I met this great bloke, Ross Lillistone, a classy sailor, designer, and builder of boats, at a boat show in 2005 and asked him to sell me plans and give me guidance in the selecting and building of a couple of small boats—a 9′ Sherpa that I rigged with a balanced lugsail and 10′ Fish Hook rowing boat—both from designer John Welsford. I’d been happily sailing then with a new cohort of like-minded sailors, but I eventually realized that I needed a faster, more versatile, but still simply rigged boat. I didn’t have the time to embark on building a third, so I was hoping Ross could both design and build a boat for me, and in 2007 he said he could.
John Shrapnel
The two masts fit all three of the mast steps, providing the option to sail with both sails, the main alone, or the mizzen alone, as conditions require.
He got to work drawing a larger, faster, but still simply rigged and sailed camp-cruiser with rowing and motor backup. He came up with a new design, and in 2008 a beautifully built 17′ cat-ketch with balanced lugsails emerged from his shop. I christened the boat PERIWINKLE, and Ross adopted the name for the design.
The Periwinkle has a glued 9mm-marine-plywood lapstrake hull with five strakes, built on its frames and bulkheads over a strongback. It has hardwood gunwales, stem, and skeg. It has very large and accessible flotation compartments, the rear one (capable of huge gear stowage) reached from a large midline hatch. The boat and sailing rig take about 600 hours to build.
John Shrapnel
The center mast partner braces the forward end of the centerboard trunk. The mast’s leather is long enough to protect the the mast in either of the partners it can be placed in.
Periwinkle has three maststeps, two for the main and one for the mizzen, giving many options for sail configuration. Ross built a beautiful bird’s-mouth mainmast, light enough to lift and drop into the appropriate mast step. Each mast, bundled with its spars and sail, fits within the boat’s length for storage and trailering.
I usually sail solo and enjoy that most but sailing with two or three aboard also works well. Being such a light boat, it is very easy to launch and retrieve singlehandedly. The lug sails and unstayed masts make for extra quick rigging at the ramp. For camp-cruising or daysailing in tidal waters, I carry two inflatable beach rollers. They make it easy to move the boat across any expanses of sand. Fully inflated, they stow neatly under each of the side decks along with the oars. If I’m daysailing from a beach camp, the simplicity of just pulling up the main, dropping the rudder and centerboard, and sailing away are always appreciated.
Paul Hernes
When fully set, the lug cat-ketch rig carries 156 sq ft of sail.
The Periwinkle excels in light air, and is a fast and easily driven boat, leaping forward in response to any puff of wind. Its initial tenderness is followed by stiffness as the aft sections come into play. With the full cat-ketch rig, I take to the ample side-decks early on to maintain the trim. An extra crew can help but is not necessary. If I’m sailing solo with the full rig I put the first reefs in at 7 to 10 knots of wind.
The rear seating, situated just forward of the rear deck, places the helmsman optimally for weight distribution. It is very comfortable tucked into those back corners with a leg resting on the seat and a foot wedged against the other side. Likewise, if hiking outboard on the side decks with tiller extension, your feet push firmly against the centerboard trunk as a counter to your pull on the mainsheet. When I spend the night aboard the boat, the floorboards offer enough room for comfortable sleeping to either side of the trunk.
Paul Hernes
The centerboard trunk makes a good footrest for the crew while they’re sitting on the rail.
Under sail, the Periwinkle points high, especially trimmed so the transom just kisses the water while the forefoot is well in—it helps to edge the bow upwind as it peels the water away. The fine entry means minimal hobby-horsing to impede its progress through choppy water. The boat is generally a very dry ride.
The Periwinkle has an ample skeg, so on every point of sail but tight push to windward using a small amount of centerboard to counter leeway. Minimal use of the centerboard, of course, helps speed. The hull has such a shallow draft that with board almost up it will get across any bit of shallow water, even as little as 6”.
When tacking, the Periwinkle doesn’t snap about like some of the other boats, probably because the centerboard acts like a long keel when it’s only partially deployed. Fully lowering the board to a nearly vertical position would make it easier for the boat to pivot around it.
Sailing on a run in stronger winds with lug sails requires care and attention. The yard shouldn’t be let out to more than 90 degrees, as dreaded rolling may put you in the drink. I learned this lesson the hard way.
And if you do capsize? The Periwinkle won’t put its mast under, so the hull will lie on its side, supported by both the mast and the watertight compartments in the ends. It was easy for me to get on the centerboard to right the boat, then slip in over the side. The built-in buoyancy limits the water scooped up, and a large bucket works well to clear the cockpit. I’ve thought an electric bilge pump would be a good addition.
I once capsized to starboard while my motor was clamped on the transom, and though it was partly dunked, I had the boat up so quickly that the motor was fine and started straight away. The air intake must have been clear of the water or perhaps there was a good seal on the cover. A capsize to port would leave the outboard well completely above water.
Paul Hernes
With the lug-rigged ketch setting only the 105 sq ft main in the middle partner, the Periwinkle still makes good speed and simplifies sail-tending tasks for the skipper.
I’ve tried all of the options the cat-ketch rig offers for sail area; the variety provides flexibility for various wind speeds. The least sail area is under the mizzen alone, and the boat really sings along in 15 to 20 knots of wind while I stay comfortably seated inboard. The helm is better balanced while using two sails, or when using one by adjusting the mainsheet and centerboard and the fore-and-aft trim. A light touch on the tiller is the reward. When tacking, moving around the centerboard case (which extends to the thwart in front of the mizzen mast) was awkward at first, but I’ve learned how to execute a flowing crossover.
John Shrapnel
In a fresh breeze, with the mizzen set in the middle partner, the Periwinkle made a GPS-measured 7 knots.
I have all the sail and centerboard controls led to the helm. If the wind is up, I can also reef both the main and mizzen from there. The yards on both sails drop readily when rounded up to the wind when their halyards are eased. If I know I’ll have brisk sailing conditions, I’ll fix about 25 lbs of lead below the floorboards, each side of the centerboard trunk. The additional weight improves performance and comfort.
As my experience with the boat grows, I have found a wonderful rig setup that’s not among those in Ross’s drawings. I step the mainmast in the forward position and move the downhaul forward to the tip of the boom, reconfiguring the balanced lug into a standing lug. This puts the aftmost part of the boom forward and well above head height—a very comforting modification. She looks good too, and still points high with great speed. As I get older and less energetic, I find this is now the optimal rig for me.
Ross kept rowing in mind when he designed the Periwinkle; the thwart and rowlocks are well situated for solo rowing. I leave the rudder hung on the transom and use a tiller tamer, as the tiller is out of reach. With a good pair of oars, the Periwinkle glides along straight and true.
For motoring I have a 2.5-hp four-stroke outboard. I fix the motor to straight ahead and use the rudder and tiller for directional control. It’s a long reach to the motor over the rear deck, so I have a small pole with loop of line for shifting gears and an extension on the throttle control. The motor well is offset to starboard, but it still keeps the motor above the water when the boat is strongly heeled on a port tack. Under power, the Periwinkle achieves hull speed at an economical half throttle.
The Periwinkle is a fine and versatile boat, and can be customized for a wide array of requirements. I’ve enjoyed the exploration of sail options and efficiency and simplicity of the lugsails. (Ross includes gaff-headed cat rig with flying jib option in his plans.)
Ross Lillistone
This Periwinkle carries the gaff cat with jib rig with a total of 132 sq ft of sail.
In its full rig option, the Periwinkle may not be a boat for a novice sailor, but with a reduced rig it offers easy and safe sailing. For those with more experience, a competitive streak, and an inquisitive mind, the Periwinkle gives a rewarding sail. I never stop learning about this boat and its abilities, and as I get older, my appreciation grows for the many options for reducing sail while maintaining performance.
We old sailors are a very competitive bunch, and all of us love our own boats. We constantly tune them to eke out every bit of speed as we close on the boat ahead (or to avoid getting closed-in on) and chuckle to see the other skipper furtively checking his trim, centerboard, and sail settings, trying to look unconcerned at being outfooted.
So, is the Periwinkle a good performer? Well, it really suits and satisfies me, and is a great all-rounder. It has taught me plenty about sailing.
John Shrapnel, a retired anesthesiologist, and his family live mostly in Queensland, on Australia’s Sunshine Coast. He has sailed enthusiastically for 10 years or so with a group of disparate older fellows in their home-built small wooden boats from designers all over the world. They often gather for meetings convened by the Wooden Boat Association of Queensland (WBAQ), whose members include boatbuilders and sailors from amateurs to masters. John has always lived by the sea, and boatbuilding, sailing, and the companionship afforded by the small-boat community are integral parts of his happy retirement.
Periwinkle Particulars
[table]
Length/17’2″
Beam/5’2″
Displacement, salt water/877 lbs
Sail area, Lug cat-ketch/156 sq ft
Sail area, gaff sloop/132 sq ft
[/table]
Plans for the Periwinkle are available from Ross Lillistone’s web site printed ($180 AUD, approx. $133 USD) or as PDF files ($170 AUD, approx. $126 USD).
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 year was 1979. My friend Geof Heath and I needed a special boat for a special project—a climbing expedition along the wild and mountainous coast of Labrador. The boat had to meet conflicting requirements: it had to be large enough to carry us, our food supplies, extra fuel, and climbing and camping gear, all while being reasonably safe in the open ocean. It also had to be light enough to be trailered hundreds of miles, often over gravel roads, and light enough that the two of us could drag ashore on rocky landings. Then there was the biggest factor—we didn’t have a lot of money. Now, nearly 40 years later, I am still amazed that not only did we find the right boat for our expedition, but that the little craft later proved adaptable for any number of demanding projects and today is still ever ready for whatever task we might call for. It proved the maxim, simplicity pays, both on land and sea.
And how did we find this floating marvel of versatility? Well, it took a considerable amount of searching and was not where one might expect. Geof was a former mountain guide in the American West and in Europe but at the time was busy working at a commercial boatyard. In his spare time, he was building a 15’ Friendship sloop, a very small version of a handsome and once-common fishing sailboat along the Maine coast. He lamented the fact that his boat would be too small and slow for our needs, could not be easily transported, and would require a tender to get us ashore.
So we turned to combing the boat catalogs, which was a frustrating job, given our unusual requirements. We soon ruled out fiberglass because of its cost, weight, and need for more power than we could afford. Wood seemed a possibility for a while, but time, expense, and weight put an end to that idea. A strong case could be made for aluminum—it is light and durable—but all the open skiffs we saw were too small, the longest around just 16′. The next larger series of aluminum boats call for larger motors, decks, floors, wheel steering, windshields, center consoles, cuddies, you name it, and were bigger and heavier than we could handle.
Then, in the back pages of a catalog from Lund Boats, I found the answer. One of their 18’ boats, with the soul-stirring name of S-18, was a plain-Jane aluminum skiff, just another “tin boat,” as scoffers were apt to deride its type. But aluminum is not tin; rather, it’s a metal that gets along very well with salt water, to say nothing about its remarkable strength, light weight, and workability. These last three features were the core of what we were looking for.
Photographs collection of the author except as noted
On delivery day in Ohio, TORNGAT all but dwarfed our little VW tow car. During her working life, TORNGAT was often towed by a VW loaded with camping gear and tools, along with four husky men.
I called the Lund headquarters in Minnesota and had a pleasant chat with a company official, who showed interest in our project right away. He answered my questions knowledgeably without trying to sell me a boat; his mainly positive replies were genuine. I asked how the boat was in rough water. “We sell most of our S-18s to Canadian fishing camps and Alaskan commercial fishermen who see plenty of nasty going.” What is the lowest-powered motor that would be enough for us? “The boat is rated for 55 horsepower, but a 25 should do the job in your circumstances.”
I was getting really interested, but then came the big question: How much will it cost? “You can have it delivered to our warehouse in Columbus, Ohio, for $1,400.” That was a sizable sum for our slim pocketbook but still a figure much less than expected. Columbus was a long distance from my home in midcoast Maine, and there was a major gasoline shortage in the Northeast, driving up the cost of filling the tank. Trusting my wife Dorrie would still speak to me when I told her what I’d bought, I said, “I’ll take it.”
All ready for the North Country, the three companions—Geof Heath, left, TORNGAT, and I—pose for a family shot. With all of our modifications, our boat has lost its skiff appearance.
Dorrie and I were soon on our way to Columbus, by way of Rhode Island to borrow a boat trailer big enough for an 18-footer, and several days later arrived at the Lund warehouse. The S-18 looked awfully big behind my diminutive Volkswagen Golf, but it weighed only 400 lbs, so the little four-cylinder car engine had no trouble hauling the “whale” back to Maine.
When you catch a big fish, you take a photo. When you pass a grounded iceberg, you do the same. The notorious Iceberg Alley passes down the Labrador coast just a few miles offshore; ’bergs often drift from the current and go aground on Labrador shallows. Geof and TORNGAT check one out.
Geof and I named the boat TORNGAT, after the range of mountains we were seeking in Labrador, and spent the rest of the year modifying the boat. I tested several different motors large and small and settled for a 25-horse Mariner, built by Yamaha in Japan. It proved a good choice then and for years afterward. Geof, skilled boat carpenter that he was, built a raised foredeck of plywood, pine, and fiberglass that bolted neatly into wooden channels he had fastened to the hull. Aft of this were fittings for three steel arches to support a light nylon canopy that would serve as our cabin. Our additions covered nearly half the length of TORNGAT.
I made and installed what turned out to be a tremendously valuable shoulder-high grabrail made of 3/4″ galvanized pipe. It offered support for safe passage while stepping over piles of gear and fuel containers between the helm and covered area. Grab rails, I knew from experience, are of great importance in rough water for both safety and comfort. Jarring boat seats can be torture to one’s bottom, but to stand in a bouncing small boat you need something solid to hang on to.
Carefully moored in Labrador’s Port Manvers wilderness, TORNGAT rested for a couple of days while Geof and I climbed nearby mountains. This was the farthest point we reached, 400 miles up the coast but still a bit shy of our goal. The melting snowdrifts in the background are evidence that we are in the land of short summers.
Building and rigging our exploration vessel—accomplished between working regular jobs for a living—carried through the winter of 1979–80. In July we set off on our venture in my International Scout with the boat and trailer in tow. This apparent late start was necessitated by the possibility of drifting ice. After leaving Maine, we towed our expedition boat across New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, ferried across Cabot Strait to Newfoundland, drove to the coast of the Strait of Belle Isle, ferried to Québec province, and then drove 60 miles of gravel road to Red Bay, Labrador, at the time the last coastal community north.
We parked the Scout in a fisherman’s field and launched from his rough log ramp. No trumpets, no sad farewells, only a “Have a good trip” from our fisherman friend, who stood at the top of the ramp shaking his head as we fired up the motor and headed out of the bay into a wall of fog.
For the next two weeks we motored up a coast that was fascinating but confusing, a jumble of islands, great headlands, deep bays that disappeared into the interior, and lovely “runs,” as long straits are called there, through miles of protected waters. We stopped at the very few isolated settlements for fuel, all the time enjoying a wild and beautiful country. Our speed averaged 10 to 12 mph, a reasonable pace in unknown and poorly charted waters but not with the zip to match modern go-fast craft. The Mariner 25 purred faultlessly at our usual three-quarters throttle setting. At that speed the motor used less fuel, the ride was more comfortable, and gave us the opportunity to take in our surroundings.
The coast in the early miles seemed to be an endless barrier of waves crashing against high ledges, rock-strewn flats, wall-like cliffs, and foaming reefs. But what a change when we came up on the Wonderstrand—more than 30 miles of vast sand beach backed by low forest. Though marked on the chart with two sweeping curves, we were still unprepared for this spectacular feature so far from the sun-warmed beaches of the U.S. east coast. We found this seemingly peaceful scene of broad sand beach washed by combers of the Labrador Sea to be as intimidating as the cliffs and reefs behind us. For mile after mile there was no place to land, and the threat of taking a heavily laden small boat through a hundred yards of humping and breaking waves caused us to listen intently for the slightest miss in the outboard motor. It didn’t fail us.
We never did reach our goal of climbing in the Torngat Mountains, although we did make it 40 miles north of Nain, the last year-round village on the coast. We just ran out of time while cruising 400 miles along a coast that seemed far larger than it appears on a map, dramatic and attractive in its variety. Our return down the coast was as interesting as the trip up, and we returned to Maine thoroughly satisfied with our adventure.
In her expedition mode, TORNGAT shows her long-distance layout. This photograph was taken after her return from Labrador—where she best fits, snugged up to shore on a Maine island.
For the Labrador expedition, we had transformed a simple hull into a capable cruiser with very little cost. The foredeck required a fair amount of boatbuilding skill, but all of the rest was straightforward cutting and bending of pipe and standard hammer-and-saw construction. Geof and I derived a lot of satisfaction in doing it ourselves and getting exactly what we wanted for our exploration of coastal Labrador.
It wasn’t the only transformation TORNGAT underwent.
After Labrador, TORNGAT went into local use, and here she’s unloading a sea-duck hunter on a Maine coast ledge. The big skiff was always welcome transport in late autumn’s blustery days.
For the next few years, except for rare day outings along the coast, TORNGAT lay idle in my backyard much of the time while Dorrie and I were involved in other activities. Then, in the mid-’80s, I began part-time work with the Island Institute, a nonprofit organization that concentrates its work on the larger coastal islands of Maine where people live year-round. TORNGAT and I went to sea again, carrying work parties and supplies to various projects. The only major change we made from her expedition layout was to cut down the high grabrail to waist height. We usually left the three arches and the nylon canopy ashore because the frequent landings on rough shores required a person to slide over the foredeck onto rocks or ledges.
MITA
At relatively low cost, the S-18 as a pleasure boat serves well on ocean waters. Stuart and Ellen Dawson, associated with the Island Institute, give their Lund a workout in choppy going.
At this time, the State of Maine, and had sold scores of larger islands to private owners but still owned approximately 1,500 small islands. Wondering if there might be some recreational value in the islets it was still stuck with, the state hired the Island Institute to check them out.
The first year, Institute staffers visited islands from Portland to Rockland using a boat that was considerably larger than a skiff. They soon found that greater care was required to navigate in the shallows among the reefs and ledges; anchoring off and using a small skiff to go ashore was a time-eating drawback. Believing that a smaller craft might be more efficient, the Institute again hired me and TORNGAT to inspect state-owned islands from Penobscot Bay all the way to the Canadian border.
MITA
Not a wreck but just resting, an SSV-18 of the Maine Island Trail Association is grounded out while her crew works on an island campsite. The tough aluminum boats are ideal for this sort of work. MITA has had a fleet of four of them for 10 years, and expects at least another decade of service each of these boats.
This sort of work was old hat for a boat used to “wild dockage,” that is, dealing with all sorts of shore landings. In the course of a day, I might target three or four islands. Some that appeared attractive from the water lacked good landings and were rejected as unsuitable for public use. But occasionally real surprises waited in the rubble: small, even tiny, gems of rock rising out of the sea had narrow sand beaches and grassy flat spots where a small boat, canoe, or kayak could make a safe landing. A tent or two could be pitched under a windbreak of storm-toughened spruces and firs.
TORNGAT did her job without effort. Steering the outboard with its tiller assured instant maneuvering among rocks and weed, and the tough aluminum hull absorbed bumps without harm and could be grounded out for hours or overnight through the rise and fall of the tide without having a rock wear a hole in the bottom. And there was still room for camping gear and food. I spent countless nights on the islands and was not without a few creature comforts.
As the count of attractive, accommodating, and user-friendly state islands climbed, I was reminded of similar spots in Labrador. What a wilderness treasure right in our front yard! Scattered along much of the Maine coast, owned by the state and therefore safe from private sale and development, were many islands well protected from the open ocean by a barrier of other islands, and these new discoveries sired an idea: why not set up a “trail” of islands where boat travelers—especially small-boat adventurers—could overnight as they worked their way along this water trail? The Island Institute published a handsome annual magazine and, as one of the contributors, I wrote an article in the 1987 issue proposing such an island-studded waterway. The idea caught on.
Institute Director Philip Conkling and I discussed the possibility of setting up an organization of interested boat people within the Institute. I was given the task of setting it up, choosing islands, establishing campsites, etc., along midcoast Maine. Initially, TORNGAT was the only boat in the budding Maine Island Trail Association (MITA), and I was at work almost every day, often helped by a volunteer or two. We usually trailered TORNGAT to a boat ramp as near to the work site as possible. Loading food and hand tools in the boat, we would run to the island of choice, clear a simple campsite in a copse of spruce or fir, always trying to balance protection from harsh weather against locations with the best views. With TORNGAT so easily trailered, we rarely had to spend the night on an island, and her large size for her type meant that she could handle snorting afternoon southwesterlies without need for holing up for the night.
By the second season, it was clear we’d need more help and a second boat. The Institute purchased another S-18 to work alongside TORNGAT. Meanwhile, membership growth of the organization was rapid, and a full-time director came on board. In 1990, MITA spun off from the Institute and became its own nonprofit entity. We opened offices in Portland and Rockland, hired a field staff of three or so part-time assistants, and procured two Lund skiffs just for MITA. The organization was now ready to serve the growing number of islands in its care.
MITA/Eliza Ginn
Two MITA SSV-18s pick up a load of washed-up island trash for disposal ashore. The four large-capacity open boats do yeoman service along the length of the Maine coast on both state-owned and private islands in the trail.
Lund altered the basic design of the S-18 in the ’90s by changing to a shallow-V bottom and making a slight increase in beam, all of which added about 60 lbs of weight. This SV-18 then morphed into the SSV-18, but the original simple layout remained with only minor changes. MITA today has a fleet of four SSV-18s and has modified the boats with grabrails of various designs, side seats, lockers, and flat wooden floors. The grabrails are made and installed by MITA and the rest are added while the boats are being built at the Lund factory. Power for the skiffs is now 60-hp, tiller-steered Hondas.
All of these boats have been worked hard for a decade or more. Kept in top shape and manned by specially trained volunteers, these descendants of TORNGAT are not only used for regular island visits but also serve as waterborne pickup trucks during island cleanups, carrying ashore storm-wrecked lobster traps and other washed-up trash of all shapes and sizes for disposal. The open layout of the boats and their capacity of some three-quarters of a ton make them ideal for the job.
As a family fun boat, TORNGAT is often pressed into service for camping and fishing on Maine’s big northern lakes. Driftwood abounds along these shores, and a regular chore of setting up camp is gathering a good supply of firewood.
Although my boat and I were no longer busy with the work of MITA, I remained interested in its development. Then, in a move I eventually regretted, I sold TORNGAT to a MITA member and bought a 16’, lighter-weight Smoker Craft aluminum skiff and outfitted it with a 15-hp Yamaha four-stroke outboard. Its simple layout, like most tin skiffs, served me well for several seasons of lake fishing and camping. I had no complaints except, through no fault of the new boat, I missed TORNGAT. The feeling must have been mutual, because at a MITA stewardship party in Rockport I heard the siren call again, and off in a corner of the yard was a familiar hull sitting on a trailer. It was TORNGAT, showing the signs of her long life in paint scratches, dings and dents, and an overall scruffy look. I made a closer examination and found a sound body beneath time’s tarnish.
MITA Director Doug Welch said TORNGAT had been given to the organization by one of the association’s members, and he didn’t quite know what to do with the aging boat. He was readily agreeable to an even swap, my much newer Smoker Craft for TORNGAT. The younger boat could be sold for a good price to benefit MITA—and I could have the hulk of TORNGAT to do with as I saw fit.
Recently restored to her former self, TORNGAT shows few traces of her working days. Gone is the pipe grabrail, which was to be replaced with a much smaller but very strong “chicken post” fastened to the seat in front of the boat driver. This is her current layout, roomy and open, as she is mainly used for freshwater activities.
Once TORNGAT was in my barn, I stripped her clean of grime and old paint and gave her a coat of dead-grass-colored paint on the outside. Inboard, I made removable plywood floorboards between the seats and took out the pipe grabrail, replacing it with a “chicken post” that I could hang on to while at the helm. I finished off the interior with gray paint. A question in my mind was what the 15-horse Yamaha, retained from the Smoker Craft, could do on an 18’ boat loaded with Dorrie and me and our camping, fishing, or sea duck hunting gear. Surprise. The motor can plane the big skiff with a sizable cargo or whisper at trolling speed while sipping fuel.
Despite her nearly 40 years of hard work, TORNGAT continues to serve on lake and sea. We have grown old together, but I can’t be restored with a coat of paint, so I have turned her over to my son-in-law so we can continue to fish and camp together.
Hauled out on a gravel beach on Maine’s sprawling Chesuncook Lake, TORNGAT probably qualifies as a still-active dowager. Many years ago I traveled this same lake’s 25-mile length in a lumberman’s bateau powered by a smoking, old 5-hp Johnson outboard that seemed as ancient as the boat. How times have changed!
As for TORNGAT today, she can look back to some significant events. She is the boat that sparked the Maine Island Trail, the first of the modern water trails, which in turn inspired the development of some 500 other water trails in North America. As we say in Maine, that’s a “decent” record for a plain tin skiff that first proved her worth in the Labrador Sea.
David R. Getchell, Sr. is a former editor of the Maine Coast Fisherman and National Fisherman, a writer and editor of several other publications, an active outdoorsman, and co-founder of the Maine Island Trail. An important partner in his work to establish the Maine Island Trail was Ray Leonard, an ecologist and field scientist, who was invaluable in evaluating details of the islands. Much of David’s writing has centered on boats and bicycles. He and his wife Dorrie live in a cottage they built by a pond in Appleton, Maine.
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 tops of the extensions, squared off inside of the diagonal side panels, serve as steps for climbing aboard over the stern. The bright finished squares of decking are hatch covers.
Many small skiffs would benefit from an extended waterline and increased planing surface. My own 14′9″ (4.5m) outboard skiff has deep V-hull shape that makes the ride more comfortable at high speeds in sharp chop, but the hull still weaves from side to side, drags a big wake at in low speeds, and requires a lot of power to get on plane. My boat also has a tendency to hobby-horse at high speeds; while I can stop this by trimming the motor to force the bow down, the remedy reduces top speed and fuel economy.
Trim tabs could help get the boat on plane and would probably solve hobby-horsing, but they would also add vulnerable electronics to the boat and are not a visually pleasing solution. When I saw the clever structure of transom extensions in the Tango Skiff 13, I decided to design and add extensions to my boat. Before construction, I tested the theory, temporarily bolting two kitchen-cabinet doors on the transom to extend the bottom surface. Although they didn’t add buoyancy, they surprisingly made a significant improvement in slow-speed behavior and also took care of the hobby-horsing. So the project was a go.
I purchased 9mm okoume plywood (12mm, in retrospect, would have been a better choice) and built the port extension first, one piece at a time, starting with the planing surface at the bottom and improvising measurements for the subsequent pieces from the growing structure. When I had the first extension assembled, I took it apart and used its pieces as patterns for the second.
The plywood panels were shaped and attached one after the other, each helping determine the shape of the next.
I joined each extension’s pieces together and to the transom, using pine strips above and oak strips below the waterline. I wanted to be able to disassemble the extensions if something went wrong, so I used Sikaflex and stainless-steel screws in the attachments to the hull, while the extensions themselves were glued together and filleted with epoxy. The top side of each extension serves as a step for boarding and has an inspection hatch. Before assembly, I painted the parts with epoxy primer. Because of the multiple angles, there were some puzzles to solve when putting the parts together the first time. I took care of gaps with epoxy fillets.
Once the extensions were in place, I rounded their corners, filled and faired the screw countersinks and joints, sanded everything smooth, and painted the extensions to match the hull. Mahogany rubbing strips reinforce the connection between the extensions and the hull.
Before the extensions were installed, the skiff settled heavily at the stern. Skiffs without a console would settle even deeper with the skipper seated there.
With the stern supported by the buoyancy and planing surface of the extensions, the skiff maintains better trim.
Although it was a somewhat arduous project, I am pleased with the result. Hobby-horsing is gone, turbulence and wave formation is reduced at slow speeds, and the boat does not wander. The extensions do add some drag, so I lost a knot or two at top speed, but the improved behavior is worth the sacrifice. To my eye, the side profile of the boat improved and the extensions make the boat appear more balanced. I wanted to maximize the planing surface, so I intentionally made the gap between the extensions narrow, and if I tilt the motor up in shallow water and turn it too far, the propeller can hit them if I’m not careful.
Many outboard skiffs, whether deep-V like mine or flat-bottomed, suffer from poor weight distribution, with motor, driver, and gas tank all at the back of the boat and could benefit from transom extensions.
Mats Vuorenjuuri is the father of three and an entrepreneur, making a living in graphic design, photography, and freelance writing. He has sailed all his life, and wooden boats, sailing, and boating are his passions. He has restored both sailboats and motorboats, and in recent years has discovered the simplicity and joy of small boats. He currently owns a small, open plywood motorboat, a Herreshoff Coquina, and TURBO. He wrote about cruising the Finnish coast in his Coquina in our May 2016 issue.
You can share your tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Monthly readers by sending us an email.
The Blackbird XLC and the Thunderfly are a good match for a steep shoreline and a narrow, tide-swept beach.
To preserve beautiful wild places for the future, visiting the wilderness is best done with minimal impact. The Blackbird XLC hammock by Warbonnet, a Colorado-based, family-owned business, is a flexible, all-weather camping system that leaves no mark on the landscape. It’s comfortable, too.
The hammock is available in a lightweight version, designed for backpackers looking to save every possible ounce of carried weight, and a heavier version, with a double layer of fabric which increases its weight-bearing capability. The Blackbird is an asymmetric design, so that a sleeper lies on the diagonal. Initially a little counter-intuitive, the arrangement creates a sleeping position that is fairly flat. It is easy to sleep on your back, or roll from side to side, but the hammock isn’t quite flat enough to allow sleeping on your stomach. It takes an overnight or two to find the sweet spot, but once you do, it becomes second nature, and then the Blackbird is a wonderfully comfortable place to bed down.
For warm, mild conditions in mosquito country, the zip-on bug net lets the breezes flow through and keeps the mosquitoes out.
A nice feature is a built-in shelf at the head end. If you like to read before turning in, you can stash a book and flashlight within easy reach, and they won’t wind up underneath you in the night. There is a full-coverage bug net that zips to the perimeter of the hammock. In cold weather, the net can be swapped for a top cover, which Warbonnet says increases the temperature rating by about 10 degrees, with small areas of netting at head and foot ends to provide ventilation.
For cold weather and light rain, the bug-net top can be removed and replaced with the Warbonnet Winter Topcover. Its breathable water-resistant fabric retains warmth and panels of mesh provide fresh air.
Another consideration for cold-weather camping with a hammock is heat loss from below. The double bottom of the XLC is designed for slipping a closed-cell foam sleeping pad between the layers. This is sufficient insulation for me for three-season camping. For winter camping, Warbonnet makes an insulated underquilt that provides even greater warmth and becomes part of an integral weatherproof cocoon. For rain, the company offers several sil-nylon or sil-poly tarps, ranging from minimalist to maxi in coverage. I opted for the middle size, the 11′ x 8′7″ Thunderfly. All the flies have fold-away flaps, which deploy to form a secure hood at each end to keep out wind-driven rain.Warbonnet offers several different suspension systems; I chose nylon climbing slings and carabiners for anchoring around a tree limb or trunk (which is less likely to injure the tree than cord attachments) and a webbing-and-buckle system to attach the hammock to the slings. Adjustment is simple, intuitive, and practically bombproof, and it only takes a couple of minutes to set up or take down. Lightweight, easily packed or stowed, simple to set up, weatherproof, and well-made of durable materials, the Blackbird XLC is well worth a look if you are searching for a leave-no-trace option for sleeping.
John Hartmann lives in central Vermont. He built his Ilur dinghy, WAXWING, to sail the 1000 Islands region of the St. Lawrence River, Lake Champlain, and along the coast of Maine.
The Blackbird XLC ($180 to $230 depending on style) and the Thunderfly ($130 to $155 depending on weight and material) are available from Warbonnet.
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 180mm Knipex plier wrench is a good size for all of my boat and trailer applications.
I have a lot of wrenches and pliers in my shop. There’s plenty of room for them there, but aboard my boats I have to keep my toolkit to a minimum. A single tool that can stand in for several is a welcome addition; the Knipex plier wrench, as its name suggests, does the work of both pliers and wrenches. Its parallel jaws will fit hex nuts and bolts and its extraordinary gripping power makes it possible to tighten them and loosen even rusted ones without slipping off and rounding their corners.
The power comes from the short half-circle tab, a part of the upper handle that drives the sliding lower jaw. From the center of the pivot to the bearing surface on the tab is just 3⁄8″; from the center of the pivot to the middle of the handgrips is 4″. That’s a mechanical advantage of 10.7 to 1. With my grip strength of 85 lbs (measured by squeezing a bathroom scale in both hands and dividing the reading by 2), the pliers can apply 909 lbs of pressure. Squeezing at the ends of the handles pushes that over a half ton. By comparison, my old pair of angle-nose slip-joint pliers, roughly the same size and shape as the Knipex, can expert only 218 lbs at the jaws’ tip and 544 lbs at their inner angle. The Knipex can flatten the edge of a steel washer and pinch small cable crimps tight, things pliers can’t do.
My 7 1⁄2″ angle-nose slip-joint pliers (left) couldn’t do much damage to a steel washer, a 9″ vise-grip (center) could slightly dent the steel with a strong grip, and the Knipex plier wrench (right) could easily flatten it.
Pressing the spring-loaded button at the pivot adjusts the space between the jaws. At the tool’s widest setting, the jaws open up to 1 3⁄8”. At each of the 13 settings, the jaws have a 1⁄4″ range of motion. That range is what gives the plier wrench the ability to turn a nut without removing and replacing the tool repeatedly as you would a box, open-end, or adjustable wrench. When pressure isn’t being applied to the handles to set up for the next turn, the ratcheting effect makes the plier wrench as fast as a socket wrench, with the additional advantage that the handles are in line with the nut and the jaws are less likely than a socket with an offset handle to slip off the work.
The jaws have smooth, flat faces and get their grip from pressure rather than by ridges or teeth, which can mar the workpiece, particularly the brass and bronze hardware often used on boats. The smooth parallel faces are also well suited to working sheet metal.
I’ve found a couple of ways to operate the Knipex plier wrench with one hand. With my left hand I can hold the lower handle, press the button with my thumb, and slide the moving jaw up and down. With my right hand holding the upper grip, I press the button and open the upper jaw wide with a flick of the wrist; then I’ll close it with my index finger to the size I need.
The plier wrench comes in four sizes: 125mm (5″), 150mm (6″), 180mm (7-1/4″), and 250mm (10″). I bought the 180mm from Hardwicks for $56.50, a steep price unless you consider of the number of tools it can replace in your boating toolkit.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.
Knipex manufactures its tools in Germany, and the plier wrenches are available at many hardware stores and online retailers.
Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.
ARGUS is a kit built Chester Yawl from Chesapeake Light Craft. Argus was a many-eyed creature in Greek mythology.
James Fullton grew up in Alabama. His dad, Jim, grew up on the banks of Dog River, an estuary that rises and falls with the tides of Mobile Bay, and his grandparents, on both sides, were Alabama river people. Boats were a part of the family’s daily life. Grandpa Fulton built and restored boats for Jim and his two older sisters in their younger years, and when they had families of their own there were boats for the grandchildren.
By the time James was seven years old, he had learned to row in a dinghy that his grandfather had restored. His early sailing experiences were in his father’s Fish-class gaff-rigged sloop, and the first time they took it out James was alarmed by how much the boat heeled under the press of sail. He told his father: “If momma sees us doing this, she’s gonna fuss.” From that day forward the boat was called MOMMA’S GONNA FUSS. Jim moved his family away when James was eight years old, but they continued to visit Alabama, spending summer vacations on Dog River. In his ’tween years, James graduated to an outboard skiff and expanded his exploration of the river. The family made several more moves in his teen years, and the gap separating him from the river and boats widened.
Jim squeezed out beads of thickened epoxy along the laps prior to pulling the wire stitches out.
Some 16 years ago, James settled in New Haven, Connecticut, to raise a family of his own. The proximity to Long Island Sound and to the state’s lakes and rivers rekindled his interest in boats, and for several years he harbored a wish to build a boat. In 2016, he talked it over with his wife and they ordered a Chester Yawl kit from Chesapeake Light Craft. Soon after, as a Father’s Day gift, he took his dad to The WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport, where the kit was waiting for them at the CLC booth.
James’ daughter Kyrie was three when construction began. By the time she had turned four, she had taken an interest in helping build the boat.
In the months that followed, Jim and James, father and son, assembled the 15′ hull, enjoying the other’s company as much as seeing the curves emerge from the flat plywood panels they stitched together. Jim eventually ceded his role as co-boatbuilder to his granddaughter, four-year-old Kyrie, the youngest of James’s five children. Kyrie had her own toolbox and projects to work on, but often suited up with the proper protective gear to help with the sanding and painting of the Chester Yawl.
Kyrie, here practicing coloring inside the lines, had turned five years old by the time the boat was finished and ready to launch.
The boat was launched on June 10, 2018, on Lake Wintergreen at West Rock Ridge State Park in Connecticut, and christened ARGUS. Kyrie had earned her place aboard with James for the first row from shore.
The boat was launched on Lake Wintergreen in Connecticut’s West Rock Ridge State Park. James and Kyrie take the first row.
Father’s Day fell on the following weekend. James’s two sons, 12 and 16 years old, gave him a note saying they both wanted to spend some “just us men” time with him aboard ARGUS.
James and his family have been taking ARGUS out at every opportunity, exploring the Thimble Islands just off the Connecticut coast east of New Haven, and Colebrook River Lake on the state’s northern border. They have their sights set on the Berkshire lakes of western Massachusetts. James shared photos of the boat with his extended family and recently received this reply from my aunt: “When I close my eyes I can see Daddy and your great-grandfather Poppee in ARGUS with you, all gathered together sharing giant smiles. James, you have carried on and passed on the Fullton family love of boats.”
Father and daughter enjoy the fruits of their labor; another generation is brought into the fold.
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.
My son was late in arriving. Nine months came and went without any stirrings from him. Another week went by. Still nothing. Cindy and I had both taken leave from work and we had time on our hands, so we loaded up the lapstrake decked canoe I’d built and headed for the lake. We had paddled a mile or so and it was then that Nathan, as he would be named, made his move. Contractions had begun, and not long after putting the canoe back in the garage we were on our way to the hospital. My entry into fatherhood the next day was marked by an unforgettable display of color. Nate arrived after a long and difficult delivery and his skin was a luminescent lilac color. Then, with each of the first breaths he drew, he turned, chameleon-like, a pink so radiant that I thought he’d be too hot to touch. Ten days later, we got Nate back out on the water as a newborn, not in the canoe, but in the Chamberlain gunning dory I’d built for my dad. He was a colicky baby, but was soon sound asleep aboard the boat and didn’t make a peep the whole time.
Two years and 11 months later, his sister was also digging her heels in well past the nine-month mark. Believing we’d discovered that the gentle rocking of a canoe was a sure-fire way to induce labor, we headed for the water again. Sure enough, the first contraction arrived while we were paddling in the middle of the lake. Alison, who has always been much bolder than her brother about approaching new and different experiences, was, as the doctor discovered, already locked and loaded when we got to the hospital. We took our infant Ali out on the gunning dory too. She was born in August, the height of blackberry season, so we rowed around the lake picking the berries that grew along the water’s edge. As we passed by one of the lake’s floating homes, the sight of a swaddled baby brought the lady of the house out on the deck.
“My, so tiny!” she said. “When was that baby born?”
“Yesterday,” we replied.
Sound asleep with my father aboard MOLLY MAY, circa 1956
I was too young to remember when my father first took me boating—he is no longer around to tell me—but there is a picture of me wearing a life vest, sleeping against his chest. On the back of that photo, in ink that has faded from black to brown, is written in my father’s hand “sleepy little son.” We were aboard MOLLY MAY, my grandfather’s 31′ cutter, sailing out of Marblehead, Massachusetts, with my grandfather at the helm.
My grandfather, Francis Cunningham Sr., was usually at the helm when we sailed his 31-footer out of Marblehead.
Although I was steeped in boats while I was growing up, I took them for granted. Dad always had one, but I was more interested in riding my bike, climbing trees, skateboarding, and making explosions with firecrackers, calcium carbide, match heads, or homemade black powder.
In 1978, I was 26 years old when I built my first wooden boat, a Marblehead skiff, but it was as a means to an end: travel under my own steam. I was tired of carrying the heavy loads required of long backpacking trips and frightened by the cars and trucks that I had to share the road with while bicycle touring. When I finished the skiff, it met my expectations: it could haul more weight than I could ever carry and could take me places where I had the waterways all to myself. But when I began cruising in it, sleeping at anchor in a snug cove, cradled in the gentle rocking hull, it brought an unexpected and profound sense of comfort and safety. Perhaps it touched upon the sense that all’s right with the world that I felt when I was a child asleep in my father’s arms aboard MOLLY MAY.
I built a few more boats specifically for voyages I wanted to make, but gradually veered away from building boats to take me somewhere, to building boats that were the somewhere. When I built a Caledonia yawl in 2003, I redesigned the interior around sleeping spaces for my children and myself. Nate and Ali would have a nest forward under a fully enclosed dodger, and I’d sleep on a platform in the main cockpit under a canopy that covered the rest of the boat. For several years we took summer cruises in Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands and never took a tent nor ever slept ashore. Each night we’d drop the anchor, button up the cockpit, and play games until it was time to sleep. I’d often rise up before them and get underway with an easy row along the shore. Nate and Ali would slowly wake to the rhythm of the oars and the sound of water curdling under the laps. I’d get the galley box out and cook them breakfast in bed—scrambled eggs, pancakes, French toast, or scones.
Ali and Nate enjoyed a Dad-cooked breakfast in bed and were happy to spend the better part of the day and night in their nest in the bow of the Caledonia yawl. The dodger that covers them at night is folded forward for the day.
We were never in a rush to shove miles underneath the keel. Whenever we reached a new island, given the choice of going ashore for lunch or eating on the boat, Nate and Ali always opted to stay aboard, where the floorboards yielded underfoot and the benches rocked when you sat down. Nate and Ali cozied themselves in a nest of pillows and sleeping bags, with everything they needed close at hand. The quarters were tight and we had few luxuries, but we were, as Germans so aptly put it, wunschlos glücklich, wishlessly happy.
Is there something innate in all humans that draws us to give ourselves over to the gentle motion of a small boat in the water, just as we are compelled to stare into a fire’s flickering flames? Or is it something that slips into an infant’s heart in unguarded moments in a father’s arms before falling asleep on a boat? Whatever it is, I am drawn to it still, that gentle rocking that soothed me when I was a child and that awakened in my children the urge to be born.
Top: John Hartsock, Bottom: Lily Dickens
With Father’s Day in mind, my son Nate and I (bottom photo) went for a row in the Whitehall I built in 1983. Thirty-five years had passed since I rowed that boat (top photo) with my father, Frank Cunningham (1922–2013).
The traditional craft documented in Howard Chapelle’s books are well known, but a number of his drawings are tucked away in the Smithsonian Institution. Among the turn-of-the-century East Coast workboats in their files, catalogued as HIC303, is a handsome 18′ crabbing skiff. It has many of the characteristics associated with working skiffs used by Chesapeake Bay crabbers of the era: a shallow deadrise hull, a large skeg and centerboard, a transom-hung rudder, multiple thwarts, a foredeck with washboards down the sides, and a low coaming around the cockpit.
Christopher Walker
The gripe is a skeg-like fin on the bow. It helps balance the skiff while under sail in thin water with the centerboard up.
The skiff also has a gripe, a skeg-like appendage attached to the stem meant to keep the bow from wandering after tacking and allow sailing shallow water with the board up. The sailing rig has a freestanding mast with a sprit boom and a curved bowsprit. The leg-o’-mutton main and the jib have a combined area of around 151 sq ft with 111 sq ft in the main and 40 for the jib.
In Chapelle’s drawings, he provides no measure of the boat’s weight, but he included plank thicknesses for the oak, pine, and cedar used throughout the original’s construction, making it evident that the crabbing skiff must have been quite robust. There are some unusual things in the plans. For example, the centerboard trunk is canted at each end, sloping down at the aft end but also sloping down toward the bow at the forward end. The plans indicate two locations for the centerboard pin, about 5″ apart, but no explanation of the purpose of the options.
The skiff was my first build, and when I was looking for a design, I wanted not only a family boat for my wife, a little one on the way, and two dogs for daysailing and camp-cruising, but also one that looks nice and sails well. I found the HIC303 on the WoodenBoat Forum. Though the design was for traditional construction, all the hull surfaces were developable curves, which got me thinking about building it in plywood. I didn’t have the time, money, or experience for a traditional build. I also lacked a wet slip for a traditionally built boat to keep its seams tight—I am in the military and move frequently, so anything I’d build would have to live on a trailer.
I built GOLDBUG in my garage over the course of two-and-a-half years, starting when my son was born and then working mainly on weekends. I used Douglas-fir marine plywood for the hull: 1/2″ for the bottom, 3/8″ for the topsides, and 3/4″ for the transom. The deck is 3/8″ okoume. All of the plywood was covered with 6-oz fiberglass and epoxy. The skeg is a big timber with oak making up the biggest piece in Chapelle’s drawings; I built it up with 1-1/2″ Douglas-fir to keep it light and added a 3/4″ white oak shoe and trailing edge to take the inevitable bumps of the trailer and grounding out on rocks. I also lightened the 23′11” mast by making it hollow—bird’s-mouth from vertical-grain fir—rather than the solid spruce indicated. The bowsprit is three layers of clear, 3/4″ vertical-grain fir epoxy laminated in a curve. Rubrails and toerails are white oak. I used cedar deck boards to make the cockpit coaming.
Meg Walker
The 6′ 8″ bowsprit extends 4′ 3″ forward of the stemhead. The jib’s leech is cut to clear the forward end of the main’s sprit boom when coming about.
It was important to me to have a boat that looks good with a workboat finish. With a sensitive little one riding shotgun, if he dropped a bucket of seashells over a nice varnished thwart or ground sand into a bright sole, I didn’t want to get upset and ruin his sailing days. Cost was also a factor, so I steered away from pricey marine-grade finishes. GOLDBUG wears three coats of acrylic exterior house paint, inside and out. It has turned out to be fantastic stuff—very durable and tremendously easy to touch up and clean up afterward. Three years after launching, the paint still looks great.
I am not an engineer—no calculations were harmed in the building of GOLDBUG—but I grew up on small sailboats, raced extensively, and feel I have a good sense of forces and how they’re distributed on small boats. I altered the HIC303 design to include one thwart instead of the two specified in the plans. I placed my thwart at the aft end of the centerboard trunk to provide lateral support to the trunk while using the trunk to support the middle of the thwart. This opened the interior significantly for a cooler, a tent as well as a toddler, a dog, and the miscellaneous gear that comes with them.
Christopher Walker
The centerboard trunk in the original crabbing skiff was left partially open and the board extended above the trunk when retracted. Capping the trunk and modifying the board keeps the interior drier in a seaway.
To brace the forward end of the trunk, I butted it to the one-piece frame that supports the aft edge of the foredeck. The plans show an open frame made of multiple pieces, none of which support the centerboard trunk. The trunk of the original was open at the top with the board extending above it; I lowered it and enclosed the top, making it a nice place to sit and watch the shoreline pass by.
Christopher Walker
Chapelle’s plans have the side decks extending to the transom and sternsheets instead of an aft deck.
I also decked GOLDBUG’s stern, filling in the gap between side decks all the way to the transom. There was no seating at the stern in the original plans, and sitting at the stern would put the boat out of trim while the covered space I’ve added there comes in handy for stowing gear.
The mast steps through the foredeck, which is reinforced underneath with Douglas-fir 1x2s. The bowsprit is about 6-1/2′ long and has a mortise that seats on top of the stem with a heel secured against the bit. The bobstay keeps it secure and provides an easy, quick way to remove the sprit.
It takes me 20 minutes, working alone, from the time I pull into the parking lot to having the boat afloat with the sails raised and ready to shove off. At the dock it is tender initially, though stepping into the center is hardly necessary as long as one’s weight is anywhere on the bottom and not on the side decks. Underway it stiffens up as it heels even though I have no ballast beyond 5 lbs of lead in the board to sink it. Breaking it down at the end of the day takes the same amount of time as setup, though when folks wander over to take a gander it takes longer.
The oak gripe and stem take beaching beautifully. GOLDBUG, with its modifications and plywood construction, weighs around 350 lbs and is easy to launch, recover, and drag up on a beach. She draws about 4″ with no one aboard. With the three of us, a dog, and an afternoon’s gear, she still draws less than 1′ with the board up.
The skiff reaches well even with the board up, thanks to the balanced lateral resistance provided by the skeg and gripe. On a reach and measuring speed on a GPS, she reaches at 6.5 knots in 12–15 knots of wind with the board halfway up. She beats to windward very well. In all wind conditions I trim the main without purchase (plans call for a 2:1 purchase), but I do use one block with a ratchet mounted in the keelson to have the sheet coming to me at a more comfortable angle. Mounted in the keelson, just forward of the block, is a cam cleat into which I can cleat the mainsheet with my foot while sitting up on the deck. I feel the 1:1 pull without purchase gives me better feedback as to how much stress is on the rig.
Underway, the helm is well balanced and exhibits just the right amount of weather helm as she heels. The stern lifts to a following sea, and the ample skeg keeps the skiff on track as if on rails . In theory, the gripe could trip the boat with a large following swell by not allowing the bow to slide laterally if the skiff did try to broach. But I have yet to experience anything like this, and the conditions for which she was originally designed include short, stiff chop rather than long, rolling swells.
The gripe does slow tacking—one has to avoid rapid stop-to-stop tiller throws. The skiff she won’t spin in its own length, one must think ahead when maneuvering in close. It ghosts nicely in light air; ideal wind seems to be 8–12 knots. If strong winds are forecast, the first reduction in sail is going without the jib. Next is the reefpoint in the main. She sails well under all configurations, and adjusting centerboard depth balances her nicely while maintaining windward performance. When I sail without the jib, I remove the jib halyard from the peak of the jib and secure it to the anchor point for the jib’s tack at the end of the bowsprit. With the halyard serving as a forestay, it counters the force created by the main, and the mast bends less.
Meg Walker
The 151 sq ft of sail can get the skiff moving at a brisk 6-1/2 knots in 12 to 15 knots of wind.
When the wind dies or I find myself short on patience or in a foul current, GOLDBUG rows well, though she is more a sailboat that can be rowed. I bought an electric trolling motor, and it pushes her very nicely—though I have yet to use it much, as it looks tacky on the back of the boat. Truth be told, I have never used the oars or trolling motor except to try them out, since GOLDBUG moves in the lightest of breezes.
The 18′ Crabbing Skiff is an easy boat to sail with a very simple rig. Built of plywood, it is easy to build and goes well in all conditions, as long as one can avoid being overpowered. It is relatively dry given its lower freeboard, and the crew’s proximity to the water contributes to a fun sensation of speed. GOLDBUG’s freeboard also makes it easy for a toddler to drag his toes in the water.
Chris Walker is an Air Force officer and combat rescue helicopter pilot. He grew up sailing on Mobile Bay, Alabama, and lakes across the central Midwest. Boats have always been a large part of his life, and racing was his focus for a long time. After his fifth deployment to Afghanistan, he began looking for a design to build. He found the time he spent in the garage building GOLDBUG to be a great source for thought, reflection, and problem-solving. He built GOLDBUG while assigned in San Diego and is currently assigned to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Back on the lakes where he raced growing up, he finds spending time on GOLDBUG with his wife and four-year-old son far more enjoyable than racing ever was. This summer they’ll move to Virginia near the Chesapeake, and Chris is looking forward to sailing GOLDBUG in the waters she was designed for.
Crabbing Skiff Particulars
[table]
Length/18′ 7.5″
Beam/5′ 4.25″
Draft/11″
Sail area/151 sq ft
[/table]
Plans for the Crabbing Skiff are available from the Smithsonian Institution. There are three sheets for HIC303: Lines with offsets, construction plan, and sail/spar plan. Each sheet costs $10; all three will be $30 plus $5 for shipping and processing. All orders are handled by mail. Request HIC303 and enclose a check or money order payable to the Smithsonian Institution. Credit card or PayPal orders are not accepted. Foreign orders require check or international money order in U.S. funds, with airmail available for an additional $5.00. Ship Plans Smithsonian Institution PO Box 37012 NMAH 5004 / MRC 628 Washington, DC 20013-7012 USA
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!
James Wharram’s Polynesian catamaran designs have inspired countless backyard boatbuilders with dreams of ocean voyaging to exotic tropical destinations. Starting with the simple 23’ TANGAROA, aboard which he completed the first catamaran crossing of the Atlantic in 1955–56, the cruising-sized vessels in his range of plans have an impressive safety record due to their conservative design parameters. Seaworthiness is the number-one priority in his designs.
While ocean-voyaging catamarans have been the main focus of Wharram’s design work, his plans catalog includes a few smaller boats suitable beach cruising. The Tiki 21 that was recently profiled here in Small Boats Monthly crosses the line between the two pursuits but is still a bigger boat than many people want to build or trailer. The Hitia 17 and the Hitia 14 are based on the same hull shape and design concepts as the Tiki 21 and her larger sisters, but the Hitias are open boats. They are lighter, simpler, and less expensive to build, while retaining the sailing characteristics and performance of the cruisers. While the smaller Hitia 14 is strictly a daysailer, the Hitia 17, with its dry-storage holds and kayak-style cockpits, features real camp-cruising capability for sailors who don’t mind roughing it a bit.
Omar Rashash
Taken apart for transport, the pieces of the Hitia 17 are light enough to be carried to the beach.
In 1997, I chose the Hitia 17 as my first sailboat build. After many years of sea kayaking and building various kayaks and canoes, I wanted to sail to the same kinds of places I could paddle craft, but I wanted to carry more stuff, and make occasional open-water crossings at faster speeds. The Hitia 17 fit the bill, and the double-canoe design appealed to my prior experiences with seaworthy small boats. It draws only 12″, is easily beachable, and could accommodate a companion or two. It offers the possibility of camping aboard if necessary—a real plus in places like Florida’s mangrove swamps where there are no campsites.
Like all Wharram catamarans, the Hitia 17 is designed for plywood construction, and the assembly method is straightforward stitch-and-glue with epoxy-fillets, taped joints, and fiberglass sheathing. The project calls for eight sheets of 1/4″ plywood and one sheet of 5/8″, as well as some straight-grained fir or spruce lumber for stringers, crossbeam parts, and mast laminates.
Omar Rashash
The two hulls and three crossbeams are assembled with lashings instead of hardware. With experience, the assembly time can be cut down to under an hour.
Building the Hitia 17 doesn’t require an large shop, because each hull is only 2′ wide and weighs about 90 lbs. They can be built one at a time under a minimal shelter, on one side of a garage, or, as some builders have done, even inside an apartment or house, as the hulls are slim enough to fit through standard doors, and everything can be moved outdoors and assembled in the back yard. The design book states that the build will take about 250 hours, but most builders take a bit longer if they’re shy on experience and tools or if they simply want better-than-average craftsmanship and finish. I built my Hitia 17 over the course of about seven months of spare-time work, and the result was everything I’d hoped for.
As with the larger Wharram cats, the components and rig of the Hitia 17 are designed to eliminate the need to purchase a lot of expensive marine hardware. The hulls are connected to the three crossbeams with low-stretch rope lashings, and the rudders are laced to the sterns with rope hinges that are both elegant and effective. The tillers lock onto the rudderposts with no metal hardware, and the mast is secured into its step with a wooden key built onto middle crossbeam Even chainplates and mast tangs are unnecessary, as the shrouds and stays are tensioned with lanyards anchored to flat wooden cleats at the sheer at one end and looped over hounds at the masthead on the other.
Barbara Davis
This Hitia 17 carries Wharram’s gaff wingsail main, with a luff sleeve for better airflow around the mast.
When I built my Hitia 17, the sail plan differed from that of the Tiki designs in that it had a sprit rather than the short gaff rig of the standard Wharram wingsail. The sprit has the advantage of simplicity—one less halyard to bother with—and the sail can be brailed around the mast with the sprit in place, but in strong winds, the sprit has to be taken down. It tends to get in the way because it is as long as the boat. Now the Hitia 17 plans include the option for the gaff wingsail, and having sailed the larger Tikis with that rig, I would recommend it as it is easier to reef and offers more adjustment to the shape of the main.
There is no mention of an auxiliary outboard in the building plans, and it’s certainly not necessary, as the boat can be paddled, but I added a motor mount on the aft beam and fitted a 3-hp Evinrude that often came in handy during extended periods of calm on the Gulf of Mexico. The cost of building my own Hitia 17, including the sails, outboard, and a new trailer I modified for it, came in at just under $6,000, which seemed very reasonable for such a capable catamaran.
Unlike the larger Tiki 21 and Tiki 26, the Hitia 17 doesn’t require an elaborate folding trailer, but unlike many beach cats of similar length, it is too beamy at 10’11” to transport fully assembled. Wharram was uncompromising in keeping to the overall beam-to-length ratio of his proven ocean voyagers, and wouldn’t reduce the beam to 8’6”, the maximum width allowed for trailering. But since the hulls are light enough for two people to easily carry or one person to maneuver around with a two-wheeled cart, almost any trailer can carry separated hulls to the water. They could even be cartopped, although with the beams and mast to carry as well, it would require a large and quite substantial rack capable of handling a 300-lb load.
I went to a little more trouble than necessary when fitting out my trailer, because I wanted to be able to assemble and launch the boat fully loaded boat by myself in one go. To accomplish this, I made two removable beams fitted with cradles to hold the hulls at sailing width. Upon arrival at the boat ramp, I secure these in place and then lift the hulls, one end at a time, into the cradles and then lash on the crossbeams and step the mast. With practice, I got my launching time down to just over half an hour.
Barbara Davis
The mast rests on a crossbeam and is supported by a single shroud to each side.
The Hitia 17 is a forgiving catamaran to sail compared to most beach cats of similar length. With its generous beam and just 160 sq ft of sail area, it is a stable platform that can handle a wide variety of conditions. That’s not to say that it won’t capsize with carelessness, but it is far less likely to than the typical, more racing-oriented catamarans in that size range. Even with its conservative sail plan and relatively low rig, the Hitia 17 is still quite capable of exciting performance in the right conditions. I often clock over 10 knots, even with the hulls weighed down with camping gear. Tacking and jibing are reliable and effortless, and windward ability is certainly acceptable for a multihull designed for cruising rather than racing.
The absence of daggerboards, centerboards, or leeboards somewhat limits the Hitia’s pointing ability, but is a great asset for exploring thin water that most sailboats can’t reach. Drawing only 12”, the deep-V hulls can be sailed right up onto the beach, then easily pushed back off again. On sandy beaches I could even sail in through a moderate surf break and land, just as I did in my kayaks. The rudders and the integral skegs are no deeper than the keels, making it safe to let the boat dry out at low tide. Owners who plan to beach the boat on a regular basis can easily add Kevlar strips or other reinforcements along the keels.
Scott Williams
The area between the aft and middle crossbeam is large enough to accommodate a backpacking tent for overnights at anchor. On a trip to St. Vincent Island in Appalachicola Bay, the author camped on the deck and use the front trampoline for a porch, a galley, and storage.
I did several multi-day camp-cruising trips with the Hitia 17 to various barrier islands off the coasts of Florida and Mississippi. The little catamaran performed well whether I was sailing solo or with a companion. I frequently anchored out and pitched a small backpacking tent on the trampoline between the hulls, an arrangement that worked well in calm conditions. There is, however, little room to move about with the tent taking up most of the deck space, so I sometimes found it easier to camp ashore, especially when I had a companion with me.
The flaring deep-V hulls give all Wharram catamarans excellent load-carrying capability for their size, and the Hitia 17 is no exception. Each hull has watertight bulkheads that segment the hull into four dry-storage compartments. Forward of the mast crossbeam, each hull has a large hold accessed through waterproof deck hatches. The plans suggest to either make wooden hatches and coamings or to purchase rubber kayak hatches. I bought a pair of large oval VCP kayak hatches for my own boat, as the foredecks can take a lot of water and spray in rough conditions. In the ’midships section between the beams, each hull has a compartment, accessible through two large hatches, to sit in kayak-style, or to use as foot wells when seated on deck. Spaces beneath these compartments offer extra dry storage for smaller items that will fit through 6” deck plates. Even when loaded with equipment and supplies for a crew of two for several days, there is room to stow lightweight, compact gear securely belowdecks.
All of these features with the ease and low cost of building your own make the Wharram Hitia 17 an attractive package for adventurous sailors wanting to do some extended coastal exploring on a safe and comfortable multihull platform.
Scott B. Williams began his small-boat adventures exploring the creeks and barrier islands by canoe and kayak in his home state of Mississippi. His fascination with the potential of these simple boats led him to longer solo journeys in the Caribbean and down the Mississippi River, which he first wrote about in the pages of Sea Kayaker magazine in the early 1990s. Combining a passion for woodworking with his interest in boats led him into wooden boatbuilding and yacht carpentry while he continued writing about his adventures. He has since written 22 books (and counting), many of them survival and adventure novels which draw on his paddling, boatbuilding, and sailing experiences. Scott can be contacted through his website.
From the moment I first sailed the waters of Panama’s Archipelago de San Blas in 2011, I have been fascinated by the sleek and colorful dugout canoes, called ulus, built and sailed by the Guna. At dawn’s first light, they set out from villages on small coral islands off Panama’s Caribbean coast to go to the rainforest on the mainland to farm, gather water, and get supplies for their island homes.
The Guna are indigenous Central American people who were driven from the mainland by Spanish Conquistadors, warring indigenous groups, mosquitoes, and other dangerous animals of central Panama. They have inhabited this stretch of the coast for hundreds of years and prefer to call their homeland Guna Yala, Land of the Guna—and dislike “San Blas,” the name given the islands by the Spaniards long ago.
While the islands are part of Panama’s territory, the people have political autonomy over their land, and they fiercely protect their culture by passing traditions to the next generations. The Guna have been building ulus the same way since they populated these waters, and they still rely on them for their livelihood. Kids as young as three and four years old already know how to paddle, having imitated the older kids who spend most of their time on the water, and they’ll often have child-sized rigs for practicing sailing.
Photographs by the author
Guna women regularly paddle ulus to Rio Torti on the mainland to collect potable water from the river and gather vegetables grown in their gardens on the mainland.
Ulus are very familiar to the numerous cruisers that visit these beautiful islands. Guna villagers will often pull their ulus alongside yachts to sell lobsters, crabs, and other seafood or their finely appliquéd pictographs called molas, in exchange for things like a cold drink, the use of a hammer, or charging a cellphone.
I was working on a charter boat in Guna Yala when I had the opportunity to sail an ulu. Dino, the boat’s first mate, is a local and arranged for me to rent his cousin’s ulu for a sailing and fishing trip. Unfortunately, the wind was very light and we caught nothing on the line, but the images of that beautifully shaped and painted canoe gliding above shallow coral reefs and piercing waves were carved into my memory.
It was that same year in Guna Yala that I first met my wife, Kate. We daydreamed about getting an ulu and sailing it along the coast all the way down to Colombia, but life took another turn and we ended up in New England instead and bought TRANQUILITY, a 53-year-old 29′ fiberglass sailboat. Over the next three years we undertook a complete restoration of the boat, while also working to fund a cruising adventure. With TRANQUILITY back in voyaging mode, we started a trip south through the Bahamas and headed back to Panama and Guna Yala. I was looking forward to seeing ulus sailing again.
Ulus carry a spritsail rig. The sprit that supports the peak is a rough-hewn spar, and the mainsail is attached with a loose foot to a sprit boom then sheeted to a becket run through a hole in the sternpost. The sheet is tied with a simple knot when the helmsman is holding a steady course, but held with the free hand for frequent trimming. A small jib is set flying from the stem to the masthead. Sails are made out of just about anything on hand, from bedsheets to plastic tarps. Ulus can sail to weather with just their carved skeg under the water.
The ulus have very simple sailing rigs. Any Guna can get ready to sail in about one minute.
The Guna had never sailed for competition until visiting yachties inevitably brought their sport-sailing mentality with them, and before long, ulu races became a point of cultural exchange between transients and locals. The most recent race, which took place in January 2018, was held at Islas Robeson, a group of seven small islands tucked in the Gulf of San Blas. This westernmost archipelago is known to the Guna as Tadarguanet, “Where the sun sets.” Kate and I had never visited here, and this race was a good excuse to explore another part of Guna Yala. We approached the area after a gorgeous three-hour sail in flat seas, tacking between reefs and low-lying islands.
Tupsuit Dummat is fringed with wooden docks. Almost all of the structures on the inhabited islands are built of poles, bamboo, and fronds brought by ulu from the mainland.
We anchored TRANQUILITY just south of the main island, also known as Ailitupu or Isla Gerti. Like most of the inhabited islands of Guna Yala, it is close to the mainland, the source for food that grows in the forests and for fresh water from the rivers. Tupsuit Dummat is scarcely large enough to fit a football field, and the village is packed tight with low buildings and fringed with wooden docks that extend from sandy paths, backyards, and pocket gardens.
Kate and I made our way to the building that houses a school, a community center, and a store. It is the only cement structure on the island; all of the rest are made from poles and fronds gathered from the mainland forest. As small as the island is, it was easy to get lost among the finely woven bamboo fences and walls that enclose the compounds of extended families. In the center of the island is a shared kitchen where a fire is always lit. A few trees rise above the weathered thatched roofs and ajì chili peppers, hibiscus flowers and plants used in traditional medicine grow in what little open space there is.
Even with my modest 5′7″ height, I had to duck many times to avoid eaves and awnings, and to pass through tiny doors. The Guna, with an average height just under 5′, are among the shortest people on Earth, second only to the Pygmies of Africa. I felt like a giant among them.
A few older women came ahead offering molas and other handicrafts. Only Guna who had traveled to the Panamanian mainland or further for work spoke Spanish or English. Others that grew up in Guna Yala only spoke their language, which they refer to, in Spanish, as dialecto. The kids saluted each other with few words in Spanish, sometimes English that they practice in school, before continuing laughing and chatting in dialecto. Men and children wore shorts and T-shirts while women wore the traditional clothing: colorful fabric wrapped around their waists as skirts, floral blouses with mola panels sewn on front and back, and beaded bracelets that covered most of their legs and arms with geometric patterns. Some had a gold nose ring.
Back at the dock, looking across the anchorage, Kate and I admired the ulus’ rippled wakes and silent passage, allowing conversation between ulus or between the boats and land, without raised voices. While we usually saw men sailing, women go together on separate ulus to the river on the mainland to fill bottles, buckets, and jerry cans with fresh water—it was their time to be alone and have personal conversations.
Soon after settling ourselves in the anchorage and getting to know our surroundings, an ulu approached TRANQUILITY and the lone paddler introduced himself as Justino, this year’s ulu race organizer. He was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, and when he smiled, two gold teeth, one bearing the letter J, gleamed. Kate complimented him on the gold and he replied, “Do you like it? I have a dentist friend in Panama City. He did it for me.” He spoke a little English but switched to Spanish when he realized that we both spoke Spanish.
Justino connected us to the American owners of ALLIANCE, a beautiful steel schooner with three masts that towered above the smaller vessels in the anchorage. They were helping him put the event together by getting on the radio and inviting cruisers from the more popular areas of the archipelago. Justino was gathering donations to put together a cash prize for the race, and we were happy to contribute. After we said our goodbyes to Justino, he paddled to a neighboring cruiser in the anchorage, drumming up more support.
On the day of the race, the start was postponed a couple of times as Justino waited for more entrants to arrive and for stronger winds. It has been an unusual January; the northeasterly tradewinds that usually blow steadily during the winter season had yet to arrive. When he spotted another yacht sailing toward the islands, he delayed the start yet again, hoping the new arrivals would provide a bigger audience and more prize donations. The delay made it possible for me to help Mr. Raul, a man with small, dark eyes and fluent Spanish, who showed up at the side of TRANQUILITY paddling a ulu and carrying an inverter wrapped in a plastic bag. He politely asked if I could help fix it. It didn’t take me long to replace a fuse, crimp proper ring connectors for the battery cables, and test the inverter on TRANQUILITY’s batteries. We passed the rest of the morning translating words from Spanish to Guna to English over Italian coffee.
Raul stopped by our boat many times during our stay in the anchorage. Like him, other Tupsuit Dummat villagers introduced themselves politely before asking for favors or offering fish, yucca root, and other delicacies from their gardens. A group of kids—boys and girls from age two to age nine—showed up one day paddling an ulu. We invited them to come aboard, and after a little we realized that they intended to occupy our boat for the rest of the day. Communication was difficult because they spoke little Spanish and we spoke little of dialecto, but with a bit of patience and ample use of gestures, we started to understand each other, especially when I took out hooks and fishing lines and Kate produced paper, pencils, and crayons.
Ulu crews maneuvered in close quarters just moments before a whistle signaled the start of the race.
Finally, at 1 p.m., we all gathered at the main dock near Justino’s home. A few curious Gunas were watching the preparation, eyeing the ulus tied to the docks and the crews preparing for the race. The racing ulus that gathered for this regatta were equipped with what looked like remnants of orange and purple nylon sails from cruising yachts, recut for mainsails and jibs. After some exchanges between Justino and one of the crews in their native language, we saw them roll the mainsail and jib around the mast and quickly step a new mast with a different rig. As Justino explained, in the interest of a fair race, they were making sure everybody was using roughly the same mast and sail size. Everything else about the ulus, including their waterline length and the equipment carried on board, was hardly standard, making it a weird one-design race.
The ulu in the foreground was having trouble with its jib sheet as the fleet sailed toward Ubicandup. The rigging is often made of cheap, thin polypropylene cordage that doesn’t stand up long to the UV damage of tropical sunlight.
Justino blew a whistle, and the race was on. The ulu crews hurried to clear the docks, paddling to turn the boats, then easing the sheets to catch the tailwinds down to Ubicandup (Isla Nellie), the first marker of the course. Kate and I joined the ALLIANCE crew on their outboard-powered tender to follow the race. By the time we were all aboard and left the dock, the ulus were surprisingly far ahead of us. The shallow-draft canoes glided over coral heads and sandbanks as their crews picked the most direct course. We had to weave through unfamiliar reefs, reducing speed and lifting the outboard over obstructions. We eventually got back into the action, just in time to see the ulus go around the first marker.
Each helmsmen maneuvered using a large paddle, or cammi, and trimmed the mainsail. The single crewman aboard each ulu bailed, tended the jibsheets, and hiked out, standing on the gunwale and pulling a line tied high on the mast. At every tack, each helmsman paddled the ulus through the turns until the bow crossed the wind and settled on the new course. While the ulus were rounding the mark, the dozens of Ubicandup villagers who had gathered on the docks to watch the ulus ran the 50 yards through the village to the other side of the island to follow the beginning of the upwind leg that started as soon as the boats cleared the southern tip of the Ubicandup.
This ulu jockeyed for the lead over the first half of the race but came in second. Here they were pressing hard during the upwind leg in pursuit of the leaders.
The next marker was almost 2 miles to the northwest, back to the island of Ailitupu, which they had again to leave to port before heading for the bow of ALLIANCE, the finish line. One dugout got in trouble when they took on too much water, and the helmsman had to head into the wind while his crew bailed frantically with a small gourd bowl. Another ulu had trouble with a parted jibsheet, but was soon back in the race with the frayed ends knotted together. Another crew was wrestling with a mast that had come out of its step and was leaning precariously forward; the crewman struggled with it but was able to restep it while the mainsail was fully powered.
The winning crew sailed their ulu across the finish line under ALLIANCE’s bowsprit. A good two minutes passed before the second-place ulu arrived.
Eventually all the problems were resolved on the fly. All six boats came in close to Ubicandup at the turn, but then the fleet spread out on the upwind leg. The lead changed hands between the two fastest boats with almost every tack. When one ulu finally pulled well ahead, we returned to ALLIANCE to watch the finish. Only four boats completed the race, crossing in front of ALLIANCE’s bowsprit to the cheers of the spectators. Two boats never arrived, but no one was worried about them. It was, apparently, safe to assume that they had gone home as they passed close by their island, or had decided to go fishing. The official race results listed them as no aqui, not here.
The ulu that finished in third place came alongside the two ulus that preceded it for the celebration and awards ceremony aboard ALLIANCE.
The award ceremony took place on the ample deck of the schooner, where ulu sailors and gringos shared freshly baked cookies. Justino and the owners of the schooner awarded the cash prizes, and the normally shy Guna crews seemed happy to accept the attention of the cameras.
After the race Justino (right) shared a laugh with the race crews. Smiles came easily to everyone we met in Guna Yala.
That evening I helped Justino with troubleshooting his home electrical system. A 100W solar panel charges a single deep-cycle battery that powers an inverter and LED lights that hang from the crossbeams of his home’s thatched roof. Electrical power is very important for Justino—he is one of the few villagers who owns a flat-screen TV. He often invites his friends over to watch movies that he has collected on USB flash drives from cruisers who visit Guna Yala. His house has also a big gas range with an oven that his family uses to bake bread that they then sell from the window.
During the following days I toured many other Guna homes in my new role of solar-power doctor, with my waterproof bag filled with a multimeter, electrical parts, connectors, and cables. Cruisers often contribute to the locals by offering technical help and donating or swapping used gear, which can be vital for them. I was happy that my basic electrical skills were very useful to the increasingly more technological Guna.
Only in recent years have the islanders had lights on during the night. They used to go to bed very early because the nights were truly dark. They awoke at 4 a.m. without the need for an alarm clock. Solar-power equipment has been provided through a government grant for rural areas, and now the daily habits of the Guna are changing. They keep their cell phones charged, enjoy watching TV, and listen to music.
I asked Justino one day if I could see somebody building an ulu. He got back to me with Joselino, a farmer who had stopped to our boat a couple of days earlier to talk about his farm. Joselino was building a new ulu from one of the trees in his property. The best hardwood in the rainforest for ulus is mahogany, but some trees are better than others. He had found a good one, with wood that could make his ulu last for more than 20 years.
Joselino (foreground) and Justino secured their ulus to the roots of the mangroves and were ready to step ashore and walk through mud and forest trails to the building site of Joselino’s ulu.
Justino and Joselino showed up alongside TRANQUILITY one morning, each paddling an ulu, ready to take me to Joselino’s project. I followed them in my dinghy and rowed for maybe half a mile to a narrow entrance in the mangroves. We left the boats, donned rubber boots, and walked inland through the soft mud. Beyond the mangroves, the ground became more solid as we climbed steep hills of red earth through the old-growth jungle. I was not nearly as adept at making my way through the underbrush as Justino and Joselino; they were soon just two dots in the splash of green of the tropical rainforest.
They stopped to wait for me and pointed out which plants I should not touch. Among the most dangerous are palmettos with razor-blade edges, and a poisonous sort of spiny liana. Joselino balanced his axe on his shoulder; a small plastic bag hanging from it carried matches, cigarettes, and a jar of water. It was all he needed for several hours of work in the jungle. Justino did not appear to carry anything at all for himself.
More than once I felt the squishy sensation of my feet sliding in place on the wet soles of the rubber boots as I tried to keep the pace while climbing a near-vertical mud slide. My two Guna companions seemed not to know fatigue, thirst, or hunger. If they did, kept it well hidden. At every stretch of the trail, Joselino would point out the expanse of his property, and how he was planning to grow bananas on one side of the path, yucca and plantain on the other, but he was, unfortunately, too busy to do it himself. Imagining the amount of work, done without the aid of animals or machines in that harsh environment, made me think how impossible the task seemed, but the Guna have been doing this type of work for centuries.
Joselino worked the sides of the canoe with his ax. He could build an impressive vessel from a tree trunk using only very simple tools.
After walking for 40 minutes, we reached the tree that Joselino had felled. He had already spent three long months alone working it with his axe. The rough shape of a canoe had emerged, surrounded by mahogany wood chips. Joselino immediately got to work carving out the interior of the hull. His skill quickly became evident when I took a turn at the axe, and was quickly embarrassed by my clumsiness, although my guides were happy to see me eager to try. “Now you know more than most of the Guna!” they told me.
The log was already well on its way to becoming a canoe, but there was still a lot of wood to carve before it reached a good balance of strength and an easily managed weight.
Joselino would work in the forest until the ulu is close to its final shape and light enough to be carried by a party of people through the jungle all the way to the water. He was already planning to open another trail for that purpose, longer than the one we had hiked, but with a gentler grade to facilitate carrying the heavy canoe down to the water. He would have to ask for the help of his fellow islanders that day, favors that he would have to repay someday either with cash or with labor. They said that the day the ulu would be brought from the land to the ocean there would be a big party, almost like a celebration for the birth of a child.
Once the ulu reaches the island, it will be kept in the water for few days to get rid of insects and pests, then pulled out to dry for the final finishing and painting. Joselino promised me that we would go sailing and fishing on his ulu on my next visit to the islands. During our stay in Guna Yala, Kate and I were captivated by the tranquil atmosphere of the islands and the generosity of the people we met. We prepared to leave and sail TRANQUILITY up the coast to Costa Arriba for some maintenance, happy to have had the chance to witness such special events involving beautiful sailing craft and their amazing crews.
Fabio is currently in Panama with Kate, living aboard their Columbia 29. They are getting ready for longer sailing routes in the Pacific. For Fabio, boats are both a professional career and a passion, a form of expression and a means to explore wonderful habitats.
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.
This trailer’s spare tire looks brand new—it still has all of the little rubber “hairs” left by the the mold that created it—but the codes molded into the sidewall indicate it is 16 years old. It needs to be replaced.
It’s easy to take trailer tires for granted—they don’t log many miles and don’t usually show much wear—but they deserve more attention than a glance to see if they look like they have enough air in them.
Imprinted on every tire is a lot of useful information on its size, type, load range, pressure, and date of manufacture. All trailer tires are marked with ST—Special Trailer— and they are not at all like vehicle tires. Trailer tires have strengthened sidewalls that keep the trailer from swaying in turns and allow them to carry the often very heavy combined weight of trailer and its load.
SBM photograph
Like all trailer tires, this tire is marked ST for Special Trailer. It is 175mm (6.9”) wide at its widest point and 80% as tall, 140mm (5.5”), from wheel rim to tread. It has diagonal fiber plies—D—and fits a 13” rim.
In the string of numbers indicating the size of the tire, there is a letter—B or R—for bias or radial plies. You may also see a D for diagonal, but its construction is the same as a bias-ply tire. For short trips, bias-ply tires are suitable; our trailer guru Eddie recommends radial tires for long road trips—they can carry more weight and don’t generate as much heat.
SBM photograph
This Load Range B tire gives the actual number of tread and sidewall plies instead of the cotton-ply equivalent. The text also provides a maximum load (per tire) of 855 lbs and a maximum cold inflation pressure of 55 PSI. The maximum pressure should be used even if the load carried is less than the maximum weight (per tire)indicated.
A load range is designated in letters B through F. The letters indicate a ply rating based on the number of plies, from 4 to 12, when they were made of cotton. Today’s tires are made of stronger fibers, usually nylon, and they achieve the same rating with fewer plies. A tire with a higher load rating will have stronger sidewalls, carry a heavier load, and run cooler. Most trailers have B or C. While the letters are an indication of how much weight a tire can carry and its maximum inflation pressure, you can find the weight and the pressure indicated in smaller print on the sidewall.
Because trailer tires have very stiff sidewalls, they may not appear to need air as your vehicle’s tires do; for the most accurate reading, use a gauge and take the pressure of the tires while cold. It is important to keep tires inflated to the maximum pressure indicated on the sidewall, even if the load on the tire (weight of the trailer, boat, and gear divided by the number of tires) is less than the maximum load indicated. This minimizes sidewall flexing, which in turn reduces the heat buildup that can lead to its failure. On a hot day or after the tires have warmed up on the highway, the pressure will rise by only 2 percent for every 10 degrees and the tires are built to accommodate that extra pressure. Don’t lose the valve-stem cap while you’re checking the pressure or inflating the tire—it protects the valve core from grit that will cause it to leak.
While car tires will also have ratings for speed, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) tests and rates all ST tires (with rare exceptions) for 65 mph, close to maximum speed on our modern highways. With a trailer in tow, we drive a little slower and load extra gear in the tow vehicle instead of in the boat.
SBM photograph
Of all the letters and numbers in the Department of Transportation (DOT) code, the last four are the most important. Here, “2502” indicates the tire was manufactured in the 25th week of 2002.
On the side of the tire there is a four-digit number that indicates when the tire was made, with the first two numbers being the week of the year and the last two numbers being the year. Age is both the most important aspect of tire safety and perhaps the most overlooked. A tire may have plenty of tread, but that doesn’t help us determine how much life it has left. Tires age with exposure to air—rubber oxidizes and loses flexibility, even as a tire sits unused. UV rays from the sun and moisture from ground will accelerate the degradation. While you can’t prevent the aging, you slow it by covering the tires and parking the trailer on a paved driveway or on concrete pavers or planks set on soil.
SBM photograph
If the only spot you have for your trailer is in the back yard, roll the tires up on concrete pavers to keep the moisture in the grass and soil from hastening the degradation of the rubber.
Most trailer tires will age out long before they wear out. Our trailer guru Eddie recommends replacing tires around the five-year mark; studies by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicate tires are no longer safe once they reach six years.
Kent and Audrey Lewis
This tire was one of 3 on a dual-axle trailer that went south in a hurry. Fortunately, the boat survived and the failure of the tires didn’t lead to an accident. The tires were 14 years old.
When you buy new tires, they should be the same size as those that were installed by the manufacturer. If you bought the trailer used, don’t assume that its tires are the right ones, a previous owner may have put on cheaper tires to save money.
SBM photograph
The label on the trailer will note, among other things, the recommended tire size. This trailer takes ST 175/80D13 tires.
Check your trailer’s loading decal or consult the manufacturer. If you have tires with a B load rating, consider upgrading to C. And before you have the new tires installed, check their date code to make sure that they actually are new.
It’s easy to take tires for granted, but if we take care of them, they’ll take care of our trailers and our boats.
Lewis family trailers have seen the Gulf, Pacific, Atlantic, and the Great Lakes. The longest pull was 1,449 miles from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Oceanside, California, with our Drascombe Lugger. The current fleet of five trailers carries boats ranging from 130 to 900 lbs.
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A dolly opens up access to the water in areas without launching ramps.
We have spent years moving small boats around, and for us, dollies are indispensable for boat storage, transport, launch, and recovery. They reduce dependence on paved launch ramps and open up new areas to explore, especially for adventurers with larger boats that carry a crew of three or four. And the less effort it takes to move a boat, the more often you’re likely to use it.
We first used dollies about 20 years ago, after years of toting around a 140-lb Sunfish. Life immediately became easier when we could roll our boats to and from storage, load them on and off trailers, move them to the beach, and launch and recover from the dolly. Because we did not dunk our trailers so often, they lasted longer. Dollies also reduced the number of scrapes and gouges on the hull, as well as the amount of labor required for repairs. We now own six lightweight dollies that are easy to store when not needed.
For storage and transport to and from the water, a Dynamic Dolly can be easily taken apart to separate the axle, tongue, and wheels.
Dollies from Dynamic Dollies and Racks are made of marine-grade parts. The initial assembly of the kit takes less than 30 minutes and requires only a screwdriver; the plastic fittings are molded with hexagonal recesses to hold the stop nuts, so a wrench is not required. The stainless hardware, the UV-protected plastic, and 1-1/2″-square, anodized aluminum components have proven durable and maintenance free.
The Dynamic’s noncorrosive wheel hubs roll on Delrin ball bearings so our boats travel easily over our yard and slightly sloped beach with firm sand. The 16” x 4” pneumatic tires have inner tubes and do not deflate over time as fast as non-tube tires. The air pressure can be reduced to increase footprint for soft sand, and while wider 18″ x 9-1/2″ tires can be purchased as an option, we prefer the standard tire for the resulting overall narrower width of the dolly. A quick rinse with fresh water is all the dolly gets after a dunk in the salty bay. For more convenient transport or storage, the dolly breaks down into five parts by pressing three quick-release buttons and removing two bolts with wing nuts.
A boat and its dolly can ride on a trailer for the drive to the beach, and dragged off for the walk to the water. This dolly rests its axle on the trailer’s bunks. Some trailers can be modified with supports to cradle the dolly’s wheels.
The Dynamic product line is built in the USA and can carry boats as large as the Thistle or 13′ Boston Whaler. The bulk of their dolly business is with owners of Sunfish, Lasers, and Optimists. Dollies are built specifically for each type, which ensures proper load balance, hull protection, and conveniently spaced tie-down points. If your boat doesn’t appear on the company’s list of standard dollies, they’ll design one to fit.
We see dollies as a great way to optimize access to soft launch areas while protecting our boats. We can roll our boat to our favorite launch spot, and the crew is a lot happier along the way!
Audrey and Kent Lewis live on Florida’s Emerald Coast and enjoy small-boat sailing, restoration, and boatbuilding when she’s not designing costumes and when he’s not flying. Their fleet includes several fiberglass Sunfish, a wooden Sailfish, wooden Sunfish, a Catfish catamaran, an O’Day daysailer, a Drascombe Lugger, and a Drascombe Dabber. They have also rescued and fostered over 30 boats since 2011. Some people describe them as “boat-struck.” They document their boating pursuits in their blog.
Frugal Navigator’s Small Craft version of NOAA charts comes folded to fit a waterproof chart case.
I still have the charts that my father and grandfather used when they were sailing out of Marblehead, Massachusetts. I don’t use them, of course—they’re over 50 years old and I live on the country’s other coast, 2,500 miles away. I’ve also kept my father’s charts of our local waters on Puget Sound, and every chart I used going up the Inside Passage.
While my fondness for old charts may be somewhat sentimental, I still find paper charts useful even though there are some very sophisticated electronic alternatives. If I were traveling the Inside Passage or the Intracoastal Waterway again, electronic charts would have a clear advantage in lower cost and bulk, but my cruising grounds are limited in range, so I don’t need many charts to cover the area. The screen on my handheld GPS is less than half the size of a credit card, and while it can zoom in and out, it can’t give me the big picture and the details all at once in the way that a chart can. And on a sunny day I can rarely see through the glare on the screen.
In the fall of 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the federal government would bring an end to the lithographic charts that it had been printing since 1862. Printed charts did not cease to exist the following spring when the presses stopped, but their production was taken over by NOAA-certified, on-demand printers. Initially there were only two sources of charts, a source of frustration at the time, but that number has grown to 25.
I obtained charts of my main cruising grounds—central Puget Sound (18446) and northeast San Juan Islands (18340)—from Frugal Navigator. These charts can be printed to replicate the NOAA charts and shipped rolled, but I ordered the Small Craft Charts. They’ve been configured for easy use in the large SealLine map case, the kind commonly carried aboard kayaks and small boats. The printing is two-sided, so you don’t have to struggle with a large, awkward sheet. If you’re about to sail off the edge of the chart, you can pinch your position and the location under your thumb will be near your forefinger on the other side—the area along the edge is duplicated on both sides.
Printed on both sides of the sheet, the Small Craft chart is half the size of a traditional one-sided chart and more easily managed.
The paper is much heavier than the paper that had been used for the NOAA charts, so it is easier to slide into a waterproof case. Frugal Navigator mails the charts with a 6mm zip-lock bag that provides some protection from water and wear if you don’t need a map case with attachment points to secure on deck. The company website notes that the charts are printed on “water-resistant paper.” I wet a portion of the chart repeatedly and each time it dried out the paper was only slightly buckled, but otherwise as good as new. The ink didn’t bleed or smear when rubbed. Immersing the paper for several hours did ultimately soften the paper and made it susceptible to tearing. The paper has a good tooth for making notes with pencil or ball-point pen, even when wet. Erasing pencil marks will get them faint enough to write over, but they won’t disappear completely.
In all, these new charts are a noticeable improvement over their predecessors. I’m glad that charts are still available with the same appearance, up-to-date information, and better paper. They’ll be as useful while cruising as they are welcome in my archives.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly.
A standard chart from FrugalNavigator , printed on one side and rolled, costs $15.95; the Small Craft version, printed both sides and folded, $21.95. You can find a list of printers, their offerings, and their contact information on the NOAA website. Frugal Navigator offers a free 8-1/2” x 11” sample chart.
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The dinghy sits lightly on the water but has enough volume to carry a complement of three. The horizontal projection at the stem head provides a handhold for pulling the tender up on the mothership’s deck.
Ernst Glas takes his family on summer cruises on the Baltic Sea aboard RONDINE, a 43′ sloop his father built in the early ’90s. He’d had a rather disagreeable tender for the yacht, too heavy to haul up on deck and powered with a rather unreliable two-stroke outboard that required “a lot of begging and praying.” He sold the tender, but his young son Tristan missed the boat and pleaded with his father for a new dinghy.
Ernst struck a deal with Tristan: they would get a new dinghy, but they would do as Grandfather did and build it of wood, themselves. Tristan agreed, on the condition that the dinghy would have a motor. The two went looking for a design, something easily rowed and capable of taking an outboard. Ernst was drawn to prams, but Tristan insisted that a fast boat must have a sharp bow.
Photographs courtesy of the Glas family
Tristan often pitched in on the construction. Here he’s cleaning up excess thickened epoxy after a plank has been secured in place with homemade plywood clamps and wedges.
They settled on Iain Oughtred’s 7’ 2” Auklet. Its 3′ 11″ beam and full-bodied hull would be able to carry the family of three and their gear to and from RONDINE, and its glued-plywood lapstrake construction, bringing the dinghy’s weight to just 50 lbs, would make it easy enough to pull up on the sloop’s foredeck.
The plans arrived at the end of the summer of 2017, and Ernst and Tristan had agreed to start the construction that fall, after the summer sailing season. But, “when the plans arrived,” noted Ernst, “something strange happened to us. Something forced us to start immediately.” Ernst ordered 4mm mahogany plywood for the planking and ash lumber for the longitudinals. He already had some 3cm mahogany, leftovers from work on RONDINE, that would make a nice transom.
Sanding can be a tedious chore, but Tristan suited up and did his fair share.
The glued-lapstrake method was new to Ernst, but “all in all it was not so difficult, because every small step is quite easy if given enough time.” The vicissitudes of life had made 2017 a particularly challenging year for Ernst, but working in his small workshop, sometimes with his son, sometimes alone with only classical music from company, had a curative effect. “I tried to do everything very slowly, to concentrate on each small step and find a kind of center for me in the music, the wood, and the tools. These were lucky hours.”
Father Ernst and son Tristan take the Auklet out for a spin under oars.
Ernst and Tristan finished the dinghy in February, “quite proud about our work.” A warm spell in early March cleared the ice from the small lake near their village and they launched their Auklet. Ernst found the dinghy easy to row and fast for its length. A few weeks later they returned to the lake with an electric outboard. Tristan took the helm and the two motored around the whole lake.
The Auklet is an worthy tender to RONDINE, the 43′ sloop built by Ernst’s father.
The Auklet that Ernst and Tristan built now rests on the foredeck of the boat Grandfather built, ready for the sailing journeys of the coming summer. It has yet to be christened but it already has its place in the hearts of a father and a son. It can wait for a name.
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In 1975, I moved to Newmarket, New Hampshire, and got my first full-time job working in a cabinet shop that was housed in an extension of a 100-year-old barn. The weight of the shop’s roof was spreading the walls and we needed to get a tie-rod to pull them back together. Steel rod was easy enough to find and have threaded, but we needed a big turnbuckle.
Two of us went to the hardware store in town to see if we could find one there. It was not a hardware store you’d recognize today—it had as much used stuff as new. The building was an aged white-clapboard telescope house with creaky wooden floors. We found the proprietor sitting by a hot barrel stove in a threadbare easy chair. We told him what we were looking for, and without a word he got up and led us through the maze of aisles to one of the building’s extremities. In the middle of the aisle he pushed some stuff out of the way and uncovered a turnbuckle that was about 24″ long, exactly what we needed. “They were for cinching up big wooden water tanks,” he said. “Not much call for them now.” I expect that place is long gone.
When I moved back home to Seattle and began building boats in 1978, there were three shops where I could buy new and used hardware and tools. There’s only one left now and its days are numbered. Hardwick’s Hardware was established in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression by the current owner’s grandfather. The store has been in its current location since 1938. It’s a single-story building being engulfed by the construction of new, much taller buildings all around it.
Towering buildings like the one that looms behind Hardwick’s will eventually eradicate neighborhood businesses that have been a part of Seattle’s University District for many decades.
Inside Hardwick’s, the aisles are so narrow that you have to turn sideways to shuffle past anyone else in the aisle. No one seems to mind; no one is in a rush to get through the store. Even when I have in hand whatever I came for, I won’t make a beeline for the registers as I do in any other store. There some narrow passageways between aisles, some blind corners that lead to dead ends, and so many interesting things lining the shelves that by the time I get to the end of an aisle it is easy to forget where I am and where I was headed.
I’m happy to wander the aisles, looking at tools or hardware that I’ve never heard of. On my latest trip to Hardwick’s, for example, I discovered paper drills, barrel bung hole drills, duckbill pliers for upholsterers, grozing pliers for glaziers, plier wrenches, scythe nibs, and taper gauges.
When the chuck key that came with my 20-year-old drill press took a walk after staying where it belonged for almost two decades, I went looking for a replacement. The big-box store had some keys, all the wrong size, and all in plastic clam-shell packaging so I couldn’t try them. At the local chain hardware store I fared no better. I found the right key online at a supplier of replacement tool parts. It cost $11.11 for the key and $11.45 for shipping—pretty steep for a chuck key.
I called Hardwick’s and learned they had a drawer full of keys. I’d been going there for since the ’70s and hadn’t noticed it. I took the chuck with me and was led to a drawer that must have once been used for index cards, set at about shin height. There was a pile of used keys inside and I found six that fit my chuck. I bought three: one in original condition for $1.95, one with a handle with a steel rod welded in place for $1.00, and one with half a handle for 50 cents.
The aisles are narrow and often cluttered, but the slower you go, the more you see.
Woodcarvers will find scores of chisels.
The hammer wall has something for every trade.
My local hardware store has only a few of these cases, and none of the unusual parts here. Lawn mower throttle hardware? Tail nuts? Ball-joint assemblies? They’re here.
Not everyone needs a compass plane, but Hardwick’s is willing to stock items that may sit on the shelves for years, waiting for the customers who need them.
Old and new wooden planes, Japanese planes, and American Stanley plans and parts…
…Swedish hatchets and English lathe tools.
There are boxes full of combination wrenches at very affordable prices.
There is a wide array of resin fiber discs, with many specifically for working stainless steel, and grinder cut-off wheels especially for aluminum.
A side of one aisle has sanding discs that you can buy individually or by the box. There are a lot of products that you can buy without the annoying plastic clamshell packaging that is so common elsewhere.
This cabinet has 18″-long Irwin, barefoot, and ship augers. This photo captures only a small part of the stock of augers.
I spent a few years living of the grid and relied on kerosene lanterns like these.
One cabinet is full of hardware for chairs. Even the drawers without labels hold parts.
Half an aisle is devoted to gloves.
If you didn’t inherit a Yankee spiral screwdriver from your father as I did, you can find this classic at Hardwick’s.
Property taxes for the land that Hardwick’s sits on have quadrupled in the past five years. And since the city decided last year to change the zoning code to allow buildings up to 240′ tall, high above the prior cap of 65’, taxes will go up even more, even faster. Before the owner can hand the reins over to his son—the fourth generation of Hardwicks—he will have to move the store and Seattle will be poorer for driving it out of the city. It may be a year before the Hardwicks sell their land and close their doors. If you’re in town, drop by. It’s as much a museum as it is a store.
Bryn Morgan has spent all his working life at sea, but until now he had never had a boat of his own. For many years he had his eye on an 18′ Plymouth Pilot, a fiberglass production boat with lines based on a 1930s pilot vessel that operated out of Teignmouth in Devon, on the south coast of England. But when his son-in-law, Adrian St. Aubyn, a Venezuelan with Cornish ancestry, enrolled at the Lyme Regis Boat Building Academy in 2015, he realized there might be a better opportunity.
Six years earlier, another student at the Academy, Alasdair Grant, had built STEADFAST, a 16′5″ version of a 15′3″ Beer Beach boat called WILD DUCK. Beer is a village located in the middle of the Lyme Bay coast, and the boats built there had evolved over many years and came in various shapes and sizes, all seaworthy enough to cope with the exposed coastline of south Devon and durable enough to be hauled up the steep, heavily pebbled beach there. WILD DUCK was built in 1963 for crabbing and bareboat charter, and she was still on Beer Beach when Alasdair and his classmates took the lines off her.
When Bryn saw photographs of STEADFAST, he fell in love with her and started talking to Adrian about building something similar while he was at the Academy. Bryn wanted something bigger than WILD DUCK, around 21′ but the administrators were concerned that would be too big to complete in the time available. They settled on 19′ with a raised foredeck and wheelhouse, agreeing that STEADFAST’s lines were a perfect starting point.
Adrian took STEADFAST’s table of offsets, put it into AutoCAD, and scaled it up to the desired 19′ with all other dimensions increased proportionally. He then faired the lines on a full-sized lofting and adjusted the offsets.
photographs by the author
Builder Adrian St. Aubyn perched on the engine mounts to enjoy his handiwork.
Construction began with an all-oak backbone. The stem was laminated from 18 pieces of 5/32” veneer; the 5-1/2″ x 2” hog and 2-3/4″ square keel were both laminated from two pieces; and the deadwood, made up of 14 pieces, incorporated a swelling through which the stern tube would be bored. An extension from the deadwood’s lower edge provided an attachment point for the bottom rudder pintle. All the pieces were joined with epoxy and copper and bronze fastenings.
Adrian cut rabbets in the hog and keel for the garboard, and in the stem for the hood ends of all the planks. The whole assembly was then erected on a temporary structure about 2′ off the workshop floor, and the top of the stem was secured to an overhead beam.
The 2-1/4″ stern knee and 1-1/4″ oak transom were then fitted, and then the nine temporary molds were set up at their stations and secured to the overhead beam. Sixteen ribbands were laid along the length of the boat so that the position of the top edge of each plank could be determined and then marked on the molds, transom, and stem. When the ribbands were removed, it was time to fit the 3/4” larch lapstrake planking.
The builder, left, and owner Bryn Morgan make themselves comfortable in the sternsheets. The throttle used while steering with the tiller is just below Bryn’s left hand.
The garboard plank—8″ wide at its widest point—was taken a little further up the stem than initially lined with the ribbands to induce more taper and lift to the forward ends of the other planks for a more pleasing profile. As soon as this was fitted, the gains, known locally as geralds, were cut at each end of the top of the garboard to allow the next plank to finish flush with the outer part of the stem and transom.
From there the remaining 14 strakes were fitted. They all had to be steamed at their ends to cope with the twist, and most had a scarf joint in them. In each case, the lands were bedded with an oil-based mastic and then fastened with copper clench nails while the ends were epoxied and screwed to the stem and transom.
The 1-1/4″ x 5/8″ oak frames were then steamed and fit between the molds on 6” centers. Almost all of these were continuous from sheer to sheer, but the forward-most five were fitted in separate halves on each side. The molds were then removed after two braces were temporarily laid across the hull to retain its shape, and the remaining frames were fitted. The sheer forward was then extended upward for the raised foredeck by fitting an extra plank flush with the sheerstrake and supported by an extra 10 short frames.
The motor housing conceals a 14-hp two-cylinder Yanmar diesel.
Adrian fit the internal structure: the 4-5/8″ x 1” oak beam shelf, the 3-3/4″ x 7/8″ larch bilge stringer, the 1-1/2″ x 1-1/8″ oak risers (the aft parts of which would support the side seats), and five 1-3/8″-thick laminated oak floors. Two sawn frames, 1″ thick and averaging 3″ deep, are joggled with limbers above every lap and doubled up from about the riser downward to stiffen up the open part of the boat. The 3-1/2″-thick engine beds span the sawn frames.
After the 1-1/2″ x 2″ oak deckbeams were fitted forward and aft, an oak laid deck with no plywood subdeck was fitted over them. The oak railcap, running the length of the boat between the decks, is 4-5/8″ x 1″. The wheelhouse is made up of 1 ¾”-thick solid sapele sides and front, with 1-7/8″ x 1-5/8″ roof beams, covered by 3/4″ ply and a layer of ’glass and epoxy.
The four 3″-square mooring posts were made of reclaimed wood that had been Falmouth docks. They were the only pieces of wood on the boat for which no money changed hands, but Adrian described them as “priceless, because they belong to this place,” referring to ELLY ROSE’s home port. That was where Bryn, Adrian, and I met up for a sea trial on ELLY ROSE on a blustery winter’s day.
Cruising speed with the 14-hp diesel is around 5.5 knots.
With Adrian at the helm, we maneuvered our way out of a tricky berth and then motored down the Penryn River. The Yanmar 14-hp two-cylinder diesel gave us 5.2 knots at the cruising rpm of 2,500, and 5.6 knots at 3,000, but the Force 6 headwind was clearly having a significant effect on the sizable wheelhouse. So we turned around and found that going downwind, she went a little faster: 5.4 knots and 5.9 knots at the respective rpm. Not surprisingly, her turning circle was also affected by the conditions. While it was about three boat-lengths (at 2,500 rpm) turning into the wind, it was little more than half that turning away from it.
Bryn and Adrian told me that they had decided to fit the engine in the deepest part of the boat without calculating the effect on the center of gravity. When the boat was launched, they found that she was bow-down and difficult to steer, especially when in reverse. The prop was too close to the surface and not really biting properly. They put around 575 lbs of lead ballast aft, which seems to have done the trick—I found her easy to steer in both directions. They have in mind moving the engine aft at some point in the future.
The rudder can be operated at the tiller or by a wheel in the pilothouse. A hydraulic piston mounted under the aft deck is connected to a bolt through the rudder stock that extends through a slot high on the transom.
There are two steering positions: a wheel in the wheelhouse (especially welcome on that very cold day!) and a tiller aft. Both have gear and throttle controls, and it is a simple matter to make sure one is in neutral before assuming command at the other station. A valve in the aft locker disconnects the hydraulic wheel steering to allow the tiller to be used. I am 6’ tall and, although I could stand in the wheelhouse, I had to stoop a little to get a clear view forward. I also had to stoop at the tiller to get a view through the wheelhouse windows. Bryn is 5′8″ and has no trouble in that respect, and neither of us did when sitting on the engine box forward or on the seats adjacent to the tiller.
Bryn and Adrian had been farther out to sea than we went that day, and Bryn said he was delighted with ELLY ROSE’s seakeeping qualities, especially when punching her way through the waves in a more exposed stretch of water.
Bryn is very much looking forward to using ELLY ROSE during his impending retirement. He plans to use her for fishing, hauling crab pots, picnicking, and visiting secluded beaches accessible only by boat. She will, I am sure, be perfect in all those roles.
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.
I graduated from college with a degree in art, so when I took up boatbuilding a few years later the transition came naturally. There is something quite sculptural about hulls and oars, spars and sails. Joe Greenley of Redfish Kayaks has doubtless made the same connection. While he is well known for his artistry with strip-building, the kayaks he has designed are more than canvases for designs in red cedar, mahogany, walnut and Alaska yellow cedar. They’re good kayaks. Joe’s Spring Run is a general-purpose kayak with an overall length of 16′9″, a waterline length of 14′10″, and a beam of 23-7/8″ and 22-1/2″ at the waterline. It weighs an easy-to-shoulder 36 lbs. The cove-and-bead strips are 3/16″ x 5/8″, slightly smaller than the more commonly used 1/4″ x 3/4″ strips, which may account for the more refined look of all Redfish kayaks.
The strips are applied without staples, leaving the kayak free of trout-speckle bands that would spoil the aesthetics. The fits between strips are tight enough that the glue lines are invisible, and the strips are placed in the same order they were cut from the stock, making it look as though construction was from broad panels cut from a single board. The exterior is ’glassed, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any evidence of it. The interior is finished with ‘glass cloth as well, transparent but with its weave’s texture left proud. The bulkheads are cedar-strip panels, ’glassed in place.
Christopher Cunningham
A webbing tab is all that’s needed to release the hatch cover. The webbing deck-line anchor (lower left) is strong and unobtrusive.
The deck bungees are anchored with discreet webbing loops set in neat ovals of black epoxy. They’re much less obtrusive than plastic pad-eyes, and they’re easy on the limbs when crawling over the deck during self-rescues. The hatch covers have nothing crossing over them to hold them in place. There is only a webbing tab on each cover to remove it. The Spring Run I paddled had an earlier version of the closure system, which employed cleats on the underside of the lid and bungees to hold the lids tight. The latest models of Redfish kayaks use neodymium rare-earth magnets to pull the covers tight against a perimeter gasket to create a tight seal.
Christopher Cunningham
The hatch covers are held down with magnets that are powerful enough to keep the covers in place and create a watertight seal against the neoprene gasket.
The cockpit is just barely long enough for me to drop into seat and then bring my feet in. I’m 6′ tall; it’s more practical for me to sit on the aft deck and slide in feet-first.
The seat is far from an off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all model. It’s removable, sculpted from closed-cell foam, and includes hip bracing and a backrest. There’s an integral foam pillar at the back of the seat that is cut slightly taller than the space for it under the aft deck. Compressing the pillar while pushing it under the deck locks the seat in place. The hip braces are also oversized; a hard push locks them in place when they curve up the inner sides of the cockpit. The seat showed no signs of slipping out of place during all the rolls and wet exits I did.
Christopher Cunningham
The carved closed-cell foam seat is very comfortable and assures a solid, non-slip connection with the kayak.
The foam also offers excellent insulation from the cold, providing a comforting, toasty warmth. Additionally, the volume of foam in the seat limits how much water can get into the cockpit in the event of a capsize or wet exit and provides a substantial amount of flotation. Its carved surfaces have a slightly fuzzy texture that contributes to the solid connection with the kayak. The combination of the deep contours and the grippy texture provides excellent support and comfort for the long haul, and effortless control of the kayak when it’s necessary.
The foot braces are the standard Keepers model, solid and easily adjusted. The thigh braces are mahogany flanges incorporated in the cockpit coaming. They have no padding, but I didn’t feel the need for any.
The primary stability is very good. I could sit comfortably with my hands off the paddle and fiddle with the GPS while taking notes without feeling the least bit twitchy. The secondary stability is solid, providing reassuring resistance that makes it easy to hold the kayak on edge for more effective turning.
The hull tracks well, and I had no trouble holding on course, regardless of speed. It also has very good maneuverability when I set the hull on edge to lift the ends to offer less resistance to the lateral motion in a turn. Sweep strokes brought the bow around and once the hull started carving, it maintained the turning between strokes.
Ed Emswiler
The Spring Run’s good secondary stability supports edging maneuvers.
The Spring Run has a fine, overhanging stern—not the sort of configuration that takes well to supporting a rudder, and it’s just as well, as there’s more than enough maneuverability without an added appendage spoiling the look of the kayak and adding little to its performance. There was no wind during the afternoon I had the Spring Run out on the water, so I can’t comment on weathercocking, though the kayak’s good response to edging and sweep strokes should make it easy to counter a moderate degree of weathercocking, if any were to occur.
At a relaxed pace I could easily maintain 4-1/4 knots, GPS measured in still water—a brisk cruising pace. With a bit more effort, but still at a sustainable aerobic pace, the Spring Run held 5-1/2 knots, and in an all-out sprint I could push the kayak to a peak of 6-1/2 knots. For a waterline of just under 15’, those are good numbers. At top speed the Spring Run maintained its trim and I never felt I was pushing it uphill.
The secure fit in the cockpit provided by the seat and the thigh, hip, and foot braces made rolling the Spring Run a snap. My hips stayed centered and my thighs stayed locked in, so when I snapped my hips the hull snapped around too. The softness of the foam and the gentle contours of the thigh braces meant I could roll without feeling any pressure points on my legs.
My self-rescue drills with the Spring Run went well. After capsizing, I had no trouble getting out of the cockpit during wet exits. In kayaks with a looser fit and a larger cockpit opening, I might fall out without having to do anything to exit, but with the Spring Run I had to move my knees to the center of the cockpit to get clear of the thigh braces and then push the back of the coaming past my hips. Then, even with the snug, form-fitting shape of the seat, it was not at all difficult to slip out.
Ed Emswiler
The kayak’s light weight makes is easy to lift the bow and drain the water that gets into the cockpit during a wet exit.
After a wet exit, the bow was light enough to lift easily with one hand so I could let the water drain from the cockpit and then roll the kayak upright. To re-enter, I could pull myself up and onto the aft deck. There’s a bit of height there, good for cargo space in the aft compartment, but that adds to the effort required to get aboard, chest down on the deck. But with a good kick and a strong pull, I got aboard with the first effort. Moving aft a bit will force the stern down, which can help if you’re having trouble. After straddling the aft deck and bracing with my paddle extended to one side, I scooted forward and dropped into the seat. It was a tight squeeze getting my legs in—with size-13 feet it may take a bit more effort for me than for others—but I was able to get both legs in and locked back under the thigh braces. This maneuver is commonly done with a float on one blade of the paddle and the other blade tucked under the deck lines, but the Spring Run had enough stability for me to hold the outrigged paddle by hand and brace without the float.
The reenter-and-roll self-rescue was a cinch. Holding the kayak floating on edge and leaning it slightly toward me, I could easily thread my legs into the cockpit, pull my backside into the seat, and, locked in once again, roll upright. That maneuver, of course, scoops up a bit of water because the cockpit opening isn’t covered by the spray skirt. But not so much water got aboard that the kayak felt unstable. The foam seat can take some credit for that.
The particular Spring Run I paddled was 20 years old and has served as a demo boat for much of its life. It isn’t as shiny as a new Redfish kayak, but otherwise, it seemed no worse for the wear. Even the bottom was unscarred. The ’glass and cedar have proved to be quite durable.
The Spring Run is a lively performer as a day boat, has enough stability for fishing and photography, and has enough cargo space for multi-day cruising. When you’re not out paddling it, the fine workmanship and the decorative touches make it something you might want to hang in your living room.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly.
Spring Run Particulars
[table]
Length/16′9″
Waterline length/14′10″
Beam/23.9″
Waterline beam/22.5″
Weight/36 lbs
[/table]
The Spring Run is available from Redfish Kayaks as plans ($85), a kit ($1695), a DIY workshop at Redfish in Port Townsend, Washington ($900 to $4,500), and as finished kayak (starting at $8,000).
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!
Peter Knape was once stuck behind an office desk in a soulless building in the business district of Arnhem in Holland. Year after year, his demanding career had sapped both his time and energy. He longed for a quiet life with freedom, and independence. He realized his destiny was in his own hands, and that he only had to muster the courage to make a break.
He took a vacation and traveled to northern Finland where he hired a small boat and set off on a long journey, one that took him far beyond the Arctic Circle to an area that’s almost uninhabited. Life aboard the boat was uncomplicated; it was exactly what he had been yearning for.
It was 1977 when Peter began looking for a boat of his own, and while on another vacation touring England by motorcycle, he made his way to Totnes in Devon, England, where Honnor Marine was building fiberglass Drascombe boats. He had decided a Drascombe Longboat could be adapted to suit the life he wanted to live, but in his discussions with Luke Churchouse, owner of the boatshop, it became apparent that a company geared for production ’glass boats wouldn’t be able to deliver the degree of customization that he required.
Peter was still convinced that a Drascombe would be the ideal boat for him, so Luke suggested a visit with my brother John and me at our boatyard at Yealmbridge. We had been involved with wooden Drascombes from their beginning, and we had the only license to build them of wood. Every Drascombe we built had been customized for each client, so we were in a good position to meet his requirements.
John and I were working when we saw a motorcycle drive up, the rider dismounted, and then came into the workshop. Peter introduced himself, explained his requirements, and asked for our opinions and advice. We answered his questions and then recommended he pay a visit to Ken Duxbury and his wife Brenda at Rock in Cornwall. Ken, who died in 2016, was a prolific writer and a very experienced sailor. He owned LUGWORM, a wooden Drascombe Lugger that featured in many of his writings and books. We felt Ken and Brenda could provide Peter with valuable advice gained from their own extensive voyages in a Drascombe, so after we telephoned Ken to provide the introduction, Peter set off on his motorcycle to meet them.
Peter Knape
Peter provided the Elliott brothers with detailed drawings and notes for the modified Drascombe Longboat that he wanted them to build.
A few weeks later, a letter arrived in the mail. It began with “Do you remember a Dutchman in blue-black leather who visited you?” Of course we did! Peter wrote about his visit to Ken and Brenda and how they had welcomed him, taken him out in LUGWORM for a sail and a row, and given great advice with enthusiastic encouragement. The visit had fired up his ambition and clarified what was achievable. He now wished to order a highly customized Drascombe Longboat Cruiser from us. He included some drawings to show us the modifications he had in mind.
Before we began building Peter’s boat we had long discussion with him about what would and wouldn’t work, and together we came to a clear understanding of the boat we’d build. A bond of understanding and trust had developed between us. During construction, Peter traveled by motorcycle from his home in Holland, a journey of around 900 miles each way, no less than three times, and even brought his partner Elly Jansen for one of those trips.
LEGOLAS would be radically different from any of the other Drascombes we’d built. It would be a cruising home. The cabin would be shorter than the standard length, and the hull would to appear normal from the outside, but the internal frames, bulkheads, and decks were designed higher to give more room for living and as much storage space as possible.
A sliding seat and long sweeps would be the means of propulsion when not sailing; there would be no outboard-motor well as on other Drascombes because, as Peter put it, “outboard motors are noisy, smelly, and guzzle very expensive fuel.” A hinged cabin hatch and a large dorade ventilator would catch the breeze and make the cabin more comfortable for sleeping in hot weather.
Douglas Elliott
LEGOLAS was built here in the Elliotts’ shop and delivered nearly finished, leaving some custom woodworking, varnish, and paint for Peter and Elly to do at their home in the Netherlands.
The manner of building LEGOLAS was the same we used for all of our other wooden Drascombes. The hull is built of high-quality 9mm marine plywood. The frames, bulkheads, centerboard case, and rudder trunk are of 12mm marine plywood. Kiln-dried iroko hardwood is used for floors, gunwales, frame doublers, and stem laminates. The decks were 6mm marine plywood, and the masts and spars were made from Columbian pine or Douglas-fir.
The forward bulkhead, ’midship frames, aft bulkhead, transom, centerplate case, and rudder trunk were all reinforced with hardwood or plywood doublers, and were assembled prior to fastening on the building jig. The rudder trunk was glued and fastened to the aft bulkhead and transom, and the centerboard case was glued and fastened to the ’midship frames. The components are all temporarily secured to the building jig. The hull was built upside down, and the frames are tied together by an inwale, the keelson, and inner stem.
Phenolic resin glues were used throughout the boat, but the frames for LEGOLAS were very different from the standard design, and so the build was about to become an experiment in adaption and innovation given Peter’s very specific requirements for this boat that was to become his home. We planked the hull up to the third strake, and before adding the sheer, we faired and finished the bottom, released the hull from the building jig, and flipped the hull.
This is the point where LEGOLAS started to differ quite significantly from other Drascombes. It’s not an open boat; it has a sheer-level deck instead of benches set even with the lower edge of the sheerstrake. We made a recess in the deck as a footwell for the sliding-seat rowing rig, not something you see on many traditional-looking 21′6″ sailing boats. LEGOLAS would be so high-sided afloat that Peter would have to use a pair of 12′ oars (normally meant to be used one per rower for racing) instead of the 9’ sculls a single rower would ordinarily use.
We dry-fit all of the plywood decking, then removed it to allow access to the interior for painting. We also painted the undersides of the decking before gluing and fastening the panels down. John and I then finished the hull by installing the sheerstrake and the transom return.
We paid particular attention to the fit and finish of the coach roof. The interior woodwork would be visible when Peter was below, and we didn’t want flaws in the joinery. The coach roof had to be strong too, because the front would be fitted with a tabernacle and have to transmit the thrust of the mainmast down to a reinforced forward bulkhead.
With the woodwork completed, we covered the decks in a 16-oz woven roving fiberglass cloth bonded with epoxy resin, which gives extra stiffness to the 6mm marine plywood decking and a durable non-slip finish.
During construction, our overriding aim was always to stay as true to Peter’s vision as possible. I believe we managed to achieve that quite well, because he requested very few alterations. The rig we supplied was a “smack rig,” which consists of a gunter main, a gunter mizzen, a jib, and a flying jib on a bowsprit.
This photograph and those that follow courtesy of Peter Knape and Elly Jansen
The modified cabin and raised deck on LEGOLAS provided more spacious accommodations than the standard Longboat Cruiser.
In March of 1979, Peter took delivery of the Drascombe Longboat Cruiser we built for him. It was unpainted and had all of the main storage spaces, but the small details surrounding storage and odds and ends were left for him work out. This was to save money, but only in part. There’s no substitute for sitting in the boat and making final decisions for yourself. Peter and Elly finished the boat in Holland and christened it LEGOLAS after an elven character in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings.
With LEGOLAS finally ready for launching after completion of the painting and multitude of odd jobs, Peter decided that it was time to move aboard and begin to travel. He sold all of his property, stepped aboard just outside of Arnhem with enough money to live simply for a year to a year-and-a-half, and on September 17, 1979, he departed in a general southerly direction on the River Meuse.
His upstream voyage on the Meuse, some 400 miles long, was against a steady 1-knot current. He sailed when he could, and when the wind dropped he brought his rowing rig into action or simply found a quiet spot to anchor and enjoy the solitude. The farther south he traveled, the less wind there was, so rowing became more of a regular duty until reaching Namur, Belgium, a city where the rocks on either side of the river reach around 100′ high, shadowing the wind altogether.
Peter rowed much of the route from the Netherlands to the south of France. Here LEGOLAS is on the Meuse River in Belgium. 1979
A little farther on, near the French border, he lowered the masts to clear the very low bridges, some as low as 11′, so rowing continued to be the everyday exercise and somewhat of a struggle against the never-abating current. It was exhausting work, and discouraging with the knowledge that winter was not far off. But the weather remained unseasonably beautiful for weeks on end.
When Peter thought he’d rowed far enough for a day, he’d pick a suitable stopping place and cook a four-course meal. Rowing burns up energy, so good food was essential, as was rest; this combination of fresh air and healthy living ensured a good night’s sleep, often as much as 9 or 10 hours. Peter was feeling fitter and healthier day by day, exactly what he had wished would happen. It raised his spirits and affirmed his decision to live life aboard a small boat.
Roger Siebert
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In October, the nights got noticeably colder, and there was a thin sheet of ice on the water every morning in the canal running along the valley at the base of the Vosges mountains. Then it started to rain, making rowing difficult because his hands became soft with the constant drenching. But his journey along the rivers and canals of northeast France continued, every day he went some 15km and through several locks, and Peter arrived at the town of Epinal. Situated 1,000′ above sea level, it was not just the geological peak of the voyage south to the Mediterranean, but a psychological peak. He would no longer have to fight against a current, but could ride with it. His daily distance gradually increased and the weather didn’t get any colder as he progressed southward. Although the rain persisted all the way to Lyon, he had a tent that could be quickly erected over the cabin and cockpit to keep everything dry. A bottle filled with hot water kept him warm whether he was in the cockpit or in his sleeping bag.
The River Saone was flooding, which sometimes made the rowing difficult, but it offered silence and solitude, beautiful scenery, welcoming towns and villages, and safe places to stop overnight.
The Saone delivered him to the Rhône, an impressive river with long straight canals, but it offered few overnight refuges. The distances between good anchorages dictated his schedule, and he often had to stop sooner than he wanted, or worse, he had to continue rowing much longer than he intended. The towns along the river catered to commercial traffic and large boats, so it was also a difficult place to even go ashore to shop for the supplies he needed.
At Avignon, just 55 miles upstream from the Mediterranean Sea, the local rowing club welcomed Peter, wanting to know all about his boat and his journey. They treated him as an honored guest, provided hot showers, hosted him for dinner, and even arranged for a newspaper interview. He was grateful for the hospitality but not interested in the interview. He was making the journey for himself, but his hosts were so kind, it would have been rude to refuse, so he acquiesced.
After the rest at Avignon, Peter left the Rhône and Petit Rhône behind to follow the long-deserted and little-used canals that coursed their way west straight into the Mistral, a northwesterly wind that made rowing impossible much of the time, so he resigned himself to the role of a barge-mule. He harnessed himself to LEGOLAS with a long line, and took to the tow paths, walking for many miles along the route.
On Étang de Thau, a 9-mile-long, 2-mile-wide lagoon, he was surprised by a Force-9 Mistral. Sailing precariously under a reefed main only, he was unable to sail to windward because he had not finished the boat’s rigging. He had put that job off while traveling the canals and rivers, expecting there wouldn’t be much sailing until he reached the Mediterranean. It was a decision that he regretted, as it resulted in a very unpleasant night on the lake. The upside was that LEGOLAS showed her ability during the storm, and it reinforced his confidence in her.
Peter takes to the oars at Sète, near Étang de Thau on the southern coast of France, after a stop to repair the rudder. 1979
At the west end of the lagoon, Peter entered the sheltered water of the Canal du Midi and, just a few hundred yards in, found a hospitable winter berth at the Le Glénans sailing school. It was New Year’s Eve, 1979, and after 100 days aboard LEGOLAS, Peter was fitter, healthier, and felt a very youthful 45 years old. It was the first time in his life that he’d spent three months on his own, and had time to think and evaluate his life. He decided, “I will not return to the circus of over-organised society from which I now feel escaped.” That resolution laid the foundation for an extensive cruise. While in the Canal du Midi, he completed the rigging and got LEGOLAS ready for the long sea voyage that was to follow.
When the spring of 1980 arrived, Peter took LEGOLAS out into the Mediterranean for the first time. It turned out to be very uneventful debut, with only 4 miles sailed in about 8 hours, thanks to the flat, calm conditions that sometimes occur there. Peter traveled east along the French coast and sometimes the sea was mirror calm; other times a screaming mistral tested his seamanship to the limit. Rarely did he have any decent sailing conditions. Rowing the unsheltered waters turned out to be quite impossible; in all but the slightest swell he was unable to keep the oar handles from colliding with his knees. Sculling over the stern was good propulsion, but only for short distances or when steering into harbor berths. Peter passed the mouth of the Rhône river and the cities of Marseille and Toulon before leaving the coast and sailing southeast for Corsica.
The 100-mile passage took four days. The first two days were dead calm, and while Peter enjoyed beautiful peaceful nights under clear, starry skies, he had to stay vigilant for the ever-present danger of passing ships. He didn’t get much sleep. On the second night, he watched a brightly lit ferry pass by in the distance, and it seemed to jump along the horizon with each blink of his eyes. Each blink was, in reality, a minutes-long sleep. On the third night the moon was obscured by big clouds and a southeasterly rose rapidly to a Force 7 blow. Peter had no option but to stream a sea anchor from the bow to ride out the storm that night. The storm was followed by a beam-on mistral which hurried LEGOLAS along under shortened sail to Calvi on Corsica’s northwest coast.
Peter, after his solo crossing from France, sailed the coast of Corsica under full sail. 1980
Sheltered coves along the island coast provided anchorages for the night, and Peter enjoyed the benefits of peace and quiet. With the good food and abundant water supplies that he carried aboard LEGOLAS made it an easy and inexpensive way to live. When he reached the southern tip of Corsica, he stayed for a while in the fjord-like harbor of Bonifacio. Elly joined him there for what was to be a few weeks holiday, but discovered, as Peter did, that life onboard agreed with her. She never left. The two sailed across the Strait of Bonafacio, the 7-mile gap between Corsica and Sardinia. They had planned to continue south and make the 112-mile crossing of the Mediterranean to Tunisia, but the weather had deteriorated as summer came to a close.
Elly joined Peter at Villasimius, a coastal village on the south end of Sardinia. 1981
They hibernated in the south of Sardinia, and by springtime, their funds were rapidly diminishing. Peter took various jobs to bring in a little money. Repairing wooden boats and old engines for the local fishermen brought in a little income—they too had little money—but in his free time Peter found he had a talent for drawing and painting with watercolor. The tourists at the marinas and harbors provided a ready market for his art, and they paid well.
Soon Peter had enough money to buy a secondhand outboard motor. He had been against having an outboard at the beginning of his adventure, but he was now responsible for Elly’s safety. And the unreliable wind often made planning ahead impossible. They needed to be sure that they could find a place to spend the winter and find jobs. Where most Drascombes have a motorwell, Peter had a gear locker, so he mounted a bracket on the transom to carry the outboard motor.
LEGOLAS lines up on the northern entrance of the Corinth Canal. Nero, the Roman emperor, took a few swings of a pickax in 67 A.D. to begin the digging of the canal, but the project wasn’t successfully taken on until 1881. In 1893, the 300′-deep cut opened the shortcut through Greece.
Peter and Elly sailed and rowed the 155-nautical-mile crossing from Sardinia to Sicily in five days. With two aboard, they could schedule watches and stay alert during the night. They then cruised aboard LEGOLAS some 1500 miles along the sheltered coastline of Italy to Greece, arriving at the island of Rhodes just before Christmas. A few days later they found work on a big charter boat, varnishing brightwork under the warm Mediterranean sun. They worked for the charter company until spring and resumed their wandering by sailing to the coast of Turkey and then making the 36-mile crossing to Cyprus.
Rising above LEGOLAS are ruins near the village of Lindos, on Rhodes, the largest of Greece’s Dodecanese islands. August, 1982
They rounded the island’s west end and stopped at Larnaca on the southern coast for the coming winter. It was a good decision: the people living in the land of Bacchus and Aphrodite were relaxed and friendly, and work was easy to find. Peter and Elly lived comfortably aboard LEGOLAS. They decided to enlarge the rig to make better progress in the weak winds that they had so often encountered. Peter built a new mast that was 4’ taller, and a local sailmaker made a 90-sq-ft light-weather genoa. Flown high from the masthead, it was a great success.
While on Cyprus, LEGOLAS got a new taller mast and a light-weather genoa to improve sailing in light air. Note the pop-top cabin roof.
After Cyprus, Peter and Elly headed LEGOLAS west again, and the following year roamed the sea around Turkey. When they came ashore for the winter, they rented a house on the beach and pulled LEGOLAS ashore in a mandarin grove next to the house. Having a bigger roof over their heads was a good choice, as it turned out to be a very wet winter. They took advantage of the space and store all their gear in their temporary villa while they repainted the boat’s interior.
Peter and Elly came ashore at Kastilllorizo, a tiny Greek island 75 miles due east of Rhodes, but just a mile and a half off the coast of Turkey. 1982
In the spring, they started sailing early and toured the many Greek islands just west of Turkey. The Dodecanese archipelago offered some of the most interesting places to visit—the 12 large islands and the scores of islets scattered among them offer secluded coves, inviting beaches, and everything from prehistoric cave dwellings to cathedrals and castles.
The voyage from Turkey to Elba on Italy’s northwest coast proved to be the most difficult sailing during the whole eight years of their Mediterranean tour. After rounding the toe of Italy’s boot, LEGOLAS struggled against the prevailing westerly and north winds, and was slowed by both the short chop and the flat calms of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Peter and Elly tried sailing at night to make use of the predictable northeasterly offshore wind, but it would usually die in the middle of the night as the temperature dropped. Then the lulls made it difficult to get to an anchorage. Italy’s west coast is beautiful, but offers little in the way of shelter for a small boat. The sailing was very demanding, and after around six months of being on the move almost daily, the couple stopped frequently to keep morale high. Upon reaching the island of Elba they chose Portoferraio as the best port to spend winter.
Peter and Elly take a break at Ibizia, the westernmost of the Balearic Islands, 47 miles off the Spain’s mainland coast. 1986
In the spring of 1987, the cruise continued to France, Spain, and the Balearic Islands. Peter and Elly enjoyed their adventures in the Mediterranean aboard LEGOLAS and were planning to continue through the Straights of Gibraltar, the Gulf of Cadiz, and on to Portugal. However, fate took a hand in Elba when Peter lifted too heavy a weight and injured his back. His recovery while still aboard LEGOLAS took four long months, during which he couldn’t sail or work. Gradually he was able to take a few short sails, as long as he avoided lifting and bending over. The biggest problem was getting in and out of the bunk in the small cabin. There was only sitting headroom, and standing up meant painful stooping. He and Elly had to make a difficult decision. Giving up sailing and the freedom it offered wasn’t an option, so they pointed LEGOLAS toward Holland and to sell her and buy a bigger boat, one with headroom and more living space. Finding work to fund the major change would be easier in Holland.
Soon after they set their course northward through France, their old and unreliable outboard motor succumbed to the very salty water of the Mediterranean; parts of it just crumbled into the sea. They had enough money to buy a new engine, a quiet four-stroke 5-hp that sipped fuel, vastly different from the old, rackety 6-hp two-stroke that gulped gas at an alarming rate and spewed a trail of blue smoke—so at least some of their journey home would be easier on the ears and wallet.
With her rig down, LEGOLAS motors north along France’s Canal de l’Est, bound for home in the Netherlands. 1987
Sailing upstream on the Rhône was an exercise in patience—fast-flowing water under bridges and in canals approaching locks almost brought LEGOLAS to a dead stop at times—but they arrived quickly enough at Lyon and from there, the journey north along the chain of rivers and canals was quite pleasant. They enjoyed good food and lovely summer weather; the peace and quiet of the River Saone and the Canal de l’Est (now known as the Canal de la Meuse) turned the final part of their adventure into a relaxing holiday.
Peter had expected to be cruising for a year to a year and a half, but LEGOLAS finally returned by water to Arnhem, Holland, on September 14, 1987, just three days shy of an even eight years of cruising, having logged more than 9,000 miles.
Peter Knape sold LEGOLAS in 1989 to Johannes Jonkers Nieboer. He painted her Navy-ship gray, and together with his partner Roos Goverde from Utrecht, sailed her until 1992. Roos took sole ownership of LEGOLAS in 2001, and life changes left LEGOLAS sitting on a trailer in a covered barn since then. She is not being sailed, but she has not been forgotten.
Douglas Elliot lives in Plymouth, England, where he and Susan, his wife of nearly 48 years, raised three daughters. In 1968, working with John Watkinson at Kelly and Hall’s boatyard in Devon, England UK, Doug delivered the first production wooden Drascombe Lugger to the London Earls Court Boatshow. The boat sold within 20 minutes of the show’s opening. Two years later Doug’s brother John was granted the license to build Drascombes in wood. Doug joined him in building the custom Drascombes until John’s unexpected death at the age of 47 in 1980. Doug built a Drascombe Peterboat 4.5 meter under license from John Watkinson. It was the last Drascombe he built. He owns the Drascombe Scaith FOOTLOOSE, a boat he built for John Weller in 1978 but bought back a few years ago. Now 70 years old, he keeps his hand in with a few repair or modification jobs from time to time, and maintains a keen interest in boats, wooden Drascombes in particular. He regularly contributes to The Drascombe Association website forum and the DAN magazine, as well as the Dutch Drascombe Owners website the NKDE, and has occasionally written articles for boating magazines.
Afterword: Peter Knape passed away on January 22, 2022 with Elly at his side.
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 padded case has enough buoyant foam padding to keep the battery afloat if it is dropped overboard.
The EP Carry is the second generation of an electric outboard developed and manufactured by PropEle Electric Boat Motors in North Bend, Washington. It is designed specifically for small boats and weighs just 14.4 lbs, making it an easy, one-hand lift. The battery, in its case, weighs 6.3 lbs and will float if dropped overboard. The whole package—motor, battery, charger, and carry bag—weighs 22.3 lbs, and is compact enough that I can easily sling it over my shoulder with the bag’s adjustable carry strap and have both hands free to carry whatever else I need to take aboard.
The light weight of the motor is not just an easy carry to and from the dinghy, it’s an advantage when putting the motor on the transom and taking it off. I could sit close to the center of the boat and lift the motor with an outstretched arm, an advantage in the small boats the motor was designed for. When approaching shore, a pull of the tiler is all it takes to tilt the lower unit out of the water. You don’t have to move aft to get a hand on the motor.
The bevel gears driving the prop are lubricated by water that circulates through an opening in the lower unit.
The prop’s high-aspect-ratio blades make it look more like a model airplane propeller than an outboard motor prop. The skinny blades didn’t come as a surprise to me. One of the pedal-driven boats I tried many years ago used an actual model-airplane prop, and it was exceptionally effective. The EP Carry’s prop turns at around 550 rpm, less when laboring to push a stubby hull with a lot of drag, and more when running with a sleek hull. Compare that to the 5,500 rpm of my 2.5-hp four-stroke outboard. The lower speed warrants a longer, narrower prop, just as a slow-moving sailplane needs wings that are long and narrow while a jet fighter needs wings that are short and wide.
The motor cocks up by simply pulling on the tiller. A push drops the prop back into the water. The EP Carry was a good match for this 7′ 9″ Eastport Pram.
The throttle is built into the ball at the end of the tiller. It has a detent in the off position; full ahead is 60-degree rotation clockwise, full astern 30 degrees counterclockwise. It takes a light touch to operate, so I found it best to steer holding onto the tiller shaft with three fingers while operating the throttle with thumb and forefinger. When I used the EP Carry on a Chesapeake Light Craft Eastport pram, I recorded a top speed of 3-1/3 knots going forward and 1-3/4 knots in reverse.
The EP Carry’s light weight makes it a good match for a small boat, though it was a white-knuckle ride on my folding coracle.
I also mounted the EP Carry on my folding tender, FAERIE, a coracle-like boat only 4-1/2′ long. It’s meant to be propelled with a single paddle, which provides plenty of power as well as a much-needed measure of stability for the little boat. I mounted the EP Carry on the stern with a bit of trepidation—a sharp turn might twist FAERIE out from under me. I made no sudden moves with the tiller or the throttle, and all was well. With the motor running at full tilt, we made a solid 2-1/2 knots and the blunt bow was throwing a wake I’d never seen before.
With a motor mount hastily sawn from a 4×4, I could test the motor on my lapstrake canoe. The speed was good; steering would have been better with a rudder or the motor located farther aft.
While the company is focusing their attention on the dinghy market, and perhaps rightly so, I thought I’d see what the EP Carry could do on my 18′8″ decked lapstrake canoe. Clamped to a mount on the port side, the motor made the canoe list a bit before I got aboard, but its weight wasn’t noticeable once I took my seat. As with the coracle, the canoe would roll with the motor turned and the thrust coming from below the hull. I didn’t bring the canoe’s foot-controlled rudder with me, but I think that it would be a good partner for the motor. It would take care of the steering, and the motor could just provide power. The canoe’s top speed under the EP Carry was between 4.5 and 4.6 knots.
The company’s website notes that the battery will power the EP Carry at full throttle for one hour. As a test, I ran the motor wide open in a recycling bin filled with water and made short videos at roughly 10-minute increments. At the one-hour mark the motor was still churning vigorously with no apparent decline in power. Five minutes later I heard the pitch drop and the motor quickly slowed and came to a stop. I checked the videos and compared the sound of the motor at the start and at the 60-minute mark. There was a slight drop in pitch, just a major third on a musical scale. The motor has an electronic power regulation system that keeps the power output quite steady throughout the discharge cycle of the battery.
While I had the motor in the recycling bin, I tested its electronic prop protection, a stand-in for the shear pin in gas outboards to prevent serious damage when the prop strikes a solid object. I poked a 2×6 at the prop, and the blades whacked away at it. Only when I pushed the board in firmly did I force the prop to stop. The motor went silent; there were no sounds or smells of wiring or circuit boards burning it up. As soon as I pulled the board out, the prop resumed spinning. I repeated the test multiple times at various speeds with the same result. The board was scarred and nicked, but the prop showed no signs of damage.
When it’s time to put the motor away, one only needs to disconnect the battery and rotate the tiller so it pivots around to lie parallel to the shaft. The motor and the battery fit in a bag that is easier to carry than a pair of oars. At home, plug the charger into an outlet and the battery. A charge takes about five hours.
If you have a small boat and want to take break from rowing or forgo the noise, nuisance, and fuel cost of a gas outboard, the EP Carry is a good way to go.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly.
The end flaps close off the ends of the HouseFly, sealing the cockpit against cold and wet weather.
When Kyle and I built SOLVI, a 20′ open sail-and-oar boat to take down the Mississippi River, we had plans for an elaborate boom tent, but, as many boat projects seem to go, we ran low on time and money and we had to scale back. I spent hours looking online for an affordable product that would work as a boom tent. When I came across the ENO HouseFly rain tarp, I decided it was worth a try. It exceeded our expectations and was so versatile that we took the custom-made boom tent off our to-do list.
The HouseFly is made of 30-denier silicone-impregnated nylon with a completely waterproof polyurethane coating—we took shelter under the tarp in many torrential downpours during our three-month voyage and we didn’t experience any drips. It is 10′8″ x 8′10″ inches when opened, but packs down into a 5.5″ x 11″ stuff sack that’s easy to store in our boat’s lockers. Designed as a rain fly for hammocks, it has a feature a simple tarp does not: overlapping doors on both ends. They provide both privacy and complete coverage from the elements, and in warm weather they can be rolled up and secured with the attached straps and buckles to let cooling breezes flow through. All the corners and the tops have lines attached with LineLoc brand fasteners for fast and secure tensioning, allowing us to quickly set up the tarp in a variety of situations.
For a boat without a mizzen mast, a simple crutch serves to support the aft end of the fly. Overlapping flaps serve as an entryway to the cockpit.
The Housefly is meant to be stretched between two trees, but we set it over the boat with one line from the mast to the peak at one end of the fly, and another line from the other peak over a crutch at the stern and tied off to a rudder gudgeon. We connect the lines at the corners of each end of the tarp together and pass those loops over the ends of the boat and pull them under the boat. With the walls wrapped over and outside of the gunwales, stretched taut, all of the rainwater that hits the tarp runs off outside of the boat. On cooler nights or during rain storms, we close the “doors” on both sides and enjoy all-around protection from the elements. The tarp can keep wind and rain out, but mosquitoes eventually make their way in, not in swarms, but in numbers enough to be annoying. When we spend the night at anchor in the mosquito-filled mangroves, we attach a mosquito net inside with clothes pins.
The HouseFly can also provide shelter from the sun while camping on a beach.
We spent a majority of our Mississippi River trip camping on shore, and even though we had a tent, we used our HouseFly almost every day. We often stopped for the day while the sun was still shining bright, so we set up the HouseFly as a sun shade. Using sticks found on the beach or SOLVI’s mast, we would prop the tarp up and then use small sticks to stake it down, providing a spacious shaded area for our chairs and cooking setup. Toward the end of our journey we spent a lot of nights sleeping ashore with just the tarp over us. A couple times we just cowboy-camped on the sand and draped it over our sleeping bag for warmth and protection from dew.
The HouseFly is readily adaptable to many open boats without making any modifications to the tarp. It is durable, versatile, and a great ready-made boom tent for SOLVI. After three months of constant use and another six months of moderate use, the rain tarp has shown no signs of wear and is still one of our most valued pieces of gear for small boat trips.
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. For the last few years they’ve been living aboard their 35’ Ben Bow cutter and cruise with it whenever possible. 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.
This group of students at De Bootbouwschool in the Netherlands built the school’s 114th boat— and its seventh Catherine.
Bert van Baar runs De Bootbouwschool (The Boatbuilding School) in an old navy yard in Den Helden, a canal-laced city on the coast of the Netherlands. The boats he and his students have built over the 20 years since the school’s founding are mostly traditional, open, lapstrake boats for oar and sail, though not, as you might expect, inspired by Dutch designs. Bert has a fondness for what he calls “the American Style,” and among his favorites is the Catherine design, the boat detailed in Richard Kolin’s book, Building Catherine: a 14-foot pulling boat in the Whitehall tradition. Bert describes the Catherine as “sleek, tender, and gracious, and builds like a miracle.”
Like its predecessors, this Catherine took shape over the course of a nine-day class.
The first Catherine to come out of the school’s shop was built in 2007, and was the 77th student-built boat. During the nine-day class the students finished everything but the floorboards, a project that was left to the student who won the raffle to take the boat home. The sixth Catherine, christened ANNA by the retired doctor who won his class’s raffle, was planked in oak, making her heavy but tough. Bert has used mahogany too and has looked, without success, for white pine that’s suitable for planking, but most often uses western red cedar.
Original Whitehalls usually carried sprit rigs, author Rich Kolin opted for the standing lug rig in his book about building the Catherine, and ANNA carries a balanced lug.
Students often wonder why such a soft wood is used to plank the boat, and Bert explains “that it works so easily, and once the boat is finished and you know how much effort went into her building, you sail her very carefully!” Riveting the laps takes a light touch to avoid burying the heads too deeply into the cedar, but the students are eager to learn and soon grew accustomed to the demands of the work.
Catherine #6, christened ANNA, was planked with oak.
Bert works closely with the students for the first few days of the class, then gradually steps back, letting them take the lead. For this most recent Catherine, the students, ranging in age from 42 to 63 and by trade from a carpenter to a flight controller, were eager to finish the boat. They worked hard and had completed everything but the last two floorboards.
The most recent Catherine was planked with western red cedar.
Bert offered them a chance to take the boat out for a row on the canal just outside the shop, but the group had given all they had to the construction, and settled for coffee and cake. They agreed to have a reunion in Friesland when Gerrit, the carpenter and winner of the raffle, had the boat ready to be christened.
With sail-and-oar boats it’s common to use the rudder while sailing and remove it, retract it, or let it trail, idle, while rowing. There are times when a rudder can be an asset while you’re at the oars.
The Gokstad faering I built for a 1,000-mile row up the Inside Passage of British Columbia and Alaska was a very well-mannered boat, but with two of us rowing I often found myself pulling harder on one side to maintain a straight course. It’s all too easy to assume it’s the other rower who’s making the corrections necessary, but leveling accusations against a partner isn’t good for crew morale. I made a small rudder especially for rowing and connected its tiller with two lines to a footboard tiller. That kept the peace aboard the boat and allowed both of us to row each in our own way without quarreling about someone putting uneven pressure on the oars.
The plywood plate turned out to be awkward to operate and there was little need for keeping it at a fixed angle with the pressure of my feet.
Rowing in a crosswind can also require working at the oars to hold a course. I like to row my Whitehall from the aft rowing station—I prefer the stretcher I’ve rigged there and the absence of a thwart over my shins, the problem I have at the center rowing station. With my weight aft, the bow rides high and is prone to falling off in a crosswind; I have to pull harder on the leeward oar. I already had a footboard on the stretcher, so rigging it with a foot-controlled tiller was easy. A new tiller line, a pair of pulleys, two bits of wood, and a bolt were all it took. I’ve rigged the steering system with a yoke on the rudderhead, but it would be just as easy to attach the lines to a tiller.
A simple stick as the tiller is easier to operate and allows the rudder to swing freely until a course correction is required.
Initially I used a plywood plate for the “tiller” so the pressure of my feet would keep it from shifting. The idea was to hold the rudder at a bit of an angle to counter weathercocking but steering with it was a bit awkward because I had to take the pressure off both feet to move the plate. And rowing in wind and waves required only momentary angling of the rudder to make course corrections. Most of the time I didn’t need to steer and the rudder could trail freely. The new version of the system uses an ash stick and is much easier to operate.
A rudder will add a bit of drag but won’t slow you down as much as putting most of your effort on one side of the boat. Many years ago, I was leading a race in a kayak that had a rudder. To keep drag to a minimum I hadn’t deployed the rudder. That worked to my advantage for most of the course where the wind was on the nose. The last hundred yards of the course were across the wind, but I didn’t want to pause to deploy it and lose ground to the kayaker trailing me. I fought the weathercocking by paddling hard on the windward side. It gave the advantage to the other competitor, who had his rudder deployed, and he beat me to the finish line.
The Whitehall has always been a pleasure to row since I built it in 1983, but the recent adding stretchers, a forward-view mirror, a sliding seat, and now stretcher steering are all improvements that I wish I’d made a long time ago.
There is something magical about the classic styling of decked runabouts that ushers us back to an earlier, more elegant era. Obtaining a genuine classic isn’t going to be in the cards for everyone, but there is an alternative that blends their style with modern affordable construction and just the right amount of whimsy. The Runabout 14 (RB14) designed by Jacques Mertens-Goossens of Bateau.com is one such craft.
Jacques has been building and designing boats for most of his life. Schooled in Belgium in yacht design, he has created a considerable stable of boat designs. He was an early adopter of CAD, and Bateau.com quickly made the transition to CNC-cut kits so Jacques could spend more time designing boats while the team at the shop manages the business of cutting kits, supplying materials, and supporting backyard builders.
Jim Dumser
Kerfs in the aft ends of the side panels make the compound curves at the stern possible.
The RB14 would look right at home in a 1950s DIY magazine, and in fact that is exactly where Jacques found some of the inspiration for the design. At only 14′ long, the RB14 will never be mistaken for a restoration of a grand runabout that regularly wins awards at wooden boat shows, but it is no slouch in the looks department. The tumblehome stern, faux planked decks, and broad covering boards will turn heads at the ramp and get a thumbs-up from motorists on the highway.
My 13-year-old daughter Kyla and I built an RB14 boat for her since “boatbuilding with dad” has become a recent tradition in our family. She had some hands-on experience helping her older sister, Hannah, build a Jericho Bay Skiff, but when we needed a bit of help we found ample guidance in Bateau’s tutorials, active forum of knowledgeable builders, and the designer himself.
Jim Dumser
The battery and fuel tank (visible here ahead of the foot well) are carried forward to help maintain good trim.
Plans are available, but we opted to order the hull kit. It includes temporary MDF molds and all of the permanent parts in BS 1088 okoume plywood. Each piece is CNC-cut with tabs to hold it in place on the plywood sheet; a little work with a thin, flexible pull saw frees them. Frames have tabs holding their centers which are left in place to give the frame rigidity during the early phase of construction. Long pieces for the side and bottom have puzzle-piece joints for quick and accurate alignment.
Construction is of stitch-and-glue plywood, assembled with the hull upside down. Permanent plywood stringers are incorporated into the molds, providing a rigid structure that exhibits little flex when the plywood panels that form the hull are bent around it.
The sides take on compound curves as they approach the transom—very difficult to achieve using 9mm-thick plywood—so the directions call for cutting parallel kerfs of varying lengths, in effect turning the aft half of the panel into six strakes. They get fastened to the curved edges of the transom and the kerfs are later filled; the facets created by the planks will be transformed into smooth curves in the course of sanding and applying ’glass and fairing compound. The sweet lines of the RB14 are proof that plywood can achieve the look that more traditional techniques provide. Builders working from plans are provided with the option of cutting the transom straight-sided and forgoing the kerfs in the hull sides.
Kyla Dumser
The RB14 carves through turns without skidding. It’s very shallow-V hull is meant for smooth water.
The plans include options for a single or twin cockpit. The twin arrangement is asking a lot of so short a boat, and some might find it a bit restrictive. Builders of larger stature may want to opt for the single cockpit design as it offers more generous legroom.
The decks and cockpit offer the chance to show off woodworking skills and a bit of creativity since more of the decision making is left up to the builder. The kit includes all the parts necessary for the hull, and extra plywood is included for the decks; anticipating that builders will have different requirements for a comfortable fit in the cockpit and the layout of the deck, the plywood for the deck isn’t cut to shape. The plans offer renderings and suggested dimensions and then leave it to the builder to create a custom fit. Although a kit, this boat might be, as the RB14 web page notes, a bit of a reach for the first-time builder.
Decking can be planked traditionally over frames and caulked, or built with a variety of modern techniques. Some Bateau.com builders have vacuum-bagged strips of veneer over plywood on runabout decks. Others have cut plywood strips, then assembled them with colored epoxy filling the seams in lieu of caulk. Kyla chose to rout shallow parallel grooves in the 9mm mahogany plywood decking and fill them to achieve the look of classic runabouts. Regardless of the method, bright-finished wood decking, from either a traditional or a modern approach, is a fitting homage to the designs of a bygone era. It’s a lot more work than painting, but well worth the effort.
Kyla Dumser
With a 25-hp outboard providing power, the RB14 can reach a speed of 30 mph.
Safety is built into the boat with a fully draining motorwell. The standard transom, with a cut for an outboard with a 15″ shaft, keeps the weight down low and doesn’t compromise stability. The literature that comes with the kit includes instructions for adding the proper amount of foam to keep the boat afloat if it is swamped. The hull isn’t deep enough to have room for an elevated self-bailing sole like those found in most larger, modern designs these days, but a good bilge pump will keep her plenty dry at the dock, and her fully ’glassed hull is able to live on a trailer trouble-free while out of the water.
The distribution of weight in a small craft is always an issue to maximize performance, and the RB14 is no exception. The hull is largely left open below decks, so it is possible to fine-tune the trim after finishing and launching the boat. If you opt for an outboard on the larger side of the 10- to 35-hp spectrum, you might want to shift some weight forward to help bring the bow down. Placing the battery and fuel tank ahead of the cockpit helped ensure our First Mate sits on its correct waterline at rest and pops out of the hole quickly when climbing on plane. The dual cockpit design makes achieving proper trim more of a challenge, because passenger weight will play a considerably larger role.
We power the RB14 with a four-stroke 25-hp Suzuki outboard and with its light plywood construction, the boat gets on plane without sending the bow to the sky at the start and with nearly flat sections aft, it will plane easily while this modest-sized outboard sips fuel. With the motor at about 4,200 rpm the RB14 skims across the water very smoothly; cruising speed with two aboard is right at 20 mph. As the rpms climb, so too does the thrill with such a small boat. At 5,800 rpm, with two aboard, the speed is right up at 30 mph, and although not a white-knuckle ride, no one is left disappointed. The windscreen is appreciated and does improve the social aspect of an outing, allowing conversation without having to shout.
An external keel strip ensures that tracking is more than sufficient to put the pilot at ease; carving turns at speed is comfortable. Even at maximum rpms, the RB14 carves a smooth turn and hardly skids. On a plane, the boat is nice and dry with just a hint of spray when larger wakes are encountered. There is a nicely balanced feel to the handling, even at low speeds, making docking a pleasure. Bateau.com notes: “It’s an old-fashioned V hull that ends up with almost no deadrise: fast, but not designed for anything other than good weather.” We can confirm that the ride is a little bumpy at speed in a chop. No surprises here.
The Runabout 14 is a lightweight, trailer-friendly design that even a small car can pull. It offers strong performance in a small package, coupled with an aesthetic that warms the heart and harkens back to an earlier era when families made the time to go for sunset cruises and perhaps stopped off for a visit at a neighbor’s dock along the way. The RB14 appeals especially to those who enjoy the option to go fast, but are willing to slow down and enjoy life at a more genteel pace.
A word of warning: Don’t take the boat to a crowded launch ramp unless you have the time to answer a myriad of questions and receive a few pats on the back. Boats like the RB14 have a way of attracting attention of the best kind, usually from like-minded people, who just might want to be your new best friends.
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 craft from canoes to a St. Ayles Skiff.
The crackle and pop that mangroves make on a falling tide has faded astern, and the sounds of wind and open water surround me. I’m reclined aboard a Ross Lillistone First Mate, embarked upon another Friday-evening solo micro-cruise, to Outer Newry Island, just off Australia’s Queensland coast, the kind of outing the boat is admirably suited for. Rigging it is a quick, one-person job, and I was on the water minutes after arriving at the ramp. I have a brisk breeze for a quick passage, and in barely an hour I’ll be tucked in behind the island to enjoy the last of the daylight, a rising full moon, and a comfy night’s sleep. An easy dawn sail (or more likely, row) will get me home before the family has stirred much beyond breakfast. These brief overnight getaways give me the feeling I’ve been on a proper trip, and I still have most of the weekend ahead.
Of the various sailboats I’ve owned over the years—the largest a 26′ Folkboat and the smallest a lovely 11-1/2′ Bolger Cartopper—the 15′ First Mate is by far the most versatile. For me, it has been the answer to the Goldilocks Equation: not too large, not too small, just right, The younger sister of Ross Lillistone’s Phoenix III, it has the same interior and the same rigs, but has been adapted from glued-lap plywood to a stitch-and-glue, taped-seam construction that is robust, elegant, and easy to build.
The search for a boat to build, which ultimately led me to the First Mate, started with a list of requirements. The boat had to have straightforward construction that is quick and economical. At the launch ramp it had to be quick and easy to rig, launch, and retrieve singlehandedly. Afloat, it had to be, above all, a rewarding boat to sail, but also a pleasant and capable rowing boat serving as a comfortable cruiser able to look after itself and the crew. And I required, of course, elegant good looks. In the First Mate, Ross achieved all of this in spades.
Ian Hamilton
The cockpit’s removable side benches can be pushed to the center to serve as a sleeping platform; an extra pair would make a broader surface. A line keeping the yard and boom from swinging has taken up residence in the motor well.
The plans for the DIY-builder are brilliant. They include 30 pages of scale drawings, showing all of the various pieces, including sails and spars for the three sailing rigs: a sprit sloop with an 81-sq-ft main and a 23-sq-ft jib, a balance lug with 76-sq-ft main, and a Bermudian sloop with a 67-sq-ft main and a 22-sq-ft jib. An illustrated manual provides 70 pages of detailed, step-by-step instructions.
Ross built my First Mate. Originally, he only wanted to go as far as cutting out the hull panels to check the expansions before releasing the plans to the public, but then just kept going and finished the boat for me. He drilled holes 4” apart for the cable ties and only needed to use a fraction of them as the panels came together so easily. No lofting or strongback is required. He thinks the project took about 250 gently paced hours of his time, including spars. There are many detailed construction photos in the First Mate gallery on the Lillistone website.
The First Mate is quite small for her length, with slender lines to address the rowing part of the equation. Some folks who are used to beamier boats may think her tender, but I don’t. She is a fine daysailer for two; three would be okay, though I haven’t tried it. For me, First Mate is primarily a solo boat, and is set up accordingly. I’ve read about lengthy cruises aboard the smaller Phoenix III design, with two sleeping aboard using the same accommodations that the First Mate offers. They must have been cozy.
What I like best about the First Mate are the many small details. Let’s start at the stern and work our way forward. The outboard well is a beauty. It’s small, self-draining, and puts the outboard on the transom where it should be. No messing with a bracket. A 2-hp outboard is more than sufficient.
The cockpit is completely uncluttered, except for the twin self-bailers, which don’t get in the way and are worth their weight in gold. Only a few store-bought fittings are required for the rig, yet all the necessary controls are there. I sail sitting on the bottom (there are no floorboards), leaning against the sides of the hull. It may be counterintuitive, but resting against the turn of the bilge is far more comfortable for my aging bones than sitting on a thwart. Even in a strong wind, I haven’t needed to hike out. The plans detail a pair of movable side seats that rest on cleats mounted on the thwart and stern seat edges. I stow them aft, lying across the stern seat (they are the only things in the boat, other than myself, which aren’t tied in), and I usually only use them as my sleeping platform, or to sit on slightly offset from center while cooking my dinner. With additional pieces, you can make the sleeping platform as wide as you wish.
Ian Hamilton
The author prefers stowing the side benches and sitting on the bottom of the boat with the hull sides as his backrest.
Moving forward, we come to the centerboard trunk, which has a shape similar to those in traditional sailing dories. The lowered aft portion accommodates a thwart for a rowing station and the taller portion forward houses a broad upper half of the centerboard, which provides more lateral resistance and fills more of the slot when deployed, reducing drag and fluttering. This arrangement caused the only disagreement Ross and I had over the design of the boat: I wanted to mount the compass on the angled aft edge of the case, right where he put the cam cleat for the centerboard. I would have preferred a weighted board lowered with a lanyard, but Ross turned out to be right. The rigid rod effectively solves the problem of grit jamming the board, and more importantly, indicates how deep the board is set. I had been in the habit of sailing with the centerboard either fully up or fully down, but now I make fine adjustments, and my sailing has consequently improved. I mounted the compass on a board held in position with bungee cord so I can move it to one side if I’m on a very long tack, or I can place it on the aft seat to serve as a rowing compass.
The forward end of the trunk is braced by a half bulkhead that also serves as a “bin” to organize cruising gear. I particularly like the arrangement for stepping the mast. The hollow mast is light and short, and even my sadly arthritic hands have no problem raising it into position. Standing beside the trailer, I lift the mast to the vertical, drop the heel in the step, and hold it in the partners with one hand while lashing it in place with the other. Securing the mast with a lashing is easy and bombproof and avoids the need for a rattly gate.
Splashboards top the foredeck to keep water out of the cockpit. Under the foredeck is a 6.45-cu-ft flotation compartment. Together with the 5.72-cu-ft aft flotation compartment, the First Mate has 755 lbs of buoyancy in fresh water, 779 lbs in salt water. Both of the airtight compartments fore and aft have small access ports, but I leave the compartments empty and the ports sealed while I’m out cruising. The buoyancy of the hollow mast and yard keep the boat from turning turtle after a capsize. The built-in flotation gives me great confidence in open water.
My requirement for a boat with pleasant rowing ability has certainly been met. Under oars, the First Mate is easy to move and balances well in wind from any direction. I happily leave the rig at home to use her as a fishing and crabbing boat, and enjoy trolling as I row. For solo rowing, the boat trims properly and performs well. With three aboard, maintaining trim is easy as the two passengers can sit in the ends, but rowing with two aboard poses a problem for trim if the passenger takes a seat forward or aft. Ross trimmed the First Mate with me sitting on the bottom at his feet while he happily rowed it 6 nm on the Clarence River. If I were going to carry a crowd, I would ship the oars, fire up the outboard, and be done with it.
The First Mate makes a fine launch with an old 3-hp Johnson I have. Since the engine sits on the transom and the aft deck is quite narrow, getting to it from the aft seat to raise and lower it is easy. For steering, I prefer to lock the motor with the steering friction adjuster, and steer with the boat’s tiller. It’s long enough to let me sit forward to trim the boat. It’s a bit quieter too. While it is possible to hit the prop with the rudder, I’d have to try pretty hard. When sitting on the port side seat, the tiller stops at my ribs before the rudder hits the prop. If sitting farther forward, you would need really long arms to push the tiller far enough.
In calm conditions, the motor, running barely above idle, easily gets the First Mate up to hull speed. When our kids were using the Phoenix III as a fishing launch, they would leave the sailing rig and the rudder at home and steer with the outboard’s tiller from the aft seat. They found that flat out, she runs a good bit faster than they might have expected. (No…I don’t know how fast!)
Ross Lillistone
The balance lug rig is the smallest and simplest of the three rigs detailed in the plans, and is a good choice for windy coastal waters.
The Central Queensland coast is windy, so I opted for the smallest of the three rigs, a balance lug of 76 sq ft. I am no racing sailor—some might say I’m not any sort of sailor—but over the years I have managed to sail most of the Queensland coast and have only drowned a little bit. Overall, I’m extremely happy with the rig and the handling of First Mate. It’s fast, responsive, dry, points up nicely, and requires little effort to sail well. The First Mate moves along fine in light air, but really shines when it blows.
On my second day out in the new boat, I caught the edge of a thunderstorm while sailing on a large freshwater reservoir. I hadn’t yet set the rig up for reefing, so I should’ve dumped the rig. With a balance lug, the whole thing will instantly and reliably lower in any conditions, so I should have dropped the sail. But I didn’t, and off we went, skittering away, depowering in the gusts, with rain pouring off the foot of the sail, to be sucked away by the self-bailers. I stayed in control, didn’t ship any water, and was very glad to have been on a lake and not the open sea. I may not have gotten off so easily with a larger, more complex rig. Guess what I fitted up the next day? Haven’t needed to use that reef since!
Ross Lillistone
This crew of three has also opted to sail without the side benches, using the side decks instead as seating.
For cruising, I have ample space for all the gear I need. My panic bag stows securely on the aft seat. My overnight gear and galley equipment live in waterproof duffels on the port side of the centerboard trunk. Eventually, I’ll build the galley box shown on the plans. It is designed to stow neatly under the thwart. Anchors stow to starboard and water bottles fit in the forward bin either side of the mast. This arrangement gives me room to scramble up the starboard side to deal with mast, sail and anchor.
I prefer sleeping aboard: there’s nothing to cart ashore, I can bug out at a moment’s notice, and crocodiles are more likely to leave me alone than if I am sleeping on the beach. On my full-moon trips, the tides are typically 20′. A low tide would leave a lot of exposed sand. I often arrive near the bottom of the tide and anchor way out on the flats.
Compared with the sleeping accommodations aboard my little cartopper, the First Mate seems commodious. That’s not saying a lot, but there is plenty of room for one. I haven’t constructed any sort of fancy tent, so my setup is pretty basic, but I have a place to sit, a place for my little camp stove, and a place to sleep in comfort.
I have yet to make an extended passage in this boat, but, based on my experience with her so far, and bearing in mind some very successful cruises undertaken in Phoenix III, I am confident that she’ll do very well under both sail and oars. I should be shortly taking her on a decently long and exposed trip up to the famous Whitsunday Passage, but life keeps getting in the way. Until then, thank goodness for Friday micro-cruises.
Ian Hamilton is a recently retired teacher living in Mackay, Queensland, who was born into a family of surf lifesavers and fishermen. He built his first boat, a tin canoe, as a kid up in the Torres Straits, and consequently learned to swim well. Since then he has always owned a selection of paddle, oar, sail, and power craft in various and sometimes quite isolated parts of Queensland. He is currently operating a Bolger Sharpshooter and a Lillistone First Mate.
"It all started as a pile of boards.” I wrote that in the third grade as the first sentence of a story about a small scow, all of 42″ long, that Dad and I built together when I was eight years old. It was as good a start as any, even now for this tale about the building of CURLEW, a 16′ Whitehall, and the history that an old, eccentric family in the hills of Mississippi has had with building wooden boats far from the sea.
CURLEW began as I was making the transition from teaching school to becoming a musician and caretaker for the family land here just north of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The large tract of land has been in the family since my great-great-grandfather, Benson Blake, settled here in the 1830s. Once a grand sweep of woods and farmland, it is much reduced, but six generations later, we Blakes are still here.
My desire to build a boat such as CURLEW would never have gotten anywhere if I had not had the good fortune to have my father, Daniel Blake, also living at the family place. He has built a string of wooden boats over the years, and it is never too difficult to talk him into another one. I started with several design requirements for my boat: It must be round-bottomed, trailerable, big enough for four adults, and it must sail. We pondered the classics and after much wrangling, we had settled on the 14’ New York Whitehall on page 197 of H.I. Chapelle’s American Small Sailing Craft, but it was a bit small and had no sail. The 16’ Boston Ship Chandler’s Whitehall on the next page seemed a bit narrow in beam for what I wanted, so we went back the New York Whitehall, stretched it to 15’11”, then added a centerboard and a sprit rig similar to the Boston Whitehalls. We also decided on lapstrake planking rather than carvel because it is stronger, lighter, and we wouldn’t have to wait for the seams to take up.
Blake family archives
My great-grandfather’s boat, VIOLETTA, sailed out of Pass Christian and was a favorite of the family. Family lore is that the boat is a New York Sloop and that it’s not likely that he built the boat. The burgee for the Pass Christian Yacht Club flies from the forestay.
I don’t know how far back my family’s connection with boats goes, but I know as soon as he was able, Benson Blake bought a second house in Pass Christian on Mississippi’s Gulf coast. The city established the first yacht club in the South in 1849 and preceded only by New York in the whole United States. When the club opened, Benson already had a house nearby, and he visited whenever he could. We don’t know what boats he owned or sailed, but his children grew up steeped in boats. When they were older they sailed the family sloop, VIOLETTA.
The wood that would become CURLEW was grown, sawn, and air-dried here on our land. We wait patiently for trees to die or show signs of disease, then harvest them and drag them to be cut on the small family mill. We cut mostly sassafras and walnut, but we also cut a mix of locust, cherry, ash, poplar, and others. I was telling someone from farther north that we build boats out of sassafras and he looked at me as if I were insane. That may well be, but sassafras is a great, moderately rot-resistant wood. In some parts of the country it doesn’t grow beyond the size and shape of a shrub, but here it can grow up to 24” in diameter, with 40’ of length until the first branch.
Blake family archives
This 50”circular-saw mill cut much of Dad’s lumber. We now have a bandsaw mill; it’s not nearly so scary.
Our current sawmill is a light, relatively safe bandsaw mill, but the circular-saw mill that cut most of the lumber for my father’s boats sticks out in my memory. His 1942, John Deere Model A tractor sat popping about 50’ from the mill, and a long, twisted flat belt connected the tractor’s flywheel to the mill, powering the 50″-diameter circular blade. The carriage and the setworks holding the log would fly down the track when my uncle, riding the carriage, pulled the lever and engaged the drive mechanism. The blade whined as it cut through the logs and boards fell off on rollers that were then neatly stacked in piles ready to be moved to the shed for drying and storage. Milling was a beautiful sight. A spinning 50″ blade is a rightfully terrifying thing, and the pile of sawdust it could make in a day’s work was enormous. The bandsaw mill is practical, but much less interesting.
Blake family archives
Dad built this little car for me and when I was about 15. He and I built this skiff, OTTER, with lumberyard pine. My cousins, a few of them seen here, were usually part of our boating adventures. Those are iron wagon wheels on the trailer. It was not meant for high-speed travel.
It is fortunate that we grow our own trees and cut our own lumber because we are always building something—little houses, furniture, airplanes, homemade cars, musical instruments, and whatever other oddity strikes us—and we don’t have to worry about the cost of lumber. There’s always a good supply of it, stickered in the old stable. We have actually been paid to build some things for other people, but for the most part we build for building’s sake. It is just a bug that bites us now and again. My work as a musician was more flexible than as a teacher and when I found myself with some free time—which is all it takes for a Blake to start building a boat—a good supply of air-dried boat lumber was already at hand.
Although a fair share of boats here have been built by eye, Dad and I decided to loft full-size as it makes things simpler in the long run. The Whitehall would be just a hair shorter than 16’, so two pieces of cheap, thin plywood were all we needed to do the lofting. We laid two sheets of doorskin end-to-end on the shop floor, tacked them down, and got to work drawing from Chapelle’s table of offsets on our stretched station spacing. Offsets are not always the key to a fair hull; even someone as highly regarded as Chapelle occasionally gets a number in the wrong place, so we were careful to stand back, eye the battens, and let them have the final say. It was a tedious process and seemed to take longer than it should, but it allowed me to hope that my first boat would not blemish the family reputation.
Blake family archives
My great-great-grandfather, Benson Blake, seems to have been nudged his son Daniel Warren Blake toward an appreciation for boats when he was very young. Although the boat young Daniel posed in for this photograph wasn’t real, Benson’s influence has extended through five generations.
My great-grandfather, Daniel Warren Blake, would no doubt have done a better job with the lofting than I did. I have seen his thesis from Cornell, where he majored in steam engineering. His precise hand-drawn design for a triple-expansion marine steam engine was a beautiful work of art. He was a real adventurer and led an exciting life. His boyhood time on VIOLETTA was just the beginning of his voyages. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, he saw action while serving aboard the USRC MANNING, a 205’ converted revenue cutter. Soon afterward, he joined the Marines and sailed on the second USS MAINE, a 394’ battleship, relieved the garrison at Peking during the Boxer Rebellion, fought the Moro insurrection in the Philippines, crossed the equator several times, rounded both Cape Horn and Cape of Good Hope, and took pictures of his travels along the way. He left a big legacy, and Blakes have been bouncing around in his shadow ever since. He kept a shop at his house in Pass Christian and built small boats to be used in the waters there. The workbench and tools that he used are now in my shop and played a role CURLEW’s construction.
Julia Blake
Dad and I set the molds on the backbone while it was still resting on the lofting.
Having finished lofting, Dad and I came to one of the more difficult parts of building CURLEW: her stem. Chapelle’s drawings called for a rabbeted stem. A false stem could certainly look just as good and wouldn’t require the fuss of fitting the plank ends, but I decided to do it as Chapelle’s drew it. In our stockpile of lumber we found both a piece of walnut that had a sweep of grain that matched the curve of the stem down to the waterline and a walnut knee with which to make the sharp turn at the forefoot. We scarfed the two together, carefully took the bevel markings off the lofting, and carved the stem rabbet by chisel to the proper depth and bevel from garboard to sheerstrake. When finished we bolted the stem to the black locust keel plank.
At its widest point the keel is almost 9″ across, wide enough for the boat to sit upright on the beach without resting on the laps at the turn of the bilge. We have a lot of black locust on the land, and the family, Dad particularly, has always used it for keels, cleats, frames, and even planking on larger boats. It’s is a great wood anywhere we need a tough, long-lasting and rot-resistant wood.
The New York Whitehall has a beautiful wineglass stern that can show off a beautiful piece of wood. I found an 18″-wide slab of walnut my father cut years ago on the circular-saw mill that I could use to make the entire transom in a single piece. It came from a large, branchy walnut that grew in a pasture on the land. It had died some 30 years before and was subsequently cut into lumber. The trunk was not long, perhaps 6’, but its circumference was such that it had to be split before it could be cut with the 50″ circular blade. I did not have a piece of locust both wide and thick enough to make a rabbeted keel. Some of Chapelle’s designs seem to show a simple butt joint where the garboard meets the keel. In those cases, Dad often treated that seam alone like a carvel design and drove cotton roving, but I wanted a dry boat that could be trailered without having to wait for any seams to take up. So we used a wide piece of juniper to make a keel batten over the plank keel, effectively creating a rabbeted keel.
Julia Blake
Dad sits in the “moaning chair” contemplating the battens sprung along the sheer. The boys, meanwhile, took a more active approach and hit things with hammers.
We would build the boat right-side up, as my father built his boats, as many of them were too big to flip. It’s also easier to inspect the fairness of the hull. The six temporary molds we built out of ash, blown over in a big wind some years before, and set them up on the stem, keel and stern. It was time for planking up.
Dad and I did the planking with 3/8″ sassafras. We rarely cut boards over 14’, so we scarfed them at a ratio of 12:1 using resorcinol. Though that particular adhesive is getting hard to find, we were able to order some from the U.K. My father has always preferred it to epoxy, though others find it finicky. I have used both for various projects and have had great luck with it. It cleans up with water—certainly easier to clean up than epoxy—and I have never had a joint fail. I can’t say the same of my experience with epoxy.
Julia Blake
At the turn of the bilge, there is less twist at the stem and the planking only gets easier from this point on.
I was afraid the garboard would need steaming, as the twist was significant and the forefoot hollow, but with a little training, the sassafras bent easily. After the garboards, twist and hollow in the rest of the strakes diminished, and the rest of the planking went pretty quickly. The planks were fastened with 1-1/8″ copper clout nails from D.B. Gurney’s, a Massachusetts company that has been making copper and brass tacks since 1825. The changing bevel as each plank met the next was a bit tricky, but each mold provided a reference for the angle of the bevel. The laps became shiplapped as they met the bow and stern, courtesy of a rabbet plane that belonged to my great-grandfather.
Julia Blake
She looks like a boat! This was a good opportunity to put a first coat of paint on the inside before the frames went in. The boys look at the fully planked hull with approval. On the ceiling above them are rows of Mason jars holding miscellaneous fastenings.
The sheerstrake is of black cherry that came from a fine tree that blew over on my wife’s grandfather’s land a decade ago, and was 7/16″ instead of 3/8″. A slightly heavier sheerstrake looks good, especially with a molded bottom edge, and adds a bit of extra stiffness at the gunwale. The cherry I found harder to work with than the sassafras, locust, or walnut. The surface planer, a 12″ Parks from 1948, tried to pull the small burls right out of the plank, and the grain was contrary in many places, even as I tried to scrape it, but in spite of the difficulties it posed it ended up giving a nice mid-tone contrast to the other woods used. Dad and I anchored the planks ends, stem and stern, with Monel Anchorfast nails with the little anchor on every head.
For as long as I can remember, all of the fastenings in the shop have been stored in glass Mason jars with their lids screwed to the rafters. It is an easy and convenient way to store them, and you can see what they are without having to take them down. This is where I found the old Monel nails. They must have been kicking around for decades in the shop, courtesy of my boatbuilding ancestors.
Blake family archives
Grandfather Daniel bought this boat surplus between the World Wars. Here it lies grounded in the mud up a tributary of the Mississippi. We have all had our share of misadventures.
Another tradition that dates back to my great-grandfather, Daniel Warren Blake, is building boats here on the land and sailing them down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. He and his brother, Henry, built a boat here in the late 1880s and sailed to the Pass Christian house on the coast. This tradition has made for many adventures…and a lot of discomfort and danger for the subsequent generations who have taken up this practice.
Blake family archives
Grandfather Daniel and his friend Waverly prepare to head downriver in I HOPE. With the powerful searchlight on the bow, they could travel at night.
My grandfather took I HOPE, the motor dory he built, down the river in the late ’30s. Fortunately, he had a Nadler two-cycle inboard engine for power. Or perhaps not so fortunately, as the Nadler has no real throttle or reverse. You reduce throttle with the spark advance. It burns the same amount of fuel no matter where the “throttle” is set. To reverse you allow it to almost die, wait for the flywheel to kick back, move the spark advance, and it will start turning backwards—sometimes. My father, my uncle, and I have made this trip as well with various misadventures along the way. We have all made it through alive, but towboats, sandbars, and sudden squalls have made for hair-raising adventures.
Frances Blake Perkins
THELMA TUGGARD was powered by two electric sewing-machine motors and was thus one of the few “twin screws” the family owned. Grandfather Daniel Carmichael Blake built the boat, but my uncle Henry was the undisputed captain.
I am not sure if my great-grandfather dreamed of building boats while he traveled the world, but my grandfather, Daniel Carmichael Blake, certainly did. He did a brief stint in the Merchant Marine in the early ’40s and then was in the Army for the rest of World War II. He was stationed in India, and I got the impression that he spent the whole time there dreaming of boats. He converted the top of a building in Calcutta to an experimental test basin and sent models, tied to a weight that was dropped over the edge of the building, ripping along a trough of water. There were so many people in Calcutta that there was always a crowd of people at the bottom of the building waiting to pass the weight back up to him. I have several of William Atkins’s books with inscriptions in the front that read “D.C. Blake, Calcutta, 1945.” How he bought them in India, I do not know, but he could not wait to get home and start building boats again.
Julia Blake
Dad and I worked side-by-side to rivet the steam bent-frames to the plank laps.
Planking complete, it was time for the steam-bent frames. I did not have fond memories of steamboxes. When I was a child I stuck my hand in one, despite many warnings from my dad and uncles, and learned a painful lesson that stuck with me. I found a piece of triple-wall stainless-steel stovepipe in the garage and an empty Christmas cookie tin. My father figured out what else I’d need, came up with a radiator hose, a crawfish boiler, and a piece of water pipe, and the steamer was ready in about an hour. He has a knack for seeing and creating simple solutions.
Frances Blake Perkins
Dad started building boats early and did sea trials in the old swimming pool.
My father, Daniel Blake, has built around two dozen boats over the years, and he has made the customary trip down the river more frequently than any other member of the family. Three times he has braved the mosquitoes, tugboats, and rain to get to the Gulf of Mexico. His original destination was far out into the blue, perhaps inspired during his years in the Navy yearning for the freedom to do as he pleased, or perhaps by his uncle Paul Nones, who had twice crossed the Atlantic in his 40’ sailboat.
Frances Blake Perkins
We do all our debugging in this little local cypress-lined oxbow lake. We can safely say Dad’s MERRY SAVAGE was the only Block Island boat to ever be in that lake. The boat’s name was a play on the name of Benson’s second wife, Mary Savage Conner.
Frances Blake Perkins
BOGLE, a 34’ Galway Hooker that Dad built, was moored in the Yazoo swamp before its big trip down the Mississippi River. From this voyage we have his diary, which chronicles, in detail, the miseries suffered by the participants.
Blake family archives
BOGLE went down the Mississippi River and sailed in Gulf of Mexico bluewater for a few days and ended up in Gulf Shores, Alabama. A few months later Dad sold her and she went to Mystic, Connecticut. She was owned by a dentist for many years until he got too old to sail anymore. In the mid 1990s, he called Dad and had to fight back tears to tell him how much the boat had meant to him. We don’t know where BOGLE is now.
The Florida panhandle was as far as Dad got in his own boats. Bradley, one of my uncles, went along with Dad downriver on his second voyage and kept a log. Much of it reads like this: “Day 6, it is still raining. There is no wind. The others maintain an attempt at optimism, but it is clear that they are beginning to go insane.”
Blake family archives
The 31’ MERRY SAVAGE II is a boat Dad designed and built. In 1991, he took me with him aboard her for a trip down the Mississippi River. Dad eventually pulled the bilge keels off.
I went down the river on one of Dad’s voyages when I was nine. Two things stick in my mind about the Mississippi. First, towboats throw an unbelievable wake behind them as they head up against the current. The second is a memory of my father using a champagne cork leftover from the launching party to fix the sailboat’s auxiliary Volvo diesel after it died mid-river. My poor mom was along on that trip as well, and she spent most of the time terrified. The family cat that came along was terrified, too. In fact, during a particularly bad squall it got on deck and bit Dad on the foot as he was attempting to navigate a particularly nasty channel. We docked in Apalachicola, Florida, and that was the end of the voyage. The cat and Mom were glad to set foot ashore again and we stayed in Apalachicola for 10 years.
Blake family archives
JUBILEE was Dad’s first steel-hulled boat; her superstructure is juniper. He built her in our backyard in Apalachicola, Florida. A neighbor complained, but the zoning guys were fisherman and said boatbuilding was not listed on the books as something you couldn’t do in town. So it all worked out.
It wasn’t long after that dad got his 100-ton license and took a job sailing GOVERNOR STONE, a 63’, 1877 schooner for charter voyages. Soon after, he decided to go into business for himself and built a 50’ paddle-wheeler to take his own tours out on the river.There were several other boats he built in Apalachicola—a Sharptown barge, a houseboat, and two skiffs for me.
Blake family archives
Dad built the 50’ JUBILEE to take passengers out. She was powered by a four-cylinder Palmer gasoline that my grandfather bought new about 1950.
Mom and Dad returned to the family land in the early 2000s, and I returned a few years later. There were work, school, and more practical matters to attend to first, but eventually Dad and I found ourselves once again working together in the old shop on a boat, my Whitehall.
We wrangled over whether to use locust or sassafras for the frames, and decided to try sassafras, and so milled a slightly wider frame to make up for its relative lack of stiffness compared to locust. Coming straight out of the cobbled-together steambox, the frames bent in beautifully. Dad and I fixed the frames in place with copper rivets. I found copper nails and roves stored in the mason jars overhead, and after falling into a rhythm, we made short work of the fastening the frames. I did have to crawl inside the boat for the hard to reach rivets, but mostly we stood side by side. I would drill, drive, and peen; Dad would back. I made the centerboard of locust with heavy galvanized spikes “driven awry,” our way of saying driven at random angles, to hold it together. I cut a rectangular hole in the board, drove nails around the perimeter leaving the heads protruding, and poured 10 lbs of molten lead directly into the locust without ill effect on the wood. We made the floors of walnut, scuppered them, and held them in place with Anchorfast Monels driven through the laps and stainless-steel carriage bolts going clear through keel, batten, and floor.
There is a small stack in the corner of the stable where we keep various bent pieces of wood cut specifically for knees and breasthooks. I dug through this pile and found some walnut quarter knees, cut from forked limbs, and used them to connect the transom to the sheerstrake. There wasn’t a crook with an acute angle to serve as a breasthook, so I made it in two pieces. Two through-bolts passed each other inside this piece, one binding the two pieces of the breasthook together and the other binding it to the stem.
Julia Blake
There is a lot of sitting, staring, and thinking that goes into building boats. Our thoughts and conversations often wandered, but sometimes we’d get around to the boat in question. Here, the end is in sight.
About the time we had inwales, risers, and seats installed, my wife and our two boys grew much more excited about the boat. The closer it got to completion, the more often they visited the shop. I was glad to have their company and to see their interest in the boat. My appreciation and understanding of wood, boats, and tools began when I was their age watching my father at work. My boys must learn about boats if they are to be the next generation to build and sail them. I needed my wife to be interested too. She knows how to sew and I was hoping she would help me make the sail. I made the mast step and partners of locust, with heavy silicon-bronze carriage bolts securing the step in place, and rivets anchoring the partners firmly in place about 2’ aft of the stem. For large rivets we often use old pennies as roves. Those minted prior to 1982 are 97 percent copper. (Those minted in 1982 and after are copper-plated zinc and are unsuitable.) The pennies work great and they are cheaper than roves of the same size.
Julia Blake
With the seats and centerboard case in, Andrew and Patrick anxiously wonder when the boat will finally get in the water.
I didn’t have to work very hard making a mast. As I was looking in the shop rafters one day to see what boatbuilding supplies were there, I found a 12’ spar from a boat that had been built and sold 50 years before.
Julia Blake
The boat is ready for its debugging period in the local oxbow. Patrick is ready to step the mast.
Pete Culler was a big fan of the spritsail and I thought his reasoning behind it was sound. It is a simple rig, easy to set up, and the gear can stow in the boat without hanging over when not in use. This is an advantage in a boat that will often be rowed. With a spritsail, it is important that the mast be able to freely rotate in the step and partners, so I collared the bottom of the spar (and also where the partners met the mast) in copper, then rounded and greased the butt end. The mast was nearly complete.
Julia Blake
I put the sail together in the living room. It was over 100 degrees outside, so the house’s air conditioning was a life saver.
My wife did agree to help with the sail. We thought about starting from scratch, but settled on sewing up a kit. That made quick work of the project and, one cheap sewing machine later (I had to replace it after the multiple layers of heavy sailcloth took their toll), the sail was complete. I made some nice 8’ oars out of sassafras, and ordered locks, cleats, and any other paraphernalia I could not find in the storage bins at the family shop.
Julia Blake
I often launch CURLEW without the sailing rig. A wind map of the United States puts us in a dead zone, an inland Doldrums. Our winds in northern Mississippi are fickle at best, so rowing is a more likely proposition than sailing. I am teaching the older son to row and the younger will get a chance soon. There is a lot of splashing and very little traction with the oars so far.
CURLEW was in the water a few dozen times over the following fall and winter. There were bugs to be worked out, the rigging and maststep had to be changed somewhat, the centerboard needed adjustment, there was a pinhole leak in the centerboard trunk, but in May we had an official launching party on Lake Bruin in Louisiana. The wind was feeble and the weather hot, but CURLEW rowed like a dream.
Carol Lutken
If we had some wind, I’d happily sail off into the sunset with my boys and my wife Julia.
You truly own the things you build, and yet I don’t own this boat. I am just a link in a chain. The land that grew the trees came from my great-great-grandfather, the tools and traditions started with my great-grandfather and continued with my grandfather. I couldn’t have built the boat without my father’s help and experience; the legacy belongs to my sons. The shop is idle now and looks lonely. It’s time to build another boat. This time, perhaps it’ll be a motor launch for those days when the wind doesn’t blow and it is too hot to row? Maybe a boat that I can take my boys on that voyage down the Mississippi River? A good stack of lumber is already laid by. It all starts with a pile of boards.
Nicholas Blake lives on his family land in Mississippi with his wife and two boys. When he is not playing music, he is building something in his shop or at his forge, wandering in the woods, messing about in boats, or fostering his family’s penchant for eccentricity.
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.
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