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.
Photographs by the author
Sea trials with SADIE showed that trim improved when some of the passengers moved from the cockpit into the cuddy cabin.
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 cuddy cabin was designed with cruising in in mind, and the drawings indicate sleeping arrangements for two. The arrangement here is unique to SADIE and intended for day use.
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.
A 50-hp outboard was designer’s the original recommendation for power; many builders found a 60-hp motor works well. The transom is designed for a 20″ shaft, though modifying it for a different length wouldn’t be difficult.
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.
A deadrise of about 45 degrees at the forefoot cuts through chop; at the stern the deadrise flattens to 11 degrees for stability’s sake.
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.
The position of the wheel doesn’t give the helmsman room enough on the cockpit sole for a wide and stable stance, so the boat will soon be fitted with a bolted-down seat. The sole is above the waterline, so it is self-bailing.
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.
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!
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.
Lorena Brown
The 70-sq-ft lug sail performs well to windward, as evidenced by GPS tracks showing the Morbic 11 tacking through 90 degrees.
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.
Lorena Brown
The stern-sheets’ center panel is removable to allow the oars to be tucked under the center thwart and stored in the bottom of the boat. Magnets hold the panel in place.
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.
Lorena Brown
After the lugsail’s yard is hoisted, the halyard is cleated and the downhaul—a gun tackle with a 3-to-1 advantage and a cam cleat on the daggerboard trunk—tensions the sail.
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.
Lorena Brown
A taut luff is the key to getting the best from a lugsail. Having a powerful downhaul that’s handy to the helmsman makes maintaining tension easy.
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.
Matthew Putegnat
With its light weight, the Morbic 11 comes up to speed easily. When sail is set, the oars stow neatly inboard.
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.
Lorena Brown
A loop of bungee holds the kick-up rudder blade down but lets it pivot over obstructions. A cord on the back side of the rudder stock runs through a shackle to make it easier to pull the blade up when approaching a beach. The sculling notch is offset to allow sculling while the rudder is in place.
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.
All photographs by the author
With NEWT in tow, I drove about 450 miles from my home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to get to the Missouri River. I stopped in Cadillac, a shadow of the boom times 80 years ago. Dilapidated buildings, wrecked cars, and an abandoned grain elevator slumber along a highway that runs from horizon to horizon through the yellow and green fields of grain. I was happy to get a tank of gas from the part-time station proprietor/farmer wearing a John Deere hat.
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.
Roger Siebert
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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 launched in the rain at the Wood Bottom Campground. When I returned at the end of the week, I found the road barricaded and the parking lot flooded. I just barely retrieved my car and trailer.
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.
With water above and water below, I cowered under my spray skirt trying to stay dry. I approached the Virgelle Ferry, here idle on the far bank, and passed beneath the overhead cable it travels along, just visible through 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.
NEWT, buttoned up and protected from the river’s main current, would spend the night at Coal Bank Landing on her own.
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.
My five-star accommodation at Coal Bank Landing was a utility room that Casey, the camp steward, let me use for the night. The concrete floor, as hard and as cold as it was, made for a better accommodations than a soggy tent in the rain.
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.
After my night in the utility room at Coal Bank Landing I woke up and checked the extent of the rising river’s flooding, as well as the foggy morning I had ahead of me.
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.
Citadel Rock is a granite spire that rises above the softer sandstone that surrounds it. The churning brown water is littered with the debris that the rising river has plucked from its banks.
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.
Tucking into a snug backwater inlet with snacks and a good book was a great way to spend an idle afternoon.
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.
Homemade French bread with canned tuna and mustard was one of my favorite lunches. The scenery certainly helped make the meal fine cuisine.
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.
Rain wasn’t threatening so the tent went up without the rainfly. The rock on the opposite bank provided a good way to keep tabs on the river’s water level.
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.
Across from a primitive but popular campground at Eagle Creek, white cliffs tower over the riverbanks.
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.
I pulled ashore at Hole in the Wall, a pierced sandstone cliff set back from the river’s edge. I tried to climb to the cliff, but wasn’t able to scramble up the steep and crumbling slope.
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’m standing on the eponymous flat rock at Flat Rock; it’s normally surrounded by a sandy beach and used as a camping table, but was almost awash in the high water.
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.
At Flat Rock, I had NEWT nestled against the shore, and hiding from drifting debris behind a small dam that I built to deflect the larger logs. That didn’t keep me from being rocked by the turbulent current during my stay that night.
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.
After I braved a herd of aggressive cattle, I had an expansive view of the river valley. My campsite is in the center, nestled among the cottonwood trees.
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.
In the morning, NEWT was still in camping mode as I got ready for the final run to the take-out at Judith Landing. The gentle slope of the bank here made it quite easy to get in and out of the boat, so I was able to get away quickly.
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.
When I got to the end of the trip it occurred to me that I hadn’t taken my red sweater off the entire week. It was time for a shower.
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.
The larger screen is much easier to read than the screen of a handheld GPS. The box makes the unit self contained and portable. As with other marine GPS units, you can load it with waypoints, employ the man-overboard functions, and save tracks and routes. This unit also has inputs for engine diagnostics and wind instruments.
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.
The Pelican case has some small holes meant for padlocks but will fit a 1/4” dowel that holds the lid at angle for easy viewing. The components inside the box are all waterproof, so there’s no harm in having them exposed to the elements. A couple of 2’ hanks of parachute cord go into the case for lashing it into place.
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.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Monthly readers by sending us an email.
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.
Photographs by the authors
For power boats that carry their maximum beam well aft, the guide posts are best placed at the back of the trailer. All of our boats tuck in at the stern, so we attach guide posts closer to the middle of the trailer to center the boat as the bow comes home at the winch. The lights added to these posts supplement rather than replace the tail lights that are built into the trailer and, as required by law, illuminate the license plate.
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.
For our double-decker trailers, we’ve bolted crossbars to the guide posts, but to make this trailer more easily convertible, we cut slots in the PVC-pipe covers and installed galvanized eye bolts in the guide posts. Lashing the crossbars takes just a few minutes. This works for light boats; bolted brackets are stronger and best for heavier loads on the upper deck.
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 belts I’ve purchased for the sander range from 40- to 1000-grit. The belts are uncommon at hardware and home improvement stores, but readily available from online sources. They cost about $1.50 apiece when bought in multiples.
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.
The cover slips off for changing belts. The large drive wheel was out of round but easy enough to fix. The wheel at the back is mounted on a pivot; a spring pushing against he wheel tensions the sanding belt.
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.
I put a chisel edge on the tip of a file to use as a lathe tool to true the drive wheel. The ledge in the frame served as a tool rest.
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 keeps the belt straight for working flat surfaces.
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.
The unsupported portion of the belt works curved surfaces without leaving facets.
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.
One assortment of belts for sharpening included a leather strop and buffing compound. They finish the job of sharpening and put a high shine on metal.
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 once summed up what drew him to building boats: “Wooden boats are just classy.” While that may not always be true, his canoe proved that a good design in the hands of a skillful builder is sure to be a class act.
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.
Photographs by Jon Wiegand
Bands of steel are placed where each rib will go and will turn the points of the canoe tacks that fasten the planking. What appears to be a keel will hold the ribs tight against the hull while they’re being bent.
Freshly steamed ribs are slipped under the bar above the centerline and wrapped around the steel bands. The cleats spanning pairs of ribs are screwed to the form to keep the ribs from arching upward.
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.
Much of the planking can be applied with very little trimming to achieve a tight edge-to-edge fit, and because the planks will be covered with canvas, there’s no need for lining-off planks for appearance’s sake.
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.
After being lifted from the form, which is now leaning against the wall, the hull has temporary cross spalls to hold it in its proper shape. The last of the planking can now be applied.
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.
With the hull pulled off the form, you can see that all of the points of the canoe tacks are bent and well buried in the ribs.
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 filler that’s used to smooth the canvas skin takes weeks to dry. Before it was applied, the canvas at the stern was trimmed, tucked under, and sealed with a bit of caulking before being tacked to the transom.
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.
With the filler finally dry, the canoe takes its final coatings of paint.
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 rare find: a 1953 outboard in mint condition.
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 well-preserved 65-year-old outboard motor is a good match for Jon’s newly launched canoe.
Jon followed the advice of Spring River Boatworks and installed folding outrigger rowlocks. They each add 4″ to the span, allowing the use of longer oars for a more comfortable stroke.
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.
Windows on the south side of the WEC building provide a view of the old boatshop, nearest, and CWB. At the far left, Lake Union extends to the north.
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.
A corner of the main floor is open for projects that can be done outside during fair weather.
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.
The new boatshop is up and running with new construction, refinishing, and repair all going on at the same time.
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.
Funding obtained for the WEC included a generous budget for new tools. The shop was even given a gift of old hand tools collected by a CWB member.
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.
At the main entrance, there is a shop carrying a wide selection of books and magazines, including Small Boats 2019 in the the upper right-hand corner of the rack bearing the CWB burgees. The stairway at left is made with treads cut from the keel timbers of WAWONA.
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.
To provide a point of reference, here’s the old boatshop. A lot of boats have been built and repaired here, but there’s only room for one at a time.
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.”
Photographs by the author
The mainsail, rolled around its yard, fits neatly to one side and below the level of the gunwales, leaving the center free for a rower and a passenger or two.
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.
The St. Ives here has two rowing stations rigged with removable tholepins. The oars, as is customary for double tholes, are without collars, requiring a bit more skill from the rower than oars with collars used in oarlocks.
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.
The rudder isn’t in place at the moment, but if it were, it wouldn’t interfere with sculling because the notch in the transom is set to port. The notch is circular with an opening at the top wide enough to accept the throat of the oar, but too narrow to let the leathers slip through. The arrangement keeps the oar from slipping free, handy when sculling or when using the oar as a stand-in for the rudder, as seen here.
“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 loose-footed lugsail makes setting sail as simple as it can be. The mainsheet runs through a rope-stropped block with an eye that slips over thumb cleats, one on either quarter, close to the transom. A second block at the clew gives the skipper a 2:1 advantage.
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.”
Lacking a centerboard, the punt doesn’t take well to being sheeted in too hard when working to windward.
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.
Photographs and video by the author
The 37 steam-bent frames give a traditionally planked hull the look and appeal of the double-paddle canoes of the 19th century. Glued-plywood lapstrake construction has the advantage of a more easily maintained interior.
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.
The double-bladed paddle described in the plans is 8′ long and has a blade 21″ by 6″. A 1-1/4″ copper tube is suggested as a means of joining the two halves—feathered left, right, or unfeathered— but not as a take-apart paddle. In the one-piece feathered version that Tom, pictured here, built, the two halves are permanently scarfed together.
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.
Weighing less than 20 lbs, a Stickleback is an easy carry.
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.
At its designed waterline, the Stickleback draws 4-1/4″, and with 220 lbs aboard, it needs not quite 6″ of water to float free of the bottom.
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.
The gunwales amidships are low and close in, well out of the way of a relaxed stroke.
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.
While the plans call for a backrest fixed to the arched thwart, leather hinges assure you get the broadest area of support and have no edge pressing against you.
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.
Running between 3 and 4 knots, the canoe can cover ground quickly and provide good exercise.
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.
Tom Regan
While speed isn’t going to be a strong point for any canoe under 11′ long, the Stickleback can move smartly, track well, and maintain its stability when pushed hard.
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 this version looks like strictly traditional construction, there are a couple of significant differences. The planking laps are epoxied, so there are no copper clench nails between frames. The nails visible here are fastened to only a few locations on the frames and elsewhere the frames float. When the yellow cedar planking absorbs water and swells slightly, the planks can move away from the frames rather than strain at fastenings and tear at the laps.
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
Open canoe option
Decked option
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.
Photographs by and courtesy of Wes Modes except where noted
Our departure from Red Bluff was delayed by repairs to our outboard motor. Word about our stay near the ramp got out and we had a lot of visitors.
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.
Having spent the night near the town of Corning, about 25 miles downriver from Red Bluff, we got ready to get underway again.
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.
The visitors we welcomed aboard often gave us a wealth of local knowledge that we could add to our charts. We interviewed many of them to get their stories about life on the river.
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.
Roger Siebert
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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.
With the skiff pulled ashore and the shantyboat tethered to the banks, our home for the night is bathed in the warm glow of kerosene lanterns.
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.
Mike Garofalo
The town of Colusa is all but hidden by the levee that separates it from the river. Two water towers at the edge of town, towering above the trees, mark the best place to come ashore.
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.
With our aluminum johnboat, Benzy and I could leave the shantyboat on the river and make quick explorations of out-of-the way backwaters.
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.
Mike Garofalo
Leaving Colusa, we caught glimpses of the Sutter Buttes, the remains of a single ancient volcano that are now known as the World’s Smallest Mountain Range.
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.
Mike Garofalo
The rusty corrugated roof might give the impression that our shantyboat came from an earlier generation, but it was built from reclaimed materials and had a patina of age even before it was first launched. On the roof over the stern deck are the bicycles we use to get around on land.
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.
Benzy quickly took to fishing and got quite good at it. This 24″ catfish made a tasty and ample meal at dinnertime.
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.
A cool swim was a welcome relief on a hot day at anchor. We had to keep a close eye on the river. If we weren’t careful and strayed from the still backwaters we could get swept downstream by the current.
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.
I welcomed the rising sun after a quiet night on Sutter Slough. Kilts are well suited to summer travel aboard the shantyboat.
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.
Walnut Grove is 27 miles from the mouth of the Sacramento. This public dock is a good place to stop—it’s right across the street from a pizzeria, an ice-cream shop, and the cafe where we had breakfast.
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.
A common ball-peen can be tiring for the user and, if it has a head that is too heavy, it can buckle a rivet’s shaft within the wood pieces it’s joining. Tom DeVries made riveting hammers to do a tedious job more effectively.
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.
Tom DeVries
The bulbous handles on these shop-made riveting hammers are a feature common to chasing hammers, which are used to emboss sheet metal. Their handles are shaped to ease the fatigue of lightly tapping chasing punches for hours on end, a task similar to peening copper rivet heads.
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.
Tom DeVries
The author’s sketch provides dimensions for the hammer’s handle, head, and wedge.
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:
Christopher Cunningham
For the hammer head, I cut the ends off a 5-1/2″ x 5/8″ bolt that I bought for a couple of dollars at a hardware store. That left me with a 3-1/2″ tempered steel rod. The bolt had a zinc plating, so I sanded that off with a belt sander equipped with a 150-grit belt. The wood I used was a locust windfall I gathered a few years ago. Chasing hammers often have handles made from fruitwoods.
Christopher Cunningham
Using Tom’s sketch and one of his hammers as a guide, I turned a handle with bulbous grip that is slightly longer and skinnier than Tom’s. I wanted to have two different shapes so I could explore my preference.
Christopher Cunningham
For my first hammer, I made a cross-peen head instead of a ball-peen. It’s better suited to small projects that I can rotate underneath the hammer to spread the impacts evenly. A ball-peen has the advantage working in a boat because the hammer can be used in whatever orientation is most convenient.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Monthly readers by sending us an email.
The tempered-steel guide has holes precisely sized to allow bits to spin freely and without wobbling.
I can count on my drill press to drill holes square to the workpiece, but there’s a limit to the size of what I can put on its table. I have a device that attaches to a hand-held electric drill; it has a round base, two vertical steel rods, and a chuck-equipped slider that’s guided by the rods. It works, but it’s cumbersome to use, and often too bulky for the jobs I need it to do. I’ve made a lot of wooden guide blocks on my drill press, but they get chewed up quickly with use and become less accurate as the hole I’ve drilled in each of them widens.
The groove on the bottom straddles corners and cylinders to align the guide. The wooden guide here is one I made before buying the V-DrillGuide. Having served its purpose—drilling a single hole for a lag bolt—it’s on its way to the fireplace.
The day before after I happened upon the V-DrillGuide on the web, I had made a wooden block guide for drilling a pilot hole for a lag bolt to support a bathroom shelf I’d made. That guide was, like all the others that preceded it, destined for the pile of wood scraps that would go into the fireplace on a cold evening. The V-DrillGuide looked like a much longer-lasting tool.
It comes in several sizes for both metric and imperial drills. I bought the 1/8″ to 3/8″ tool with 17 holes in 1/64″ increments. It’s made of steel that’s heat-treated for durability. I tried drilling a hole in it with an 1/8” bit and its tip just skated across the surface leaving only a faint scratch that is barely visible and almost undetectable to the touch.
Clamped to a flat surface, the guide keeps the bit on target. The hashmarks on the bottom edge of the guide are aids to placement.
The guide is 5-1/2″ long and 3/4″ wide at the largest hole. The markings are imprinted so they’ll never wear away. Even the fine print on the side is etched into the steel to make it permanent. Those instructions note: “Never hold the V-DrillGuide by hand when drilling—Always clamp V-DrillGuide securely before drilling any holes.”
The smaller bits, up to 1/4″, quickly bore into wood and stabilize themselves so with them I’m comfortable holding the guide by hand and the results are fine. Larger bits cause the guide to wobble as their tips start to get buried. I’ve achieved good results by locating the bit on the mark, getting the hole started, and then setting the bit up with the guide.
Even though the grove on the bottom is not quite 3/8″ wide, it aligns the guide perfectly when clamped to this 2-1/2″ pipe.
The V-notch on the bottom is about 3/8″ wide and parallel sided so the guide is self-aligning on round objects. Pipes and dowels lend themselves to clamping so that’s the best way to proceed. I was surprised that the narrow notch worked so well on 2-1/2″ pipe. Clamping the guide put it in perfect alignment.
Clamping the guide to the edge of a wide board would require special arrangements for a clamp, but the guide is steady enough on corners to be held by hand.
The groove fits right-angled corners, and with square stock, clamping is easy. Wide boards are awkward to clamp, but holding the guide by hand is enough to make it quite steady, even with a 3/8″ bit. I can’t think of a time when I needed to drill into a corner, but if the task ever comes up, I’ll be ready for it.
The guide is also useful for sizing drill bits. Even if the jaws of my drill chucks haven’t smeared the size markings on a bit, they’re hard to read. Finding the hole that fits on the V-DrillGuide is a quick way to sort a bunch of loose bits.
The packaging for the V-DrillGuide has the red “As seen on TV” logo; I might have found my way to the tool sooner, but I cut my cable and got rid of my TV years ago. I’m happy to have it in my toolbox now. Better late than never.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly.
To get the best from our small boats we like to keep them shipshape. We often beach launch and have sand and water to clean up after returning to shore, so to make the chore easier we bought a Porter Cable Cordless 20V Max 2-Gallon Wet/Dry Vac. It does a great job, and we have been pleasantly surprised with many other jobs that it takes care of in our shop and home.
The vacuum weighs just 7-1/4 lbs (without battery) and is very portable. The 7′8″ hose is sturdy and flexible, and wraps neatly around the power head when not in use. A crevice tool stores in the power head and a wide-nozzle tool stores on the side of the tank. The battery clips into the end of the power head.
Kent and Audrey Lewis
The vacuum carries a crevice nozzle in the handle and a battery on one end of the case. When not in use, the wide nozzle here clips into a recess in the other end and the hose snaps into hollows around the whole case.
One of our favorite uses for the Vac is cleaning up sanding dust left over from fairing a hull. It can also collect dust when its hose is attached to our random-orbit sander. With the hose switched to the exhaust port, we use the Vac as a blower to get debris out of bilges or to test the Sunfish sailboats that we restore for air leaks.
You can quickly convert the Vac from dry mode to wet by unlocking the two latches on the power head, removing the large, washable air filter, and replacing the head. The 34-cubic-feet-per-minute suction makes quick work of the bilgewater in our Penobscot 14; it will fill the tank in a couple of minutes.
The vacuum is quieter than a regular shop vac, and its small size makes it easy to store and to move between our different saws. There is no bag to dump, so it’s quick to empty. The 1-1/4″ hose will fit common vacuum accessories; a soft brush head is a good addition to the provided attachments.
The 20V lithium-ion battery and charger have to be purchased separately. We bought two 1.5-Ah batteries; they have about 20 minutes of run time and take 40 minutes to charge. The charger has LED lights to indicate charge status and overload protection so batteries can stay in the charger indefinitely. Larger 2-Ah and 4-Ah batteries with longer run times are available, and they all work with other Porter Cable 20V tools. The battery power is our favorite feature—no electrical cords around wet boats! We liked the Vac so much in the shop that we bought a second one for the house to do small jobs such as cleaning stairs and dewatering air-conditioner drains.
Kent and Audrey have a small fleet of boats, canoes, and kayaks to maintain after spending time on their home waters in Florida. They log their adventures on their blog Small Boat Restoration.
The Max 2-Gallon Wet/Dry Vac is available from various retailers. Prices vary widely, from $49.99 to about $79.99. Batteries and charger, which power a number of Porter Cable cordless tools, must be purchased separately.
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.
Middle schoolers have the privilege of taking MSS BROOKWOOD out rowing on Cutler Pond on the edge of the school grounds.
Halfway between Swampscott and Gloucester on the Massachusetts North Shore is Brookwood, a private school serving students from pre-kindergarten to the eighth grade. Located in an area with a rich maritime history, it was, perhaps, inevitable that boatbuilding would work its way into the school’s curriculum. The idea had been floating around the school’s faculty for a few years and when one of the school’s classrooms was scheduled to be vacant during the 2015/2016 school year, the space was available for a workshop.
Sven Holch and his fellow fourth- and fifth-grade teachers took the opportunity to introduce 90 students to “design thinking and project-based learning” under the guise of hands-on boatbuilding. The students were divided into nine “watches” with maritime names like Stellwagen, after the Stellwagen Bank fishing grounds. Every week, each watch would gather in the Boatyard, as the classroom had been named, ready to do some boatbuilding.
The design chosen for the build was the 9′ canvas-on-frame double-ended tender designed and built by Ned MacIntosh back in the 1940s when he and his wife were living aboard their Atkin cutter STAR CREST in Panamanian waters. The boat caught on among other cruisers, especially after Ned added a sailing rig. Soon there was a fleet of about 20 of them. When STAR CREST returned home to New Hampshire Ned made more of these lightweight tenders. Maynard Bray, an author of many books on boatbuilding and a frequent contributor to WoodenBoat, saw the tender, took a liking to it, and measured one of them to create drawings to work from to build one for himself. His plans were the starting point for the Brookwood project.
Boatbuilding was new territory not only for the students but also for some of the teachers who participated in the project. “We’re all starting from ground zero,” said Sven. “Building a boat together is the perfect place to practice not knowing anything. We’re using the boatbuilding project as a way to teach about learning styles—metacognition. The kids can think about their thinking at this age.”
From the very beginning, the students kept journals documenting their progress:
“Today I learned about a stern. At first I thought that it was the front of the boat but I learned that it was the back of a boat.”
“Today I also built replicas of the boat. They were nine inches. We had to scarf the stringers. We had to cover it with paper. And use popsicle sticks to make seats.”
The hands-on project gave student real-world connections to academic studies. “The math, science and classic STEM curricula tie to the project in numerous ways,” Sven noted, “including but not limited to displacement, angles, scale, joinery, characteristics of water, measurement and more.”
The canvas boat has held up well for the three years it has been used by students to practice rowing on the school’s pond.
The boat was launched on Cutler Pond, situated between the school and its soccer fields, and christened MSS BROOKWOOD in a ceremony led by Head of School Laura Caron, made Admiral of the fleet for the occasion. The MSS stands for Middle School Ship. Students took turns rowing around a duck-sized schoolhouse—complete with a Brookwood-style cupola—that floats in the middle of the pond. Rowing became the next learning opportunity after the boatbuilding.
The boat’s bow bears the heron from the school’s logo. The pond is a good habitat for herons, so the school chose it as its symbol when the school was founded in 1956. This version is now “old school,” as the logo was updated this summer.
Since its launching, MSS BROOKWOOD continues to rule the pond unchallenged and hasn’t leaked a drop.
I first met Phil Thiel in 2009. My son Nate had just graduated from high school and was eager to build a boat, so we decided upon Phil’s 18′6″ Escargot canal boat. We paid a visit to him at his home, only a half dozen miles from ours, and he led us to his basement shop where he had his stock of plans, all stored in cardboard tubes. Over that summer, I coached Nate and his friend Bobby through the build and kept Phil up to date with the progress.
I continued to keep in touch with him after BONZO, a slightly modified Escargot, was launched in October. Phil was ill, with no hope of recovery, so I visited with increasing frequency, offering to help in any way I could; I had several of his plans sets scanned so they’d more easily made available. I had lost my father suddenly the year before, so I knew how important my remaining time with Phil would be. When I was offered this job, working with WoodenBoat as the editor of Small Boats Monthly, I knew how happy that my father would have been for me, but he was gone. I told Phil, and I got the smile I needed from him.
I was with Phil, his family, and a few friends when he passed away on the evening of May 10, 2014. Since then I have had the privilege of visiting Phil’s shop and have kept in touch with his family—wife Midori and children Kenji, Tamiko, and Kiko. It is with their kindness that I can share a few glimpses of my absent friend.
You could say Phil’s shop is “organically” organized. His tools and materials aren’t separated into categories, they’re intertwined like the roots of a tree, and the juxtapositions—waxed paper, an old brass scale, and a padlock, or tarred marline, a trailer ball, and toothpicks—have an engaging, even poetic quality. Over his home’s front door, there is a sentence, one of many written in all caps in white chalk on the dark exposed ceiling beams, that reads: “A LOT OF WHAT I DO GROWS OUT OF WHAT I’M DOING.” The shop fosters that sense of unexpected possibilities and is fertile ground for the imagination.
Phil bought this machinist’s lathe, used, on November 24, 1987. It’s a South Bend C9-10JR, manufactured in South Bend, Indiana. Its original owner purchased it in 1949. The headstock needed some work and a few parts were missing, so Phil wrote to the manufacturer on January 9, 1988, beginning with: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I have recently achieved a life-long ambition and at age 67, a few weeks before retirement from teaching, acquired a South Bend Lathe.” The motor, here hidden from view, delivers power to the lathe with a flat leather belt, seen on a three-step pulley.
For woodturning projects there is a small lathe driven by a motor mounted underneath the workbench. Here, it has a sanding disc attached to the headstock and a wooden table on the tool rest. His daughters have fond childhood memories of spending time in their father’s shop using this lathe.
The anvil was made from a section of railroad track and fastened to a short timber. It was portable and could be set on the basement’s concrete floor rather than a workbench, which would bounce and rattle everything else on the bench top.
The pedal drive in Phil’s Sanpram required a propeller specifically designed for modest power and a peddler doing about 60 rpm, so Phil designed a wooden prop of stacked plywood. The pattern for the plywood rests on the workbench. Stair-stepping the pieces according to the marks on the paper pattern creates the proper pitch. The long cone on the finished prop reduces drag.
Phil made a lot of paper models as he developed his designs. This one appears to be the 22’9″ Joliboat. He used a similar angled roof as an option to provide more headroom in the L’Ark version of the Escargot. The drawing below is a freehand sketch of the 22’9″ Friendship.
Phil kept busy right up to his last days. This is his desk as he left it. I haven’t been able to figure out what his last drawing was about.
For all his technical prowess, Phil never went digital with his work. He did all of his drawings by hand, inked them flawlessly, and then taped pieces together to make masters to be photocopied. The year before he passed away, I took the originals drawings for his small wooden boats to a copy shop and scanned them. The digital files will assure the survival of his work and make his boats more easily and widely available. The red stamp has a propeller and bicycle pedals joined and set inside a circle. It’s an indication of Phil’s interest in Japanese culture. In Japan, a Kamon is a symbol of one’s clan and has been used since the 12th century. It’s like a European family crest but with a broader set of relationships. Designs in circles are a common form of Kamon. Phil had another circular symbol—a snail, set on ripples of water, with SERENDIPITY written in an arc to complete the circle. His serendipitous snail is a reminder to go slow while boating and to leave yourself open to chance.
Sitting on ledge near the drafting table is a stack of paper models: a tombstone-transom dory at left and a double ender sitting in a pram at right. The two long models at the bottom are for the 15′ 7″ Skiffcycle, one of the smallest of Phil’s “pedal-powered boats for the flâneur-afloat” and designed for a commercial Sea-Cycle drive. Phil’s graph plotting boat speed and pedal rpm shows the Skiffcycle reaching 5 1/2 mph, though Phil, a flâneur himself, wouldn’t dream of rushing about at such a pace, missing all of the sights, sounds, and scents to be taken in at a more leisurely pace. On at least one occasion, he furrowed his brow when I told him I usually paddled my kayak at 6 mph.
Models for the 15′ 4″ Aphasia (left), designed in 2006, and the 12′ 4″ Sanpram, designed in 2011, are resting on drawings for the Escargot. The Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle has had the first-built Aphasia in its rental fleet for many years and it’s the most popular boat in the fleet. It is equipped with two Sea-Cycle pedal drives, making the boat extremely maneuverable. With one drive pedaled forward and the other in reverse, it can spin around in its own length. The Sea Cycle drives are expensive, so for the Sanpram, Phil designed a drive for the do-it-yourselfer. Bicycle pedals and cranks turn large pulleys and V-belts transfer the power to a small pulley and an idler on the propeller shaft. The propeller is made of stacked plywood, like the one on his workbench.
Phil kept the tools he treasured most in a locked file cabinet. This is the first time the drawer has been opened since his passing. In the wooden box to the left is a proportional divider. To its right are two dial opisometers, or curvimeters, for measuring lengths long curved lines. I don’t know what the three devices with handles are. The black one to the right, made by Nikkor, has a lens that provides a fisheye view. The two with wooden handles are Phil’s home-made versions using wide-angle door viewers for lenses. The leather case at the bottom holds one of many slide rules.
I only knew what this was because I have one was passed down from my grandfather, a civil engineer. It’s a polar planimeter used to measure the area of shapes on a drawing. The top arm has a pin with a weighted disk to hold it in place. The other arm has a pointer that is used to trace the shape’s perimeter. The cylinder on the lower left has a polished steel wheel that both rolls and slides as the pointer moves. By some miracle, the area shows on the scale when the outline is complete. The planimeter can be used in boat design, for example, to measure the areas of hull cross sections.
This second model of the Aphasia was Phil’s most recent development of the design and did away with the expensive Sea-Cycle drives, adopting instead the DIY system of the Sanpram. I found the remains of two moths in the cockpit, the only passengers to ever get aboard the redesigned boat.
There are no markings in this half hull. Phil did some work designing commercial vessels and this may be one of them. It hangs in a room adjoining the shop, a windowless room lined with bookshelves.
Among the models in the shop is a steel passenger ship of unknown origin (Identified by a reader as the SS Tacoma. See Clayton Wright’s comments below.) and a freighter with a nesting barge. As I recall from my conversations with Phil, he designed the freighter while working as a naval architect. The idea was to create a system where cargo carried by two different means did not have to be reloaded. It’s like the freight trains that carry trailers or containers that are also hauled by truck or by ship. A barge used for inland waters could be floated aboard this purpose-built sea-going vessel.
Phil did a lot of international travel and has bookshelves full of photo albums and file cabinets full of slides. His interest in boats of all kinds is evident in his photographs.
Hidden in the library was this painting. On the back is written in Phil’s hand: “Philip Thiel, late ’40s, early ’50s while student at M.I.T.” His oils were applied quite thickly, giving the painting rich texture. I knew he could draw well, but this was the first indication I’d had that Phil was, among everything else, a talented painter with an exceptional feel for color and free-flowing forms. It was a side of him that I discovered only after he was gone.
Henry Rushton, of Canton, New York, was a preeminent boatbuilder in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Living and working between the St. Lawrence River and the Adirondack wilderness, and his skill in designing, building, and marketing small boats allowed him a long career. Rushton may be best remembered today for his lightweight cedar canoes. His Wee Lassie is still a popular hull design built in all manner of methods. Maybe less well known these days are his pulling boats. According to Atwood Manley in Rushton and His Times in American Canoeing, rowing craft accounted for the bulk of his trade.
Photographs by the author
In the original boat, the planks were clench-nailed to the frames through the laps. Here they are riveted. A single copper clench nail secures the laps between frames. These planks have glued scarfs; the drawings show plank sections joined by scarf joints set in varnish and held with clenched 1/2″ copper tacks.
The Ruston 109 is an old-fashioned guideboat type combining lightness, good looks, and easy rowing. It’s a double-ender with nearly plumb stems, a lapstrake hull, and sweeping sheer. The boat is 14′3″ long with a beam of 39-1/4″. Many of Rushton’s pulling boats were offered as rowing/sailing combinations with a compact folding centerboard and a rudder with a yoke and steering lines. The plans for the 109 show no accommodation for sailing but do offer a rudder design. No doubt the fashion of the late 1800s allowed a fellow to pull hard on the oars, not seeing where he was going, while his amiable companion pulled the ropes.
My wife, Tina, and I have long enjoyed fishing the lakes, bays, and rivers of the mid-Atlantic states and northeastern U.S together. We’ve spent many fine days afloat in an aged, lumpy, chopped-off canoe that’s as slow as a slug. Last winter, with my shop idle, I decided to upgrade our fleet by building a spry fishing boat for two that we could also enjoy rowing solo. Anything much longer than 14′ would not fit in my work space. I’d never built anything with a transom, and I like the looks of double-ended craft. Happily, I came across Ben Fuller’s 87 Boat Designs: A Catalog of Small Boat Plans from Mystic Seaport’s Collection and found, on pages 56 and 57, a Rangeley Lakes Boat and the A.L. ROTCH, Rushton’s 109. I had an affinity for the Rushton; as a boy, I spent summer vacations with my family at a camp on a lake not far from where J. Henry plied his trade.
The plans for the Model 109 come from Mystic Seaport on three sheets: lines, offsets, and construction details. The hull is symmetrical fore and aft, so lofting half of the boat is all that’s required, though to ensure fair curves I did run my battens beyond the middle station. While lofting, I changed the vertical keel to a 4″ plank. The Rangeley Lake boat is built this way, and I had read that Rushton’s sailing canoes called for red-oak plank keels. I might one day want to add a folding centerboard and sail rig, but am now heeding the advice of Mr. Fuller that this would be “more successful in a longer and wider model.”
The plans call for all of three thwarts to be 5/8″ oak, like the center thwart here, but the cane seats, meant for a canoe, are lighter and more comfortable.
Station spacing on the plans is 14”. I set up five molds 28” apart, with two stem-end molds 68” from the center mold. I got out the 13′3-1/4″ keel from 4/4 ash and worked the rabbet. The plans indicate a steam-bent, two-piece stem, but I laminated them with ash strips and made two bending forms so I could glue them both up in one day. The stem-keel marriage was bedded with 3M 5200 and riveted. The backbone was then attached to the molds, and the stems plumbed and secured for building the hull upside down.
I began planking by spiling a pattern for the garboard, keeping an eye on the plans for plank width. Each plank has one scarf, as my northern white cedar stock ran mostly 8’ to 10’. After the garboards were bedded and screwed in, the rest of the planking continued. I fastened the 1/4″ planking with 5/8″ clench nails, being mindful of the spacing of the ribs, which would be installed later. I beveled the stems as I went, first clamping planks to the molds at their lining marks and filing for fit. Planks were bedded and screwed at the stems. There are eight strakes, and the sheer is especially shapely.
The center thwart can serve as a stretcher when the boat is rowed from the forward station.
With planking complete, I cut the plank ends flush with the inner stems and then bedded and attached the outer stems. After plugging the countersunk screws, I turned the hull upright for planking. The plans call for clench-nailed 1/2″ x 1/4″ half-round elm ribs spaced 2-1/4″ on center. In Appendix B of Atwood Manley’s book there is a detailed description of the method Rushton’s crew used in framing. One held a specially grooved backing iron while another quickly hammered home the clench nails in the short time the rib remained pliable from steaming. Because I generally work alone, I’m more comfortable riveting frames. I can bend, clamp, and screw steamed ribs to the keel while they remain supple and return after they’ve hardened for riveting through the planks. I spaced 9/16″ x 1/4″ rectangular white oak ribs 3-1/2″ apart and fastened with 14-gauge rivets. The flat face of the frame gives a solid landing for the burr, and the heavier scantling allows a wider spacing while retaining strength and minimizing weight.
The breasthook (“deck” in canoe nomenclature) and rails are of white oak. The rails I attached as a set, fastening one end of the outer rail with screws through the planking and into the breasthook, and then setting the inwale in place and clamping all together following the sheer sweep. I placed 10-gauge rivets through every other frame. The remaining frames were fastened through the inner rail with ring nails. The thwarts were placed according to plan: white oak for the center and cane seats for the bow and stern. As work progressed, I sealed and primed where appropriate.
The depth amidships is 11″ and the stems rising 13″ above that, giving the sheer a deep and dramatic curve.
The bronze oarlock sockets are patterned on Rushton’s original design and made by Bob Lavertue, proprietor of the Springfield Fan Centerboard Company. He does fine reproductions of many Rushton accessories and owns a Rushton-built Iowa. I enjoyed making the brass mooring-ring assembly shown on the plans and also cold-hammered and bent some 3/8″ bronze rod for center thwart stiffeners. After finishing the removable floorboards, I fashioned an adjustable foot brace as depicted in Rushton’s Rowboats and Canoes: The 1903 Catalog In Perspective, by William Crowley, and made 6’6″ spruce oars.
To get our boat to the water, I made some trailer modifications to cushion the lightweight hull. Tina and I can easily place the Rushton on and off the trailer and carry it where we want. Trailering the boat also makes it easy when I launch solo at a boat ramp. It’s a bit overweight to manhandle alone but can certainly be cartopped. For long road trips I would prefer the boat riding on top to having it on a trailer getting peppered with gravel kicked up by the truck.
Getting aboard the Rushton is a lot like getting into our old canoe, though with its flat bottom, the 109 is steadier. Still, we generally board while holding the gunwales and make sure to plant our feet on the narrow floorboards, keeping our weight centered. Pushing offshore, the wide keel takes the grind instead of the planks. There are two sets of oarlocks. The center station is for rowing solo. Rowing from the bow balances the boat nicely with a passenger in the stern.
With these two adults aboard, the Rushton 109 sits in perfect trim.
You sit low in this boat. There hull amidships is only 11-½” deep between the floorboards and top of the gunwales, and the center thwart sits just 5-3/4″ above the floorboards. With the dramatically curved sheer, the oarlocks are far enough aft from the middle to have some extra elevation to give plenty of room for the rowing stroke with your legs straight out. I am 6’ tall and comfortably row solo at a steady pace with my heels planted on the foot brace. Tracking is superb in this light, fine-entry double-ender. A few short strokes get you going, and then it’s easy to maintain a rate that’s faster than walking speed.
With two aboard, rowing from the bow, I’ve found that the center thwart is ideally placed for bracing my feet. The 109 responds to the added weight favorably, carrying beyond a boat length with each stroke. And it’s a nimble craft. I can turn the boat 360 degrees from a standstill with nine pulling and backing strokes. The aft seat is 7-½” above the floorboards, and Tina reports that it is quite comfortable for an afternoon cruise, though the tight quarters in the stern make an all-day fishing trip feel a little bit cramped.
One day, I took two young neighbors out for a row in the Rushton. There was plenty of room for the three of us on board while we poked about looking at lily pads and little fish. I imagined myself at a camp in the North Woods, sitting in the stern seat, with my dad rowing and brother in the bow with a coffee can of worms between us and our fishing poles restlessly waiting for a strike. The Rushton 109 is that kind of a boat.
Tom Devries and his wife Tina live in New Braintree, Massachusetts. Now that both of their kids are off to college, Tom DeVries 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.
Plans for the Ruston’s Pulling Boat Model 109 come as a set of three pages and include lines, offsets, sail plan, and construction details. They are available from Mystic Seaport for $75.
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It was still dark when I woke, and all of Calvert Island and the anchorage it surrounded were eerily still. I shifted my weight and GAMINE moved with me. We were still afloat. Above the gunwales, the faint light of early dawn had just separated the sky from the silhouettes of the forested hills. I drifted in and out of sleep for another hour and when I sat up, beads of dew trickled off my bivi bag. With RAINBOW gone (read about RAINBOW in Part I), I was alone in Pruth Bay, a cruciform inlet with three half-mile-long coves at the head of its entrance to the east. I was cold and rowing would be the quickest way to warm myself, so I prepared to get underway before breakfast. As I reeled the anchor in, the rattle of the chain against the gunwale echoed across the bay.
Photographs by the author
Ward Channel was quite still and GAMINE’s wake was the only thing disturbing the water. I couldn’t bring myself to row fast any more than I’d break into a run in a cathedral.
The 4-mile row to the north end of Calvert Island brought me to Hakai Pass, its waters rising and falling with the ocean swell as gently as the chest of someone still asleep. I made the crossing in about an hour and entered Ward Channel, a 1-1/2-mile-long alley just a few hundred yards wide. The swell diminished and the black water along the shore mirrored the band of gray rock beneath the trees; the closer to shore I rowed, the harder it was to distinguish the presence of water from emptiness. A raven flew by dozens of yards away; I could hear the faint crinoline rustle of its feathers.
I entered Fitz Hugh Sound where it was about 5 miles across to the mainland shore, and felt the beginnings of a southerly breeze. It filled in, pleating the water a darker blue, and I raised the mast and set sail in the first following wind I’d had in two weeks. I was making fair progress with the main and jib set, but I thought I could do better by raising the light nylon boom tent as a spinnaker. I had threaded the end of a halyard through the webbing loops on one end of the tarp when I heard the hollow rush of a whale’s exhalation.
Forty feet to port, a long, low streak of black broke the water’s surface. A low knuckled fin, traveling the length of the streak before submerging, identified the whale as a humpback. I pulled the tarp aloft and it bellied forward opposite the main. The wind continued to freshen and GAMINE churned northward, making quick work of Fitz Hugh.
Roger Siebert
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I turned west into Lama Passage. There the wind was against me, but I felt strong even rowing 5 miles against the chop to Canal Bight, a twin-lobed cove on the north side of the pass. I’d covered more than 33 miles since leaving Calvert, but I’d sailed most of the way and had had a long break from rowing with my stay at Port Hardy and sailing with RAINBOW. I put GAMINE ashore to cook dinner and thought I’d spend the night at anchor, but the bight was not protected from southerlies. There were two nooks tucked around corners that would be safe if the wind came up during the night, but both would dry out with the early- morning low tide. The air was still and to the west the warming amber tones of sunset silhouetted the lacy fringe of tree line that surrounded me.
It was almost 9 p.m., but only 5 miles lay between me and Bella Bella. The tide would carry me northward and the gibbous moon, gleaming in the indigo sky to the east, would light the way. I rowed around Twilight Point, appropriately, at twilight and as I turned north the moon’s reflection splintered in the ripples of my wake. A seiner, southbound, slowed and came alongside; the skipper, having seen my light, asked if I was okay. I replied, “Yes, thanks, I’m doing great.”
When I reached Bella Bella, I tied up at the end of one of the two docks, hiding beneath the ramp to the pier a dozen feet above. I thought I’d be safe there, tucked out of the way, but after I had rearranged the boat for sleeping, a group of teenagers, judging by the sound of their voices, tromped down the ramp. Two of the boys among them were there to have a fight; the rest came to watch. All the shouting and goading was making me a bit anxious, so I quietly packed up, slipped my lines, and rowed away through the pilings beneath the pier.
A few dozen yards to the south, I found a mooring buoy and gambled that the owner wouldn’t be needing it that night. Dew was beading up on the boat and my gear, but I warmed up as soon as I was in my sleeping bag. The fights on the dock were still going on and I heard another similar commotion to the north. Around midnight the waterfront lapsed into silence and I was able to sleep until 4 a.m., when there was yelling and swearing again coming from the pier.
At daybreak, Bella Bella was at peace as a man in a red-and-black plaid coat rowed a diminutive plastic dinghy out to one of the fishing boats moored near GAMINE. I said good morning and introduced myself; he returned the greeting, identified himself as Kelvin, and invited me to come ashore for a cup of coffee. He rowed over to pick me up, but when I stepped aboard the dinghy, which was full of holes, it started filling with water. I tied a long line to it so he could go ashore first and I could pull the dinghy back out for my turn.
Kelvin’s house, built on slender stilts over the intertidal, was a short walk along a weathered boardwalk with several planks missing. His living room was well kept, with shag carpet and dark paneled walls, decorated with only a framed photograph of a young girl—his daughter—and a painting of Jesus. As we sat at the kitchen table with a plate of homemade bread his wife had made that morning, the washing machine, running just outside of the kitchen, went into a spin cycle and the whole house shook as if an earthquake had rumbled under Bella Bella.
The southerly that had helped me get to Bella Bella brought clouds, and when I left it began to rain. I sailed under the boom-tent spinnaker to Seaforth Channel. Visibility in the rain and mist was poor, but I was always able to steer clear of fishing boats and cruise ships and make out the landfalls along the north side of the channel. GAMINE was moving well, but sitting in the stern, inactive, I was getting chilled. My nylon rain jacket was saturated with rainwater and pressed heavily against my back and shoulders. The cold seeped through, at first numbing my hands and arms, then making me shudder. I lowered the rig, set the oars between the tholes, and began to row, waiting for the exertion to warm me.
Port Blackney wasn’t the refuge I’d expected it would be. GAMINE is tethered at the far left and somewhere behind the thick wall of trees there is an old log cabin being consumed by the rainforest.
After 3 miles under oars I turned north-northeast into Reid Passage, a 170-yard-wide channel separating Cecilia Island from the mainland peninsula it parallels. At the north end of the passage was a place marked on my charts as Port Blackney. I expected to find a harbor of some sort where I take shelter and warm up. What I found there, nearly invisible in the dark woods along the south side of the cove, was a one-room cabin, its log walls cinder-black with decay and its roof swaybacked under a thick layer of moss and duff fallen from the cedar trees that loomed over it.
My hands showed the effects of spending 10 hours in the rain. My sense of touch was quite dulled, and in the evening I had to dry the skin over my camp stove before I could use my hands less clumsily.
Worried that the cabin might yet appeal to bears or wolves, I resumed rowing along the mainland shore and made my way to Mathieson Channel. I had covered about 25 nautical miles when I pulled into Tom Bay to anchor for the night. It had been raining the entire time I’d been underway, and my hands had been wet for 10 hours. My palms were as rough and almost as white as raw cauliflower. Every fingerprint ridge was in high relief, and where rowing had peeled away a layer of skin there were craters surrounded by ragged edges. I could scarcely feel anything with my fingers, and I fumbled with the tarp, getting it stretched over the cockpit. Before I cooked dinner, I held my hands above the stove until the heat rising from its blue flame brought them back to normal.
The ride up Mathieson Channel went quickly with a benevolent tailwind, though the rain and gloom were dragging me down.
In the morning I woke well before sunrise as the first light was sifting through the fog and drizzle. I was under way at 5 a.m., dreading another day of being cold and wet, but again needing to get moving to warm up. There was a good following wind in Mathieson Channel, strong enough that I set only the mainsail to drive GAMINE north the 7 miles to Jackson Passage. Flanked by 1,000’-high ridges, the nearly 6-mile-long east–west passage spans not quite a half mile in a few places, but most of it is just a few hundred yards wide.
After I’d been rained on for the best part of two days, the mist began to lift over Jackson Passage. During the trip, I took very few photos of myself from a distance. The camera’s self timer gave me only 10 seconds to get into the frame and running across seaweed-covered rocks in this little cove off the passage was flirting with injuries I could ill afford.
There was no wind in the steep-sided landscape, so I brailed the main and rowed. Cedar trees, growing thick just above the water, had their lowest boughs evenly trimmed by the tides, like an orchard grazed by deer. The rain had stopped, and the water was dark and as smooth as oil. While the sky was still overcast, far to the west, beyond the end of the passage, the sun had reached through an unseen gap in the ceiling, setting the overlapping ridges of Swindle Island aglow and dappling them with the shadows of clouds.
When I entered the channel that led to the village of Klemtu, I found a cove that seemed to be where fishing boats past their usefulness were left to die.
When I emerged from Jackson Passage there was a westerly on Finlayson Channel, so I dropped the bundled mast, mainsail, and sprit and began rowing across to Swindle. In mid-channel I passed a blue plastic tarp floating at the water’s surface. Thinking it would help me get through another spell of rain more comfortably, I fished it out of the water and tucked it away.
Klemtu was a small native village, home to about 200 people and accessible only by boat. Running in front of the houses at left and toward the white building at right is an elevated boardwalk that served as the main street.
Klemtu was a small village with a single row of white clapboard houses arrayed along the curve of the shoreline, and a boardwalk set on pilings over the intertidal zone and serving as the village’s main arterial. I stopped long enough to buy some apples and cookies at the grocery store, and was underway again at 3 p.m.
In the late afternoon a northwesterly arose briefly, staying only long enough to sweep the dull gray overcast. With the sky cleared and the air stilled, I kept rowing well into the evening. The moon rose above Sarah Island and lit my way along Tolmie Channel to a narrow inlet on Princess Royal Island. About 200 yards in, I stopped rowing and GAMINE slowly drifted backwards in what had to be the outward-flowing current of a river. I could hear fish jumping and guessed that salmon were heading to the river to spawn.
It had been a very long day—I’d covered 33 nautical miles since leaving Tom Bay—and I needed a good night’s sleep, but when I settled into my sleeping bag it was still wet from the rain two days ago. It took a long time to get warm, and I kept worrying that GAMINE would drag anchor and drift into the traffic in Tolmie Channel. The repeated knocks of salmon running into GAMINE’s hull made it that much harder to get to sleep.
I did nod off eventually and slept so soundly that I missed my alarm in the morning. When I woke I could still hear the salmon on the move, but instead of splashing, they were making a swishing sound like an oar blade pulled only half submerged. Then a sharp rap of wood against rock shook the boat. I bolted upright and saw the water was only inches deep; the salmon barely had enough to cover their backs. I was surrounded by fins. I got dressed quickly in the chilly morning air, hauled the anchor aboard, and let GAMINE drift into deeper water.
I’d rowed only about 4 miles to the north when several packs of 10 to 15 southbound commercial trollers rushed by, pushing piles of white foam at their bows. I took some wakes bow-on and rowed through them, but others were so high and steep that I had to lunge for the stern sheets to raise the bow enough to keep from spearing through them.
I stopped to stretch my legs at Swanson Bay on the mainland side of Graham Reach. There had been a pulp mill there, built around 1900. All that was left were a towering square brick chimney and the ruins of two concrete buildings, one with a pair of squirrel-cage fans 8’ in diameter at the base of rusted metal bars five stories high.
Marked on my chart was the point where the tides meet behind Princess Royal Island, and I rowed toward it from Swanson with the last of the flood, anticipating the ebb would carry me the remaining 10 miles to Butedale. But a northwesterly wind had given the flood tide flowing in from the north end of the island enough momentum to continue flowing south during the ebb. With wind and current against me, I had a long hard pull to get to Butedale.
I hiked to Butedale Lake on the steep boardwalk built alongside the wooden pipe supplying water to the generator that provides electricity to all of the buildings. A wrapping of wire kept the tarred staves from bursting under the pressure.
Tucked in a 1/3-mile-wide cove and built up against the steep slope of Princess Royal Island, Butedale was built as a cannery and was in operation for three decades before being shut down in ’50s. When I arrived, almost all of the buildings for fish processing and the residences for the workers were empty, but the general store, a two-story white clapboard building at the top of the ramp angling up from the dock, was still open for business. Dan, the man running the store, was a Seattlite like me, and he had just bought Butedale, all 72 acres along with the houses, the dining hall, a bunkhouse, the fish-packing buildings, and the hydroelectric plant. I bought an ice cream sandwich from him, and he invited me to spend the night in the bunkhouse.
I brought my gear up from GAMINE, took a long, hot shower in the bunkhouse, and made myself at home in the dining hall. I was the only one in the building, but the steam radiators were keeping it warm and the air was redolent with the aromas of old wood, paint, and linoleum. I didn’t need to use my camp stove for cooking, as I had a working institutional kitchen at my disposal.
I woke in the bunkhouse clean, dry, and well rested. A southeaster had moved in during the night, bringing rain. I was in no hurry to leave and the tide wouldn’t be in my favor until midday, so I took a walk around the village. Lights were on everywhere, even in the unoccupied worker houses. The turbine driving the electrical generator was always spinning, driven by water from Butedale Lake descending through a tarred wood-and-wire pipe 3′ in diameter. To keep the turbine at a safe rate there had to be a constant load on the generator from the electrical grid.
At noon, I left Butedale and rowed into a confusion of chop as two sets of waves were met at right angles to each other and bounced off the shore’s near-vertical slabs of bare rock. In Fraser Reach, a 12-mile-long furrow between ridges on either side rising from the water in uninterrupted slopes as high as 4,000 feet, the wind picked up, so I set the main and jib. GAMINE took off down the channel. Rain was seeping through leaks in my foulweather gear, so I wrapped myself in the blue tarp that I’d picked up in Finlayson Channel.
As I was settling in on the stern sheets, an errant gust slipped in behind the main. I ducked under the boom as it slammed across, but the sheet snapped tight across the back of my neck and pinned me on the now leeward side. Wrapped in the slippery wet tarp, I couldn’t get much traction and had to scramble to get my weight to windward. I managed to get to the high side before any water could come pouring over the rail; when I got GAMINE settled on the new tack, she made great speed, and the white-veil waterfalls draped over the steep flanks of Princess Royal Island raced by.
I rounded Kingcome Point at the intersection of Fraser Reach and McKay Reach and coasted into the island’s lee. A 1-mile row brought me into a cove that would be protected as long as the wind didn’t swing around to the north. It was only 5:30 p.m. and I had covered just 15 miles, a short day. The fog had lifted, the water was silky-smooth for as far as I could see, and although I had fallen into the habit of making miles whenever I could, the next safe haven was a long way off. A mooring buoy in the cove would simplify settling in for the night and set aside my anxiety about dragging anchor, so I settled in my nest on the floorboards dry, warm, and happy.
In the wee hours of the morning, I was awakened by a dull thud that shook the boat. A drifting log had struck GAMINE and stuck, balanced across her stem. It took several hard pushes with an oar to slip it free.
The gap in the hills ahead is the entrance to Grenville Channel, a 45-mile-long corridor that funnels winds and tides.
I got up at 4:30 and was under way at 5:00 under clear skies and on calm seas. I rowed with the tides in my favor and made good speed covering the 20 miles from McKay Reach and across Wright Sound. Two miles into Grenville Channel, a 45-mile-long ice-age-plowed trench between Pitt Island and the mainland, I was feeling fatigued and pulled into a narrow notch in the north shore to wait out the worst of the ebb; it would reach speeds upwards of 5 knots and make progress impossible. It didn’t take long for gnats to find me at anchor. I wrapped some netting around my head, pulled my bivi bag over the rest of me, wrote an early journal entry, and eventually lay down for a nap.
Waiting out an adverse tide on Grenville Channel, I had to wrap up in a piece of netting to keep the bugs off my face while I wrote in my journal. In cool weather I dressed in wool: heavy socks, Army surplus pants that I had turned into knickers for backpacking, a long-sleeved shirt, and a Cowichan knit hat that I’d found half buried in the intertidal sand on a Puget Sound beach.
When I woke an hour or two later, the backs of my hands were dotted with pinhead beads of blood and GAMINE was crowned with erratically circling gnats. I rowed out of the inlet as fast as I could, swinging at the bugs tucked into my slipstream. It took a mile of hard rowing to leave them all behind.
I’d been getting used to the fatigue—rowing was just what I did every day, often all day—and my hands had toughened up, but my mind was feeling the wear and worry of the travel, especially in the long channels where anchorages were scarce and adverse currents and winds were a daily struggle. September was just a few days away, and the crests of the ridges and peaks that surround the Inside Passage were now being dusted with snow. In another week I could cross the U.S. border, but as appealing as it might have been to say I had rowed to Alaska, as a goal, it had become meaningless. The scope of my concern was much narrower and more practical. Keeping warm and getting safely from one anchorage to the next were the only things that mattered.
Nettle Basin, in the farthest reach of Lowe Inlet, is quite remote but I found lots of good company there. The couple cruising with the St. Pierre dory (left) was quite generous. They brought me aboard for breakfast and before they left they gave me three big Dungeness crabs they’d caught.
I rowed another dozen miles along Grenville, and in the mid-afternoon I entered Lowe Inlet, a 1/4-mile-wide gap in the 2,000′ ridge on the north side of the channel. Two miles into Lowe, I came to Nettle Basin, where a waterfall tumbled out of a valley in the farthest reach of the inlet. The top of Verney Falls was nearly level with the band of blackened rocks that separated the forest from the intertidal, and, with a spring high tide, the falls would be no more than tongue of dark jade water slipping quietly into the inlet.
The tide was rising when I arrived at Lowe Inlet and salmon were gathering in Nettle Basin, waiting for the peak of the tide before attempting to swim up the waterfall.
I beached the boat, carefully picked my way across the rock slope, and sat down at the edge of the falls. I had seen salmon surfacing at the base of the falls when I had approached with GAMINE, and suddenly dozens of them were darting out of the water in low arcs above the rush of whitewater, flexing their tails rapidly even though airborne. They had been waiting for the peak of the tide to help them get past the falls to their spawning grounds farther inland. Some of the salmon, attacking the falls on my side, flew by inches from my boots.
I sat watching salmon at Verney Falls for the best part of an hour. As I was doing research for this article, I found a photograph of the waterfall showing a black bear waiting to catch a fish at the very spot where I had been sitting with my back to the woods.
Nettle Basin was a popular anchorage for working vessels and pleasure craft. GAMINE, by far the smallest boat there, drew a lot of interest and generosity. A couple aboard a St. Pierre dory gave me two slabs of salmon that I cooked for dinner; the skipper of the tug LADY JODY let me spend the night in the fo’c’s’le. In the morning I was invited aboard the dory for breakfast and given three Dungeness crabs. A woman aboard a motor cruiser handed me some cookies and a banana, and a family of nine Tsimshian First Nations people invited me to join them for a beach picnic of spareribs and crab cooked over a campfire.
That second night in Nettle Basin was quite still, and rather than get ready to sleep, I started rowing out of the inlet, planning to take advantage of the nighttime tides in Grenville Channel. I rowed about a mile and had misgivings about spending the night underway; I and turned around and spent the night at the anchorage.
When I woke the next morning, black flies had found me. They were as big as raisins and their bites were quite painful. I had to wait until noon for the tides, so I pulled the bivi bag over my head while I had breakfast in bed.
I shared Grenville Channel with yachts, fishing boats, and cruise ships such as PACIFIC PRINCESS, featured in the TV series “The Love Boat.” After stardom, she got caught up in a drug smuggling ring in the Mediterranean and was ultimately scrapped in 2014.
I reentered Grenville Channel and rode the ebb tide, sailing wing-on-wing in a moderate wind. For hours I sat on one of my 5-gallon paint buckets with one hand on the tiller; I passed Klewnuggit Inlet, 11 miles along, where I got my first glimpse of the end of Grenville Channel, still some 20 miles away. I stopped in Kumealon Inlet on the north side of the channel after covering 25 miles. The anchorage was deep and the tides were running 15’ between high and low, so I asked a couple aboard a sailboat already anchored there if I could spend the night with a long painter tied to their stern, assuring them I’d be on my way at dawn. They agreed, and I made preparations aboard GAMINE for cooking dinner. I boiled the three Nettle Bay Dungeness crabs, one at a time, and ate all of them, picking them clean in 45 minutes. For dessert I had a peanut butter sandwich and two bowls of cereal.
I cast off from the sailboat at 6:00 a.m. and rowed back out to Grenville Channel. It was still early in the morning when a southeasterly funneled between the steep mountain slopes flanking it. I set sail and GAMINE again made good speed with the main and jib set wing-and-wing. The wind stiffened, making it harder to steer against the turning force of the mainsail. At the mouth of Grenville, just as I drew abreast of Gibson Island, the wind caromed off the island got behind the main; I saw the leech curl and dove for the floorboards as the boom slammed over to port. The sprit had crossed forward of the mast, raising the foot of the sail and pulling the boom jaws off the mast. Nothing had broken, and the self-scandalized sail reduced its area by at least a third and made it easier to steer.
I turned into the lee on the north side of the island to put things back to rights. I rowed the patch of slick water to a beach of rocks the size of bowling balls. After I put the boom jaws back on the mast and removed the sprit, I folded the mainsail from clew to throat, making it a low triangle with less than half the area. The next landfall, Porcher Island, was obscured from sight by the rain and low clouds, but I saw few whitecaps outside of Gibson’s lee, so it appeared that the wind had moderated.
I pushed off and drifted slowly out of the lee. A hundred yards out, the wind slammed into the sails and they turned as rigid as if they’d been made of steel. The mast bowed and GAMINE accelerated out from under me, rolling me into the stern. Both sheets were cleated on the centerboard trunk and now out of reach; I dared not go forward to reduce sail or round up to the wind, fearing the dory would pitchpole or capsize. GAMINE climbed up the backs of waves and stuck her bow out over the maws of deep troughs before dropping into them. There was no wallowing in the troughs pausing for following seas to lift the stern. GAMINE was outrunning the waves. After surfing the face of one wave, she just plowed into the next. As the bow drove forward into the back of a wave, I pushed myself tight against of the crown of the transom to keep the boat from being swallowed by the berms of green water raised up on either side.
The mainsail was set to port, and even though it was a fraction of its full size, it still overpowered the jib, set to starboard. I had to pull the tiller with both hands to keep the main from shoving the bow into a broach and a capsize. My arms and shoulders burned with the effort. Water around the dory rushed by in a blur that I could not bring into focus. I stole glances at the chart only to find that the part of Porcher Island I was headed for ran along a fold in the chart where the paper that had worn away. I had no choice but to aim straight at the land and accept that I might be driven against an abrupt rocky shore. Even that, I reasoned, gave me much better odds than a capsize mid-passage.
Beneath the stern sheets was the orange bag that contained a survival suit; I visualized grabbing it if I capsized. GAMINE plowed into one wave so sharp that it couldn’t support the weight of the boat amidships and poured water in over the gunwales. Gusts tore the tops off the waves, streaking them with spume. The rain and spray that hit my face stung so painfully that I had to stop looking aft to protect my eyes.
In spite of the speed, the dory skiff never broke loose on plane. If that had happened, the rudder, only as deep as the skeg, would have lost its grip and I’d have surely capsized. Water was boiling up astern, covering the transom nearly up to the gunwales and completely burying the rudder blade.
As I quickly closed on the land ahead, I saw a deep recess in the shoreline. It was dead ahead, but with each gust GAMINE veered to starboard, pushing my course toward the rocks on the east side of the gap. If I inched carefully back to port, I risked a jibe that I feared would, at the very least, break the mast.
Racing into the gap, GAMINE tore through a kelp bed without the least indication of slowing down. Kelp hammered against the bottom and the ends of wrist-thick stalks cut by the centerboard flailed up through the frothy white wake. The band of bare gray rock at the edge of the passage streaked by scarcely more than a boat length away.
After the crossing, GAMINE rests in Kelp Passage. With the sprit removed, the main is much smaller, but I’d have been better off running under bare poles, better still waiting for a better day.
The wind, weakened by its collision with the land, eased and GAMINE slowed. A quarter mile into the narrow gap I’d chanced upon—Kelp Passage, separating Porcher Island from Lewis Island—I turned to starboard into a 100-yard-wide cove. The sails and sheets went slack, and the dory coasted to a stop with the bow nudged against the shore. I stepped over the side and felt the cool, comforting squeeze of the mud around my boots.
I made it ashore in one piece but I was deeply shaken by the crossing from Gibson Island. The decision had been made for me; it was time to bring an end to this voyage and go home.
It was only 10:00 a.m., but I was certainly done for the day. The tide was nearing low slack. I left GAMINE where I’d come ashore and let the water slip out from under her. I dropped the rig, set up the boom tent, and heated a bowl of soup for an early lunch.
My accommodations were spartan at best. I slept on the floorboards with my legs tucked alongside the centerboard trunk. To roll over, I had to pull my legs back, lift them over the thwart, and tuck them on the other side of the trunk. All that required waking up. Here in Kelp Passage, the tide is rising as my last night of the voyage approaches.
I spent most of the day aboard the boat, and once she was afloat, she kited back and forth at the end of the anchor rode. The wind was blowing unabated and howling in the trees surrounding the cove. Tide would rise more than 20′ from the low and would lift me out of the lee, so in the afternoon I rowed deeper into the passage and anchored in larger cove better sheltered from the wind.
I spent the rest of the day aboard the boat tidying up, eating, and resting. At dusk, as I was settling in for night, the falling tide set GAMINE gently on a muddy plain. Grounded, I’d sleep well and be afloat in the morning. I awoke just before midnight and looked out from under the boom tent. The gibbous moon, just four days past full, was illuminating the landscape; as far as I could see, there was no water anywhere in the passage.
To the south, the islands were being swallowed up by fog.
When I woke, GAMINE was afloat and the air was still. I packed up and left in a hurry, not wanting to waste good rowing weather. As I headed north, Kelp Passage broadened and became Chismore Passage. Clear of Chismore’s north end, I set a course across Arthur Passage toward Smith Island, 4 miles away to the northeast. To the south, islands were turning pale and then disappearing as they were being enveloped by an approaching fog bank.
The horizon had disappeared behind a chalky haze, and when two pilot whales rose in tandem, their hooked black dorsals were the only marks on a dimensionless amalgam of sea and sky.
GAMINE’s bow is aimed at Alaska, hidden in distant fog bank beyond the gap between the northernmost islands of British Columbia. It would remain out of reach.
I rowed hard as fog wrapped around the south end of Smith Island and veered north by degrees, completing the crossing just before losing sight of the island. I crossed to Lelu Island and found my way along its western shore blocked by a sandbar that had been uncovered by the low tide. The bar stretched all the way to Kitson Island, a full mile to the southwest.
Prince Rupert is a busy port and I didn’t know where I’d be able to come ashore. In the midst of all of the oversized commercial facilities, I found the Prince Rupert Rowing and Yacht Club. I was welcomed there and allowed to stay for several days while I made arrangements to take GAMINE back home.
After I rounded Kitson, the fog cleared, and to the north I could see the last of the islands on the British Columbia coast stretched out along the horizon; beyond them lay Alaska. As close as I’d come to it, the weather had made it clear that it was time to stop. As I made my way to the port city of Prince Rupert, the sun broke through a ceiling of clouds the color of tarnished silver. I rowed the last 7 miles bathed in sunlight.
Epilogue
Wanting it to be over
I took this picture of myself during a break from rowing Grenville Channel. Thinking that I’d look back on this experience in a few years with fondness, I wanted to have something to remind me how difficult it was and how often I was either wet, cold, tired, hungry or all four.
After 31 days, having travelled over 700 miles aboard GAMINE and almost 100 miles with RAINBOW, I was relieved to be in Prince Rupert and on my way home. I hitched a ride back to Seattle; GAMINE came along on top of the van. I never did another cruise aboard her and eventually sold her.
I spent several days in Prince Rupert waiting for a ride back home to Seattle. No longer burdened by cruising, GAMINE and I both felt a bit lighter.
For a while I gave up on cruising, but when I saw maps of other inland waterways, the same stirring that had compelled me to build and sail GAMINE came over me. Between 1982 and 1987 I built three more boats for three more inland cruises. The first of those cruises was longer—2,500 miles over the course of 4 ½ months— and the one that followed was more challenging—2,400 miles in 2-1/2 months in the middle of winter. Eventually I returned to the Inside Passage and made it to Alaska.
During all those cruises I never came up with a good answer to the question—”Why?”— posed to me by young Bergie while I was aboard GAMINE in Nanaimo. I had no goal, at least not one that I could find within me, let alone express. To be sure, I had many memorable experiences, but they took on meaning only in retrospect and even the sum of them couldn’t account for whatever it was the kept me coming back to travel by boat. If I had known what I was looking for, I might have taken the quickest path to it and, having achieved it, set out for something else. When I was looking at maps of the British Columbia coast I must have seen the convoluted course of the Inside Passage not merely as a waterway leading north, but as a path I could follow to explore what I was capable of and perhaps discover something about myself.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly.
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.
When I retired, my wife and I decided to move from the middle of Wales to Modbury, a town in Devon, England, just 4 miles from the coast; the prospect of a move and more time on the water with my family encouraged me to look for a slightly roomier dayboat than my 14′ 6″ Oughtred-designed Whilly Boat. I spent many happy hours studying designs from France, America, Australia, and, of course, nearer home here in the U.K.
I became increasingly interested in the work of the British naval architect Andrew Wolstenholme. Two of his lapstrake plywood dinghies, the 11′ Coot and the 12′ Mallard, really caught my attention. Both were already very popular owing to their lovely lines and excellent performance under sail. I approached Andrew to persuade him to design a bigger dinghy for estuary use in Devon. The boat needed to be light enough for easy trailering but big enough to take care of itself on a mooring for the summer months. Andrew agreed and produced a set of plans for a new 15′ gunter-rigged dayboat, the Swallow.
photographs by Mike Wynne-Powell
Airtight chambers along the boat’s entire perimeter give the hull stiffness and ample buoyancy in the event of a capsize.
The lines of the Swallow seemed to offer an ideal compromise of lightness, speed, and roominess. The plans are suitable for skilled amateurs, as there are no step-by-step instructions or patterns for planks. Lofting isn’t required—full-sized patterns for the molds and transom are provided with the plans—but the hull must be lined off and the plank shapes spiled. When I realized each sheer plank might have to be scarfed together from three pieces of plywood, I asked Andrew to reduce the overall length to allow for two 8′ lengths of ply, joined by 10-to-1 scarfs, to have sufficient length for the sheer planks. Andrew agreed, and the dinghy became 14′ 6″. The straight stem and slightly raked heart-shaped transom, coupled with epoxy-glued planking, give the Swallow a very traditional appearance.
Fairing the planking lines on a new design is quite time-consuming, and I spent many hours peering at a batten laid over the hull while I tried to visualize how the boat would look when turned the right way up. The plank widths were worked out for the stem, ‘midship mold, and transom. The marks for other molds were determined by laying a batten through the known points and then marking the remaining points where the batten intersected with the molds.
Throughout the planking process, the 13 molds kept the lightweight 6mm marine plywood fair. I sometimes used up to 30 plywood U-shaped, wedged clamps to hold each new plank in place until the epoxy hardened—they have the reach to get around the plank, cost next to nothing, and are lighter than metal clamps, whose weight could distort the planks. Each plank has a 20mm-wide beveled edge which provides ample gluing surface for the subsequent plank.
The Swallow has 10 strakes, making 20 planks to cut, trim, and bevel before fitting. The backbone is a substantial keelson in khaya laminated to a sapele keel. The 7/8” sapele transom is faceted rather than curved, so each plank end can lie on a flat beveled surface for a perfect fit. The gunwales and inwales are substantial, with three laminations of sapele sandwiching the sheer plank.
The Swallow carries a gunter main with an area of 94 sq ft and a jib with 29 sq ft.
The interior layout is simple and comfortable, with the aft seat at the same height as the side benches, making it relatively easy to slide from one position to another inside the boat. The foredeck is above the bench level, but well below the sheer, and supported at its aft edge by a 12mm ply bulkhead. A large hatch on the bulkhead gives access to the watertight storage area under the deck. I stow the jib there, along with fenders and clothing. The rear compartment is accessed through two small hatches mounted on the bench and is used for stowing cordage, a chart, outboard motor parts, and safety equipment.
A pair of longitudinal buoyancy chambers span the bulkheads in the bow and stern and are fitted with removable hatches for ventilation and access. These chambers greatly increase the rigidity of the hull and comply with the EU Recreational Craft Directive regulations on safety. A pair of 7/8″ sapele knees at each bulkhead and at the center thwart secure the gunwales strongly to the hull. The centerboard case is topped by a 6″-wide 1/2″ plank, forming an additional perch in the middle of the boat. A 3’-deep swinging centerboard was fabricated from edge-glued sapele and carefully worked into an efficient foil from the plans. A 3” lead disc, epoxied in, provides some slight negative buoyancy. The nicely profiled kick-up rudder, offered in the plans as a full-sized pattern, is controlled by an uphaul and downhaul. The tiller projects from the rudderhead through an elliptical hole in the transom.
The boat carries a gunter rig, and the spars for the tall mainsail stow within the length of the boat. The mast is supported by two shrouds and a forestay. The plans call for a mast set in a tabernacle, but I opted for a strong bronze hinge. In raising the main, the yard is pulled tightly and parallel to the mast, in effect acting as a Bermudan rig. During windier conditions, the yard can be lowered about 18″ for attaching the main halyard with a quick-release pin to a second, higher slot on the yard when the sail is reefed.
Shrouds to the masthead support the rig when the Swallow is sailed hard.
Under sail, the Swallow is very responsive and light on the helm. The underwater profile of its hull not only gives a good turn of speed but the well-rounded shape, with a beam of 5′ 6″, is very stable when being boarded or sailed. There is room enough for up to four adults; with an agile crew of two aboard, the Swallow can be sailed very fast under full sail. On the Salcombe estuary in Devon, in a wind of Force 3 to 4, my wife Linda and I managed to keep completely dry despite the choppy conditions.
When sailing single-handed, the helmsman is provided with the main halyard and centerboard adjustment to the starboard of the centerboard trunk. A boom downhaul, with a 2-to-1 gun tackle to tighten the luff, leads to a cam cleat on the port side of the trunk. The Swallow sails wonderfully under main alone when going solo. I have experimented with leading the mainsheet to a block anchored on the centerboard trunk, but prefer handling the mainsheet as it comes from the boom end in the present arrangement. A kicking strap could be added to prevent the boom lifting, but I prefer less clutter. In recent years, I have fitted an auto ratchet block on the end of the boom to take the load in windy conditions. The mainsheet is led from the boom end around a block attached to a 2′ traveler on the transom.
With a beam of 5′ 6″, the Swallow needs long oars. The pair here are 9’6″.
The Swallow has a single rowing station at the center thwart and, with 9′ 6″ oars, rows with ease, but I stopped carrying oars some years ago and use an outboard for auxiliary power. I stow a Honda 2.3 outboard on the port side horizontally under the center thwart over a wooden block that protects the larch floor boards. To use the motor, a special two-piece plywood mounting fits over the transom, covering the hole for the tiller and protecting the mainsheet traveler. The outboard is then quickly clamped on the centerline and can be used in minutes. The motor powers the boat so easily that I rarely get to half-throttle.
With the rudder removed, the Swallow will take a small outboard for auxiliary power. Half throttle is all it takes to get the boat up to speed.
Over the past 14 years, I have appreciated and enjoyed Andrew Wolstenholme’s timeless design for the Swallow—a traditional-looking dinghy which could happily sail in the lightest airs. I had originally wanted a dayboat that was roomy with easy lines and ideal for exploring the estuaries of South Devon, but I got that and so much more.
Nick Hanbury was a cartographic surveyor with Ordnance Survey, Great Britain’s mapping agency, and spent all his working life making maps. In 1992, he joined John Kerr at his boatyard in West Wales for a week and was introduced to concepts of lapstrake building. In 1997, Nick’s Whilly Boat won the Amateur Shipwright Award at the Wooden Boat Show at Greenwich. His Swallow, christened LUCY, went to the Boat Show at Beale Park in 2004 and won 3rd overall and special prize for Best Constructed Boat. He is grateful to Linda for her support during these projects. He’ll be happy to share more about his building and sailing experience through correspondence directed to [email protected].
Swallow Particulars
[table]
Length/14′ 6″
Beam/5′ 6″
Draft, board up/7.5″
Draft, board down/3′ 9″
Sail area, main/94 sq ft
Sail area, jib/29 sq ft
[/table]
Plans for the Swallow are available from Wolstenholme Yacht Design for £125 ($162 USD) for e-mailed PDF files, and printed for an additional £20 ($26 USD) plus shipping.
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!
The Skipper and I launch our small sail-and-oar boats from our beach and dock, and coming and going we have to negotiate several obstacles. With the boathook we may pole off the beach, fend off from our beach groins, or push off the dock. We’ll also paddle to and from the dock and in and out of the wind shadow created by the shoreside trees. We like to carry as little gear as possible when sailing, so we created a combination paddle and boathook, which we call a “padook.”
Photographs by the authors
The blade of a Greenland paddle is narrow enough to provide a good grip when using the boat hook, but has plenty of area for power when used for paddling.
We liked the bronze boathook that we ordered from The WoodenBoat Store and attached it to a wooden shovel handle. Handle and hook together measured 5′, a length that worked well for our Penobscot 14; it had a good reach length and was easy to store and use, so we set that as the length for the padook. We bought another bronze hook and made a new shaft with a paddle blade shaped like that of a traditional Greenland paddle.
We both prefer using Greenland paddles for kayaking; used properly, the long, narrow blades have a powerful stroke and are very well suited for sculling techniques. The slender blades, unlike those of conventional paddles, are sized to provide a good grip in the hand and would also make the padook a little easier to stow aboard our small boat.
We started with a piece of white pine, trimmed it for finished overall length of 5′, and tapered the shaft end to fit in the boathook socket. The bronze hook is secured with two silicon-bronze wood screws. The wooden paddle part measures 1-3/8″ diameter at the hook end, transitions to a 1-1/8″ by 1-3/8″ oval at the paddle throat, and flares to 2-5/8” wide at the paddle tip. The blade is 34” long, tapers to 1/8″ at the edges, and has a center chord that tapers from the 1-3/8″ thickness at the throat to the 1/8″ tip. The edges have shoulders where they meet the loom, and for paddling this provides a good grip that’s easily oriented by touch in the dark, as well as a secure handhold when we have to pull hard with the hook.
As it is with Greenland paddles, the padook works best when the blade is moving slightly edgewise through the water. It will flutter when pulled hard straight back, but still provide power. Think of it as the blade of an airplane propeller instead of a plank on a paddle-wheel. The blade is very well suited for sculling; we can provide a constant pull and avoid having to pull the blade out of the water. Coming back home we use the hook end of the padook to fend off the dock and grab dock cleats.
With the boat hook weighting one end of the padook, the blade rises above the water making it easier to see and to retrieve.
Like a proper boathook, the padook floats vertically—the weight of the hook pulls the loom down; 16″ of the blade sticks up above the surface, much easier to see and grab than a boathook that floats flat. The padook also aligns with our goal of having boating gear that serves multiple purposes. Maneuvering a boat around a dock usually requires a paddle and a boathook, and we like having a single device in hand that takes the place of both.
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.
Editor’s notes:
I was intrigued by the Lewis’ padook and decided to build one for myself. It was an easy and familiar shop project—I’ve made several Greenland paddles in the past and described the process in a book I wrote, Building the Greenland Kayak. Here’s how I went about making my padook:
Photos and video below by Christopher Cunningham
The fir that I used was a 2×3 (1-1/2″ x 2-1/2″) so I glued pieces to the sides to get the 3-1/2″ blade width I felt was a good fit for my hands. If I’d started with a 2×4, the additional wood wouldn’t be required.
At the throat, I marked the inboard end of the blade for a 2″ width. The 1-1/8″ width of the loom marked here, with the full 1-1/2″ thickness of the 2×3, creates an oval loom that is a comfortable and secure fit in the hand and aligns the strongest dimension parallel with the direction of pull when paddling.
At the hook-end of the shaft, I marked the tapered of the loom out to 1-1/2″ to match the outside diameter of the hook’s socket.
After cutting to the outline of the loom and blade, I marked the loom with an eight-siding gauge and drew parallel lines for a 3/8″ thickness at the blade edge.
The tapered thickness of the blade is marked for cutting the bulk of the wood away on the bandsaw. The marks at the end are a bit wide of the blade width markings to avoid unintentionally sawing away too much wood.
The faces of the blade are planed to to a taper from the 1 1/2″ loom to the 3/8″ tip.
The loom is cut to the eight-siding-gauge marks and the blade has a rolling bevel between the centerline marking the spine and the parallel lines at the edges. The rolling bevel is best worked with a spokeshave and with small planes held on a diagonal to shorten the area of contact with the wood.
Spoon-bottom planes can work the hollows between the center ridges and the edges. The tool resting on the blade is a Japanese wooden plane; beneath the blade is an old Stanley palm plane.
A 3″ sanding drum (see review, January 2018) chucked in a cordless drill had a good shape for hollowing the blade between the edges and the center spine.
I measured depth of the hook socket and used that dimension to mark a shallow kerf for the shaft’s shoulder. To get the right taper, I scribbled pencil marks inside the hook socket, then twisted it over the shaft. Pencil lead would transfer to the high spots where I needed to remove more wood.
The finished shoulders are rounded and sanded smooth. They provide a good grip and at night indicate the orientation of the blade.
I made a padook with some straight-grained Douglas-fir. After the initial shaping it had too much buoyancy for the hook and floated flat. I puzzled over what to do to get it to go vertical. Trimming wood on the hook end would reduce buoyancy and eventually let the hook sink, and trimming the top of the blade would reduce the weight holding it flat on the water. It seemed that shaving both the shaft and the blade would do the trick. I trimmed everything down and the second float test worked. Kent and Audrey used white pine, a wood less dense than Douglas-fir and got about 16” of blade above the water. I got about 12” of my padook blade showing, using the same hook as they did.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Monthly readers by sending us an email.
Cooking at anchor aboard a small sail-and-oar boat can be a challenge. Some make dedicated boxes to hold their stove, fuel, and cooking utensils, and while they may be convenient, finding a place to stow them can be difficult, especially in a boat already crowded with gear for a long trip. In my boat, FIRE-DRAKE, my critical gear goes through 9″-diameter hatches into the watertight compartments, so a galley box is out.
photo and video by the author
With the pot locked on the stove and a folding tripod base clipped to the fuel tank, the Jetboil system behaves itself while cooking at anchor with the boat rocking.
Jetboil’s Flash Cooking System is pot, stove, and fuel all in one tidy package that stows easily. Since acquiring mine a couple of years ago, I use it for 99 percent of my cooking. It is very quick to boil water and simmers well enough for the meals I make with it. My cooked meals are generally simple: porridge in the morning and dried pasta or rice for the evening meal, with soup occasionally.
The pot is a 1-liter aluminum cylinder with nonstick coating and a base that connects it to the burner. It has a neoprene insulating sleeve to retain heat and a webbing handle so you don’t need a pot gripper. Welded to the bottom of the can is a corrugated aluminum heat exchanger that greatly increases the efficiency of the heat transfer from the flame to the pot, so much so that the flame doesn’t melt the neoprene. The burner has a built-in piezoelectric lighter; its isobutane fuel canisters are available in 100g, 230g, and 450g. The insulating sleeve has a window with an indicator that changes color as the water comes to a boil. It works, but you can hear when the water boils.
Disassembled, the stand, burner, and a 100g fuel canister all fit neatly inside the pot, kept in by a silicone lid. There is also a plastic measuring cup that fits on the bottom to protect the burner.
Assembled, it looks a little unstable, but having the stove and pot connected make cooking much less precarious, and a fold-out base with sticky feet, snapped to the fuel canister, steadies the stove. If you fill the Jetboil to no more than the recommended fill line (500ml, or 2 cups) it seems to be adequate for the normal motion of an anchored boat. I did accidentally kick mine once and partially knock it over, but that is a risk with any stove used in confined quarters.
It only takes about 50 seconds to assemble the stove and get the flame lit. Then in just over 3 minutes, 2 cups of water will come to a boil.
For most of my meals I boil the water, add the ingredients, partially cook it at reduced heat, then shut the stove down, put an additional stove insulating cap (made for another stove but it fits the Jetboil Flash nicely) over the top, and let it finish cooking. The method saves fuel, and the extra insulation keeps the food hotter. By turning the stove off before cooking is complete, a 100g canister will last about a week.
Should you want to cook anything in a pan, Jetboil makes a pot support that fits on the burner assembly.
I’ve used the Jetboil Flash for over 80 cruising days now, and it has performed flawlessly every time.
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 Flash Cooking System is available from Jetboil for $99.99 and from many outdoor retailers.
Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.
Modern double-braid line, with its shiny white weave and colored tracers, isn’t a good match for the subtle earth-tone elements of a traditionally built vessel. For SOLVI, with her bright-finished cedar and her bronze hardware, we wanted a low-stretch, smooth-running twisted line that had the aesthetics of a traditional hemp cordage and the strength of synthetic line, but without the slippery plastic feel.
Photographs by the author
The P.O.S.H. line splices well, coils neatly, and looks right on a wooden boat.
After some Internet searching we came across P.O.S.H. (Portside Out, Starboard Home) manufactured by Langman Ropes. It has a soft feel that’s easy on the hands and a natural-looking tan color that looks right with our boat’s bright-finished wood. The three- or four-strand polyester twisted line that is UV-stabilized, pre-stretched, and made with spun yarns rather than filament yarns—think knitting yarn versus monofilament fishing line. The spun and twisted polyester yarns in P.O.S.H. are not as stable as filaments, therefore in order to meet the grade set by modern double braids they must go through the additional processes of heating and stretching to lower their elongation under load. The line then reaches a mere 2 percent stretch at 20 percent load of its breaking strength. This is better than New England Rope’s classic Sta-Set double-braid, which has a 3.5 percent stretch under the same load.
P.O.S.H. has good resistance to abrasion and chemicals, and its strength is not diminished when wet. We find its handling characteristics when wet are well above the typical double-braid; because it’s less slippery, it requires less grip strength. The spun yarns are not as strong as filaments—10mm P.O.S.H. has a 3,500-lb breaking strength versus 4,400-lb for double-braid—but the line is well suited to uses aboard small boats, and the aesthetics and the comfortable feel make for a worthwhile compromise.
The strands keep their shape when spliced; the cut end can be melted with a hot knife to prevent fraying below the whipping.
Aside from the intended use as running rigging, P.O.S.H. lends itself to decorative knots and ropework. What I like most about this line is the ease with which it splices. All of our sail controls—outhaul, reefpoints, halyard—are done with simple spliced toggle shackles, and all of our blocks are attached to the boat with spliced loops. Splicing P.O.S.H. line requires no special tools and is something that can be done quickly and easily. When untwisted for splicing, the three strands resist unraveling, allowing for a tight and tidy splice. With a little practice I found that I could even neglect taping the strand tips and, if necessary, could easily retwist the strands or even the line itself. The soft shackles we make take the place of metal shackles, which can clang around and scratch a carefully laid finish and can be dangerous when whipped around by the wind. A little pleasant work with P.O.S.H. reduces these risks and saves money while also producing fittings that look just right on our lug-rigged boat.
After more than 1,000 miles of sailing with this line for every piece of running rigging on the boat, we had no problems or complaints. It held up well to both fresh- and saltwater conditions, constant sunlight, and the chafe of everyday use.
Danielle Kreusch grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah and spent a lot of time hiking and camping in the mountains. After moving to Florida to finish her BA in Psychology and Child Development, Danielle met Kyle Hawkins, who took her sailing on their third date. Their Mississippi River trip was their first small-boat excursion, and they have both fallen in love with the idea of continuing to travel in small boats.
The first time Harvey Hamel retired as a contracts director for a Fortune 500 engineering and construction firm, he designed and oversaw the construction of the house he and his wife Leslie now live in. That was in 1999. The following year he went back to work with the same firm and then retired again in 2013. In the fall of that year he went to Port Townsend, Washington, less than an hour’s drive from his home in Kingston, for the annual Wooden Boat Festival. He had done some woodworking and had always been intrigued by the complexity of wooden boat construction. Seeing all of the traditionally built boats at the festival got him thinking that he might try his hand at boatbuilding. Before heading home, he bought a used copy of John Gardner’s Building Classic Small Craft.
Photographs by Harvey and Leslie Hamel
To make it easier to assemble the plank sections, Harvey built a long worktable along one wall of the garage.
Leafing through the pages of the book was all it took for him to get hooked on the idea of building a boat. It would be the perfect retirement project. Leslie was the daughter of a Coast Guard captain and moved frequently while growing up, but spent many of her summers at the family beach house on Camano Island, plying the waters there in a dory. She had fond memories of it, so Harvey decided he’d build a dory. He bought Gardner’s The Dory Book and was drawn to the chapter on the Chamberlain gunning dory.
Prior to cutting the bottom to shape, Harvey set the frames and stems in place to make sure everything fit the outline he’d cut.
Harvey spent a few months poring over The Dory Book, soaking up the 71 pages of Chapter 5, and buying tools, hardware, and lumber. Gardner supplies detailed drawings of the dory’s frames, and since the six frames and the stems were the only building forms required, lofting wasn’t necessary. Except for a 1-5/8″ height difference the stems are identical, and the three frames forward are identical with the three frames aft, so Harvey only had to make one pattern for the stems and three for the frames. In anticipation of the work on the planks, he made a 19’ workbench along one wall of the garage.
With the garboards in place, a three-piece blank for the broad strake, scarfed and glued, was set on the forms to get the marks for its sheer-side edge.
Finding suitable lumber at an affordable price wasn’t an easy task. After searching for several months, he came across a Craigslist ad for white oak and clear, old-growth vertical-grain Douglas-fir, which had been properly stickered and stored in a warehouse in Lake Stevens, Washington, for 15 years. Harvey bought seven 20′-long 2x12s of the old-growth fir, two 12′ lengths of 2×8, and four 20′ lengths of 1×4 oak. Harvey milled the oak on his 12″ planer for sawn frames, bent frames, stems, inwales, outwales, breast hooks, and false stems. He sent the fir to Edensaw in Port Townsend to be resawn into 1/2″ planking stock and 1″ boards for the bottom and thwarts.
With the hull complete, the gunning dory is ready for the interior accoutrements.
Harvey also bought some old planes, some new planes, a 14″ bandsaw, and what would become a steady stream of clamps. Sawdust and shavings first fell on February 20, 2014, when blades and boards came together to produce the three-plank bottom. Harvey worked largely alone, sussing out each step in the construction by watching YouTube videos, reading blogs, and studying boatbuilding books. Progress on the uphill side of the learning curve was slow, and the project dragged out for months, then years. The stream of friends and relatives who visited the shop slowed to a trickle; they gave up asking when the boat would be finished.
Four years in the making, ODYSSEY is finished and ready for the water.
Each boatbuilding mystery that Harvey had to solve led to what he called a “sabbatical,” and then he’d eventually find a solution and return to the project. In December 2015, he had finished the planking, a significant milestone, but after he flipped the hull right-side up to work on the interior he was confronted with a whole new set of challenges: steam-bending frames, fitting the two breasthooks, and springing in risers, inwales, and outwales. Overwhelmed, he took a prolonged leave of absence. It came to an abrupt end one night in June 2016, when he bolted awake at 2 a.m. hearing a voice in his head shouting, “Just build it or burn it!” That morning he got back to work on the boat.
On a cool October afternoon, Harvey takes to the oars and glides gracefully into retirement.
As the project neared the end of its fourth year, it became clear that it would come to a successful completion and the boat was going to need a name. Leslie, mindful of the long and transformative journey Harvey had made to turn a stack of lumber into an elegant boat, came up with ODYSSEY.
At the end of the project Harvey began to feel his efforts had breathed life into lumber, screws, rivets, and varnish and in spite of all of the difficulties, the build had been the best way to begin his retirement. It had kept him healthy in mind, body, and spirit. His only regret was that he hadn’t started building boats 60 years earlier.
This time he has decided he’ll stay retired.
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 my tweens my father let me play with a model steam engine that my grandfather had built, so I was told, from a Stuart Turner kit from England. I’d occasionally take the engine, its boiler, a small crescent wrench, a box of matches, and a handful of black licorice and set up on the concrete patio in the back of the house.
Stuart steam engine models date back to 1898. I’d guess that my grandfather’s is now about 90 years old. It doesn’t have a lot of hours on it and still runs smoothly.
After removing the pressure-release valve I could trickle water into its fitting until the water showing the gauge on the front of the boiler was almost to the top of the glass tube. I’d replace the valve, then fire the boiler with either an alcohol burner that Dad bought for it, a can of Sterno, or wood scraps. I preferred wood for the glowing golden flames at the mouth of the fire chamber and the plume of smoke issuing from the chimney.
The model is powered by a copper boiler secured to the plywood base over a circle of fire-proof jeweler’s soldering board.
As the pressure built, some of the fittings on the boiler would begin to hiss and spit. The whistle on the top of the boiler was my only means of checking the pressure. It would lisp when the pressure was just beginning to build, and with good head of steam, it would scream shrilly when it was time to open the valve to send steam to the engine. The brass flywheel might’ve also needed a bit of a nudge to get it spinning.
The engine never propelled anything, but it was pleasure enough just to watch it and listen to it—I’d sit by it eating licorice until the water level in the gauge dropped to the bottom and it was time to extinguish the fire.
When John Leyde invited me to take a run in a steam-powered boat up the Ebey Slough from Marysville, a half hour north of Seattle, I was eager to watch a steam engine put to use. John helped a friend build ATNA, an Adirondack guideboat that was featured in our January 2018 issue.
The propane burner in the boiler has not yet built up a head of steam, and all’s quiet.
The steam launch E. SCOTT HAMMOND is just one of the many boats John has built. Its lines were inspired by a Karl Stambaugh cruiser that John scaled down to half for an electric launch, then stretched to 18’ for the HAMMOND, launched in 2009, which was initially diesel powered and then converted to steam on 2016. The switch was one John was destined to make; his father worked with a logging crew in the Washington forests and ran a steam donkey, a powerful seething machine with a tall boiler and a powerful winch, all mounted on a pair of hip-high log skids.
courtesy of John Leyde
John’s father, Ralph, here sits on the winch drum of the steam donkey he operated. Grandfather Leo is behind him, and John’s uncles, Paul and Glenn Leyde, are in shirtsleeves standing in front of one of the log skids. The donkey was behind hauled between work sites where it was to be set on the ground, resting on the skids.
The engine for the HAMMOND was built in 2004 by a steam buff in Oregon. It has a 2-1/2″ bore with a 3″ stroke, making it a 241 cc engine, although it’s not just the top of the cylinder that does the work. The piston gets pushed by steam from above and below.
John’s steam engine pushes the HAMMOND along at about 4 knots.
The piston is lubricated not by oil, but by water condensed from the steam flowing into the cylinder, and the water is recycled in the hot well beneath the boiler where it will be turned into steam again. It is possible to use oil to lubricate the cylinder, but the water to be recycled gets contaminated with oil. John tried an oil-lubrication system once, and to filter the water before it reached the hot well, he ran it through a homemade filter: pantyhose filled with hair clippings from his local barber shop.
The boiler is propane fired, so there’s no smoke coming out of the stack. There are two propane tanks secured under the foredeck. With two tanks, John can switch as one becomes cold, even icing up, and interrupting the delivery of fuel as it is consumes at about 1-1/2 gallons per hour. There is a freshwater tank under the HAMMOND’s aft deck, and the water it supplies goes through a heat exchanger warmed by the engine’s exhaust to make the boiler more economical in the amount of fuel it consumes to create steam.
A bronze 16×20 propeller pushes the HAMMOND along at about 4 knots. It’s a good thing that she doesn’t go much faster, because John spends about half of his time tending the engine, checking the boiler, and going forward to check on the propane tanks. “Never take a date out on a steamboat,” he said, “you’d just be ignoring someone.” I took the initiative to keep an eye on our course up the serpentine bends of the slough, and often reached across the cockpit to turn the wheel, mounted on the portside coaming. I too let a lot of shoreline slip by without notice. Watching a steam engine is very much like staring into a campfire: it’s soothing, almost mesmerizing.
I’ve been using a very reliable 2.5-hp outboard for a dozen years, and as happy as I have been with it, I don’t really take pleasure in it because it doesn’t make for good company. With two of the boats we use it on, I’ve abandoned its tiller and put some distance between the helm and the motor so I don’t have to put up with its constant thrumming and quivering. John’s steam engine is a much better companion, soft-spoken and more open—it doesn’t hide behind a cowling and an engine block.
I’ve often thought I’d make a model launch scaled for the Stuart Turner engine, but while I might enjoy seeing the boat underway, I’d miss watching the workings of the engine.
It is hard to capture the feeling of a good pulling boat, but perhaps the best way to sum it up is to say that some boats just glide and will cover great distances on the water with seemingly no effort at all. A few pulls are all that are needed to reveal a well-designed wherry. With the skin-on-frame Ruth, Dave Gentry has created an interesting adaptation of a classic rowing wherry that captures that elusive quality of glide.
The Ruth, with its fabric skin, and well-thought-out, easily built wooden frame, keeps the weight down to around 45 lbs, light enough for this 18-footer to be singlehandedly cartopped with ease. Gentry’s plans are a complete, well-illustrated, easy-to-follow, and include paper templates for the plywood frames.
The structure for the Ruth is a combination of plywood and lightweight western red cedar stringers. The 1/2″ marine-plywood stem, frames, and transom are notched for the full-length strips that bend from bow to stern and give shape to the wherry. Joining frames to stringers takes only a bit of thickened epoxy and stainless-steel screws. Even the most inexperienced builder with basic tools can have a frame built in just a few hours. The plywood breasthook and various supporting knees are laid out in the paper templates as well. They are essential strengthening elements and relatively simple to add with a bit of beveling and finesse.
The fabric skin goes on with a combination of stainless-steel staples and only a bit of handiwork with needle and thread. The plans recommend 8-oz polyester. Nylon durability is well regarded among the skin-on-frame kayak builders; Gentry mentions it as an acceptable alternative with a precaution that it does not heat-shrink as well as polyester.
A good pneumatic or electric stapler makes short work of the hundreds of staples that a fix the skin along the entire gunwale, but a hand stapler would also adequately do the job, albeit with a bit of fatigue at the end of the day. An extra set of hands for the skinning step is helpful. You can do the job solo, keeping the skin in proper alignment with push-pins straight along the keelson. The addition of the gunwale later on hides the staples, but care should be taken to set them consistently at a depth that holds and doesn’t cut or pull the cloth askew at each staple.
Jim Dumser
The author’s Ruth is rigged with a home-built rowing rig for solo rowing and is without floorboards and a seat for a passenger. A false transom covers the edges of the fabric skin for a tidier appearance.
The skin wraps around the transom and particular care should be taken to do a neat job with the folds and the copper nails; they will be visible when the boat is completed. On my build, I first used upholstery tacks as a decorative touch, but they didn’t hold well, and the folded fabric edge wasn’t as tidy as I’d hoped. I decided to hide the fabric and the staples with a false transom of 1/8″ plywood. It added very little weight and looks tidy.
The only stitching required for the skin is at the bow. Even for the uninitiated, this short section can be accomplished rather easily. In addition to the supplied directions, helpful video tutorials are available online. Since polyester can easily unravel once cut, the edges need to be heat-sealed. If you don’t have a hot knife specifically made for the task, a flat cutting tip on a soldering gun works like a charm.
After the skin is attached to the frame, the gentle use of an iron will remove wrinkles and pull the skin taut. The polyester fabric needs to be sealed to become fully waterproof and the instructions call for oil-based paint or varnish. Inexpensive latex porch/floor paint, a favorite of many skin-on-frame builders, seems to hold up well, and can always be touched up or recoated. Marine topside paints, aside from being more expensive, are hard when fully cured and don’t seem to fare well applied to a flexible fabric surface.
Kyla Dumser
The length and enough fullness in the ends keep the Ruth in trim as the rower’s weight shifts back and forth on a sliding seat.
Once the skin is on, the rubrail and skeg round out a finished hull. Although the skeg is attached with screws through the skin, no leaks have developed and reinforcement by way of a short piece of brass fixed along the trailing edge of the skeg and the transom has proven ample support.
The plans detail an interior layout that consists of a rowing station and passenger seats. Designer Dave Gentry opted to rig his own Ruth with a fixed seat with simple outriggers as laid out in the original plans, a good option if you’re building on a limited budget. Fixed-seat rowing will require a pair of locks and simple plywood outriggers attached to the gunwales. A pair of 7′ to 7′ 6″ oars are a good fit.
The plans also include guidance on installing sliding-seat rowing units. I equipped my Ruth with a custom-built sliding seat rig that was designed around plans and a hardware kit ($299) from Colin Angus. Ready-made drop-in rigs like the Piantedosi ($595) have been successfully employed by many Ruth builders.
Kyla Dumser
The author has been able to bring the Ruth up to 6 knots in a short sprint and can hold 4 to 5 knots at a sustainable effort.
My Ruth weighs 55 lbs with the addition of the built-in rowing rig. The boat is very comfortable on flat water and can take on a bit of chop. I can easily sustain a cruising speed of 4 to 5 knots using a 9’6” pair of carbon-fiber hatchet-blade sculls. Top speed for me is a little better than 6 knots, but the extra effort to sustain the sprint seems hard to justify when rowing for pleasure.
Getting aboard is not difficult, but care does need to be taken about foot placement to protect the skin. The plans detail lightly constructed floor boards for a fixed seat; I omitted them because they would have interfered with the placement of the sliding-seat rig.
I usually launch in shallow water and get aboard by sitting on the seat first and then swinging my legs into the boat. Under way, the stability is very good and the Ruth provides a dry ride even when things become a little rough. The craft’s light weight lets me come up to speed very quickly in just a few strokes and the sharp bow ensures that I can maintain speed even in modest chop. The skeg assures that hull will track well underway and yet allows for reasonable maneuvering in tight quarters.
Kyla Dumser
While this Ruth isn’t equipped with a seat for a passenger, the reserve buoyancy created by the transom will support the additional weight without putting the hull well out of trim.
The greater freeboard of the wherry design, compared to a traditional scull, does lend itself to a little fight in a crosswind, but weathercocking is not excessive and easily corrected. At 18′, the Ruth does an admirable job avoiding the tendency of shorter craft to hobby horse as a rower’s weight shifts fore and aft with the sliding seat. I built my Ruth for solo outings and didn’t install the passenger seat.
The 8-oz polyester skin specified in the plans might make one wonder about its long-term durability. There isn’t much between the rower and the water, but after three years the skin is still in good shape and has no tears or punctures. In the plans, Gentry mentions the option of adding a skim coat of a polyurethane adhesive along areas where abrasion is likely. The challenge is to keep it thin enough not to bubble up while curing, but, when successful, it provides an additional measure of security.
Dave Gentry’s capable Ruth is a winner. Few homebuilt boats will get you on the water as quickly and as inexpensively. The simple construction method, plainly written guide, and complete plans ensure that even a first-time builder will succeed.
Jim Dumser is a husband, father, teacher, and boatbuilder who is lucky to have had the opportunity to share the art and love of boats with his daughters and his students for the past decade. Building boats is the natural extension of his time spent starting and teaching the Wood Arts program at North Carolina’s Community School of Davidson where students have built a number of boats from canoes to a St. Ayles Skiff.
Ruth Particulars
[table]
Length/18’
Beam/33”
Weight/45 lbs
Maximum capacity/375 lbs
[/table]
Plans ($65 for paper, $55 for digital) and kits ($500) for the Ruth are available from Gentry Custom Boats.
Update: The Gentry website seems to be down. Duckworks has plans for the Ruth. 7/14/22
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!
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Photographs by the author
