In our shop we have a lot of tools that have come to good use when working on wooden boats. One of the least conspicuous is a pile of small zinc-plated fender washers.
With oversize diameters and small holes, fender washers were developed for working on automobile fenders where the sheet metal would be distorted when pressed by smaller washers. I can’t remember where we came across the idea to use them in working on wooden boats, but I am glad that we did. We often encounter tasks that are beyond the reach of clamps, and a fender washer and a screw can pull parts together, like bending a plank into position on a frame, stem, or transom.
We’ve tried to close gaps between pieces using the wood screws that will be the permanent fastenings, but found that method fraught with problems. The heads of wood screws can bury themselves, damaging the workpiece and then becoming difficult to remove without lifting and splintering the top fibers of wood. And the conical underside of a flat-head screw can act as wedge and split a plank end. The finer threads of silicon-bronze or marine stainless-steel screws may not bite as well into softer wood, and while those screws can be used to hold parts together, they’re not well suited to closing gaps. A screwdriver can also cam out of the slot in a softer bronze screw head, requiring replacement of the damaged screw. To avoid these problems, we use fender washers with drywall or deck screws as temporary fastenings while we drill for and install the permanent fastenings.
Fender washers are especially useful when working with softer hardwoods. We once needed to pull a cypress plank tight to a frame during a repair and first tried using a single silicon-bronze wood screw, but the screw buried itself under the surface, did not have enough bite to pull the plank, and stripped out of the frame. We then tried using several bronze wood screws to distribute the load but ended up shearing some of them, and nothing is more fun than dealing with half a screw in a frame while the plank is not pulled tight. When we switched to a fender washer and a deck screw we fared much better. A deck screw’s star-drive head has an exceptionally secure hold on the driver bit, and the longer, coarser threads of the deck screw bit right into the frames and pulled the plank tight. Once the cypress plank was properly positioned and the permanent fastenings were installed, we removed the deck screw and used that hole for another permanent fastening. In some cases, we’d fill the hole with thickened epoxy or a wooden plug.
We also use fender washers when working with plywood panels. The washers prevent damaging the layers of ply while the panel is being shaped to the molds and fastened. Without the washer, the screw head might crush the multiple thin layers of plywood, either leaving a lot of damage to finish, or even compromising the integrity of the panel. A rough-cut panel can be left on a mold for a few days to help preset a bend, making final installation easier. If the plywood is reluctant to make a bend you can help it along by covering it with towels, pouring boiling water over them, then covering it all with plastic sheeting to hold the heat. Use zinc-plated or stainless-steel washers—plain steel will stain the wood black.
A fender washer and a screw don’t cost much, under 50 cents for the pair, and a handful of them can get you through jobs where clamps can’t be used or you don’t have enough of them.
Kent and Audrey Lewis used quite a few fender washers during the restoration of their 1880s Mississippi River Skiff BARBASHELA and their 1950s Alcort Sailfish ZSA ZSA. More information on their continuing adventures can be found on their blog Small Boat Restoration. www.smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com
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Until I tried the Resp-O-Rator by Duxterity of Graham, North Carolina, I’d been using disposable dust masks and traditional respirators for years, but with my full beard, they didn’t seal properly against my face. My nose-blow tissue test always showed that I’ve been inhaling a bunch of dust. On top of that, I use prescription safety glasses, and both dust masks and my half-face respirator caused my glasses to fog up and ride high, so I often chose what I thought was the lesser of two evils—inhaling dust instead of risking an eye injury—and skipped the mask.
Some guys grease their beards with Vaseline to get a good seal with a respirator, but my beard is long enough that I just can’t grease it up enough for a proper seal. When I did try, the Vaseline inevitably migrated to my hands, tools, and whatever I was working on, and the mask became a slithery mess. Even with a shorter beard, I wasn’t going to go to that trouble for a quick, it’ll-only-take-a-second job.
The Resp-O-Rator, an odd-looking device with twin snorkels connected to disposable dust filters, isn’t compromised by a beard. The mouthpiece goes between lips and teeth, and the attached clip clamps your nostrils shut. To assemble it, a quick push and twist attaches the 4-1/8″-diameter filters to the tubes, and it’s ready to put on by removing one of the tubes from the mouthpiece, wrapping it around your neck, and reconnecting it.
Since my lips make the seal with the mouthpiece, I don’t need to worry about getting a proper seal against my beard. My safety glasses don’t fog or ride up. When I release the mouthpiece, the whole thing drops, completely hands-free, taking the nose clip off with it, and the Resp-O-Rator hangs comfortably around my neck where I can just let it ride until I need it again. With one hand, I can pop the mouthpiece back in and install the nose clip in less than 5 seconds, and I’m ready to go again.
The mouthpiece includes one-way valves to make sure you are not just rebreathing exhaled carbon dioxide. About the only downside is that condensation does occasionally drip from the downward-facing exhaust port. The large, replaceable HEPA filters pull air through both front and back faces, so it’s easy to draw air in through them. Their filtering efficiency is listed as over 99.97 percent, [removing particulate] down to 0.3 micron in diameter for a respirator rating of 100. The common disposable dust masks with two elastic straps are rated 95, or 95 percent of particles of at least 0.3 micron—assuming they have good contact to the face. The Resp-O-Rator is not suitable for filtrating aerosols, volatile organics, or particulates that contain oil, but neither are disposable dust masks.
If you are sporting a full beard, there’s a pretty good chance you aren’t getting a proper seal even with a certified mask, and for those without beards, you may find the Resp-o-Rator gives you a better seal than a dust mask’s elastics and metal nose clip. And on a hot day, not having half of your face in a wet rubber respirator can be a welcome relief. The Resp-O-Rator works well with glasses, and it’s comfortable and convenient enough to let it hang around your neck ready to be used instead of sitting on the shelf. When I’m in my shop, I’m always wearing my safety glasses and when I’m about to start creating dust, my Resp-O-Rator is the first thing I reach for.
Geoff Coley of Medicine Hat, Alberta, is a mechanical engineer whose first cedar-strip canoe was followed by a cradle boat for his first child. That was in the early 1990s; he is now working on boat No. 7 and dreaming about building a double garage so No. 8 can be just a wee bit bigger.
The Resp-O-Rator by Duxterity is available from Duckworks for $42.50 and from online retailers.
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Small-boat cruisers rarely travel at night intentionally, but sometimes we get caught out late or we need a predawn start to catch a favorable tide, like I did while rounding British Columbia’s Cape Caution last year. Between sunset and sunrise, we need navigation lights to comply with Coast Guard regulations and to ensure we are seen by other boaters. As our boats rarely have a built-in power supply, portable, battery-powered lights are a good solution.
There are a number of configurations that meet the regulations for unpowered boats under 20′, but for several years I have used two lights, a bow light and a stern light, from Innovative Lighting in Iowa. They are built with a molded body protected with shock-resistant neoprene; one light has a combined red and green lens and the other has a white lens. Their LEDs are powered by four AA batteries. They can be bought with either a screw-clamp mount or a suction-cup mount. I have the clamp mounts and clamp the bow light to the top part of my stem right forward. The stern light has an 18” pole with a clamp on the bottom, which I fasten to my transom. With both clamps, I use additional pads of nonskid material to provide extra grip and protect finish.
I made two modifications to fit the lights to my boat, FIRE-DRAKE. The bow light clamp, from the factory, is a parallel to the light, so if I were to apply the clamp to the sides of the stem head, the light would point to one side, rather than forward. To solve the problem and put the light at a right angle to the clamp, I filed a shallow notch in the housing and refastened the clamp bracket. The white light for the stern shines 360 degrees, which meets the requirements for powerboats and anchoring, but 135-degree visibility is required for sailboats and rowboats. I made a mask of Gorilla tape to cover the forward two-thirds of the lens, which isn’t elegant, but does the job and preserves my night vision when rowing.
The lights feel robust and have an O-ring that waterproofs the assembly where the lens screws onto the one-piece battery compartment. The push-button power switch has a soft rubber cover. The clamps are powder-coated aluminum U-channels with a fine-threaded coated steel screw and end pad.
To me, the lights appear at least as bright as built-in 12V powered lights, but I don’t have independent confirmation from other boaters how far they can be seen. I also don’t know how long the batteries will actually last, and the manufacturer makes no claims, but I have used them for an entire night a couple of times. I suspect that the life is likely in the dozens of hours at least, possibly hundreds.
The lights are rain-proof, but I discovered, accidentally, that if submerged in seawater for too long, the waterproofing does not keep the water out and the innards can corrode. It’s a good practice to take the batteries out of devices you won’t be using for an extended period, lest they leak and cause corrosion. I now keep the lights in a dedicated dry bag until I need them and take the batteries out between cruises. Having eliminated these operator errors, the Innovative Lighting units have been reliable.
Alex Zimmerman is a semi-retired mechanical technologist and former executive. His first boat was an abandoned Chestnut canoe that he fixed up as a teenager and paddled on the waterways of eastern Manitoba and northwestern Ontario. He started his professional career as a maritime engineer in the Canadian Navy, and that triggered his interest in sailing. He didn’t get back into boatbuilding until he moved back to Vancouver Island in the ’90s, where he built a number of sea kayaks that he used to explore the coast. He built his first sail-and-oar boat in the early 2000s and completed his most recent one in 2016. He says he can stop building boats anytime.
The running lights are available from Innovative Lighting for $31.98 each and from marine and online retailers for as low as $26.22.
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Peter Sibley and his wife Carole live in Murwllumbah, New South Wales, a dozen miles from Australia’s east coast, 19 miles if you go by boat down the Tweed River. Peter had set out to build a French pilot cutter that he had redesigned with the help of the late yacht designer Ed Burnett of Devon, England.
Wanting to do as much of the work as possible in his own shop, he started with logs, and that required some special equipment. He had once run a sawmill business, and for transporting logs, he had designed a gantry crane that he mounted on a flatbed truck; once he had the logs at his shop, he slabbed them with a horizontal bandsaw mill that he’d built, complete with hydraulic controls. To make his own bronze hardware for the cutter, he set up a separate foundry with a large furnace and made his own wooden patterns.
Peter had laid the keel for the cutter and was fully invested in the project when he had to bring it to a sudden and unexpected stop. One of his daughters was taken ill, and he and Carole devoted themselves to the care of their daughter and her children.
Peter still had bits of free time to devote to boatbuilding, but he needed to scale back. He shelved the cutter project and tossed around various designs as alternatives on the Woodenboat Forum, where over the past 18 years he has made over 74,000 posts and was recently elected BROTM, Bilge Rat of the Month, by his friends who inhabit The Bilge, the forum’s no-holds-barred venue. Peter didn’t find anything that was just right, so he commissioned Antonio Diaz to create a new design, the 24′ Kathleen Gee, a stout-looking little yawl drawn in the tradition of the small coastal cruisers by C.P. Kunhardt, author of Small Yachts: Their Design and Construction.
Life’s demands, as they often do, grew and occupied more of Peter’s time, and the Kathleen Gee, with a displacement of 10,000 lbs, was too ambitious a project to take on. He looked for an even smaller boat and found himself drawn to the lug-rigged yawls popular among camp-cruisers. He ultimately settled on an 18′ 4″ canoe-yawl, Jim, designed by Paul Fisher of Selway Fisher in Melksham, England. It was designed for stitch-and-glue plywood construction, but Peter preferred the more traditional look of lapstrake, so Paul advised building the design in glued lapstrake and drew up a lug sail in place of the gunter mizzen.
Peter began work on his Jim in 2012. He put his pattern-making skills to use and had bronze rudder and stem hardware cast from wooden patterns he’d made specifically for the boat.
As 2015 drew to a close, Peter had nearly finished the build, but the project was brought to a sudden halt. Peter was given a diagnosis of an aggressive brain cancer in its final stage. He had surgery on the tumor, but not all of it could be removed. Peter received a dose of chemotherapy and radiation, but his prognosis was grim. He was given six months to live.
A sign hanging in the front of Peter’s boatshop reads: “Optimists only beyond this point.” Peter applies that directive not only to his boatbuilding, but also to living. Six months came and went. Peter needed a trailer for the canoe-yawl. None of the commercial trailers available would have been a good fit for the boat’s pronounced rocker or the hull’s wineglass cross-sections aft, and Peter wasn’t going to settle for something that didn’t meet his high standards he sets for himself and his work. He built a trailer, from scratch. Late last year, three years after his diagnosis, an MRI revealed that the tumor had grown again and was inoperable. Another round of chemo and radiation was administered, but another MRI in January showed the tumor hadn’t been stopped by the treatment.
After such a long struggle, to get the boat so close to the finish line and fail wasn’t an option, so two old boatbuilding friends, Nick White from Conrad Blocks and Keith Davis from Pelican Slipway, came down from Brisbane to Northern New South Wales and readied Jim for a preemptive launch. There were some cleats that had yet to be installed and the deck was ’glassed but not painted, otherwise Peter’s Jim was ready to sail. On February 13, a group of his friends gathered to rig, launch, and take Peter, now very weak, for the maiden voyage of JIM. Peter said, “The process of building was really enjoyable!” In spite of his condition he was clearly enjoying the sailing too. He had an enormous grin when he was grasping the tiller and commanding his little ship.
In a recent post to the forum, Peter wrote: “I suppose it’s to be expected…. The end story after a life of reasonably high energy and the ability to do most of what I wanted to achieve. The medicos have made it plain there is no way back from a glioblastoma, they don’t go away. I’m disappointed that the game is up, but I’m 69 so can’t really complain. Here was NEXT BOAT, someone should build her!”
With gratitude for the example Peter set by his devotion to boatbuilding and to family.
Thanks to Peter’s friend, Duncan Gibbs, for his help with this story.
Editor’s note, May 28, 2019: We received word that Peter passed away on this day.
I was in my early teens when I bought a propane torch. I just wanted to burn things, but my father found it useful for more constructive uses, like making a case for drill bits. He always had racing shells in the garage, repairing them for crews in the Pacific Northwest, and the torch came in handy for making replacements for missing stretcher bolts. He’d file a small flat on a brass washer and set it in the slot of a brass machine screw, slip a 1″ length of copper pipe over the screw threads, and solder everything together with paste flux and lead-wire solder.
When I built my first boat, a dory skiff, I didn’t consider making any metal fittings. I bought bronze pintles and gudgeons for the rudder but opted for oak tholepins over oarlocks and made all of the cleats out of hardwood. A few years later, a cruising canoe I was building needed a rudder, so I made one out of a discarded aluminum street sign, bent in a vise and pop-riveted together.
It wasn’t until I moved to Washington, D.C. and landed a job at the Smithsonian Institution that I learned I could do more with metal. I was hired by the National Museum of African Art as an exhibits specialist, part of the crew making display cases and installing artifacts. For a few weeks I assisted contract workers brought in to make mounts to support the objects that would be put display. They used brass rod and flat-bar, annealing it to make it pliable and joining pieces with silver solder with an air-acetylene torch. I learned a lot watching them work, and after they left I did much of the mount-making for the museum.
The museum staged an exhibition of the work of sculptor Sokari Douglas Camp and filled the main gallery with her life-sized metal figures. Many of them were motorized: a dancer stomped his feet, a small girl clapped her hands, and a boat stroked with six oars. During the last stages of the installation, one of the sculptures failed, and Sokari asked me to weld the broken part. I’d never worked with an oxy-acetylene torch, so to be on the safe side, I wheeled the museum’s welding rig outdoors to the loading dock, read the instruction manual, and made the repair without setting the museum on fire.
While I was working for the Smithsonian, I was living in a home just outside of D.C. and building a tandem decked canoe in the basement. It is said, “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” and with my access to the museum’s metal shop, all of the fittings I needed for the canoe looked like metalsmithing projects. I made gudgeons for the rudder, a grab handle for the bow, and pad-eyes for the anchoring the sailing rig.
When I left D.C. in the late ’80s and returned to Seattle, I made a soldering station around an air-acetylene torch a friend I’d built a boat for had once used to make jewelry. I got a job making mounts for the Seattle Art Museum and continued making hardware for boats I built and for making simple tools.
In 2007, an elderly friend of mine passed away and his family wanted to find good homes for some of his tools. I was given his oxy-acetylene welding equipment. I didn’t do anything with it until my son and his friend built BONZO, a 19’ Escargot canal boat, and we decided it needed a wood-burning stove for winter outings. I scanned the web for small stoves and found some meant for using in canvas wall tents, but they were expensive and too large for the space we had available in the boat. I had the torch and a large sheet of 1/16″ steel, so I decided to figure out gas welding.
The weld I’d made for Sokari was only 1″ long, so I didn’t know that a long seam required tacking to keep pieces aligned. Consequently, some of the edges I welded are far from straight, but as things went wrong, I did more research and applied what I’d learned. In time I got the hang of heating the steel and feeding welding rod into the liquefied metal. When I ran out of the few rods I had, I straightened wire coat hangers and welded with them.
Gas welding turned out to be a great pleasure. Seen through the dark lens of welding goggles, the molten metal, like lava, glows and flows, leaving a trail of overlapping crescents. After making BONZO’s stove, I made two more, for my cruising garvey, HESPERIA, and my teardrop trailer.
A few years ago I bought a cheap arc welder. I’ve never been able to do even a spot weld with it—the rod just sticks to the metal—but I haven’t given up on it. Arc welding is just another challenge of metalsmithing. Like soldering and gas welding, it might just open up another world of possibilities.
There she was, Miss April in the 2015 Calendar of Wooden Boats. Benjamin Mendlowitz had photographed her at the golden hour, at anchor, with the water around her ever so slightly rippling. That was the first time I saw BELLE.
After 35 years of racing on Chesapeake Bay, I was looking to downsize from my 26′ racing and cruising sloop. My crew had grown older, and none of us were willing to do the foredeck duties while careening around the marks. I was looking for something a bit more manageable for one or two people. I always liked the lines of some classic gaff-rigged daysailers such as the Herreshoff 12-1/2 and its relatives, but I wanted something that was lighter and trailerable. At 16′— and with those looks—BELLE seemed to fit the bill.
After I saw the photograph in the calendar, I searched up BELLE and found that Dan Gonneau, the designer/builder, had written a blog post that was a stream-of-consciousness diary about his inspiration for exactly the kind of small boat I was looking for. It sketched out the big decisions, the tiny details, and the material choices that went into the boat, and the craftsmanship that infused her every plank, frame, and joint. Classic lines with a modern aesthetic—I was hooked!
Dan was working as a boat carpenter by day and thinking about his ideal small boat by night. Over the course of about two years at the D.N. Hylan yard (now named Hylan and Brown Boatbuilders) in Brooklin, Maine, Dan put pencil to paper—no CAD here!—and BELLE took shape. It wasn’t his first construction, but I think it’s his best.
His forethought shows in many ways. The cockpit, for instance, has 8’-long seats with usable storage space underneath, and the centerboard trunk is unobtrusive. The cockpit is functional but not cluttered, with everything you need and nothing you don’t. I’ve sailed with four adults on board and the boat performs well, maybe even better than when solo, and there’s still plenty of room and comfort. And a soft-sided cooler fits perfectly behind the trunk.
Our BELLE, the first built to the design, has an attractive color scheme—light blue/green hull and an off-white Dynel deck. The interior has weathered Port Orford cedar floorboards and trunk cap with everything else painted gray-green. By limiting the brightwork to her red oak coamings, cypress/western red cedar cockpit seats, Douglas-fir spars, and not much else, the emphasis is on the boat’s clean, simple lines. It also means not too much varnishing in the spring.. BELLE’s whole is indeed more than the sum of her parts. The boat and trailer fit in the garage during the off-season, with a full 3/4″ to spare!
Its size means that you’re closer to the water— literally and figuratively. One of my first sails was in the fall and was a magnificent introduction to the pleasure of a small boat. I was gliding through flat water in a little creek where most trees had shed their leaves. As BELLE parted the patches of fallen leaves now grouped on the water, I could hear the slight rustle as they brushed against the underside of the lapstrake hull. Now that is getting back to nature and close to the environment, which is what I think of as the essence of small-boat sailing.
My wife, who is a self-described “happy passenger” on the 26-footer, has become enamored of BELLE; she finds it more inviting, less intimidating. The controls are within easy reach and are more easily managed. And while BELLE is sensitive to weight shifts, the 126 sq ft of sail, 6′4″ beam, and low center of gravity steady her well.
Rigging the boat is pretty straightforward. The 15′11″ mast is of hollow bird’s-mouth construction and weighs less than 20 lbs, so lifting it into the deck partners and setting it on the step presents no major difficulties. All halyards are cleated to the mast, which simplifies rigging. A wire forestay and two Dyneema side stays connect in less than a few minutes, and the mast is ready to accept the boom, gaff, and mainsail. The jibsheet jam cleats are set on chocks secured to the coaming.
BELLE is a beauty to sail. Unballasted and weighing only about 550 lbs, she flies off the wind. And downwind, wing-and-wing, with the centerboard raised, she is a positive demon. Upwind, it’s been a learning experience for this old marconi-rig helmsman. The main has a relatively high peak and it seems sensitive to peak halyard tension. However, I’ve found that if I bring the peak up so that the leech is straight and then back off just a bit, BELLE exhibits good performance into the breeze. To help things further, I put a little bit of a foil shape on the centerboard which had originally been a flat panel made of two layers of 3/8″ plywood, rounded along both ends. I think the smoother flow helps her get a better bite to windward. And since she’s now on a trailer, I’ve replaced the bottom paint with a smooth enamel, which I’m sure gives her an all-around boost in performance.
BELLE’s broad garboards have no deadrise amidships, and that flat surface makes the boat easy to load on a trailer and should be good for pulling the boat up a beach on rollers (though I have yet to try that). It does contribute to a bit of slap on the bottom going upwind in a chop, but with a bit of heel the boat will cut through the water more like a V-shaped hull.
BELLE has watertight compartments fore and aft. The bow compartment, occupying the space below the foredeck, is designed so that the bottom of the mast can fit snugly in the boat when trailering with the top nestled in the sculling notch in the transom. The boom and gaff fit securely on the cockpit floor. Beneath the seats there is ample storage space for fenders, lines, and gear. The storage isn’t waterproof—what can drain out through a limber can also come back in—but it’s very handy. To keep things dry, I use small gear hammocks under the foredeck.
The sculling notch in the transom, for those so disposed, is set off to starboard. The oarlocks are set in chocks on the coaming, and with the wide beam and high placement of the locks, 10′ oars would be required. Unfortunately, the ramp and dock I’m now using are not really amenable to such long oars and it can get a bit congested, especially when the two college sailing teams hit the water. So, I’m using paddles for maneuvering around the docks, which works pretty well for short distances.
For longer distances, I need auxiliary propulsion. Fortunately, between the end of the cockpit and the transom (above the aft watertight compartment) is an open space designed to store a small outboard motor. Initially I thought that a 2– to 3-hp gas outboard would be about right, but further reflection on having a gas can aboard, combined with the smell and noise, brought me around to trying an electric trolling motor. The boat is actually designed with space and weight allowance for a battery under the foredeck, forward of the mast. I installed a 35-amp deep-cycle, lead-acid battery and used about 15′ of 8-gauge wire under the side decks with a master switch, quick disconnects on the battery end, and a heavy-duty connector to the motor. The motor is rated at 46 lbs thrust and moves the boat quite well at about three-quarters throttle. I can get just shy of 4 knots at full throttle. According to the motor’s manual, I should get about 45 minutes at full throttle and 2 hours or so at half throttle. This arrangement has worked well for a year. If I need more range, there is space for a second battery. One unexpected benefit is the tranquility that comes from nearly noiseless propulsion. You can almost forget that you’re under power.
BELLE attracts more than her share of acknowledgments on the water, on the trailer, and even in the garage. When you receive compliments from an admiring kayaker or fisherman, sailing a beautiful boat brings more benefits than just the satisfaction of wind and water.
Tom Sliter has been racing and cruising sailboats on the Chesapeake Bay and environs for the past 45 years. He insists that it’s the one thing that helped him retain his sanity during 35 years working on Capitol Hill. These days, Tom teaches sailing with DC Sail and is also a US Sailing race officer. His non-nautical time is spent as a member of a local fine art photography gallery. Tom’s wife Debbie notes that with BELLE around, the usual springtime scent of mulch in the garden has been replaced with the bouquet of varnish.
Belle Particulars
[table]
LOA/16′
Beam/6′2″
Draft/9″
Hull weight/approx. 550 lbs
Ballast: optional, 40–50 lbs in bilge
Sail area/126 sq ft
Outboard/2-hp gas or electric trolling motor
[/table]
The Belle is available as a finished boat from Belle Boats, Shelter Island Heights, New York. Prices begin at $31,900.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats Monthly readers would enjoy? Please email us
Up the coast of Maine and just over the Canadian border lies Deer Island, New Brunswick. The island has a long-standing tradition of first-rate boatbuilding, and the late Lindon Parker did much to uphold it. In the 1940s he likely started with a half model that he had carved to design and build what is now known as the Parker Dinghy. “Dinghy” may not suggest the elegance of this boat, whose shape is clearly linked to the small working craft of the area. Powered by oar, and used, among other things, to tend herring weirs around Deer Island, they were typically carvel planked and had a moderate beam, relatively steep deadrise, and a generously raked transom. These elements produced a hull with the ample reserve buoyancy needed to tend the nets.
Plans for the Parker Dinghy are available from Harry Bryan, a wooden-boat builder in Letete, New Brunswick, one of two places with ferry service to Deer Island. He writes: “Deer Island was known for well-designed dinghies, when good performance was valued by local fishermen. A family from Colorado who summers on a small island off Deer Island bought one of Lindon Parker’s boats, and because they used it for only a week or two every year and stored it in a shed, it is in good condition and one of the last surviving Deer Island dinghies. We did some minor work on the boat in 2002, including removing 27 lbs of paint. Retired biologist and boatbuilder Mike Strong and I took the lines off the boat with a fundamentals class at WoodenBoat School. Mike went on to build the boat and I drew up the plans.”
The plans are a single 18″ x 23″ sheet with lines, offsets, construction drawings, and scantlings—all the information a boatbuilder with intermediate skills needs to build the boat, and nothing extra. There are no patterns included, so the boat requires lofting. The plans call for steam-bent frames and carvel planking typical of the small boats of the area, though one could certainly use lapstrake or glued-lap-plywood construction.
Having had my sights set on building a plank-on-frame rowboat in the 12′ to 16′ range, I was immediately sold on the Parker Dinghy when I saw her lines. I ordered the plans and set about lofting the boat and picking up all the patterns for the backbone and transom as well as building the five molds required. The plans call for woods all native to New Brunswick, a nod to the way Lindon Parker would have built them, and perhaps to Harry Bryan’s belief in using what’s around you. I was building this boat in the Pacific Northwest and had a different array of wood species to choose from. I found a nice piece of tight vertical-grain western larch for the keel, deadwood, and sternpost. Though it’s a softwood species, it is quite hard and rot-resistant.
The one departure that I took from the construction plan was adding a keel batten to provide a solid backing for the garboards as well as a secure place to bed and fasten them. This can go a long way toward keeping that leak-prone seam watertight. As drawn, the rabbet in the keel would have been too shallow for most of its length to provide much of a landing for the garboards. The 3/4″ x 3″ keel batten was cut from western larch, bedded in 4200 and screwed to the top of the keel and deadwood at the apex line (the innermost corner of planking as it enters the rabbet). Joining the keel and keel batten at the apex line allowed me to rough out the bevels for the rabbet very easily while the two pieces were separate; it needed only small adjustments once it was time to plank.
In the construction plan, the stem is drawn as a natural crook running right down to the keel, joined by an overlapping stem knee. I wanted to stick with this detail if possible, as it is structurally superior if done right, and the process presented the intriguing challenge of finding a suitable piece of wood. It just so happened that a friend had recently been given a load of black locust branches from a blowdown, and was nice enough to let me bring my stem pattern over and have a look. I found a branch with just the right shape. If I hadn’t been able to obtain a natural crook I would have either laminated a piece to suit or I’d have assembled a stem, knee, and gripe as is commonly seen.
I set up the molds on the strongback at a convenient working height, and proceeded to affix the backbone and transom to the setup. Building the boat upside down in this fashion puts accessibility and gravity on your side. I chose to line off the plank locations at this point, before installing the ribbands. The plans show eight planks per side, and that proved to be the right number with strakes neither too wide to accommodate the curvature of the boat, nor too narrow to be practical. Once the plank locations were lined off, I notched the ribbands into the molds, spacing the ribbands in between the planking marks so that they could remain in place as planks went on. With the ribbands set into the molds, the frames would be bent on the outside of the ribbands rather than the inside. This eased the process of bending the frames, as I could push them down around the ribbands instead of having to feed them inside the ribbands and pull them from the outside until I could secure them to the ribbands.
The 1/2″ x 1-1/4″ white-oak frames were steam-bent from rail to rail over the top of the keel batten for most of the boat; toward the ends of the hull, frames were installed in halves. I used zip ties to hold the frames to the ribbands temporarily, eliminating the need to put any unnecessary screw holes in them. Once this was complete, it was time to start planking.
The western red cedar that I acquired for planking stock wasn’t long enough to get planks out of single boards, so I elected to scarf two boards together to make up the length. A 12:1 scarf and a good marine-grade epoxy makes a very strong bond, and eliminates the work of fitting and fastening butt blocks which would have been required otherwise. The other advantage I found was that I was able to scarf the boards together on varying angles to accommodate the shape of the plank, and keep the grain running in the right direction as much as possible.
This boat planked up fairly easily, not having any real extreme shape to accommodate. However, here was enough twist leading into the stem that the hood ends of the garboards and the following several planks required steaming. I did the steaming in place with a polyethylene bag slipped over the first few feet of the plank and an electric steam generator. Specific plank-to-frame fastenings were not specified in the plans, so I used copper rivets for both because they are a reliablefastening and because the 1/2″-thick frames wouldn’t provide enough depth for screws to get good bite.
Once the planking was complete, I flipped the hull right-side up and finished off the rivets. Up until then the planks were held to the frames by the nails alone, now it was time to apply the roves, nip off the excess, and peen the cut ends.
The Parker Dinghy’s interior is finished off simply. There are three thwarts and the sternsheets. The ’midship and forward thwarts are the two rowing stations. They are set up not for two people to row together, but for one rower to choose a position to achieve proper trim when a passenger or load is carried. Though the plans show tholepins, I decided to go with common bronze oarlocks. Tholepins surely would have done the job just fine, but I prefer the solid connection of an oarlock in a socket, and think it looks a little nicer as well. I painted all surfaces with the exception of the transom, which is varnished on its outer face. The topside and interior paint is an alkyd enamel from George Kirby Jr. Paint Co., which looks good and provides great protection for the wood.
Rowing the Parker Dinghy is a wonderful experience. It’s refreshing to see a boat that is aimed purely at rowing, rather than one that has to function as a sailboat and motorboat as well. Without having to accommodate different modes of propulsion, it really excels at its intended purpose.
When rowed solo, the boat carries the rower at the ’midship rowing station; when carrying passengers in the sternsheets, the forward station is employed. With just one person aboard the boat it may feel a little tender; however, what it lacks in initial stability is made up for in secondary stability—the deeper you push the bilge in the water, the more stability you gain. With even just one other passenger aboard, the hull will settle down in the water and stiffen up considerably, a characteristic that harks back to the design’s net-tending roots.
The Parker Dinghy’s deep keel diminishes quick maneuverability but makes the boat track beautifully. A pair of 8’ oars keep it moving along nicely, and are suitable for either rowing station. The Parker Dinghy is a fairly large boat to be rowed by one person, but I have found that it gets up to speed quickly and carries its momentum well, requiring less effort from the rower once underway. In a chop and through large boat wakes it has proven to be dry, and really gives the feeling of a small boat that will keep you safe.
There are few, if any more enjoyable ways to explore a coastline than aboard a well-designed rowboat, and the Parker Dinghy is the perfect little craft for the purpose, whether going solo or loaded up with family and friends.
Cyrus Dworsky grew up lobster fishing out of Stonington, Maine, first with his father, and continuing on for much of his life. He’s always had a strong interest in boat building and boat design, as well as a love for the ocean and sailing. After living in the Pacific Northwest for several years and attending the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding, he turned his focus more seriously toward boatbuilding, and has now moved back to Stonington. He currently has a 12’ yacht tender under construction.
Sometimes Lake Superior feels like an inland sea, and sometimes, just a lake. In this muddy campsite, hemmed in tight by pines, maples, and birches, it felt like the northern Wisconsin lakes that Sophie and I had canoed when we were growing up. Superior is usually separated from the forest by yards of stones or sand, but today a thin, pebbly beach only a few feet wide separated our little clearing from the roiling lake. Paddling along the shore, we had seen a narrow gap in the trees and suspected it might be a pathway to a campsite. Beneath the tangle of undergrowth, clayey ground had turned soupy with mud. We found a little cleared patch in the woods with a stone fire ring and a few stumps for sitting. A short pathway led from the clearing down to the water.
This meager clearing was where we would have to weather the first big storm of our 1,200-mile circumnavigation of Lake Superior. Sophie Goeks and I, like idiots, had set out on May 25, 2016, from Little Sand Bay on Wisconsin’s Bayfield Peninsula, only a week or two after the ice had cleared. We had finished our final papers and exams in college during the early days of May before putting in. Now, 10 days into this journey, we prepared for the windy hail and rain storm the weather report said was coming our way. We pulled in around 10 a.m., just before the weather got nasty. We set the tent up in the middle of the scrubby clearing and ate a few handfuls of fatty nuts before crawling into our sleeping bags in our tent to try to get warm. Temperatures were in the low 40s, and it had been drizzling since we retired to our tent—I was chilled to my core.
From one of the dry bags Soph pulled out one of the half dozen novels we had in our library. It was a battered romance novel featuring chefs at competing Italian and French restaurants who inevitably fall in love, and predictably, spatulas fly. Soph and I traded off reading aloud in half-hour segments. It was our version of watching soaps all day.
Around 2 p.m. we crawled out of the tent, Soph fired up the stove while I coaxed smoke from a smoldering pile of soggy sticks in the fire ring. With butter melting in the pan, Soph wrapped thick chunks of cheese and venison in tortillas and fried them in butter. I made peanut-butter and Nutella quesadillas to complement. Out in the cold, I had abandoned all of my nutritional standards. I knew we should have been eating a balanced diet with fibers, proteins, and complex carbs, not just fats, but it was body over mind, and my cravings had nothing to do with fruits or vegetables.
We gorged ourselves, crawled into the tent only to emerge every two hours to repeat the process. I was so, so cold. I had only three pairs of wool socks to my name out here: one pair that I wore with my drysuit, now crusty with dried sweat, another one pair for wear around camp, and a pair I used only when I’m settled in the tent. But the day before, my camp socks had been so miserably wet and icy, I stepped outside wearing my tent socks and my soggy tennis shoes drenched them. The air was too cold and too humid to evaporate moisture; I resigned to my chilled and clammy state.
We went on like this for three days as the storm hovered over us. We had run out of books to read and had talked about everything under the cloud-blindered sun. We even wondered aloud why we hadn’t quit the trip even though it had been the least fun I have had in a long time. We decided that if we could just hang in for a month or so, things would get better, and we’d be able to carry on for the entire 1,200-mile circumnavigation of the lake.
Minnesota
Early in June, we forged along through the chilly weather. Leaving Wisconsin’s familiar, muddy ledges behind, we spent a harrowing day paddling past Duluth’s dozens of miles freeway-lined shore.
By the time we settled into Minnesota’s North Shore, the wild storms of the late spring had given way to kinder days. A day or two before reaching the northern outpost of Grand Marais, we slept easily in the crisp cold of a clear star-speckled sky. We woke at 5 a.m. to the beep of my watch alarm and before I pressed the button to turn it off, Sophie was already out of her sleeping bag and stuffing it into its compression sack. The long, loud hiss of air by my ear as she rolled and deflated her sleeping pad drove me out of my bed.
Dressed and busying herself outside, Sophie unrolled the tarp burrito that contains all of our kitchen equipment and “smellies.” I emerged to pack up my gear and take down our tent. Two weeks into the trip, we were a quick team. While she boiled water and unearthed our plastic sacks of oats, nuts, dried fruit, and brown sugar, and I piled all our gear near the water. By 5:25 a.m. we were sitting down for a breakfast of oatmeal and watching the newly risen sun’s rays grow brighter over the lake. A few dozen gulls squawked and wheeled above the treetops at the waters’ edge. With everyone else still slumbering, they were free to play. Breaking the silence, I said to Sophie, “I’ve never felt so in touch with birds, as being awake and near the water at this hour.”
In 20 minutes’ time we had packed our boats in exactly the way we did each morning. Every space inside my hatches was tightly packed with gear. A large nylon bag held neoprene gloves, sunscreen, and a woolen hat was attached to my front deck. On my stern deck a large Pelican case kept our camera safe, and a 3′ PVC tube strapped across my rear hatch cover held the rolled maps for the lake’s whole coast.
By 6 a.m. we were slipping across exceptionally glassy water, paddling in silence. The water felt frictionless. The shore was lined with cliffs, with homes perched on the ledges high above the water. At this hour, yards and decks were quiet, and there was no one to be seen. After an hour an intermittent breeze dragged dark patches across the silvery water. Soph and I were reluctant to break the silence, and kept to our routine of paddling fastest before taking our first snack break.
Massive, decadent homes—some surrounded by well-appointed lawns, hedges, and flower gardens, others nestled deep into the trees—dotted the shore, and while they were separated by enough land to give their residents privacy, there was nowhere we could get off the water without stepping in someone’s yard. We found one strip of beach along Highway 61 and paddled ashore for a break. We had our lunch on a park beach that was crawling with picnickers. There was no outhouse and I hadn’t found anywhere to duck out of sight, so by the time we got back to the kayaks I was doing a little bathroom jig.
The wind picked up, as it almost always did right after noon. It had become customary for us to get off the water by 2 p.m., and by 1 p.m. it was already clear we wouldn’t making much headway, so we began looking for a beach to hide ourselves away. After an hour of searching we rounded a steep point of land ragged with fissured rocks and found a little beach pushed up against between a 50’ sheer cliff and an equally high, steep wooded hill. It was the first spot with no vacation home in sight. While Soph held the kayaks, I scampered into the woods to relieve myself. After we carried our heavily loaded boats out of waves’ reach, I explored the crevices and overhangs under the cliff. Sophie scoped out the shore in the opposite direction.
“Oh crap! There’s a staircase!” Sophie’s voice came from around the corner on the side of the beach backed against the wooded slope. I joined her at the base of the wooded slope and saw in dismay a steep, wooden staircase, nearly ladder-like, climbing up the slope. These treacherous staircases are common on the north shore where people build on properties looking out over the lake. Storms pound these stairs in the winter, and we had seen many smashed staircases splintered on the beach. Sophie and I climbed the stairs to ask permission to camp on the beach.
A climb that had us breathless led us to a striking modern house, hidden in the pines. It was built almost entirely of glass, and inside we saw tables and ceiling beams clearly made from reclaimed wood, sprawling marble countertops, and sculptural Scandinavian furniture. As we peered in to admire the deluxe interior, I noticed a squirrel perched on his hind legs on the deck staring in with us. With my wild hair and stinky armpits, I felt as if I were just another curious animal. Sophie and I checked the other side of the house and discovering faint tracks in a crushed gravel driveway. The residents were likely weekenders only, but to be on the safe side I left a note sharing the details of our journey and thanking them in advance for the privilege of spending the night on their beach.
We descended back to the lake level and began unpacking. From the after compartment I pulled out our 2-quart Dutch oven—still crusted with last night’s devil’s food cake—the hard little ball of my compressed sleeping bag, and the tent poles. I slid each arm through the handle-loops of a few dry bags, hooked fingers on a Nalgene-bottle loop and stuff-bag strings, and trudged up the rocky shore, placing each step with care to find solid footing. Sophie and I liked the challenge of carrying all of gear from the kayaks in a single load. Halfway up the beach, the bags on my left side start sliding off. I lifted my left arm and rushed toward the campsite, moving as fast as I could while battling to keep my hold on the pieces of gear piled on and hanging off my body.
After setting up camp, we kept out of sight in the woods until darkness, hoping that the homeowners wouldn’t come home and decide to walk down to the beach. Like many nights on this populated stretch, I never quite settled into a deep sleep during the night, waiting for morning to get away before our trespassing was noticed.
The North Shore, Canada
We left Minnesota behind on a humid, overcast day, and paddled up the Pigeon River, a muddy meander that separates Minnesota from Western Ontario’s inconspicuously similar wooded border. We made a short hike up to the highway, had our passports scanned, and carried on to the Canadian part of the trip.
“Sorry, Sophie! I broke the rule again!” Sophie paddled ahead of me and, intently focused on keeping her momentum against the gusts, ignored my apology. We both knew this wind was my fault. It came in walls, and ragged chop broke just over my kayak’s bow. Desperate for a moment’s rest, I set my paddle shaft across the pool of water sloshing across my spray skirt and leaned forward to steal a drink from the water reservoir on my deck. A solid gust caught the blades of my paddle and thrust the shaft against my gut and the swallow of water went right down my windpipe. I hacked it up with a few wracking coughs, and in those few seconds, I’d been pushed backward at least 15 yards. Sophie, a full 100 yards down shore, gestured emphatically toward a rock the size of a modest RV and whitewashed with guano. It looked like the only possibility to tuck into a lee and regroup.
I strained toward it. The waves were pushing higher, lapping at the horizon and often obliterating Sophie from sight. With the passing of each peak, I sucked in a breath for the dizzying roller-coaster drop into the trough. Each of the steep-sided crests held my kayak in a moment of teeter-totter equilibrium with the ends suspended in the air before my bow smacked down with a force that vibrated through my legs and shot spray up into my face. When I reached the lee of the seagull-infested rock, the air was still but rank. On its windward side, the rock’s height stood 10’ above the water, with a sheer vertical face standing bold against the wind. Its leeward side pitched downward to the nearly flat shelf of rock which ended in a gentle slope into the water. Protected from the wind, I dragged my nearly swamped kayak ashore and plopped down on an ottoman-like rock next to Sophie. Bursts of wind cresting over the top of the windward side of the rock just skimmed the top of my head, tugging at locks of hair.
“When will you learn?” she sighed. If the old mariner’s superstition about commenting about fine weather is true, I was to blame for the wind we had been struggling against.
We’d had three days in a row of nearly tropical weather on Lake Superior with only a gentle breeze, just enough to cut the heat from a blazing sun unimpeded by clouds. The still water was unclouded and rocks 50’ beneath us radiated kaleidoscopic color. Ripples lapped against round basketball-sized cobbles piled on steep slopes. Those rocks at the water’s edge were milky white, speckled in gray, and black. Higher up pumpkin-colored lichen dotted the stones. We’d had a few days like this; it was easy to forget that headwinds, rain, and storms were possible; and soon after I had commented on the fair weather, “Well, this is just about as amazing as it could get.” What had been a light breeze became a stiff wind and the summer haze blurring the horizon turned into a thick slate-gray roll of clouds.
The rock Sophie and I were sitting on lay at the midpoint of the mile-wide opening to a horseshoe-shaped bay. A quarter mile away, the spindly spruce and fir trees lining the bay were tightly huddled together in a forbidding palisade. The spaces between tree trunks would be too small to walk through let alone set up a tent. We’d have to land on the cobblestone beach that lay downwind of us and find a place to make camp. A wall of billowy thunderheads charged toward us; it was time to make a dash to shore and hunker down.
With the wind and waves at our backs we made good speed surfing toward shore, even though we did as much work bracing to avoid broaching as we had while paddling. But reaching the beach buried in the bay appeared to be easy compared to the landing that was ahead. Soph and I perched 40′ offshore. About every four seconds a tall wave pounded the line of imposing rocks, washed up the beach, and receded. The thump of water on rock reverberated in my chest. I tried to coordinate the best landing procedure with Sophie, but the wind carried my words away. I shouted that I would go in first and then catch her as she approached. Swallowing my fear, I rode swells in, sharply inhaling each time they lifted my stern above my head. I landed with a thump on the rocks, bolted out of the cockpit, and dragged the kayak up the shore, a 40′ slope that resembled a rock slide.
I rushed back into the breaking waves. Chest-deep in froth, I felt my legs squeezed by the water. I gave Sophie two thumbs in the air. She reached forward with her paddle and surged forward. A wave hurled her straight for me and I darted to the right, threw myself over her front hatch. I grabbed her deck lines. While I steadied the kayak, she popped her spray skirt, and hopped out. Together we carried her kayak up the ankle-breaking cobbles.
With both boats safe from the waves, we climbed up the hill to scout a place for the night, and perhaps for a few days to come. I hopped from rock to rock, ever ready for those that might roll underfoot and make me fall. Tearing a ligament or cracking a bone would end the trip. At the top a nearly level plateau, lichen-splattered rocks spanned a few dozen yards to a forest of spindly trees. We made our kitchen in a spot with juniper bushes to shield us from the wind and a few trees to support a tarp over our heads. A few dozen yards from the kitchen, we found a patch of rocky ground for the tent. While I was stretching the kitchen tarp tight, Sophie began setting up the tent. Moments later she yelled, “The tent’s got me!” The wind had wrapped it flapping around her head and torso and then picked up the fly and sent it tumbling like a plastic bag blown down a city street. I ran after it and snagged it before it got away. I got Sophie untangled and the two of us got it set up. There was little sand or soil for staking it down, so we collected a few heavy rocks and tied the tent’s corners to them. With the wind now gusting at 30 knots, we took shelter under the wildly flapping tarp over the kitchen and hurriedly prepared a dinner of dried vegetable alphabet soup. Eager to escape the violence of the storm, we ate quickly and tightly wrapped our food bags and cooking equipment in a tarp and weighted the bundle down with rocks. Sophie ran for the tent ahead of me, and we plopped down on the hard, lumpy tent floor.
Over our heads, the dome of the tent was pressed sideways by the wind, and its wall edged toward Sophie’s head. Seeing the fabric quivering violently over her face I her I started to giggle; Sophie rolled over, laughing into the tent floor.
When we listened to the weather report on the radio, we heard: “Severe storm alert. Mariners seek cover. Squall warning. Winds gusting 45 to 55 knots.” We nestled into our sleeping bags and I spent the night drifting toward sleep, only to have cracks of thunder send adrenaline surging through me.
I slept, on and off, for 16 hours that night, and Sophie and I stayed put, pinned down by the storm for two days. In the wee hours of the morning on the third day Sophie was awaken, perhaps by a sudden silence. She peeked out the tent door and saw a rippled lake. The weather report was for “winds light and variable, building to 15 knots northeast by 10 a.m.”
“Screw it,” Sophie said, “we’re going.” We packed in the dim predawn light and were back on the water, underway again, spooling miles along the Lake Superior coast.
The Upper Peninsula, Michigan
As the summer days ticked by, Sophie and I grew stronger. When the weather would allow, we’d do 30-mile days. The small, widely spaced communities and uncertainty of finding nutritious dried food at their stores meant we had to carry two to three weeks’ worth of food in our boats. With heightened metabolisms, our food disappeared quickly. With full bellies and ever lightening boats, we took advantage of the warm winds and made quick time back to the American border.
We rounded the corner at Sault Ste. Marie, crossing back into the U.S., and suddenly our months of traveling east into the morning sun were behind us. It was late July now, the weather had become hot, and the prevailing westward wind had begun, blowing into our faces all day long. The landscape had changed too, from sheer rock cliffs to endless sand dunes. The gentle slopes of the beaches were so gentle that we spent all day paddling 50′ offshore, floating above endless rippled sand with only inches of water between my rudder and the bottom. Mild wind in these extensive shallows meant dumping surf nearly every day and for the first time, our landings and launchings were determined by how manageable the shore break was.
After we had rounded Whitefish Point, a dagger of land pressed into Lake Superior’s eastern neck, and we paddled far out from land where lurching rollers pushed us forward. In the morning, we had come ashore at Whitefish Point Lighthouse, making our first human contact in a week, and a few miles farther on decided we needed to stop for lunch. We assessed the miles of beach ahead. The beach ran as a 50’ flat before rising sharply into a grassy dune-wall that climbed steeply 30′ to what looked like open, sunny woods full of towering pines.
I looked for a stretch of shore where the shore break was less violent. The sun warmed my skin and the light wind carried the scent of pine. Sophie, bobbing next to me in the gently rolling waves, was smiling as her whimsical spiky hair danced in the breeze. On this beautiful summer day, the white churning surf skirting the edge of the beach reminded me of the tumbling water I loved to roll around in as a kid at the beach. I turned to my grinning paddling partner, “What the heck, I don’t think there’s really an ideal landing zone here, and sand is a gentler reception than the rocks we’re used to. Shall we go for it?”
I am usually the more conservative paddler, and conditions I would describe as gut-wrenching, Sophie calls a good time. Pleased by my unusually gung-ho attitude, she agreed and we approached our landing. It was fine until a few boat lengths from shore and my stern was kicked high and my bow was plowing into the sand. I ripped my spray skirt off the coaming, shimmied out of the cockpit, and rolled my body tightly out the side, landing hard on the sand beneath the swirling foam. I leapt up and hauled my boat to dry ground.
Sophie, about 100′ up the shore from me, was riding a wave in. As she got into shallow water, another wave hurled itself on her as she was slipping out of her cockpit. Soph and her kayak were tossed upward and dumped on the hard sand beneath the wash. She got to her feet and dragged her kayak out of the water.“
So, I guess we are sleeping here, huh?” Neither of us would dare venture back into that surf to leave anytime soon. Sophie, sitting on the sand, only grunted in reply, clearly hangry and annoyed by our circumstances. I set her up with a bag of pecans and raisins, and trudged up the high dune to scout the woods above.
Tall pines with sparse branches stood dozens of feet above me toward the sky, and the hard-packed sandy forest floor was carpeted with umber needles and dappled with sunlight. A broad open space was covered with low scrubby bush. Jackpot. Under each leaf hung clusters of dark little wild blueberries. Deeper in the forest I found fields of blueberry bushes. I sprinted back toward the lake, vaulted over the dune ledge, and tumbled down through the sand to tell Sophie about our home for the night.
Sophie and I shuttled all of our gear up the dune-ledge, kayaks included, and set up our tent on a patch of bare ground nestled among blueberry bushes. I hoped that any bear in the area would find plenty of berries to eat without having to harvest those near us. Sitting by the edge of the bluff looking out over lapis lake waters, we made a lunch of blueberry-packed pancakes fried in butter. Under a cloudless sunny sky, cooled by a steady west wind, we lazily cleaned our plates and put a pot over our leftovers on the camp stove to fend off nosy chipmunks. I put on my wetsuit and Sophie retrieved a book before heading down to the beach. She sat down, curled her toes in the sand, and opened her book to read. As I headed to the water to play in the surf, she called after me, “Go easy or you’ll get a cramp!” For these three months, we had been each other’s family. We were best friends, sisters, and parents to each other.
When we returned to our camp, I tied my hammock between two broad-canopied pines, climbed in, and lost myself in a Barbara Kingsolver novel while the wind rocked my nest. Sophie disappeared into the blueberry bushes, re-emerging nearly an hour later with our dented tin pot full of blueberries. She set herself up in our kitchen, and with her sun-cracked hands, kneaded together chunks of butter, flour, oats, some baking powder, and sugar until she had a soft, sticky mound of dough. As she folded in the tart berries, the dough became streaked with purple berry juice.
Together we baked the scones in the Dutch oven over a little fire. In about two weeks, we would return to where we started, Little Sand Bay, completing an 86-day, 1,200-mile circumnavigation of Lake Superior. We’d leave this camp behind, but we’d have a lifetime to savor the memory of sharing sweet, fresh-baked scones at the edge of a lake that spans the horizon.
Uma Blanchard is a guidance counselor who works with high-achieving teens who will be the first in their family to go to college. As a Chicago resident, Lake Michigan is Uma’s new playground and she spends her weekends either teaching kayaking classes or out and about on her own Midwestern outdoor adventures. She is longing for the day when she has a garage, and is able to begin amassing a healthy collection of boats.
Sophie Goeks is a second-semester senior at Northern Michigan University, where she studies mathematics. She is spending her free time admiring the ice on Lake Superior and dreaming of new adventures when the weather warms. She hopes to spend some quality time in the Boundary Waters this coming summer, breaking in the canoe she is currently building.
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.
While building a Crandall Midget Flyer 10’ runabout, from plans published in the January 1938 issue of Motor Boating, I wanted a bow handle, a foredeck fitting, and transom tie-down U-bolts that were appropriate to the period. I wasn’t able to find anything on the market, so I decided to make my own, and instead of shaping wood patterns and having a foundry sand-cast them, I would fabricate them myself with brazed brass and bronze. Another hobby of mine has been building fillet-brazed, lightweight steel bicycle frames, so I’d use some of the same techniques.
By using a brazing alloy that would build up in fillets at the intersections, the resulting radiused transitions would have the appearance of custom-cast fittings. After some experimentation with different alloys, I found that Harris Safety-Silv 45% Silver Brazing alloy, purchased in a coil of 1/16” wire, produced a nice fillet with a golden color that is a good match for brass, though not quite so dark as bronze.
I started by making the bow handle from brass plate 1/8″ x 2″ x 24″ acquired from Hamilton Marine. The 3-1/2″ x 6″ base had to be shaped to fit the camber of the white oak breasthook under the fabric deck, so I hammer-formed the two halves of the plate over a curved section of heavy steel. To silver-braze the two halves together, I set them on a firebrick and coated all areas where the brazing was to occur with GFM Type U Silver Brazing Flux. I use a small Meco Midget oxy-acetylene torch, with the acetylene’s regulator set at 4 psi and the oxygen’s at 10–12 psi. These settings have worked well with other torches; the pressures are set with the valves opened slightly. After lighting the torch, starting with the acetylene, I bring up the oxygen and adjust it to get a gentle, quiet, neutral flame, just off-feather of the outer cone. It is important that the area for brazing is heated slowly so that the flux is not burnt or blackened. The flux will first turn to a chalky white and then, as it reaches the proper brazing temperature, it will become clear.
I hold the torch at a 45-degree angle pointed in the direction the work will progress and position the brazing alloy at an opposing 45-degree angle. A puddle is created when the brazing alloy comes in contact with the adequately heated metal; after creating the initial puddle, you dip the brazing alloy into the molten material–either the heated metal or the puddle of molten brazing material–as you travel along. Don’t try to melt the brazing alloy with the flame. Heat control is critical—apply only enough heat to melt the brazing alloy and not the brass. The part should also be positioned and repositioned so that there is always a valley for the molten material to flow into and create a radiused transition.
When the brazing is finished, the residual flux will be a very hard, glassy coating that needs to be removed. Let the part cool to room temperature, then place it under a faucet of hot running water and scrub off the flux with a brass-wire brush. When the brazing was done I did some additional contouring and shaping to the base plate before fitting the curved handle.
I used 3/8” bronze rod for the curved handle. It was too rigid for my handheld tubing bender, a General #153, so I heated the rod with the torch to a dull red and bent it while it was still hot. The next step was to drill the holes in the base plate for the handle to fit into. Sheet brass really catches the flutes of the drill bit as it exits the back side, so use extra caution when drilling it.
After inserting the handle into the holes in the base, I used the torch and flowed fillets in around the joints. The final profiling of the fillets can be accomplished by using a small round file, followed by 80- and 150-grit emery cloth and working through the various grits of sandpaper to 600-grit. Parts can be polished with a buffing wheel and buffing compound.
I also made a small deck fitting and transom tie-down U-bolts with 1/8″ brass plate and some 1/4” brass rod. The bolt ends were threaded to accept 1/4-20 bronze nuts.
Using a brazing allow to build fillets provides a way to create flowing transitions between joined pieces; the result, with practice, is elegant metalwork that can pass for cast without the investment of the equipment required for melting and pouring metal into molds.
Mark Kaufman is a technology and engineering education teacher at Garden Spot High School in New Holland, Pennsylvania. He has been fascinated with boats and boatbuilding since his childhood days of boating with his family on Pennsylvania’s Allegheny River. As a teenager he built his first boats, a wood-and-canvas Trailcraft canoe and a Minimost hydroplane. Over the years, many of his high-school students have built skin-on-frame Greenland- and Aleutian-style kayaks. Mark has also taught classes on building these types of kayaks at WoodenBoat School since 2010.
Editor’s note: For a simple method of fabricating parts with brazing alloy and silver solder, see the review of the Bernzomatic TS 8000 in this issue.
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A few years back, I was watching my carpenter friend fix the trim around a door. A section of it was rotten, and I imagined he would replace the entire piece, but instead he pulled out an amazing tool, made a plunge cut straight into the trim, and removed only the rotten section. The tool was an oscillating multi-tool, and I quickly started thinking of the potential uses for boatbuilding and repair.
The multi-tool has a side-to-side rotating blade that swings just 1.6 to 5 degrees at up to 23,000 oscillations per minute. Its speed can be controlled for different materials: slower for metals and faster for wood.
Blades for multi-tools tools come in different shapes and materials for use with metal, fiberglass, or wood. We found a semicircular blade handy for reefing out caulked or glued seams and also for scribing and trimming a bevel along plank edges. The plunge-cut of oscillating saw blades allow us to precisely remove areas of rot and neatly trim the surrounding wood for dutchman repairs.
The blades are small, have a small range of motion, and can be attached at different angles, so the tool can reach into tight spaces or around corners. For long, straight cuts a blade guide is a useful attachment; it can also be used as a depth stop .
We’ve used the oscillating multi-tool to put scarfs into planks, doing those repairs while the planks were still attached to the boat. With a blade designed to cut through wood and nails we can cut through fastenings in the laps between planks.
If you’ve enjoyed using Japanese handsaws, there are multi-tool blades with teeth cut in the same way; they’re well suited for working with hardwoods.
Oscillating multi-tools do more than cutting. Triangular sanding pads can do sanding in small spaces that other sanding tools can’t reach, even all the way into corners; scraper blades speed up paint and excess epoxy removal.
When we went shopping for a multi-tool we did our research and settled on DeWalt’s DWE315. It has a system that allows fast blade changes, without having to use a tool. We switch blades frequently when we work on seams and planks, and having to use a tool to change blades slows the work down and risks losing the fastening screw and washer. The DeWalt comes with a universal adapter, meaning we can use the full array of blades available, no matter which of the half-dozen fitting attachment configurations might have. We like the long 10′ cord and the LED work light on the tool. The DeWalt has a variable-speed control trigger—rather than a switch as on some other models—and continuous-on trigger lock. The powerful 3-amp motor has been up to all the jobs we’ve done with the tool.
The teeth of wood-cutting blades can get dulled quickly by some materials; a dull blade will cut slowly and may even begin to smoke. Ridge Carbide makes a blade sharpener that is a stack of fifteen 3″ metal-cutting discs, separated by 1/16″ rubber washers on a 3/8″ arbor. We put one on our electric drill to sharpen burned-up blades in minutes, saving the time and money that comes with a trip to buy new blades. With sharp teeth, the work is easier and goes much quicker.
Bosch, Dremel, Fein, Hitachi, Porter Cable, and Rockwell all manufacture oscillating multi-tools. You may find one of them that is a worthwhile addition in your shop.
Kent Lewis and his wife Audrey maintain a fleet of small boats in Northwest Florida. Current boat works projects include restoration of a wooden Sunfish and new build of a diamond-bottomed catboat. Their adventure blog is www.smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com.
The DeWalt DWE315 is available from several stores and online vendors. It comes as a kit with blades, accessories, and case for prices as low as $119.
Editor’s note:
I bought Dremel’s Multi-Max 6300 (superseded by the Multi-Max MM30) to diminish the misery of sanding the interior of my bright-finished lapstrake Whitehall. With its narrow strakes and closely spaced steam-bent frames, there were hundreds of index-card-sized patches of planking to sand, and I didn’t want to subject my fingertips and knuckles to that kind of torture. The Ryobi Detail Sander 1000 I’d bought a few years earlier turned out to be a disappointment; it rattled in my hand so badly that it was painful to use and all that wasted motion made for inefficient sanding.
With the Dremel I feel a slight bit of buzz in the tool, and the motion is almost entirely directed to whatever accessory is attached to it. It doesn’t have all of the features that the DeWalt 315 does. There is no light, no variable-speed trigger, and no quick-release system for the blades; it has an on-off switch and a dial for varying the speed. The attachments are secured with a bolt and washer. (I lost the washer and had to trim a bolt washer to replace it.) But the DeWalt tops out at 22,000 oscillations per minute through an arc of 1.6 degrees, while the Dremel peaks at 23,000 opm through 3.2 degrees, giving it faster sawing capabilities. The Dremel’s wider angle also makes for more aggressive sanding; the DeWalt may do finer work.
The Dremel’s triangular sanding pad came in quite handy for sanding the Whitehall. It has a hook-and-loop attachment for sandpaper (the Ryobi used adhesive sandpaper—a nuisance in my book) and I don’t often buy the expensive made-to-fit sandpaper, I just cut out triangles from the 5” discs that I buy in bulk for random-orbit sanders. With a bit of Velcro, a worn-out saw blade also makes a good sanding tool.
The day before I wrote this, I installed a new kitchen counter and sink. The side panels of the cabinet underneath the sink prevented me from seeing, let alone reaching, the channels on the bottom of the sink’s flange that hold the clips that would secure the sink in place. With the Dremel I made plunge cuts in the tight space I had to work in and quickly removed the sections of 3/8” plywood that were in the way. No other hand tool or power tool could have done the job so easily. In earlier remodeling projects, I used the Dremel to trim the bottom ends of door trim prior to installing laminate flooring. While neither of these projects involved boats, they demonstrated the ability of an oscillating multi-tool to do quick work in cramped spaces and at inconvenient angles.
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Just last year I was hoping to write an article very much like Mark Kaufman’s on making custom hardware, and the approach I had in mind was to make the process and the equipment required more accessible. I happen to have acetylene torches, but they’re expensive and not common equipment in the workshops of amateur boatbuilders. I was hoping ordinary propane torches would provide the heat required for using the silver solder I’d been using for years. Silver solder, like the 45% silver brazing alloy Mark uses, creates a very strong and long-lasting bond and is easy to use. I tried using a single propane torch to solder two short pieces of 1/4″ x 1″ brass bar together without success, then I used two torches, and then two torches with the brass surrounded with fire bricks to retain the heat. I couldn’t get it hot enough to melt the solder and I gave up on writing the article.
When Mark’s article arrived, I was inspired to give it another try. I reread Harry Bryan’s article, “Silver Soldering: A straightforward technique for joining metals,” in WoodenBoat’s July/August 2010 issue. I followed his advice and bought Bernzomatic’s TS 8000 torch with a canister of MAP gas. (The article also mentioned Bernzomatic’s TS 4000—a similar torch without the trigger and at a lower cost, but it doesn’t deliver as much heat.)
The TS 8000 has some very nice features that are a great improvement over my ordinary propane torches. A finger trigger starts the gas flowing and ignites it with a piezo-electric spark. Releasing the trigger stops the flow of gas, extinguishing the flame. That’s safer and less wasteful than a propane torch, which has a valve to control the flow of gas. The TS 8000 has a valve for adjusting the rate of flow, but you don’t need to turn it to light or extinguish the flame. The trigger has a safety lock to prevent the torch from being turned on either inadvertently or by curious young hands. The trigger also has a “run-lock” button to keep the torch operating without having to keep your finger on the trigger. The cast-aluminum body of the torch provides a comfortable grip that’s more secure than holding a gas cylinder.
The TS 8000 will burn both propane and MAP-Pro gas (propylene)—the cylinders for both have the same threads. Propane burns at 3,600° (all temperatures in Fahrenheit) and MAP-Pro at 3,730°, just 3.6% hotter [This calculation of percentage isn’t appropriate. See Comments below. Ed.]. (Acetylene with oxygen, by the way, burns at 5,800° to 6,300°.) I have three grades of silver solder with different melting points: Hard at 1,425°, Medium at 1,390°, Easy at 1,325°. With those numbers, it seemed to me that a propane torch would have been adequate for silver soldering, but it’s not the temperature of the flame that makes silver solder melt and flow into a joint, it’s the temperature of the metal. While the flame is heating the workpiece, the workpiece is absorbing some heat but losing some to radiation, conduction, and convection. To get to the temperature at which a solder will flow, the torch has to deliver heat at a rate that exceeds that of the heat loss.
The TS 8000 delivers that heat. While the opening at the tip is about the same size as that of a small propane torch, the TS 8000 has a much larger flame. It’s also louder and the grip becomes very cold, both indications that it consumes fuel faster and delivers more heat.
Even with propane, the TS 8000 did very well with silver soldering. I could get a 1″ square of 1/4″ brass silver-soldered to a 5″ length of the same material using hard solder. That’s the cooler flame working the highest-temperature solder on a workpiece larger than what I usually make.
I did another test, heating 1″ lengths of 1/4″ copper rod. With a propane torch, the copper came up to a dull glow and maintained its shape with no signs of melting. The TS 8000, burning propane, melted the copper until it turned into a ball, and, when burning MAP-Pro, it turned the copper into a ball that must have been less viscous because it rolled off the fire brick.
After reading Mark’s article I bought some Safety-Silv 45. It has a solidus temperature (below which it is solid) of 1,225° and a liquidus point (above which it is liquid) of 1,370°. Acetylene with oxygen burns at 5,800° to 6,300°. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Stay-Silv flow quickly into the joint between two pieces of brass bar and then built up a fillet as I fed more of the brazing alloy into the joint. Capillary action pulled the liquid alloy up the sides of the vertical piece. I’ll be switching from silver solder to Safety-Silv 45 for my future boat-hardware projects.
I’ve been impressed with the features and the performance of the Bernzomatic TS 8000. It will do a wide range of projects that fall between a propane torch and an oxy-acetylene torch, and for most of my projects I’ll be able to use it with propane at one-third the cost of MAP-Pro gas.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly.
The Bernzomatic TS 8000 is available at many hardware stores and home-improvement centers and from online retailers. The torch alone can be purchased for about $45, or as a kit with a canister of MAP-Pro gas for about $55.
Some tips on silver soldering
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Boatbuilding is in Nick Blake’s blood. He’s the fifth generation of Blakes to build at least one boat since the Blakes settled in Mississippi in the 1830s. Not long after he launched his 16′ Whitehall, CURLEW, he began mulling over building another boat. He and an old high-school friend had chartered a boat to go fishing off the Gulf Coast. The trip rekindled his interest in fishing—in his teen years he’d fished the Florida coast in OTTER, a 16′ flatiron skiff that he and his father, Daniel, had built from pine boards. It was powered by a 5-hp Johnson outboard, which provided enough speed to get to and from the fishing ground faster and more reliably than sailing or rowing could. CURLEW wasn’t well suited to outboard power, so a new boat was in order.
Nick set his sights on a larger version of OTTER, long and slender, easily driven, capable of cruising at 10 knots while carrying 600 lbs. He enlisted his father, who had many more boats to his credit, to help design HERON, as the new boat would be called. The two spent the summer of 2017 studying flat-bottomed skiff designs for inspiration and borrowed elements from Pete Culler’s Long John and William Atkin’s Ration and XLNC. With the shape they wanted in mind, Nick and Daniel got to work, starting with a quarter-scale lofting of what would be a 20′6″ skiff.
HERON was built upside down, but instead of building the hull around molds supported on a ladder frame, the Blakes made the permanent frames long and fastened their ends to the shop floor. All of the lumber for the boat came from trees grown on their land and was sawn into flitches with their bandsaw mill. Most of the boat was sassafras; the shoe protecting the bottom was done with locust for its durability, and the stem and trim were walnut for its rich color.
The sides were done in lapstrake on jogged frames. The bottom was planked fore-and-aft with batten seams, as Atkin had indicated for his Ration. Nick and Daniel had done plywood and cross-planked bottoms with previous boats, and Nick remembered that OTTER, with her cross-planked bottom, leaked after spending time out of the water and he had to soak the boat for a few hours to get the seams closed up before launching. Plywood bottoms, of course, eliminated the seams, but would be best protected by fiberglass and epoxy, materials Nick preferred to avoid. The batten-seam construction promised a watertight, traditional hull.
Nick also remembered that OTTER was never in good trim when he took her out alone. Without a passenger in the bow to counter his weight and that of the motor in its narrow stern, the boat would squat and lift the bow out of the water. A wider transom would have helped, but “fat transoms,” Nick says, “are a curse of outboard motorboats, and their owners for that matter.” HERON was built with a well to bring the motor’s weight forward. To use a narrow stern and keep the buoyancy surrounding the motor as high as possible, Nick built the slot aft of the well quite narrow, wide enough for the motor’s lower unit to kick up, but too slim to allow steering with the motor. A rudder built into the aft end of the well would take care of the steering. The rudderpost runs inside the transom and is capped with a quadrant that takes the steering lines.
Placing the helm at the center thwart moved the pilot’s weight forward, a second measure to keep the boat in trim. The steering lines from the rudder are connected to a whipstaff, a similar smaller lever controls the throttle, and a knob set in the thwart controls the shifter.
All of the Blake-built boats get their first trials on a small oxbow lake near the family home. During HERON’s first outing, it quickly became clear that the rudder wasn’t up to the demands of the boat. The hard chines at the stern and the immersed edges in the motor-well were great for tracking, but they resisted turning. Nick tried a half dozen different rudder blades, varying both size and shape. The ones that worked best were the ones that extended the deepest, but that made them vulnerable to submerged objects. The solution was to make a long blade that could pivot over obstructions. The first one he tried had a lead weight to keep it extended, but when HERON was at speed, it would swing to horizontal and lose its grip on the water. The second relied on friction to hold it down. Two lock washers created enough spring-like compression on the blade to hold it down, even at speed, but allowed the blade to pivot. Soon after he equipped HERON with this version, Nick ran the boat over a submerged log, and both motor and rudder kicked up, neither damaged.
On a later outing, Nick, his wife, and sons Andrew and Patrick took HERON out on a backwater slough. All was going well as the boat motored along until fish started jumping around them. Two 10-lb grass carp leaped up out of the water and landed in the boat. Flopping wildly, they splattered mud, scales, and blood everywhere. Andrew, the younger son, wasn’t at all happy to have the uninvited guests aboard.
Nick, his wife, and their two sons took a vacation and trailered HERON to Greer’s Ferry Lake in Arkansas. Nick took the boat out for several trials: outings with his family and fishing trips with friends. When he was the only person aboard, HERON did almost 14 knots; with three adults aboard with fishing and picnic gear, she cruised at about 11 knots. At times, the wind kicked up a bit of a chop, but HERON’s narrow bottom didn’t pound against the waves. At the end of the vacation she had logged 5 hours of running time and had sipped only 3 gallons of fuel. She was, Nick concluded, “well behaved, made decent speed and was stable and burdensome—a worthy successor to OTTER.” And Andrew is happy to get aboard HERON as long as there are no carp.
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My workshop is a one-car garage in the basement of my 91-year-old house. It’s a cramped and cluttered space, but I manage to get a lot done in it and I simply enjoy being there. Almost all of the time I spend in my shop I’m alone, but it’s far from being a lonely place. In the midst of my tools, I’m surrounded with reminders of people I’ve cared for. Every tool has some usefulness, but the ones that have stories to tell are the ones that I value most.
I have, of course, many of my late father’s tools, but there is one that stands above the others. It’s the Stanley No. 100 ½ round-bottom squirrel-tail plane he used for shaping the blades of racing sculls. He had dropped it on his shop’s concrete floor and the tail had broken off. It wasn’t a tool he could easily replace, so he asked our neighbor, Bob Clare, if it could be repaired.
Bob, who was known to many as “Scrap Iron,” owned the two houses across the street; he and his family lived in one and his shop occupied the other. Both back yards were filled with metal scrap, some heaped on the ground and some propped against racks and towering high overhead. Bob brazed the tail back onto the plane, and while it’s a bit crooked and the repair looks like it was made with gobs of drab gold clay, he saved the plane.
In that plane I see my father at work in the garage, surrounded by the racing shells he was repairing, and in the repair I see Bob with his grease-blackened hat cocked back on his head and hear his cackling laugh. His shop caught fire once, and when I saw the smoke, I ran over to help. When I arrived, he was dragging a metal cabinet out the front door. It was full of flammable solvents and he had put it right inside the door for just such an emergency. (I, of course, put my cabinet full of solvents and paints just inside the garage door that opens to my shop.)
Bob had already turned the water on for the garden hose, but there was no spray nozzle on it. I was trying to put the nozzle on, but, with the water running, I couldn’t get the threads engaged. Bob calmly took the hose, folded a kink in it to stop the flow, and screwed the nozzle on so I could douse the flames. That repair is all I have of him. If the Stanley 100 ½ ever disappeared, no other tool could ever fill that void.
My mother also has a presence in my shop and I am always reminded of her by the tape dispenser she used in the print shop Dad and I built for her in the back of the house. I also have the universal plane and the full set of blades that she bought at a yard sale. She thought it was worth taking a gamble to pay all of $5 for it, hoping I might have a use for it. I did, and cut the beads on my dory’s seat risers with it.
The smallest of my three drill presses is dedicated to stirring epoxy. It is covered with cured residues as if encrusted with coral, but every time I use it I’m reminded of my grandfather-in-law, Bob Altick. He liked to tinker, and once he made several ingenious pendulum letter scales for determining postage. In his late 70s his health was failing and he gave his tools to family members. I got the drill press. He died in 1988, but I’ve mixed a lot of epoxy since then and he’s never long from my thoughts.
Hanging on a pegboard is a 10” steel spring-joint divider, the very first tool I bought when I decided to build a boat and needed to tool up for lofting. I bought the divider in 1977 for $6 in a second-hand tool store. The two-story clapboard building the store occupied was torn down decades ago and replaced with a welding supply shop; it was torn down and replaced with a pumphouse for a sewer main. The divider has a brass ball on the end of the screw and a threaded brass knob for adjusting the span. The knob spins so freely that it’ll travel a full inch along the screw if I give it a good flick with my thumb. Every time I use it I can see my 24-year-old self, looking for a direction to take in life and finding one in boats.
With the 1×30 belt sander I reviewed in this issue now sitting on my workbench, I’ve been thinking about the other tools in my shop that were just ordinary purchases. In spite of all I’ve accomplished with them, I don’t have the same connection to them as I have to the tools that have stories to tell. My 14” Delta bandsaw, for instance, has been an essential workhorse for me for 30 years, but I have no memory of where I bought it and I could easily replace it and not give it a second thought. On the other hand, I clearly remember when and where I found my old 10” Homecraft bandsaw: trout-speckled with rust, it was standing along the road I used to drive to work. It had a “Free” sign taped to it, so I stopped and loaded it into my car. Vic, the woman who put it there, is a friend of mine and the bandsaw had belonged to her father. There is only that one bandsaw with that story.
I eventually realized that the 1×30 belt sander did have a story to tell, but it was one I wasn’t paying attention to: its price. I had been pleased, at first, with the how little it cost, but began to wonder about all of the parts and labor that went into it for just $39.99. Manufacturing moves to places where labor is cheap and manufacturers there may not be required to protect them workers and pay them well. If that’s a tool’s story, I’d rather pay more and support manufacturers who take good care of their people. After all, the tools in my shop, however I came by them, are the company I keep.
SADIE is a Classic 17 that was built by Steve Hewins and his fellow students at the Boat Building Academy in Lyme Regis, U.K. Jacques Mertens designed the Classic 19, around 1990, for an amateur boatbuilder in Florida, and the 17 and 21 followed soon afterward. His company Bateau.com has now supplied a couple of hundred sets of Classic 17 plans around the world, and he thinks about 50 boats have been launched in the U.S. Mertens based the design on a classic hull shape that was common among outboard boats in the 1950s. Unlike today’s deep- to moderate-V hulls, the Classic 17 has a low, 10-degree deadrise, which requires less power to plane but will pound more as the sea builds up. All of the Classic-series boats were designed to go offshore in moderate conditions and make it home safely if the weather takes a turn for the worse.
Steve found that the PDF plans, supplied as an “instant download” by Bateau.com, were very comprehensive—there are even separate metric and imperial versions—and there was no need to loft the boat. There is detailed information regarding every plywood component, including offsets and a thoroughly thought-out nesting arrangement to ensure economical use of plywood. For SADIE it was decided that, as a useful exercise, the academy students would cut some of the parts would be cut by hand, and enter the data for others in a CAD program and have them CNC cut at the Architectural Association’s woodland site at nearby Hooke Park.
Construction began by setting up a base frame consisting of two longitudinals and four cross braces, all in 8″ x 2″ softwood. The build requires ten sheets of 1/4″ plywood, ten of 3/8″, and three of 1/2″, all in standard 4’x8’ sheets. Steve chose to use Robbins Elite okoume plywood. In addition to the transom—made up of two layers of 3/8″ ply with an American walnut veneer on the outside—there are five 3/8” plywood building molds that serve as permanent bulkheads and frames.
Each of these was set up and supported by two 2×4 softwood timbers fixed to the base frame, ensuring that it was plumb and accurately positioned. The transom is positioned at an angle by the motorwell sides. The two longitudinal stringers in the bottom of the boat, each in two layers of 3/8” ply, were notched into the transom and the four aft molds. There is an optional fore-and-aft mold at the bow, but Steve decided that the bottom and side panels would come together accurately without it.
SADIE’s planking consists of a pair of bottom panels and two topside panels on each side, overlapped. The panels were made up with joined pieces of 1/4″ plywood to get the required length before it was fastened to the molds. The instructions call for butt joints backed by butt blocks, but Steve used a “welding” technique taught at Lyme Regis by boatbuilder Jack Chippendale some years ago. In this case, a bevel 3/16″ deep and 2-1/2″ wide was machined into each of the edges to be joined, and the two sharply beveled edges were brought together resulting in a 5″-wide triangular recess. The void was filled with epoxy and ’glassed until it was slightly proud (resembling a metal weld) and then sanded flush.
Compared to butts, these joints look tidier inside the boat and bend in a fair curve, avoiding the flat spots butt blocks can create. The bottom planks and lower topside planks were fitted, stitched, and taped to each other before being epoxied to the transom and fixed to the molds with temporary fiberglass tabs. The exterior faces of the plywood planking were covered in 450g biaxial cloth and epoxy. Then the upper topside planks were fitted, overlapping the lower topside planks by about 7″, providing a great deal of longitudinal stiffness. Covering the outside of this upper plank in ’glass is optional, and Steve chose not to do so.
The hull was faired and painted, and then a 1-1/2″ x 3/4″ piece of sapele, tapered toward the bow, was fitted along the outside of the chine for extra stiffness and to act as a spray rail.
When it was time to turn the hull over, the temporary fiberglass tabs were cut so that the hull could be lifted off the frames and bulkheads, turned, and lowered onto a close-fitting cradle. It took 10 students to do this, not because it was heavy, but because without the forms to keep its shape, the hull was very floppy and needed careful handling. The chines and centerline were epoxy filleted and taped before the inside was glassed with 450g biaxial cloth and epoxy. The ’glass layers on the inside and outside are structural; plywood as thin and flexible as 1/4″ may be used for planking.
After trimming the bulkheads, frames, and stringers to allow for the thickness of the newly-applied glass, they were installed permanently with epoxy fillets and fiberglass tape. The 1/2″ plywood cockpit sole was fitted, resting on the stringers and on timber cleats elsewhere, and the void below it was then filled with two-part expanding polyurethane foam.
The plans offer two possible cockpit arrangements but also acknowledge the freedom builders have to plan a different layout. Both of the plan’s arrangements involve side seats, but Steve planned to use SADIE for fishing, and his more experienced fishing friends advised that it would be desirable to stand as close to the edge of the cockpit as possible. So, he fitted a seat across the stern under which the 6.6 US-gallon portable fuel tank and battery would fit.
The deck structure was made up of a beam shelf—kerfed where the bend was particularly pronounced in the forward sections—and carlin, both of 1″ x 1″ Douglas fir. Steve had doubts about the lack of any other structure for the foredeck, so he fitted a 5″ x 1″ Douglas-fir kingplank before laying the 1/4″ plywood decks. (His concerns persisted after SADIE was finished, and he planned to add deckbeams from underneath later.)
Steve strayed from the specified scantlings for the superstructure by increasing the coamings from 3/8″ to 5/8″ (he had some spare 1/4″ plywood, so he laminated this to the 3/8″), and by reducing the coach roof’s thickness from 3/8″ to 1/4″. He had found it too difficult to bend the thicker plywood with its slight compound curvature; the 1/4″ material would suffice because he didn’t expect to ever put any weight on the roof. Four 3/16”-thick acrylic windows with rubber gaskets were then fitted.
While the design called for two berths inside the cuddy, Steve doesn’t intend to sleep onboard, so he fitted a seat to starboard, and to port a stainless-steel-topped galley unit that will accommodate a camping stove.
SADIE was finished with natural wood in various places including a varnished khaya cap for the cockpit coaming, laminated in ten layers where it curves up at the aft end of the coach roof; uncoated iroko handrails; a 2″ x 3/4″ sapele rubbing strake, which had to be steamed over the forward 6′; and 3/8″-thick sapele linings along the hull sides in the cockpit. Some of the sapele was recycled from wood from a church, and coated in Deks Olje No 1.
SADIE’s topsides are finished in Epifanes two-part polyurethane gloss in custom-tinted “Stars and Stripes Blue,” below which there is a white Hempel boot-top and black Jotun Racing Antifouling. The decks, coamings, and inside are coated with Hempel’s Multicoat single-part paint, with Hempel’s Anti-Slip Pearls in the horizontal deck areas.
The plans recommend a 50-hp outboard engine, but Steve noticed in the comprehensive Bateau.com forum that other Classic 17 builders had fitted 60-hp engines; the designer had approved that upgrade some time ago. Steve’s local engine supplier, Rob Perry Marine, had a Mercury 60-hp EFI four-stroke engine at a good price, so Steve went for that.
Steve had also read in the forum that someone had managed to get 32 knots out of a Classic 17, although that was with a lighter two-stroke engine. He hoped that he might get around 25 knots but “isn’t planning to gun it everywhere” and would generally prefer “a nice steady pace” on future trips mostly with his dog Sadie, after whom the boat is named, his girlfriend, and occasionally his parents.
On the day SADIE was launched, the wind was light and there was a slight chop off Lyme Regis. With five of us on board and the engine at 5,000 rpm, SADIE achieved a top speed of 21.9 knots. Steve’s concern that his aft seating arrangement might give too much bow-up trim was proven, and so two of his crew crouched in the cuddy to keep her level. The ride was a bit bumpier there than on the aft seat, so Steve plans to install some internal ballast forward.
He also plans to install a seat at the helm—and the three of us who took a turn at the wheel found standing to be slightly precarious. SADIE showed that she has a very tight turning circle: around 2.5 boat lengths at 13 knots and 1.5 boat lengths at 5 knots. In flat water, with the engine idling at 900 rpm, the boat moves along gently at just under 2 knots and is very directionally stable.
Steve was generally very impressed with the detail of the plans. “It all went together beautifully,” he said. “All credit to the designer. He has done a really good job to make sure you can build the boat relatively easily with minimal help.”
Nigel Sharp is a lifelong sailor and a freelance marine writer and photographer. He spent 35 years in managerial roles in the boat building and repair industry, and has logged thousands of miles in boats big and small, from dinghies to schooners.
Classic 17 Particulars
[table]
Length/17’2”
Beam/7’
Displacement at DWL/1,500lbs
Hull draft/8″
Hull weight/850 lbs
[/table]
Plans and kits for the Classic 17 are available from Bateau.com for $90 (digital plans), $110 (digital plans with printed copies), and $4,580 for CNC-cut kit.
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Building a wooden boat had finally made its way to the top of my to-do list, and building a small one would be sufficient to satisfy that dream. At the time, we still had a 27′ trimaran and have since moved to a 35′ sloop, both wonderful sailing machines, but a sailing dinghy, capable of rowing, would provide a very different sailing experience. And, if light enough, we could potentially put it on top of our SUV and explore new waters. My son Tyler commented this would be a perfect new hobby for me combining two of my favorite interests: sailing and woodworking. I was eager to get started.
Inspired by the beauty and light weight of strip-built kayaks, I decided I’d use the same method for a sailing dinghy. I scoured the Internet but just couldn’t find a design that got me excited enough to invest a few hundred hours of my time. Then I found the Morbic 12 sail-and-oar dinghy, designed by the French naval architect, François Vivier.
I contacted François in the fall of 2016 to inquire if his Morbic 12, designed for lapstrake plywood, could be built with strip planks. He replied, “Yes, with some modification,” and asked me more about my requirements to make sure the Morbic 12 would meet my needs. After discussions on weight, cockpit arrangement, rowing ability, and rig, he decided a new design would be in order.We agreed to go forward with a Morbic 11 as a lightweight strip-built hull with a balanced lug rig, daggerboard, kick-up rudder, buoyancy compartments, and a bit of dry storage.
François delivered comprehensive plans with more than 60 pages including detailed drawings, a hydrostatic analysis, layouts and dimensions for lumber and plywood components, and assembly instructions filled with 3D color drawings. This would be my first boat build, so I was pleased with the clear instructions in English, and François was very responsive when answering the few questions I had along the way.
The recommendations for wood species were provided with several options. I used sapele for the stem, keel, and transom glued up with epoxy. These were attached to seven plywood stations on a temporary box frame. The plans do not include instructions for strip-planking, as there are plenty of books on the topic, and the creative decorative aspects are left to the builder. I used a combination of light and dark western red cedar and Alaska yellow cedar with accent strips of sapele and maple. Strip edges were beveled and edge-glued with Titebond II. I wanted to avoid staple and nail holes in the hull, so strips were held in place using hot glue, clamps, and Shurtape CP66, a stretchy and strong masking tape.
I had read plenty of warnings on how labor-intensive strip planking is; even so, I wondered what I had got myself into. Fitting a total of 220 strips was tedious work, but at least no steam was required for bending. I did resort to using a heat gun to coax some of the strips into shape on the deck, as the bends were tighter than on the hull.
After completing planking and adding the skeg and full-length keel, sanding began and the pay-off for building a strip-planked hull became apparent. The smooth-flowing lines on this boat are a thing of beauty.
After applying fiberglass and six coats of epoxy and sanding fair once again, I flipped the hull. The temporary stations were removed by slowly softening the hot glue with a heat gun until they could be wiggled out, without damage to any strips. I sanded and fiberglassed the interior, applying a second layer of cloth on the bottom for additional strength.
The bulkheads are of 6mm okoume plywood to save weight, and carefully fitted and filleted. There are three buoyancy compartments with access through 8″ deck plates for dry storage for wallet, keys, and other small items. I made very few changes to the design detailed in the plans, but I did move the bulkhead of the aft storage compartment back about 10″. The original placement is better for weight distribution while rowing with a passenger in the stern, but I thought I’d need a bit more for space for my feet while sailing, so sacrificed a bit of storage for it. As it turned out, I sail sitting farther forward and the original layout would have been fine.
The rudder case, built of laminated okoume plywood, is hollow to reduce weight and give access to the nuts that bolt gudgeons to the rudder. A specific brand and size of pintles and gudgeons are called for in the plans, and I could only find one source for them, at Classic Marine in the U.K. The kick-up rudder and tiller install securely on the hull in seconds and have a solid feel.
The laminated Douglas-fir mast isn’t hollow, yet it is light enough for me to slip through the foredeck partner into the step. The step is keyed to prevent the mast from rotating. The yard has an adjustable attachment point to a mast traveler that I built and wrapped with leather. The halyard attaches to a ring on the mast traveler to raise the yard. A downhaul pulls the boom down and aft; raising the aft end of the boom gives the sail a nice, full shape without creases. The downhaul has blocks for additional purchase and a conveniently located cam cleat on the starboard side of the daggerboard case for downhaul adjustment. This makes for a super-easy 10-minute launch.
The plans do not call for lazyjacks, but I added some to keep the boom and yard from banging around on deck when the sail is in a lowered position. They are also helpful for reefing, which only takes a few minutes. To use my reefing system, I release the downhaul, lower the sail, tighten the new tack and clew to the boom by tying off a single reef line to the cleat to the center of boom, make fast the foot to the boom with the five reef lines on the sail, then raise sail again. There are two reefpoints, and this system has been proven on two outings in a little more than 15-knot winds.
I built my Morbic 11 in 540 hours, working on and off over 15 months. It certainly could be built in less time, but this was my first build and I was in no hurry to get it done. I joke (with some truth) that 200 of those hours were spent scratching my head. Woodworking is not my profession; my experience with it is mostly from high school, so the boat is clearly suitable for amateur builders.
Like any dinghy, the Morbic 11 feels tender initially, but its 5′ beam stiffens up quickly and is amazingly stable. The boat accelerates quickly due to its light weight, and I regularly achieve speeds of 3 to 4 knots sailing to weather in anything more than about 8 knots of wind. I wondered how well the Morbic 11 would point with the balanced lug, and it exceeded my expectations. GPS tracks show nice 90-degree tacks upwind. We recorded a maximum speed exceeding 6 knots downwind—what a blast!
Sailing the Morbic 11 is a real kick, particularly when singlehanding. One day, sailing downwind in a blow, I suddenly caught a gust of over 20 knots that surprised me. I immediately eased the boom completely forward, over the bow, something that wouldn’t have been possible with a stayed mast, and then steered up to weather keeping the sail luffing with the wind the entire turn. Then, I dropped sail and rowed the short way into the marina, impressed that the Morbic 11 took care of me.
With two of us aboard, I’ll often take the helm and my crew will sit on the ’midship thwart facing aft and handle the mainsheet, shifting position to keep the boat at a proper heel and ducking under the boom as it comes across during a tack or jibe. With a small child joining us, their favorite spot is forward of the thwart, safely out of the way of control lines, with the mast or foredeck to hang onto as needed an unobstructed view forward.
When the wind dies, one can always row. The lazyjacks are slackened so that the boom and yard can be dropped all the way to the thwart, and the forward ends of the spars get tucked under the foredeck so they don’t get in the way. The 8′ oars, stowed either side of the daggerboard trunk, are easy to unstow after removing a magnet-held seat panel aft.
The Morbic 11 rows handily being a “classic” French sail-and-oar design. She tracks well due to the full-length keel, and is easily driven because of her light weight. There is a notch on the transom for sculling, but I haven’t learned to do that well yet. It does provide a convenient spot for the mast to lie into while trailering.
Coasting onto a beach is no problem with a daggerboard that lifts right out and the kick-up rudder which stays in the raised position with a clam cleat. A full-length bronze band protects the keel.
The Morbic 11 is designed to take a small outboard, but in Oregon, where I live, that would require registration and unsightly numbers stuck on the hull, so I don’t plan to use a motor.
Many have commented to me that this boat, with all the pretty woodwork and varnish, belongs in my living room and not on the water, but that would be such a waste! It’s a wonderful sailboat, and we get much enjoyment from her the way she was designed to be—on the water.
Gary Brown, husband and father of five, is a family man and recently retired electrical engineer living in Aloha, Oregon. A boater all his life, he has owned sailboats the last 15 years, and loves to race. He kept a construction blog for Hull #1 of the Morbic 11. Gary is in the process of evaluating boat designs for his next build as he continues his woodworking hobby.
On the rusty old trailer behind my car was NEWT, a 15′ solar-powered micro cruiser that would be my little floating home for the coming week. NEWT had proven herself last summer during a month-long cruise through Washington’s Puget Sound, among cities, restaurants, museums, and crowds of luxury yachts. This year, I was looking forward to a much more solitary and rural river trip in the Missouri Breaks National Monument.
I arrived at Fort Benton, Montana, the usual starting place for drifting down the Missouri River, late in the evening. It was dark and raining hard as I pulled into the local campground. With NEWT still perched high on her trailer, I set up the cockpit tent, which was quickly soaked, and the interior soon became equally wet as I awkwardly crawled in over the gunwale with soggy clothing and muddy shoes. Getting things sorted out and arranged for the night was like playing Tetris in a leaky garbage can. As I drifted to sleep, I was hoping that the weather in the morning would be better.
When I woke up the sky was still gray and foreboding, but it was time to go. The squishy, wet cockpit tent made a gurgling noise as I rolled it up and shoved it into its sack. The car was dry and the fast-food breakfast was hot as I drove about 18 miles downriver to launch at Wood Bottom Campground. It had begun to rain again and the boat launch was quite uninviting—gray, muddy, and deserted.
NEWT would have made an odd sight—if there had been anyone to see—as I backed the trailer down the slippery ramp. My daughter and I had built the hull several years ago, a Chester Yawl kit from Chesapeake Light Craft. In preparation for my Puget Sound trip, I had modified it with arched decks fore and aft, leaving space for a small cockpit in the middle. The decks are covered with high-efficiency solar cells that can generate 400 watts, enough electricity for a customized trolling motor to drive the boat indefinitely at about 5 mph on sunny days. Lithium phosphate batteries provide about 4 hours cruising in reserve for cloudy days and early mornings. A small tent covers the cockpit to provide a small but cozy sleeping area.
I slid the boat into the swampy water and parked the car and trailer in a corner away from the river, hoping that the favorable weather forecast for the rest of the week would prove accurate. The forecast for the river conditions, however, was not at all favorable. The ranger in the campground’s interpretive center warned me that the river flow, controlled by an upstream dam, was three times above normal for this time of year. This would cause very strong currents, water levels 3′ or 4′ above normal, and there would be plenty of debris in the water, everything from small grass and weed that would foul my propeller to huge tree trunks that could put a hole in my boat. The high water had brought the normally busy guiding and touring business to a standstill, and I would be all alone on the river for the week.
I waded into the turbid and swirling water, climbed into NEWT, and pushed off. The power of the current was immediately evident; before I could even get an oar in place, it pulled the boat toward the soggy and flooded shoreline. A few hard pushes got me out to the middle of the stream, and before I knew what was happening NEWT was swept under a bridge 3/4 mile downstream. As I flew by it, I caught a glimpse of hundreds of swallow’s nests—circular, muddy, smooth caves underneath the bridge.
After a few minutes, things settled down and I began to notice the landscape around the river. The banks were low, grassy, and dark green under the cloudy skies, backed by low rounded hills in the distance. The water was murky brown with small vortices visible throughout the entire surface. With my throttle set for cruising, I was heading downriver at about 10 mph. This was going to be a fast trip.
It was also going to be a wet one. Although I have a spray cover for the cockpit and decent waterproof gear, the rain was so heavy and steady that after just an hour I was wet and cold. My feet were still soggy from the launch, and every time I moved new rivulets of water would trickle down my back or neck. Water beaded on the solar panels. There would be no solar power today.
Fortunately, I have a cheap little electric hot-water heater in the boat. It’s so poorly made that I regard it as a fire starter, but it worked this time. Some hot tea and cheese crackers made life a little bit warmer and nicer. My mood was further improved by seeing a flock of great white pelicans, standing motionless, facing upstream, up to their bellies in the water a few yards downstream of a narrow muddy spit of an island stranded in the middle of the river. I wasn’t alone putting up with the rain.
As the dark gray and green landscape flowed by I ducked under the spray skirt. NEWT’s dim interior was infused with an orange light filtering through the wet fabric. Every cubic inch not occupied by me was stuffed with food, water, and gear for a week. A very gentle whirring noise from the stern of the boat was the only indication that the boat was under power. In the turbulent current, a constant tending to the steering lines was required to keep the bow pointing downstream. Two hours of navigating got me to my first stop, Coal Bank Landing, a boat launch and campsite on the north shore of the river.
Steering around the half-submerged bushes straining to keep hold of their roots in the strong current, I made it to the launch area, the bow grating on the gravel boat ramp as NEWT came to rest. The mud squished around my already wet feet as I scrambled out of the boat. The surging river tugged at the boat, scraping it against the bank. The only place to moor was along a marshy, grassy bank adjacent to the boat ramp.
The rain continued to drizzle down as I trudged up the gravel path, the sharp stones of the boat launch stinging my bare feet. At the top of the bank there was the new log-built camp station. When I opened the door, a warm dry waft of air wrapped around me, followed by a warm greeting from Casey, the campground host. Casey was tall and thin, with a grizzled face and granny glasses that made him look like an academic. A retired IBM hardware engineer, he was working the summer to get a free park pass for the fall season while staying in the riverside campground.
After talking about the rain and the flooding, he rescued me from what seemed to me the inevitable misery of another wet night. I could spend the night in the camp station, and while the hard floor surrounded by tools and supplies for the campground seemed a little industrial and exposed, it was nothing compared to the specter of a soggy night in the boat. I took him up on his offer. After I set my pad and sleeping bag, I crawled in and was lulled to sleep by the sound of a refrigerator rather than the rain on the tent I had been expecting.
On waking the next morning, all I could see through the multi-pane window of the camp station was fog and mist. My little boat was a gray smudge at the bottom of the boat ramp, surrounded by half-downed trees and the gray river fading away toward an unseen far shore.
This was not the weather that had been forecast, but, rain or shine, it was time for breakfast. About three-quarters of the way through my steaming bowl of porridge the sun finally arrived, sending light streaming through the window. Suddenly the sky was bright blue, filled with puffy white clouds, and the water was at least a lighter shade of muddy brown. This was more like it. Time to go.
Casey waved from the shore as I headed out into the strong and swirling current. Motoring downstream, the landscape was looking much less like the flat, bald prairie lands that surround my home. The riverbanks transformed from low, green, and rolling to high, gray, and steep. Bone-white sandstone cliffs, rising straight up from the river, were scarred with meandering, dark rivulets descending into the chocolatey water below. Lone black and ochre granite spires appeared, each pushing up into the now clear deep blue sky. I let the boat drift and slowly spun with the current, providing me with an ever-changing panorama of geography laid bare by time, wind, and water. I was certainly not in Saskatchewan anymore.
The current grew stronger as the river narrowed. NEWT, still just drifting with the current, was moving very fast, and I was soon approaching the region where I was hoping to stop for the night. A little bit before reaching the next campground, I noticed a small inlet on the right side of the river, not marked on the map. Some quick thinking and deft motoring got me through the strong current next to the narrow entrance, into a still backwater stream.
Just as I entered, I looked up and saw four deer standing on the bank, only 10′ away and staring down at me. I reached for the camera and, of course, scared them away. Disappointed, I proceeded up the inlet and found some consolation in a narrow stretch of water nestled between a low grassy meadow and steep rocky cliffs. It was so quiet and calm that I was suddenly aware of the low hum of the motor pushing me slowly along the nearby shore.
I moored up against the grassy bank and tied lines fore and aft to some half-drowned shrubs. Stepping ashore, I waded through the fresh green grass that poked up through the dusky brown mat of last year’s dried remains. In the distance, old black cottonwoods rose above the peak of the small island between the stream and the river. Across the narrow water was a high and jagged sandstone cliff, studded with protruding boulders and spindly trees clinging to cracks in the rock.
I decided this would be a nice spot for the night. I had made such good time and arrived quite early in the day—about noon—so I had lunch, and did absolutely nothing for the entire afternoon. I reclined in NEWT, wiggled my feet in the water, and read my book.
When evening approached it was time to transform NEWT into her sleeping mode. Getting the boat ready for night is a bit of a chore. To lie down in the boat, I need to clear a space that is normally occupied by gear. Anything that can go on shore I put there, and everything else gets stuffed under the deck in the bow. I set up the tent (a backpacker’s tent less its floor) over the cockpit with the zippered door facing the shore. If it bodes rain I’ll add the rain fly.
Getting in from shore is kind of like crawling into a small cave and can be difficult if the bank is steep or muddy. Once inside, my head and torso are in the tent portion, and my legs stretch out under the deck into the stern between the batteries. I have pockets lining either side of the boat as a ready place for phones, tablets, chargers, granola bars, and my glasses. This particular evening promised to be dry, so I did not bother with the rain fly and snuggled in for a very quiet and peaceful night.
I looked out of my tent after waking to find the shore 4′ away, rather than right next to the boat where I’d left it last night. Across the inlet, a rock that had been prominently above the surface last night was now awash. Overnight, the water level had risen about 2′. That was a little alarming. It looked like I was at the mercy of engineers at the dam upstream with their hands on the valve. Luckily, I had tied the boat firmly to trees on shore, so all was well.
After a breakfast cooked on the bank, it was time to go again. As I headed down the river, sometimes under power, sometimes drifting with the current, I came to the start of the continuous wall of sandstone cliffs, with large sculpted features appearing individually along the shore, poking up from dark green shrubbery. One of the most famous is “Hole in the Wall,” a sandstone cliff pierced through just beneath its peak, showing a small prick of light from a long way off.
Lewis and Clark, passing upriver here in May 1805, described the scene:
The hills and river cliffs which we passed today exhibit a most romantic appearance. The bluffs of the river rise to the hight of from 2 to 300 feet and in most places nearly perpendicular; they are formed of remarkable white sandstone which is sufficiently soft to give way readily to the impression of water…. The water in the course of time in descending from those hills and plains on either side of the river has trickled down the soft sand cliffs and worn it into a thousand grotesque figures, which with the help of a little imagination and an oblique view at a distance, are made to represent elegant ranges of lofty freestone buildings, having their parapets well stocked with statuary….
Settled comfortably in my boat, drinking tea and eating snacks, I watched the scenery go by. I got better at avoiding the weeds and large debris to keep my propeller clean and running efficiently. The flood was washing the manure left by grazing cattle on the banks down into the river. The ranger at the interpretive center had warned me not to drink or even filter the water for drinking. Looking at the murky brown water, I wasn’t about to try.
In the late afternoon of the third day I arrived at Flat Rock, an undeveloped camp along the south bank lined with a stand of cottonwood trees stretching along the river, many with branches arching out over the water. I’d been warned to avoid the big trees since they often drop dead limbs, so I chose a spot along the riverbank that was not directly underneath any large overhanging branches. Normally, there’s a broad, sandy flat here where it’s easy to beach a boat and camp, but the flooding put it all underwater.
I nestled the boat in the inundated grass at the foot of a steep bank, and struggled to step out of the boat, grabbing at the scrub to keep from slipping into the water. I tied the bow and stern lines to trees high on the bank, and the current pressed the boat against the grassy shore. Downstream about 30 yards was a lone, flat rock that gives the place its name. Normally used as a dinner table by boaters, it was nearly awash. Pressed against its upstream side was a tangle of gray driftwood caught in the flood: broken tree trunks, planks, a fencepost, and mud-coated dead reeds. The sun was still high in the cloud-mottled sky and I welcomed the shade of the trees.
About 150 yards across the debris-filled river, tawny cliffs above bands of black and white rock rose high above the water’s edge. On this side of the river, there was little evidence of the camp: a disused fire pit, fallen branches, and overgrown cow paths dotted with manure that wound through the tall cottonwoods.
Beyond the shade of the trees was a wide dry plain of grass and chest-high sagebrush that extended to the adjacent hills. The land is used by cattle ranchers, and while there once was a fence to keep the cows out of the camp, there’s little left of it now. I packed some water and snacks, then headed out for a hike to gain perspective from higher ground. After an hour of walking over the plain and up a dusty slope, the view was impressive, with the grassy hills and bare cliffs stretching upstream and down, the gray and green plain bordered by the long lush cottonwood grove next to the river.
As I walked back to the boat, a herd of cows with sooty black hides and red and yellow tags in their left ears trotted toward me. They did not seem happy with my presence. Normally, a yell and an arm-wave would scare cattle away, but not these. They continued to advance and I noticed a few of them looked like bulls. I was happy when I regained the cool, dark protection of the cottonwoods in the camp.
As the sun settled and the shadow of the ridge surrounding the river crept up the cliffs on the opposite bank, I set the tent up over the cockpit and settled in for the night. The turbulence of the flooded river gurgled along the hull and caused a surprising amount of rocking while I was trying to get to sleep. I eventually dozed off, but in the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of wind rushing through the cottonwood trees above. After such a hot day, a rising wind and storm was to be expected.
Poking my head out from the cockpit tent and looking up into the dark, windy night, I assured myself that I was not going to be crushed by a falling branch. The western horizon was blanketed in the black of the storm but the rest of the sky was clear and starry. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the cliffs across the water glowing white in the starlight. There was, in spite of the storm, beauty all around me. It was time for some more sleep, so I crawled back into my little tent and listened to the wind with more contentment than concern.
I woke to a calm and sunny morning, with the perspective again back to a friendly, bright river scene—the cliffs were the proper tawny gray and the sky was blue. It was a short hop to my final destination at Judith Landing, less than 10 miles downriver. It must have been a slow day at the campground, because both of the rangers there to greet me as I ran the boat ashore for the final time on the Missouri River. I grabbed some lunch and my phone, then trudged up the gravel slope to a picnic table nestled in a grassy spot at the top of the boat launch.
As I sat having lunch and waiting for the shuttle to take me back to my launching point, my phone connected to a Wi-Fi signal emanating from the nearby camp house. It began to beep and boop just like R2-D2 of Star Wars. The isolation had come to an end, the trip was over, and it was time to head home.
Rick Retzlaff is an Engineer, professor, and entrepreneur living (sometimes frustratingly) in the landlocked center of the Canadian prairies. He has owned and sailed many boats, the smallest being NEWT, the largest a Beneteau 40 kept on the Canadian Great Lakes. He has recently left the academic world to develop high-performance solar panels, a pursuit sparked by the success of NEWT. He can be reached at [email protected].
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.
I’ve had a number of handheld marine GPS units for years, starting with a Garmin 12 in about 2000, where all you got was course, speed, and latitude/longitude. I currently have a Garmin GPSMAP 78sc. While these small units are great for kayaks and other small boats, I’ve looked enviously at the big screens in chart plotters on larger boats with 12-volt electrical systems but they’re not designed to be used on open boats.
I’ve been watching with interest the adoption of waterproof electronics by kayak anglers. The GPS units they usually use have 4” to 5” screens, are waterproof, and have waterproof cabling to connect to a waterproof box that contains a small 12-volt motorcycle battery. But these units are mounted to kayaks and aren’t meant to be removed from the boats for use on land or on other boats.
I considered using a tablet computer with a waterproof case and backup batteries, but I don’t need one for other uses besides navigation, and haven’t had great luck operating touch screens with a wet or gloved finger.
Lithium batteries now provide large capacities in small packages. Some entrepreneurs, fueled in part by a market created by stand-up paddleboards set up for fishing, are creating small waterproofed lithium batteries. I thought the new batteries would make it possible for me to create a portable GPS unit that I could use on my small sail-and-oar boats or on an outboard skiff.
I needed three pieces: a compact GPS unit with a 4″ to 5″ screen, a 12-volt lithium battery, and a watertight box to put them in. A NOQUA Pro Power 10ah battery is small enough to fit inside a 1050 Pelican box, which was big enough to accommodate the Garmin echoMAP 54cv GPS that I bought on sale last winter. There are other similarly priced GPS units aimed at the fishing market by SI-TEX, Lowrance, and Hummingbird. I’d be able to mount the GPS in the lid of the box and have enough room for the battery inside. Your battery and GPS selection will dictate your box size.
I trimmed some reinforcing ridges from the box with an oscillating tool and small saw blade; then, using the template that came with the GPS, I cut the hole for the unit and drilled holes for the four mounting bolts. I installed the GPS to read from the hinged side so I could angle it up in use. This only works with a horizontal display.
My unit had a wiring harness for both the battery and the included transducer for the fishfinder, and the NOQUA battery had an output cable with waterproof crimp-on marine butt connectors. Wired up, everything worked beautifully.
I’ve used it now for several months. A full charge on the battery lasts 20 hours. The echoMAP 54cv came with a transducer for the CHIRP sonar fishfinder, but I haven’t hooked up it up as I have to make a mount and I suspect that it will drain the battery faster. The box also has space to tuck the charger and the small strut.
I usually operate the unit with the box open, the lid propped up with a dowel to a good angle for viewing, and rely on the waterproofness of the GPS, battery, and waterproof connectors, so I was not concerned with keeping the Pelican box’s own waterproof integrity. The GPS’s mounting gasket allowed some leakage, and Aquaseal solved the problem; I didn’t seal the GPS to the case so I could remove it for servicing if needed. Closed, the box floats.
I’m happy with the result. I don’t have to grab the handheld GPS to see it. I can easily read the 5″ screen from a few feet away. The lithium battery lasts for several days’ use, a lot longer than the alkaline AAs on my handheld. The battery unit can also charge my phone using a USB cable and, if I were away from power for a long time, I could set it up for solar recharging. This stand-alone unit is quite convenient, and I use my new GPS box on many different boats.
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.
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If you go boating alone, you may be fine once under way but occasionally wish you had someone to lend a hand at the launch ramp, especially when there’s unsettled weather. Several of our boats draw only a few inches of water and while they’re good for gunkholing skinny Florida waters, at the launch ramp even a little wind and chop can push them around and it can be a struggle moving them on or off the trailer.
When we moved to Florida a few years back, we noticed a lot of the boat trailers had guide posts, so we took the hint and added them to our trailer frames. The metal posts, clamped on either side of the trailer frame, center the boat during loading. The square metal tubing is usually covered with a 2″ PVC pipe to protect the boat from dings and abrasion. During solo launching and retrieving, the guide posts serve as a helping hand and reduce wrestling a boat to get it lined up with the trailer. I no longer have to wade out to the end of the trailer to swing the boat around. Our Drascombe Lugger was notorious for drifting sideways at the ramp, and now that we’ve added the guide posts I can row onto the trailer!
The guide posts are also handy visual targets that help us keep track of an empty trailer as we back it, especially when it disappears down the incline of the ramp and when it is submerged. Some of our boats have a very low profile that is well beneath the rear window, and guide posts help us keep track of the trailer in the rear-view mirror.
Guide posts are L-shaped and available in different widths and heights. Most are 40″ to 60″ high. They are simple to install—just attach them to the trailer frame with brackets and bolts provided, and set them between the uprights a distance about 2″ wider than the widest beam of the boat. Posts come in galvanized steel or aluminum; for bigger boats, steel is better able to sustain larger side loads.
For bells and whistles, rollers and bunks can be added to the vertical posts to get the best fit for different boats, and one can get a set of LED lights made to fit the PVC pipe covers. The lights can be used in place of or in addition to the trailer-mounted lights. Different kits are available to mount directly on top of the pipe or attach with a bracket. Having the turn signals, running, and brake lights raised makes them more visible than lights down low on a small trailer where they might be hidden under an overhanging stern.
When Audrey and I go boating together, we often load a pair of sailing dinghies, canoes, or kayaks on a double-stack trailer that we made by attaching a cross support between each pair of guide posts. Depending on the weight of the upper boat and the length of our trip to the launch, we have used aluminum crossbars or wood bunks for the cross supports. Our trailer guru, Eddie, says steel posts are required for a double-stack—aluminum posts will not handle fore-and-aft stress of acceleration and braking.
For easier launch and retrieval and hauling pods of small boats, check out trailer guide posts. You’ll get more out of your trailer.
Audrey “Skipper” Lewis and “Clark” Kent Lewis enjoy small boating along the bays and rivers of Florida’s Emerald Coast. Their adventures can be followed on their small boat restoration blog.
The authors purchased 60″ galvanized steel CE Smith Post-Style Guide-Ons from a trailer dealer. They’re available online for $105. A variety of guide posts and accessories are available from online retailers such as etrailer.
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 1″x30″ belt sander I bought recently filled a gap in my shop’s arsenal that I didn’t realize existed because I’d grown so accustomed to the limitations of the tools I have, particularly those I use for working with metal: a 6″ disc sander that has an aluminum plate that takes adhesive sanding discs, a bench grinder with a 30-grit and a 60-grit wheel for coarse work, a Makita blade sharpener, a couple of angle grinders, and a buffing wheel for polishing and honing. Changing grits is impractical on all but the angle grinders, and those are too aggressive for fine work.
I’d done a bit of research before buying the 1×30 belt sander at one of the local Harbor Freight stores, so I wasn’t dismayed when I first turned it on and discovered it had a lot of vibration. The drive wheel was, as I expected, the main culprit; I’d seen some YouTube product reviews about that very problem. So I put a sharp beveled cutting edge on the end of a flat file as a quick stand-in for a lathe tool and ran the sander without a belt or the table in place. A horizontal ledge on the frame served as a tool rest while I carefully worked the wheel to true, which took care of the vibration.
It’s a more complicated process to true the smaller wheels, but they seemed to be fine as they were. The rest of the machine needed a bit of tweaking here and there—adjusting the backing plate and loosening the tensioning pulley’s pivot—but I was soon satisfied with the way it works. It’s small for a shop machine: 13-1/2″ tall, sitting on a 6-1/2″ by 8-3/4″ base, weighing just 12 lbs, portable and easy to store.
The sanding belt supplied with the machine had a lapped joint, and every time the it crossed the backing plate it slapped the workpiece away. I went online and ordered two sets of belts with butt joints. The tape backing the joints adds only a bit of thickness, and make a bit of a bump with every pass, but it’s not such great nuisance. My assortment of belts ranges from 60- to 1,000-grit and it takes only 20 seconds to change one for another. The guard over the top wheel comes off, then the side cover, and the belt slips off. With the spring-loaded tensioning wheel at the back pulled forward a bit, the next belt slips on. There’s a screw to hold the top guard in place, but I don’t bother with it.
The backing plate is 2-1/2″ tall, and so the belt is without backing for the next 3″ to the top wheel. The tensioning wheel has a soft spring, so the upper part of the belt can curve around a workpiece, a nice feature if you’re working soft curves. The motor drives the belts at 3,260 feet per minute. With the right belt, that moves metal and wood quickly and quietly.
I first put the sander to good use when I made a riveting hammer to the instructions in Tom DeVries’ article in the December 2018 issue. I used it to take the zinc plating off of the bolt I used for the hammer head and then to refine and smooth the taper to the peen that I’d roughed in on the bench grinder. The locust I used for the hammer’s handle was quick to dull the cutting edge of the gouge I was using on the lathe, and with a quick sharpening with a 600-grit belt I was back in business. After I cut the handle from the rest of the locust stock, I used a 220-grit belt on the sander to smooth its end. Locust is quick to discolor if heat builds up when worked with power tools, but the belt sander didn’t leave any scorch marks.
When I use the finer belts for sharpening edge tools, the steel stays cool so the risk of losing temper is much less than it is with my bench grinder and disk sander. One of the assortments of sanding belts I ordered included a leather belt and a stick of buffing compound. It puts a high shine and a sharp edge on a blade.
The belt sander has been earning its keep ever since I got it tuned up. I’ve used it for shaping small pieces of wood for a model I’m building, cleaning up damaged threads on the ends of machine screws, sharpening the chisel that gets the dirty work of cleaning up cured epoxy, and putting crisp corners on the tip of a worn screwdriver. I’ve got space for the sander on one of the shelves in the shop, but I like having it on my workbench, ready to go to work.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly.
The 1×30 Belt Sander from Harbor Freight lists for $52.99; save 20% with Harbor Freight’s single-item coupon, found in most of their ads. There are similar tools from other manufacturers: Wen, Rikon, Grizzly, Powertec.
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.
Jon Wiegand grew up in Iowa, not far from the Iowa Great Lakes, a chain of natural lakes in the northwest corner of the state. As “great lakes” go, they are rather small—the greatest of them is just shy of 9 square miles, so you could never be out of sight of land—but they had a big impact on Jon. His father used to take him fishing on the lakes closest to his home, and those outings fostered his fascination and love for wooden boats.
When Jon had a family of his own, he did what those inexorably drawn to wooden boats often do: built boats for his children. The first was a 17′ strip-built canoe, a birthday present for his daughter. To be fair, he had to do something equally grand for his son, so he went right to work on a second strip-built canoe. It’s said that when you’re taking up something new, you should try it once to see what it’s like, and a second time to see if you like it. Jon decided he enjoyed boatbuilding, so he kept at it. His wife was boatless, so he gathered up supplies for a third project, this one a strip-built kayak.
A move to the outskirts of the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, interrupted Jon’s serial boatbuilding, but didn’t bring it to an end. The new home had ample room for a shop and its own sandy beach on Green Bay. The view from the living room offered more of a “great lake” feeling with the far shore of the bay just a slim line along the horizon. It was inevitable that Jon would soon feel the lure of another project to take advantage of the water at his doorstep.
He upped the ante considerably by deciding to build a wood-and-canvas canoe in the traditional manner. If you like to build things, it’s a good way to go: you get to double your fun (not to mention the time and expense) by building the form required and the canoe. Jon got his plans from Stewart River Boatworks in Knife River, Minnesota. The Fishdance model he chose is listed as a 15′ 6″ Sportboat. Named after a lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of Minnesota, it’s a square-stern canoe with a beam of 43″, so it’s meant for rowing and motoring rather than paddling. With the bigger boat Jon would be better able to manage the wider waters of Green Bay in his backyard.
The build started with the form that the canoe would be built around. It was very much like a strip-built boat shaped around a dozen plywood forms, only with thicker strips. The strips don’t need to be tightly fit to one another, but they do have to be fair from stem to transom. Wherever there was to be a steam-bent rib in the canoe, there was a metal strap on the form, which would turn the points of the clench nails that would eventually be driven through the canoe’s planks and its 44 ribs and 37 narrower half ribs.
The canoe began to take shape when the ribs were steamed and bent over the form. Jon had never done steam-bending before, and was a bit daunted by the task. He did a lot of research online and built an insulated wooden steambox, bought a propane burner designed for deep-frying a turkey, and a turned a cleaned propane cylinder into a boiler. It didn’t take long for him to discover that steam-bending isn’t a great mystery, but rather, as he put it, “one of the most satisfying experiences” he had during the build.
The planking followed. Working the thin stock was easy, and the gaps between the planks needed only to be snug, not airtight. Canoe tacks, over 1,500 of them, were driven through the planking and into the ribs. When the fine points of the brass tacks emerged and hit the steel bands on the form, they bent and turned back into the rib.
When the hull was finished, Jon stretched canvas over it, tacked it in place, and applied the filler, a traditional paint-like concoction that’s thickened with silica. It’s a messy job rubbing it into the canvas until the weave is filled and the skin has a smooth surface. Jon was forced to take a break from working on the canoe for the month it took the filler to dry.
A traditional square-stern canoe wouldn’t look right with a modern outboard, so Jon went on an extensive search for a vintage motor. He had the good fortune to locate a 1953, 3-hp Johnson Seahorse in mint condition. He and his wife bought it as a present to themselves on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary in August 2018.
The whole project took eight months. “It helps when you’re retired,” Jon notes. He launched the canoe on October 22, 2018, on Green Bay. It was a crisp fall day, the motor performed flawlessly, and the oars just came along for the ride. Jon didn’t have much time to enjoy the fruits of his labor, as Green Bay ices over in December. The canoe is in the garage, the outboard is in the basement, and Jon is mulling over his next project. He’s thinking lapstrake.
Have you recently launched a boat? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share your story with other Small Boats Monthly readers.
In 1968, Dick and Colleen Wagner began renting Whitebear skiffs and other small wooden boats from the watery “back yard” of their floating home on Seattle’s Lake Union. They had been collecting boats for years, and while running a livery would help pay the bills, their motivation was to foster in others an appreciation for wooden boats. In 1976, with the help of like-minded friends, the Wagners established The Center for Wooden Boats (CWB) on the south end of Lake Union. It has been housed in two floating buildings: one with offices upstairs and a gift and book shop and meeting room on the main level, the other housing the shop where the fleet of boats for oar, sail, and paddle is maintained.
In 2012, CWB opened a second facility, an old warehouse on the north end of the lake, that would serve as a workshop and place to store its collection of old and historically significant boats. While it’s a useful extension of the facilities, the workshop is 2-1/2 miles from the Center and has no access to the water.
In January 2016, on a parcel of land on the lake shore right next to CWB, Dick and Colleen broke ground for the Wagner Education Center (WEC). The new building hasn’t yet had its formal opening, but the staff has moved into the new office space and the boatshop is up and running.
Josh Anderson, the lead boatwright (and an SBM contributor), gave me a tour. The building has over 9,000 sq ft on its two floors, tripling the space CWB has to work with. The walls are a bit of fir-plywood heaven. Over 700 sheets of it were prefinished by volunteers, edges gently rounded and faces given a clear finish. The floor upstairs is cork; on the main level it is concrete, except for the boatshop. There, two layers of 1-1/2″ plywood have been recessed and are flush with the concrete floor. The plywood is kinder to tools accidentally dropped and provides an easily renewed surface when the top layer is worn out. The combined 3″ thickness of plywood is a good base for boatbuilding forms that need to be screwed down. The boatshop occupies the south side of the building and floor-to-ceiling windows wrap around its three sides, providing not only plenty of natural light, but also a view in from the sidewalks outside. When the summer daylight gets too bright and too hot, exterior panels on vertical tracks can be lowered by winches inside to cover the windows.
When I visited, there were three boats in the shop: a Blanchard Knockabout in for repairs, a 15’ Catboat Class being built to plans drawn in 1920, and a peapod awaiting refinishing. There was still room left over for at least two more small boats. On the north side of the shop there are small rooms for tools, supplies, and Josh’s office. He built his desk from leftover bits of 2″-thick, tight-grained western red cedar.
The flight of stairs rising from the gift shop and bookstore at the main entrance has treads made from wood taken from the keel timbers of WAWONA, a three-masted schooner launched in 1897. At 166′, she was the largest of her type ever built. She served the first half of her life carrying lumber between ports in Puget Sound and California, the second half fishing the Aleutian Islands. In her retirement she rested alongside the Center for Wooden Boats until she was dismantled in 2009. Josh spent months plugging the old bolt holes, ebonizing the wood, and fitting the treads to stairway’s steel framework. The handrails were milled from lumber salvaged from a World-War-II minesweeper that came to rest at the Lake Union Dry Dock, a half-mile from CWB.
When the WEC has its formal opening early in 2019, it will already be well into the mission embarked upon by Dick and Colleen a half century ago: preserving maritime history and passing on traditional boatbuilding and boat-handling skills.
Long before the fine sand and exquisite light of St. Ives were discovered by artists and tourists, the small town on the north coast of Cornwall was a thriving fishing center. At its peak, 300 fishing boats were moored cheek by jowl inside its picturesque harbor and millions of fish were landed, salted, and then exported all over Europe. Each of these boats had a tender and, as the tide went out, each tender had to settle on the sand until it was refloated by the incoming tide, twice a day, every day. Most days, the boats were given a good beating by the notorious ground sea that runs into the harbor, and on bad days they often got swamped and filled with sand. It’s a particular kind of punishment that requires a certain type of boat, as retired physician Scott Bowring discovered.
“When I started sailing in St. Ives 12 years ago, I wanted a boat to keep in the harbor, so I had a 10′6″ Lily-class dinghy built for me by Ashley Butler in Dartmouth,” Scott says. “ZEPHYR is a lovely boat, and I’ve had loads of fun on her, but she was too lightly built for the conditions in St. Ives, and at the end of every season, a couple of ribs would be broken. I realized I needed something stronger for the conditions here.”
Scott is a member of the St. Ives Jumbo Association which keeps two 20’ Jumbos, replicas of Victorian fishing luggers, built by Jonny Nance, in the harbor. The starting point for that project was a 13′ rowing punt based on a set of lines Jonny’s father took from a traditional fisherman’s tender in 1975. Unlike the streamlined punts from more sheltered ports such as Falmouth on the south coast of Cornwall, the St. Ives punt was short and stout, heavily built to survive the challenging conditions of St Ives harbor. But could it be made to sail?
To find out, Scott teamed up with fellow Jumbo sailor Pete Lee and asked Jonny to design a sailing version of his father’s punt. The boat they specified had to be smaller and lighter than the rowing punt with a standing lug rig which would stand a trashing. It needed to be stable, so you could stand on the gunwale without tipping over, and withstand the abuse of various feral grandchildren. They didn’t want a centerboard, as the boat would be sitting on the beach at St. Ives—plus they wanted fewer moving parts for kids to get their fingers jammed. And the boat had to be pretty.
“It was an interesting challenge, given that the traditional punt was primarily for landing fish and had to be capable of carrying the maximum weight in the minimum amount of water!” says Jonny. “I modified the rowing punt lines to make the boat as sailable as possible. I raised the deadrise a little, so it’s not so flat bottomed; the sailing punt’s keel projects about 3″ below the garboard, whereas the rowing punt only has 2″. The sailing punt also has a much more elegant run aft and finer entry. Little things, to make a sailboat shape without diverting too much from the punt type that she is.”
Jonny built the first St. Ives sailing punt for Pete in 2014, followed by a second boat (with a slightly taller mast) for Scott in 2015. Good-quality larch wasn’t available for the planking, so Jonny built both boats of Douglas-fir on oak ribs, fastened with copper rivets. The inside was fitted with oak thwarts and grown oak knees, all sealed with a mix of Stockholm tar, linseed oil, and turpentine, which quickly turns black with age. Scott named his punt MAIA, in part after Saint Ia of Cornwall who, according to legend, sailed to St. Ives from Ireland on a leaf, and in part after one of the Pleiades, Maia, from Greek mythology.
It was glassy calm and cloudy when I arrived in St. Ives to sail MAIA, so we made the most of the weather by first testing the boat in rowing mode. The St. Ives punt has two rowing stations, both fitted with tholepins rather than rowlocks. I’m not a usually great fan of this arrangement, which I suspect is usually used for aesthetic rather than practical reasons, but I have to admit I hardly noticed the difference on this occasion.
With her beamy, burdensome hull, the punt is not best suited to long-distance rowing, though it carries its way well enough and you would happily row home if you had to. In practice, though, I suspect the oars are mostly used to get her in and out of harbor. The Jumbo crews are keen scullers, and the transom has been fitted with a sculling notch, set off-center so it can be used with the rudder and tiller in place.
“Sculling was the principal means of propelling a punt in crowded fishing harbors, as it was seldom possible to row,” says Jonny. “So sculling isn’t just a quirky revivalist fad. It remains a very useful skill and is frequently the most appropriate option.”
While we were trying out the oars, Scott’s other boat, ZEPHYR, turned up, and I jumped aboard to take some photos of Scott rowing and sailing his punt. The simple standing-lug rig, with its stayless mast, is extremely easy to raise and lower—one reason it was so popular with fishermen—and within a couple of minutes the boat was under way.
I feared the St. Ives punt might be a bit sluggish under sail, but it soon proved me wrong. Even before the surface of the water had been ruffled by the breeze, it managed to catch a breath of wind and, as if by magic, sailed away purposefully over a glassy sea, before the natural order was restored and a few ripples appeared below the bow. Even then, as a feeble wind blew hesitantly across the bay, it seemed to keep its way and made steady headway almost regardless of the wind.
The punt kept up its uncanny ways after I climbed on board to join Pete, and we headed out past Bamaluz Point toward the open sea. A strong current was setting us to the west, with just a puff of wind from the southwest, yet as we turned around and headed back to St. Ives, the punt slipped along as if pulled forward by an invisible line. Of course, by then we were on a broad reach, and I suspect it would have been a very different matter if we’d had to tack to windward, not the St. Ives punt’s strong point.
One unusual feature in an otherwise quite standard lug rig is the sheeting arrangement, which runs through a single block with a line which is looped over a thumb cleat on the leeward rail. When the boat comes about, the block is simply unhitched and hooked onto the opposite cleat. I wondered if a rope horse wouldn’t make life easier, but Scott told me he had tried that and the current arrangement worked better. It certainly seemed the optimum position for the sheet to be in, judging by how well the sail set, though I had my doubts about how handy it would be in really windy weather.
The calm conditions combined with a strong current made it hard to judge the boat’s true sailing performance during our short outing. But certainly the absence of a deep keel or centerboard will affect the punt’s windward performance, though her builder insists that, providing you sail the boat full and by (not sheeting her in too tight) it performs very well. Indeed, he suggests the sailing St. Ives punts make very good training boats for the bigger Jumbos, teaching sailors how to manage a heavy boat with only a shallow keel to resist leeway.
“There’s nothing to stop the boat going sideways,” says Jonny. “And if you sheet too hard when tacking, it will just go sideways. So, you’ve got to get way on first. As soon as you’ve got momentum, it heads up fine, and there’s no question of not being able to make it to weather.”
The proof of a boat is in her sailing, and MAIA certainly showed the St. Ives punt is no slouch by winning the small boat class at the Looe Luggers Regatta, in open water and against several other bigger boats, just a couple of weeks after she was launched in 2015. The following year, she won the Prettiest Boat award in her class at the Falmouth Classics regatta, proving that even a hardy St. Ives lass can win the hearts of those South Coast yachties.
So confident is Scott in the St. Ives punt’s seagoing abilities that he and his wife are planning to take MAIA gunkholing around the U.K., starting with an Old Gaffers Association rally on the Isle of Wight and then heading up to Scotland to explore the lochs. And it’s this use as an expedition boat that might give the boat a greater purpose. Not everyone wants to keep a boat on a mooring in a tidal harbor that dries at low tide, but more and more people are discovering the pleasures of dinghy cruising and coastal sailing in small boats. Although the St. Ives sailing punt is small, it’s certainly sturdy and would cope with some dirty weather.
For now, MAIA is doing a very good job moored off the jetty at St. Ives, going up and down with every tide, weathering the relentless ground sea just as her forebears did, and without breaking a single rib so far. Watching her sailing in her native waters, surprisingly nimble despite her sturdy construction, I can’t help feeling that a bigger future awaits her beyond St. Ives, beyond the Isle of Wight, and beyond Scotland even. This traditional, local design, reborn for modern times, deserves to travel the world.
Nic Compton is a freelance writer and photographer based in Devon, England. He has written about boats and the sea for 24 years and has published 14 nautical books, including a biography of the designer Iain Oughtred. He currently sails a 14’ Nigel Irens skiff and a 26’ Chuck Paine sloop.
I live in an area where there are a lot of quiet sloughs, little lakes, and slow-moving rivers, but there are only a few launch ramps. With my trailered boats I have been going to the same four places for decades and feel cut off from all the opportunities the region has to offer. I can cartop my canoe, but it’s too heavy to carry and requires a cart, and my kayaks are all long enough to be awkward to carry and not well suited for narrow winding streams and half-acre ponds. Iain Oughtred’s Stickleback may be among the smallest of small boats, but I wouldn’t regard its diminutive size as a limitation. On the contrary, it would be just the right boat to overcome the limitations of all of my larger vessels.
The 10′ 8″ Stickleback is the shortest of the four canoes in Oughtred’s catalog. The plans include five sheets of drawings and a “plans supplement” that has 14 pages of general instructions for the construction of his canoes, dinghies, and Acorn skiffs. While there is adequate information in the supplement for building the Stickleback, Oughtred’s 174-page Clinker Plywood Boatbuilding Manual has more drawings and lots of photographs that first-time builders will find quite useful. The Stickleback drawings provide both imperial and metric figures, and while offsets are included, there are full-sized patterns for the seven molds and the two stems, so you can skip bending over a lofting and tweaking fairing battens. There are also full-sized patterns for the breasthooks, deckbeams, side-deck knees, and backrest as well as measured scale drawings and full-size plan and profile patterns for an 8′ spoon-bladed paddle.
Oughtred offers a number of options in the plans. The alternate station spacings he suggests can make the canoe 10′ 2″, 10′ 8″ (standard), 11′ 2″, or 11′ 6″. The Stickleback can be built as an open canoe with open gunwales or as a decked canoe with sealed compartments in the ends. The compartment bulkheads lie on the same stations as the temporary molds, so you’d use 4mm marine plywood as the molds for stations #2 and #6 and epoxy them to the planking. Hatches in the bulkheads would provide access for dry storage spaces. The patterns for the molds are marked for planking the hull with five strakes for glued-lap plywood or seven strakes for plank-on-frame construction, but don’t provide scantlings for frames and planks. The Stickleback shown here was built in the traditional manner by Tom Regan of Grapeview Point Boat Works in Allyn, Washington. He took the 3″ frame spacing from Rushton’s description of the 10′ 6″ Nessmuk canoe in his 1903 catalog: “Ribs, very light and spaced 3″.” Rushton’s legendary SAIRY GAMP has 5⁄32″ × 7⁄16″ frames, and were likely red elm, as with his other canoes. Tom made his frames 3⁄16″ × 3⁄8″ so he could edge-set them a bit easier if required. He had milled up white oak frames, scrapped them because the were too heavy, and ultimately used Alaska yellow cedar.
The plywood version of the canoe is meant to have a floor of 3 or 4mm plywood spanning the keelson, garboards, and first broadstrake. Glued in place, it will stiffen the hull under the paddler and provide a little elevation to keep the seating area dry. The open space between the hull and the floor is not sealed off at the ends of the floor, so care should be taken to have those inaccessible surfaces well sealed with epoxy before assembly and hosed out after paddling to avoid accumulations of sand and leaves. The backrest in the drawings is 11″ wide, 2 3⁄4″ from top to bottom, cut with a curve for comfort and fixed to a laminated arched deckbeam at station #5. Another deckbeam, shown installed just aft of station #2, serves as a foot rest. Its position could be altered to best suit the leg length of the paddler.
Tom’s Stickleback was made of Sitka spruce and Alaska yellow cedar; it weighs a mere 18 lbs; 2 lbs under the 20 lbs Oughtred indicates for the plywood version. Either makes for an easy carry. With a removable carrying yoke spanning the gunwales amidships, I wouldn’t balk at carrying it a mile or more if there were a jewel of a hidden lake to be paddled.
Getting aboard the canoe is a bit dicey. Tom sets a foot on the floorboards, holds the gunwales, and sits down quickly as he brings the other leg aboard. That leaves his weight up high for a moment, and the canoe gets rather twitchy, but he has yet to take a dip at the launch. I straddled the bow and sat down on the floorboards just aft of the forward thwart, then brought both legs in at the same time as I slid back into paddling position. That kept my weight low and the canoe stable as I got aboard, but the method requires legs long enough to bend around the gunwales. Both my method and Tom’s were meant to preserve the varnish. If that weren’t a concern, I would use a method that’s common with kayakers: Put the boat afloat parallel to the shore, set the paddle across the deck/gunwales with one blade extended shoreward and resting on the land. Then the paddle can take your weight and stabilize the boat as you drop into the seat.
Once I had planted myself on the floorboards, I was quite comfortable and stable. Tom had mounted the backrest with leather hinges instead of gluing it, so it settled flat against my back. The toes of my size 13 feet were high enough above the floorboards to get a solid purchase on the thwart that serves as a footrest, though with my leg length I would have prefer having the thwart about 2″ farther forward.
My 220 lbs was as much as the canoe could handle comfortably. One of the longer versions made by increasing the station spacing would have been better scaled to me. I had about 5″ of freeboard and if I leaned to the side I could get water to lap over the gunwale. The canoe felt stable for as far as I could lean it without swamping. Tom, at about 150 lbs, had around 6″ of freeboard, and while it might seem that he’d be able to take on rougher water than I, the boat isn’t meant for venturing out in wind and waves. The lake we paddled for my trials was only 150 yards wide and well protected, an environment well suited to the Stickleback.
Like the Rushton lapstrake canoes that preceded it, the Stickleback is designed for use with a double-bladed paddle. I did most of my trials with a double-bladed paddle, but I had no trouble paddling on one side, as I would with a canoe paddle, incorporating a ruddering finish to my stroke. I wasn’t sitting high enough to paddle with the J-stroke used by canoeists. A single-bladed paddle would make a reasonable spare to carry aboard.
The 27″ beam, located at about hip level, doesn’t get the least bit in the way of paddling. As I’d expected, the Stickleback was quite nimble and fun to maneuver through tight turns. I was limited by freeboard to only a modest degree of edging, but even that was enough to quicken the turns and keep the canoe carving around between strokes.
The bow yawed noticeably at slow speeds, but in general the canoe stayed on course without veering to one side, a good indication that the backrest is at the right position, putting the paddler’s weight just aft of center and pressing the stern down slightly deeper than the bow.
I was surprised by how fast the Stickleback felt. Sitting low on the water exaggerates the sensation of speed, but the canoe turned in a respectable set of numbers on the GPS. It responded to relaxed paddling with a speed of 3 knots, and to an aerobic exercise pace with a speed of 4 knots. When I put in an all-out effort, I could sprint at 4 3⁄4 knots; the GPS registered a momentary peak of 5 knots. At that speed, the bow throws a wake like a miniature PT boat.
While the traditionally built and bright-finished yellow-cedar Stickleback that I paddled is a strikingly beautiful work of boatbuilding, a glued lapstrake plywood version, painted, with a few accents of brightwork, would lend itself to going paddling often and taking the knocks and scrapes that come with exploring new backwaters. And with its curves accented by the planking laps, the Stickleback would still be a pleasure to look at.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.
Stickleback Particulars
Length: 10′8″
Beam: 27″
Draft at DWL: 4 1⁄4″
Freeboard at DWL: 7″
Weight: 20 lbs
Plans for the Stickleback are available from The WoodenBoat Store for $105. Thanks to Tom Regan of Grapeview Point Boat Works for his help with this article. Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us!
Snags and sudden shifts in the current came out of nowhere as we dodged left and right around dangerous gravel bars that shot water back and forth across the river. The shantyboat shook as the skegs bumped across rocky shoals. I didn’t want to think about what this was doing to the wooden hull.
I was at the helm, white knuckles on the wheel. “Freddie,” our 30-hp Mercury outboard, was trimmed barely in the water to keep the prop off the rocks, running at full throttle for a measure of control. My shipmate Benzy was at the bow urgently calling out hazards and depth; Hazel, the ship’s hound, cowered under the table. I was sure we would end up deeply stuck, if not seriously damaged or sunk. The river rocketed through a single twisted channel and took us along with it, slaloming the clunky shantyboat hard left and then hard right shooting us through a series of rock bars and snags, their jagged teeth raking either side of the hull.
This stretch of California’s Sacramento River was the sketchiest bit of boating I’ve done in a thousand miles and ten years of sketchy boating. We were shooting the Upper Sacramento River in a rustic wooden barge-bottomed houseboat. It was a boxy behemoth that had no place on this section of the river where sleek jet boats fly over the shallows.
Our re-creation of a historic shantyboat was similar to those that used to dot the banks in every river town on the continent through the early 20th century, the kind of houseboat built by workers and vagabonds who needed to live on the cheap. In that tradition, we built our shantyboat by hand, from the wooden skegs to the gable roof, using mostly reclaimed materials. Redwood from a 100-year-old chicken coop, corrugated tin from an old outhouse, and single-pane windows pulled out of old houses contribute to a houseboat that looks like it floated out of a history book.
Where we started, the river had just barely come out of the rugged northern California mountains. The water comes from the depths of the Shasta Dam and is very brisk, warming as it meanders under the Valley sun.
At the ramp in Red Bluff, just downriver from a now-decommissioned diversion dam, the river was really moving. We got to know this ramp well as we stayed there for two days trying to diagnose why our brand-new Merc motor wasn’t running. This delay was quietly frustrating Sara who collected audio of our repeated failure to start the motor and our colorful cursing. When we finally found Dave, the mechanic, he spent a few minutes and said, “You got water in your gas, chief.” It was an inauspicious start to a month-long journey.
When we launched, many people who know the river suggested we’d never make it, including the Fish & Game people and a series of fisherfolk. On the other hand, Dave and the local sheriff had more confidence in us. They told us the river was hairy but doable. Despite the naysayers, they were right.
It wasn’t all white-knuckle boating. Punctuated by these long moments of sheer terror and intense vigilance, we idled away the days in long floats of serene relaxation and contentment on the Upper Sacramento. As we floated south, the river slowed and took its time down the long Central Valley.
Though there are monotonous fields and orchards for miles on either side, the river corridor is wide and surprisingly wild. Birdsong formed the soundtrack of our days. Crickets filled the night, interrupted by the rustling of critters in the riverside jungle.
For a tiny rustic floating cabin, the boat is well-appointed. The barge hull is 20′ x 8′ with a 10’-long cabin. We have a small but cozy galley with lots of stores and running water, a big table for work and play, a leather couch largely dominated by the ship’s hound Hazel, a comfy sleeping loft, and a library of river history, art books, and trashy novels.
I’m an artist by trade, and life aboard the shantyboat is part of my work for A Secret History of American River People, a project to collect the personal stories of river people. Every summer since 2014, I float down a major American river and talk to hundreds of people about vanishing river culture. Despite the dramatic moments on the shantyboat, we have plenty of time between piloting the boat and doing the oral history work of the project.
After our days on the sketchiest portion of the Sacramento, we beached the boat at a pleasant sandy spot. We were not too far from a small town whose sleepy streets hide behind an impenetrable jungle and a sizable levee. “I’d kill someone for a sandwich,” Benzy said. So, we hiked into town on what I dubbed the Dustiest Road in America, winding through thick forest, picking blackberries and helping ourselves to grapefruit from a tree’s overhanging branches. After a sad little sandwich at Princeton’s tiny bodega, we headed back with 20 lbs of ice for our little cooler. “And for cocktails!” Benzy said.
A guy named Mike overtook us and offered us a dusty pickup-truck tailgate ride back to the river. This old fella lives happily in this tiny forgotten river town and goes down to the river every day with his dog, Gus. Mike is one of a vanishing breed of river people.
We whiled away the rest of the day with the tart bite of ice-cold gin and tonic, a meditative hour with a cigar, a float in an inner tube to cool off, a good book in the sun that turned into an afternoon nap, and a simple dinner. Jeremiah, another member of our crew, was meeting us in Princeton that night. “I brought a few things,” he said, gesturing at his mountain of supplies and gear. We got a ride from Mike down the long, dusty road to the shantyboat. We celebrated Jeremiah’s arrival with bourbon and cards late into the night.
In the morning, Jeremiah, always one to take care of the hard work first, insisted we do a water run. Jeremiah and I hiked to the road, foraging for water to refill our freshwater tanks—two long trips carrying two heavy, 5-gallon containers. While we were gone, Benzy picked a bucket of blackberries for a pie.
Mike arrived for an interview with a local friend, Al, an avid gardener, who gave us a huge bounty from his garden: fresh tomatoes, onion, cucumber, and squash. I am always surprised by the generosity of strangers when we are on the river.
People give us rides into town and loan us cars. They let us do our laundry and take hot showers. They bring us fresh fruit and vegetables, home-baked bread, books and articles, beer, and, of course, they share their stories.
I talked to Mike about his living in the little town of Princeton, population 400, his love of fishing and hunting, and his passion for the river. We talked for a couple hours, with Al chiming in with unsolicited comments and details that Mike had missed.
Mike set Benzy up for fishing with minnows and showed her how to bait a hook for striper. She spent the next several hours working along the bank. “Y’all like craydads?” Mike asked, “You know, crayfish? Like little lobsters?”
“Never had ’em,” said Benzy, “but hell, yeah.” Mike presented us with a whole trap-full of crawdads pulled from a secret spot in the river.
It was getting on dusk when Benzy yelled out that she thought she had a fish. She fought it to the bank and wrestled it in, a hefty 18″ striper. So, we capped off our long day of work and play with surprising bounty, a huge meal prepared in our tiny galley, and devoured around our little table: fresh fish, boiled crayfish, and blackberry pie right out of our janky, collapsible stove-top oven.
After a few rounds of cards, we tumbled into our racks. For Jeremiah, it was a sleeping bag on the deck under mosquito netting. Benzy and I retired to the loft in the gable of the cabin, up under the tin roof, rocked to sleep by the gentle motion of the river.
The next day, accompanied by the sublime aromas of good strong coffee, sautéed onions, garlic, and potatoes, we headed back out onto the wild river. We let the shantyboat drift quietly downriver, slowly turning in the swirling current. We listened to birds and watched the rugged landscape drift slowly by, always keeping one eye on the river for what it might throw at us next.
Over the next week, we left the wild river behind and Jeremiah left us to return to work. We were nearing Colusa, one of the few towns of any size on our journey. It was a chance to resupply, do our laundry, and a bit of maintenance on the boat.
The electrical system under the rear deck was giving us problems. Like an RV, the boat has two batteries, one for starting the motor and one for powering a few lights, charging phones, and other stuff. But unlike an RV, all the wiring was homemade and cobbled together over the years. The house battery wasn’t charging and I wanted to know why. So as Benzy made margaritas and floated in the tube, reading, I spent an afternoon under the rear deck sweating and swearing. In the end, the problem was the battery itself, which we replaced in Colusa.
A TV news crew found us on the beach in Colusa and wanted to know about our boat and the project. The reporter stood onshore with the shantyboat in the background and made the inevitable Huck Finn comparison. We offered to take them out for a spin in the shantyboat and they made us do stupid tricks for the camera for an hour or so. Drop the anchor. Haul up the anchor. Repeat. I was reasonably sure the landlubber cameraman stumbling through the boat was going to end up in the river with his $10,000 broadcast camera. We were exhausted and relieved when the TV crew stepped ashore.
A guy who’d been following our travels loaned us an old pickup truck, so we had a chance to regain our land legs and cruise town in the evening, Credence Clearwater Revival blasting from the cassette stuck in the player. We stopped by a local watering hole, The Sportsmen, where locals were running amok on an otherwise quiet Tuesday night, dancing on the bar and loading up the jukebox with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
After Colusa, the jungle shores gave way to rocky revetments, beyond which golden fields and dusty orchards extended into the hazy distance. For the first time on our trip, there were other people on the river, pleasure boats and families out for a dip on a hot summer day. Some boaters were curious about the shantyboat and zoomed dangerously close to us, throwing up a huge wake with their deep-V hulls.
The barge-bottom of the shantyboat is extremely stable as boats go, but big waves can still knock things about and break our teacups. With just a foot of freeboard, water comes over our deck easily. Each time it happens, we note, with anger, that neither etiquette, caution, nor good sense are requisite for buying a big, fast, expensive boat. We are very grateful to the boaters who slow for our little craft.
We found a rope swing from an overhanging tree on the inside of a slow river bend. We brought the shantyboat in to shore and took time for a leisurely lunch of tuna melt with Al’s fresh tomato. Against our mother’s advice we swam right after lunch, and the rope swing shot us off the high bank over the river to splash down in deep water. If we didn’t swim ashore quickly, we’d end up downriver with the current.
The mid-river scenery offered less variety, but afforded us opportunities to quietly drift downstream and even bob alongside the boat on a blazing afternoon. Benzy continued to fish from the boat with limited success. Along with more houses on the riverfront, we started seeing abandoned piers and docks…old boats sitting on the muddy bottom or high and dry on the banks. We were intrigued by these. What was their story? Where had they been? Who did they ferry? Why were they left to rot or rust? We would never know.
As we passed the mouth of the American River, Sacramento appeared with its Old Town district along the river. Suddenly, here we were in the Big City. The historic riverside section looked exactly as it had in 1890, if they sold taffy and Sacramento Kings T-shirts in the 19th century. Though chock-a-block with tourists, it still had its charms. There were several brilliant museums, including a well-known railroad museum, good restaurants, and lots of places to check out. Benzy and I were two river hobos out on the town.
That first night, we tied up at a dock under the Tower Bridge. Settling in for the evening, we played cards and read a book aloud, and then turned in, but soon the crazy began with party boats pulling up to the dock with fireworks, loud music, and people wandering the dock. It was a Sacramento Old Town Dock Rave. There was a knock on the shantyboat in the middle of the night. Who could that be? It was a sweet guy who followed our journey and had taken his boat upriver from who-knows-where to find us and welcome us to the area. Deep in the night, we were startled awake by the sound of something large and heavy crashing down from the deck of the bridge and slamming against the pilings.
In the morning, we motored up the American River to see if we could find a quiet place to catch up on our sleep. A local park at the confluence of the American and Sac rivers is a popular place. Locals wade and frolic well out into the shallow water. Anglers anchor offshore with lines crisscrossing. We wove our way through the chaos. The waters of the American River are clearer and bluer than the muddy Sacramento, and since they come from melting snow in the Sierras, they’re colder too. Apparently, it is also a summer hangout for yachters. We discovered clumps of big boats rafted together full of partiers. There was a long line of boats rafted together gunwale-to-gunwale nearly across the whole river, an imposing yacht wall blasting Joe Walsh. Our shantyboat coming slowly upriver, looking for all the world like a floating chicken coop, did not fail to impress. We waved as the whole floating party appeared to check us out and politely declined offers to join the Yacht Wall.
Farther upriver, it was quieter. We were still in town, but the riverbanks were given over to wild and overgrown county parks. Oaks, willows, and cottonwoods shaded the banks. Thickets of elderberry and blackberries lined paths through the woods. There were folks squatting in little camps among the trees. Local kids were fishing, both young anglers with pro rigs and kids with makeshift strings tied to cane poles straight out of Huck Finn. We found a quiet bank in the sun, dropped a line in the water as well, and made coffee and breakfast of potatoes and cheesy grits.
We were near a rustic train bridge over the river and every few hours a freight train would woot over the bridge. We bathed in the river, Benzy played the banjo, and Hazel hunted ground squirrels tunneling in the bank. A couple putted by in a little boat and beached downriver. The fellow was sweeping a metal detector over the sandy bank. I talked to him for a bit.
Clyde was a treasure hunter and amateur archaeologist. He told us that he spends his free time on the shores of the American and Sacramento rivers hunting up treasures: old Chinese pottery and ceramic ware, metal bits and bobs from the Gold Rush era, and lots of bottles. “I have over a thousand bottles,” he said. “I’ve found every color—deep brown, cobalt blue, even old bottles that used to be clear, turned pink and purple by the sun.” In the short time I’d been watching him, he’d detected and dug up an old coin, an unidentified broken piece of speckled ceramic, and several rusty pieces of old iron. Clyde gave us the curious junk he didn’t want and we added it to our collection of odd river artifacts.
Another evening on the American River, we camped near a fellow in a neat compound a short walk from the shore. He was alternately sunbathing and organizing his camp. I had heard about the homeless camps along the American River north of town and was curious. The man’s name was Bar and he’d lived along the river for most of the last ten years. He shared a camp with another man who was getting on in years and needed Bar’s help. The local police knew Bar took care of the area and kept the “young bucks” out of trouble, so they told him that if he kept his camp clean they’d leave him alone. I sat down for a formal interview with Bar. His dark skin and bright eyes glowed handsomely in the sunset light.
He told me that about half of the folks who camped at the river were homeless because they struggled with mental illness or addiction, meth and alcohol being the most common. Bar himself had struggled with substances in the past and was clean now. “I feel for those people, but I don’t want to hang around them,” he said.
After our talk and some urging, Bar came over for a fish dinner at the shantyboat. He looked around and said, “Exactly right. You folks know how to live! Someday I’m gonna get myself something just like this.” Bar was a good neighbor, and we were sorry to say goodbye as we made way. I heard later that the cops had completely cleared out the camps along the river.
While we were in Sacramento, we exhibited the Secret History project with the Sacramento History Museum while docked along the Old Town waterfront below Joe’s Crab Shack. Hundreds of people braved the heat and came by to tour the boat and share their own river stories. One musician sat down with our banjo and played us a few old-timey tunes. Among the folks who found us there were a water-quality expert, a historian giving history tours of Sacramento, and a professional house restorer who offered to fix a cracked pane on the shantyboat and show us around town. Later, I interviewed these folks.
We needed to make one more stop in town to do a few interviews, and so Mark Miller, our new friend and window restorer, took us around to get groceries and ice. We stopped at Sacramento’s municipal marina where an apologetic attendant charged us an outrageous price to tie up for the night on an uncovered dock with no water and no electricity. Were we not so tired, we would have turned around to head back upriver to another marina.
Before we’d even had our coffee the next morning, we heard yelling. “Hey! Hey!” A lady was leaning out over the balcony of the swanky harbormaster’s office yelling, “Hey! This isn’t a public dock! You can’t just tie up there!” She was pointing at us. “You can’t tie up there,” she yelled.
From time to time, we’ve dealt with this kind of thing. We’ve had dockmasters say to our face, “You know, that’s not going to be welcome in any marina,” gesturing dismissively at our rustic boat. Fortunately, that’s the exception, not the rule. Most of the time, when marina staff discover our project and what we are doing, they refuse to let us pay.
This marina had lost our paperwork, and the woman working the office that morning thought we were squatting. We are certainly not above that, but we’d already paid too much for too little, and this lack of hospitality was over the top. We were still grumbling about it days later, joking in a screechy voice every time we docked, “Hey! You can’t tie up there!”
We were relieved to be out of the city. We had left the California capital, and the character of the river changed again. We had officially entered the Sacramento Delta, and we could feel it. The air smelled sharp and salty. The river got wide and sluggish and veered off into a maze of channels and sloughs. The sloughs had a different texture than that of the river. It was clear we were in a channel with rock revetment and high levees. A thin scrim of trees fringed the levee. At night it was ghostly and surreal.
We spotted old houseboats that we considered shantyboats, people living quiet lives—or at least weekends away—floating in unobtrusive corners of a forgotten slough. We never met anyone on these shantyboats and so we never learned their stories.
There were a good number of little marinas south of Sacramento that were little more than a few docks out in the river. Some looked posh, filled with big shiny yachts, and others looked forgotten by time. We stopped at one of the latter and found a collection of old houseboats and a legitimate shantyboat with a classic arched roof. The people aboard it said they’d had their boat in the marina for nearly a decade.
We stopped for a swim and a walk along a levee in Sutter Slough where we discovered that the interior of the island was an endless expanse of pear orchards. We felt obligated to pick a bag of pears as part of our research. Hazel was relieved to stretch her legs on land, and picked up no less than nine ticks. Were all the slough islands infested? We were horrified, but didn’t encounter the bugs elsewhere.
We heard that the nearby town of Courtland was having their annual Pear Festival, but small and large boats occupied every inch of available space on their public docks, most appearing not to have moved for decades. We attempted a tricky beach landing between trees in a brisk breeze. I was piloting and Benzy was trying to fend off hazards and set an anchor on shore at the same time. I got the shantyboat in an awkward position, and a big branch punched right through a kitchen window pane. We gave up on Courtland and headed downriver feeling stupid.
Our first stop on our Sacramento Delta tour was the town of Locke, a tiny town founded by Chinese who had helped build the railroad, then the delta levees, and finally worked as farm labor. This town retains its original rustic character and Chinese influence. Back in the day, Locke was a haven for bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution. An easy ride from Sacramento, it was where state politicians met to work out shady deals and let off steam. To be sure, it looks the same as it did in 1915 due to a century of neglect and poverty, a Byzantine net of historic preservation laws, and cooperative and occasionally conflicting ownership.
Mark came down from Sac to meet us for lunch. He immediately got to work on our broken window as well as ones that had been busted and covered for years. He introduced us to some of the folks in Locke, non-Chinese folks who’d befriended some of the original Chinese families and lived there for decades. My interviews included a photographer and oral historian who’d written a book about Locke.
As a Chinese community, Locke faces challenges. As the older generation of Chinese people die and younger generations move out of town, there are fewer and fewer Chinese people in Locke. The community viewed non-Chinese residents like Mark’s friends with suspicion until they slowly gained the trust of the community. Unfortunately, I never made a connection with any of the few Chinese families still living in Locke.
Docked near us was COMPASS ROSE, a former torpedo retriever, now a Sea Scout vessel with a crew of young mariners. Mark told us that he’d served in the Sea Scouts as a kid and plied the waters of the delta. Boy Scouts who reach high school can become either Eagle Scouts or Sea Scouts. The Sea Scouts are co-ed, a factor that helped Mark decide to join. He told us hilarious stories about his skipper, a hard-drinking Vietnam Vet and their ancient World War II ship. The crew of the Compass Rose gave us a tour of their ship from pilot house to engine room. We felt a warm kinship to these kids and all the nautical traditions they were steeped in.
Out on the river, the channels got wider and the reaches longer. The shantyboat was getting beat up by waves whipped up by the afternoon winds. Water sloshed over our decks, but our recently installed knee-knockers prevented waves from entering the door of the cabin. The tall shantyboat with its gable roof is a giant clumsy sail in a good wind. We resolved to get on the water earlier in the morning, but the call of a leisurely breakfast and several cups of coffee were always stronger than our sense of self-preservation.
Rather than brave the vicious winds of the Carquinez Strait to the San Francisco Bay, we opted to explore more of the Delta.
We chose a favorable wind and, from the Sacramento River, through a long cut, motored upriver on the San Joaquín. Vast reaches, long tidal flats, and insubstantial tidal islands covered in tule grass barely poking up above the water at high tide, gave the impression of a drowned world. With huge container ships moving both up and down river, we stayed out of the channel but the marshy levees afforded scant shelter from the wind. We couldn’t trust our NOAA maps. We were afraid we’d motor over an inundated island and stave in our hull on an old submerged fencepost. We were driving principally by instruments, navigating by compass, watching the depths on our electronic charts.
We stopped at a haphazard floating dock near some tumbledown fishing shacks to give Hazel a moment ashore and let us stretch our legs. On our short walk, the tide turned, putting us up-current from a menacing row of pilings and making getting under way more perilous than we expected. I started Freddie, and Benzy released the stern line. The moment she cast off the bow line and stepped aboard, I gunned Freddie before wind and tide could cast us into the jagged pilings.
We re-entered the maze of sloughs and silted-up cuts. This was the true delta, dotted with ancient marinas, secret coves, and endless tracts of tule-lined water.
Eleven hundred square miles of constantly fluctuating tidal and wind-blown wilderness. Our month-long journey had begun at the southern end of the Cascade Range, took us through California’s Great Central Valley, through the vast Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta, and brought us nearly to the sea; now it was time to bring an end to it. Consulting our maps, we liked the sound of Pirate’s Lair Marina just off the San Joaquin River. We spent a long afternoon carefully picking between tule islands and sprinting across long reaches, and landed at the palm-lined, green grass shores of Pirate’s Lair just in time for cocktail hour.
Wes Modes is a California artist focused on social practice, sculpture, performance, and new media work. A Secret History of American River People is an art and history project, conducted over a series of epic river voyages, that gathers and presents the oral histories of people who live and work on major American rivers from the deck of a re-created 1940s-era shantyboat.
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.
To do good work you need good tools. Some tools you can’t readily find in a store, and a proper riveting hammer is one of them. Happily, it’s not hard to make your own fine hammer. Rivet hammers come with cross-peen or ball-peen heads. This hammer’s head is fashioned from 5/8″ stainless-steel rod, the handle is turned from a 12″ chunk of 1-3/4″ square maple, and the wedge that flares the handle in the head is a sliver of ironwood.
Work the metal head first. I start by drilling a 3/16″ pilot hole for the handle. Make a dimple with a center punch to keep the bit from wandering and clamp the rod to the drill press table.
Make adjustments as necessary to keep the bit straight and vertical. Follow the pilot hole with a 3/8″ bit. Next, round the end of the rod with a grinding disc on an angle grinder and smooth with a file and/or 80-grit sandpaper. Then, with a cutting disc in the grinder, cut the rod to length and finish off the flat side of the head. Remember that the steel gets hot after drilling, grinding, and especially cutting.
I used a lathe to turn the hard-maple handle. Hickory, oak, and ash are also suitable. Commonly, riveting hammers have slightly contoured straight handles, but the one I use has the bulbous handle of a chasing hammer, another type of metalworking hammer that does its work with light, repeated strikes. As the neck of the handle is pencil-thin for flexibility, a tight, straight grain is essential. The pencil-thin shaft of a ball-peen hammer I made 25 years ago has set thousands of copper rivets and will easily outlast me. Though I turned my handle on a lathe, you could do a fine job sawing out a blank and shaping with chisel, spokeshave, and files. Hammer handles are like chicken soup—there are a lot of recipes that make really good soup.
Using a fine-kerf saw, cut a slot parallel with the grain for the wedge. Finally, choose a wedge from maple, hickory, or a dense tropical wood. Oak and ash tend to crumble or split.
Fine-tune the fit of the handle and gently get the wedge and hammer head started. Orient the handle so the grain runs parallel to the head. Rest the assembly head down, straddling two wood blocks or an open vise, and tap the bottom of the handle with a mallet to start seating the head. Flip the hammer head-up and tap in the wedge a bit. Continue this upside-down, right-side-up tapping, gradually increasing the power of your blows, until the head is solidly seated. Trim the handle and wedge proud of the head.
As the drier air of winter descends, you may need to set the wedge a bit deeper. It’s good to have the option. Finish the wooden handle however you like. I use a mix of tung oil, varnish, and turpentine and occasionally rub on a coat of wax.
My hammer weighs just 7 oz. Copper rivets require light tapping to head them without distorting their shanks, and a small, light hammer is the best tool for the job. About 20 or 30 raps with the ball-peen flares a 14-gauge rivet, and a few final taps with the flat end seats and smooths the mushroomed head.
Tom DeVries and his wife Tina live in New Braintree, Massachusetts. Now that both of their kids are off to college, he spends more time in Beyond Yukon Boat and Oar, his woodworking shop, and imagines that away he and Tina will be spending more time together fishing, paddling, and sailing in little boats. In years gone by, Tom has pirogued on the Congo, canoed on the Yukon, fished commercially in Alaska, and sailed his skipjack on the Chesapeake.
Editor’s Notes:
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