekend paddles hadn’t really prepared me for paddling every day.
I went through my first lock, Lock 36, with a tourist boat. I talked with the lockmaster on the way in and told him this was my first time through a lock. He took good care of me and talked me through the procedure. The tourist boat had come through while I was waiting to enter, but then just turned around to go right back, so I had to wait for a bit. I chatted with some of the tourists on the boat—for them I was part of the show. I was reluctant to mention that my plan was to paddle the length of the canal—I didn’t want to jinx it starting out.
After an hour, I reached the outskirts of Rochester, where the canal sides rose from eye level to 20′ or even 30′. What wasn’t vertical rock was near-vertical wooded slopes. Water trickling down traced lacy patterns over intricate layers of limestone, and streams spilled into the air out of pipe ends 20′ overhead; rope swings hung from a couple of the dozen highway and railroad bridges. Aside from one man fishing at a small platform, the canal felt isolated and quiet with little noise from the road bridges overhead—there wasn’t even much graffiti. The canal walls provided welcome shade till about 11, and I was grateful not to have to smear sunscreen on my face and wind up with a slippery grip on my paddle. While I was in that deep canyon, a boat powered by three massive black outboard engines roared by me without slowing down. The 2′-high waves in its wake threw me around as they ricocheted off the canal walls. As I neared the Genesee River the banks dropped, and I crossed the river junction in bright sunlight and pressed on against the first, albeit weak, opposing current of the trip.
A little over 5 miles from the river, I stopped at Lock 32 to camp in the canal-side strip of grass along the Erie Canal Trail, a 360-mile gravel path for hiking and cycling. I climbed out of the canoe onto an aluminum dock so hot with the afternoon sun that it stung my hands and knees. On the north side of the lock was a gazebo large enough to host a 100-person wedding, but only a solitary person sat at one of the picnic benches. There was no rain in the forecast, so I wouldn’t need the shelter of the gazebo, and I set my tent up by a picnic bench beneath the shade of an evergreen tree, conveniently limbed up to 6′.
I walked the towpath along an old canal channel that was long, straight, and filled with trees. Black raspberries grew thick on what would have been the canal bank, and I grazed as I walked. A little over a mile north of the lock, I found a Mexican restaurant and bought a burrito that contained more food than I could eat. I also stopped at a grocery store where I bought bread and fruit to see me through the next few days. I returned to the park and enjoyed not having to make dinner. At dusk the mosquitoes came to join me, and I was happy to leave them to it and retire for the night.
I had become accustomed to the hardness of the camping pad and, dressed in my fleece this time to stay warm, I slept well and woke the next morning refreshed and ready to transit the lock where I had camped.
By 10:30 the sun, heat, and humidity combined with the monotony of the long, straight stretches were taking their toll on me. A break for a snack revived me enough to make it to Lock 30 in Macedon where I stretched my legs strolling the mowed lawns before reboarding the canoe. I paddled another 3 miles to Lock 29 and just beyond it made camp in a gazebo at a Palmyra city park. The forecast had predicted rain, but it didn’t show up until bedtime, and when it did, it came with thunder, lightning, and gusts of wind that blew the rain horizontally. I was happy to have found the gazebo, but even so I watched with trepidation to see if the hard-packed gravel of the shelter would flood and force me up onto one of the picnic benches. Eventually I relaxed because all seemed to be staying dry, and I drifted off.
At the end of my first day, I stopped to camp just outside of Lockport. The top of the berm was flat and recently mown, and it had not yet started raining. I felt I couldn’t have done much better for my first camp.
The town of Palmyra is separated from the canal by a 100-yard-wide band of forest, and I paddled several mile-long straight stretches along hardwood woodlands to the outskirts of the Port Gibson area where the canal curved and widened to 1⁄8 mile. I took the inside of the bend along the northern shore’s thick woods and bypassed the town’s homes and docks. The canal narrowed again to its usual 120′ and brought me quickly to Newark. I moored up to the town dock and made a 20-minute walk to the nearest grocery store. My walk back was a race against gathering clouds. Just as the downpour started, I’d made it back to a covered picnic table and waited out the rain near the dock. When I headed out again, I paddled over several shallows where I was startled by the sudden thrashing about of schools of carp, disturbed by my paddle.
By evening, I was just beyond Lock 27 in Lyons and camped behind the fire station with a view overlooking the lock. My campsite was tucked away, but I realized too late that there were overhead bright streetlights and a block away customers in a restaurant were enjoying a loud Friday night happy hour. I turned in, pulling my fleece up over my head and eyes to block the light and noise.
I was up and paddling by 6:20, alone on the canal as it meandered through low-lying wetlands and forested banks interrupted only by remnants of an industrial past: a handful of massive abutments supporting nothing, and an abandoned five-story brick building the size of a city block. Three-and-a-half hours after setting out, I reached Clyde, and stopped for a break. There was a bathroom in the park by the landing, and I washed my clothes and put them back on still wet so they would cool me as they dried in the heat of the sun.
The canal turned south, merging with the straightened Clyde River. From time to time the old river splits away from the canal before merging to rejoin the canal farther downstream. Several times I went with the river and was pushed along by an occasional 1⁄2-mph current. For all but a few minutes I was alone with the canoe, the water, and the sky.
Soon I was back on the canal and through Lock 25. I landed on a slippery, muddy bank at the end of the lock wall and wound up on my backside twice as I carried my camping gear ashore.
I unloaded the canoe at the Bates Road Ramp, right by Guard Gate 15. The spot provided shade, a park bench, and someone to chat with. Like many of the sites along this part of the canal, the Erie Canal Bike Trail runs right by it; my impression was that the canal sees many more cyclists than boaters.
The next section of the canal stayed away from the small towns. During my stop for breakfast in the shade of the bridge to Haiti Island, swallows put on an air show chasing dragonflies.
My planned camp at Seneca River Fishing Access Point was shadeless, littered, and busy with fishermen. I poked up a winding stream in the nearby forest looking for a camping spot. The clear water and the shade of the lush vegetation were appealing, but a swarm of mosquitoes and muddy banks put me off. I ended up back along the canal on a dry but shaded mud bank. I tied the boat between shore and a tree branch overhanging the canal so boat wakes would not bounce the canoe off the bank.
I arose sleepy after a night of trains going by and fish splashing. Baldwinsville, 14 winding miles away, was my goal for the day.
When I reached the town, I came ashore at a park and set up in the empty picnic shelter. The park was busier than many, with a softball game and a couple of people to chat with while I set up camp. I’d had no access to grocery stores during the day, so dinner was dehydrated backpacking food.
Settled in the gazebo at San Souci Canal Park Boat Ramp. There were often unoccupied gazebos at the parks, and they sheltered me through a number of rainstorms. They made packing in the morning much easier because everything was dry.
The next day I continued to follow the Erie Canal along gentle curves of the old bed of the Seneca River until it merged with the Oneida River at Three Rivers Point. I turned right and headed east toward Oneida Lake. Among the stretches of woods along the canal were many ash trees that were leafed only at the bottom, the tops likely killed due to the emerald-green ash borer.
At Lock 23 I ascended for the first time; I had been warned that there is more turbulence in a lock when going up, but it was little different from going down. I camped on the 10′-wide swath of mown grass above the long wall to the east of the lock. I set a space blanket over the tent and napped in its shade till dinner. It was going to be beastly hot again tomorrow afternoon. If I left early I could make it to Oneida Lake before the worst of the heat. The distance I would need to cover and worries about the open water of the lake made for a restless night.
I was wide awake at 4:45, well before the mosquitoes, and got moving: I was on the water in 45 minutes. The only things visible were navigation lights on the bridge 2⁄3 mile down the canal and the faint predawn sky. Bats on whispering wings darted across my bow and dark silhouettes of great blue herons lumbered by overhead while bullfrogs croaked in a distant marsh.
I passed through Brewerton in the pre-dawn darkness and was almost blinded by a bright green fuel-dock sign and an LED American flag. I passed under a 1⁄3-mile-long highway bridge and entered Oneida Lake as swallows streaked the sky and skimmed the waters.
All the Erie Canal locks are 328′ long and 45′ wide. This one, Lock 32, raises and lowers boats 25′, which is on the high end for locks on the canal. The small white building by the gate is a common feature on locks and contains lock controls; I would usually chat with lockmasters there on my way in. The white lines hanging down the sides of the lock are used by boaters to maintain their position in the lock.
The eastern horizon brightened and when the sun rose, blood red, it swallowed the bow in its reflection. A light gust of wind scuffed the water, and the ripples to port sparkled like diamonds. The wind strengthened slightly and made me nervous about my exposure in a small canoe in a large lake. The headwind was not enough to slow me down much, but there were shallow spots that sapped my speed, so I shifted farther from the lake’s north shore.
At 10:30 I landed on a sandy beach at Taft Bay Park for my morning break, not as far along as I would have liked, but after five hours of paddling I was starting to fade. I settled into a gazebo and contemplated just camping there, but it was still early. The forecast for tomorrow had changed, and thunderstorms would start at 3 a.m. and continue into the day. I wouldn’t paddle the lake in that, so I decided to press on.
At 3:20 that afternoon I made a shortcut across the northeastern corner of the lake, expecting to find the canal entrance on its east end. The sun was high, turning the water pewter gray beneath a gray-green shoreline and a hazy blue sky. I followed a bearing with the compass mounted on the thwart. There was no obvious landmark for the canal. I paddled another 20 minutes under the blazing sun, and the horizon was still just a distant smudge. The wind eventually returned, now roughly in my direction and at my speed so I didn’t feel it. Time dragged and I was tired, but eventually I found the entrance to the canal and tied up along a dock just inside.
There was more boat traffic than I had seen anywhere else on this trip. It was not a weekend, so a very boat-centric town. I wandered along the dock into town, Sylvan Beach, looking for something to eat. What I really missed was fresh fruit, but I needed calories and got a chocolate milkshake.
I paddled a meandering 4 1⁄2 woodsy miles to Lock 22, keeping to the shade along the side and wove my way around the stumps and logs littering the shoreside water.
At Lock 32 I had my first experience camping on a lock’s grounds. I tied my canoe between a broken drinking fountain and the dock so wakes would not push it against the dock; using my throw bag line kept me out of the poison ivy along the bank while I set that up. I set up my tent in the mown strip between the Erie Canal Bike Trail and the canal.
The lock was closed when I arrived at 5:30. I was gaining elevation, and the lock, which would raise me 25′, was an imposing concrete structure that towered over me. I wandered around, grateful to have all evening to prepare for the night. I changed into shorts and a T-shirt. It was very warm and the mosquitoes were scarce.
After the 30 miles of paddling that day I was moving lazily, and after I made dinner I pondered ways to set up the canoe, tent, and tarp around the picnic table in preparation for a rainy night ahead. Eventually I gave up and just put the canoe over some of the gear and tossed the rest into the tent vestibule. I turned in, wrote a bit, contemplated not even bothering to inflate the sleeping pad, but eventually did and fell asleep with my gear unsorted—it would provide something to do on a rainy morning.
I roused myself at 5 a.m. Yesterday’s long day made for a good night’s sleep, and I hadn’t been awakened by the rain. By 5:30 I was out of the tent; a ceiling of ashy mottled clouds covered the sky, a pleasant change from yesterday’s sun. Rain fell occasionally so I was quick and packed up in a lull.
After clearing Lock 22, the paddle to Rome was 10 miles of arrow-straight canal, interrupted only by Lock 21 a mile out, and then it was just the canal stretching off for as far as I could see. The canal passed by but not through Rome. I tied up at a canal-side park and almost beat the afternoon rain on my walk to a grocery store.
Just beyond Rome the Erie Canal descended in the last watershed, the Mohawk River valley, and paralleled or merged with the river until the Mohawk’s confluence with the Hudson River, the Erie Canal’s eastern terminus.
Getting out at Benton’s Landing in Little Falls was easier than I expected, but I would not want to do anything much taller than this without something to grab onto; I ended up standing on my seat to get myself up. Finding peaches and blueberries at the farmers market in Little Falls made the effort worthwhile.
The wind was mostly behind me and strong enough that I was glad to be going with it. I finally got to the entrance to Lock 20. The low dock there was close to a wooden picnic table under a tree, which made it easy to set up camp. I spent some time sorting and cleaning gear; some of which might not outlast this trip. My new water shoes already smelled like old neoprene booties and were stained orange from the algae that flourishes in some of the still waters at the canal’s edges.
I spent the long hot following day paddling to the southeast into the blinding glare off the water with sunscreen dripping in my eyes. I hugged the side of the canal, looking for any shade I could find. The canal didn’t go through Utica and Frankfort, so I had little to hold my attention for more than 16 miles until I reached Ilion. The town, situated on the south side of the canal, had a very nice marina, so I stopped and did laundry. I ended the day another 6 miles farther along the canal and camped at Lock 18 by carrying my canoe up to the lawn overlooking the canal.
I chatted with the lone fisherman at the lock and learned that he had seen a bear in the vicinity, so I made sure to bear-bag and hang my food from a tree. A 30-yard-wide strip of mown grass, which served as a spillway to protect the lock from floods, led through the woods down to the Mohawk River, and I wandered to the river at dusk to watch night fall before turning in.
It was a restless night with train horns sounding for much of the night. In the morning, for a change, I had breakfast before I headed out. I was clearly losing weight. The lockmaster arrived around 7, and as he put me through Lock 18, he pointed out the scars on the walls made when tugs slammed into them in the working days of the canal before the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s made the Erie Canal obsolete for commerce.
At the tail-end of the thunderstorm that blew me back down the canal, I ate a peach while I waited for the lightning to fully subside before continuing. This was the only time I dealt with wind of significant strength the entire trip.
The river was 80 yards wide, half again as wide as the canal, and exposed to the morning sun, so I paddled close to the south bank to get every bit of shade I could, even though the shallows, vegetation, and submerged rocks and logs slowed me. I stopped in Benton’s Landing to wander around in Little Falls. The 3 1⁄2′-tall concrete wall there provided an exercise in balance and scrambling, but I made it out of the canoe and stayed dry. I wandered into a small farmers’ market where I bought a quart of blueberries and a basket of peaches. Fresh fruit at last! As I meandered back to the boat, I ate all of the blueberries and several of the peaches.
A modest current on the Mohawk nudged me downstream, and I arrived at Lock 17 at 11, a little earlier than I expected, and entered the chamber through the mitered gates. At the far end of the lock, on the downstream side, was the canal’s only vertical gate, a solid 150-ton barrier, which lowers like a castle’s portcullis. The water level began to drop and would take almost 10 minutes to lower me 40′, farther than any other lock on the canal. Deep in the chamber, the lock walls squirted jets of water into the falling pool. This was entertaining until I realized the one behind me was steadily filling up the canoe. I moved forward, glad I was the only boat in the lock and free to change position.
As the afternoon progressed, I hurried through a sea of clouds reflected on the mirror-still waters of the canal, headed toward a thunderstorm. Suddenly caught by it, even pushing straight into the wind at a sprint, I was blown backward. I took shelter behind a large tree trunk fallen in the water at the side of the canal. Crowned with tall vegetation, it provided a good wind break. The world turned into a white haze of raindrop splatters as the storm intensified and thunder sounded overhead. I had put my rain jacket on before the storm but didn’t think to first throw on my long underwear top. There was no point in getting it out in the rain—it would be instantly soaked. I warded off hypothermia by vigorously bailing out the inch of water that 10 minutes of rain had poured into the canoe. The intensity of the storm dropped rapidly and, 15 minutes after it began, I ventured on, staying close to the bank in case more lightning occurred.
Rain fell intermittently until 7 p.m. and I decided to stop at Lock 15 in Fort Plain. I picked a spot in the large mown area by a trailer park and busied myself using my paddle to flick wet goose poop out of an area large enough to camp in. During a break in the rain, I set up the tent and tossed the gear in. A walk into town to use the Wi-Fi at the local library kept me occupied until the rain abated and I could return to camp to cook a quick dinner and retire for the night.
The rock on the left is steeper than it looks, and the water is deep, making a sketchy morning loading job near Guard Gate 2. The top of the rock on the right is 2′ above the water—not too hard getting stuff into the canoe in the morning, but not simple getting it unloaded the night before.
I used my canoe cart to portage around the lock before it opened; a good half mile to walk and a bit of a scramble over rocks to get in the water, but it got me moving. Once launched, I cut over to the outflow from the weir next to the lock to get a boost of speed.
I paddled more than 21 miles before stopping on the south side of the canal, across from the town of Amsterdam. The park there was small and not well appointed but seemed quieter and less exposed than the one on the city side of the water.
The next day began slowly as I wandered around Amsterdam, an old mill town that was not nearly as busy as it must have been before 1950. The large warehouses and industrial buildings looked like they had been patched and modified numerous times; several stories of glass panes that must have been broken once and replaced with whatever color was available. The surrounding neighborhood mixed ordinary and elegant houses with some in fine shape and some in need of serious repair.
The valley had opened up and the Mohawk was so wide that I wouldn’t cross from one side to the other without good reason. Highways or train tracks bounded both sides of the river but there were a few houses, and trees blanketed the surrounding hills. The waterway felt less intimate than it had, but the sky above was more expansive and captured my attention. I anxiously watched one squall line move over my port stern quarter for at least an hour, but it eventually moved north of me.
My body had mostly hardened to the rigors of two weeks of paddling, and I was grateful that it was now rare for more than one body part to complain at any one time.
I paddled past Lock 8, landed at an expansive and well-kept park at Scotia Village, and watched it rain from under a shelter while I filled up water bottles. A busy road ran close by the park, so I decided not to camp there and paddled the 2 miles back to the lock where the alley-wide beach at the lock’s south end and the lawn above it provided one of the easiest take-outs and quietest spots of the entire trip.
The final descent of the canal, Locks 6 through 2, lowered me 169′ in the span of 1 ½ miles, and provided a fitting ending to the canal journey. As I looked back at Lock 2, the final lock, I had only another 10 minutes of easy paddling to the Hudson River and I was done.
The next day’s paddling from the lock turned out to be longer than expected. Several spots where I thought I might camp turned out to be unappealing for one reason or another. Two locations I tried were choked with water caltrop and made shore access impossible. After paddling more than 21 winding river miles, I left the wide Mohawk River for the last stretch of narrow canal and stopped at Guard Gate 2 late in the afternoon. The north side was crowded by a road, so I chose the south side where the only disadvantage was a steep take-out.
On my last day I was up far earlier than necessary, but I was itching to get going. However, I couldn’t go anywhere until the five locks ahead were staffed, so I left the tent fly out to dry and wandered around in the faint dawn light as the sun barely glowed through the overcast sky. I followed a gravel road away from the canal toward Crescent Dam. After following the road for 20 minutes around a field bordered by trees, I reached an overlook at the east end of the dam, a 500-yard arc of two 50′-high walls separated by an island in the middle of the river. Downstream, hidden from view, was another dam and Cohoes Falls. Today, the 1 1⁄2-mile flight of five locks, 6 through 2, would drop me 165′ and circumvent the dam and falls. I watched the white curtain of water spilling over Crescent Dam for a minute and then headed back to get packed up for the day.
I spent some time figuring out the least hazardous way to get gear down the rocky bank and back into the boat. I couldn’t do it safely in the flip-flops I was wearing, so I forced myself to put on my damp, stinky water shoes. The rocks dropped steeply into deep water, so I found a flat place to stand; I twisted at the waist to move the gear and drop it several feet into the boat without moving my feet.
I made a couple of calls on the VHF to the lockmaster working the gates as well as the upper locks 6 and 4. Guard Gate 1 was up so I didn’t need to get that opened. I passed through Lock 6 and, as I was dropping down in Lock 5, got the lockmaster to toss me an apple from the tree that I had seen from the chamber. A bit tart, but it was some of the fresh produce I was starved for.
Lock 2, the last of the flight, deposited me into the final 150 yards of the Erie Canal where it rejoined the Mohawk River. I paddled for 10 minutes until I got to the confluence with the Hudson River.
I’d spent 19 days traversing the full 363-mile length of the Erie Canal. While it has outlived its purpose as an artery for commerce, it now thrives as a beautiful waterway for boats as modest as a solo canoe.
Hugh Rand lives in Maryland where paddling gets him out into nature and provides some much-needed exercise. He especially enjoys paddling up Class-II rapids, documenting natural history on paddle explorations, pulling fishing line out of the water, and bouncing around in ocean waves. He continues his father’s tradition of honoring the water gods by sacrificing expensive items—cellphones, eyeglasses, binoculars, cameras, and more—off boats and docks.
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.
Getting my larger trailered boats to and from the water is pretty straightforward—the ramps are paved, and my truck does most of the work. My canoes and kayaks, on the other hand, aren’t so easy, especially when my truck and the water are separated by stretches of asphalt, loose cobbles, and sand and I have to do the lugging. Carts with wheels do fine on pavement, but they get bogged down in sand and rocks.
Photographs by the author
In soft, dry sand the fender supports the weight of the canoe with its large footprint. The wheels are prevented from sinking in the sand and plowing deep furrows.
In the late 1990s I made a cart that fit on the stern of my plywood Greenland-style kayak. It had a 6″ × 15″ fender, the kind with a center rope tube, instead of a pair of wheels. With its much larger footprint it rolled beautifully over dry sand.
The kickstand holds the cart in position for the canoe to be loaded. A machine screw with a wingnut applies enough pressure to keep it from pivoting out of position and allowing the cart to tip onto its side.
Since that first fender-roller cart, which took only half of the weight of the kayak, I’ve made three fender-roller center carts for my canoes. The center carts take all the weight of the canoes as well as gear and make it very easy to get everything to the water and back in single trips. The one I built in 2017 used a fender alone, and the two I built this year each combine a fender with a pair of wheels on the same axle. These latest all-terrain carts roll well over hard and soft surfaces and use the durability of the wheels and footprint of the fender to good advantage.
With the fender removed, the wheels have sunk in the sand almost up to the axle and do as much plowing as rolling.
The fender I used for the kayak cart some 25 years ago is a Taylor-Made 6″ × 15″ and has a tube just large enough for a 1⁄2″ PVC water pipe (which has an outside diameter of 0.84″). I beveled the end of the pipe, used a bit of dish soap to lubricate it, and pounded it into the fender tube with a mallet.
On pavement, the wheels take most of the load and the cart rolls a bit more freely than it would with the fender alone. The wheels also avoid subjecting the fender to wear when the support it provides is not needed.
The two carts pictured here are a small one for my 12′ 8″, 35-lb Piccolo canoe and a larger one for my 18′ 9″, 80-lb decked canoe. For the small cart I use a Polyform HTM-1 fender, which measures 6.3″ in diameter and 15.5″ in length, and 7″ wheels. The larger cart employs a Polyform HTM-2 fender, which measures 8.5″ in diameter and 20.5″ in length, and 8″ wheels. (These measurements are from the manufacturers. Both wheels are actually 1⁄8″ less in diameter than their matched fender, and the fenders slightly larger than the wheels.)
On soft sand, the large cart easily supports the weight of an 80-lb canoe and about 25 lbs of gear.
The Polyform fenders have a rope tube that fits 1⁄2″ copper water pipe, which has an outside diameter of 0.625″ and is a slip fit in the fender. The pipe rotates with the fender, preventing its tube from wearing. The axle for both pipe inserts is 1⁄2″; I’ve used solid aluminum rod, solid steel rod, and steel tubing. All have a loose fit in the copper pipe, which has an inside diameter of 0.527″.
I’ve hauled this canoe across soft sand like this on another part of this same beach using a cart I’d made using inflatable hand-truck tires. It was slow going. With the fender cart it was a breeze.
The cart frame consists of three pieces: a horizontal deck with two through mortices and two uprights with tenons to fit. The tenons extend above the deck and are attached to a pair of fore-and-aft bunks for the boat. A kickstand bolted to one of the bunks keeps the cart upright enough for the canoe to be loaded on it. A tie-down strap to hold the cart against the hull slips through holes in the uprights. The axle gets a larger washer to keep the fender away from the uprights and smaller washers inside and outside of the wheels. Hitch-pin clips, inserted into holes at the ends of the axle, keep everything in place.
I repurposed an old canvas tote to make a bag for the cart parts. The fender, which can be used for its original intended purpose or as a beach roller, doesn’t need to be bagged up.
I made a canvas bag to hold the cart parts for carrying aboard the canoe. The fender stays loose so it can serve as a beach roller or, with a line threaded through it, as a fender.
The parts for the carts are readily available. The fenders can be a bit pricey new, but I’ve salvaged many that have gone adrift. The fender can still be used for its intended function.
The cart’s bunks and kickstands are nothing special and can be made of shop scraps. Softwoods, like the Port Orford cedar for the longer one and red cedar for the shorter one, will work well without the weight of hardwoods. The kickstands need to be short enough to have the cart lean on them.
The copper pipe should extend about 1⁄4″ from each end of the fender. A large washer will keep the fender from rubbing against the cart’s uprights. After cutting the pipe to length, file the edges smooth inside and out. This is especially important if using a tubing cutter, which will create a sharp edge that intrudes into the opening.
The only critical dimension of the deck, whether the small one here or the large one below, is the distance between the mortices. It should be the measured length of the fender plus ½”. I made this deck of ¾” oak.
I had a piece of 1″ Douglas fir that worked as the deck for the large cart. A piece of 3⁄4″ hardwood would also work.
I used cut-offs of 3⁄4″-thick pipe from a decking project for the uprights (oak would work, too). The hole at the top is for the 1⁄4″ × 20 machine screw that holds the upright to the bunk. If the hole is too small for an easy slip fit, a 5⁄16″ hole is fine. A loose fit isn’t a problem. The middle hole is for the 1” strap that will hold the canoe to the cart. It should be just below the level at the bottom of the deck. The undersized hole provides some friction to keep the strap in place. The 1″ hole for the axle can also be enlarged if the axle is a tight fit; it should rotate freely.
The notes about the small upright apply to the large upright, too. The outside dimensions for the two patterns aren’t identical but they aren’t critical.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.
Afterword:
7/12/24—My YouTube suggestions turned up a video about the Rolligon, a cylindrical low-pressure tire invented 1951 by William Albee and patented in 1957. He had been inspired by Inuit using inflated rollers made of sealskins to roll boats ashore. Rolligon tires are currently being used by vehicles for oil-drilling operations in the North to traverse tundra without getting stuck or seriously damaging the terrain.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats readers by sending us an email.
When I bought my first handheld marine GPS (a Garmin 12 in 2000), I thought, like many of us in fog-bound Maine, that I now had the ultimate answer to kayak and open-boat navigation. I regularly swapped it for newer handhelds as features were added or mine broke. Then last summer I heard about Maptattoo, a promising new chartplotter specifically created for small boats. It was being crowd-funded and I sent in a deposit to reserve one.
The Maptattoo was designed to address the difficulties its developers encountered using a tablet in the 2018 Race to Alaska (R2AK). The first issue was visibility. If you’ve used a dedicated handheld tablet or smartphone to navigate, you know how frustrating it is to read an LCD screen in bright sunlight. Reflections make it difficult enough; with dark glasses it’s almost impossible. Power management is a challenge, with LCD screens needing plenty of power when running at full brightness. Batteries require replacing or charging, and on small, often wet boats this can be a problem. Handhelds that run 19 hours or so on a couple of AA batteries are fine for a day’s outing, but beyond that, the batteries need to be replaced or recharged. Despite manufacturers’ claims of watertightness, their handhelds’ battery boxes eventually fail, as my numerous dead handheld GPS units can attest, even when I’ve operated them in windowed dry bags, which also worsened visibility.
The Maptattoo developers had several goals: a large screen with visibility even in bright sunlight, a multi-day battery, watertightness, impact resistance, and the ability to be operated with a wet finger or push-buttons. For readability and low-power consumption they settled on the only technology that provides both: E Ink, the black-and-white screen technology used for e-readers like Kindle.
They hand-built several prototypes and field-tested them on three boats in the 2022 R2AK. Two of the boats finished and the other capsized, yet they all provided useful feedback. With the benefit of the sea trials and crowd-funding financial support, production started, and the first units went out in the fall of 2023. I got mine in November and did my initial testing while rowing my dory in subfreezing temperatures, sailing on an iceboat, and then rowing the dory on longer trips the next spring.
Maptattoo is built in the U.S. and comes in a pouch with cables for charging and computer interface: one USB-C/USB-C and one USB-C/USB. The unit is 7 1⁄2″ tall, 4 1⁄2″ wide, and 1⁄2″ thick; the screen measures 6″ on the diagonal. Besides the power button on the left, and a menu key under it, there are zoom-in and -out buttons. On the right, four navigation buttons cluster around an enter button.
Photographs by the author
The display can be read in any light from bright sunlight to night darkness. The speed and heading are presented in large numbers that can be read from a distance, and the device can be operated via the control buttons beneath the display, or with touch-screen commands.
When you turn the device on you get a picture of a cigar-chomping balaclava-clad gent missing a front tooth. I had to ask. It is Henry Worsley at the end of his solo trek across Antarctica in 2016, just 100 miles short of completing the more than 1,000-mile crossing. The trek killed him. Why Henry? It’s a reminder of the spirit of adventure, the folks for whom Maptattoo was designed. Several of the devices were used on the 2024 Everglades Challenge and Worrell 1000, a sailing catamaran race on the Atlantic coast from Florida to Virginia.
A few seconds after the image of Worsley appears, the main screen comes up with a chart with your location centered, and your speed and heading displayed in large type above the image of the chart. It is eminently readable. Course and speed are in type large enough to be readable 6′ or more away, as are land masses, the intertidal zone, and water shallower than 6′. This is done with two shades of gray and the intertidal zone shown in hatched diagonal lines. Details such as submerged and drying rocks, aids to navigation, and geographical names including waterbodies are visible at arm’s length, pretty much the same as in other electronic and paper charts. In the dark, turning the light switch to high powers-up a backlight that fully illuminates the screen.
Depths are indicated in feet, but to keep the screen uncluttered there are no contour lines. Depth and distance units can be user set; users can also choose between true and magnetic courses.
Other GPS navigation devices, like the paper charts on which they are based, display charts and information in color on LCD screens. The black-and-white E Ink used by Maptattoo makes the screen more easily readable outdoors, but it required the developers to write new software to reinterpret the color-coded data from the International Hydrographic Organization. So, the developers needed to make decisions about how much data to show and how to show it to keep the screen from being cluttered. Information is provided in drop-down menus.
I had a bit of a learning curve to get used to working without color, and for those used to scrolling on LCD screens, scrolling here is a little different: the screen blinks off and then comes up with the spot you’ve scrolled to; it’s like turning a page on an e-reader.
When you touch the menu key, several menu items display across the screen bottom. These are: Light, Search, Forward, Route, Waypoint, Tide, Info (about the unit), USB connect, and Touch (turning off or adjusting the touch-screen function). The latter is handy when it’s rough and an inadvertent touch can shift the screen; you then control the unit solely using the buttons. The Forward mode attaches a line to your position arrow that varies in length to scale. It helps while reading the unit at a distance.
To keep the amount of on-screen clutter to a minimum, detail about objects such as an aid-to-navigation or a tide symbol comes by touching the object in question. This opens a drop-down box with fields based on the IHO standard that provide data about the object or a small tide or current table. Once you move beyond 500′ scale, fewer aids are shown, and your touch is less accurate. People familiar with software such as OpenCPN or iBoating are used to this. It is a little different for those of us who are used to reading NOAA chart abbreviations, but it does present a clean, clear look. When you shut the unit down and turn it back on, the light level reverts to the default low, and touch defaults to two-finger, but the scale stays as you left it.
For much of the winter, while I was unable to get afloat with the Maptattoo for sea trials, I familiarized myself with the device’s software and provided feedback to its developers. Many of the recommendations that I made about how names of bodies of water, islands, rocks, and hazards would be shown, were incorporated into the first major software upgrade, which happened in January 2024. There will be more improvements in the forthcoming second major upgrade; widgets to display route information as well as a trip summary will be included.
I’ve not worked with routes and waypoints much. They can be set up on computer with software—such as OpenCPN, Garmin BaseCamp, and GPSVisualizer—that work with GPS Exchange Format (gpx) files that the Maptattoo uses. The online manual has the details. The developers plan to add a Maptattoo-dedicated software tool for creating gpx files, but that is in the future. Their focus is currently concentrated on the unit’s interface and on adding more charts.
In the lower right corner of the device there is an attachment point for a lanyard. The developer recommends Quadlock gear to make a mount. I’ve picked up the pieces needed and attach the mount to a thwart in my dory with a spring clamp, rather than screwing the base in place. This allows me to move the unit wherever I like. In a kayak or sailboat there might only be one place/spot that you want to fix it, and securing the base would be best and more secure.
The Maptatto can be mounted with Quadlock gear with a base permanently afixed in one spot or, as seen here, on a spring clip so it can be moved around the boat. The designers have put concerted efforts into “decluttering” the display. Depths are given in feet but contours are eliminated.
On a recent trip as a passenger in a fast outboard on a choppy day for the Maine Island Trail Association, I used the Maptattoo as a handheld. While I was bouncing around at speed the accuracy of touch suffered, so the buttons at the bottom were easier to use. I confirmed that the Maptattoo is indeed shockproof and can survive being dropped and bounced around an aluminum boat’s bottom. With its rubber charging-port cover fully in place the Maptattoo is waterproof to the IP68 rating—fully sealed against dust and able to survive 30 minutes underwater at a depth of 1 meter. I didn’t give mine the IP68 test, but it did survive being dropped into a sinkful of water. The seal is replaceable. The charging cords have O-rings so the Maptattoo can be charged even when exposed to rain or spray.
I’ve not been out long enough to test the 50-hour battery time. I do know that an eight-hour trip with continuous use took a little over 10 percent out of the battery and that the recent adventure-race users were impressed with the battery life between charges.
Maptattoo is aimed at the users of small boats, and comes from developers who also use small boats, occasionally get wet, and use them for more than day trips. The company is small, and its principals are happy to answer questions and address concerns. They welcome and implement suggestions for improvements. The Maptattoo eliminates the problems of bright light, battery life, and waterproofing. It is certainly up to the demands of those who may be using their small boats in places and weather beyond most of us. This is a product for the demanding. Seeing Henry Worsley come up when I turn it on is a reminder that navigation is serious and Maptattoo is, indeed, meeting the needs of the serious user.
Ben Fuller, curator emeritus of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, and former curator of Mystic Seaport and Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, has been messing about in small boats for a very long time. He is owned by a dozen or more boats ranging from an International Canoe to a faering.
The Maptattoo marine GPS is available from Maptattoo for $799. It includes a 1-year warranty, firmware and software updates, and a chart package for a chosen coastal or Great Lakes area of the U.S. or Canada.
Over the decades, we’ve stored quite a few boats outdoors with only fabric covers to protect them. Those covers must be supported in some way to prevent sagging lest they create holding ponds for rainwater that will likely end up leaking into the boats. For boats with sailing rigs, we’ve used sprits as ridgepoles, but an elegant solution for boats with or without spars is to spring battens across the beam to arch the cover. The battens are easy enough to make; the challenge is how to securely anchor the ends of the battens on the gunwales. East Passage Boatwrights in Bristol, Rhode Island, has an innovative and beautiful solution: a batten socket that fits into a rowboat’s standard 1⁄2″ oarlock fitting, is easy to use, and doesn’t disrupt a small boat’s classic lines.
Keeper lines, threaded through a hole in the bottom of the socket’s pin, can be tied off to the boat or, as seen here, back around the batten itself.
The batten sockets are cast in silicon bronze. The pin is 2 1⁄8″ long and has a diameter of 7⁄16″, which makes for a quick and easy fit in a 1⁄2″ oarlock socket. The batten socket’s opening is 3⁄4″ deep, 1 5⁄16″ wide, and 3⁄8″ high.
We cut our battens out of cypress, at 3⁄8″ thick and 1 1⁄8″ wide. Both the inside width and height of the socket’s pocket taper approximately, so we trimmed the batten ends as needed for the best fit. Battens can, of course, be cut wider and thicker to optimize the spring and strength of the wood. The cypress we chose is a light wood and will float with the sockets attached, should they go overboard, to prevent losing the beautiful bronze to Davy Jones’s locker.
For a boat with two rowing postiions two pairs of batten sockets can be employed to create a well-spaced frame for a boat cover.
The batten socket’s pin has a hole at the base with a strong, thin lanyard already attached to prevent the pin from popping out of the oarlock socket during installation or removal of the cover. Although we tie the lanyards back around the batten, they could be tied to other spots inside of the boat. There are also two versions of the batten socket: one has a small set-screw that can be used to secure the sockets to the batten (which is favorable for boats stored on deck or where there is danger of the hardware taking a swim); the other has no set-screws and should work fine for storage on the hard. We drilled small pilot holes into the batten ends for the set screws to ensure that they would set fully into the batten—any bit of the set screw left protruding from the bottom of the batten socket will prevent full seating of the socket pin into the oarlock socket.
Photographs by the authors
Set up and disassembly could not be easier: the silicon-bronze socket has a 7⁄16″-diameter pin that comfortably fits into a 1⁄2″ oarlock fitting.
Our Penobscot 14 has two rowing stations, so we bought two pairs of batten sockets and cut the battens to appropriate lengths to create a modest 2″ rise for the battens amidships. We rounded all edges of the battens to prevent chafe on the inside of the cover. The batten sockets themselves have smooth, polished edges all around, which minimizes wear on cover materials.
Audrey and Kent Lewis have messed about from coast to coast and are always on the lookout for well-designed boats and beautiful bronze boat bits. Their continuing adventures are logged at their blog, Small Boat Restoration.
Batten Sockets are available from East Passage Boatwrights for $95. Each set includes two sockets with lanyards.
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.
When Polly Robinson was growing up in Cumbria, there was always a home-built boat for the family to use. Her father and grandfather were hobby boatbuilders, and she attributes her love of being on the water to them. Long before she was born, her grandfather built a pram dinghy in which her father and aunt learned to sail. It stayed in the family and, when they were old enough, Polly and her sisters learned to sail in it too. A generation later, Polly’s two children used it. Beyond sailing and rowing, Polly’s grandfather also introduced her to boatbuilding. When she was 9, she helped him to build a Selway Fisher Wren, a stitch-and-glue canoe. Now, she has built another stitch-and-glue Selway Fisher design, the 7′ 6″ Redshank, a lapstrake rowboat based on a traditional English dinghy.
Photographs courtesy of Polly Robinson
Stitching the strakes together would become increasingly nerve-wracking as Polly progressed up the sides of the hull and the curve became exaggerated around the generous beam.
In 2022, Polly was working at Fyne Boat Kits in Kendal, Cumbria. During the two years she had been with the company a diminutive stem dinghy, all stitched up but not glued and far from finished, had stood in one corner of the boatbuilding shop where weeklong classes were held. When Polly came in to work one day, the boat was gone. She didn’t think much of it until a colleague told her it had been thrown out, but that he had rescued it from the dumpster. He felt sorry for it, saying it deserved better than to be simply thrown away. He thought he should ask Polly if she would be interested in finishing the boat. He knew she’d built a Kaholo paddleboard and a 9′ 6″ Grain Waterlog surfboard and had been talking about building something else.
Once all the planks were stitched into place Polly moved the project outside, inverting the hull to apply thickened epoxy between the laps.
“It was true,” Polly says. “I had been chatting about building something more than a surfboard. I keep a Cornish Coble on a swinging mooring on Coniston Water—where Arthur Ransome based the Swallows and Amazons books—and I wanted a tender for it. We had an inflatable, and it did the job, but it wasn’t the prettiest.”
Polly went to look at the dumpster-salvage dinghy parts. At first glance it seemed like everything she needed was there: strakes, thwarts, knees, forward and aft bulkheads, ’midship frame. There was no transom, but she knew she could cut one on the CNC router at work. Also missing were the hardwood gunwale pieces, copper wire for stitching, fittings, and fastenings, but Polly knew she could source everything locally. She loaded the kit into her car and drove home.
Once all the lands were glued up, Polly was able to flip the hull back to upright and snip out the copper wires.
Needing a space to build the boat, Polly talked to her father. Could she use his garage? “I promised him it would only take a couple of months of building weekends and then I’d be gone,” she says. “He’s always loved building boats, so he was fine with the idea.”
Her father wasn’t the only family mentor to be involved. “When my Granda died,” Polly says, “I inherited his tools. He had a lot of fastenings and fittings that he’d intended to use on boats he was going to build but hadn’t, and they all came to me. It was nice to use his old boatbuilding tools and some of the fittings. It felt like coming full circle.”
Back inside the garage, Polly glued up the transom. Typically the reinforcing panel goes on the inner face of the transom but Polly preferred the look of it on the outside, and also saw it as a good plate on which to mount the outboard.
Polly set up a building station in her father’s garage and laid the parts out on the floor. She was surprised to see how flat the side and bottom panels were. “The boat had been stitched together for years, so I thought the parts would retain some of their shape. But the plywood had no memory of the curve they’d been put into. None, they were just flat.”
As the boat slowly took shape, that flatness and the age of the material led to some nerve-wracking days.
There’s no such thing as too many clamps. Polly glued up the two-piece sapele gunwale in situ.
“The Redshank is only 7′ 6″ long,” says Polly, “but its beam is 4′, so there’s a lot of curve in the planks. My father was an enthusiastic helper, and I don’t think I could have got the planks on without the extra pair of hands. Even with his help it was hard. I’d stitch a plank in place, bending it cautiously around the curve, and it’d get harder and harder toward the ends. I’d hear the plywood creaking and hold my breath. Whenever we’d finish a plank, I’d feel like I couldn’t leave, I’d sit and have a cup of tea and just wait for everything to start pinging off.”
Polly works on fairing the outside of the hull prior to painting. The skeg (important for the boat’s tracking capabilities) would not be fitted until after the hull was finished.
As it turned out, nothing broke and, with the last of the planks stitched into place, Polly quickly turned to the epoxy and fiberglass. She started to breathe more easily. “It was such a relief when we got the epoxy fillets into the lands and the ’glass and epoxy over the whole hull. Only then did I trust that it was going to stay put!”
Despite her anxiousness, Polly managed the whole assembly without steam. “We did think about it. A friend who built a Redshank used a steambox, but in the end we managed without.”
In the ends of the Redshank the thwarts sit atop bulkheads to enclose generous buoyancy compartments accessed via removable hatches. The ’midship thwart sits on the central building frame.
For the gunwales, Polly used sapele. After the struggles with the planking, she decided to apply it in two pieces, each 7⁄8 × 1 1⁄8″, epoxied and clamped in place.
Once everything was painted and varnished all that remained was to install the bronze oarlock plates.
By the time most of the assembly was complete, summer was fast approaching. Polly’s original time frame would have been spot on but for one thing. “I went sailing,” she laughs. To justify the delay she explains, “The weather was great, and I was invited to go sailing on some different boats. I love sailing, it’s really my thing. So, yes, I went sailing up in Scotland, over in Norfolk on the East Coast of England, and down on the South Coast as well. It was great, but the boatbuilding did get delayed. My estimate of the hours I’d need was probably pretty close, but I was off having fun.”
Launching day was calm and foggy—the perfect “Swallows and Amazons” day for a first row on Coniston Water.
PUFFIN was eventually launched on Coniston Water in England’s Lake District in the autumn. But, despite her late arrival, she quickly became a family favorite. Polly mounted a 30-year-old 2.3-hp Mariner outboard on the transom and bought a pair of 6′ 6″ oars. Even though the boat is only 7′ 6″ long, thanks to the beam, she says, “you can fit loads into her. The kids and I have used her to go up the lake, over to Wild Cat Island, swimming, or we’ve just zoomed around. Plus, Conor, who’s 11, likes to fish so he’s been going out in her on his own. And she looks pretty!”
Polly’s father, Paul Robinson, rowing PUFFIN on her first excursion.
Polly is now volunteering at Windermere Jetty Museum in Bowness. She works in the conservation boatshop helping with projects as diverse as steaming and fitting new timbers in a lapstrake sailboat and scraping paint off a 100-year-old carvel-planked steamboat. And she’s already excited to be thinking of her next project. The family is hoping to “build a house on the Inner Hebridean island of Tiree,” she says, “and once that’s done, we’re going to need a boat to use up there. I’m thinking a Tolman Alaskan Skiff would go well. They’re 22′ with a cabin, so a bit of a step up from PUFFIN, but who knows!”
Jenny Bennett is managing editor of Small Boats.
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.
In the northern Bahamas, the Albury name is synonymous with boat building. For generations, this family has turned out hundreds of boats – from dinghies to schooners – from their building sheds on Man O’ War Cay in the Abacos. Since the mid-1950s Willard and Benny Albury have been producing fine outboard runabouts that have earned a reputation as smooth-riding, sea- worthy, rugged boats, capable of excellent speed with modest horsepower.
Albury Runabout Particulars
For many years, these boats were built in wood, by eye, with no two boats being exactly alike. After building so many unique variations on a single boat type, the Albury brothers have a pretty good idea of the important factors in runabout design. The plans shown here represent what Willard Albury considers to be his optimal boat, the best of over 250 individual boats.
Doug Hylan has drawn a set of plans that not only document the construction of these fine boats, but make it possible for other builders to enjoy their good qualities. The lines show a moderate deadrise of 15 degrees with a fine entry, producing an easy ride even in the short, steep chop common in the shallow waters of the Bahamas. Construction is robust but simple and clean, making these boats long-lived and easy to maintain.
Albury Runabout Profile View
The Albury runabout will make a fine project for intermediate and advanced builders. Glued strip planking over frames sawn from natural Madeira root knees was the original construction, but most builders today will probably find it easier to laminate their frames. For those who would prefer cold-molding, a construction sheet is included for this method. Lofting is required, but this is not a difficult set of lines to lay down.
Six sheets of plans for the Albury Runabout show lines, original construction, cold-molded construction, and details. Calculations for U.S. Coast Guard safe powering, load capacity, and flotation requirements are included. WB Plan No. 136, $90.00.
Albury Runabout Top View
Completed 19′ 7″ Albury Runabout Images
Matthew P. Murphy
Here’s a behind-the-scene’s look at how many a WoodenBoat cover and calendar have come to be. Maynard Bray (left) mans the helm of ABACO while photographer Benjamin Mendlowitz does his magic behind the camera. The Albury runabout’s steadiness and agility make her Mendlowitz’s boat of choice for this work.
Benjamin Mendlowitz
The Albury runabout is a sturdy, stable, yet surprisingly nimble runabout for her size (almost 20’ LOA). She can be strip-planked or cold-molded.
Chip King (both), Shearline Boatworks
Though some may prefer the looks and the utility of a simple arrangement and paint throughout, a varnished windshield, handsome and comfortable bucket seats, a rod holder, and a teak platform (walking deck) show how nice this design can look when she’s all dressed up.
Benjamin Mendlowitz
To comply with present regulations, the motor should be separated from the cockpit by a watertight bulkhead as shown here. Bill Boyd and his son built this Albury runabout for summertime fun around Brooklin, Maine.
Recreational canoeing began in Britain and America in the latter half of the 19th century in boats similar to Iain Oughtred’s Wee Rob. The general type came to be known as the Rob Roy canoe, after a popular, archetypal vessel by that name. Oughtred’s 12-footer-being a small version of the original breed-is named accordingly.
In recent years there has been a revival of double-paddle sailing canoes, as more people rediscover the versatility of these lovely craft. Traditional construction, though, of what is essentially a tiny yacht can be a challenging project-given light scantlings, solid lumber, tight spaces, and a complex round-bottomed shape. Wee Rob can certainly be built in the traditional manner, and Oughtred has specified information for that option. However, the real purpose and appeal of this design (as with much of Iain Oughtred’s work) is to facilitate rather than complicate construction, so the builder can go boating in a traditional craft after a minimum of shop time.
To that end, Wee Rob requires no lofting, because patterns are provided for the stems and the station molds. Also, the preferred building method here is glued-seam lapstrake plywood construction, which requires few fastenings and no internal framing, and for which sheet materials are readily available in marine grades. Moreover, the designer has predetermined the plank shapes and prepared an illustrated, instructional monograph for building small boats by this system.
The construction drawing in the plans set shows not only the Wee Rob’s building jig but — along with the sail plan — a variety of auxiliary parts and appurtenances should the builder elect to produce a decked rather than open canoe, or create a lug-rigged lee board sailer of the basic double-paddler.
Finally, provisions have been made and revised patterns furnished for lengthened versions (at 13’7″ or 15’2″) of this hull on the same beam. The standard model of a Wee Rob would be as handy a single-hander and car-top cruiser as you’re likely to find. And to find one, friends, is to build one, since boats like this are not seen at the store; but she’s well worth the effort. Wee Rob offers the opportunity to do some old-time, commemorative canoeing: a return to the roots of recreational small craft, in a modern boat.
Plans for the Wee Rob Canoe consist of five sheets which include lines and offsets, construction and sail plans, plus patterns for molds and stems that are marked for plank lands. Also included are a materials list and the designer’s 14-page building booklet. WB Plan No. 79.
Completed 12′ Wee Rob Canoe Images
Lorenz Rutz
Shair Rutz and her granddaughter take a maiden voyage of PEARL on the Ompompanoosuc River near Norwich, Vermont.
Charlotte Rutz
The Wee Rob plans include a decked version but Lorenz (wading) was looking for a light pond boat, and decking would have added significant weight, so he built it as an open boat.
Paul LaBrie
The LaBrie’s son, Jonathan, launched from their dock on Cobbosseecontee Stream. Jonathan loves the canoe and has asked us to build him one.
It would be hard to imagine a better all-around small boat than the Shellback Dinghy. She is a pleasure to row, and fast and responsive under sail. She is easy to build and maintain, docile and well mannered under tow, small enough to handle easily but big enough to carry a good load. And, she looks great– handsome with just paint, or lovely with a little varnish.
Plans
What designer Joel White did for the pram with his terrific Nutshell design, he has done again for larger dinghies with the Shellback. Here is a boat that is elegant of line, can be built by the beginner, and will outperform just about any production dinghy on the market. Scores of these fine boats are already improving the waterfront scene, and you might even be able to find (or start) some hotly contested Shellback racing in your area.
The more experienced builder will have no trouble building Shellback from the plans alone, but for the beginner there is lots of help. First, there’s the 53-page monograph How to Build the Shellback Dinghy. The Shellback Model Kit ($79.95) will help you sharpen your boatbuilding skills on a smaller scale. And, complete boat kits are available: $1,295.00 for the rowing version; $1,495.00 if you want to sail as well.
Line Drawings
As a teaching tool, the Shellback provides an education in the fine points of sailing, rowing, and sculling for sailors of all ages, her standing lug rig easily dropped altogether if the winds come on too strong. She is not easily adapted to outboard power, primarily because the weight of the motor throws her fine hull out of trim, but she rows well enough to provide plenty of efficiency and speed, even with a load. She is distinctive enough in appearance to attract admiration at every turn, a unique blend of traditional design and modern wood construction.
Construction Plans
Plans for the Shellback Dinghy come on six sheets and include lines, construction, building jig, plank layouts, and full-sized patterns for molds and other parts. WB Plan No. 109, $75.00.
Completed 11’2″ Shellhack Dinghy Images
All photos by Delaney Brown
The Shellback is well behaved under oars. Neither the plans nor the book Building the Shellback Dinghy indicate a brace for the rower’s feet, but the addition of one would allow for a more powerful pull.
The Shellback sits in near proper trim even with a light rower in the bow and a bigger passenger sitting in the stern.
The Shellback Dinghy is a wonderful entry level craft for both kids and adults learning how to sail.
Pam Payson
When taking the helm, sitting on the bottom is the most convenient position. Floorboards make that a more comfortable option when some water gets aboard.
photographs by Bruce Holaday
PETIT BATEAU patiently awaits a grandchild.
Bruce sails the boat from a ramp across from the Coast Guard base in Oakland.
After successfully carrying RIDDLE the last 50’ and splashing down into the pond, it was time for a victory lap.
The Nutshell Sailing Pram is, in our opinion, one of the best tenders ever designed. She’s a beauty in looks, easy to build, and does her job far, far better than most boats of her length. She rows very easily, and can carry three adults with a comfortable margin of free board. She tracks exceptionally well and, even in a chop against a breeze, she holds her own like a true pulling boat.
7′ 7″ Nutshell Sailing Pram Particulars
The Nutshell tows steadily and with little disturbance. An ideal yacht tender, she can also be rigged to sail. Very stable, yet swift under the lug sail, she’s a great “fun” boat for kids and adults alike.
Joel White, who created the design, has this to say about the Nutshell Pram: “Little boats are fun to develop, but not easy, since the design constraints are so strong and the requirements so firm. One of the requirements was that it must be constructed from 8’ plywood panels, so the pram became 7′ 7″ overall. An earlier plywood pulling boat I built with glued laps proved to be such a success that the same construction is used here in Nutshell. It produces a strong, light, easily constructed hull, and one that is so uncluttered inside that cleaning and painting become easy.”
Plans Redrawn for Publication by Dave Dillion
The Nutshell Pram is planked upside down on a building jig. Consisting of only 22 wooden parts (Rowing model), the design was a natural for a kit, and WoodenBoat first offered her as a complete kit boat, one of the most attractive and best performing for her size of any we’ve seen. (The Nutshell Pram Kit is still available in a Rowing Model for $700, and in a Sailing Model for $895, freight collect.)
In WB No. 60, we ran a “how-to-build” article on the Nutshell, and we now offer a plans package for those who prefer to furnish their own material. The plans consist of eight sheets, including building jig details, template sheet, scaled plank patterns, patterns for structural members, and construction details. A how-to build manual and video can be purchased separately. WB Plan No. 41. $75.
Construction Plans
Completed 7′ 7″ Nutshell Sailing Pram Images
Photo by Audrey and Kent Lewis
This Nutshell’s sail has a row of reef points, described in Maynard Bray’s book as “a prudent step.” He also advises “Hold the sheet; don’t belay it. Being able to instantly let it go in a puff will avoid a capsize.”
Photo by Audrey and Kent Lewis
The belaying pins on the forward thwart serve to belay the halyard. While they may seem more sentimental than practical, when properly used, they can be pulled in an instant to drop the sail. And unlike cleats screwed in place, they can be removed to clear the thwart for rowing. For builders who don’t have a lathe, they’re available for purchase. The function of the long pintle on the transom is explained in this article by Kent and Audrey Lewis.
Photo by Audrey and Kent Lewis
For rowing, the daggerboard, rudder, and tiller fit neatly behind the aft thwart. The lug sail can be rolled up around the spars and laid in the boat; the 8’ 3” mast will extend past the transom.
Photo by Audrey and Kent Lewis
With a single occupant aboard, the Nutshell sits with the bow transom clear of the water without a lot of overhang shortening the hull’s waterline.
Installing the Rudder of a Nutshell Pram
The Nutshell’s split gudgeon rudder hardware employs a single 11 7⁄8″-long brass pintle and places both gudgeons on the rudder. The split gudgeon has overlapping top and bottom bronze “hooks,” similar in shape to open fairleads.
Photo by Audrey and Kent Lewis
Step 1: Hold the rudder perpendicular to the transom and slide the lower gudgeon onto the pintle.
Photo by Audrey and Kent Lewis
Step 2: Bring the rudder to vertical. The hooks of the lower gudgeon will grab hold and the rudder can be slid down until the upper, conventional gudgeon engages with the top of the pintle.
Here is a pair of boats that will feel right at home on the working waterfront. Both would make fine boatyard skiffs or small harbor-ferries. Both would be fine for a little recreational fishing or getting around the lake on a summer vacation, or ferrying out to that island camp. The larger boat would make a fine skiff for some entry-level lobstering or shellfish harvesting.
Drawings
Garveys originated as shallow-draft, burdensome, and easily built boats for working the shallow bays and estuaries of the Jersey Shore. The advent of the internal-combustion engine, and later, the outboard motor, ensured their survival since the hull form is actually better suited to mechanical power than to the sailing rigs of the early boats. Doug Hylan has refined the Ben garveys somewhat from their original form: They show a strong sheer and more rake to the bow transom for good looks, the buttock lines aft have been straightened out for planing speeds, and the construction is updated to make use of plywood and epoxy. But they still display the same characteristics that made their forefathers popular: ease of construction, shallow draft, good stability, and great load capacity.
Plans
You build the Ben garveys of plywood, upside down on a ladder frame over temporary molds. Lofting is required, but it is extremely simple. The chines are easily made using epoxy fillers and fiberglass tape. Flotation compartments ensure that a swamped boat will float level and support the motor head above the water.
Plans
The plans are printed on five sheets (four for Big Ben) and include lines, construction, details, and building jig. Also included are instruction sheets that cover tool and materials, scarfing plywood, construction, and use. WB Plan Nos. 126 (BEN) and 127 (BIG BEN), $75.00 each.
Completed 15 ‘9″ and 19’ Ben Garveys Images
Photo by Doug Hylan
This Ben Garvey has its outboard motor mounted in an inboard well. Designer Hylan lobbies against building that well for general use as it reduces the boat’s efficiency, occupies space, and adds construction time.
Photo by Benjamin Mendlowitz
Designer-builder Doug Hylan and his daughter head out across the Benjamin River in his Ben Garvey. The stable boat is easily built with plywood and epoxy, and requires only modest power.
Photo by Bill Thomas
“They can perform every manner of waterfront task with easy competence and honest grace.”
Photo by Bill Thomas
Denny Robertson, a Maine waterman, built a house way aft on his 19′ Big Ben Garvey. The boat ferries people and supplies to an island camp in Blue Hill Bay.
Photo by Mike O'Connell
Mike O’Connell built this center-console Big Ben. The husky boat earns its keep by assisting rowing crews near Pittsburgh and working for the local Riverkeepers.
Inspired by Alton Wallace’s highly regarded West Pointer workboats of the Maine coast, designer David Stimson has drawn the striking 19’6″ Ocean Pointer outboard skiff. The traits that make Ocean Pointer well suited for its ancestral job of inshore fishing allow it to perform all manner of waterfront tasks for pleasure or profit.
Ocean Pointer Particulars
A sizable flat to the bottom provides good initial stability—have you ever try hauling something heavy over the side of a typically tender deep-V hull? The flat bottom also permits this boat to plane with modest power. Substantial freeboard forward, combined with a relatively fine entry, allows Pointer to blast through a harbor chop smoothly and at speed.
This skiff runs dry. Relatively low deadrise angle (V-shape to the bottom) around Stations 2, 3, and 4 reduces or redirects spray. The bow wave tends to roll down and out, rather than to climb the sides of the hull.
Construction Plans
A sweeping sheerline puts the rail down to a comfortable height back where you’ll be working, or playing, and it looks fine. As for that pronounced tumblehome back aft—well, that just looks fine.
Hull construction consists of cedar strips over plywood semi-bulkheads. The designer specifies silicon-bronze fastenings. Dynel set in epoxy covers the deck. Building this strip-planked hull will prove fairly straightforward, but it will require some time. Designer Stimson, also a professional boatbuilder, tells us it takes him about 600 man-hours to build an Ocean Pointer. He estimates that if an amateur builder works carefully “the project should give close to a thousand hours of enjoyment.”
Construction Plans
In addition, because this building process involves small pieces, it’s well suited to part-time work. You can come home from the office and install a strip-plank or two before turning in. This would seem far preferable to spending time in the vast wasteland of network television. In any case, Stimson’s well-illustrated book How to Build the Ocean Pointer (WoodenBoat Books, 2002) can provide a helping hand and a good read.
Ocean Pointer will carry a considerable load at reasonable speeds while driven by modest amounts of power. And it makes a striking appearance in any company.
Completed Ocean Pointer Images
Matthew P. Murphy
Owner-builder John Blatchford with his Ocean Pointer skiff near Bucksport, Maine. Using detailed instructions from designer David Stimson, Blatchford built the boat over the course of two years.
Matthew P. Murphy
Ocean Pointer uses a classic center-cockpit layout, with ample storage under the foredeck, in the console, and under the helm seat
Phil Thiel was enamored of the canals of England and France and found the slow pace along the waterways, the pauses at the locks, and the proximity of verdant shores not only relaxing but also conducive to connecting to the world around him. Near the end of his 93 years, he designed several boats in the spirit of the canal boats he traveled in every summer for almost two decades.
Escargot Particulars
The Escargot, at 18’6″ by 6′, is the smallest of his canal boats and is designed so that almost anyone could build it. The construction couldn’t be simpler and his plans are meticulously detailed, right down to the drip grooves under the windowsills. Construction requires only a few basic tools and minimal woodworking skills. There are only two significant curves to contend with: the transverse curve of the cabin roof and the upward turn at the ends of the bottom. Neither poses a problem when bending the plywood over the forms.
The hull is built upside down. The four bulkheads and two transoms all have affixed to them posts the same height, and when the boat is assembled upside down the posts support her structure and make it easy to level and square. When the bottom is finished, the structure is sturdy enough to be rolled over and set on a couple of level sleepers for the remaining work. A sketch for a galley is offered as a suggested layout for the starboard side of the main cabin, but a more versatile option that provides a fourth berth is to have the port-side dinette/bunk duplicated. If your crew is in the range of 6′ tall, a modification well worth considering is raising the cabin roof by 6″. (The plans include a four-sheet supplement for L’Ark, a version of the Escargot with 6′ standing headroom under the center of a flat roof with straight sloping sides.)
The Escargot draws just 6″, so you can sneak into some very thin waterways. A 2.5-hp outboard will push the boat along at 4.5 knots, and while a bigger motor would help buck a headwind, Thiel designed the Escargot for “sheltered inland waterways” and that is indeed where the boat is most at ease.
Escargot Patterns
With a calculated weight of around 750 lbs, the Escargot is not a heavy burden for towing. It’ll draw admiring stares whether on the road or on the water.
The 16 pages of drawings include basic in-structions, dimensions, details, the layout of pieces on each of the 23 pieces of plywood, and the L’Ark supplement.
Completed 18′ Escargot Images
Photographs and video by the author
The storage space on this Escargot was used to add a wood-burning stove to ward of the cold of off-0season boating.
The catwalk added to the cabin roof proved to be a popular perch aboard this Escargot. The bow often allows stepping ashore with dry feet, though in this case , with very muddy boots.
The Escargot plans include drawings and dimensions for a rudder, but BEULAH manages well enough being steered with the outboard. The cabin here has been raised.
The Escargot boat wasn’t designed to sail but, equipped with a leeboard and a mast supporting a square sail, it makes for very pleasant sailing on runs and broad reaches.
The Escargot provides a cozy nest for overnights in sheltered backwaters.
With its minimal draft and ample windage, the Escargot makes a lot of leeway when the wind is on the beam. The leeboard (not in the plans—see “A Leeboard for a Motorboat.”) solves the problem and greatly improves maneuverability by creating a pivot point for sharp turns.
Those who know the sport of rowing know Graeme King to be one of the world’s top designers and builders of wooden racing shells. The rowing shells that come out of his King Boat Works are built not only to stand the test of time, but have also put their crews and designer in the record books. The Harvard and Navy crews, as well as other outstanding crews, use King-designed boats.
Kingfisher Particulars
Recognizing a strong resurgence in recreational rowing today, WoodenBoat commissioned King to design a single shell that the home builder would be capable of constructing. The result is the Kingfisher Shell, a graceful, V-bottomed shell that does not require a lot of expensive jig and mold making, and is very well suited to one-off construction by the amateur builder with intermediate boatbuilding skills.
Stability is a delicate matter in a shell, as any beginner discovers when he or she first settles onto the sliding seat! Kingfisher’s 1’4″ waterline beam provides a good compromise, giving inexperienced rowers a shell they can learn to handle, but also proving to be very satisfying to the experienced oarsman. She can be rowed in a variety of conditions, ranging from a glass-smooth river to a two-foot open bay chop (only the oarsman very familiar with shells, of course, should try to row in anything but smooth water). The prototypes were thoroughly tested in two pulling boat races (which included a variety of other shell designs), one on Narragansett Bay off Newport, and one in Boston Harbor in very rough conditions. The boat proved to be excellent to row on flat water, handled chop very well, and had a surprisingly fast turn of speed; she won both races handily. Intended as a recreational rather than all-out competition boat, Kingfisher can still reach an estimated 93% of the speed of the best competition shells.
Construction is of 3/32″ or 1/8″ mahogany plywood for the hull and bulkheads, with spruce stringers and a deck of shrunk Dacron. The boat is 22’6″ overall, l ‘7″ beam, and has a 4″ draft. With a weight of only 45 pounds, she may be readily transported to your rowing site on a car roof, and is easily carried by one person. A key to comfortable and efficient rowing is the rigging, as the designer knows very well, having formerly been rigger for the Harvard crews and the U.S. National teams.
Kingfisher Patterns
The four sheets of plans for the Kingfisher Shell include general arrangement, fitting details, bulkhead details and strongback, keel and patterns. WB Plan No. 51. $75.00.
A complete construction kit for the Kingfisher is also available from King Boat Works, and the kit comes with everything you need to build your boat, except varnish and oars. For those who are building from plans, outriggers and hardware can be purchased separately from King Boat Works as well. Write to WoodenBoat for details.
Completed Kingfisher Shell Images
Photo by Karen Wales
Graeme King (shown) has devoted his career to designing and building wooden rowing shells. He developed the Kingfisher single for the home builder who desires a fast and elegant recreational shell.
Photos by Karen Wales
King builds the specialized sliding-seat mechanism and outriggers required by the Kingfisher and Kookaburra. Lightweight oars are purchased separately.
Kingfisher Details
Photo by Karen Wales
Here is hull No.1 of nearly 1,000 Kingfishers that have been built over the past 25 years. Her sapele plywood hull glistens in the afternoon sun.
Photo by Karen Wales
The Kookaburra is a double version of the Kingfisher. Like its predecessor, the Kookaburra double is a fast and able recreational shell. Long, quiet expanses such as straight rivers and oblong lakes provide the best conditions for this type of craft.
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Kent Lewis
