The dolly has made it much easier for me to move over a half ton of boat and trailer.
If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t have to man-haul my boat trailers to get them to the car to hitch them up. The caster on a trailer jack works okay on pavement, and only marginally in my backyard in the summer when the lawn is dry and hard, but on gravel and damp sod it’s a struggle to get it to roll or pivot.
I recently sprang for the MaxxHaul trailer dolly and wish I’d bought one sooner. It took about 20 minutes to assemble; metric sockets would have been much quicker than the crescent wrenches I had to resort to. The dolly weighs 31.7 lbs and feels quite solid. It comes with a 1-7/8″ ball, which fits the couplers on my two small trailers. The 12″ x 4″ pneumatic tires are like those used on wheelbarrows and roll easily on pavement, grass, and gravel. The dolly has a stable 24″ wheelbase and the wheels spin on bearings slipped over a 0.9″ steel tubing axle. A sturdy 1/4″-thick steel bracket supports the hitch ball and is connected by a brace to the 4′ long handle.
To roll a trailer-jack wheel across this soft lumpy ground, I had to lay down a path of boards. The dolly isn’t bogged down by it.
The first time I used the dolly—on the trailer I don’t have outfitted with a jack—I was impressed with how easily it can lift the trailer’s tongue from the ground. Raising the handle lowers the hitch ball, and after the ball is steered under the socket of the trailer’s coupler, lowering the handle lifts the tongue. The long handle not only provides a lot of mechanical advantage—4.4 to 1—but also entirely eliminates the back strain of lifting the tongue up by hand. I just have to put my weight on the handle to push it down. The tongue weight on the trailer I’ve been using the dolly on is 137 lbs and the weight of the trailer and the Caledonia yawl it carries is between about 1200 lbs. MaxxHaul sets the dolly’s capacity at 600 lbs, so even though I’m doubling the working weight, the dolly hasn’t shown any sign that it’s suffering under the load.
The handle comes to a convenient height for pulling; it just lines up with my arms and there’s no fighting its angle. Pushing is almost as easy, I can set the handle in the crease of my hips if I need extra power. Steering with the dolly is a breeze—it easily spins around the hitch. Lowering the handle moves the hitch ball a bit past directly over the axle and presses the handle down on the stand that’s bolted to its backside.
My backyard has a bit of a slope down to the sidewalk next to it, and while it’s neither long nor steep, it’s too much for me to push a half ton of trailer and boat up it. Although I can’t simply pull or push the dolly to get the boat up the slope, I can use the dolly to take advantage of the leverage provided by the long boat-trailer tongue. The 13′6″ trailer tongue gives me a nearly 3:1 mechanical advantage over the 4′8″ wheelbase. Chocking one wheel and pushing the tongue to that side will roll the other wheel forward.
The wheel chock I use for hauling the trailer uphill is tied to the trailer and follows close behind both wheels, allowing one to roll forward, while the other is prevented from moving back.
To make leverage work in a single-handed operation, I made chocks to follow the wheels. I added 1″-thick slabs of scrap wood to both ends and both sides of a 2×4 that spans from one wheel to the other. Cords, tied between the 2×4 and brackets forward of the wheels, pull this device forward, so all I have to do is push the tongue back and forth sideways and the chock lets the wheels roll forward but not backward. The dolly makes it very easy to move the tongue from side to side and ratchet the trailer uphill.
The fewer impediments that I have to getting a boat to the water, the more likely I’ll be able to get on the water more often. The MaxxHaul trailer dolly will get most of the heavy lifting out of the way.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Magazine.
If you’d prefer to upgrade your trailer jack with dual 10″ pneumatic tires, see Ben Fuller’s review of the Croft wheel kit.
The MaxxHaul 70225 trailer dolly is available from online retailers. I purchased mine through Amazon for $50.80.
Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising, or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.
When Frank Ward of Port Townsend, Washington, retired after his career as a healthcare cybersecurity consultant, he had a plan for putting his free time to good use and carried it out with enthusiasm. He joined a learn-to-row class at the local rowing club; soon afterward he served on the club’s board. He enrolled in the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding. He did so well as a student there that he was named as one of two teaching assistants for the following year.
Photographs courtesy of Frank and Cathy Ward
The strongback extended its plywood top across the workbench.
His new loves of rowing and boatbuilding set him on a search for a design that he and his wife Linda could safely row on the somewhat exposed waters around Port Townsend. His research led him to the Annapolis Tandem Wherry from Chesapeake Light Craft (CLC). He liked the look of the boat, and it clearly would meet his criteria for rowing, but the plywood kit offered by CLC wasn’t his cup of tea—he wanted the challenges, pleasures, and satisfaction of building a boat from lumber.
The first arrangement for positioning the transom was short-lived. It didn’t survive closing the door at the end of its first day.
Two of Frank’s friends had recently finished building a cedar-strip canoe, and he thought “it was gorgeous.” He resumed his search for a design, hoping to find a strip-built wherry, but kept coming back to the Annapolis wherry. He decided to call CLC and ask about a cedar-strip version of the Annapolis tandem, and the person who picked up the phone was John Harris, the company’s owner and designer. John, it turned out, had already drawn a version of the wherry for strip construction, and he told Frank to visit the CLC website the following day, and the plans would be there. That day, Frank placed his order for the plans and cedar strips.
The support for the transom here is the replacement for the one that the garage door tore off. There were moments in the shop when Frank enjoyed the boatbuilding in spite of the mishaps and cramped quarters.
The wherry is 20′ long and Frank’s single-car garage, at 23′, was barely long enough for the project. The sports car that he was sheltering there could store outside, but the woodworking bench had to stay. There wasn’t enough room for the bench and the strongback for the wherry, so the strongback was built as an extension of the bench.
Frank matched cedar strips to give the hull a symmetrical pattern.
After Frank had the molds set up square and plumb, he placed the transom on the jig to hold it in the right position and the precise angle. That would have been the end of the day’s work, but when Frank closed up the shop, he pressed the button to lower the garage door. It came down like a guillotine and clipped the jig. It went flying one way and the transom took off in the opposite direction. After that mishap he came up with a new jig, which provided the clearance required, a meager 1/2″, but enough for the safe operation of the garage door.
With planking complete, the hull seemed to take up even more room in the narrow garage when turned right-side up.
Before he could begin planking, Frank had to scarf the 8’-long, bead-and-cove strips together, so he made a special jig to speed the process and make stronger joints by cutting the bevel at an angle. He usually worked with the garage door open as an invitation for curious neighbors to keep tabs on his progress. When the molds went up, there was a quick, dramatic display of progress, and the conversations were welcome and encouraging, but the strip planking went slowly, and there wasn’t much to show for a day’s work. When the thrill was gone, the work didn’t go as well and mistakes happened. His workspace was small and there was always something in the way. Linda, on more than one occasion, heard a crash coming from the garage, followed by some strong language, and rushed to Frank, fully expecting to find him gravely injured. She was relieved to discover he’d only lost his temper, not any blood or body parts.
The finished boat was equipped with and sliding seats he built to fit the wherry and Colin-Angus designed outriggers.
After two months of work on the boat, Frank fit the last of the planks and could step back and admire the shape of the finished hull. After planing, scraping, and sanding the planks fair, he draped the hull with fiberglass, and as he filled the fabric with epoxy, the color of the cedar came out for the first time, radiantly.
The neighbors who were checking on the progress were impressed by the beautiful cedar but dismayed that Frank said he intended to paint the hull white. Only the exterior would be painted, he reassured them, and there would be more than enough bright-finished cedar on the inside.
Prepping the interior for varnish was an arduous task. Frank sealed all of the wood with epoxy, and sanding it smooth took a toll on his fingers and wrists. They’d ache for days afterward. For the varnishing, the shop was vacuumed clean, and the garage door came down to keep the dust and the cold out. There was no going around the stern, and Frank had to crawl under the boat to switch sides.
Friends and neighbors joined Cathy (left) and Frank (right) in carrying the wherry to the water on launch day.
Frank launched the wherry with a group of friends and neighbors and christened it FESTINA LENTE, a Latin saying that goes back to ancient Rome and Greece. It means “make haste slowly.” Frank and Linda took the wherry for the first row.
Frank and Cathy took the first strokes aboard FESTINA LENTE.
Not long after the launching, Frank took FESTINA LENTE to the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend. Chesapeake Light Craft had a booth there, and John Harris was in attendance. He noticed FESTINA LENTE and introduced himself to Frank, complimenting him on his work. John said that his boat was the first strip-built Annapolis wherry to be completed, so it has the distinction of being Hull No. 1.
Michael Lampi
The new owners, Giles and Cathy, learned to scull on Seattle’s busy Lake Union, but from their house in West Seattle, they could see Puget Sound, and longed to row there. They looked around for a boat that could take on the open water of the Sound. When they saw FESTINA LENTE listed for sale, they immediately fell in love with her lines. “Frank is an artist,” they said, “and he created a work of art that boat.” They row a couple of times a week, and enjoy rowing in the company the seals and sea lions, always striving for the perfect stroke.
After Frank and Linda enjoyed FESTINA LENTE for a couple of years, they put the boat up for sale. It was purchased by a Seattle man, Giles Stanton. He and his rowing partner Cathy Morgan entered the Great Cross Sound Race, a 7-mile out-and-back across Puget Sound. They won their class. That FESTINA LENTE was the only boat in her class shouldn’t be held against her. She’s one of a kind.
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Finn and Tereza enter the Iron Gates where the Danube passes between ranges in Serbia and Romania. Funneling between the steep slopes, the wind is often on the nose. Watch as they tack downstream under a reefed sail.
I have a fair number of boats in my fleet, and some are getting on in years. The oldest of the ones I’ve built is a Chamberlain gunning dory my father commissioned in 1980. The oldest of them all is an English river wherry bearing an oval brass plate that reads: T. Cooper & Sons of Shrewsbury, Boatbuilders, Shrewsbury. Dad acquired it perhaps 40 years ago and believed it was built around 1890.
All of the structural pieces in the stern have decorative touches. The builder’s plate is fixed to the thwart.
Dad may have told me where he found the wherry, but I can’t recall that detail; at the time it was just another boat in a garage crowded with racing shells and I didn’t pay much attention to any of them. As I remember the boat when he brought it home, it was entirely gray with dust and weathering. Whatever differences there were in the woods used for planking, thwarts, transom, and the rest were masked with age. It seemed that Dad might sand all the way through a piece without finding a trace of color or a whiff of fragrance that would indicate whether it was cedar, mahogany, or oak.
The seat has a mahogany backrest supported by an ornate cast-iron frame.
Years passed before Dad got around to restoring the boat, and sanding and varnish did bring out the colors of the wood, but there was no hiding the boat’s age. While some of the mahogany beamed with a coppery glow that had been dimmed for decades, all of the wood was mottled with the dark age spots befitting a supercentenarian. The passenger-seat backrest bore the scars where the tiller lines cut grooves in two clusters, separated by the shoulder widths of the people who once sat there.
After decades of use, probably by livery customers, the wherry’s tiller lines had worn grooves in the backrest
It was important to Dad to make the boat serviceable again rather than just clean it up for display, and, remarkably, all that was required was sistering the frames by the oarlocks and adding an extra floor amidships. The rest of the boat just needed varnish and paint. Dad painted the hull dark green and later blue with a white sheer, the colors of the Lake Washington Rowing Club, where he coached crews and kept racing shells in working order.
Photographer unknown
My father took took to the oars while my mother tended the tiller lines when they went out for a row on Lake Union. After restoring the wherry, he painted the hull dark green.
Dad kept the wherry at the club’s shellhouse and for special occasions the wherry would be carried to the dock and left in the water for a few days to give the seams of the lapstrake hull time to take up. I rowed the wherry on two of those special occasions, both in the months that followed my father’s passing in 2013. The first was a loop of Lake Union, rowing as a memorial to him with a fleet of club boats and rowers. The following May, the wherry was one of the three boats at the head of a parade for the opening of Seattle’s boating season; I rowed beneath a fluttering blue banner bearing Dad’s name. Since then, I’ve taken the boat out of storage a few times and rowed it in the protected waters of the ship canal next to the club.
Marilyn Goo
With the wherry now in its new color scheme, my sisters and I went out for a memorial row with the Lake Washington Rowing Club after Dad’s passing. Ellyn, in the bow, wears his Cunningham-tartan scarf. Laurie sits forward of the family private signal, bearing a design that has been flown by seven generations now.
As my father did, I consider the wherry a boat to be rowed, not a relic. I think Mr. Cooper and his sons would be pleased that their work has survived for 130 years and the wherry is not idle in some museum, but still in use and rowed by someone who appreciates their craftsmanship and knows how sweetly it moves through the water.
Built in England 130 years ago, the wherry remains in use 6,000 miles away from the shop that produced it.
One hundred and thirty years is a long time for a boat to remain in service. Even the first boats I built—the gunning dory, a Marblehead skiff, and a lapstrake Whitehall—have almost a century ahead of them to match the longevity of the Shrewsbury wherry. I think my Whitehall, in particular, has a chance. It is built in much the same way as the Coopers built the wherry, with copper fastenings instead of epoxy, solid wood throughout instead of plywood, and natural crooks for knees and breasthook instead of laminates. When I built the Whitehall, I was just 30 years old and not thinking very far ahead, only doing the best work I could.
Fastened with bronze boat nails to my Whitehall’s transom is an oval of brass with my name and 1983 stamped in it. Will someone a century from now look at that plate and wonder about me as I do about T. Cooper and his sons? Will my boat also convey something about a boatbuilder whose name alone has been carried across time from forgotten generations? While I feel confident that some of the boats I’ve made will outlast me, I’d like to think that a few will survive well beyond that and some of my work will remain after my inevitable erasure from memory.
The Coopers remind me to do good work that lasts. It may be the balm to soothe the sting of mortality.
Glen-L’s Bo-Jest is an 18′ pocket power cruiser designed in 1986 by Ken Hankinson. I loved its tugboat style and its just-right size for our cruising needs—big enough to stay in for a few days and small enough to avoid high moorage costs.
The three pages of plans I ordered from Glen-L were clear, but required extra study for me as this was my first plans-built boat. (I had previously built an Adirondack guide boat from a partial kit.) The plans were well drawn, and the full-sized patterns for the frames were accurate and required no fairing during assembly. The 16 pages of accompanying printed directions were thorough and easy to follow. The plans provide details for the installation of an inboard motor—specified to be no more than 10 hp with a weight of about 240 lbs—and the option to configure the stern to take a 5- to 10-hp outboard. I built the outboard version so I could use the space in the pilothouse that would be otherwise occupied by the inboard-motor housing.
Earl Boissonou
The plywood takes to the aft half of the hull without fuss. Forward, the 3/8″ sides need some hot water to take the curve, and the twist in the bottom has to be done with two layers of 1/4″ plywood to achieve the 1/2″ thickness required.
The Bo-Jest uses traditional plywood-on-frame assembly, and the plans call for mahogany, oak, and Douglas-fir for the timbers; I chose Douglas-fir for its strength, easy availability in Oregon, and long-established use as a boatbuilding material in the Northwest. Some steam-bending is required for the stringers, plywood at the bow, trunk cabin, and main-cabin brow.
I was 77 years of age at the beginning of the build, so I eased the physical burdens by hiring a 14-year-old boy from the neighborhood to apprentice with me. A friend helped off and on throughout the build, and many others assisted in the heavy work of flipping and moving when needed.
The stem, five frames, and the transom are connected by a plank keel, the chines, and inwales. Three battens on either side of the centerline are let into the bottoms of the transom and the frames and their forward ends stop shy of the stem. The aft two-thirds of the hull goes from a slight V forward to a nearly flat stern. There’s similarly very little shape in the sides aft, so the 3/8″ plywood goes on easily. I eased the bending of the 3/8″ plywood sides at the bow with rags soaked with boiling water, muscle power, clamps, and a come-along. The 1/2″ bottom is made up of two laminates of 1/4″ plywood; bending the thinner plywood to shape is much easier.
After the hull was finished and while it was still upside down on the jig, I made two gantry cranes equipped with ratcheted truck tie-down straps to turn the hull. (I’d use the gantry cranes later, to lift the completed boat onto the trailer.) I also devised and built a cradle to rest the hull on after it was right-side up and finished construction with the hull upright. I used the cradle as a pattern to build adjustable contour bunks on the trailer.
John Kohnen
The pilothouse and the trunk cabin offer plenty of shelter space. The settee to port in the pilothouse is a custom replacement for the galley detailed in the plans.
As I scanned the plans for Bo-Jest, I realized the original floor plan for the pilothouse and trunk cabin would be rather crowded for our use. The Bo-Jest was designed for self-contained cruising with sink, stove, refrigerator, potable water tank, and closets. I too wanted this kind of cruising ability, but I was willing to sacrifice the built-in galley for a more open space. I raised the pilothouse roof 3″, which adds a spacious feeling. Having lived now with the modifications I made for three years, I’m happy with them.
Gas cans, battery, and stern anchor are all located in the aft cockpit. The gas cans are partially hidden by hinged seats, the battery is located in the starboard stern locker, and life jackets for six are located in the port stern locker. Three to four people can sit in the open, self-draining cockpit.
An ice chest, a small butane stove, a few pots and utensils, and a dishpan are all we need for cooking. We keep a bucket-style portable toilet stored under the pilothouse settee and a small carbon-monoxide-sensing propane heater stows in a locker under the trunk-cabin V-berth. All other gear is stored in lockers in the same area.
John Kohnen
Glen-L notes that the Bo-Jest’s length of 17’10” can be stretched to 19’7″or shortened to 17’8″ by changing the frame spacing by up to 10 percent.
Our pilothouse has a settee portside with storage drawers instead of the compact galley in the plans, the helm to starboard, and a center entry door. (An inboard-powered Bo-Jest will have the door to starboard of the engine box.) Down below there is a very roomy 7′6″ V-berth in the trunk cabin. I compensated for the weight of the plans’ potable water tank, which I chose not to install, by using round barbell weights secured in the same forward location under the V-berth. This helps maintain correct trim.
The Bo-Jest was designed to be powered by as little as a 4-hp outboard, but I chose a 9.9-hp, the maximum recommended, and I’m happy with that choice. I gladly would have installed electric propulsion if it weren’t so expensive and offered greater range from a lithium-ion battery pack.
Our Bo-Jest has a top speed of 7 knots, cruises nicely between 4 and 6 knots, likes 5-1/2, and will gunk along at a snail’s pace. I wanted more positive low-speed control at the helm and achieved it by mounting an Uncle Norm’s Marine Products double-finned rudder to the cavitation plate of the outboard. This provides great low-speed steering control, which aids in docking, even while coasting with the engine in neutral. The boat has some windage issues because of its tall profile, and the steering accessory works well to minimize them. Another nicety of this hull design is its turning ability; flip the wheel riotously fast, and the boat will come about in nearly its own length! It is stingy on gas: less than ½ gallon per hour at 5-1/2 knots, and at 7 knots consumes about 6/10 gallon of precious non-ethanol gas.
John Kohnen
Powered with just a 9.9 hp outboard, painted to match the boat’s color scheme, the Bo-Jest can hit 7 knots.
I haul the boat with a 3.5-liter V6 Ford Flex. The loaded trailer pulls easily with no sway, and with the electric brakes I installed on the trailer, there’s no trouble slowing or stopping.
I would not rate this a project for a beginning boatbuilder unless the builder has previous more intricate wood project experience. However, motivation can be powerful and provide success to a dedicated novice builder like me. I spent two years and ten months working three to four hours per day, five days a week, to complete this project. Phone calls to Glen-L cleared up any questions I had along the way.
The Bo-Jest is very comfortable and roomy for a boat with a length of only 17′10″. The trunk cabin is cozy—many who come aboard enjoy napping below; two people can be very comfortable overnight. The pilothouse is quite comfortable with the settee on the port side, and a well-equipped pilot station makes navigating the boat easy.
John Kohnen
The pilot house is designed to have standing headroom from 6’1″ to 6’4″; the cabin has seating height from 4’1″ to 4’4″.
I am now 81 and have piloted our Bo-Jest many miles. I have navigated the Yaquina River near Newport, Oregon, and have made other excursions in Washington’s Puget Sound, including participating in the first Salish 100, a 100-mile pocket-yacht cruise. More voyages lie ahead, and I look forward to them.
I would happily recommend this design to anyone who appreciates its jaunty, salty looks, and quite-good handling. Unlike many small craft, this boat provides extended use at both ends of the boating season.
Earl Boissonou, 81, lives in Corvallis, Oregon, and is a retired elementary-school teacher. He is a passionate artist who draws, paints, and sculpts. He began sailing in 1968 and built his first boat, an Adirondack guideboat, in 2009 to keep busy while recovering from a major operation. He christened it CHERRILL B in honor of his wife. While building his Bo-Jest he had the help of two neighbors: young Caleb Washburn and Dr. Bruce Thomson. The boat was christened DR. PETRA, a nod to Dr. Pepper soda and tribute to his doctor friend, Bruce, and Petra, a family dog that had passed away.
Bo-Jest Particulars
[table]
Overall length/17′10″
Waterline length/17′
Beam/7′11″
Hull type/Semi-displacement
Displacement/2,660 lbs with inboard; 2,350 lbs, as-built, with outboard
A group of us in Marinette, Wisconsin, and Menominee, Michigan, were inspired by the Scottish Coastal Rowing Association to form a club with the idea to build and row a team boat. We thought the Chesapeake Light Craft Team Dory would be a good boat for us and made arrangements to rendezvous with the Les Cheneaux Rowing Club on a chilly, misty October day in October to try one of theirs on Lake Huron. The weather was less than perfect and the water around the Les Cheneaux Islands was a bit choppy, but the dory handled it like a charm. With our WISHIGAN (for Wisconsin and Michigan) Team Rowing Club newly established, we ordered a Team Dory kit.
Our kit arrived on a 4′ x 8′ pallet along with a box containing the epoxy, watertight hatches, and hardware. All of the parts were well marked and easily identified. We began building with all of the preassemblies: frames, planks, bottom, and transom. The proper alignment of the long three- and four-part planks and bottom panel is guaranteed with the precise CNC-cut puzzle joints. We dry-fit the puzzle joints and found them very tight and almost requiring a hammer to tap them together, but once they were coated with epoxy they slid together quite easily.
For the lapstitch construction, the bottom edges of the upper planks are have a 1/2″-wide rabbet, which creates an overlap and largely eliminates the imprecise alignment of the butted edges between conventional stitch-and-glue panels. The plywood parts had all of the 1/16″ wiring holes precisely predrilled. We were amazed that all the holes lined up perfectly, even where wires had to be pushed through two overlapping planks. Once the wires were tightened, the planks formed tight joints and the hull had the classic lapstrake appearance.
While wiring the parts together was tedious, we were amazed at how quickly the boat took shape. We checked the boat for twist and symmetry using winding sticks at the frames. We departed from the kit instructions at this point, which suggested turning the boat upside down and applying beads of epoxy to the laps between the wires to lock the shape. We were satisfied with the alignment of the hull while it was right-side up, and we opted to add the epoxy tacks between the wires on the inside of the laps.
Four of the five 18mm-thick plywood frames come in halves with puzzle-joint connections between them. The fifth frame, which gets placed in the stern, is a single piece. The frames are sandwiched between pairs of 6mm doublers that extend below the seat level. These reinforcement pieces are set about 1/4″ back from the frame perimeter to make extra room for the structural epoxy fillets between the frames and the bottom and garboard planks.
The gunwale pieces have precut scarf joints and are ready to be glued together. After the epoxy cured and the gunwales were ready for installation, gluing them to the sheer planks required using every clamp we had and every clamp we could borrow.
Chesapeake Light Craft
The rowers’ seats are enclosed compartments that serve as foot bracing and, with watertight hatches installed, as flotation and storage. The seat for the coxswain will have a third panel, removable for access to the storage space.
The seats were assembled while we were finishing the sanding of the gunwales and inside of the boat. The top of each seat is 14″ wide and rests on the top of the frame doublers. Bulkheads forward and aft extend down from the seat at a 30-degree angle; the forward bulkheads of the aft three seats serve as foot braces for the rowers facing them. The seats are positioned 45″ apart.
The bottom and garboard planks get a layer of fiberglass in between the frames before the seats are installed. The boat interior, gunwale, and seat assemblies get sealed with epoxy, and the seats’ exteriors are sheathed with fiberglass. The seats get dry-fit to the boat then attached using generous fillets. Watertight ports are added to the aft side of the seat enclosures for access and storage of small items. The coxswain’s seat has a three-piece top; its port and starboard panels are epoxied in place, and the center section is removable for access to storage underneath. Limbers permit drainage from the compartment.
The exterior surfaces of the bottom and garboards get a layer of fiberglass and epoxy; the rest of the planking receives a sealing coat of epoxy. The skeg is fastened to the bottom with thickened epoxy and screws driven from inside the hull and fillets reinforce the connection. During the boat’s first winter maintenance we added an oak “wormshoe” from the skeg to the bow to protect the bottom.
We modified the oarlock pads by increasing their height to allow additional oar-to-leg clearance for rowing in choppy water. Even though the boat is designed with a single oarlock at each station, we installed oarlocks both port and starboard at every rowing location to permit switching the oar to the other side on long rows.
Chesapeake Light Craft
The rudder extends only as deep as the bottom of the skeg, so it can stay with the dory when it’s on the beach. With the boat afloat and the crew aboard, the rudder blade is well covered for effective steering.
Building a CLC Team Dory is a very enjoyable project. The manual is complete and easy to follow; construction is well suited to a novice or an experienced boatbuilder. Following the instructions will make it a very rewarding experience. We built our boat during a winter with crews of two to five people working six to eight hours a week. Our best advice: Careful attention to detail and care in the use and cleanup of epoxy will certainly eliminate a lot of tedious sanding.
Mark Hawkins Photography
The boat has a maximum displacement of 1000 lbs, so a full crew will have plenty of freeboard.
Our first oars were the traditional carved straight-bladed oars made to the patterns furnished with the CLC kit. The oars were 9′ 6″ long. Our second set of oars had blades of 3mm plywood, bent and epoxy-glued in a curved fixture. The blades were then attached to shafts 9′ 6″ long creating oars 10′ 6″ long. A year later we made an additional set 11′ 6″ long. The shorter oars are ideal for rowing in choppy water and the longer oars are used in calmer water. This year we have started using the 10′ 6″ oars in the 1st and 4th position and the longest oars in the 2nd and 3rd positions. The rowers sit on the centerline of the boat and the distance from oarlock to handle differs 6″ and this was an attempt to equalize the balance and mechanical advantage for all positions. However, the effectiveness of this change is still inconclusive, perhaps more mental than physical.
Mark Hawkins Photography
Two good rowers can move the Team Dory at a good clip, often faster than a full crew. The 9′ 6″ oars are being used here.
We now have two Team Dories, and this is our fifth year of rowing them. Our group comes from a varied background of fixed and sliding-seat boats with each person handling two oars, so the first things we had to get used were each pulling only one oar and following the cadence set by the rower in the stroke, who sits directly in front of the coxswain. Initially, the boat would rock side to side, but once we synchronized our stroke, the boat rode level. A practiced crew rowing together cruises at a speed of 4 to 5 knots.
The Team Dory is light, about 250 lbs, and easily rides the top of the waves. We have taken our dories out with waves of 1′ to 2′ and have never taken any water over the sides. We carry water scoops and sponges but thus far they’ve been idle. The low profile of the boat gives little resistance to the wind. The boat responds well to the rudder and turns quite easily without the coxswain having to direct rowers to row harder or ease up on one side.
Mark Hawkins Photography
The Team Dory is well suited for training new crews. As Meat Loaf might sing for this crew, “Now don’t be sad, ’cause three out of four ain’t bad.”
While the boats are designed for four rowers and a coxswain, we take the Team Dories out with only two rowers and a coxswain. We balance the boat with one rower at the bow and the other at the third seat. They have oars of different lengths—the boat has a narrower beam at the first seat—and produce an imbalance in thrust, but the coxswain can easily maintain a straight course with a slight angle on the rudder. Rowing with a crew of three has little effect on the speed of the boat; two good rowers can often be faster than a full crew of five.
We often travel to participate in regattas with other teams, and modified a trailer to accommodate one Team Dory with a second nested inside it, resting on styrofoam pads on the seats. An event flotilla usually consists of Team Dories and 33′ pilot gigs, each with six rowers and coxswain. The Team Dories outrun the gigs on a course with twists and turns, but have difficulty keeping up on a long, straight course.
Mark Hawkins Photography
The rowing stations are 45″ apart, a generous spacing which will keep the crew on good terms, even if the stroke is in mid-drive and third seat is on the recovery.
Most of our rowing has been on the protected waters of the Menominee River, but we have also had the Team Dories out on Green Bay, Lake Huron, and Lake Superior in waves up to 2′ and have yet to take on any water. And while neither boat has ever foundered, the air-tight seat compartments provide reassuring flotation. The dories are also tough in spite of their light weight; we have inadvertently hit everything possible from docks to bridge supports with little damage aside from scuffed paint and varnish. We highly recommend the Team Dory. It is an exciting construction project, and the finished boat is a pleasure to row with our friends.
Scott Craw of Marinette, Wisconsin, was Lead Structural Engineer at Marinette Marine, a ship-building company that produces vessels for the Army, Navy, and Coast Guard. He retired in 2011 and, during the first winter of his retirement, he built a Wineglass Wherry, noting “winters are long in Wisconsin.” His plan was to use the boat to fish the local waters but he discovered the joy of rowing and, as he puts it, has yet to drown a worm. Scott started following the Scottish Coastal Rowing Association on Facebook. He and a fellow rower, Mike Kushman, wanted to have a similar group on the Great Lakes and the WISHIGAN Team Rowing was born. The club offers free rowing to the community twice a week.
As far as sailing goes, it had been a summer of frustrations for me, with one boating trip after another canceled or cut short while I dealt with life ashore. A series of job interviews seemed to be heading nowhere I wanted to go. My house was an affliction of leaking faucets, sagging gutters, and wildly overgrown hedges, and the car wasn’t much better—wheel bearings, transmission, tires, all the tedious consequences of chronically unenthusiastic maintenance arriving all at once. Then an unexpected funeral brought me back early from a solo cruise on Georgian Bay. I kept hoping that one morning all these unwelcome obligations would drain away like an ebbing tide, leaving me free to hoist a sail and set out along the margins of the world to find a place where the water’s crooked fingers had dug deep into something worth seeing.
A cold and rainy September seemed likely to finish the dreary season entirely. But then a narrow window of freedom opened unexpectedly just as the weather promised to improve, and I was off with my boat and a pile of camping gear before complications could arise, with no clear destination in mind except “away.” A quick look at a rest-stop road map an hour down the road reminded me of a sprawling lake system in northern Wisconsin, 15 miles from the Michigan border, created by a dam at the confluence of the Turtle and Flambeau rivers. I hadn’t been there for a couple of years, which seemed like reason enough to make it my destination now. After a phone call to convince my brother Lance to meet me there with his Phoenix III for a few days, I was moving again. “The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous,” Thoreau assures his readers, and by this definition I am nothing if not wise.
Roger Siebert
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“Paul Bunyan was too busy a man to think about posterity,” wrote Aldo Leopold, noted conservationist and author of the classic A Sand County Almanac, “but if he had been asked to reserve a spot for posterity to see what the old north woods looked like, he likely would have chosen the Flambeau.” The ancient pine forests of northern Wisconsin were gone before the 20th century began, as Leopold knew all too well; his essay on the Flambeau River is in large part an elegy to a vanished world. By the time he wrote it, sometime in the 1940s, the Turtle-Flambeau Dam near the river’s headwaters was 20 years old. But despite the irresistible advance of modernization—Wisconsin’s burgeoning dairy industry needed such dams for rural electrification—the state government had also moved to preserve a 50-mile stretch of wild river on the upper Flambeau, just below the dam. Leopold again: “Slowly, patiently, and sometimes expensively the Conservation Department has been buying land, removing cottages, warding off unnecessary roads, and in general pushing the clock back, as far as possible, toward the original wilderness.” It was a wilderness that would later expand to include the new man-made lake that had swallowed the floodplains of the two rivers for a few miles above the dam.
As I pulled into the parking lot at the main boat ramp of the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage—all but empty on a Sunday evening in mid-September—it seemed to me that the clock had been pushed back far enough to seem almost irrelevant here. The lake lay hidden within a forest of pines and hardwoods already more than 100 years old. The shoreline wandered across the map in a series of elaborate flourishes for more than 100 miles, enclosing 14,000 acres of water and nearly 200 undeveloped islands—and, almost unbelievably, dozens of free first-come, first-served campsites accessible only by boat. Here was a sail-and-oar wilderness at the scale of a long weekend, along with an astonishing absence of bureaucracy. No fees, no permits, no reservations. The clock, it seemed, had not just been pushed back. In some ways it had stopped running entirely.
Photographs by the author
Just minutes from the boat ramp, Lance and I were well on our way into the heart of the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage. Aboard the Alaska, the space between the forward thwart and the mast serves as the cargo hold, leaving the rest of the cockpit clear; storing most of the gear in two large duffel-style dry bags makes unloading simple when camping ashore.
Lance was already at the ramp when I arrived. We launched our boats, hastily transferred gear, parked our cars, and set off under oars down a narrow channel that ran northward between a chain of tiny islands to starboard and a long peninsula to port. When we reached open water, we hoisted our sails and began working our way southwest in light winds as the sun dropped toward the horizon. An hour later, we sailed into the wind shadow of an unnamed island—one of many—near the center of the flowage and turned north again, ghosting along in winds too light to feel. One of the unwritten rules of evening sailing was holding true: the closer we got to our destination, the fainter the breeze became. No matter, though. We were in no hurry. We simply glided along past island after island, moving so slowly that each boat seemed to be floating atop an impressionistic portrait of itself, Monet trading his lilies for lugsails.
We beached our boats below an empty campsite at the northern tip of an unnamed island and unloaded our gear. We had come only 2 miles from the ramp, but distance is not the only measure of solitude. There is magic to camping on an island, however near the mainland it might be—just ask Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. Two miles on the map had become 100 miles in my mind, a welcome unburdening from life ashore.
Our campsite’s location near the center of the flowage offered a good view of Big Island to the northwest and opportunities for exploring in any direction, no matter what the wind decided to do that day.
Our island had been a low ridge on the east bank of the old Flambeau River before the dam swallowed it up. Now the river was gone, along with a dozen smaller lakes and waterways: Rat Lake, Horseshoe Lake, Townline Lake, Baraboo Lake, Otter Creek, Beaver Creek, and more. But other than the wide band of gravelly beach surrounding each island, the mark of midsummer drawdown at the dam, there was no obvious sign of the lake’s industrial origins. There were a few cabins and lodges along the northern and western sides of the flowage, I knew, but here we seemed surrounded by pure wilderness.
The boats rested in still water while we unloaded gear at camp. The Alaska’s boomless lugsail makes brailing a simple option for quick stops ashore, even without a dedicated brailing line.
After setting up our tents and cooking supper over camp stoves, too lazy to bother with a fire, we watched the moon climb through the treetops. The wind died away entirely as the evening grew darker. When the islands had faded to nothing but jagged silhouettes in the moonlight, I returned to the water’s edge to check on the boats before retreating to my tent for the night. But, as usual, the temptation was too much for me. Instead of going back to camp, I shoved off and set out under oars with no intention but to continue moving slowly through the night until I had seen something of what there was to see.
Working to an easy rhythm with the oars floating lightly in my hands, I glided over water so dark and still that it might have been a photograph. With each stroke, water ran down the oar blades to fall drop by drop onto the surface of the lake, and the sweep of the oars on the recovery drew long arcs of slowly expanding circles alongside the hull. It was the only sign that the boat was moving at all.
I kept rowing gently through a maze of islands that were nothing more than looming shadows in the darkness. For how long—an hour? Two? It was impossible to know. Somewhere out on the water a loon called, and called again. And far above the earth, beyond the darkness of the night sky, the stars continued their slow-moving circumnavigations around the pole star, measuring out the hours almost imperceptibly.
Morning brought an autumn chill and cloudy skies. We dawdled through an unambitious breakfast in camp, waiting for the slow sunrise to dry the dew a bit before setting out for the day. Soon enough, though, we were ready to be moving. Our island campsite was comfortable, especially considering the price—a picnic table, fire ring, and open-air toilet hidden back in the woods—but we hadn’t come this far to stay ashore all day. We pulled out our maps and started to look things over.
A southeasterly breeze made the choice of where to begin an easy one: we would sail north, following the original channel of the Flambeau until we reached the northern shore of the flowage, where we would have to work our way westward under a low bridge and around the northern end of the aptly named Big Island. From there, we’d be entering the course of the Turtle River, which we’d follow down the west side of Big Island to the dam. Then north again, roughly paralleling the old Flambeau channel once more past dozens of smaller islands, to close the loop at camp. Ten miles, give or take. Just about right for a casual day’s journey.
The bridge connects Big Island, on the left, to the mainland. The band of darkened rocks along the shore show that it’s more important to pay attention to the “Low Bridge” sign before the summer draw-down at the dam.
With a base camp to return to, we didn’t need to load much gear—just water bottles, rain jackets, and a few snacks. Then we hoisted our sails and shoved off from the beach, riding north on an easy broad reach. After a mile we turned west, skirting a chain of piney islands on a run dead-downwind, jibing now and then. The breeze was light enough to let my Alaska edge slowly ahead of the Phoenix III—no surprise with an extra 10 square feet of sail, and a waterline more than 2’ longer. But it was really no more than a slight edge. The two boats seemed well-suited for cruising together. Before long, I pulled into a shallow reed bed to drop my sail and mast so we could pass under the bridge connecting Big Island to the mainland. I started to pull out the oars, but we were already moving straight toward the bridge. The wind would push us through, I realized. We drifted easily along the marshy shore and under the low bridge, where a bright yellow sign needlessly proclaimed Caution Low Bridge Narrow Channel. I smiled. There was barely room for the hull to slip between the rocky banks—and that in a narrow sail-and-oar cruiser with a 4′ 8″ beam. I could have stood in the center of the channel, knee-deep in dark water, and touched the stones on each shore. But our boats floated through without so much as brushing the bottom. With water levels so low, I didn’t even have to duck my head.
We beached the boats just north of Big Island, at the end of the road on the northern approach to the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage. Big Island is a state wildlife refuge with miles of trails, and a few boat-in campsites on its eastern shore.
We beached our boats on a wide sandy beach on the far side of the bridge, 3′ below the summer high-water mark. A low tide in the north woods begins in July when the spillways open to maintain water flows for the electric plants downstream, and lasts until spring. No need for complicated anchoring systems or clothesline moorings here—at least, not if we returned before April. But I took my 6-lb Northill anchor up the beach anyway, and set it firmly at the sand’s edge, wary of an unintended marooning should my boat somehow float away. Overkill, I knew, but I’ve learned to accept that overkill is generally more tolerable than underkill.
Overhead, gray clouds were breaking up and streaks of bright blue were showing through. We left our boats on the beach and crossed the bridge onto Big Island to walk a long way along the trails. Autumn was just beginning to show itself in muted browns and oranges, and monarch butterflies flickered back and forth above our heads as we dawdled along. That’s the beauty of a small wilderness: no urgency, no reason to push on for mile after mile. Plenty of time for side trips.
Eventually we returned to the boats and set off again. The Flambeau was behind us; our course followed the Turtle River channel west and south from here, down the western side of Big Island. We sailed a slow beam reach through 100 yards of reedy shallows, rudders kicked up but still dragging, before reaching deep water and turning south.
I’ve logged over 1,000 miles in my brother’s Phoenix III, and now, three years after launching my Alaska, I’m nearing that milestone in it as well. The Phoenix III seems to have the advantage to windward, while the Alaska really takes off with the wind behind the beam.
It had been a while since I’d been on a two-boat trip with Lance, and I was quickly remembering how much I liked it. As always, we made for an unruly armada, breaking formation on the merest whim, but generally remaining in sight. With the wind behind us, the Alaska edged ahead at first; then I cut inside a couple of small islands to hug the shores of Big Island while my brother took the outside route to regain the lead. And promptly surrendered the lead again by landing at one of the campsites on Big Island while I kept drifting slowly along the main channel, sitting to leeward to keep my sail filled in the light breeze. And so it went.
As we reached the far western side of Big Island, the winds picked up and the channel veered south, making for a tough beat. With all the miles I’ve spent aboard my brother’s Phoenix III, I’ve come to appreciate its excellent performance to windward. Now, falling behind in my Alaska, I found myself wishing his boat wouldn’t point quite so high, or tack so quickly, or slice so cleanly through the chop. Or maybe it was more the skipper than the boat. Either way, aboard my Alaska it was getting windy enough to be interesting. Before long, I headed into the wind and dropped the sail to tie in a reef. But the wind kept building, stronger and gustier. Even with a reef in, it was getting to be a handful. And then a double handful. I’ve learned that my Alaska, with its narrow beam, slack bilges, and low sweeping sheer, is not shy about dipping a leeward rail when pressed hard. That had been alarming at first, until I learned to trust that it would heel only so far and then keep sailing right along. Still, I’m too lazy to really enjoy hiking out and pushing hard. Better to keep things in control.
We found several long sandy beaches on the western side of Big Island, overlooking the old channel of the Turtle River. With the wind picking up, I took the opportunity to pull ashore and tie in a second reef.
When I spotted a long sandy beach on the western shore of Big Island, I steered right toward it at speed, sheeting in hard, then pulled up the rudder and let the sheet fly just as the stem scraped the sand. With my weight far back on the sternsheets, the boat glided well up onto shore and ground to a stop. I dropped the sail and tied in a double reef. Lance joined me on the beach a few moments later, and tied in a reef as well—more to let me keep up, I suspected, than because he needed it. But I wasn’t going to try to talk him out of it.
Of course, there is nothing so fickle as the wind. The approaching frontal system swept past quickly in a riotous jumble of clouds and rainy gusts, and before I had managed to sail a half mile, it was time for the full mainsail again. Already the Phoenix III had opened up a wide gap. It was definitely faster to windward, where the Alaska lost ground on each tack, its long flat keel needing to be sailed around in a gentle turn. At least I was finally gaining ground under full sail, I consoled myself. Or at least, not losing ground anymore.
Sailing through the narrow dog-leg channel separating our campsite from the next island to the north made for an interesting light-air challenge. With patience, we both managed to reach camp without resorting to oars.
I followed Lance toward the foot of Big Island, dodging through a field of stumps that would have been hidden at higher water. More than once I found myself tacking within inches of a stump I’d seen too late, hoping I wasn’t about to sail right over another that I hadn’t seen at all. Worse still were the occasional angled logs still rooted in the lake bed but barely visible—or not—above the surface. At one point I felt a booming thump on the hull as I sailed right over one of them. All right, at more than one point. Apparently the warning on the Department of Natural Resources’ map I’d picked up at the boat ramp before launching—“The Turtle-Flambeau Flowage has an abundance of stumps, logs, floating driftwood, and rock bars”—wasn’t as irrelevant to a boat with a mere 7” draft as I had assumed, at least not in September. I glanced at the map again. There, too, was the obligatory “The map should not be used for navigation” disclaimer. Busted again, navigating when I wasn’t supposed to. Sometimes it seems like I’ll never learn.
But finally we sailed free of the stump field—which, I reminded myself, has probably done a lot to keep the jet skis away, so it’s not all bad. And then we tacked past the Turtle Dam with its long line of yellow buoys and turned north again, heading downwind along another string of islands. Off the wind, the Alaska pulled ahead of the Phoenix III, sail area and waterline triumphant again. We finished the day by approaching camp from the east, slipping through the narrow dogleg channel that separated our island from its nearest neighbor, skirting a few downed trees that rose from the water like grasping hands, before sliding up onto our home beach again. An evening of thunderstorms and hard rain drove us to our tents early.
The next day brought clear weather at last. The wind had swung around to the southwest, bringing some fierce gusts, but it wasn’t enough to keep us ashore. We launched our boats and tacked down to the southern tip of our island, where we started to beat our way southward through the biggest stretch of open water on the flowage. Again I waffled back and forth: one reef, two reefs, no reefs. Gusts. No gusts. Strong wind. Light wind. Light wind, strong gusts—an interesting combination, impossible to reef for. Lance pulled ahead steadily in the Phoenix III. I tried not to notice.
We worked our way toward the southern reaches of the flowage, taking time to stop at several islands along the way. A few more thumpings of the centerboard when I cut too close to shore at one point reminded me too late of the “abundance of rock bars” the map had warned about. Still, no harm done. At least, not this time.
Navigating the narrow, twisting channels of the far southern reaches of the flowage involved maneuvering in shifty breezes that seemed to come from all directions at once.
Before long we were well past the farthest point that we reached on our last trip two years earlier, into a chain of smaller lakes that was almost a river again. Tacking and jibing in the shifting gusts that swept the narrow channel, we sailed south and farther south. Finally, though, the low water levels defeated us. At the mouth of Otter Creek, at the very end of the flowage, the Alaska ground to a halt among the reeds, keel dragging in the mud. Even in a kayak I couldn’t have made it into the creek and continued upstream.
Forced to turn around, we sailed our way back to open water with no regrets. It had been a perfect day exploring a wilderness that seemed as if it must have been created for sail and oar. No motors, no people, nothing but sun and wind and solitude, the gentle motion of the waves, an occasional splashing of spray over the coaming. Island after island, tall pines and birches shuffling in the breeze, the quiet splashing of small waves on the shore. Seen from a small boat, the southern half of the Turtle-Flambeau seemed like pure pre-industrial north woods—no cabins, no cottages, no roads, only an unbroken forest of mixed hardwoods and pines.
But of course, like so much that seems too good to be true, the Turtle-Flambeau is as much illusion as it is reality. What looked like pure wilderness was only a clever ruse, I knew, the result of what the Department of Natural Resources calls “a 300′ aesthetic zone”—a fringe of timber left perpetually unharvested around the entire shoreline of the flowage, with provisions for selective logging and intermittent clear-cutting still in place farther inland. Still, it was better than nothing at all. Give me a small boat, a sail, and a good pair of oars, and I’ll work my way along the margins of the world past whatever fringes of the wild remain, wherever they lead. That was exactly what I had come looking for, after all.
September days are short in northern Wisconsin, but the evening light can be magical. For our four-day trip, we had the flowage almost entirely to ourselves.
It was late afternoon by the time we headed north toward camp, paralleling a chain of islands up the western shore of the flowage. Light winds gave way to lighter winds. The sun dropped below the trees, but still the light caught our sails in a soft golden glow even as the water beneath grew ever darker. Eventually we turned up a narrow passage that ran through a jumble of small islands, where the breeze faded almost to nothing. We floated up the channel side by side, the Alaska slowly pulling ahead thanks to its larger mainsail.
Still a mile from camp, we starting to lose the wind. Aboard the Alaska, my simple line-and-bungee “autopilot” took over the steering while I got photographic proof that the Phoenix III isn’t always in the lead.
The sky faded to a deep blue, and stars began appearing overhead. And for more than a mile, for more than an hour, we sat silent and unmoving in our boats, drifting along so slowly that it was hard to perceive any motion at all. Only the faint ripple of our wakes and the whisper of moving water along the hull disturbed the sensation of utter stillness. Weight to leeward to keep some wind in the sails. Steering with the barest nudges of the tiller. Slowly and ever more slowly, our two boats slid over the dark water.
Somewhere a loon called. The moon rose slowly over the trees, casting its rippled light over the water. And far behind me, the victim of a shorter waterline and a smaller sail, my brother’s boat hung altogether motionless atop a sea of blackness, white hull clearly outlined against a seemingly endless backdrop of jagged islands and dark pines. An illusion, I thought to myself again. But one worth seeing.
Our trip ended just as the weather turned, bringing a few miles of rowing through dead calms and a cold rain.
Tom Pamperin is a freelance writer who lives in northwestern Wisconsin. He spends his summers cruising small boats throughout Wisconsin, the North Channel, and along the Texas coast. He is a frequent contributor to Small Boats Monthly and WoodenBoat.
If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
My new set of homemade clamps have a reach of 16″. Here one is applying enough pressure to keep the clamp from pivoting under its own cantilevered weight and resting on the edge of the plywood.
When I built a reproduction of the 9th century Gokstad faering, I encountered a number of challenges I hadn’t faced with any of the other boats I’d built; one was working with very wide planks. The faering has only three strakes, and the planks are 12″ to 14″ wide amidships. I had a collection of Brenne-style cam-lever planking clamps that had a 10″ reach, enough for even the rather wide planks on dories, but they couldn’t span the middle of the faering planks.
I made my first set of Brenne-style clamps in the late ’70s and they’ve see a lot of action, but there are some jobs that are just beyond their reach.
I made a set of three extra-long clamps for the job; I used my tap-and-die set for wood to make threaded dowels as the means to tighten them. They worked, but were unwieldy and much slower to operate than the cam-lever clamps.
A Brenne clamp, like the fist planking clamps I made, could easily be scaled up to provide more reach, but the cam and the metal straps connecting it to the clamp jaw opposite have a limited operating range. I’d made one of my earliest clamps in that style with longer straps that had additional holes, but adjusting it to fit the work at hand was never something I thought to do until I had a batch of epoxy mixed, and the clock was ticking.
When I made a new set of long-reach clamps, I used the cam idea but did away with the metal straps and used a single length of cord instead. It allows instantly changing the clamp to fit jobs of different thicknesses. I didn’t bother with the semicircular notch for the cam that’s cut into the jaw; it’s the fussiest part of making Brenne clamp and unnecessary here. I went through a few iterations of the new design, with each less complicated than the one that preceded it and, as is often the case, the simplest solution, presented here, was the best solution.
The dimensions aren’t critical so you can build the clamp to suit your needs and available materials. The 2-1/2″ circle seems to be a good size for providing good clamping pressure.
For a clamp with a 16″ reach, I cut two 24″ jaws out of softwood 2x4s. The tips are about 1-1/4″ wide, the tails 3″, and in between, the jaws curve smoothly and taper gradually. I glued and nailed two 1/2″ plywood cheeks to one jaw, then set the other jaw between the cheeks, with a 1″ gap between the tails, and drilled a 5/16″ hole for a 1/4″ carriage bolt.
The jam cleat is just a piece of hardwood with shallow-angled cuts on the bottom. I didn’t sand those cuts smooth; I left them rough for a better grip.
Roughly 16″ in from the tip of the pivoting jaw I drilled two more holes, one above the other. I made a 4″-long hardwood jam cleat and screwed that to the plywood cheek over the fixed jaw. The fixed jaw will be on top during use, and because I’m right-handed, I put the cleat on the right side.
When I checked the clamping pressure on a bathroom scale, the results were around 50 lbs. I can get over 60 lbs if I apply the clamp, then flip the cam lever forward, tighten the cord to pull out the slack, and flip the lever back again. I couldn’t measure the clamping pressure of my Brenne clamps this way because they can’t function on an arrangement this thick.
For the cam lever, I used a piece of hardwood (ash); the lever is subject to a lot of pressure and hardwood is less apt to be crushed. It’s 9-1/2″ long, 1-1/2″ thick, and the circular end has a diameter of 2-1/2″. The hole drilled in it needs to be lined up with the circle’s center. Put a square on the side of the handle that meets the circle at a tangent, draw a line through the circle’s center, and drill the hole on that line.
I tied a stopper knot in a length of rather stiff 3/16″ kernmantle cord and threaded the cord through one hole on the lower jaw’s left side, through the hole in the cam lever, and finally through the other hole in the lower jaw.
In use, the cam lever is set on the top jaw with the handle facing away and the hole and cord set on the bottom. With the clamp’s tips set on the workpieces, the cord is drawn tight and wrapped around the jam cleat. The cam lever is flipped, raising the hole and adding tension to the cord. The cam will roll backward as the lever is brought down on the jaw and the lever will tend to rise and release the tension. Sliding the cam lever forward will change the angle of the cord and cause it to hold the lever down.
This version of the clamp applies the same amount of pressure, about 50 lbs.
A long-reach clamp can also be built with a ratcheting bar clamp. Cut a slot in each jaw to give the bar a loose fit by drilling a row of holes and remove the wood remaining between them with a knife, chisel, or coarse file. The clamp will probably have a rolled steel pin in the end of the bar. Tap that out with a hammer. Remove the clamp’s sliding jaw, insert the bar through the slots in the jaws and replace the sliding jaw. It may help to grind or file a corner off the end of the bar to ease reinserting it past the inner workings of the ratchet mechanism. If the release trigger is too close to the jaw, cut a groove in the back of the jaw to make room to get a finger under the trigger.
Slots in the wooden jaws accommodate the bar of a ratcheting clamp. Note the shallow groove in the wooden jaw, which provides clearance for the release lever, and the rounded end of the bar, which eases reinserting the bar through the ratchet grip.
You can tap the rolled pin back in or leave it out to make it easier to switch back and forth between the ratchet clamp’s normal use and its place in the long-reach clamp. The clamp I built this way is the size of the cam-lever version above, and has the same reach and applies the same pressure.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Magazine.
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When I finished our Penobscot 14 back in 2017, I intended to row it around the river inlets and shoreline of our bay. One of the pieces of gear that I was going to need was a nice pair of gloves to prevent blisters on my hands, as I didn’t row frequently enough to develop calluses. I had tried a few styles but was not happy with the fit or feel until I came across Gill’s Long Finger Deckhand Gloves.
Audrey and I do a bit of sailing and paddling in addition to rowing, so I also wanted gloves that were versatile, easy to put on and take off when wet, and that dried fast. The Deckhand Gloves have lightweight polyester-spandex shells with doubled synthetic suede Amara reinforcements and padding. None of these materials hold much water, so they dry fast. The elasticity of the shell makes it much easier to put on and take off than a leather glove. A side benefit is that the materials provide UV50+ protection, an important factor for us in Florida.
Photographs by Audrey Lewis
After a year in use, the gloves show little evidence of wear.
Audrey, a talented seamstress who has made gloves in the past and knows how they’re put together, looked the Deckhand Gloves over, inside and out. The fabric panels on the sides of the fingers, the fourchettes, are cut from synthetic suede for lightness and comfort and the tops and bottoms, the tranks, are cut from spandex. The palms and the insides of the fingers are reinforced with the Amara suede for better grip and padding; the suede is wrapped around the tips of the middle, ring, and pinky fingers, which places the seams on the backs of the fingers to keep from creating pressure points. The thumb and index-finger tips are open for an undiminished sense of touch. The suede also wraps around the side of the index finger and thumb, which makes a big difference when handling lines. The hook-and-loop closures at the wrists are easy to grip and adjust.
The open thumb and index-finger tips come in handy when manipulating small bits of hardware, using electronics, and fastening gear like PFD buckles and zippers. I also tried gloves with all of the fingertips open but found that I didn’t really need the tactile feel on the other three fingers for rowing and paddling. I prefer the protection of closed fingertips.
The fit of the gloves allows gripping oar handles without forming creases in the palm. The black suede material wraps around the thumb, over an area where the skin is prone to blistering during long rows.
As for sizing and fit, they gloves are snug, which is what prevents loose material bunching up in the palms while rowing. If you prefer a looser fit, I’d suggest ordering one size up. There three versions: Short Finger, Long Finger, and Junior Short Finger. The Long Finger version I have comes in five sizes, XS to XL. I’ve been using the Deckhands for a year now and, they have proven durable and comfortable. They are thoughtfully designed, sturdily made, and affordably priced.
Audrey and Kent Lewis mess about in an armada of small boats on the bays and rivers of the Florida Panhandle.
Extensions make it possible to get away from the motor while still steering and controlling the throttle.
Outboard motors are handy things on small boats, but they’re demanding devices. Hanging off the transom as they often do, they require a broad stern to support not just their weight, but the weight of the person stuck with holding the motor’s tiller.
Rigid extension handles make it possible to stand while at the helm and sit farther forward to lighten the burden in the stern, and articulated extensions, equipped universal joints, provide more options for where you plant yourself. I’d been using a plastic pipe as a rigid extension and thought I’d give an articulated extension a try. I found two: the Handi-Mate from Davis Instruments and the HelmsMate from Ironwood Pacific. They were both described in similar terms, so I thought one would be about as good as the other and bought the less-expensive Handi-Mate.
The Handi-Mate’s outer tube slides over the universal joint to switch from articulated to ridge.
The Handi-Mate was packaged in clear plastic, and it looked okay until I got it home and was able to get a look at the universal joint. The handle is made of two nesting aluminum tubes; the inner tube slips out to provide the adjustable length and the outer tube slips over the U-joint to make the transition from articulated to fixed. The snap buttons for both tubes were small and difficult to operate. When I exposed the U-joint, I was disappointed to see that it was plastic and very small. The larger tube has a diameter of about 7/8″, and the U-joint had to fit its 3/4″ inside diameter.
The Handi-Mate’s U-joint is made of plastic and has to be small enough to fit inside the aluminum extension tube.
I slipped the Handi-Mate socket over the handle of one of my outboards, a 4-hp Yamaha four-stroke. Tightening the socket’s knob presses a bar against the handle’s rubber grip. It holds it in place, but the pressure is applied only on the underside of the bar and on the opposite side of the rigid socket, so I suspect the socket will shift in one axis on a small handle. More troubling were the stops molded into the U-joint. They limit the extension’s range of motion and could leave the handle hanging in midair when released, a very vulnerable position; given the great mechanical advantage of the handle over the U-joint, I thought any force applied to the suspended handle would destroy the joint. I’d seen enough and didn’t need to try it on the water. I put it back in its package and returned it to the store for a refund.
The HelmsMate impressed me from the start. It comes strapped on a cardboard panel with everything showing, including the stout, stainless-steel U-joint. The device to lock the joint is a 3-7/8″-long aluminum tube that fits over the outside extension tube, so the U-joint’s size is limited by the largest tube’s 1″ outside diameter instead of its inside diameter, as with the Handi-Mate. The locking device has a textured plastic grip and an ingenious diagonal slot that tightens the connection between the outboard tiller and the extension, making it quite rigid. The 5/16″ snap buttons are easy to operate.
As a fixed extension, the HelmsMate provides a wiggle-free connection to the outboard’s tiller and throttle. The skipper can get their weight to the middle of the boat and stand for the best view forward.
The HelmsMate’s socket is slotted and the thumb screws that tighten it squeeze around the circumference of the outboard handle. The inboard end of the socket has two openings for access to those kill switches that are mounted on the tip of the outboard’s handle. (If you have an outboard with a tethered dead-man’s switch, you may need to add an extension to it to clip it on your person when you’re using the HelmsMate.)
The HelmsMate’s universal joint is stainless steel and fits the 1″ inside diameter of the locking device, at right.
The U-joint has a good range of motion that varies from 75 to 90 degrees depending on its rotation, enough to let the handle drop to the floorboards before the joint has to take the strain. The extension tubes add from 32″ to 48″ to the reach of the outboard’s handle in six 2-3/4″ increments.
The locking device has a rubber grip and a diagonal slot that engages a push button. When the device is twisted, the connection between the socket and the extension is quite solid.
Having the HelmsMate’s U-joint locked out provides positive control of the motor, and I was comfortable using even the full extension while the motor was at full throttle and pushing the boat at 5 knots. With the diagonal slot tightening the connection and the socket squeezed tight on the tiller handle, the only play is in the tiller’s connection to the motor head. I like motoring standing up, and the HelmsMate, locked straight, works very well for that.
While the articulated extension looks like it might function like a Norwegian push-pull tiller, it does not. It takes two hands, not one, and a lateral sweeping motion instead of a push-pull.
When I tried the HelmsMate with the U-joint in play, I had the instructions provided for both it and the Handi-Mate in mind. The Handi-Mate’s instructions advised: “Steering with the swivel engaged should be limited to trolling speeds. Do not operate at high speed without first locking into rigid position.” The HelmsMate instructions read: “Intended only for use at trolling speeds. Do not use at higher speeds.” I’m not a fisherman, so I had to look up trolling speeds. There’s quite a range, from 1.7 knots for trout to 8.5 knots for marlin. With my boats and motors, I’m lucky to hit 5 knots, but it was easy enough to determine that the warnings applied to the lowest end of the trolling-speed scale.
When the U-joint is being used, turning the motor can align the extension and the motor’s tiller. It’s important to have two hands on the extension to control the motor.
I had thought that putting the U-joint in play would be very much like using a Norwegian push-pull tiller on a rudder, but I was quite wrong. The two arms of a Norwegian tiller are always at an angle, and never lined up with each other. You can manage it with one hand, like a push broom. An articulated outboard extension is like an upright broom; it takes both hands, especially when sweeping across the point where it lines up with the outboard’s tiller. That “top-dead-center” (TDC) point is more than just a weak point. The torque created by an outboard and its propeller tend to twist the motor into a turn, to port for most small outboards, and the boat doesn’t need to be going fast for this twist to happen. (For more information, see the afterword of this outboard review.) With the HelmsMate, my Yamaha 2.5-hp would snap through TDC only when turning to port; turning to starboard was fine. My son and I quickly learned to put both hands on the extension before initiating turns. Doing that while seated is easier than while standing.
The U-joint turned the throttle smoothly with the extension angled up to about 60 degrees from straight and beyond that it continues to work if the throttle is at a position that puts the square piece in the U-joint on a diagonal. If that piece is level, when the extension is beyond the 60 degrees, the U-joint won’t rotate. The limitations on the range of motion weren’t restrictive in our use of the extension. The positions we took up when using the extension happened to keep the HelmsMate away from angles that compromise the U-joint’s smooth operation.
The HelmsMate is sturdily built and is a cinch to use in its rigid configuration; it just needs a bit of practice and caution when used as an articulated extension. I won’t be taking it back for a refund.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Magazine.
The Handi-Mate is available from some marine stores and online retailers, but the product has been, wisely I think, discontinued by Davis Instruments. The HelmsMate is available directly from Ironwood for $61.95 and from some online and conventional retailers.
Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising, or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.
With his newly finished boat out of the shop, it’s easy to see why Alf was drawn to the trap skiffs of his youth.
Alf Manuel has deep roots in Twillingate, a small town on the northeast coast of Newfoundland. Seven generations of his family have made their home there, and it was only in Alf’s lifetime that a causeway and bridge, built in 1973, connected it by road to the rest of Newfoundland. Naturally, boats and boatbuilding are steeped in his bloodline.
Alf Manuel
An eye auger would be a curiosity or an antique to most, but to Alf, it’s a tool that hasn’t yet outlived its usefulness. The axe in the background to the left belonged to Alf’s father, but it is not the one Alf used to make toy boats.
As a boy, he would sneak an axe from his father’s shop and chop a boat out of a scrap of wood. There were a number of boatbuilders near his home, and he was inexorably drawn to their shops to watch them at work. At 19, he built his first boat, a plywood skiff, and “it worked out all right,” he says, so he went to a trade school to learn more. Now 80 years old, he works in the shop that had belonged to his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He has a long string of wooden boats, up to 56′ long, to his credit and is a highly regarded boatbuilder.
Alf Manuel
Alf used crooks to to a create a strong structure at the stern of the skiff. Against the back wall he has two ways of coping with the Newfoundland winter: a snow shovel and cross-country skis.
His most recent boat was inspired by the trap skiffs that he used to watch as they worked the Twillingate waters. They ranged from 28′ to 34′ long; the smaller ones, with a crew of two aboard, were also used for hand-lining cod in the fall when the lobstering season closed. The original skiffs were more boat than he needed, so he had in mind to build one 21′ long. There were neither surviving boats nor plans for the trap skiffs, so he started with a half model, carving the shape from memory. Lofting followed, and he drew full-sized lines for a skiff 21′ long with a beam of 6′6″. He gathered materials for the build. From a local sawmill he got live-edge Newfoundland black spruce for the planking and black spruce timbers for the keel; with the help of his son and grandson, he cut tamarack crooks for the stem and frames. Stainless-steel fastenings would be used throughout. Wanting to power the boat in the traditional way, Alf acquired a single-cylinder make-and-break engine.
Alf Manuel
The hull, even as a lattice of sawn frames and temporary battens, already shows the handsome shape that began as a half-hull trap skiff carved from memory.
He built the skiff over the course of two years, working only during the winters, often wearing a heavy coat and wool gloves while tongues of wind-driven snow lapped at the floor beneath the shop doors. He assembled the keel and frames upright, and then as the planking proceeded, he tilted the nascent hull to angles convenient to the work he needed to do.
Alf Manuel
Rather than crawl under an upright hull to spile and install the garboards, Alf set it on its side. The first half-dozen planks from the sheer down hold the shape.
After Alf launched the boat, the 4-hp Acadia motor he had installed developed a number of problems, so he switched to a more reliable and more powerful 13-1/2-hp Volvo Penta two-cylinder diesel. It pushes the skiff along at about 5 knots.
Alf Manuel
The finished hull has lodging knees on two of the thwarts to stiffen the hull. The enclosure aft conceals the make-and-break engine initially installed; its vertical exhaust pipe is to starboard.
Alf does day cruises and some recreational cod fishing in the waters around Twillingate. Notre Dame Bay, which surrounds the North and South Twillingate islands, is cradled in Newfoundland’s ragged and island-speckled northeast coast and has no shortage of nooks and crannies to explore. In the late spring and early summer, the harbors and coves may be free of ice, but icebergs, spawned by Baffin Island and Greenland and carried south by the Labrador Current, are regular visitors, so numerous that Twillingate bills itself as the Iceberg Capital of the World. Verdant hills and wandering mountains of brilliant white ice make a spectacular seascape for Alf’s cruising.
Stephanie Manuel
Alf, his wife, son, and daughter-in-law motor out of Twillingate’s inner harbor. The make-and-break’s exhaust pipe is gone and the skiff is now powered with a diesel engine with a wet exhaust above the waterline on the starboard side.
Alf has spent a lifetime building and using wooden boats, but the boy who was often scolded by his mother when he came home with pant cuffs wet after wading from shore with his axe-hewn boats remains every bit as fascinated by them.
Do you have a boat with an interesting story? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats Magazine readers.
The Danube carries Finn and Tereza through Croatia to Serbia and a stop at Belgrade. Fall brings shorter days, nearly freezing nights, and rain. See how they’re holding up two months into the voyage.
Finn and Tereza make their way across Hungary, and visit the capital city of Budapest. There they pick up a crewmate, Karl, and carry on down the Danube. Get ready for some wild river sailing!
In Slovakia, Finn and Tereza have to get chaperoned by a cargo vessel to be allowed through one of the larger locks, but in the wider parts of the Danube they get some sea room and a breeze. Watch JILL spread her wings and fly.
The Danube’s gentle current carries Jill along and the miles come easily for Tereza and Finn. Check out the lush landscapes and elegant urban architecture of Germany and Austria in their latest video.
After an afternoon kayaking outing on one of the last warm summer afternoons of the year, I returned to the dock where I’d put in to pry myself out of the cockpit. There was a man in the water hanging on to the end of the dock. I asked him how the water was, thinking he was in there to cool off, but he made it clear that he wasn’t swimming for pleasure: “My girlfriend threw my pants in the water and all my money is in the pockets.”
I peered into the water that was in my shadow. On the bottom I could just make out a shopping cart and a green ride-share bike, but no pants. He said they were farther out, but on that side of my kayak there was only glare. I hauled myself up on the dock and wished him luck, as much for finding his pants as for finding a new girlfriend.
On the drive home I regretted not doing anything more to help, but he had a diving mask on, so if the pants were somewhere near the dock, he’d be able to see and retrieve them; the water there is only about 12′ deep.
The incident got me thinking about being better prepared to recover something that has dropped in the water. About 100 yards from that same dock, the rudder for my gunning dory slipped free and has been on the bottom. I wasn’t prepared then to recover it, and now, 20 years later, I can’t remember just where it would be. Recovering the rudder might have been possible if I could have done two things: see it clearly through the surface, and get a line hooked on it.
My son, Nate, used an underwater video system to retrieve this outboard that had gone AWOL three days earlier. The yellow video monitor is between his shins and he’s holding the 60′ cable that connects it to the underwater camera.
More recently, I was testing an electric outboard motor that suddenly pried its tiller from my hand, turned sideways, and wrenched itself off the transom. (It’s the very last time I used an outboard without having it tied to a safety line.) The motor went down in about 30′ of water in the middle of the shipping canal, too deep and too dangerous for me to look for it by free-diving. I went home, made a grappling hook out of steel rod, and connected it to a long line and my little underwater video camera. It took three outings at the canal to find the motor, and it was only with my son’s help manning the hook and watching the monitor while I rowed a search pattern and dodged boat traffic that we found and recovered the outboard.
The motorwell on the Caledonia yawl is located just to port of the skeg. The plug that fills the hole when the motor is not in use has a window. The box-like plug is also a handy place to toss my hat.
When I built my Caledonia yawl, I incorporated a simple device for seeing into the water. The plug that fills the motorwell while I’m rowing or sailing has a plexiglass bottom. It comes in handy when I’m sailing in shallow water and need to keep an eye on the bottom, but it has some limitations. When I was exploring the fringes of Yellow Island in Puget Sound’s San Juan archipelago, I got a brief glimpse of the tip of a submerged boulder just before it tore my rudder off.
My helmet required weights front and back—about 90 lbs altogether—to get it to sink the volume of air inside it.
I’ve had my best view of the underwater world with a hard-hat diving helmet I made out of plywood and plexiglass. A plastic pump for inflating rafts, manned by someone I can trust, supplies air through a 50’ length of garden hose. I made my first dive with it in a marina, and I was quite content to just sit on the bottom, 12’ down, looking out across the sandy wasteland under the docks. I could have stayed there for quite a while, but I could tell by the diminishing airflow that my pump man was getting tired.
With air pulsing through the garden hose, our friend Bobbie begins his descent while Nate looks on.
While the helmet’s four windows offer a good view of the underwater world, the noise of the bubbles in the helmet gets to be quite loud. It’s not exactly tranquil.
An easier way to see underwater is through a different kind of windowed plywood box, one used at the surface. On the south coast of Menorca in the Mediterranean, I saw fishermen wading in the shallows, bent over with their faces pressed into things that looked like oversized megaphones. They had openings at the top to fit around their eyes and windows on the bottom. I never found out what they were looking for, but I was intrigued by their devices, called bathyscopes or aquascopes. They’ve been around for quite a while, perhaps almost as long as window glass has been.
The contoured opening keeps light from getting into the bathyscope and making distracting reflections on the plexiglass window. I’ll add foam strips to the perimeter for comfort.
After worrying for a while about the unfortunate man who’d lost his pants, I made a bathyscope from stuff I had lying around the shop: some leftover mahogany plywood, oak from a desk I’d made years ago, a scrap of 1/4″ plexiglass, and a pair of brass window-sash handles. The top end is 3″ x 5-3/4″ with cutouts for my forehead and nose. I pressed a length of lead-free solder to my face to make a contoured pattern.
The 1/4″ plexiglass window sits in the recess created by the trim framing the bottom of the bathyscope. A thin bead of silicone caulking, applied only on the outside, makes a watertight seal that will allow easy removal of the plexiglass if it needs to be replaced.
Painting the interior flat black eliminates reflections and improves the view.
The window at the bottom is 7″ x 10″ and recessed in the trim pieces at the bottom so it won’t get scratched when set down. The interior is painted flat black to make the best of the underwater view. The handles are angled for a comfortable grip and offset from one another vertically to provide firmer control if the water’s a bit unsettled.
I had a clear view of the bottom off the end of the dock, but I saw no sign of the missing pants, just a shopping cart and a bicycle.
The bathyscope was ready a few days after I’d met the man looking for his pants, so when I returned to the dock with it and a grappling hook I didn’t have much hope of finding the pants, or reconnecting them with their owner if I did. I got a good look at the bike and the shopping cart, guided the hook to them, and hauled them up. There were no markings on the cart, so I’m stuck with that. I took the bike to a service center where the company repairs them. The technician there recognized it as an older model, so it had been missing for quite a long time.
While letting the boat drift at the end of its painter, Nate scanned the bottom for treasure.
With winter coming, the water here will be getting much clearer. I’m planning on rowing around the marina with my bathyscope, grappling hook, and a large magnet. I suspect the water there has been hiding all manner of treasures under its mask of ripples and reflections.
A cruising sailboat in the 20′ to 22′ range resides at the high end of the spectrum that most amateur boatbuilders can realistically aspire to. Go bigger and you need time, money, space and skills that few of us have. But there’s a delectable spread of choices at the level just below the impossible dream—plans by at least a half dozen highly regarded designers. Of these, Sam Devlin’s Song Wren 21, was, in the end, the most compelling. I had already built two smaller stitch-and-glue designs from Devlin Designing Boat Builders, so I felt comfortable with the process.
The Song Wren can be built with a shallow slotted keel and a centerboard for sailing thinner water and easier trailering and launching. I was drawn to the fixed-keel version for its ballasted-keel stability and cabin space unobstructed by a centerboard trunk. Its profile exuded the refined dignity of a much larger craft, and the gaff-cutter configuration offered the complexity I crave in a sailing rig. I love to stay busy, tinkering and tuning sail trim.
Devlin had drawn the Song Wren in 2011 as a commission, but nobody had yet built one, so no one could report on how it would sail, and if there were bugs in the design. I had budgeted up to $36,000 for parts and materials, a figure Devlin confirmed to be in the ballpark. Committing this pile of money to a boat that has never before existed, to be executed by an amateur who just barely knows what he’s doing, would seem edgy by any objective standard. But anyone who’s ever loved a boat, or a drawing of a boat, understands.
Dennis Ryerson
The Song Wren is the first of Devlin’s smaller sailboats to use double-chine construction, and the upper chine provides an opportunity to mount a rub strip the full length of the hull. This makes the hull appear longer and lower, giving it a more serious, big-boat look.
Devlin can supply a kit of CNC-cut okoume plywood panels for the hull and bulkheads, so I went with that option. Not only does it relieve the builder of the dismal job of scarfing plywood, it also provides a fiberboard building jig with slots that hold and align the Song Wren’s five bulkheads. This ensures that the hull will take form accurately, and that an insubordinate builder will not tinker with the basic design. There’ll be no sneaking in an extra 6″ of overall length, nor robbing from the cockpit to make more cabin. Amateur builders are probably better off with such temptations foreclosed.
The hull is built upside down on the jig, and the two-chine design (two side panels and one bottom half per side) made the handling of the big pieces manageable—with the help of one dedicated and capable friend. Topsides, I made one significant structural and aesthetic change, with Devlin’s approval. His plan called for a mast tabernacle to sprout from the cabintop with a steel compression post to carry the load to the keel. I planted the tabernacle on the deck instead and moved the cabin trunk’s front 6″ aft to lock into the tabernacle and buttress it. I added a beefy laminated deckbeam underneath, 2″ thick and 6″ wide, and supported it with the relocated compression post. The result is a terrifically strong foundation for the mast (which also enjoys six stays!) and, I think, an elegantly integrated design detail. It was a lot of additional work, but a project as ambitious as building a boat like Song Wren does not argue for taking the expedient path.
Dennis Ryerson
The maximum headroom of 51” is more than adequate for seated tall people. The surface at right doubles as chart table and galley counter; a cooler slides underneath. A portable head resides in the closed compartment under the seat forward of the counter.
Though cabin headroom is only 51″, I wanted to outfit the living quarters as elegantly as possible. My plan is to park the boat at a marina in Port Townsend, Washington, or the San Juan Islands and use it as an occasional summer cabin as well as a daysailer. I installed a ceiling of 79 varnished sapele planks, concealed all electrical wiring behind sapele trim or structural bits, and built in a total of 16 drawers, shelves, bins, and cubbies to corral the clutter that loves to overwhelm small-boat cruising.
The build consumed 4,500 hours, and the cost of parts and materials came in about $1,000 below that $36,000 budget. It was challenging, but the 14-page plans set is extraordinarily detailed, including such things as a precise assembly sequence for the keel and several drawings of the cabin’s sliding hatch. Still, I wouldn’t recommend this as a first boat for any amateur builder.
With 302 sq ft of sail, the Song Wren seems generously canvased to make the best of Puget Sound’s notoriously skinflint summer wind. Devlin estimates the dry weight at 2,800 lbs, but I haven’t yet weighed this first real-world iteration. It glides eerily through air that’s barely stirring. Two knots (verified with an anemometer) gets us moving. In 5 knots of true wind we’re seriously sailing. On a close reach we enjoy 4+ knots of boat speed with 7 knots of apparent wind. In 10 knots apparent we are approaching our theoretical hull speed of 5.8 knots. A close reach seems to be this boat’s best point of sail. In the best conditions, the Song Wren will sail up to about 40 degrees off the apparent wind and tack through 95 degrees—decently pointy in the gaff-rig universe. The jib slips easily past the staysail stay for tacking, though in very light air it helps to furl it halfway when beginning the tack, then release the furling line to finish.
In this first season since the May 2019 launch, my wife Patty and I have tried all possible combinations of sail—always fun and interesting when you’re blessed with more than the usual main and jib—and learned what works and what doesn’t. The best balance and performance come with all three sails flying. The staysail doesn’t provide much power—it adds no more than 0.2 knot in most situations—but it does help us crowd the wind more tightly, and it looks way cool. I had hoped the first reefing step would be to simply furl the jib, but this doesn’t work well. The Song Wren develops an unpleasantly heavy weather helm with only staysail and full main, and if the wind continues to rise, it’s impossible to heave-to for further reefing unless we unfurl the jib. So, we reef the main first, then roll up the jib as the second reef. The boat balances beautifully on staysail and reefed main, which gives 63 percent of the working sail area. I may add a second row of reefpoints in the main, which could be more effective than dropping both foresails.
Dennis Ryerson
The Song Wren’s cockpit seats are 7’ long, providing plenty of space for daysailing with four adults. The seats are overlaid with a veneer of sapele planks with contrasting fir strips, and the battery, charger, and depth sounder reside under the watertight hatch on the starboard side.
The Song Wren’s sail controls all are accessible from the cockpit (there are 13 lines in all), so while there’s a lot that requires attention, it’s all in a safe place. I located cam-cleated lines on the cabin top for a preventer so it can be deployed in seconds for downwind runs.
Dennis Ryerson
The staysail is self-tending with a single sheet. Roller furling added to the jib makes it easily doused from the cockpit.
Some years back, I twice had to dock chartered boats under sail because of engine failures, so I always like to plan and test what I’ll do in case of that event. With the Song Wren, approaching a dock on staysail alone is a good idea since it provides a suitably poky pace and will drop instantly. It will not, however, claw upwind or tack, so a power-off docking still needs the jib’s aid until final approach.
Sam Devlin
The 302 square feet of sail take good advantage of light air.
For auxiliary power, I bought a new 8-hp Yamaha outboard. In all but one respect it was an excellent choice: reasonably quiet, smooth-running, powerful enough to push us to hull speed at half throttle, and incredibly economical—we’re averaging 12 nautical miles per gallon. The drawback is its weight. I tried to engineer an indented transom mount but failed, so I finally resorted to a commercial adjustable mount. Cantilevering 90 lbs out nearly 1’ behind the transom makes the engine hard to tilt up and causes the boat to squat low on its design waterline aft. The only mitigation at this point seems to be to plant more ballast forward. If I were starting over, I would consider sacrificing some cockpit locker space (there’s plenty) for an inboard motor well.
Sam Devlin
The sail controls all lead to the cockpit, so there’s no need to venture forward to tend to the jib and staysail.
Near the end of this first sailing season, the most remarkable thing about living with the Song Wren is its accommodations. For such a compact boat, both its cockpit and cabin seem incredibly spacious and comfortable. Four people easily daysail; three sleep inside as long as they’re close friends. The most rewarding thing is this boat’s jaw-dropping beauty—and Devlin deserves all the credit for it, not me. I have perhaps accentuated it by celebrating its woodiness with acres of brightwork (rub strips, toe rails, cabin sides, companionway doors, cockpit seats, and more), which I may regret when the time comes to sand and revarnish. Devlin implores builders to paint everything. But when you totally fall for a boat’s great looks, and its performance keeps you engaged and intrigued, you’re not afraid to look forward to a mountain of work in the relationship.
Lawrence W. Cheek is a journalist and serial boatbuilder (two kayaks and four sailboats to date) who writes frequently for WoodenBoat.
From all the refined creations of the designer Iain Oughtred presented in the intriguing biography A Life in Wooden Boats, written by Nic Compton, one particular boat, the 14′11″ Elf, caught my eye and imagination. Based on Norwegian faerings with roots in the Viking era, the small but intrepid-looking Elf is a fascinating adaptation of ancient design to modern construction. I had built a couple of glued lapstrake plywood canoes, so the Elf was a natural choice for me.
The original faerings were built by hand and eye, and had slowly evolved during hundreds of years to meet the local conditions and particular purposes. Iain carefully studied every design and photo he could find, realizing no two faerings were alike. He had a commission for a boat smaller than the original ones, and after absorbing all he could find on the subject, he began drafting his own interpretation of the faering, adapting the structure for glued-lapstrake plywood.
Mats Vuorenjuuri
The Elf has many traditional elements—broad strakes, rangs (angled frames in the ends), kabes (wooden row locks)—and only the daggerboard trunk and the absence of lap rivets betray its modern construction. For rowing, a plug for the daggerboard case will keep water from splashing into the hull.
Iain’s plans are famous for their elegance and detail, and Elf makes no exception to this. The package includes full-sized templates for the building molds, frames, and stems plus lines plan, construction plan, detail patterns, materials list, and construction notes. Add Iain’s own informative book Clinker Plywood Boatbuilding Manual, and you should be good to go.
Iain recommends 9mm okoume or 7mm mahogany plywood for the hull and Douglas-fir, larch, or pitch pine for keel and frames. There are only two laminated frames in the center of the boat and smaller canted frames—rangs—aft and forward in the hull. The center and forward thwarts are installed aligned with the main frames further reinforcing the structure.
With basic woodworking skills, tools, and some practice in using epoxy, building Elf should not be too demanding. One critical step is to get fair and accurate lines on the three wide strakes of the hull. This can be achieved using plywood or bendy strips attached together to make patterns to transfer plank shapes from the molds.
In his book, Iain constantly uses various clamping methods to avoid the need for screws. Moving forward with the building process, I started to understand and appreciate this method more and more. The benefits of avoiding screws are less screw removal, fewer holes to be filled later, and perhaps a more elaborate structure. There are some stages where screws are necessary and unavoidable to get parts set correctly for gluing.
Sanna Virnes
Elf is a joy to row, it moves effortlessly and tracks exceptionally well. The hull is quite full forward, so, for rowing alone the forward thwart is a good choice, especially when traveling downwind. Some gear or ballast aft, will help put the keel level.
As the hull comes together, you really begin to admire the simple and functional structural design of the boat. Realizing the unadorned beauty of Elf, you will think very carefully before adding anything but the necessary fittings into the boat. It took a whole year before Iain dared to equip his own boat with sailing gear, and to that end, a slot for the daggerboard is cut to one side of the wooden, full-length keel and the daggerboard case is fitted forward of the center thwart. Iain has drawn a beautiful Norwegian-style rudder, and there are two options for rudder fittings. One has a long, curved rod held by two stem fittings that allows the rudder to be positioned high on the stem with the blade nearly clear of the water for rowing or beaching, or low with the blade fully submerged for sailing.
I chose a more conventional solution of common pintles and gudgeons and remove the rudder when I’m not sailing. With the 5′-long tiller, I can easily steer even while sitting in the middle of the boat.
The plans include drawings for oars and the traditional oarlocks called kabes. The oars are locked to kabes using rope loops. The loops need to be measured and spliced carefully for both a smooth rowing experience and to allow shipping the oars. The 9′ oars for the Elf have looms with flat backs and bottoms that fit the kabes and set the blades at the proper angle. The blades are long and narrow; their shape catches little wind while being effective.
The Elf weighs only 143 lbs and can easily be pulled up on a beach or onto a trailer singlehandedly, and two people can carry it. I bought a pair of inflatable beach rollers for effortless and harmless beaching; they fit under the thwarts when not in use and serve as flotation.
Once you get the Elf in the water, it will feel tender at first, but stable when you get settled on the thwart. Then the very first strokes will put a smile on your face. The hull resistance in slow speeds is remarkably low, and the boat is very easily driven. A peaceful pace for this boat is 3 knots, and by adding some effort, a knot more can be achieved. This seems to be the hull speed. The full-length wooden keel provides excellent tracking, and she turns smoothly. Because the Elf’s bow is much fuller than its stern, the forward thwart is the best choice for rowing alone; putting some gear or ballast in the stern will achieve proper fore-and-aft trim. For solo rowing, when the wind is abeam, rowing from the aft station will help prevent the hull from turning into the wind.
Mats Vuorenjuuri
With two rowers, Elf balances up nicely and maintains good speed with little effort. The 3′ spacing between the rowing stations is just enough for two well-synchronized rowers.
Because the span between the aft station’s kabes is 4″ less than the span at the forward station, you will lose some leverage rowing aft. For tandem rowing, the space between the two rowing positions is just enough.
The extreme lightness of the Elf has its virtues and drawbacks. It takes very little to move it, whether under oar power or sails. Lightly loaded, the hull sits high on water, and the upswept bow and stern add to windage. Although the hull can handle rough wave conditions, rowing against even a moderate breeze can be hard work. Waves also have an effect on the light hull, and its lack of momentum while tacking can lead to getting caught in irons. After you steer through the eye of the wind the Elf will start flying; off the wind it will accelerate quickly to surf down waves, occasionally exceeding hull speed.
Once you step into the Elf you are more than doubling its displacement, making it sensitive to both longitudinal and transverse trim. This can be disconcerting to a novice, at least to begin with, but very useful to an expert sailor accustomed to trimming and ballasting a sailing dinghy. The magic of faerings is in a narrow waterline beam for fast rowing, and a ’midships flare for ample reserve buoyancy to resist heeling while under sail.
Pasi Ehrola
Elf is well mannered under sail. Once the ample flare in the midsection hits the water, the hull stiffens up considerably.
Elf sails quite well even without the daggerboard. Before I installed the daggerboard case, sitting on the floor in the center of the boat was a sweet spot when sailing alone. The push-pull tiller rests conveniently on the center thwart, and I had unobscured views under the sail. When the wind picks up, you get more leverage from body weight by sitting on the thwart, or by hiking out on the gunwale. Sailing with a family of three aboard was also comfortable—my daughter would sit in front of the mast on the floor, I steered while sitting between center and aft thwarts, and our third crew sat between the center and forward thwarts. Loaded this way, Elf is very forgiving and stable.
Adding the daggerboard resulted in faster tacks and better windward performance. If you have camp-cruising in mind, I would seriously consider dispensing with the daggerboard and case to get good use of the stowage space in the center of the boat.
Gene Williams
This Elf, built by Duane Mathes, carries the sprit rig that is detailed in Oughtred’s plans.
I deviated from the plans for the sailing rig. The plans call for a 53-sq-ft sprit sail, but I opted for a lugsail of similar size; lugsail is also a choice of preference by Oughtred for Elf’s big sister, the 16′ 6″ Elfyn. As designed, Elf’s mast is supported by an extra partner fastened at the sheer. I wanted to minimize the structures and have unobstructed access to the bow, so I used the forward thwart as the partner. With this arrangement, the mast bury is quite small, so I stayed the mast using the halyard as one stay, and a dedicated line as the other. Eventually, finding the right tweaks for the lug sail, balance was good. The area of the balanced lug sail that sets forward of the mast compensates for moving the mast location a little bit aft, so the center of the sail’s overall area is very nearly the same as that of the spritsail.
As Iain remarked about the Elf: “Getting such functional efficiency in such a simple shape is astonishing.” Build an Elf for rowing, sailing, or wandering solo with a light load of camping gear, you can hardly go wrong. Elf is packed with character. Give it time and opportunities, and it will eventually charm your eye and steal your heart.
Mats Vuorenjuuri is the father of three and an entrepreneur, making a living in graphic design, photography, and freelance writing. He is currently becoming a boatbuilder as well, offering boatbuilding and maintenance services through Nordic Craft. In recent years he has discovered the simplicity and joy of small boats after sailing various types including sail-training schooners. He wrote about cruising the Finnish coast in his Coquina in our May 2016 issue and about a Lakeland Row in January 2017.
Elf Particulars
[table]
Length/14′11″
Beam/4′4″
Sail area, lug/52.72 sq ft
Weight/143 lbs
[/table]
Plans for the Elf are available from the WoodenBoat Store for $204 USD (study plans are 99 cents) and from Oughtred Boats for $224.44 AUS.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats Magazine readers would enjoy? Please email us!
We descended the steep trail from the parking lot into the Barron River valley and came into a grove of pine trees with waist-thick trunks; their roots fanned out more than 20′ and intertwined above the shallow soil. At the river’s edge was a clearing carpeted in russet pine needles. The banks were lined with rounded barrel-sized boulders, and rocks just below the surface of the water had a copper-colored glow. Where the 50′-wide river was deepest it ran black.
Photographs by the author
After carrying the canoes down from the long, steep path from the Brigham Lake parking lot, Phil and Rob paused for a rest before launching onto the Barron River. Two paddlers who preceded us are just getting underway.
The sun was high overhead and the heat of the day was peaking. Sweat beaded on my brow, but waiting for us was a soothing breeze on the Barron River. I was headed, with Rob and Phil, my canoe buddies for many years, to a part of Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park known as Barron Canyon, where granite cliffs stretch 300’ above the river.
All of us, now in our 60s, preferred to use my lightweight solo canoes (30 lbs) that I call Wee Bonnies. Rob and I used the skin-on-frame versions, while Phil always has dibs on the one I strip-built using light blue insulation foam.
Launching into the shallow, gentle current of the Barron River, we slid slowly downstream in clear, cool water over black, white, and orange granite stones the size of golf balls.
As we headed downstream over a shallow stretch of the river, we had to be careful to watch for submerged log debris and rocks lurking just below the surface.
Phil took the lead, Rob followed, and I was at the end, making sure to avoid any sunken logs or boulders that were just under the surface of the shallow river here. The banks were high and thick with white and red pine, and as the land rose up around us, we paddled by sections of crumbled cliffs and boulders separated by stands of trees. Pickerelweed with its spikes of purple flowers was thick along both sides of the river, and log debris was everywhere.
The river widened abruptly at the entrance to a small lake, and the rippled sand beneath us dimmed as the water gradually deepened. Brigham Lake is 200 yards across and twice as long and surrounded with pine and fir. We paddled to the south side of the lake and carefully picked our way through barely submerged shoreside rocks to a clearing in the woods.
To prepare the canoes for portaging from Brigham Lake to Opalescence Lake we flipped the seats up so the yokes on the ends of the seats were ready for the carry. The trail was steep and rocky so we carried the canoes and packs in separate trips.
A campsite there had a stone-ring fire pit and log rounds for seats, but we were here not to stay but to portage to Opalescent Lake. The carry would be a challenge, as it rose about 150 feet over a distance of 800 yards. The path was well defined and easy to follow but strewn with ankle-twisting rocks and roots. It crossed steep-sided valleys and skirted steep rocky drop-offs, so we decided to carry our gear and canoes in two trips. If the portage was less rough, we would have chosen to do a single carry. We had plenty of time, so two trips it was.
The three of us picked up our packs and set off on the first crossing along the sun-dappled path, winding through the thick bush of pine. While I could see clearly ahead over 50’, I kept my focus downward, and stepped gingerly over rocks and roots, sometimes hidden by a thick layer of dried pine needles. We maneuvered down some rock steps, being careful not to lose our footing on the uneven ground and tumble down a rocky granite slope. We passed through a valley and crossed a small creek on a narrow bridge made of four long, springy 2x6s. In the lowlands around the creek, swarms of mosquitoes attacked us and we picked up our pace. As we got close to the end of the portage, we could see the sun sparkling on the water through the trees. It was a welcome sight because our packs, fully laden with gear and provisions for four days, were at their heaviest.
Roger Siebert
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I set my pack down at the end of the portage, scratched my legs and arms, and then reached into the front pouch of my pack to pull out a bottle of bug spray. I hadn’t applied enough repellent to deter the little blood-sucking pests; I’d be better protected for the return trip.
Phil and Rob had already headed back and I could hear them in the distance, cursing the mosquitoes. Well slathered with spray, I hurried back over the rocky trail to catch up. Back at the Brigham Lake clearing, Rob flipped his canoe onto his shoulders and took the lead, with Phil close behind him. I brought up the rear again, hoping the mosquitoes would have had their fill from them and leave me be.
The third walk on the trail was easier because the canoes were lighter than our packed gear, and the mosquitoes left me alone, but the trickles of sweat running down my face seemed to attract deerflies. There was no cooling breeze making its way through the thick bush of pine, spruce, and fir, and the back of my T-shirt was drenched and sticking to my skin.
We set up our base at the Opalescence Lake camp site where we would stay for the next two days and do day trips. There was still some unpacking to do but but a refreshing swim came first.
I rejoined Phil and Rob at the end of the portage, and gently swung my canoe down on a patch of the hard-packed ground cushioned with pine needles. A soft cool breeze skimming across Opalescent Lake provided some relief on that hot day in July. The irregular chain of rocks that had dotted the portage carried on into the lake, making it difficult to find enough space to launch our canoes. The clear water, its dark-blue surface dotted with bright green lily pads, was breathtakingly beautiful and indeed opalescent.
The narrow lake, running ¾ mile from east to west, was hemmed in by red and white pine, cedar and spruce, and scattered maples and birch. We walked out onto a low rock ledge at the edge of the lake and set our canoes in the still water. After loading the packs aboard, we eased into our seats and pushed off.
Just around a bend from the launch, we glided up to a granite ledge on a blunt point of land where pale, shin-high grass surrounded bald outcroppings of bedrock. Working together, the three of us quickly carried the canoes up past the ledge and set them on a tracery of roots covering the nearly flat ground. In 2013 we had camped here in the sun-drenched clearing, a dozen yards wide. Since then a tree that had provided shade had been snapped in half, perhaps in a heavy wind storm a few years ago.
Rob pointed out to me that his canoe’s seat had started to split, as the synthetic cane weaving had finally succumbed to the sunlight after four years of use. I would do some patching later.
Since we’d been here before, I knew just where to hang my hammock and Phil and Rob knew where to pitch their tent. The bedrock, of course, made it impossible to set tent pegs, so we weighted them down with rocks. My hammock was strung between two large pines where the bank started to slope down to the lake, so I’d have a good view of both the lake and sky.
With our camp set up, we could take advantage of the clear lake water just a few yards away. We dove off the rock ledge, swam out about a quarter of the way across the lake, and bobbed around, enjoying the refreshing feel of cool water below the warm surface layer.
As we climbed out of the water, Phil noticed blueberry bushes at the edge of the clearing. The berries were so sweet, it was hard to save some for breakfast.
Rob, Phil, and I have a tradition of having steak for dinner on our first night at camp. We had brought a frozen, precooked meal of steak, potatoes, and veggies. It had thawed during the day and all we had to do was to warm it up on our camp stove. For dessert, I’d brought a bar of dark chocolate.
With supper over, dishes done, we needed to pack all the food in a bag and hang it in a secure location outside our camp beyond the reach of mice, chipmunks, raccoons, and bears. We found a tall dead tree about 100’ to the east and Phil and I took turns trying to throw the rope, with a small rock tied to one end, up over the branch about 20′ up. I missed, but Phil did it on his second try. We hoisted the bag and headed back to camp. We made a small fire in the campsite’s fire pit, a ring of flat granite rocks piled in several tiers. Flickering flames spread easily across the dry dead branches Rob had gathered. Watching the flames was calming, and, tuckered out, we soon headed for our sleeping bags. Stargazing would have to wait. We were in bed by 10 o’clock, but I couldn’t fall asleep. Bullfrogs seemed intent on singing all night, and one was just 10′ from my hammock. Every 40 seconds he let out about four or five deep “ribbits.” I fell asleep at about 2 a.m., only to be awakened by two loons three hours later. Their haunting calls echoed off the far shore, making it sound like there were more of them.
After a breakfast of oatmeal and coffee, I worked on the seat on Rob’s canoe. I always carry some 1/8″ nylon cord and it worked for reweaving the damaged half of the seat. With a foam cushion added, it would be almost as good as new, but feeling somewhat guilty that I hadn’t replaced that old cane in the spring, I let Rob use my green skin-on-frame canoe and I would take his.
A light morning breeze ruffled the lake just before we launched for our day trip to explore Cork Lake.
Our plan was to go for a day trip to Cork Lake, east of Opalescent Lake via a 750-yard portage. We paddled slowly down the far shore of Opalescent Lake, taking our time, paddling as close to shore as possible to peer into the woods and enjoy the scenery. We passed a campsite on a rocky point; some trees there had been toppled by a small tornado that had passed through in July 2013. Massive pines lay on their sides, root structures upright like a giant saucer on edge.
The portage to Cork Lake was as reasonable as a portage through the bush could be, and we were carrying only light daypacks with our canoes so we only had to walk it once. It didn’t take us long to reach the shore of the lake.
Cork Lake had only three campsites, and only one was occupied that morning. The water was crystal clear, but the decaying debris on the bottom made it look an inky black. We hugged the shore and saw a few loons. The shallows along the shore were cluttered with underwater logs and a lot of rock ledges, but the water was so clear they were easily seen and avoided. One ledge was a massive dome of bright, gold-colored granite that loomed just 6″ under the water.
We took our time, circled some boulders, and squeezed our canoes in behind others.
When we stopped for lunch on Cork Lake, I pulled into a shallow, very slippery rock cove and let the north wind hold my canoe in place while we ate.
Heading north along the eastern shore, we stopped about halfway for lunch at a flat, scrub-covered rock ledge protruding out from shore. Phil and Rob pulled their canoes out of the water to keep the northerly, now steady breeze from sweeping the canoes away. I circled around to a cove on the north side of the landing, where the wind would hold my canoe mostly afloat over a smooth shelf of rock. We sat in silence, taking in the warm sun and eating lunch. Rob and I dove into the cool, clear water, swam well out from shore, and just floated, taking relief from another hot and humid day.
Phil and Rob paddled close enough to touch the cliff that bordered the east shore of Cork Lake. The vertical rock face extended well under water.
We continued our loop of the lake and paddled up the east side to massive cliffs of multicolored granite that towered over it. Orange lichen made the cliffs look as if they were spray-painted.
We made the carry back to Opalescent Lake and just as I stepped into my canoe, I slipped and dropped right on the back rest, snapping it from the thwart. I couldn’t paddle with my back up against the thwart, so I used a water sandal as a cushion and paddled gently back to camp. I rummaged through my pack to see what odds and ends I could use for repairs. I had thrown in a couple of bicycle inner-tube strips as general-purpose bungee cords. It wasn’t a pretty repair, but it worked to hold the seat back on the thwart.
Back at the Opalescent Lake camp after a day of paddling, Phil, at left, gazed at the small fire in the fire pit. Rob, center, and I relaxed with a cool drink.
As the evening dimmed the perfectly clear sky, Venus appeared, followed by the brightest stars one by one. Soon the sky was filled with constellations and streaked by shooting stars traced by satellites. When we hit the hay, it was nearly midnight with so many bullfrogs croaking that it sounded like white noise. Loons again woke me up early.
The morning was hot and humid even as we were getting our daypacks ready; we launched and set out to explore Barron Canyon. Three shadow-dappled portages through the woods, a 350-yard paddle across tiny Brigham Lake, and we were back at the Barron River 650 yards downstream from where we’d first launched two days before and very close to the canyon’s west upstream end. We launched the canoes into the clear shallow water where the river was running fast over a bed of tumbled granite stones. We slowly traveled downstream—sometimes lightly paddling, sometimes just drifting—and as the embankments flanking the river rose over us, the water deepened and the current slowed. Hemmed in by rough boulders, the river flowed past the stands of white pine, then towering cliffs where trees had taken root in small crevices in the rock and grown tall with their backs up against the vertical sides of the canyon walls. The cliffs rose over 300’ high and were streaked chalky white and sooty black with minerals leached by rainwater, and the rest of the rock was stained cinnamon brown or draped with moss; only a few places showed the rock’s real color. We paddled beneath outcroppings of granite that were cantilevered over the river.
Phil got ready to step into his Wee Bonnie for the final leg into the Barron Canyon. The water was so clear it made the canoe look as if it were floating in air.
About a mile or two downriver—I’d lost track of how far we had come—we found what seemed to be the only accessible spot to pull up our canoes and have a bit of lunch. We climbed up into a secluded grove of widely spaced slender red pines, then sat and looked out at the slightly rippled narrow river and at the pine-covered steep rocky embankments. A few other canoeists paddled by.
Rob gazed up at one of the massive multi-colored granite cliffs that stretch up over 300’ high. Hikers could peer back down from a trail at the top.
It was time to start the long trip back, so we launched and headed slowly upstream the mile or so back to the portage we had come through a couple of hours ago. A great blue heron flew ahead of us, landed a short distance away, only to fly ahead again at our approach. A beaver swam across the river in front of us; the heron landed once again and finally just waited for us to get by.
As the water grew shallow approaching the portage, we got out of our canoes and walked over the pebbled bottom, with the cool water lightly flowing over our feet. We pulled the boats upstream 60′ or so. A couple of hikers were moseying along the river bed in the ankle-deep water as if they were strolling in the park.
Phil and Rob shared the carry of one of the canoes as they hiked up the steep, rocky portage trail as we headed back toward Brigham Lake
The portage was short and would now be a little easier with our lightened packs, though rough with lots of roots and rocks to carefully step over. We carried up the initial steep slope of the portage one canoe at a time. Once at the top the path was now level but high up from the river bed. I chose to carry my own canoe with my lunch bag strapped to the thwart. Phil and Rob chose to carry both their canoes parallel to each other, holding their daypacks, with one person at the front and one at the back. We stepped along a steep and narrow path with the Barron River to our left and barely visible through the trees. Halfway along the portage, we took a short break at the narrow falls and rapids known as the Brigham Chute. The water there crashed down over a small waterfall and swirled around in side-streams to get through all the rocks.
Stopping for a break at the Brigham Chute, Rob decided to climb down and sit out in the center of the stream. Phil and I thought the climb down to be too precarious and remained up on the embankment.
From the Chute it was only a short walk to the river, where we launched, paddled a short distance, then made the100-yard portage back to Brigham Lake. Then the longer 800-yard portage uphill put us back into Opalescent Lake, and a paddle around the corner put us back in camp.
That night we were beat and all in bed before 9:30. The evening was hot and humid, and I had the fly of my hammock flipped back to catch whatever breeze there might be. I gazed up through the bug netting at the evening sky. I could clearly see the stars and even the glowing band of the Milky Way, and soon slipped into a deep sleep.
Heading back up stream on the Barron River, we approached our launching point from a few days prior. The solo canoes could easily maneuver in and around any debris we encountered.
We were up the final morning shortly after 6 a.m. We had our breakfast, took a quick swim, and then broke camp and retraced the route we had come three days earlier via a short paddle, again the 800-yard portage into Brigham Lake, and back into the Barron River, but this time heading northwest upstream 3/4 mile, with a final carry up the hill to the parking lot. It took us a couple of hours to get back to the cars and packed up for home.
Gazing down from a dizzying height on top of the Barron Canyon trail we watched canoes coming down stream through the canyon.
It was still early in the day, so we drove the short distance to the Barron Canyon Trail, parked, and hiked up the steep, well-worn trail leading to the top of the canyon. I looked down over the edge at the meandering river. In the distance, three canoes, almost invisibly small, traveled downstream and vanished around a wooded bend.
Phil Boyer retired in 2017 after working 38 years in R&D in the telecommunications industry. He now keeps busy teaching karate at two local clubs and building boats. He has been around boats his whole life, starting with paddling as a kid. At age 11 he built a sailing pram with a bit of help from his father. In 2006 he began building solo canoes and now has four of them, featured in the August 2019 issue. Phil’s interest turned to building SOL CANADA, his solar-electric boat, in 2015. His next build will be a solar-electric version of the Power Cat he read about in the March 2016 issue of Small Boats Magazine.
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.
"Never cleat the main” is often taught to beginning small-boat sailors. A cleated main can turn you over. A friend of mine, Barry Thomas, solved this when he built a Seabright skiff for his young son, David. There were no blocks in the mainsheet and no cleats on it, so Barry let his son sail whenever he wanted. David wasn’t strong enough to hang onto the mainsheet if the wind was strong enough to capsize the boat, so he couldn’t help but spill wind from the main.
But sometimes there are not enough hands to hold the main, steer the boat, and do something else; sometimes you just get tired and it’s a relief to have a cleat to hold the sheet. Dinghy racers are well familiar with this, and for many years have used various forms of quick-release jam and cam cleats. But sailors who haven’t grown up with them may not be fast enough to free the sheet, and so sometimes wind up taking a swim.
Ben Fuller
With a turn around a short pin protruding from the underside of the thwart, a slipped hitch holds the main sheet.
A traditional way to secure a sheet is with a slipped hitch on a half pin. The Ashley Book of Knots describes the Slippery Hitch, #1619: “…in small boats, especially boats that are easily capsizable, the hitch is indispensable. A whaleboat’s halyards as well as sheets are always secured with them, since a Slipped Knot admits of casting off without first removing the load.”
The slippery hitch is anchored by a pin that extends below a thwart, a rail, or some other part of the boat; a line under tension is looped around the pin, and a bight in the tail end is tucked behind the working end, using the tension in the line to pinch it into place. My faering has two pins protruding beneath the thwart just ahead of the helm, one for the halyard and one for the foot downhaul. The sail is pulled up, and the working end of the halyard is looped behind the half pin, turned into a bight, and the halyard pinches it against the thwart. A yank on the free end drops the sail.
On my Harrier, RAN TAN, I also have a pin on the center thwart, which is just a bit of 1/2″ oak dowel glued into a hole in the underside of the thwart near its aft edge. I added a bit of brass half-round to the thwart edge to minimize chafing. I use the pin and the slippery hitch to make my mainsheet fast, but also easy to release with a yank. If the sheet goes slack it will release itself, a disadvantage of this system.
When I rigged my Good Little Skiff for the hitch, the thwart had to be drilled from the top, so I turned a 1/2″ pin with a 1″ cap and drilled a countersunk hole for it in the thwart. It isn’t quite flush but is just a bump sitting on it.
SBM photograph
The cam-cleat arrangement is a good fit for this 14′ New York Whitehall, especially as the breeze picks up.
I have the pins for the slippery hitches close to the boat’s centerline, and while that’s fine for light breezes, it’s not handy when I need to have my weight to windward. For RAN TAN I added a quick-release mainsheet cleat that I could reach sitting on the rail or a side bench. I took advantage of the oarlock sockets by using a 1/2″ stainless-steel carriage bolt (which fits the socket) and a piece of Delrin to hold a cam cleat.
Ben Fuller
The author’s arrangement uses a Delrin block to connect the 1/2″ bolt to the cam cleat.
SBM photograph
The editor’s disassembled cleat on the left shows the countersink for the head of the 1/2″ bolt; his assembled cleat on the right shows the countersinks for the cleat-jaw bolts. The jaws of the cleat are angled down toward one another, so using the cleat as a guide for drilling the holes for the bolts made sure they fit. Pairs of copper rivets across the oak blocks are guards against the wood splitting under strain.
If you don’t have Delrin, you could use anything that won’t split under a load on the cleat. Cut it to match the base of the cam cleat, and drill holes and countersinks for the cleat’s bolts and the 1/2″ bolt. To make the cleat easily removable for rowing, I drilled a small hole in the Delrin for a lanyard.
SBM photograph
A tether keeps the cam cleat from going astray when it’s removed to free the oarlock for rowing.
These cleats go into the oarlock sockets when it’s breezing up. I then can place the sheet into the cleat with a little tug and an upward pull instantly releases it.
Both of these systems can easily be retrofitted into most small boats and make sailing much easier by holding the sheet to free up a hand, with the ability to let it run with a single pull.
Ben Fuller, curator of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has been messing about in small boats for a very long time. He is owned by a dozen or more boats ranging from an International canoe to a faering.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Magazine readers by sending us an email.
After it was set up for this 10″ blade, the sharpener got through all 60 carbide teeth in less than 3 minutes. I was impressed until I took a very close look at the results.
Not long after I bought Harbor Freight’s 1 x 30 belt sander, I returned to the store for their circular saw blade sharpener. The belt sander needed a little bit of work to make it run smoothly, but it has become one of my most frequently used tool, so I had high hopes for the sharpener—a little bit of fussing to get it tuned up and then it might do a respectable job.
The reviews on the Harbor Freight web site for the sander and the sharpener were about the same, 4-1/4 stars for the former and 4 for the latter. Several noted that setting up a blade for sharpening was time consuming, so I wasn’t surprised that it took a half hour to set the spring-loaded pawl in the right position on the blade. I eventually was satisfied that the 4″ diamond-abrasive wheel would just kiss each carbide-tooth face and shave it down to a new clean surface with a sharp cutting edge. Making fine adjustments to the pawl’s support was quite difficult because when the bolt holding it to the base was loosened, the post tended to move much more than I wanted it to. A screw adjustment device would have made a world of difference. The kit included a 10 mm wrench for turning the bolt head, and it worked for a while, but soon started slipping. The bolt’s hex corners were a bit rounded from the get-go and even before I had made adjustments for the first saw blade, the wrench no longer worked. Fortunately, a 3/8″ box-end wrench was a tight, functional fit. I was okay with that and decided I’d replace the bolt with a thumb screw that wouldn’t require a wrench.
The spring-loaded pawl at the top of this post sets the teeth at the right position for the diamond-coated blade, just visible at top center with the yellow label. Setting the pawl is done by loosening the hex bolt in the slot of the posts’s base. It’s difficult to adjust, but not the fatal flaw.
The motor and wheel ride on an adjustable carriage that tilts 25 degrees either direction from square. The indicator was set at 0 degrees, but the wheel was hitting just one side of the first tooth. A few small adjustments got the wheel to make full contact. A screw adjustment device would be an improvement here too, but all of the carbide-tipped blades have teeth square to the blade, so this initial adjustment might be the only one I’d need to make.
With the adjustments made for a 60-tooth blade, I sharpened all of the teeth in under 3 minutes. The pawl did not set the teeth precisely. There was some play in the sharpener and I could apply a bit of pressure on the blade to get a consistent sound as the diamond abrasive worked on the carbide.
This carbide tooth wound up with a ragged cutting edge and a chipped corner. Before the “sharpening,” the edge was smooth and straight, and only just a bit softened.
And this tooth took a real beating in the sharpener and lost a quarter of its edge to the diamond wheel.
When I was finished, all of the tooth faces had a new shiny surface, which I took as an indication that the cutting edges would be sharp. It wasn’t until I took a powerful magnifier to the teeth that I saw what the sharpener had done. The diamonds left tracks across the carbide; under magnification it looked like the work of a garden rake. That was bad enough, but the worst damage was at the edges and corners of the teeth. Carbide had been chipped away on very tooth. I didn’t bother putting the blade back on the table saw. It was ruined.
I went to the Harbor Freight web site and closely read all 37 of the one-star reviews, the ones I’d dismissed as being in the minority. Among them were two that matched my results:
Everything posted about how hard this is to setup it true. However, with a little patience, this tool can be used to sharpen circular saw blades. However, the real problem is with the available grinding wheels. The diamond wheel is just too coarse.
When finished, I looked at the top cutting edge of each tooth. Every one had carbide grains chipped out instead of a sharp edge.
If Harbor Freight would offer wheels with finer grit, there’d be hope for the sharpener, but the 180-grit wheels that are supplied with the machine and available as replacements are brutal on carbide saw teeth. I have two diamond sharpeners from EZE-Lap Diamond Products with four grades of diamonds on aluminum handles about the size of tongue depressors. The grits are rated from 250 to 1200, and the 250 grit is designated as “coarse.” That puts the 180-grit wheel on Harbor Freight’s circular saw sharpener into the proper perspective—coarser than coarse.
Harbor Freight has a 90-day return policy. Unfortunately, that opportunity for a return went by 4 months ago. I’m reminded of a billboard I used to drive by back in the 1960s: “Only the rich can afford poor quality.”
Christoper Cunningham is editor of Small Boats Magazine.
Afterword
When the Harbor Freight sharpener failed to live up to its promise, I kept looking for ways and devices to sharpen carbide-toothed saw blades. In the comments following one DIY sharpening video, someone mentioned that carbide dust created by sharpening is a health hazard. I did a bit of research and found the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries confirmed the risk in a 1995 article titled “Carbide tips create heath problems”:
Workers who file saw blades or those who machine tools with tungsten carbide (or other “hard metal”) tips may be exposed to toxic levels of cadmium, a cancer-causing agent, and cobalt, a suspected cancer-causing agent.
A lot of the jobs I do in my shop create dust, some more evident than others, so a dust mask is always warranted, but, for me, the health risks of creating carbide dust outweigh the benefits of sharpening my circular saw blades myself.
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.
The Zhike Gravity Hook, left, and the Lixada 4-Claw Hook work in different ways and both performed well.
The grappling hook (also known as a grappling iron or grapnel) that I made a while back from some stainless-steel rod and a few cable ties worked well enough, but it was an awkward and dangerous thing to keep in a small boat. It rested with one claw always pointing straight up, like a caltrop, an ancient and wicked device of war that wounded anyone unlucky enough to step on it. Modern grappling hooks aren’t so hazardous. I found two different types, both welcome to stay aboard waiting for the opportunity to retrieve something underwater.
Lixada 4-Claw Hook
Opened up, the Lixada’s claws span 8-1/2″.
The Lixada 4-Claw Hook is 9″ long, has a span of 8-1/2″ between the tips of opposing claws, and weighs 26.3 oz. The central shaft is stainless steel and the claws, my magnet tells me, are some sort of steel alloy. The claws spin around the shaft on an internal threaded rod that pushes the round cap at the bottom out so the claws can pivot outward or fold against the shaft. Spinning the claws in the opposite direction locks them either in or out. The folding design makes the 4-Claw Hook quite compact and prevents the claws from digging into woodwork or the bottoms of my feet when stowed. The device is rated to 860 lbs, more than I could imagine ever subjecting it to, and the serrated claws keep whatever has been hooked from slipping away. It’s an elegant design with an aggressive grip.
The large round disk at left moves in and out on a threaded rod. Here it keeps the claw tips safely up next to the shaft.
The Lixada was quick to snag this 60-lb ride-share bike and held on to it during the lift to the dock.
Zhike Gravity Hook
On contact with something, the Gravity Hook’s jaws open up. The single plate on the jaw at left will slip about 1/4″ into the space between the double plates on the right, preventing slender items from slipping out.
The Zhike Gravity Hook is 5-3/8″ long, 3-1/2″ wide, and weighs 8.9 oz. The device is made of stainless steel except for the nuts and bolts—the magnet says they’re steel. The four pivot points allow the jaws at the bottom to open upon contact with something, then close when the Gravity Hook is pulled upward. For use as a grappling hook, a separate cross piece is set between the articulated jaws and two O-rings are rolled into a pair of notches to keep the device from opening and dropping the cross piece. The hook is rated to 772 lbs, more than enough for retrieving anything from a small boat.
When the cross-plate is installed, two O-rings roll down into a pair of notches and keep it securely held in place.
In its grappling hook configuration, you can cast about and drag for lost items, and it will snag line and chain, the wire basket and tubing of a shopping cart, but not anything with a diameter over 1-1/2″. For retrieving small objects like glasses and key rings, the Gravity Hook’s ability to grasp things make it better suited than an ordinary grappling hook. Using the opening jaws is best done when you can see what you’re fishing for. If you don’t have clear, undisturbed water, a face mask or a bathyscope will be helpful. The jaws have to be set directly upon whatever you’re after, so you need to be directly above it; and they have to be crossing the object, not parallel to it, so you have to be able to see what you’re doing. That said, we were able to grab a lost bright orange cinch cord on the first try.
The Gravity Hook got a hold on this sunken cinch cord on the first try. The milfoil came up on one of the hooks.
With both devices, it’s possible to get hooked on some immoveable object and join the ranks of items stuck on the bottom. Neither has an attachment point for a retrieval line, the kind used to retrieve a snagged anchor, but you could tie one on if you decide to go fishing blindly, or dive for it if the conditions and your ability allow.
The promotional copy for both devices suggests you can use them for climbing, just as Batman did with his grappling hook in the 1960s TV series. But if you’re going to throw the hook up to the top of a building or over a tree branch, you may not be able to get the grappling hook back if you can’t climb up to it. The Lixada and Zhike devices both supported my 220 lbs, but climbing is risky business, especially if what’s holding you up can get dislodged.
Both of these devices have the ability to save the day if something valuable is lost overboard in shallow water; they also can provide great entertainment fishing for the treasures that accumulate around the docks at marinas and launch ramps.
Christopher Cunningham is editor of Small Boats Magazine.
When we first heard from Richard Nissen, in June 2017, he shared one of the boats he had built and added to his small fleet at his home west of London on the River Thames. It was a s’ciopon, a Venetian boat rowed standing up and facing forward. With his newest boat, he’s still facing forward, but he’s taken a seat. It’s a skin-on-frame kayak, built to the plans and instructions in George Putz’s 1990 book, Wood and Canvas Kayak Building. Putz took his inspiration from a how-to article by about the Walrus kayak by Norman Skene in the June 1923 issue of the now defunct magazine, The Rudder. And Skene took his inspiration from a Southwest Greenland kayak he measured in 1921 in the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Howard Chapelle drew the lines for that kayak and included it in his chapter of Bark Canoes andSkin Boats of North America.
Richard Nissen
The frame’s many elements are screwed and glued together. When it was finished, Richard had to decide what to skin it with.
The kayak has undergone quite a few changes from its origin as a sealskin-covered driftwood frame to Skene’s adaptation. To simplify construction for readers of The Rudder, Skene did away with steam-bent frames and lashings and switched to a frame made of sawn pieces, glued and screwed together. He felt at liberty to assume that his readers had tools and woodworking experience; his article occupied two-and-a-half pages of the magazine. Putz, publishing in 1990, took 124 pages to coach readers through the build.
For lumber, Richard had some old planks on hand, nearly free of knots, but not long enough to make the longitudinals in one piece, so he had to cut and glue a lot of scarf joints to make the keel, stringers, chines, and gunwales. He repurposed a discarded Windsor chair back for the deck beam at the aft end of the cockpit—a more comfortable piece to lean against—and cut the curved stems from a similarly curved driftwood branch he found in the river.
Richard Nissen
The heavy-duty, fiber reinforced polyethylene tarp made a lovely skin, allowing the intricate frame to show through.
The construction of the frame was straightforward and didn’t bog Richard down, but deciding what material to use for the fabric covering did. He was set on keeping the expenses to a minimum and steered away from canvas, even if it were easy to come by. Back in 1990, Putz himself acknowledged that a suitable piece of 10-oz canvas would be pricey—about $130. Richard settled on a fiber-reinforced polyethylene tarp as the source of his covering material. “It looks magnificent,” he notes, but admits in hindsight “that this choice was a bad one as it is not as strong as it should be.” It stretched over the frame easily enough and with bright-finished sheer guards covering the material’s edges and the staples anchoring them, the semi-transparent skin looks quite hi-tech.
Richard Nissen
At the Thames riverside, the kayak, ready to launch, rests in the company of two of Richard’s other boats.
The keel strip, which is to guard the skin from wear, was itself the cause of damaging it. When the kayak went out for its first trials, where each screw holding the guard passed through the skin there was a pathway for water to get aboard. “This made the first paddle extremely exciting as the kayak effectively leaked like a sieve. So, it was a dash for home not to sink completely.” The solution was clear silicone caulking, dabbed over each screw head and run along the junction of the skin and the keel guard.
Richard and his son report that, leaks nearly eliminated, the kayak performs well and “is a joy to use, so the design works.” Setting the kayak over strips of toilet paper helps locate leaks that have yet to be fixed, and chasing leaks remains an ongoing project. Richard isn’t willing to replace the skin. “It may be easier to start again from scratch to resolve the difficulties with a new solution for the skin. The frame is a very beautiful object in its own right and perhaps it will end up on display stripped of its skin.”
Juliet Nissen
Richard has the perfect place for “messing about in boats.” His stretch of the Thames winds through the countryside that Kenneth Grahame used as the setting for “Wind in the Willows.”
For now, he hopes to get all of the leaks stopped and enjoy paddling the Thames. “There are no rocks or other things in the river to rip or destroy the boat—the Thames is very sheltered and gentle environment.” Kenneth Grahame, author of Wind in the Willows,” lived very close to where Richard has his houseboat, so he paddles were Ratty and Mole enjoyed picnic outings and messing about in boats. He has yet to cross paths with them.
Do you have a boat with an interesting story? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats Magazine readers.
Finn and Teresa continue eastward on the Main-Donau Canal, taking lock aft lock the geographical high point of the voyage. While it was all “downhill” from there to the Danube, their video conveys a grand adventure.
At Würzberg, Finn and Tereza are joined by Lorenzo, a staffer from their alma mater, the Brockwood Park School. Watch this video to see how our adventurers solve a few problems on their way to the city of Bamberg and the entrance to the canal that will carry them to the Danube river.
Photographs and video by the author
