Sam Devlin’s Candlefish 13 began with a client’s detailed request for the design of an outboard skiff suitable for the lakes of Alaska’s Far North. It had to be light enough to lift up over the cab of a one-ton pickup truck towing a fifth-wheel trailer, narrow and short enough to fit on the roof rack, and as stable and as spacious as it can be within the restrictions on length, beam, and weight. Sam drew up plans to his customer’s specs and in the process imagined how he might adapt the design the boat for his own use: “a couple of weeks of moose hunting on a far northern lake with my friends Sven and Ollie.” To that end, the Candlefish 13 he’d build for himself would be able to carry three successful hunters and a half ton of moose meat, and still have about a foot of freeboard. When I took Sam’s Candlefish out on the waters of South Puget Sound on a sunny morning, it wasn’t brimming with camo and a carcass, but I wasn’t the least bit disappointed.
Sam took his inspiration for this little workboat from the pangas he admired on his frequent visits to Mexico. These remarkably seaworthy skiffs had generous freeboard to fight back the chop that came up with the afternoon winds and were narrow for greater efficiency and speed under the power of modest outboards. The Candlefish 13 is diminutive version of the panga with a length of 13′ 4″, a beam of 4′ 11″, and a bare-hull weight of 165 lbs.
All Devlin boats are built stitch-and-glue, a method Sam pioneered back in the late 1970s and ’80s. The thwarts, benches, and bulkheads reinforce the hull and leave the interior free of structural clutter. There’s no shortage of firm unobstructed footing. The cockpit sole is fairly flat, so to keep any water that gathers there from splashing underfoot it’s covered with removable honeycomb rubber mats.
all photographs by the author
The large compartment amidships keeps the cargo clear of the cockpit and its weight positioned for proper trim.
There is a watertight compartment just forward of amidships. Inside there’s room for tackle boxes, a two-piece boathook, a pair of aluminum breakdown oars, and a 6.5-gallon fuel tank. The tank puts the weight of the fuel, about 40 lbs when full, nearly amidships to help keep the boat in trim. The latch that levers the large gasketed hatch cover down tight and has a hole for a padlock to secure the compartment’s contents.
The cockpit is easy to sluice down with a hose. The forward footwell drains aft through an enclosed tube set in the amidships cargo compartment and into the cockpit and then out through two drains in the transom.
The forepeak has an open compartment for more gear and a deck recessed below the sheer and the bulkhead. Scuppers in the corners drain water overboard, so a muddy anchor, chain, and rode can be deposited there and sluiced down with a bucket of water without making a mess of the cockpit.
Spray-on truck-bed liner provides a thick, tough coating with a bit of texture for a non-slip finish.
The center compartment and side benches offer plenty of comfortable seating for the crew whether they’re enjoying the view or gnawing on fresh moose meat. A stout, bright-finished thwart puts the helmsman within easy reach of the outboard tiller, and its slick finish makes it an easy slide side-to-side to adjust trim or switch hands on the tiller. Ample transom knees provide a sturdy base for downriggers.
The bottom has a keel running aft from the stem and ending about a foot shy of the transom. At the aft half of the hull there are bilge keels at the sides, protected, like the keel, by stainless-steel half ovals. Two wedges, each about 10″ wide, serve as fixed trim tabs and keep the boat from hobbyhorsing with a light load aboard.
Sam uses spray-on truck bed liner for interior finish of many of his open boats. It looks good, is tough as nails, and provides good traction without wearing through your britches or elbows. He has used it on the exterior of this particular Candlefish too, an experiment that has been running for three years now. The texture likely adds some drag that knocks a bit off top end speed, but Sam hasn’t found that perceptible enough to change the finish to something smoother. I found very few signs of wear in the finish, even on the bottom. There was a scuff forward, a few small nicks on the corner at the bottom of the transom, but nothing that had come close to penetrating through to bare wood.
A deep gouge might be the only thing to convince someone that the boat is made out of wood. Sam is passionate about wood—“It’s God’s way of keeping me working every day”—but he’s practical about it. In a workboat it’s primarily a structural material, and he’s going to protect it with a durable, low-maintenance finish. I don’t punish my boats with hard use, so I’d opt for a slick exterior. Sam does flawless work with smooth, glossy, Awlgrip finishes, and I’ve often had to restrain myself from offering the dubious compliment of comparing it to production fiberglass and gelcoat. If you build your own Candlefish, you’d be at liberty to gussy it up with more brightwork, but the boat has an appeal that’s more than skin deep. Sam has an artist’s sensibility (his watercolor paintings can attest to that), and he designs boats with the form as the eye candy.
While the original design had to meet the customer’s request for a cartoppable boat, Sam has never been a fan of cartopping: “It’s hard on the boat, hard on the operator, and a miserable way to go.” I’d agree. My 85-lb decked tandem canoe is at the limit of what I can manage to get on and off my roof racks by myself. A trailer is a better way to transport the Candlefish with a great savings in time every time you launch: Your gear can stay aboard and the outboard can remain attached.
Sam’s Candlefish, the one you see here, serves as a utility skiff for his 37′ converted salmon troller JOSEPHINE. The skiff’s padded gunwale guard protects the mother ship when coming alongside, and its narrow bottom and bow eye, placed well down on the stem, contribute to its good manners under tow. When Sam and his wife are cruising Alaskan waters and JOSEPHINE’s at anchor, often in the company of two other couples aboard their own motor cruisers, he uses the Candlefish to shuttle gear and people: “I can carry all six of us and the dog in a hot minute.”
With the Candlefish’s 20-hp outboard at full throttle, Sam Devlin skims smoothly along at over 20 knots.
With a 20-hp Yamaha four-stroke outboard powering the Candlefish, she gets up and a plane with one person aboard in about 4.5 seconds and then with the throttle wide open flies along at 20½ knots. With two of us aboard, the Candlefish 13 topped out at just over 17 knots. She tracks well at all speeds and banks quickly and powerfully into turns: I quickly learned to use a soft touch on the tiller. A slight angling of the tiller sets the inside chine down, and the Candlefish carves smartly around.
The Candlefish maintains a level trim and good visibility at low speeds thanks to the centrally located cargo compartment and the fixed thwart that keeps the helmsman well forward of the tiller. The bow rises only briefly as she climbs up on a plane, and the skiff levels right out again.
Empty, the Candlefish 13 draws just 4 ½”. Throw in half ton of cargo and crew and it will draw about 9,” leaving plenty of freeboard.
The bottom is 36″ wide at the transom and not much wider amidships, so with just me and a light load of essential cargo in the center compartment, the Candlefish is a bit tender but she has plenty of flare and stiffens up as she heels. Settled deeper in the water with a heavier load, that moose for instance, she’d care much less where I planted myself.
Sam offers plans and patterns on paper and in digital format. He estimates the cost of materials for a do-it-yourselfer at around $850 and the time to build at 200 to 250 hours. Kits and finished boats are produced by Devlin Designing Boatbuilders upon request. They’ll use British Standard 1088 Marine Grade Plywood, 9mm (3⁄8″) for the hull and 18mm (3⁄8″) for the bulkheads. The exterior is sheathed with Dynel fabric and epoxy. The lumber that goes into the gunwales, seat edges, keels, breasthook and knees is either Port Orford cedar purpleheart or Honduras mahogany (plantation grown in Fiji).
The Candlefish 13 is a trim little skiff that packs a lot of potential into her short length. Lively running light and with the load-carrying capacity of a half-ton pickup truck, she’d be no stranger to work or play.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.
For 15 years the Everglades Challenge has pitted paddlers, rowers, and sailors against a variety of sea conditions on a 300-mile journey from Tampa Bay to Key Largo. The rules of the race require that every vessel be launched by hand from the beach. The 2015 EC brought some approximately 107 canoes, kayaks and small sailboats of every description to the starting line at Fort DeSoto Park near Tampa Bay, Florida. It would be my fifth Everglades Challenge and my first with Wally Werderich, a 42-year-old Chicagoan with a respectable ultra-distance racing résumé.
My first EC, in 2003, was a trial by fire. In that five-day journey my partner and I battled through navigational errors, leaking spray skirts, headwinds, waves, sleep deprivation, and hallucinations. In 2006 I teamed up with veteran WaterTriber Marty Sullivan and we picked a plywood triple kayak to race in. We spent two months building the kayak and one month training in it. The race went perfectly, and Marty and I finished in a time of three days and six hours, a Class 1 (Expedition canoes and kayaks) record that has yet to be broken. In 2009 and 2013 I raced with other partners in the triple, CONDOR by name, and again finished first in the division.
On Friday, March 6, Wally and I spent the morning at my house in Orlando making some modifications to his kayak seat and trying to fit all of our gear in my car. We loaded CONDOR, picked up my girlfriend Stacey, our shore contact, and arrived at Fort Desoto Park just in time for the mid-afternoon roll-call of racers. We all go by aliases. Back in 2001, when I needed to pick my WaterTribe name, my young daughter was a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer so I came up with RiverSlayer. Wally chose Los Humungos.
During the pre-race meeting, WaterTribe Chief, Steve Isaac, went over the protocols. The EC requires more safety gear than any other organization I’ve raced with. For electronics alone, Tribers have to have a GPS, EPIRB, SPOT satellite messenger, cell phone, and VHF radio.
Stacey Roberts
Over 100 kayaks, canoes, and sailboats lined up on the beach for the 2015 Everglades Challenge. The Sunshine Skyway Bridge in the distance spans the entrance to Tampa Bay.
Over 100 kayaks, canoes, and sailboats lined up on the beach for Everglades Challenge. The Sunshine Skyway Bridge in the distance spans the entrance to Tampa Bay.
Following the meeting Wally and I transported CONDOR to the starting line. The full length of the beach was filled by boats, more than half of them sailboats. The forecast was for 15–20-mph winds out of the northeast. Back at the hotel Wally and I put bananas, cookies, beef jerky, Snickers, protein bars, Cheez-its, fruit cups, and PB&J sandwiches in ziplock bags—small amounts that we could eat throughout the race. Around 10 p.m. we had finished and headed for bed.
The hotel alarm clock went off at 5 a.m. and we quickly mixed up our powder drinks and took our remaining gear to the Jeep. After a quick stop for breakfast, we headed for Fort Desoto. It was still dark when we arrived, but the beach was awash with headlamp-wearing racers making final preparations.
Stacey Roberts
In the predawn light before the start at Fort Desoto Beach, Wally and Rod pack CONDOR with supplies and gear.
In the last hour Wally and I were able to fit all of our needed gear into CONDOR and Wally, donning a mask, cape, and tights like a Mexican Luchador wrestler, transformed himself into the great Los Humungos. I am all for having fun at the start; the suffering will come later.
At 7 a.m. there was no horn or gun signaling the start. Everyone just started pushing and pulling our boats to the water. The tide was low, and we had to haul across a sandbar offshore. With Wally seated forward and me aft, we were soon in deeper water and paddling away. Despite being in a kayak, Wally and I were both using lightweight canoe paddles—they’re less fatiguing than kayak paddles. I put the rudder down so Wally could steer, but in the rush to get under way, his seat had slid back and he couldn’t reach the rudder pedals. As a canoeist I don’t trust rudders: many kayakers get knocked out of races with various rudder malfunctions. I have plenty of experience steering CONDOR without a rudder, and we continued without any problems.
We expected rough conditions at the entrance to Tampa Bay, and about 2 miles into the challenge the wind and waves picked up. Soon we were surfing on 3–4′ waves. I was sure some of the less experienced Tribers would be having problems.
Stacey Roberts
The race was still on as CONDOR passed under the bridge to Santa Maria Island.
Soon we were in much calmer waters and going under a bridge linking the mainland to Anna Maria Island. As we approached a second bridge I spotted Stacey, right where she’d always been on previous races, calling out to wish us luck. I told her we would call her from Checkpoint 1 at Cape Haze Marina, and we continued southward.
Tom Ray
With the wind blowing out of the east, the sheetless two-meter sail provided little help. For Wally, still sporting his Los Humungos attire, and Rod lightweight canoe paddles are the best choice for the long haul in the kayak.
About 15 minutes later a sheriff’s boat sped past us heading north toward the channel. Five minutes later a Coast Guard boat followed. Some of the Tribers must have been having a rough go of it, but Wally and I were making good progress; trailing a couple of the leading kayaks, but I expected them to slow down after the first day and then we could reel them in.
We were going under a bridge near Sarasota Bay when another racer’s shore contact standing above us called out that the Coast Guard had declared a weather hold and we were supposed to head to shore. Wally got Stacey on his cell phone; she told him there were multiple rescues in the shipping channel and the Coast Guard had ordered all racers to shore. This seemed rather ludicrous since we were surrounded by pleasure boaters and recreational kayakers enjoying a calm sunny day on the water. None of the lead kayaks had stopped, so we told Stacey that we’d continue to Checkpoint 1 and call her in a few hours.
We passed a few other WaterTribers. Some knew nothing of the Coast Guard order and others had new tidbits of information. Several hours later Stacey gave us the bad news: After rescuing a dozen WaterTribers in distress, the Coast Guard canceled the race and requested that racers proceed to Cape Haze Marina and make arrangements to be picked up. I told Stacey we would camp there before deciding what to do. I felt bad for Wally. He’d paid the entry fee, took time off from work, and traveled to Florida, only to have the race canceled.
Wally Werderich
Bill Whale, Tribe name “Whale,” with a reef zipped in his sail and paddle in hand makes tracks in his outrigger-equipped decked sailing canoe.
We pulled into Cape Haze Marina about 8:30 p.m. After changing into some dry clothes, I spotted Bill Whale (tribe name, appropriately, Whale). He had just arrived in his sailing canoe and had met up with Bob, a friend who lived nearby. Bob drove us to a restaurant and over dinner Bill, Wally, and I decided to continue to Key Largo. Bill was planning to take the Wilderness Waterway through the Everglades. It adds about 30 miles to the trip, but winds through some spectacular scenery. This was my first chance to paddle through the entire waterway.
Bob dropped us off at the marina with directions to his house, 2 miles south along the canal. Thirty minutes later we spotted him by his dock. I would have been happy to camp in his backyard, but Bob had several guest bedrooms available. After a shower I quickly fell asleep in a comfortable bed.
We were up at 6 a.m. Bob advised us that the winds would be gusting from the east and suggested that we paddle out into the Gulf through Gasparilla Pass to avoid the wind and waves of Charlotte Harbor. We took his advice and headed into the Gulf of Mexico before turning south. The tree-lined shore blocked most of the wind, and we had good paddling conditions. As we passed North Captiva Island, Bill was under full sail and Wally and I had to paddle hard to stay with him.
Wally Werderich
Many stretches of water between the mainland and barrier islands were busy with boat traffic and offered no places to camp.
We turned east on a small channel leading to Sanibel Island. The inside route was crowded with motorboats, and we had to stop abruptly to keep from being run over by two speeding jet boats going at least 50 mph. We crossed paths with several Tribers in sailboats tacking back and forth as they neared the Sanibel Island bridge. One told us to watch out for the law: It seems another WaterTribe sailboat was stopped for “excessive tacking” by a police patrol boat and told to turn around.
Wally and I crossed under the Sanibel causeway while Bill went west to find higher clearance for his mast. We caught up with each other south of Sanibel Island. The sun was setting as we paddled by Estero Island. Bill suggested that we stealth-camp on Lovers Key, and two hours later we pulled our boats up there on a beautiful white sand beach. Lovers Key is a state park for day use only, but it’s the only undeveloped land in the area. As we set up our tents I noticed ATV tracks and hoped park rangers did not make nighttime inspections of the island. We were soon all inside our tents and asleep. We hadn’t been racing, but paddling 50 miles in a day is still tiring.
We were up and paddling by 6 a.m. Bill took advantage of the east wind and gradually sailed ahead of us. Wally and I paddled hard for about three hours and covered over 15 miles. We caught up with Bill as we approached Gordons Pass south of Naples. He suggested that we take a break at the park inside the pass. There was a lot of boat traffic, and a big catamaran sailboat suddenly turned in our direction. Wally and I sprinted out of the way; Bill had to turn around to keep from getting hit. When we finally made it to the park, Bill was still steamed about the near collision. We were all ready for the peace and tranquility of the Everglades.
Wally Werderich
CONDOR awaits its crew during a restaurant stop at Marco Island.
After a 30-minute break we continued along the inside route to Marco Island and boat traffic dwindled as we paddled through Rookery Bay. By 3 p.m. we had reached Marco Island. Wally and I talked Bill into stopping at a restaurant.
An hour later we were back on the water and paddling for the little town of Goodland, the last bit of civilization before we entered the Ten Thousand Islands. Our plan was to paddle through the archipelago and turn east to find an island suitable for camping. As darkness fell we ran into several WaterTribe sailboaters who asked if they could follow us. Wally and Bill looked at the charts and decided that Gullivan Key, about 5 miles away, would be a good choice. Wally and I led the convoy, and when we arrived at Gullivan the tide was out and we could not get close to the beach. We tried White Horse Key 30 minutes farther on and found ourselves in the same situation. Bill, Wally, and I were pretty tired and decided to drag our boats through the 2″ water to get to the beach. We tied the boats up on the beach and quickly set up our tents above the high-tide mark. About 1 a.m. I woke to waves crashing on the beach. I could see our boats in the moonlight; they were still tied up, but I wondered how high the tide would get.
None of us had slept well with the waves so close, but the good news was that we had plenty of water to launch off the beach. Today’s goal was Chokoloskee, the gateway to the Everglades. We cut through the Ten Thousand Islands and at 1:30 p.m. pulled into the ranger station on the north side of Chokoloskee Bay.
It was the hottest day so far, and we quickly headed for the store for some cold drinks, then to the ranger’s office for camping permits. Our first camp was 20 miles away and the next 36 miles after that. The ranger checking us in questioned us our ambitious plans—most paddlers in the Everglades travel no more than 10 miles a day—when another ranger recognized us as WaterTribers and said, “These guys know what they’re doing.”
Chokoloskee Island was 3 miles away. The Havana Café there, known for great Cuban sandwiches, would close at 3 p.m. and it was now about 2. Wally and I went into race mode. The tide was up so we paddled straight across the bay and we arrived in plenty of time. We ordered sandwiches for ourselves and one for Bill. There were a half dozen other WaterTribers on the island, and with strong winds forecast for the next few days, most were ending their trip. I thought we’d be able to make it to Key Largo. We’d camp two nights in the Everglades, arrive in Flamingo on Thursday afternoon, make an early crossing of Florida Bay on Friday, and reach Key Largo that evening.
Wally Werderich
There is a reason that the WaterTribe awards a gator tooth to racers who traverse entire Everglades Wilderness Waterway.
Bill, Wally, and I filled all of our water jugs for the Wilderness Waterway trip. I noticed that the tap water had a brownish tint and decided to buy a gallon jug of distilled water in the convenience store. I knew the owner of the store from previous races and asked him about the “brown” water. He said it was fine but that he would call his cousin, the Mayor of Chokoloskee to check on it. It pays to have access to the Choko power structure.
We left Chokoloskee about 5 p.m. and paddled into the Everglades. The Wilderness Waterway was marked by numbered poles and had park service campsites along the route. Shortly after nightfall, about 20 miles from Chokoloskee, we stopped on Possum Key at the camp known as Darwin’s Place. Arthur Leslie Darwin, the “Hermit of Possum Key,” moved here in 1945, built a one-room cinder-block house, raised rabbits, and cultivated bananas on 10 acres of land. He cooked using a gas stove and collected rainwater in a cistern. In 1957 Possum Key became part of the Everglades National Park, but Darwin was allowed to stay. He passed away in 1977 at the age of 112.
Wally Werderich
A pair of osprey keep watch over the Everglades woods.
The mosquitoes were in full attack mode, so we quickly set up our tents. As I drifted off to sleep with their constant humming outside my tent, I wondered how Darwin survived here.
We were in our boats by 7 a.m. and paddled through miles of bays and connecting rivers with the whole unspoiled area to ourselves. Green mangrove islands were all around us and egrets, herons, ibises, and osprey were everywhere. I noticed the distinctive boils that manatees make in the water. When one erupted near us, splashing CONDOR, Wally let out a squeal. After that we often joked about the “killer” manatees.
Wally Werderich
Soon after Bill, Rod, and Wally arrived at the Harney River Chickee, darkness fell and the bugs descended upon them.
Just before dark we reached the Harney River chickee, one of several freestanding wooden platforms in the Everglades that provide toilet facilities and tent sites. Bill heated up some water for our freeze-dried meals. We hoped that away from land the bugs would not bother us. But as darkness fell over us so did the no-see-ums, and I abandoned my wish to sleep under the open sky without a tent.
Wally Werderich
Bil Whale, with his mast down and outriggers stowed, leads the way through a passage choked with mangroves.
At daybreak we paddled the Harney River toward Oyster Bay. WaterTribers often struggle getting through narrow waterways here—The Nightmare and Broad Creek—but we hit the creeks at high tide and in the daylight and could pick our way through and around the overgrown foliage. At night and with mosquitoes buzzing, it would have been a lot tougher.
To reach Flamingo we had a lot of open bays to cross. The wind was howling out of the east, and Wally and I paddled hard across each windy and wavy bay, then waited for Bill to catch up before repeating the process. About 2 p.m. we arrived at the canal to Coot Bay. We were about 8 miles from Flamingo. The convenience store there would close at 5:30 p.m. When Bill caught up, we told him we would paddle ahead to get sandwiches and cold drinks. Wally and I again went into race mode. We worked hard paddling across Coot Bay in the wind and 2′ waves. Finally sheltered in Buttonwood Creek, we kept up a good pace over the last 5 miles to Flamingo. We made it to the store a few minutes before 5 p.m. I drank about a quart of cold chocolate milk over the next half hour. Bill came in about 40 minutes behind us, and we had cold drinks and a sandwich waiting for him.
Our plan was to leave Flamingo at about 5 a.m. for the 33-mile crossing of Florida Bay. The wind on the bay was currently out of the east at 15 to 20 knots; Friday’s forecast was for 20 to 25 knots. We needed to leave now. Bill was having some issues with his hands and decided to end his trip at Flamingo.
Shortly after 8 p.m., Wally and I said goodbye to Bill and headed east. We were leaving on a high tide and could cut across the open water and save some time. Much of the first half of Florida Bay is across shallow water, and you must follow the route marked by the occasional marker pole or you’ll run aground. Wally was closely watching his GPS route and giving me constant steering directions. We crossed through the Dump Keys and then made it through the passage that crosses the sandbar known as the Crocodile Dragover. As we entered deeper water, the waves increased to 2 to 3 feet under a forceful wind. Our progress was agonizingly slow. Wally and I had to paddle our hardest just to make 2 miles per hour. Every few hours we would take a brief break in the lee of an island.
About 4 a.m. Wally and I could see the lights of Key Largo, but I desperately needed caffeine to keep me awake. Wally split an energy shot with me and that was enough to make it to daylight. We aimed for the cell-phone tower at the Bay Cove Motel that marks what would have been the finish line for the Everglades Challenge. At 8:30 a.m. two tired paddlers made it to Key Largo. Even though the EC had been canceled and every racer who started would be officially listed as DNF—Did Not Finish— Wally and I did what we set out to do: We finished.
Rod Price is an Orlando-based ultra-distance paddling racer. In 2009 he and partner Ardie Olson won the canoe division of world’s longest canoe race—the Yukon 1000. He is the only racer to have completed North America’s six longest paddling competitions including: the Ultimate Florida Challenge (1200 miles), the Yukon River Quest (444 miles), the Missouri River 340, the Everglades Challenge (300 miles) and the Texas Water Safari (260 miles). At the age of 55, he continues to race. He is the author of Racing to the Yukon and Racing Around Florida, both available on his website.
The Chesapeake Triple
In 2005, Chesapeake Light Craft was looking for a team to race one of their boats in the 2006 Everglades Challenge (EC). Marty Sullivan and I were selected and given the option of picking any of the CLC boats to compete in. Since we were both paddlers, we opted for the Chesapeake Triple, a 21’ by 30” kayak.
Early in November of 2005, Marty and I received our kit, a box of panels precision cut by a CNC (computer numerical control) router from okoume (plantation-grown) marine-grade plywood. This was my first boatbuilding project and we worked on the boat steadily for two months in Marty’s garage. With detailed step-by-step instructions accompanied by a video, the kayak took shape quickly. The stitch-and-glue construction with epoxy and fiberglass produced a strong and light structure. After lots of sanding, epoxy-work and varnishing, CONDOR was ready for the water. We launched it January 2006 on Lake Virginia in central Florida. We had two months for training with CONDOR before the EC.
The Chesapeake Triple kayak provides a great mix of speed and stability. For the multi-day Everglades Challenge races, the middle cockpit is ideal for storing gear. The triple is so stable that I have built my seat up six inches to put me in the best position for using my preferred canoe paddle when racing. Since building CONDOR in 2005 I have paddled thousands of miles in rivers, lakes, bays and oceans. I have used the kayak in two 3-day Florida adventure races, four 300-mile Everglades Challenges, one 90-mile North Carolina Challenge and one 64-mile Okumefest Challenge on the Chesapeake Bay. —RP
If you have an interesting story to tell about your travels in a small wooden boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
The varnish is wiped on in “panels.” Here Don is applying varnish to planks bordered by the thwart frame, transom, and stern seat compartment.
I had just finished again sanding out the wiggly, wavy, saggy results of my latest brushed varnish attempt on my wherry interior. I’d bought yet another quart of expensive marine spar varnish and was discouraged that I could expect most of it to wind up in the shop vacuum. In the dusty reaches of my memory I recalled an article by a furniture maker describing his efficient wipe-on varnishing technique. Not having that magazine readily at hand, I used this new-fangled thing called the Internet and found a posting about using a pad-wiping technique with thinned varnish. I did a cursory scan of the instructions, tried my hand at it, and much to my surprise, it worked! It wasn’t perfect but a major improvement over my brushed attempts. I’ve since refined the method to better apply it to the odd shapes of a boat, and present it here for others to experiment with and further refine. This treatise is for building up final smooth coats over epoxy or base coats of varnish. There are faster ways to build base coats that will fill wood grain.
Materials:
Marine spar varnish (I use Interlux Schooner.)
Brushing thinner (Interlux 333 thinner or this close approximation of it: 25% naphtha and 75% kerosene)
Small foam brushes
Paper towels (untextured or blue shop towels from hardware or auto parts stores)
Cotton T-shirt material (don’t use the kind with ribbed texture.)
Paper or plastic bowls (that are compatible with thinner)
Disposable plastic mixing containers with graduation marks
Stirring sticks
Fine 3M Scotch-Brite finishing pads (#7445, white in color)
Tack cloth
Paint filter funnels
Disposable gloves
Sand your base (epoxy or varnish) with at least 220-grit sandpaper—320 is less likely to cut through base coats. Wipe the dust away with a rag wet with thinner. Pour some varnish through a screened funnel into a mixing container, note or mark the volume, and add brushing thinner to double the volume for a 50/50 mix.
SBM
On his worktable Don has thinners, disposable gloves, blue paper shop towels, squares of cotton cloth, paper bowls, and varnish.
Crumple a couple of paper towels, and smooth a third over one side of the wad. Place the smooth side of the wad on a roughly 10″ square of T-shirt cotton and gather the edges around the wad to create a handle. Smooth out wrinkles on the working face. Make two of these pads.
Set out three bowls. Pour a bit of thinned varnish into a “do” bowl and straight thinner into an “undo” bowl. A depth of ¼″ to 3/8″ is plenty. Leave the third bowl empty.
Wipe down several square feet of the area to be varnished with the tack cloth. Place one of the T-shirt pads into the “do” bowl and let it soak up a supply of thinned varnish. Press the pad into the empty bowl to squeeze out excess. The face of the pad should have an even, wet look without drips or thick glossy areas. Start at one end of a “panel”—a thwart, plank, whatever that is bordered by edges of some kind—and wipe smoothly in a straight line along the grain, leaving behind a thin but glossy film of varnish. Avoid lifting the pad from the surface by making turns at the ends of short strokes. For long areas, strokes all go the same direction. Overlap the strokes slightly for a consistent wet edge. As the varnish load is depleted, usually within a few strokes, reload and press out the excess as before.
SBM
While applying varnish to the panel over the forward compartment, Don missed a dime-sized patch of sanded varnish. Rather than go back over the area on this pass, he’d get it covered with the next coat.
Holidays? Not to worry, you’ll get them in subsequent coats. DO NOT, under penalty of endless frustration, go back into wet areas to correct them.
Before the varnish in the panel has time to begin flashing off its solvent, use a nearly dry foam brush to tip out the irregularities that occur at the ends of strokes or where you come up against obstructions. Start at the obstruction and very lightly tip back into the smooth area, lifting the brush off the surface as you go. You can also correct still-wet drips or sags with the foam brush. Use a wetter foam brush to get into corners or other areas the pad can’t reach, then blend back into pad-applied areas with the drier brush.
If the foam brush fails to fix errors of excess varnish while things are still wet, grab your undo pad, dip it into the thinner bowl, press it moist, and wipe down the whole panel. Recoat immediately.
Continue with adjacent panels. The goal is to keep a wet edge. The undo pad can refresh a wet edge that is at a panel perimeter such as a plank lap.
With masking tape protecting the painted hull, Don can move with the speed necessary to wipe on the thinned varnish.
When you’ve finished with the first coat, allow it to dry to the point the surface of the earliest coated area does not feel sticky to touch. That may be only an additional half hour or so depending on how long the whole job has taken. You may notice streaks or areas that are not as glossy. Don’t fret; these tend to decrease with subsequent coats. Some folks have seen a reduction in streaks by increasing the varnish in the thinned ratio.
Use a light touch with a 3M white scrubber to dislodge bugs and lint nits. If the scrubber drags, the varnish isn’t quite dry enough. Wipe with a tack rag in preparation for the next coat.
Make up a new varnish pad and repeat as above. You should be able to get at least three coats on in a day, roughly the same as one coat of brushed varnish. The next day you can continue without sanding unless there are drips, runs, or errors you want to correct. Eight to a dozen coats over two to three days will build up a nice depth of finish. Overall, wiped-on varnish will achieve good results with much less sanding labor. It takes practice and even though I don’t get perfect results, the boat will look pretty nice when I step back from my work. An annual light wet-sanding with 320-grit and three or so coats of wiping varnish should get you through a season depending on local conditions. Wiping-on varnish also works well for scratch repairs.
Don Aupperle apparently inherited his fascination with boats from his father, and has cobbled together many, beginning with an Eastern Idaho canal sailing raft made of borrowed fence posts and advancing through wood-and-canvas kayaks to several plywood sailboats, graduating only recently to current stitch-and-glue technology. A Seattle resident, his day job is product design. Or is really it maintaining his 39′ cruising sailboat?
Editor’s note:
I used Don’s method to apply new varnish to the exterior of a lapstrake Whitehall I built in 1983. The boat had been well cared for, but it was showing signs of age. The existing varnish was in good shape and I chose not to go to bare wood to smooth the surfaces. I used odorless mineral spirits for a solvent—it was what I had on hand—and started out with a 50/50 mix with West Marine Admiral’s varnish. Wiping varnish on was much faster than brushing, and the thinned varnish as it came from the pad was much less likely to sag or drip than straight brushed-on varnish. I had recently refinished a dory with brushed varnish and the fresh coat would often look fine before I left it to dry, but an hour later sags appeared. The wiping varnish goes on much thinner and dries much faster, so sags were an infrequent occurrence. It also greatly reduced the time during which dust and bugs could get caught on the surface. When I did get sags, they’d be dry and sandable the next day. Sags of brushed-on varnish never seemed to cure; they could stay gummy for days if not weeks. I applied three coats of wiping varnish per day for three days. I was getting matte streaks and increased the amount of varnish in the mix. That and better lighting greatly reduced the problem. I was pleased with the results, easily the best varnish job I’ve ever done.
You can share your tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Monthly readers by sending us an email.
The Premium RailLight comes with a variety of attachment options.
RailLights may look like the post lights sometimes used to illuminate garden paths, but these solar-powered LED lights are designed for boating. They can provide for general illumination in a cockpit tent, cabin, or shore-side camp, and can, for some boats, serve as all-around white lights for navigation.*
SBM
A piece of oak with a large tapered hole for the mast and a 1″ hole for the Premium RailLight serves as a way to use it as an all-around light.
Constructed of marine-grade stainless steel, the lights are topped with a solar panel and light sensor epoxied in place. A small switch protected by a waterproof rubber boot, is tucked beneath, allowing the user to turn the lights on and off manually or to choose an automatic setting that activates them in the dark and shuts them off when daylight arrives. The units run on rechargeable batteries that, according to the manufacturer, will last for three to four hundred charges and up to three years. I appreciate that the RailLights are designed for batteries to be replaceable by the user, a feature significantly extending the potential life of the product.
SBM
The Mini RailLight has hardware for attaching it to a stanchion or rail. The wooden base is homemade.
I tested both models: the 14″ tall RailLight Premium, with four LEDs, and the 11″ tall RailLight Mini, with two LEDs. The Premium has a more pronounced glow than the Mini but both were easily visible from about 2,000′ away, even in the perpetual twilight of an urban environment. The Mini with its smooth frosted surface and uniform light is better suited for task lighting. The Premium’s ribbed globe produced a dappled light, making it better for general area illumination. Neither was so bright that they significantly diminished my night vision.
The lights are water resistant, and after being subjected to several showers, there was no change in their performance. They charge up in daylight, even under cloudy conditions. In direct sunlight a two-hour charge , the best opportunity I could get this time of year, produced about one hour of light. Charging during partly cloudy days in late March produced 4 to 6 hours of light. The manufacturer notes both lights can produce “up to 8 hours of light on a full charge.” On the summer solstice here in Portland, Oregon, 8 hours and 20 minutes separate sunset from sunrise, so the RailLights may not be able to fill in as anchor lights. The Premium flashes as an alert when it is low on power. Given the simple, sturdy construction and basic solar technology, the potential for problems with these lights seems low.
SBM
Simple homemade wooden bases adapt the RailLights to tabletop or thwart-top use.
Each Raillight comes with mounting gear that can either clamp to a rail or be screwed into a flat surface. For small boats, a homemade mounting system will probably be most effective.
No matter how many batteries I have tucked away, I always worry that I’ll run out and regret how many have to go into the trash when they run through their charge. If you’re a worrywart like me, a RailLight in your quiver will allow you to focus on your adventure, not your gear.
Bruce Bateau sails and rows traditional boats with a modern twist in Portland, Oregon. His stories and adventures can be found at his web site, Terrapin Tales.
The RailLight Mini retails for $29.99 and the Premium for $39.99. Both are available from numerous retailers and direct from Davis Instruments.
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.
A fire with flames rising through the coil will heat water more effectively than a bed of coals.
This ShowerCoil system is fantastic! With a fully stoked fire and a bit of practice, I could heat 4 gallons of water in just over 11 minutes and take a pleasant, warm, and long-lasting shower.
The heart of the system is an aluminum-alloy coil that heats water as it flows through the coil from an elevated bag supplying cold water. Water drains from the bag through heat-resistant silicone tubing, and a hollow braided-wire sheath protects the tubing where it joins the coil and the heat of the fire is most intense.
SBM
The heart of the thermostat is a bimetallic coil that operates a valve gate.
The hot-water tube filling the lower water bag has a small thermostat that regulates the temperature of the water by adjusting its rate of flow into one of the water bags.
SBM
The supply bag needs to be elevated about 3’ to provide the coil and thermostat with an adequate flow of water. Here it is suspended from a tripod of oars.
The two 15-liter (4-gallon) roll-top water bags are quite durable and versatile: their clear fronts and black backs make them well suited for solar-heating water; interchangeable fittings allow them to be used as general-purpose water bags; sealable roll-down tops with buckles allow them to serve as dry bags; and when equipped with the valves on the short hoses, they work as compression bags for packing bulky soft goods.
SBM
When the ShowerCoil is used with a camp stove the sheathing over the tubes needs to be supported. The supplied Y-stand (lower right) was too short for this stove, so a twig filled in for it.
A fully stoked campfire with flames rising through the coil is required to get water nice and hot. My first fire was mostly coals, which produced just a lukewarm shower. You can also use a camp stove to heat the coil: A steel heat deflector distributes the flame around the coil, and a prop supports the sheath over the tubing. My stove heated the water in just under 10 minutes. In camps where I could make a fire, I’d prefer to do the heating with wood and save on stove fuel.
Spring Courtright
The water bags also serve as drybags and solar water heaters.
A full water bag weighs about 36 lbs, challenging for me to manage and too heavy for me to hang up high on a tree branch. The instruction manual that comes with the kit has directions for easily lifting a full bag of heated water using ropes and carabiners, but I just used the bag half to three-quarters full.
Spring Courtright
A ratcheted clamp on the silicone tubing regulates the flow to the shower head.
One of the nicest features is the pinch valve on the shower-head hose which adjusts the levels of flow so the shower can be a luxurious rush of warm water or a prolonged sprinkling. With the valve wide open for wetting down, closed for soaping up, and opened again for rinsing, I had plenty of warm water to bathe and wash and rinse my long hair. The long hose on the showerhead makes it easy to direct the spray where it’s needed and make the best use of the water.
A hot shower is something that’s easy to take for granted at home, but it’s a great luxury in the wilderness. The ShowerCoil is a truly great outdoor shower setup.
Spring Courtright has been sea kayaking for over 15 years, leading and assisting day trips and multi-day trips in Washington and British Columbia. She has taught sea kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding, canoeing, backpacking, through the Olympic Outdoor Center, Outward Bound, Naturalists at Large, YMCA Earth Service Corps and Colorado Mountain College.
The ShowerCoil system is available from BoundaryTEC for $99.95.
Editor’s note:
I gathered some data on my own trials with the ShowerCoil. In an ambient temperature of 61°F a small fire of woodshop scraps burning under the ShowerCoil heated a full bag of water from 58° to 100° in 12 mintues with the thermostat set one click down from high. I switched bags and ran the heated water through again with the thermostat set on high. That brought it up to 120°. Hot! I added some cold water to the bag and brought the temperature down to a good level for bathing, around 105° to 110°. The full bag of heated water provided a 5 ½ minute shower with the valve wide open.
I also used the ShowerCoil with a single-burner propane cannister stove rated at 10,000 BTU. The stove didn’t provide as much heat as the wood fire and the rate of flow was much slower: After 12 mintues the lower bag was half full of water at 98°. I was impressed that the thermostat was doing its job well, dramatically reducing the rate of flow to suit the cooler fire. The heat transfer of the coil may have been made less effective by the layer of creoste that had built up after several wood-fire trials. Water flowing through the coil keeps its surface relatively cool resulting in the tarry buildup. Removing the creosote with oven cleaner, as recommended in the instructions, would improve heat transfer. To retain heat in the hot water bag I put a piece of foam padding under it to insulate it from the ground. It would be a good idea to insulate the bag further by putting a coat or a blanket over it.
I set one half-full bag, clear side up, out in the sun. In 2 ¼ hours it warmed 58° water up to 82°, not bad considering the low angle of the March sun over just the last half of the afternoon.
Is there a product that might be useful for boatbuilding, cruising or shore-side camping that you’d like us to review? Please email your suggestions.
With winds gusting above 25 knots on the Willamette River, three school staffers pushed the boat hard. The cockpit-controlled adjustable jackstay proved handy.
Wind & Oar Boat School is a Portland, Oregon, nonprofit that teaches boatbuilding not only for its own sake, but also to give meaning to math, science, design, and practical problem solving. As part of a workplace readiness program in the summer of 2013, students were tasked with building François Vivier’s Ebihen 16. With a long bowsprit, plumb stem, and workboat carrying capacity, the Ebihen 16 has the look of traditional English Channel fishing boats of northern Brittany and Normandy.
The women in the class showed great attention to detail and were cutting terrific gains by the time they got to the sheer plank. The inner/outer stem construction avoids having to cut rabbets. The outer stem is laminated with 1/8” fir.
MA CHERIE was built for Norm Eder, a Portland resident, avid boater, and one of the school’s board members. He wanted a boat big enough to take grandchildren out sailing in comfort and yet small enough to fit in his garage. The hull measures 16′ on deck and has high topsides keep the crew dry, accommodations for an outboard motor, a steel centerboard, water ballast tanks, and built-in foam flotation. The roomy cockpit has three storage areas to keep miscellaneous gear out from underfoot. Vivier has drawn several sail plans for the Ebihen; Norm opted for the gunter sloop rig.
The top frame of the ballast tanks is being glued in either side of the centerboard trunk. Getting the tanks watertight along the outboard wall proved challenging, but thickened epoxy was a good friend. The two compartments next to the motor well will be filled with foam for flotation.
The construction was complex for such a small boat and provided lots of learning opportunities for the student builders. The plywood parts were cut on the school’s CNC machine, and each plank was cut in three pieces with puzzle joints in between and reinforced with fiberglass when assembled. Students finished planking the hull, rolled it upright, and went on to install the motorwell, flotation compartments, and ballast tanks.
The bowsprit bitt is off center so that the tip of the bowsprit ends up on center. Flotation foam fills the entire compartment forward of the bitt.
Edensaw Woods supplied Sitka spruce for the spars. One piece was 6″ x 10″ x 26′, too big to be milled at the school, so students hoisted it on their shoulders and walked it three blocks down the street to have it planed and resawn at a commercial woodworking shop. After making the spars, there was enough spruce left over to use for the decking. Strips of dark zebra wood provided contrast for the blond spruce.
Discussion about the seat layout revolved around making the center thwart removable, or installing benches in place of it. Ultimately, the students decided to go with the designed fixed center thwart, even though there was no intention of rowing the boat. Vivier shows thole pins in the design, however.
Bronze hardware and wooden blocks came from the Wooden Boat Chandlery of Port Townsend, Washington. For custom-made bronze hardware— mast partner, traveler, and both bowsprit brackets—and a galvanized steel centerboard, the school enlisted Portland’s Silver Eagle Manufacturing.
Ready for sailing trials, MA CHERIE shows off her custom-made bronze hardware. Note that the shrouds for these early trials are made taut with tension knots.
Launched on the Willamette River, MA CHERIE carried five adults and performed well. A 6-hp Suzuki outboard provides auxiliary power. Three Wind & Oar staffers conducted sea trials in November with winds blowing over 25 knots, and even in rough water MA CHERIE was solid, comfortable, and dry under all points of sail. Even with the ballast tanks empty, the leeward rail stayed reassuringly high above the water. Half filling the ballast tanks put the boat on even more solid footing.
During sea trials in strong wind, the bowsprit bowed under the strain, an issue later fixed by adding whisker stays.
Owner Norm Eder reports that MA CHERIE is a delight to sail and easy to sail singlehanded. He can get the boat on and off the trailer by himself, and has developed his system for rigging and getting underway quickly. The Wind & Oar Boat School would build another Ebihen 16 only by special request because of the complexity of the build, but for a competent home boatbuilder, the project is certainly within reach, and the rewards on the water merit the effort.
Have you recently launched a boat? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share your story with other Small Boats Monthly readers.
In 1913, shortly before the start of WWI, England’s Boat Racing Association (BRA), a small club of sailing enthusiasts, called for a design to comply with the following requirements: length 12′, beam 4′8″, and a single 100-sq-ft sail with no battens; she should be a capable rowing boat as well as a good sailing craft, suitable as a tender for larger yachts. The winning design was submitted by an amateur designer named George Cockshott (1875–1952). Eight of the first BRA 12-footers, as they were then known, were built by the Shepherd’s Boat Yard in Bowness on Lake Windermere in northwest England at a cost of £25 each. Several members of the West Kirby Sailing Club near Liverpool ordered BRA 12s and with typical English humor named them after the Royal Navy battleships of the time: DREADNOUGHT, THUNDERER, BELLEROPHON, and SUPERB.
Collection of the Author
The scene of racing in the 1950s on a lake near the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands is very much the same as it is now.
The design’s popularity spread rapidly. In 1914, eight boats presented themselves at the start of a race in Karachi, then in India. Belgium and Holland adopted the BRA 12s with great enthusiasm. Development of the class in England was curtailed during the war, but in the neutral Netherlands the class flourished and toward the end of WWI there were some 140 of the little boats sailing there.
After the war, voices in England called for an “improved” BRA 12, and the well-known naval architect Morgan Giles came up with a design promised to be faster, more seaworthy, and easier to row. Belgium and the Netherlands by then had the largest fleets of BRA 12s on the water, and they fiercely opposed the adoption of a new design that would make theirs obsolete. The International Yacht Racing Union (IYRU) was called in to arbitrate the situation. While the IYRU approved of the new design, the Low Countries prevailed, and in 1919 at the IYRU meeting the original Cockshott design was officially adopted as a new International class: the International 12-Foot Dinghy.
Roger Smith
While the 12′ dinghies are built for racing under sail, they’re outfitted with oarlocks and rowing thwarts to fulfill the class requirement that “each boat shall be built, equipped and finished complete in every respect and so as to be fit for use as a useful yacht’s centerboard dinghy.”
The class is a one-design, meaning that every boat must be identical and have a valid measurement certificate. With their close tolerances, these dinghies were not meant to be built by amateurs, but over the years many have been home-built. Certification required “each boat to be carefully built in strict accordance with the drawings and this specification, and the greatest care must be taken to ensure that all boats are as nearly alike as possible in every respect. Minor deviations from standard may be permitted, at the discretion of the Council of the Association.” The class specifications list the dimensions and material of every part of the boat: the centerboard must be 1/4″ soft steel plate; the steam-bent frames would be of American elm, ½″ thick by 5/8″ wide, spaced 7″ on center; spars were to be solid spruce, although the gaff could be of bamboo; and the 12 strakes are 5/16″ clear straight-grained fir—though later oak and mahogany were allowed as well. Fastenings were screws, bolts, and clench nails and copper, brass, or yellow metal throughout. The hulls might leak when first launched for the season, but after they were fully immersed for a day or so they’d be tight and dry. These dinghies were no lightweights. The 2012 building rules for the Dutch measurement certificate stipulates that the “dry” weight of the bare hull must be a minimum of 229 lbs (104 kg). A new top-of-the-line, race-ready wooden 12-footer built in Europe today can cost as much as €25,000 (about $30,000 US). A good used one can set you back $6,000 to $14,500.
International yards such as Abeking & Rasmussen and de Vries Lentsch built many 12’ dinghies in the 1920s and ’30s, and many of these are still sailing today. The Italian Riva family, famed for their classic speedboats, are also a well-known builders of these boats. Two years ago in England, Stephen Beresford of the Good Wood Boat Company launched a new dinghy with sail number GBR 50.
David Stephenson
On Ullswater, a lake in NW England, Richard Fielden and Stephen Berrisford sail in Force-7 winds on the maiden voyage of dinghy GBR50. She’s one of the few 12-Foot dinghies with reef points.
The dinghy was adopted as the singlehanded boat for the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp. The Dutch took the gold and silver medals—a predictable result, since the only boats entered were the two Dutch ones. The 1924 Paris Olympics saw a French design as the singlehander, but in 1928 at the Amsterdam games the 12 was again chosen as the solo class. Twenty countries competed and this time the Dutch were outclassed: Sweden took the gold, Norway the silver, and Finland the bronze.
The status of the 12-footer as an International class was terminated in 1964, and its popularity declined after that. Despite that, many countries maintained active 12′-dinghy class associations, and upgraded the class rules to suit their sailors’ demands and circumstances. The conservative Dutch changed their rules to improve safety and ease of boat handling: They allowed self-bailers, boom vangs, transom drain holes, and insisted on flotation bags. In Italy, the Associazone Italiana Classe Dinghy 12′ was far more progressive, allowing aluminum masts and booms, pop-up rudders, plywood construction, and, horror of horrors, fiberglass hulls. The Netherlands, Italy and Japan are the current hotbeds for the class, and there are small fleets in Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Japan, Lithuania, France, and Turkey. In recent years new boats have been built in Canada, Argentina, the Far East, and the US.
Wietske van Soest
After jibing in a very strong wind, the bow can dig in but experienced sailors have no trouble maintaining control.
Sailing the 12 does not require great athletic abilities. Anyone can enjoy these boats, whether for relaxation or competition. In light weather the boat is a great singlehander; racing regulations allow a maximum crew of two. The standing lug rig requires the crew to move the yard to the leeward side of the mast with each tack. This is accomplished with tripping lines run port and starboard from the throat. The yard is slightly curved to facilitate this movement, but it still takes a bit of practice. Timing is the key: At the moment that the boat moves through the eye of the wind the yard will slide across with little effort. Sailing in a blow can be hair-raising, particularly on a run with the wind dead astern. With the mast only a few inches aft of the bow, the boat often tries to become a submarine but moving the crew well aft can allow a following wave to flood over the transom. Balance is the key and under ideal conditions one can nearly get the boat on a plane. Jibing in a stiff breeze is practically impossible, and many a racing sailor will tack through a 270-degree turn at a downwind mark. While a reef would be advisable under those conditions not all 12s have them.
Roger Smith
Five dinghies come about in the 100th anniversary race at West Kirby. The woman skippering the Dutch entry #688 is 81-year-old Tonnie Surendonk.
In 2008 an international yearly competition began, aptly named the Cockshott Trophy, and in 2009 the Cockshott family donated a silver challenge cup—first won by George Cockshott in 1902—to be awarded to the overall winner on points each year. Turkey, Italy, and the Netherlands hosted events counting toward points in the years 2010 and 2011 when there were 137 and 178 competitors, respectively; understandably, not all started in all the races. Holland dropped out of hosting the competition, as that country only allowed wooden-hulled boats whereas fiberglass hulls were allowed by the others. In 2012 France, Germany, and Slovenia joined in hosting trophy-point races, with a total of 16 countries represented.
Roger Smith
On the 100th anniversary of the first race of International 12-Foot Dinghies two Dutch crews race on England’s River Dee near West Kirby in 2013.
In 2013 and 2014 the Royal Loosdrecht Watersport Club hosted the centennial celebrations of the International 12-Foot Dinghy in the Netherlands, with an astonishing total of 187 boats entered, including four brand-new boats. The granddaughter of George Cockshott, Jane Rowe, and her husband Ernest came over from England to take part in the celebrations. Both the Italian and Dutch Post Offices issued special stamps commemorating the centennial. The Associazone Italiana Classe Dinghy 12′ issued a magnificent book: Il Dinghy 12′ Classico Italiano. The Dutch association published their own impressive book, Twaalfvoetsjol: 100 Jaar Klasse (Twelve-Foot Dinghy: 100 Years a Class).
When George Cockshott submitted his drawings to the Boat Racing Association in 1913, it is doubtful he envisioned that a hundred years later the little 12-footer would have a registration in Italy of well over 2,300, that in the Netherlands sail numbers for the wooden 12s have reached nearly 900, and that his granddaughter and 10 countries would be represented at the centennial celebrations of his design.
Evert Moes was born in the Netherlands in 1934 and in his teens campaigned his 12-ft International, H391, PIGLET. After emigrating to Canada in 1960 he became involved in wooden boat building. His latest project was the building of a 9′ 9″ Nutshell Pram from scratch with a modified lug rig similar to the International 12-footer. In summer he sails the waters of the British Columbia’s Gulf Islands.
Norway’s Færder snekker constitute a small racing class that hails from outside of Tjøme in the country’s Vestfold region, 55 nautical miles south of Oslo. The two-part name reflects the dual lineage of piloting and fishing that historically defined the island of Hvasser, where the Færder snekker fleet was born and still thrives. The boats are named in part after the Færder Lighthouse, which lies 4 nautical miles southeast of Hvasser. The lighthouse marks the southwestern entrance to Oslofjord, the narrow route north to Oslo. Snekke (the singular form of snekker) refers to the hull shape of the older and smaller sail- and oar-powered working boats used for hunting and fishing along the southern Norwegian coast through the turn of the century.
Both piloting and fishing along the Norwegian coast demanded high levels of seamanship. The drive to be the first to market with a fresh catch or the first out to a passing vessel awaiting a pilot naturally gave rise to a strong spirit of competition among the local population, whose livelihood depended on these trades. Racing workboats for sport was a natural extension of this impulse and informal regattas became a summer pastime in the second half of the 19th century. The Færder Seilforening (Færder Sailing Club) of Hvasser was formally founded in 1897, with an inaugural regatta that year on Midsummer’s Day—the Scandinavian summer holiday marking the summer solstice. Midsummer marks the kickoff for the regatta season to this day, and races are scheduled every other week through September.
In the early days of the Færder Seilforening, there was a clear class distinction between the pilots and the fishermen who came together to race in summer. The club officers were aways pilots while the fishermen were ordinary members. Initially, the regatta boats were workboats moonlighting as a racing fleet on Sundays. Most of the local population was either participating or standing watch on the docks as spectators. In black-and-white photographs from the period, children, fisherwomen and pilots’ wives alike are elegantly turned out in their Sunday best along the waterfront, some with pilots’ binoculars around their necks.
Eli Ulriksen
The main is a spritsail with an unusual shape: Its “peak” is lower than its throat. The line running from the top of the mast to the top of the sprit serves to flatten or increase the depth of the upper part of the mainsail, thus improving sail trim and safety in varying wind conditions.
The racing fleet had evolved from heavily framed lapstrake workboats to carvel-planked hulls by 1910. The Færder snekker, though inspired by drift-net herring boats and mackerel fishing snekker, were purpose-built exclusively for racing beginning around 1923. Two boatbuilders in particular, Hans Jansen and Alf Andreassen, were responsible for developing and refining the design that came to be known as the Færder snekke. Jansen built six for the racing fleet throughout a career that began in 1897. Andreassen began his apprenticeship in 1913, and would go on to turn out an impressive 17 Færder snekker throughout the 1930s and ’40s. The boats’ design and construction naturally evolved toward a consistent form during this period despite the fact that the class design rules were somewhat nebulous. Slight variations in specifications are still evident across the fleet today, in large part because two-thirds of the current racing fleet was built well before plans were drawn up. The difference in length and depth between the oldest boats can be as much as 4″ (10cm).
Of the 31 boats regularly sailing in the Færder Seilforening at present, ten were built in the 1940s, four in the 1930s, and four in the 1950s. Most of these have been meticulously restored by their owners. New-builds today follow lines and construction plans that were drawn up in 1978 from four of the oldest and best-maintained examples in existence at the time. Four newly built boats and a number of restored ones have joined the fleet since the Færder Seilforening 100th anniversary celebration in 1997. The oldest currently sailing, FS 9, was built in 1937 and still races regularly. Boats are assigned consecutive numbers as they joined the racing fleet and early numbers are occasionally reassigned if old boats are lost. The most recently launched this past summer proudly carries FS 44 on her sail. It is not certain exactly how many of the boats have been built since the 1920s, but the number is certainly higher than 44: In the early days of the club only members of the racing fleet were given numbers. The only break in racing during more than a century of club history came during WWII. During the war, owners hauled the boats and removed every scrap of lead (including external keels) from every boat in the fleet. The ballast was then buried ashore to keep the sought-after material from being seized by the occupying Germans. After the war ended, ballast and keels were exhumed and reattached, and racing resumed.
Evelyn Ansel
The hiking straps visible at the edge of the side benches are a recent addition to the interior arrangements.
Færder snekker are long-keeled, open double-enders with an overall length of 20′8″ (6.3m), and with a substantial draft of 3′1″ (0.95m). The classic design includes no bulkheads or flotation,which is something a prospective builder or owner might consider. Pairs of steam-bent ash or pine frames are placed between oak sawn frames, cutting down on weight, time, and the number of natural crooks required. The hull is carvel planked in pine, and the deck is pine or spruce. A thwart and mast partners are situated forward in the cockpit, side benches amidships, and a small thwart or U-shaped sternsheets aft. There are no accommodations for rowing or an outboard and the only auxiliary power is, and always has been, nothing more than two paddles—these boats are not intended for work. In spite of the lack of auxiliary power, some determined regatta entrants regularly sail from homeports three to five hours away to participate in the bimonthly summer races. The hulls are generally painted white or finished bright, and the interiors often feature a deep forest green that is known as “Færder green” in Norwegian hardware stores.
Eli Ulriksen
Racing off Hvasser in a fresh breeze. Hiking straps play a key role in modern racing.
Today’s Færder snekker are sprit rigged like their fishing forebears, but their hulls are much deeper. New builds feature a 1.090-lb (500-kilo) external lead keel, while boats built prior to 1980 carry the same weight split between internal and external ballast. The mainsail ranges from 118 to 124 sq ft (11 to 11.5 m2), and the jib is not to exceed 70 sq ft (6.5 m2) according to regatta regulations. The main’s “peak” is lower than the throat, giving the rig a profile that seems a little unusual to me, a kid raised in New England.* The sprit features a sheave at the top for easy setting without having to lower the pole, and a line running from the top of the mast to the top of the sprit allows for greater control in trim adjustment. The racing sails generally don’t have reefpoints, but some boats carry a separate set of storm sails when cruising. The boats are happiest in 15 to 20 knots of wind, and are fairly quick in stays.
Eli Ulriksen
Wide side decks allow Færder snekker to sail comfortably with the lee rail submerged.
Side decks allow for sailing in relative comfort with the lee rail well under. Eli and Ulf Ulriksen, former owners of FS 9, have noted that “she is reasonably stable and will carry a heavily built man standing on the extreme edge of the side deck hanging onto the shrouds, without capsizing or causing water to flood over the lee coaming.” Even so, when racing in gusty or fluky conditions, it is important to have quick-thinking and agile live ballast aboard. Prior to 1970 it was considered highly unsportsmanlike sit on the coaming and positively unthinkable to hike out while racing but hiking straps in every boat in the modern fleet are testament to the evolution of prevailing tactics and thinking. It is possible to singlehand the boats, but the regatta regulation crew of three is ideal. With a beam of 6′3″ (1.9 m), the boats will carry four adults comfortably, though perhaps a bit sedately, in lighter air.
Evelyn Ansel
Most of the boats have a bronze or brass pole ring that slides up and down the sprit. The ring has two welded eyes: one to attach to the peak of the sail and the other to attach to an outhaul that runs through a sheave in the peak of the sprit. The leather chafing gear at the upper end of the sprit protects it from the pole ring.
Though the Færder snekker are much beloved within the Norwegian sailing community, they are not widely known abroad. I first encountered a lone Færder snekke at a maritime festival in Oslo in the summer of 2014. It stood out among the several hundred boats there for reasons that were initially difficult pin down. Over the course of the weekend, I kept returning to the dock where she was tied up, wondering what it was about this little double-ender that kept catching my eye. There was an enormous amount of variation in boat types represented at the show, from Viking ships to Nordlandsbåt from the north and Oselvar from the west to steel tugs, motorsnekker, and Redningskoites, but she was the only one of her kind. She was small and open, but did not fit in with the similarly scaled, rough, and hardy oiled workboats from the north. On the other hand, the boat had shadows of an appealing older working aesthetic that didn’t fit in with the larger, yachty Meter boats or varnished cruisers either. It was an intriguing combination and proved sweet to watch under sail during the festival regattas and parades.
On the final day of the festival, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Sissel and Ivar Karlsen, the current owners of the Færder snekker—FS 9, VESLA—after they received the festival award for Best Traditional Restoration of a Historic Vessel. The Karlsens had sailed 77 nautical miles from their homeport to attend the festival and, in keeping with tradition, carried only two paddles for auxiliary power. Ivar and Sissel grew grew up on two different islands neighboring Hvasser, and both harbor a powerful and well-deserved sense of pride and ownership not only toward their VESLA but also toward the entire fleet of Færder snekker. Though the boats are no racehorses, competition among them is lively, and they inspire enormous loyalty in owners like the Karlsens and the Ulriksens: Many own and race the boats for decades at a time. I saw this genuine dedication to the type in every person I met who had ties to the Færder-snekke tradition and fleet. They say that interest in the Færder snekker has only increased since the club’s 100th anniversary in 1997, and club members are hopeful about the future for the boats.
Evelyn Ansel grew up in Mystic, Connecticut, and has chased small boats from Venice to Stockholm and beyond. When not on the water, she spends most of her time in museums and conservation labs. Her article, “The Snekke: Norway’s timeless motor launch,” appears in the March/April 2015 issue of WoodenBoat.
*John Leather’s book, Spritsails and Lugsails, shows a type of Danish fishing boat, kaperboats, that had spritsails with the peaks set lower than the throats. —Ed.
Færder Snekke Particulars
[table]
Length/20′8″
Beam/6′3″
Draft/3′1″
[attr style=”font-weight:bold;”]Sail Area
Main/118 to 124 sq ft
Jib/70 sq ft, max.
[/table]
Drawings: Gert Morgenstierne circa 1978, courtesy of the Færder Sailing Club, Tore Marthinsen
For more information or to procure plans, see the Færder Sailing Club website. The site is in Norwegian, but you can open an English version with Google Translate.
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After having built and used kayaks steadily for 21 years, I had begun to think about a different type of vessel to use for cruising and camping on local and familiar waterways close to my home in Portland, Oregon. I had done numerous overnighters with my kayaks, and had always camped on shore. Sandy beaches, a wealth of uninhabited islands, and abundant access to land made camping easy, but a vessel to sleep in seemed like a further step toward ease, and the idea of sleeping on the water had an irresistible appeal.
After deciding to build a “floating campsite,” I had to find a suitable design—a stable, small, platform that would be very simple to build. It had to be a historic design, something a little off the beaten path, with a workboat background. Years of studying old Arctic kayaks had molded my sensibilities and taste.
I came upon the garvey box while flipping through Howard Chapelle’s American Small Sailing Craft. It was built near Tuckerton, a small town on the south end of New Jersey’s Barnegat Bay. The garvey box served the same purpose as the better-known sneakboxes of the area, but was easier to build. I started building in January, and launched in mid-March 2014.
I had very little experience sailing or even rowing, but I worked out the kinks and learned the ropes, and began to plan an overnight for ZEPHYR’s third voyage. I would launch at the south end of Vancouver Lake and make my way to Lake River, which drains into the Columbia 11 miles farther north. I expected this would give me one night on Lake River, and plenty of options to progress the next day.
All photographs by the author
Loaded and ready to go, ZEPHYR awaits her oarsman at the south end of Vancouver Lake. The island, 1-1/3 miles away, is barely visible through the fog to the left.
On April 7, I set out in fog so thick that I could barely see the island in the middle of the lake. I started out under oars, but when I reached the island, the fog had broken, and a touch of a favorable south wind picked up. I unbrailed the spritsail and made a meandering run to some inundated willows at the north end of the lake, and stopped for lunch in bright sunlight.
The wind failed as I entered Lake River, so I brailed the rig and went on under oars. Lake River is a pretty stream lined with trees and pastures. It is about 250′ wide, and its western shore is mostly floodplains and pasture, some lined with ash and cottonwood, some bordered by flood dikes. Gentle bluffs to the east are wooded with oak, ash, and fir, and hide the populated rolling plains of Vancouver above. Beneath the bluffs a heavily trafficked rail line lies within a half mile from the river, and in some places the tracks are just 75′ away.
A shady cul-de-sac off of Lake River provided an ideal resting spot. Lake River is plenty sleepy, but this cove oozed silent primeval slumber.
Toward midafternoon I ducked into a hidden harbor on the western shore. It meandered a little ways through a dense wood of ash and cottonwood that created a shade-giving canopy over the water. I had a snack and rested a bit; the only noise was the distant honking of geese, and two raccoon kits chasing each other up and down trees. It would have been an ideal anchorage for the night, but it was too early in the day to stop.
A very pleasant and peaceful moment on Lake River, with just enough wind to move me along, and slow enough to allow my mind to wander.
I nosed ZEPHYR back out into Lake River; the south wind picked up again and teased me along at a dreamy pace. I was nearly asleep at the helm when a huge and cacophonous flock of Canada geese suddenly took off from a field just astern of me, clearly startled by something. They rose into the sky, and the surface of the river below them erupted as if hit by a downpour of oversized hail. I was quite pleased to be out of range of their bombs.
Not 15 minutes later, the pastoral waters erupted again. A bull California sea lion gave a poor carp a violent thrashing just 30 feet off my port bow. The sea lion slapped the pallid carcass back and forth, bent on eviscerating it; I was lucky not to get splattered.
Her anchor set in fine mud, ZEPHYR is readied for her first night out. The freight train in the background up on the berm did not bode well for a good night’s rest.
When the sun was getting low, I sought a haven for the night. A few creeks drained down the slopes of the steep eastern shore into Lake River. The first creek I came upon had a lovely ash-canopied cove, but it was quite close to the railway. I could see on my charts that another cove farther downstream might be more promising. I rowed another few minutes and turned into the meandering creek, and came to a stop some 20′ in, just as the sprit snagged a low branch.
I brailed the sail and unstepped the rig, chucked my 10-lb Navy anchor overboard, and let out the chain and some 10′ of rope. (I’d found the anchor in the Columbia River 15 years ago while kayaking, and knew someday I’d have a boat for it.) I stepped a short dummy mast forward, secured a stick at the aft end of the cockpit, and then draped the simple canvas pup tent I’d made over the uprights. Toggles accessible from inside and out of the cockpit secured the tent around the coaming. My rowing “thwart,” a simple box full of tools and camping gear, went to the port side—reoriented fore-and-aft—to serve as my dining table and lantern stand.
With the rowing seat serving as a nightstand I was ready to turn in for the night.
I had brought cans of soup, a few baguettes, and some tins of sardines, but I was too tired to fire up my alcohol stove, so I had the soup cold—right out of the can. I uncorked a bottle of red wine, poured to the rim of my enamel coffee mug, and reached for my book, William Least Heat-Moon’s River Horse: Across America by Boat. The light was good and bright in my raw-canvas tent, even for dusk reading, but soon I lit the candle lantern, if only for ambience. Before I knew it, the sun had set, so I dragged my sleeping bag out from under the foredeck and laid it out, foot forward. I took one last peek out the back of the tent at the yellow and orange twilight mirrored on Lake River and framed by the leafless ash branches of my snug harbor. As the sky faded I fell asleep, using my life jacket as a pillow. The last sounds I heard before nodding off were distant geese and the faint lapping of ripples caused by fish jumping or beavers swimming nearby.
My quiet bliss didn’t last too long, as I soon found that being 100 yards away from the railroad tracks isn’t much more quiet than being 100′ from them. How irrational the startled nighttime mind can be, thinking the train is bearing right down on one’s very anchorage! This terror must have happened at least five times throughout the night.
I woke around 8 a.m. to bright daylight, and had a leisurely breakfast in bed while reading more River-Horse. I soon turned attention to my own adventure, so I set to converting ZEPHYR from a bedroom back into a vessel. Called to shore by nature, I realized that I hadn’t set foot on land since 10 a.m. the previous day: I had spent 23 hours within ZEPHYR’s 33″ x 72″ cockpit and had never felt the least bit confined. All comforts I required were close at hand, and the gently rockered floor, unencumbered by fixed thwarts or clunky framing, was exactly the camping platform I had hoped for. The only thing it required was for me to place it in the loveliest settings I could find!
With water glassy and the rig brailed, I rowed up Lake River, passing an abandoned half-sunk vessel.
When I emerged from my harbor, the river was still and smooth as glass. There was no wind, so a-rowing I went. At Ridgefield, 8 miles downstream from Vancouver Lake, I assessed my situation. There was little promise of wind. A mile north of Ridgefield I could turn south on the Bachelor Island Slough and enter the Columbia across from Sauvie Island with the choice of heading north or south as wind and current might favor. Or I could continue north another 2 ½ miles on Lake River and enter the Columbia on the north end of Bachelor Island, across from Warrior Rock lighthouse near Sauvie Island’s northernmost point.
The speck of white on the distant shore is Warrior Rock Lighthouse on Sauvie Island. To get there I’d soon be rowing across the Columbia River.
I chose to strike out for Warrior Rock. The Columbia was glass-smooth. The current was running, but presented no challenge to reaching the lighthouse under oars, as it was slightly downriver. I came ashore on a sandy beach in a nice, protected cove just north of the lighthouse.
Warrior Rock Lighthouse stands just across a horseshoe cove from the beach where I landed ZEPHYR. The basalt dike below the light house made a perfect picnic spot.
The 28′-tall lighthouse was built in 1930. The upper half is an elegant octagonal shape, while the lower half is an elongated concrete hexagon, shaped and oriented to cut the water like a ship when the Columbia floods. It sits prominently on Warrior Rock, a former site of native canoe burials. I sat down at the base of the lighthouse and downed a can of soup and a crust of bread. A west wind alighted on the river beyond the lee of Sauvie Island’s tree-lined shore. Eager to take advantage of it, I returned to ZEPHYR and rowed her off the beach. With the westerly, I could reach up the Columbia toward Portland or a half-mile downriver, around the northern end of Sauvie Island, into Multnomah Channel at the town of St. Helens. I chose to sail north.
At the tip of Sauvie Island, I tacked and close-reached south, up Multnomah Channel, dodging old pilings and lines from the many fishermen in aluminum skiffs anchored in the channel. The west wind held up nicely, and I made good progress upriver. I passed the entrance to Scappoose Bay, which breaks away from the channel towards the west about 1¼ miles from the Columbia. This bay is about 2 miles long, though it continues on in several secluded meandering creeks that I’ve yet to explore. A night in the bay somewhere was a fine possibility, though it was too early to stop.
As I approached Louse Island, tucked into the long neck of Sauvie Island, just across from Scappoose Bay, I decided to head for a favorite stream hidden behind Louse Island: Cunningham Slough. Meandering some 4 miles into Sauvie, the slough measures only 2.1 miles straight-line from its mouth to Cunningham Lake. A night in this narrow mud-banked and ash-lined slough would be truly peaceful. I’d never been all the way up to the lake at its end.
ZEPHYR’s shallow draft allowed her to explore water too thin for most boats.
The water was high, making it an opportune time to travel the full length of the slough, but about a mile up I grew tired of rowing: The wind in the 90′-wide slough was nonexistent. I dropped anchor to rest, read, and if need be, nap. Later that afternoon, I woke up groggy yet anxious about deciding where to proceed next. Up-slough would have been easy and comfortable, and, practically speaking, resulted in at least two more nights out. I was prepared for such a commitment, but at the time making “progress”—under sail, if possible—weighed more heavily, and I rowed back toward Multnomah Channel.
Clouds had washed over the blue sky, and the west wind had picked up considerably. When I reached the channel, I stowed the oars and unbrailed the spritsail, and made a reach to the south. The wind curled around and over the tall cottonwoods on the weather shore, and I endured severe blows from astern. My boom leapt and galloped several times in the chaotic gusts. At times the winds felt very favorable to forward progress, and yet I was frequently backwinded to a stop. Sailing up a narrow channel with a tree-lined shore is fraught with surprise and disappointment.
I passed the last of the trees along the weather shore and came to an area that gave way to low meadows. The sailing should have been steadier here, but instead the wind died completely. Taking to the oars, I found that the ebb had strengthened, and my work began in earnest. Along this stretch of Multnomah Channel, one shore is lined with rip-rap, and the other was sheer banks of mud tangled with logjams: there weren’t any inlets for refuge for at least 2 ½ more miles. A south wind sprang up, giving me more to work against, and I could see that black sodden clouds over Portland were headed my way. I could’ve easily backed out under sail to Scappoose Bay or Cunningham Slough for the night, but the urge to go forward persisted, and I raced against the threat of a heavy rain to the mouth of the Gilbert River.
I pulled hard to get ZEPHYR into shelter, weighing every other minute whether or not I should sacrifice some ground made by taking time to don a raincoat. Every inch seemed to matter, so I kept on in shirtsleeves. My goal for the evening’s anchorage was a floating moorage dock just at the mouth of the Gilbert River.
With parts of me chilled, and others hot with exertion, I reached the mouth of the Gilbert River and made my painter fast to the dock. ZEPHYR streamed down-current and downwind from the end of the platform. The very moment I had the tent out and half set up, the clouds let loose. There is something dismal about tenting in the rain, but this time it felt like a narrowly won victory. My tent, made of untreated canvas, was untested in any rain, let alone a downpour, but it performed superbly. The cotton fibers swelled and blocked the hammering rain and took each heavy drop with a low solid pat instead of the urgent high-pitched pit-pit-pit that dainty synthetics make.
I slipped into my sleeping bag and ate a quick meal of cold soup. The pat-pat-pat lulled me to sleep quickly. It wasn’t to be a night of good sleep, however. First, either the wind reversed or the tide turned (or perhaps both), and ZEPHYR bumped against the dock. After this gentle yet awakening jolt, I realized my sleeping bag was soaked. Damn the canvas! I scrambled out into the dark with a flashlight and perched on the wet foredeck, undid the painter, and sculled over to a snag I’d seen earlier. After tying up to it, I climbed back into the cockpit and I noticed that my water bag had come open—all the water in the boat had come from this, and not the rain. Relieved that I hadn’t used the wrong material for the tent, I slept the rest of the night in quiet, damp victory.
The next morning brought dry and sunny weather, and several options to choose from: up-channel and up the Willamette 27 miles to Willamette Park in Portland; up the Gilbert River 4 miles into the heart of Sauvie Island; up Crane Slough to Crane Lake; or back down channel to Scappoose Bay, the Lewis River, or either north or south on the Columbia. I chose none of these, and instead decided to call it quits.
Writing now in the middle of winter, I should have kept going. I could have gone to Portland, met my family for lunch, and then headed back down the Willamette River to Kelly Point, where it meets the Columbia. From there, the course might be east for Cascade Locks or The Dalles, or perhaps north and west, which would carry me down the Columbia toward the ocean, perhaps to Astoria. But this was nothing grand—just a two-night test run. I hauled out at the Gilbert River boat ramp and called home. My wife soon arrived, and I hoisted ZEPHYR on the top of the car.
The last 48 hours had been magical, and I marveled that I had only spent about 15 minutes of it with my feet on terra firma. I came away with a list of things to add to the boat and to my gear, and a hunger for more voyages.
The only fundamental change I made to the design, aside from some fidgeting and simplification of the deck, was to shorten it from 12′5¼″ to 11′10¾″ so as to come under Oregon’s 12′ registration rule. Chapelle’s drawing notes that the boat “steers with an oar,” and indeed the boat does so nicely. The sculling notch in the raised transom not only served for steering, but also allowed me to learn sculling. Eventually, I did make an easily removed and stowed rudder for ZEPHYR, which I have found to be most handy while running in moderate winds.
ZEPHYR, over-loaded yet managing fine on her launch day at Vancouver Lake, March 15th, 2014. The helmsman is making room in the cockpit for another adult and two kids, but his weight is too far aft. The kids were soon sent forward to lie on the foredeck.
Despite the small size of this boat, I could walk around on it quite comfortably, and I could even stand on the rails at any point or quarter and the sheerline wouldn’t submerge. This was quite the novelty for me, being used to kayaks. The broad, gently rockered flat bottom is perfect for sleeping on. The cockpit is very generously sized, 33″ x 72″, and the daggerboard trunk is forward of this, leaving the space quite open and unencumbered.
Two sticks, two hooks, and seven toggle-snaps are all it takes to set up ZEPHYR’s canvas tent. Wooden toggles keep the door closed.
I was to have 20 more voyages in ZEPHYR that summer—only two more overnighters, though. Friends and family have joined me for day trips, and ZEPHYR ably carried as many as three adults and two kids (lying on the foredeck) at one time. The best times out were with my son, Max, scoping for blackberries along the shore —and we still laugh about keeping “fingers out of the snotter.” This boat has proven to be exactly what I was looking for, and it promises many more voyages in and around the Columbia River.—HG
If you have an interesting story to tell about your travels in a small wooden boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
I have never been ambitious enough to master a vast array of knots. There are plenty of books filled with detailed instructions and photos for scores of complicated hitches and bends, but in practice, there are only a few simple knots that I use regularly aboard my boats. Quick-release tension knots, which can be drawn very tight and released instantly even when under load, are an extremely useful part of my repertoire.
SBM
The common trucker’s hitch (shown loosely tied for clarity) has a slip-knot loop and two half hitches holding the tension.
The tension knots I use are variations of the standard trucker’s hitch, which is used to secure loads on trucks or roof racks. Begin by forming a loop in the standing part of a line—a figure 8 on a bight works well. The trucker’s hitch often uses a slip knot that can be undone when it’s no longer needed, but for boat rigging, a permanent yet easily untied loop is better because for a line that has a single purpose you’ll want the loop to remain in the same place.
SBM
A figure-8 on a bight forms an inline loop for repeated use.
SBM
Pulling the bitter end will create a lot of tension, with the loop of the slip knot and the anchor point (here, a screw eye at right). Pinching the working end of the line where it wraps around the slip knot will hold the tension as the knot is being completed.
Next, take the working end of the line around an anchor point and bring it back to the loop. Pulling back on the working end after passing it through the loop creates a mechanical advantage that allows the line to be drawn very tight.
SBM
The tensioning knot is finished off with a slipped half hitch, snugged up with a pull into the figure-8 loop.
When you have the line as taut as you want it, pinch the working end of the line tightly where it wraps around the loop. With your other hand finish the knot with a slipped half hitch—a single half hitch with a bight rather than the tail of the line pulled through. Snug the hitch up by pulling the bight directly back toward the loop. If you pull in any other direction, you will lose some of the tension in the line.
SBM
The finished quick-release tension knot with a figure-8 on a bight and a slipped half hitch
This quick-release finish is especially useful on a small boat when you often have to act quickly, with one hand, or with cold fingers. The slipped half hitch can be released, even under extreme tension, simply by tugging the tail end of the line, which pulls the bight back through.
Tom Pamperin
Three quick-release tension knots secure the mast and boom.
Variations on this system can be used to join two separate lines or the ends of a single line to create a very reliable high-tension attachment point. The downhaul for my balance lug rig is tied with a quick-release tension knot; the absence of blocks and fittings keeps things cheap and quiet, and tension is easy to achieve and adjust. I also use a tension knot as the parrel for the boom of my lugsail, allowing me to adjust the fore-and-aft position of the boom. A line tied off with a tension knot secures the mast in the partner, taking the place of a conventional mast gate.
SBM
You can guard against the slipped half hitch from shaking out by slipping a second bight into the first and pulling it tight. A pull on the bitter end will still release the hitch.
Tension knots tied with short lengths of line attached to the boat’s hanging knees hold the oars tightly under the side decks, where they’re out of the way but ready for instant access when needed. The ridge line I use to hang a tarp for a boat tent for sleeping aboard runs from the rudderhead around the mast, then back to a loop to finish with a tension knot. I also use quick-release tension knots on the lines holding the edges of the tarp to the side decks. For securing loose gear or bags, tension knots are often a better solution than bungee cords, which can’t be custom fit and can be difficult to secure under tension. In spite of their plastic-coated hooks, they can mar varnish and dent soft wood.
There are lots of other jobs aboard the boat and in camp that can be performed well with a bit of line, and almost nothing that can’t be secured and easily released with simple quick-release tension knots. Use the money you save on blocks and fittings to extend your cruising season instead.
Note: The slip-knot loop of the trucker’s does come in handy when you use a line for a variety of purposes. The slip knot is easily undone with a tug on the line, but there is a a right way and a wrong way to tie it.
SBM
The wrong way to tie the slip knot for a trucker’s hitch. The bight must not be on the standing side (left here) of the loop. When trucker’s hitch is tensioned, the bight will shrink back into the loop.
SBM
The proper way to tie the slip knot is with the loop on the standing part of the line and the bight on the working side. Tied this way, the it will not collapse under tension in the trucker’s hitch.
You can share your tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Monthly readers by sending us an email.
Mosquitoes, gnats and flies can be a real nuisance when camping in coastal areas. Nemo has developed a versatile shelter called the Bugout that combines the protection of a waterproof tarp with a generously sized screened enclosure. I had a chance to test it in an area where the mosquitoes are notoriously bad—the Florida Everglades.
The Bugout is very well made and combines a bug enclosure with a rain tarp/sunshade. A tarp is always handy to have in camp for shelter from sun and rain, and if the bugs aren’t biting the netting can be rolled up, secured with loop-and-toggle fittings, and stowed out of the way. When it gets buggy, the netting can be released, staked down, and zippered shut, creating a bug-proof enclosure. The netting also helps as a wind and rain break, and it is treated with a durable water repellent (DWR) so it sheds water, making packing up easier.
Photographs by the author
The Bugout with the screen walls rolled up. The trim sewn to the edge of the tarp roof curls upward to form gutters that direct rain to the low corners.
The Bugout comes in two sizes: the 9′x9′ that I tried, and a 12′x12′. Both have 6′ headroom, and the 9′x9′ weighs about 5 pounds. The smaller shelter has room for setting up a table and chairs so on a buggy shore you don’t have to be tent-bound, swathed in a head net or slathered with DEET. The reinforced tie-downs and beefy grommets are really tough and should hold up very well with regular use. The zippered corner entries provide quick entry and minimize the number of bugs that get in with you. Another very useful feature is that the Bugout works flawlessly with my hammock. The three sliders on each zipper allow the Bugout to be set up over the hammock as a rain fly and add a bug-proof porch to my setup. No more letting hundreds of mosquitoes into my hammock before I can jump in and zip it up!
Setup is quick and easy, provided there are trees or other uprights to string it to. It’s a little more difficult without trees, but you can use paddles, oars, spars, or Nemo’s optional tarp poles and some additional stakes and cords. The Bugout includes a set of stakes for anchoring the netting, but they won’t hold in sand. For loose ground you’ll need sandbags as weights or sticks buried as deadmen.
Here in South Florida, the mosquitoes can make an outing downright miserable. With the Bugout set up over my campsite I could enjoy being outdoors rather curse and swat at the bugs that would have otherwise swarmed around me while I was cooking breakfast and trying to make that early morning cup of coffee.
Rain fly, sunshade, windbreaker, dew preventer, and bug net—the Nemo Bugout is truly multifunctional and has made a great addition to my kit. If your next camp-cruising adventure is somewhere hot, wet and buggy, the Bugout is a must-have.
A native Floridian, Thomas Head grew up working on his father’s home-built stone crab boat in the small coastal town of Inglis. He has 19 years of service in the U.S. Navy. His account of racing in the Everglades Challenge appeared in our November 2014 issue.
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.
Protecting your eyes is one of the first rules of working with machinery. Tools that operate at high speeds—table saws, routers, drill presses, sanders, etc.—throw particles far enough and fast enough to cause serious injuries to your eyes. They can also create a lot of dust that may be only an irritant to your eyes but harmful to your lungs. When I’m working with power tools I wear a dust mask and safety glasses, but the two don’t work well together. A lot of warm, moist air flows up from the mask and fogs the safety glasses. I can’t work safely or accurately with my vision obscured, so I have to stop and wipe the fog away. I occasionally catch myself peeping under the safety glasses—a dangerous practice.
Safety glasses are fairly effective in blocking particles propelled directly at the eyes, but I’ve had bits of wood ricochet off my cheeks into my eyes. Routers can unleash a torrent of wood dust that swirls around safety glasses and into my eyes. Afterwards I dab mud out of the corners of my eyes.
DeWalt’s Concealer looks like ski goggles rather than safety glasses. The soft rubber seal provides a comfortable fit on my face. I haven’t yet taken a good whack to my face while wearing the Concealer, but the soft, cushioned frame is easily going to be much less painful than rigid safety glasses have been when that has happened to me in the past. The strap keeps the Concealer in place—it won’t slip down a sweaty nose—and doesn’t interfere with the pads of my hearing-protection earmuffs.
Dog-leg slots on the top and bottom of the goggles provide ventilation without giving a particles a direct path to the eyes. The wrap-around lens doesn’t restrict vision at all: The perimeter of the goggles is at the limits of my peripheral vision.
photos by the author
I need reading glasses for close work so I modified a pair to fit inside the Concealer goggles.
I wear reading glasses for close work and have to wear goggles over them but the glasses frame makes contact with the lens of the goggles and makes the fit loose over my cheeks. One pair of aviator-style reading glasses had one temple broken off, so I snapped the other temple off and bent the bridge a bit to match the curve of the Concealer’s lens. They’re now a perfect fit and a semi-permanent fixture in the goggles.
The Concealer caries the mark “Z87+,” indicating the lens meets U.S. government occupational standards for impact resistance, both high-mass (a pointed 1.1-lb projectile dropped 50”) and high-velocity (a ¼” steel ball traveling at 102 miles per hour) impacts without fracture.
I’ve had some surgery on my eyes in the past year, and I’m now much more aware that I can’t take my vision for granted. It’s a relief now to be able to protect my eyes consistently without being in a constant fight against fog.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly.
The Concealer by DeWalt sells for around $10 at numerous online and retail outlets.
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.
Shari Rutz and her granddaughter take a maiden voyage on the Ompompanoosuc River near Norwich, Vermont.
A bit of keeping up with the Joneses led Lorenz Rutz to build PEARL, a 12′ Wee Rob canoe designed by Iain Oughtred. His wife Shari enjoyed kayaking but struggled with her 60-lb plastic kayak. Lorenz would help her load the boat on their truck’s canopy roof rack, but she would return with it slid in on the truck bed. Shari paddles with a petite woman who arrived at one of their outings with a new 30-lb composite kayak. When Lorenz heard about that, “the gauntlet was down” and he started looking for a winter project: a small paddle craft that was “light, small, and classy.”
Lorenz Rutz
The second strake goes on with the aid of dozens of fixed plywood clamps and wedges.
With light weight a priority, Lorenz found himself looking at undecked double-paddle canoes. In Oughtred’s Clinker Plywood Boatbuilding Manual he found listed among the designs the Wee Rob, a double-paddle canoe in the tradition of John MacGregor’s Rob Roy canoes. The Wee Robs he saw pictured on the web appealed to him and he ordered plans from The WoodenBoat Store.
The Wee Rob requires only two sheets of 4mm marine plywood and a few bits of lumber. Lorenz, on good terms with the folks at his local lumberyard, was allowed to sift through stacks of SPF (spruce-pine-fir) dimensional stock. Much of this grade of lumber is Canadian-grown spruce, and there are occasionally pieces with close, straight grain and nearly free of knots. “For the cost—cheap—I could well afford to rip out the best bits and save the knotty stuff for other uses.”
Lorenz Rutz
Spruce structural members keep the canoe’s weight to a minimum.
The plans include a set of full-sized templates for the molds and stems, so Lorenz could skip lofting. He found Oughtred’s book a valuable companion to the instructions included with the plans. To assure that he didn’t make mistakes on the good plywood, he used cheap 3mm plywood to create patterns for the planks. At the finishing stage of construction, all of the wood was sealed with a coat of epoxy prior to varnish and paint.
Charlotte Rutz
The Wee Rob plans include a decked version but Lorenz (left) was looking for a light pond boat, and decking would have added significant weight, so he built PEARL as an open boat.
Lorenz Rutz
A bit of custom outfitting—footbraces and a padded backrest—give the canoe a kayak-like fit and feel. Foam pipe insulation protects the varnished gunwales and offers comfortable arm rests.
PEARL was launched last summer on a beaver pond near the Rutzes’ home in Strafford, Vermont. As kayakers, they found the absence of decks took some getting used to. To get a more secure and familiar fit, Lorenz added foot braces, a molded seat, and a broad, padded backrest. “Once these were in place the boat felt much better to us.” While they’ll continue to use their kayaks for exposed waterways, the canoe is well suited to tranquil exploration of the many ponds nearby. At 30 lbs it is much easier for Shari to manage by herself, and she reports that PEARL turns heads wherever she takes to the water.
Have you recently launched a boat? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats Monthly readers.
Addendum: Lorenz provided us with some photographs of his well appointed shop. In response to the comment below by reader Mark Steffens, two photographs are posted here.
The MerryMac catboat tends to make the blood hum with a sense of adventure and challenge. Its owners claim that it has always been so since the first of about 200 MerryMacs sprouted wings on the banks of New Hampshire’s Great Bay back in the early 1950s. And MerryMac lovers will tell you that the sense of adventure and challenge are rooted in both the boat itself and her designer/builder Ned “Mac” McIntosh.
I first met the boat and the man 16 years ago while sailing a little cutter in the lee of Great Guana Cay, Abaco, Bahamas. I was half-lost in a sailor’s daydream, running before a warm, 12-knot southerly when a blue, hard-chined catboat came surfing up behind me and surged past on a plane.
“You wanna race, Cap?” called her skipper, a senior citizen in a long-billed cap, denim shirt and double-patched, paint-stained khakis.
For the next hour McIntosh led me on a spritely chase that had us charging among the moored and anchored cruising boats in the settlement harbor. Back then he was a mere 82 years old. Now he’s 98, and he and his MerryMac are still actively sailing in the waters off his winter base, a simple cottage called Termite Terrace that he shares with his wife Terry on Guana Cay.
Nate Piper
The simple rig is well suited to first-time sailors.
The origins of this swift little cat-rigged sharpie started in New Hampshire in the barn/boatshop of the farmhouse that McIntosh has called home since his birth there. During World War II he was in Panama building and repairing wooden boats for the U.S. government and later did a stint as captain on a fishing boat working between the Galapagos and Puerto Rico. Once back in New England, he began building cruising yachts with his older brother Bud on the banks of the Piscataqua River.
During his years in Panama, McIntosh had made friends with boatbuilder and designer Clark Mills, the creator of the Optimist pram. In Panama the two men built their own small sloops to race after work. It was the simplicity of those boats and the fun of the evening competition that came to mind when McIntosh conceived a boat for dinghy adventuring and racing in Great Bay.
Terry Picard
With its 90-sq-ft sail the MerryMac can make way in a whisper of a breeze.
“I launched the first MerryMac on Thanksgiving day,” he recalls. “It was 1953. I was 37 years old and had been building boats and sailing them for 27 of them. When you sail many different boats, you become quite a critic. You know what works and what doesn’t, not only performance-wise, but other issues as well. Is it easy to build? Is it strong? Is it versatile? Is it fast? Is it fun? Can I repair it easily? Can I sell enough to make a living? What do folks want in a boat? What can they afford? What’s the best shallow-water design?”
He says that in the early 1950s family life was returning to normal following WW II. “People weren’t rich, but they sure had a lot more money to spend than they had had for the previous 25 years, and they wanted fun family activities. Sailing seemed a smart choice here in the seacoast of New Hampshire. I was happy with the performance of MerryMac number 1 and was encouraged when my friend Phil wanted me to build number 2 so we could race.”
The two-boat fleet gained momentum when a friend’s cocktail party generated orders for six more MerryMacs. Soon there were more and more orders, and “McIntosh Custom Boats” was born. By 1955 MerryMac sailors had formed the Great Bay Yacht Club, and held races every Sunday. Meetings at each other’s homes provided the sailing instruction and social atmosphere for the growing membership. The club became a place where sailors could not only race but also pack a picnic lunch, load the family in their MerryMacs, and explore the wooded coves and islands of Great Bay.
Nate Piper
Mahogany stringers set under the plywood frames stiffen the bottom panels.
With the MerryMac McIntosh gave the New Hampshire sailing community a basic sailboat at a price of $449. For safety he designed his boat with a broad beam, high topsides and decks. For ease of building his mind turned to a hard-chined, shallow-V, sharpie hull with no skeg. To keep the boat simple to sail, light, and inexpensive, he decided on a single triangular sail and plywood construction.
The MerryMac, simple enough for beginners but with enough performance thrills for dinghy racers, caught on with local sailors and by the mid-1960s McIntosh had built 200 copies. He also made the mold for a fiberglass version that was locally produced in small numbers. Planked and decked with thin plywood, the wooden MerryMacs were intended to have a limited life span. But after 50 years many of the boats built in the 1950s and 60s are still sailing and racing in New Hampshire’s Great Bay and far beyond. Maine is home to many and the West Coast has its share. One boat has been preserved in the Woodman Institute Museum in Dover, New Hampshire.
The Merry Mac is 13′6″ long and has a 5′ beam and a 6″ draft. McIntosh designed the boat to be built with ¼″ plywood for the sides, deck, floorboards, and bottom. He used 5/8″ marine fir plywood for sawn frames and transom. The keel and chines are mahogany. The stem is oak. Like most dinghies, the Merry Mac is assembled upside down on a building form then rolled upright for finishing. The first 50 masts were wood; subsequent masts have been aluminum.
“The genius and simplicity of this boat just blows me away,” say Nate Piper of New Hampshire’s Piper Boatworks. “It has fewer moving parts than a Sunfish, but is safer, carries more people, and is fast.”
Piper built his own MerryMac in the spring of 2014, and his enthusiasm for the design prompted his boatshop to acquire the exclusive rights to build new MerryMacs in both wood and fiberglass. Two of the things he loves about the boat are the rudder that can kick up for easy beaching and a roller-reefing boom that makes fast reefing easy from anywhere in the cockpit. Another thing that excites Piper about this boat is its carrying capacity. Four adults can stretch out on the floorboards with ease.
“What’s the point of building a boat that you can’t sleep in?” asks McIntosh with a twinkle in his eyes. He’s quick to point out that when his daughter was a child, she and her parents camp-cruised their Merry Mac down the west coast of Florida for weeks.
Having watched McIntosh and his wife Terry sail their Merry Mac with safety and aplomb in stiff winter trade winds at Guana Cay, I can testify to the boat’s ability to stand up to heavy air and choppy seas. Appropriately reefed for such conditions, the MerryMac can blast to windward in a blow without excessive pounding or a heavy weather helm. She digs in her leeward chine and screams on a reach. Off the wind before a following sea, she planes with ease when her crew shifts their weight aft.
Nate Piper
While the MerryMac can be a lively racer in a brisk breeze, in milder conditions it’s well suited to family outings.
Until recently I was less certain of the MerryMac’s ability in light air so I was glad for breezes in the 2- to 7-knot range when I joined Nate Piper and McIntosh for a sail in Piper’s MerryMac on Great Bay. With so little wind at the launch ramp that I could see the mirror image of the boat reflected without a ripple on the water, the cat-rigged sharpie gained way as soon as we dropped the centerboard and hoisted the sail. While McIntosh spun stories about cruising the Caribbean in his Atkin cutter more than a half century ago, the MerryMac worked her way offshore steadily in air that seemed no more than a whisper. But when I put the helm down, she tacked in her own length.
We found a stronger breeze in the middle of the bay so I tried some jibes. Once again the catboat responded with alacrity and grace, but no drama. Controlling the sheet and the boom during the jibes was as easy as I’ve ever experienced in decades of sailing small boats. When the wind finally died on us altogether, a few strokes from a paddle set us on course to ghost back to the launching ramp. It was during this ghosting that I noticed a wooden pad on the port side of the transom.
“You can put an outboard on this?” I asked.
“I have a little electric one on my boat and a battery I charge with a solar panel,” said McIntosh. He flashed me that twinkle in his eye again. It was the look of a man who had designed, built and outfitted his vessel for every possibility.
Suddenly, I began picturing days of camp-cruising and sailing around Great Bay in this nimble little cat with my wife and sons. Then again maybe I would get a MerryMac of my own and head for the waters off Great Guana Cay for a little match racing with a legend called “Mac.”
Randy Peffer is a frequent contributor to WoodenBoat, the captain of the research schooner SARAH ABBOT and a relentless racer and gunkholer in all manner of small craft from canoes to catboats.
MerryMac Particulars
[table]
Length/13′6″
Beam/5′
Draft/6″
Sail Area/90 sq ft
[/table]
Piper Boatworks in coastal New Hampshire is the authorized builder in wood and fiberglass for MerryMacs. For pricing and information contact Piper Boatworks, P.O. Box 879, Rye, NH 03870, 603-686-2232, [email protected].
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One day in the early 1990s, a local contractor visited my boatbuilding shop in Marblehead, Massachusetts, telling me he’d been hired to convert an old boatshop into a playhouse. “The museums and antique dealers have been through it,” he said; “take anything you want or itʼs going to the dump.” The shop had been run by Samuel Brown, an MIT-trained naval architect, and his brother Bill, a boatbuilder.
The building was mostly empty but there were two steamboxes and a wood-fired stove for their boiler. I took those. In the long back room there was a planking bench with odd parts scattered around. Above the bench, tucked under the eave, the blackened end of a tight roll of paper caught my eye. I took the roll down, dusted it off, and put it in the truck. I loaded everything else that looked useful and drove off. That evening, I unrolled my find.
The roll was three sheets of drafting linen with edges black and ragged from years of dust and smoke. Pencil-drawn designs were inscribed “Lines Plan, Construction Plan, and Sail Plan,” for “Racing Dory designed for Swampscott Club,” signed C. D. Mower, each with their separate dates, 16 and 18 December, 1898, and March 14, 1899. I knew the Mower name, mostly from R-boats and New Jersey catboats of his design. This plan was old, but beautiful, interesting, and very racy. I had to find out more.
I visited Peter Vermilya, small-craft curator for Mystic Seaport Museum. He retrieved a February 1900 article on the design from The Rudder. The pencil drawings were virtually identical with the inked drawings in the article. Charles Drown Mower was a native of the Boston area, and had worked with Arthur Binney and then B. B. Crowninshield. He had become the design editor for The Rudder in the summer of 1899 and this design was believed to be his first commissioned design. Peter’s first remark on seeing the drawings was “Now you have to build one!”
All photographs courtesy of the author
The lack of decks on the dory helped determine where it fit in among the racing dories of its day.
I later made my way to the Swampscott Club in Swampscott, Massachusetts. There I found pictures of these dories racing and club members who knew their history. They told me that after the first year, these dories were decked over and concluded the plans I’d found were for the “X-Dory.”
Lee Van Gemert, a former national champion in the Indian Class, also saw the drawings and said “Thatʼs where the Indian came from. ” In 1921 people from the Massachusetts Yacht Racing Association had gone to yacht designer John Alden asking for a children’s boat like Mower’s dory. William Chamberlain, a Marblehead boatbuilder, built six boats but the Indian was never really a kid’s boat and at the end of the first summer they were all put up for sale and bought by people from Boston’s South Shore. The Indian then became the largest class in Massachusetts Bay. Sam Crocker, working for Alden, gave the Indian a broad transom and a skeg-hung rudder, but the hull shows its connection to the Mower dory. The Indian carries a big marconi rig and calls for 350 lbs inside ballast.
The Rudder index put together by Mystic Seaport showed another 21′ Mower Dory design from 1911. This turned out to be an update of the 1898 design, this time for Massachusetts Bay. The changes were minimal, with a very slight chine added in the middle of the earlier wide garboard, a rectangular centerboard, and other alterations to make the design easier to build. Matt Murphyʼs book Glass Plates & Wooden Boats incudes Willard Jackson photographs from 1903 and 1907 showing X-Dories decked and rigged with shrouds, and sailing often with four people aboard. I have since found one undated Jackson photograph of an undecked boat sailing off Marblehead.
Suzanne Leahy, a Cape Cod boatbuilder who grew up in Marblehead, saw the drawings and mentioned a similarity to the Beachcomber, William Chamberlain’s 21′ racing dory. In Building Classic Small Craft John Gardner noted that the Beachcomber was a popular racing class until 1913 when a young Sam Brown designed OUTLAW, a similar dory with a flatter sheer and better speed. Sam Brown’s archive is in the collection of the Peabody-Essex Museum in nearby Salem, Massachusetts. Curator Dan Fenimore found the plans for OUTLAW among Brown’s papers. OUTLAW looked a lot more like the Mower than a Chamberlain suggesting that Sam Brown had these very Mower drawings when he designed OUTLAW. It’s likely he had rolled the drawings, then tucked them over the planking bench where they sat for 77 years.
The garboards are built up of three planks joined with flush dory bevels and rivets. The seams between them are visible here with one running out at the transom and the other at the garboard’s upper edge. To the far left is one of the butt blocks on the broad strake.
Building the Mower dory took place over a couple of years. I set up a long shrinkwrap-covered wigwam with bent saplings and in it built the hull during one winter. I lofted the boat and then began work with sawn white-oak frame halves joined with rivets, a white-oak stem, and a white-pine transom.
A single 26″ wide white-pine board became the bottom. I cut it to shape with the circular saw set at its maximum angle and still had plenty of planing to do for the bevels that receive the garboards: The shallow deadrise required 6″-wide bevels through the boat’s middle. For the garboards I had a few Atlantic white-cedar boards that had the length but not the width I needed, so I built up each garboard from three planks joined with flush dory laps riveted together. The broad and binder strakes are Maine white cedar, butt-blocked to get the length and shape. Both the port and starboard planks for the sheerstrake were cut from a single 26′-long white pine board. The strakes are dory-lapped with 45-degree bevels on the tops of the plank, rolling bevels on the bottom edges of joining planks, and rivets every 3″. In between the sawn frames are pairs of steam-bent white oak ribs riveted in place.
Raising the mast is made easier by a hinged partner and a ramp to guide the foot of the mast to the step.
The breasthook and quarter knees were cut from hackmatack crooks. The inwales are bent in place and screwed to the sheer strakes. For the two rowing stations, butternut pads on the rails are drilled for tholepins. The butternut thwarts sit on yellow pine risers and are braced with hackmatack knees. I made the centerboard rectangular—like the 1911 update and even more like the Indian. It’s a 17″-wide piece of African hardwood with a ¾″ square brass rod on its leading edge. The centerboard trunk has 2″ x 12″ white oak logs riveted to white oak head ledges secured to the bottom board with hanger bolts. To make it easier to step the mast I used hinged mast partner of an old whaleboat design. The mast step is a 3″ thick chunk of oak with a big knot drilled out.
The white oak rudder has gudgeons that slide down a single long transom-mounted pintle. The top of the pintle gets lashed into a groove set near the transom top.
The flat sheer of the Mower dory distinguishes it from the Beachcomber class that preceded it.
The 21′ mast is solid, rounded out of glued-up 2″ Sitka spruce. The 20′ boom is also Sitka. Every bit of wood got multiple coats of raw linseed oil before and after installation. The interior has boiled linseed oil for a finish, the exterior has Swedish linseed oil paint, the bottom antifouling paint over red lead. I sewed the 27-sq-ft jib and the 175-sq-ft leg o’ mutton main. It was time to put Mowerʼs lost design to the test.
The dory proved herself well sailing in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine. The strongest breeze I’ve encountered, about 15 knots, was off the WoodenBoat waterfront at Brooklin and the dory was well balanced and exciting. I found her remarkably stiff when moving about the boat at rest or keeping her upright in a breeze, and she moves very easily under either sail or oars.
An article in a 1900 issue of The Rudder reported that “the [Swampscott] Club had a fleet of about 10 boats, which were raced throughout the season, and a great deal of sport was had, as the boats turned out very satisfactorily and proved their ability to whip everything in a good breeze…. Their strong point was their ability to go to windward, while their quickness in stays and ability to lug sail were also noticeable points in their behavior.” Over a century later, all this remains true.
Thad Danielson restores, builds, and designs classic wooden boats for sail oar and power. He does business as Thad Danielson Boats in Cummington, Massachusetts.
Mower Dory Particulars
[table]
Length/21′
Beam/6′
[attr style=”font-weight:bold;”]Draft
Board up/7″
Board down/30″
[attr style=”font-weight:bold;”]Sail Area
Main/175 sq ft
Jib/27 sq ft
[/table]
The sail plan, one of the three original drawings, shows signs of its age around the edges.
For copies of the drawings and a table of offsets, contact the author through his web site.
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The morning on Lake Nipigon brought cool air, clear skies, and a few faint wisps of cloud to color the sunrise. I unzipped the tent and crawled out onto this narrow beach on Murchison Island. There was a line of fresh moose tracks between me and the water’s edge, barely 3′ from my front door. So much for thinking of myself as a light sleeper.
Until last night I had been sleeping aboard at anchor. This was the first beach I had seen in 80 miles, and only the second island I’d managed to set foot on. Everywhere else, the lake ran right up against thick forest or steep cliffs, making it almost impossible to get ashore, much less find a place to set up the tent. I’d been confined to a 15′ boat for five days and nights so when I noticed the bright fringe of sand at the head of the bay, I hadn’t hesitated —I just sheeted in to gather speed and ran the boat, a Phoenix III I’d borrowed from my brother, right up onto the beach, eager to step ashore for a while but unambitious enough that “a while” soon changed to “for the night.”
all photographs by the author
Murchison Island’s narrow sand beach offered a rare opportunity to camp ashore. I didn’t have to think twice about stopping here when I saw it—I hadn’t set foot on land in two days.
After setting up the tent on the flattest patch of beach, I unloaded the gear, shoved a couple of plastic fenders under the keel, and rolled the boat up onto the sand as far as I could. It wouldn’t be far enough if the wind backed west, but I’d had southerlies all week. I wandered through the island’s dark interior, a maze of swamps and spruces so dense that I could hardly believe that the moose whose trails I was following had been able to fit through the gaps between trees. At dusk the mosquitoes swept in like the wrath of God and I retreated to the tent.
A head net is essential gear for any Lake Nipigon trip. Mosquitoes weren’t too bad at anchor most nights, but ashore, they were fierce and unrelenting.
Camping ashore makes for a slow start. The sun was already high overhead by the time I’d dragged the boat back down the beach to the water’s edge, reloaded the gear, and shoved off. I had only the vaguest of plans: Head south until I found somewhere to stop for the night, repeat for the next 60 miles over three or four days, and get back to the South Bay boat ramp. The wind was southerly and light enough that rowing would have been faster than sailing, but I reminded myself that if speed were the point I wouldn’t be sailing. I hoisted the sail, sheeted in, and started tacking down Murchison Island’s west side, past a scattering of heavily wooded islands too small for names. I shuffled a couple of boat cushions around and settled in for a long day. I had sailed my brother’s boat before, but this was my first chance to sail it alone. It had seemed like a very good boat with both of us aboard; with me alone, it was nearly perfect.
With summer rains and high water levels drowning the beaches at many of the official crown land campsites, the ability to live comfortably at anchor—or nosed into a reed bed—was a big advantage.
As I rounded Selwynn Island the wind faded away until the boat was barely moving. I packed the seat cushions away and stood up. I didn’t feel like rowing—there had been plenty of rowing already on this trip, whole days of it—so I was happy to discover that, standing on the garboards with the tiller between my knees and the sheet in one hand, it was easy to shift my weight enough to give the sail a good shape and keep it drawing. The boat kept gliding smoothly forward across flat water.
I had been thinking of anchoring somewhere off Shakespeare Island, but it was 20 miles away and the sun was already dropping toward the horizon. There were a few other islands within reach, clustered at Murchison Island’s southwestern edge, but none offered a place to step ashore. About 4 miles past Rodger Island and before the 7-mile crossing to Shakespeare Island there was one last pair of islands, one with an anchor symbol marked on the map. Harbor Island, I decided, would be where I’d spend the night.
Tall cliffs and rocky headlands guard the lake’s southern shores. I kept well offshore to get steady sailing winds.
But the wind kept shifting as evening came on, header after header, and by the time I cleared the southern tip of Rodger Island, the sun was touching the horizon. The wind was growing stronger and my pleasant day was going to end with a cold, wet beat 4 miles dead to windward. I dropped the centerboard all the way, tensioned the outhaul, and sheeted in tight. I was soon hiked out on the side deck, trying to manage the sheet and zip up my rain jacket at the same time. After nearly a week of broad reaching and running, working to windward seemed painfully slow. And cold. The water must have been somewhere around the 50s, and sailing solo there was nobody on the forward thwart to block the blasts of spray.
Southerly winds mean fair weather on Lake Nipigon, and long days of reaching and running. I often set out under oars before the morning breezes set in, and set the anchor as the sun went down.
Soon the wind was strong enough that reefing wouldn’t have been out of the question, but I kept on without it, hoping a longer leading edge to the sail would be an advantage for windward work. The wind was getting stronger, about 20 knots, more than enough to churn up a short, steep chop. I was forced to fall off a few degrees to preserve momentum, and then a few degrees more as the wind kept building. By the time I was closing in on Harbor Island’s northern tip, I was barely making any headway at all, and even that was mostly taking me in the wrong direction.
From the brief glances I could spare for the map, it looked like Harbor Island’s anchorage might have a southern exposure, exactly wrong for these winds. It was hard to be sure—the island was small, and the map was printed at such a low resolution that the smaller features were pixelated and indistinct—but conditions were approaching the point where running off would be my only option anyway.
It’s hard to fall back on Plan B when you’ve barely managed to form a Plan A, but I had little desire to beat down along the southern side of Harbor Island only to enter an unfamiliar and dangerously exposed anchorage on a moonless night. I headed up into the wind and scanned the horizon for better options. The sail swung wildly back and forth in the gusts, snapping the loose sheet around the cockpit while the boat lurched and yawed in the waves. The sun had set more than an hour ago. Whatever I was about to do, I’d be doing in the dark.
Three nights ago I had anchored at Dawson Island. It has a well sheltered bay that I knew I could find, even in the dark. I grabbed the map and made a hasty measurement: two thumbs northwest of Harbor Island, 6 miles from here. Dawson Island’s low silhouette was just visible off the starboard quarter, a broad reach in this wind. Relieved to have discovered a reasonable course of action, I tucked the map away and fell off on a port tack.
Darkness set in so slowly during the rush to Dawson Island that I didn’t realize just how dark it was until a cold wave broke over the boat without warning, leaving me soaked and shivering. A few minutes later another wave crashed over me and I was ankle-deep in 50-degree water. All I could do was keep the boat pointed northwest and hope that the two breaking waves had been anomalies rather than the new normal. It was too dark to see much of anything, so it was difficult to gauge speed, but I must have been doing 6 knots.
All at once there were breakers off the starboard bow. Waves were crashing onto Dawson Island’s southern shore, a dark and looming form that I could barely see. My perception of distance had been distorted by the darkness and I had come in too close. Just as I was about to try to fight my way off, the wind died away as abruptly as if someone had flipped a switch. I jumped forward and dropped the rig, set the oars in the locks, and started rowing. Shore was barely 5 yards off.
It was awkward rowing past the tip of Dawson Island with the big waves on the beam, but soon I was able to turn north, letting them sweep the boat along the 2-mile-wide channel between Kelvin and Dawson Islands. I kept in close to shore, not wanting to miss the entrance to the anchorage. And eventually the anchorage was there. I rowed up into the head of the bay, threw out an anchor, and rigged the boat tent. I’d come more than 30 miles from Murchison Island, most of them dead to windward. Just before crawling into my sleeping bag, I dug out my watch from under the side deck to check the time: 12:47 a.m. I’d spent 15 hours at the tiller and the oars. No wonder I was tired.
At Dawson Island a cold, all-day rain provided a perfect excuse to huddle under the boat tent and read A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Thoreau’s account of one of his own sail-and-oar journeys.
The next day was all gray skies and rain, but at least it kept the mosquitoes away. I huddled under my improvised boat tent, reading and eating whatever didn’t require cooking. Every few hours I’d bail out the boat, and then go back to reading. I have a high tolerance for sloth, but it was a bit much even for me. Toward evening the sun broke through for a moment and two otters scampered across Dawson Island’s tiny beach and into the forest. Cheered by the clearing skies, I leaped up and started rolling up the tent so I could at least row around the bay. A few seconds later the clouds closed in and the rain came pouring down again. I flipped the tent back up and dived beneath it. Back to my book.
When morning finally came around again with clear skies, I didn’t waste time. After rolling up the tent and packing everything away, I rowed out of the bay and straight into a north wind—the first of the entire trip, and strong enough that I hoisted the sail with the first reef tied in. I let it luff while I thought about what to do. Too strong a northerly wasn’t ideal for the long hop to Shakespeare Island, and it was still early, which meant the wind would get even stronger as the day went on. With 15 miles of open water and a 40-mile fetch, conditions would only get worse from here. Then again, it might be the only northerly I was going to get, and on one long broad reach I could easily manage 5 or 6 knots; it would take less than four hours to reach Shakespeare, where I could hide behind the tall bluffs at Kings Head.
Besides, I had a boat I was confident in. If I did capsize, my drysuit that would protect me from the cold, and I was confident I could recover quickly. Or, before the worst could happen, I’d drop the rig and run off under oars. The Anderson Islands were about halfway through the crossing, and I could duck into the little cove and a campsite on the middle island’s south side where I could wait it out.
No, it might get a little uncomfortable out there, but I didn’t think it was blatantly stupid to set out. I made sure everything was lashed down or tied in and set out on a port tack, steering toward Kings Head, just visible on the horizon. The lake was already all whitecaps and gusts, but the boat surged ahead smoothly over the waves, getting closer to a safe harbor every moment.
Strong northerly winds and a 40-mile fetch called for caution at the start of the long run to Shakespeare Island. I started out with a single reef tied in, but by the time I sailed into the lee of the Kings Head bluffs ten miles later, I was kicking myself for not double-reefing instead.
Several hours later, as I neared Kings Head, the waves were rising behind me, their crests looming well over my head. They rose up over the transom, one after another, tumbling ranks of steep 6-footers, but as each wave came up, the boat rose with it. There’d be the merest wiggle of the transom and then I’d be slicing straight down the face of the wave, with no tendency to broach. Finally I rounded the corner and cut into the quiet water in the lee of the Kings Head bluff. The long crossing was over. The boat had handled it easily, but it was definitely time to get out of the wind. It was time to release my grip on the tiller, relax, and breathe deeply.
After the long and wild run from Dawson Island, a tiny unnamed river provided a quiet rowing route through the interior of Shakespeare Island.
The rest of the day was perfect sailing, reaching and running down the lee of Shakespeare Island with plenty of wind and nearly flat water. Out on the open lake the waves tumbled along in a growling rush of whitecaps, but all that was behind me. I stopped for lunch at the mouth of one of Shakespeare Island’s tiny rivers, and rowed upstream until it got too narrow for oars before turning around and drifting back. Ten miles farther on I found a secluded anchorage in a cluster of unnamed islands. I dropped the sail, set an anchor, and settled in for my last night the lake. A couple of beavers swam around the boat, eyeing me, and a loon’s calls echoed across the water. I’d seen only one boat in the eight days I’d been out, but the beavers and the loon were all the company I needed.
A hidden anchorage just east of Shakespeare Island provided a peaceful setting for a final night aboard.
With the last of my evening chores done, I leaned back on the thwart and watched the faint breeze write ripples across the bay. By early afternoon tomorrow I’d be back at South Bay, get the boat onto the trailer, and hit the road, but for now I’d watch the world grow slowly darker, the light fading away to blackness until the sky was covered in a dense speckling of stars, with the bright belt of the Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon. A shooting star streaked across the sky above me, and, a few minutes later, two more in quick succession. The sudden slap of a beaver’s tail broke the stillness. Reluctant to miss whatever might be coming next, I rigged the tent and zipped myself into my sleeping bag.
Ross Lillistone’s Phoenix III is just over 15′ long, with a beam of 4′ 6″. When I reviewed it for Small Boats 2013, I wrote that I couldn’t see much that would improve it, and my opinion hasn’t changed. It can take a 76-sq-ft balance lugsail or a 104-sq-ft spritsail sloop rig on an unstayed mast or a Bermuda sloop rig with a taller stayed mast. For cruising, I’d argue that the balance lug is the best choice: It’s easy to reef when things breeze up. All spars for the lug and spritsail sloop fit inside the boat for trailering, and these rigs take only minutes to set up. A non-stretch halyard and downhaul are essential for good performance, but few expensive fittings are necessary. My brother’s boat uses simple lashings wherever possible, a method I’ve come to appreciate for its simplicity and economy.
The Phoenix III is big enough for two to sleep aboard comfortably, using a platform rigged from the side benches and a couple of extra planks. There’s plenty of storage space under the thwarts and in the sealed buoyancy chambers. Once unloaded, it’s not too heavy for a solo sailor to roll up onto a beach.
The fine entry slices cleanly through the waves, while the wide outwales knock down much of the spray and make excellent handholds for moving the boat. Best of all, this is a boat that simply does not want to capsize: The hull shape makes it round up when pushed too hard, giving you plenty of time to react. If you do manage to knock it down (in my capsize tests it took a concerted effort by a couple of 200-pounders just to dip the lee rail), the wooden spars keep it from turtling. A tug on the centerboard, a few minutes of bailing, and you’re on your way.
The excellent plans, building notes, and glued lapstrake construction make the boat suitable for a motivated first-time builder. If glued lap seems intimidating, the First Mate design is essentially the same boat in stitch-and-glue. Study plans, photos, and information are available at Ross Lillistone Wooden Boats. See WoodenBoat issues 236, 237, and 238 for the designer’s three-part article on building the Phoenix III.—TP
About Lake Nipigon
At 60 miles long, and 40 miles wide, Lake Nipigon has more than enough to keep a sail-and-oar cruiser happy: wide stretches of open water, hundreds of uninhabited islands, and an almost complete absence of roads and development.
The well-protected South Bay ramp, which allows camping, is probably the most convenient launching point. The Forgan Lake access point at the Nipigon River’s Pine Portage Dam is a few miles closer, but camping is prohibited. Both ramps are public access, with no fees. There are private ramps along the eastern shore near the town of Beardmore, and at Kings Landing.
The South Bay boat ramp is one of the busiest launching sites on Lake Nipigon. Of course, in northern Ontario, “busy” is a relative term.
There are no charts available, but Chaltrek in Thunder Bay offers the Lake Nipigon Signature Site map, which covers the entire lake. Although it doesn’t show water depths, contour lines, latitude and longitude, or even a compass rose and declination, the map is probably accurate enough for most small boat cruisers. Despite its failings, in fact, it’s almost essential, if only because it marks boat ramps, access roads, and the dozens of official Crown Land campsites that are scattered around the lake’s many islands. The map also explains seasonal camping closures from March to August to protect nesting birds and calving caribou (yes, caribou—this isn’t the Arctic, but it’s still the North). A set of topographical maps covering the area are also be useful.
Nipigon is a big lake, with long crossings between islands, dangerously cold water, and little chance of outside assistance; visitors should be well prepared and self-reliant. They should also be ready to sleep aboard. Not only does anchoring out eliminate the need for non-Canadians to purchase an expensive Crown Land camping permit ($10 per person per night, available at the Pigeon River Border Crossing between Minnesota and Ontario, or wherever Canadian fishing licenses are sold), but it reduces exposure to the aggressive mosquito population (bring a head net) and discourages any black bears out looking for an easy meal. There are plenty of shallow protected coves; I never needed more than 20’ feet of anchor line.
Some campsites are well maintained; others are not (check Paddling Light for brief descriptions of selected campsites). Thick brush can make setting up a tent, or even simply stepping ashore, very difficult. And Nipigon is bear country so food needs to be secured accordingly. At many campsites there may be no place to beach a boat, particularly in periods of high water, but with no tides to worry about, it’s often possible to anchor from the stern in knee-deep water with a bow line tied to shore.
Bring everything you need. The town of Nipigon, thirty miles from the South Bay ramp, has just a few basic amenities: gas station, convenience store, commercial campgrounds, and a Subway. The nearest bigger towns are Thunder Bay, 100 miles west, and White River, 200 miles east.—TP
If you have an interesting story to tell about your travels in a small wooden boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
With a small wide-mouth thermos, water boiled in the morning will have a hot cooked meal for you for lunch or dinner.
When I’m out cruising I’m generally too lazy to do anything fancy to feed myself. I rarely bothered with hot meals at all. When I did fire up my cruising cook set, a single-burner backpacking stove, the lack of an effective low setting made real cooking impossible anyway. Boiling water, yes. Simmering, no. Then I discovered thermos cooking. It’s so simple that I now regularly cook hot meals when I’m cruising.
To try it you’ll need a wide-mouth insulated food jar or vacuum bottle; Thermos, Stanley, and Hydroflask offer good choices. Get one that is lined with steel rather than glass—steel retains heat better. A 16-oz thermos will cook a large entrée for one person. For bigger meals, you’ll need a larger bottle, or even more than one.
Boiling-hot water does the cooking; a pot and a compact stove or a small campfire will do the job. Thermos cooking uses very little fuel—a single 8.5-oz pressurized propane/isobutene fuel canister provided 18 days of hot meals on my last solo cruise.
Pre-packaged meals from the supermarket like pasta and rice-based dishes work well, as do bulk grains or dry soup mixes—anything prepared by boiling in water. Oatmeal, steel-cut oats, couscous, and quinoa are standard fare on my boat because they’re cheap, wholesome, and keep well. By themselves, bulk grains don’t have much flavor, so you’ll want to carry spices and other ingredients to make them more interesting. There are plenty of recipes for thermos cooking on the web. A funnel with a wide stem comes in handy when pouring the dry mix into the thermos. You’ll lose less heat and avoid getting bits of food in your bilge or scattered around your campsite.
Preheat your thermos by filling it with boiling water, then seal it up and set it aside. This step is important—your thermos should be hot before you begin cooking. While your thermos is preheating, prepare your dry ingredients so you’ll be able to add them quickly to minimize heat loss. Check your recipe to see how much water to add. Start your stove again and boil that amount—this is the water your food will actually cook in.
Once the cooking water is boiling, open your thermos and pour out the water you used for preheating. This water will still be fairly hot; I often use it for a cup of tea or hot chocolate. Quickly add the dry ingredients and the boiling water, and reseal your thermos.
Gently roll your thermos around to mix the ingredients, then lay it on its side: Your meal will heat more evenly on the horizontal. Set it aside to cook. In cooler weather, wrap your thermos in a towel or space blanket for extra insulation. If you’re especially ambitious, give it an occasional roll.
Three to eight hours later—depending on what you’re cooking—you’ll have a hot, fully cooked lunch or dinner waiting. Not sure your rice or pasta is done? Give your thermos a shake. If you don’t hear water sloshing around, it’s ready. If you’re still not sure, go ahead and check: A quick look or two won’t do any harm. And don’t worry about overcooking—once your meal is ready, you can leave it in the thermos all day or night. It’ll still be warm and ready to eat when you get to it.
With thermos cooking, it’s easy to wake up to a hot breakfast—it’s about the only way I get breakfast in bed—or sit down to a hot supper immediately after tossing out an anchor for the night, with no need to dig through your gear to find your stove and supplies. I especially appreciate a ready-to-eat hot meal for those late-night arrivals.
The Hydrus fabric has a water-repellant finish and is laminated around a waterproof and breathable membrane. (Shoe removed to show entire sock.)
I have been a kayak guide for 15 years and have always hated getting my feet wet. My home waters of Puget Sound are a chilly 45 to 50 degrees year-round, so if my little piggies get wet, they get cold. I love my kayak more than I love dry feet so you won’t catch me getting aboard my kayak while it’s high and dry then grinding my way into the water. I get aboard when my kayak is afloat, and if I’m not wearing my drysuit with built-in waterproof socks my feet will get wet. I’m often standing in water for long, chilly minutes while launching and landing clients.
I’ve struggled to find workable footwear. I’ve tried neoprene boots and neoprene socks, always hoping that the manufacturer’s claims of waterproofness will prove true, but each time my feet get soggy. This autumn I tried waterproof knee-high rubber boots. They keep my feet dry but they’re not flexible enough to work well in the cockpit and they aren’t safe in the case of a capsize.
When I heard about Kokotat’s Launch Socks I was pretty excited. The first time I tried them, I waded into the water, got aboard my kayak and my feet were still dry! It was a cold day paddling in the wind and rain, but my feet stayed happily warm.
The height of these socks—18″ from heel to top—is perfect for me. I have short legs for my 5′6″ height so the socks reach just above my knees, which allows me to launch easily from water more than deep enough to keep kayaks off the rocks. The toggles and draw cords at the top allows me to tighten them down to any size leg and keep the socks pulled up high. The Launch Socks are perfectly waterproof. I filled them with water one evening and laid them out on newspaper. In the morning the paper was still completely dry. The Hydrus three-layer waterproof, breathable material and taped seams had worked their impressive magic.
To avoid wear and tear, the Launch Socks require footwear to be worn over them but they’re just a thin layer of material (think lightweight rain jacket) and can easily slide into boots, shoes, or sandals and leave room for thick socks underneath to keep feet warm. The only itty-bitty drawback with the Launch Socks is that they’re baggy, so they don’t go with my super-stylish zip-leg quick-dry pants.
I’m more into function than fashion, and the Launch Socks are the most functional and versatile thing I’ve found for beach-launching footwear. I highly recommend them.
Spring Courtright has been sea kayaking for over 15 years, leading and assisting day trips and multi-day trips in Washington and British Columbia. She has taught sea kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding, canoeing, backpacking, through the Olympic Outdoor Center, Outward Bound, Naturalists at Large, YMCA Earth Service Corps and Colorado Mountain College.
There’s a little balancing act I have to do when hauling my boat up on its trailer. After I draw the boat in by its painter, I tiptoe down the trailer tongue pulling the winch cable out as I go, clip the cable’s snaphook into the bow eye, and walk the tongue back to the car. I haven’t fallen off yet but my number’s bound to come up. As I crank the boat forward with the winch the cable accumulates on the drum, effectively increasing its diameter and I lose mechanical advantage just as the boat’s full weight is coming to rest on the trailer. I often have to pull the cable sideways to distribute it more evenly on the drum; I have to be very careful not to let my hand slip along the cable lest my palm get laid open by a broken wire.
The Sky Winch put an end to this nonsense. It uses the painter so I can lead the boat to the trailer and put the winch to use immediately while I’m still on solid footing at the back of the car. The winch drum is essentially a round jam cleat that grips the rope and then feeds it out after a half turn. The rope doesn’t accumulate and the mechanical advantage doesn’t diminish.
The 1/2″ braided painter takes a half turn around the drum and then feeds out the top of the winch.
Attaching the Sky Winch to my trailer took under half an hour. Its sturdy steel L bracket is secured to the trailer post with two bolts and the angle of the nylon winch body can be adjusted to suit the angle of the post. My trailer has a plywood deck and a pair of carpeted supports to support the bilges of the boat on it, a Caledonia yawl weighing about 400 lbs. (The manufacturer specifies the winch is for “lighter-weight boats under 18′/1,000 lbs.”) The trailer is painted, not galvanized, so I usually back it up to the point where the axle is just above the surface of the water. The boat doesn’t get floated on and off and dragging its full weight across the plywood deck puts a lot of strain on the winch, much more than there would be if the trailer were equipped with rollers. Dragging the boat forward the last 6′ with my cable winch takes two hands on the handle.
The manufacturer notes that the Sky Winch will accommodate line up to ½″ and recommends ½″ solid braid line for best results. I experimented with ⅜″ nylon line, both solid braid and three-strand laid line, and it worked fine until that last 6′ and then slipped. Neither type of ½″ nylon line slipped, though the laid line bunched up leaving the drum. Solid braid ½″ line is indeed the way to go.
The 9″-long Sky Winch handle is a direct drive for the 1½″ drum and its mechanical advantage feels similar to that of my geared cable winch. A trigger on the bottom of the Sky Winch allows the drum to reverse and release its grip on the line. The only problem I have with the Sky Winch was with the spring that keeps the line pressed to the top of the drum. With wet rope the spring can get pulled back rather than letting the rope slide by. With one finger on the trigger and another on the spring, I could get the line to back up and slip free of the drum.
I’ve seen a lot of awkward performances as boats get loaded on trailers and with the Sky Winch I’ll gladly avoid adding my wobbly balance-beam routine to the gymnastics offered at the ramp.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly
The Greenfield Sky Winch is available from numerous retailers at $41 to $60. It carries one-year manufacturer warranty.
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.
WHIO’s gaff rig carries 235 sq ft of sail. When the wind fails, an outboard mounted forward of the transom provides power. The notch in the transom allows the motor to be kicked up.
Ralf Schlothauer first tried to build a boat when he was six years old. He scavenged bits of plywood and lumber from the neighborhood and then enlisted the help of his sandbox playmates. The result was not a boat but a collection of even smaller bits of plywood and lumber. In his 30s his wife gave him a copy of The Backyard Boat Builder by John Welsford. He thumbed through the pages for a few years trying to decide what kind of boat he should build. “I never really fell for any of the dinghies and small sailboats. If I was going to make my lifelong dream come true, I had to build something special, something for my whole growing family would enjoy, something that would be like a mini campervan on the water but not compromise on a classic look.”
With her centerboard retracted, WHIO can anchor safely in waist-deep water.
He was drawn to Welsford’s Penguin, a 21′ pocket cruiser. It sleeps four, two in the roomy V-berth forward and two berths that extend from the main cabin aft under the cockpit seats. The galley, large enough for a two-burner stove and cookware, opens up to the port side of the main cabin. A portable head sits to starboard off to the side of the passageway to the forward berth. The accommodations were all his family required for extended weekend cruises and yet the Penguin would be small enough to be kept at his home and trailered to their New Zealand cruising grounds.
Designer John Welsford (right) pays a visit aboard WHIO. The view looking forward takes in the galley and the portable head tucked in the passageway to the forward berth.
“When I ordered the building plans from John Welsford I had only very basic shop skills, and enough naivety to fool myself about how long it would actually take to finish the project.” Ralf persisted with occasional help from John and the informative mistakes that slow the going on the steep side of the learning curve. As his skills improved he “looked forward more and more to my time in the workshop. It gave me the satisfaction of doing something real to balance a day job that consists mostly of phone calls, emails and meetings.”
WHIO, named for a New Zealand river duck, emerged over the course of seven years and was launched quietly with just family and one boat-wise friend present. “The first time in our own boat was every bit of the magical experience I had hoped for,” says Ralf. “The kids could swim, jump in the water, play Frisbee and later we could all sit in the cockpit or cabin having a well-deserved cuppa tea or even a handmade espresso.”
WHIO’s builder, Ralf Schlothauer, sails Lake Rotoiti, a 9-mile long mountain lake on New Zealand’s North Island.
Ralf made a few modifications as he got to know the boat and WHIO performed beautifully: “The boat feels extremely stable and safe.” With her cutter rig she is very well balanced. “When she heels a slight weather helm emerges as John intended.” WHIO easily reaches 4 to 5 knots and has, so far, peaked at 5.7 knots in about 15 knots of wind. “She is all I had dreamed of and worked for over those long years of building.”
Have you recently launched a boat? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats Monthly readers.
At Dark Harbor, Maine, the legacy of the Rossiter Skiff outshines that of even its most popular fiberglass counterparts. Dark Harbor, located on the mid-coast island of Islesboro, is home to a small summer colony. The family of skiffs that evolved here has been around for decades, and summer residents and local fishermen alike continue to use these boats more than a half-century after the design’s debut. Some of the boats have become family heirlooms.
First built by Willis Rossiter toward the end of World War II, the Rossiter Skiff—originally called the Willis Skiff—was designed around the increasing availability of small and reliable outboard engines. The skiffs’ plywood construction made them relatively light and the extreme rocker built into the bow allowed the boats to run up a beach for some distance before grounding out. Island picnic-goers prize the boats, as their shallow forward sections allow passengers to alight with dry feet while, on a beach of average slope, engines can remain in the water with ample depth for safe operation. Additionally, the hulls are more efficiently driven than similar-sized V-bottomed designs. The hard-chined hull is easily built and provides enough stability to accommodate whole families.
all photographs by the author
The generous rocker forward will set the bow high on the beach for stepping ashore dry-shod.
The extreme rocker in the bow has an additional benefit: Combined with the boat’s considerable length, it allows these skiffs to be towed rather well at moderate speeds. Instead of ploughing down into the water, as some tenders do, the stem of a Rossiter Skiff lifts clear without the stern squatting; the hull simply planes along nicely.
The Rossiter Skiff has evolved over the years. Willis, after building as many as eight each winter for the better part of 20 years, built his last skiff in the early 1970s. At that time, two basic models were available: a 14-footer and a 16-footer. The 14-footer had the option of a standard or narrow beam, while the 16′ boats were all built with a beam of 5′8″. Since then, a number of builders have created their own renditions of this legendary skiff. One of the more prolific ones was island carpenter Butch McCorrison who expanded the list of offerings to include hulls as short as 9′.
More recently, Pendleton Yacht Yard (PYY), also of Islesboro, has been building Rossiter Skiffs to order. They’ve continually tweaked the design, and today’s hull is a little wider than the original version—largely to accommodate the weight of modern four-stroke engines. Also, the majority of recent builds have been the 16′ version, as this hull is large enough to tow youngsters in a tube or take the whole family on picnic outings.
With its bit set well forward, the skiff maintains much of its maneuverability when towing.
The design is based upon economy of construction, for it takes only four sheets of plywood to build a 16′ hull. Options were and are few. The stem, frames, stringers, keel, and other structural pieces are of white oak, while thwarts have, by habit, been of mahogany. Likewise, hulls have traditionally been built of Douglas-fir marine plywood, though other good plywood options exist. Various species of mahogany plywood might take a finish better than the tried-and-true fir, but island residents—including the crew at PYY—are still partial to fir’s golden glow. Also, as PYY’s project manager Marc Clayton explains, the outer veneer of fir plywood is thicker than that of many of the other options, and this allows for the inevitable wear of frequent beaching.
The sides are of 3/8″ plywood and the bottom of 1/2″. In a nod to economy, the pieces cut away from the bottom panel at the bow are glued to the stern in order to gain the needed width, which is greater than the standard 48″ plywood sheet. Likewise, both sides of the hull are less than 24″ tall, allowing for mirror-image panels to be cut from single sheets. For the sides, a 16′ hull uses two sheets of plywood glued together and essentially ripped in half. Other offcuts from the hull are used to make the partial bulkheads under the thwarts.
PYY builds their hulls around a simple jig, and once the stem and transom are in place and the side panels fastened to them, the boat has a substantial degree of structural integrity. An oak rubrail wraps around the sheer and conceals the top end-grain of the hull’s plywood. This rail is let into both the breasthook and quarter knees. On a completed hull, this rail is largely hidden by gunwale guard.
An oak stringer running the length of the hull at the height of the thwarts provides stiffness. The thwarts are supported by partial bulkheads and significantly strengthen the hulls. Sawn frames run from the bottom stringer to the tops of the hulls. The use of the sawn frames has diminished over time; original hulls had as many as five per side while newer hulls have only one set between the aft thwart and the stern.
While transoms have typically been of solid mahogany, PYY now uses two pieces of 3/4″ plywood glued together for a beefy 1½″ of thickness. Substantial oak stringers run the length of the bottom and provide protection during beaching as well as directional stability when under way or under tow.
The towing bit prevents the center thwart of this skiff from being used for rowing but a set of rowlocks forward is well suited or rowing with cargo or passengers in the stern.
The Rossiter Skiff is a jack-of-all-trades, and as a result, perhaps not a master of any. However, the skiffs are rowable, extremely stable, and easily powered. They do have some downsides: They can pound in a chop and are heavy to move back to the water if left high and dry on the beach. And, being flat-bottomed, they have no bilge in which to conceal small amounts of water. However, deluxe versions have teak gratings in their after portions to keep any nuisance water well away from the operator’s feet.
Under power, with only the operator aboard, a 14-footer’s narrow hull will comfortably cruise at 14 knots with an 8-hp outboard motor. Typically, the 14′ boats use around 10 hp and 16-footers use between 15 hp and 20 hp. The 16′ hulls can easily achieve between 18 and 20 knots with two adults. While under tow a 16-footer is more stable than a 14; even a 14 will tow safely at 15 knots.
A canvas gunwale guard protects the boats tended to by this Rossiter skiff. A set of fenders hung over the rail from the thwart knees provides additional cushioning.
In addition to towing well, the Rossiter Skiff itself makes a great towboat. At PYY, these skiffs are used when hauling and launching engineless craft. Many summer families use their skiffs as tenders to their Dark Harbor 20 racing sailboats, and it is a common sight to see a “20” under tow behind a Rossiter on a windless race day. As the boats are so often used as tenders, canvas gunwale guard is standard on almost all of them, as it has been since Willis built his first skiffs. A couple of skiffs have even been fit with purpose-built towing bitts, allowing great maneuverability when towing heavy craft. The towing bitts have an added benefit: They can be used as the vertical support for a variety of canvas covers.
There is sufficient stability for an adult to easily stand on the rail of a skiff, which inspires much confidence. Although they are prone to the aforementioned pounding and chattering, in a seaway they feel secure and stable.
Islander Linda Sienkiewicz has fond memories of her father hand-hauling lobster traps and taking the family on picnics in their 16′ Rossiter Skiff. She recalls it was one of the first of many boats her family owned, and she clearly remembers it with affection. In fact, almost all islanders have at least one story to tell involving a Rossiter Skiff. These fond memories inspire a certain loyalty, and that, no doubt, is what made this design endure and thrive.
Nakomis Nelson is a sailor, freelance author, and father. His armchair ambitions include sustainable architecture and organic farming. He is an avid backcountry skier and constant seeker of the unspoiled world. Nakomis and his wife run a charter yacht company in Midcoast Maine aboard their 58′ wooden motor yacht and live at the dead end of dirt road on an island off Maine’s coast.
These days, I do my cruising in small, open boats. They’re cheaper to build, easier to haul, quicker to set up, and more exciting to sail than big boats. I’ve learned to accept their limitations, happily for the most part, but there are times, like a third straight day pinned down by high winds and driving rain, when what I really want is a small, cozy cabin. I don’t need anything fancy, just a dry place to lay out a sleeping bag and small stove, but the boat still has to be cheap and simple to build, light enough to trailer easily, and enough of a shoal-draft cruiser to pull up to a beach or anchor in knee-deep water.
For that kind of sailing, John Welsford’s Sweet Pea is well worth a look. The name is an allusion to Swee’Pea, the quick-scooting baby from the Popeye comics and cartoons. Welsford originally drew Sweet Pea as a club racer, but his clients also wanted the boat to be suitable for cruising their sparsely inhabited, relatively sheltered home waters. Welsford describes the result as “sport cruising on a budget,” and that’s exactly what Sweet Pea offers: a fairly fast shallow-water cruiser for those who prefer the comforts of a cabin and a portable toilet to a tent and a trowel. The boat could even be a contender in endurance events and adventure races, where a place for the off-watch crew to rest comfortably out of the weather can offer more of an advantage than pure speed.
all photos courtesy of John Welsford
The hull’s flat center panel will keep the Sweet Pea upright on a falling tide.
Sweet Pea’s multichined hull is built upright, with hull panels defined by stringers over plywood bulkheads erected on a narrow bottom panel—a simple and inexpensive construction scheme that Welsford often uses. Indeed, Sweet Pea may be simpler than most. Sail Oklahoma! boating festival founder Michael Monies, who built the Sweet Pea described in this article, described the process as “way easier than building a Pathfinder,” a similar-sized Welsford design with no cabin in glued lapstrake plywood, and “about the same as a Scamp,” the popular 11′11″ micro-cruiser designed by Welsford for Small Craft Advisormagazine.
The side panels—three per side, including a narrow sheer plank that adds some tumblehome aft—are 9mm plywood, with the main chine just above the waterline. A large steel centerboard provides plenty of lateral plane, while its weight adds some stability. With its plywood hull, outboard motorwell, and raised-deck cabin, Sweet Pea’s aesthetic is relatively modern rather than ultra-traditional. Two rigs are shown: marconi sloop with spinnaker carrying 198 sq ft of sail, and gaff yawl with 180 sq ft. For a cruising boat, I’d choose the yawl for the advantages a mizzen offers. Those more interested in racing might prefer the bigger sloop rig, although Sweet Pea’s light weight, fine entry, and clean run should have her well over hull speed when reaching or running, even with the smaller yawl rig.
When I first saw John and Ellen Miller’s Sweet Pea on the beach at Sail Oklahoma!, it wasn’t immediately obvious how well it fit my idea of a good small cruising boat. That’s because, like most Welsford boats, it seems far bigger than it is. The cockpit could hold six adults for short daysails—I found it luxurious for two or three when we took it out for a long sail—and the raised-deck cabin offers two full-sized bunks and comfortable sitting headroom, even for skipper John Miller, who is 6′3″. Sweet Pea feels like a 20-footer, well into the category of “big boats” for someone like me, more accustomed to cruising in a 15′ dinghy. And yet, she’s only 17′5″ long, including the short bowsprit, and weighs about 1,100 lbs empty—light enough, no doubt, for a motivated crew to manage the mandatory beach launch (sans trailer) at events such as the WaterTribe Everglades Challenge.
Although the Millers haven’t committed to the Everglades Challenge yet, they did take their newly launched Sweet Pea on the Texas 200, a popular five-day adventure cruise along the Gulf coast of Texas. “I’d never really sailed a small boat in the conditions we had down in Texas,” John Miller says. I know from my own Texas 200 experiences that winds above 20 knots are typical, and there are stretches of open water that can be challenging for small boats. But Sweet Pea handled it quite comfortably, even though the Millers had only sailed their new boat for about two hours total before setting out on the race.
The yawl rig carries 180 sq ft of sail and short, manageable spars.
“I never felt out of control or struggling in any way,” Miller reports. “The boat told you what it wanted to do.” As a result, the Millers sailed along in perfect comfort, averaging about 8 mph according to their GPS, and surfing easily at 10 mph. And with the mizzen for balance, they were able to make their Sweet Pea self-steer—an important consideration for an event where 40-mile days, and long stretches at the tiller, are standard fare. “I don’t think we really touched any of the sheets or the helm all the way from Panther Cut to South Pass,” Miller says, describing one 6-mile close reach. They also discovered that the boat offers plenty of room for cruising. “We lived on it for a week,” Miller tells me. “We could probably go for two weeks on that boat with the two of us.” Having spent a full month aboard a 15’ dinghy this summer, I imagined happily spending six or seven weeks aboard a Sweet Pea. With a supply stop or two, I could easily spend an entire summer aboard—and never get trapped ashore in a sagging, dripping tent. Sweet Pea was starting to sound like my kind of boat.
That impression only got stronger when Ellen Miller invited me out on Sweet Pea for a long, windy sail, along with Michael Monies and designer John Welsford. Launching was simple: Wade out into knee-deep water, manhandle the boat into the wind like an oversized dinghy to raise the sail, and hop aboard. The offshore breeze pushed us off into deeper water, where we dropped the heavy steel centerboard and set off across the lake.
The offset mizzen and the outboard flank Sweet Pea’s rudder. The sides of the footwell are angled provide comfortable footing when the boat heels while under sail.
Once we were moving, my first impression was that I was on a much bigger boat. Sweet Pea is beamy enough to feel quite stable underfoot, and even hard on the wind she’ll heel only so far and then lock in place firmly. Minor triumphs of comfort and ergonomics reveal themselves everywhere aboard, and what might seem to be trivial features make quite a difference. The sides of the cockpit footwell, for example, are perfectly angled to provide a stable footrest as the boat heels. Everyone I talked to who had sailed in the Millers’ Sweet Pea noticed this, and raved about how comfortable it was. The seats themselves are wide and comfortable, and visibility from the helm is excellent, with the cabintop low enough to see over easily. The tiller felt light and responsive, needing only fingertip control.
Even on a broad reach we were able to play the mizzen to make the boat steer itself, virtually hands-off. When we hit planing mode, the shift was so subtle that Welsford had to point it out the first time. The subtle smoothness of that transition is an intentional feature of the design; Sweet Pea’s rocker is designed to lift the bow and slip up on plane easily, rather than “popping out” by brute force when the wind powers up enough to overcome the bow wave. “It sails wonderfully,” John Miller told me, summing up Sweet Pea’s performance in the Texas 200. “It’s way more capable than I realized at first. I would feel comfortable taking it on some pretty big water.” Very quickly, I found myself agreeing. Sweet Pea sails as if she wants to take care of her crew.
Still under construction, this Sweet Pea cabin awaits its roof. The benches flanking the centerboard trunk serve as full-length bunks.
Of course, no boat is perfect. Sweet Pea’s cabin, comfortable as it is at anchor, is less comfortable while sailing. The big centerboard restricts legroom, and an angle of heel that feels perfectly comfortable in the cockpit feels much more extreme below. Everything feels much more extreme below, with the cabin magnifying even the smallest sounds; a routine tack can sound like an emergency. The centerboard tackle runs down the cabin’s centerline, making it difficult to switch sides during tacks (at rest that’s not a problem, because the tackle can be temporarily removed, and replaced with a bolt to hold the board in place).
But those complaints are minor, and every skipper will find his own way of dealing with them. One issue that can’t be avoided, though, is setup time, which is far greater than the time needed for a 15′ open boat with an unstayed rig. “You’ve got two to two-and-a-half hours of setup and takedown for however much time you spend on the water,” John Miller told me. Which means that unless you plan to keep a Sweet Pea on the water, either on a mooring or in a slip, it’s not a good choice for a boat that will be dry-sailed and trailered. But the solution to that problem seems especially simple to me: just set up the boat once in spring, and spend your entire summer cruising. Simple enough.
[table]
LOA/17′ 5″
Beam/7′ 4″
DRAFT
Board up/8″
Board down/4′ 5″
SAIL AREA
Sloop/198 sq ft
Yawl/180 sq ft
[/table]
The cruising yawl rig has short manageable spars and sails that are easily reefed.
The sloop rig’s 198 sq ft of sail will bring the Sweet Pea up on a plane in a reach or a run.
The plans call for 9mm plywood skin over the chines and plywood bulkheads, a simple structure quickly constructed. The cockpit will sea six and the cabin will seat four and sleep two.
In the early 1960s Martin Litton, a travel editor for Sunset magazine, came to the McKenzie River in Oregon to write a story. When he got there, he saw wooden drift boats on the water; they would change his profession, his life, and river running on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon forever.
Martin and Pat Riley, his partner on trips in the 1950s, were planning to run the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1962 before the Glen Canyon Dam opened the following year. They needed new boats because the cataract boats they had used on previous trips were at the bottom of the Colorado River. They had been patched so many times they were literally falling apart at the seams—so, midway through a descent through the Grand Canyon in ’59, Pat scuttled them at Pipe Creek and his group hiked out of the canyon on foot.
The fiberglass cataract boats Martin and Pat used on the Colorado then were built to a design first developed for plywood construction by Norm Nevils, a river-runner of the ’30s and ’40s, for running the cataracts—whitewater—of Utah’s San Juan River. They had a low profile with vertical sides and a slight rocker, and held only one or two passengers. They sliced through waves, rather than riding over them which was hard on the boats and made for a wet and often unstable ride.
As Martin watched the graceful McKenzie drift boats cutting through the technical rapids and surfing high on the waves, he thought he might have found the perfect boat for the Colorado. The boats sat with both ends rising almost a foot out of the water. With that amount of rocker, they could pivot and spin on the tops of the waves with just a flick of the wrist from the oarsman. The river flowed under and around the boats rather than colliding with the stern, pushing them relentlessly forward with the current.
Dave Mortenson Collection
During the 1962 trip Martin Litton rowed PORTOLA and Pat Reilly rowed SUSIE TOO, the new McKenzie-inspired boats. Brick Mortenson rowed FLAVELL II, a cataract boat .
Dave Mortenson Collection
Dave Mortenson, ready for the river. The foam mix that his father Brick used to fill the space in his boat’s buoyancy compartments was very expensive so he used empty Clorox bottles to take up some of the volume. He sent Dave into every laundromat in the San Fernando Valley to dig through the trash looking for the plastic bottles: In those days they were the only plastic bottles you could find. If that wasn’t bad enough, Brick had Dave wear two bottles tied to his life jacket. Fortunately, the requirement for extra flotation was dropped. It had been, according to Dave, “a 13-year-old’s worst nightmare.”
Recognizing the advantages the boats would have on the Colorado, Martin ordered two from Keith Steele, the most active boatbuilder on the McKenzie. In the spring of ’62, Martin picked them up and commented on how big they were compared to the cataract boats. He and Pat initially referred to the new boats, PORTOLA and SUSIE TOO, as “monsters.”
On that Grand Canyon river trip in 1962 there was a third boat, FLAVELL II, a cataract boat built and rowed by Brick Mortenson who took his 13-year-old son Dave, with him on the trip. Almost 50 years later, I met Dave at the 2011 McKenzie River Wooden Boat Festival at the Eagle Rock Lodge in Vida, Oregon. He had come to see the boats that had first caught Martin’s eye and to talk with some local boatbuilders. Dave had a vision: He wanted to re-create that trip of ’62 on its 50th anniversary to honor his father and the other river runners who blazed the trail in these Oregon-built boats. When he brought up replicating those boats, I was hooked by the idea and his enthusiasm. I agreed to build a replica of PORTOLA, even though the only record of it was in old photographs and videos. A good friend of mine, Randy Dersham, agreed to build a SUSIE TOO. He had a boatshop on the McKenzie only a few miles from where the original boats were built. Dave would not succeed in having the replica FLAVELL II built until 2014 but he was thrilled that the two Oregon boats being built for the 50th anniversary trip.
Over the course of that summer, Randy, his son Sanderson, and I assembled the hulls of our replica boats. As we slowly bent the side panels around the frames, we heard the sickening pops of wood approaching its breaking point. We listened to the wood, slowed down our bending, held our breath, fastened the panels to the frames, and hoped they would hold. I wondered, with so much tension, would my boat just explode on contact if I hit a river boulder? We all felt better after we fastened the side panels to the frames and attached the bottoms, holding everything together.
With the hulls finished, I hauled mine to my garage shop where I could work at my usual snail’s pace. The hundreds of pictures and video from the 1962 and 1964 trips were my guide to building the interior.
The paint on PORTOLA was still drying as I backed it out of the shop and headed for the Colorado River in the spring of 2012. Passing through Oregon snowstorms, Utah rainstorms, and high-desert dust storms, we finally reached our launching ramp at Lee’s Ferry, Arizona, 16 river miles below Glen Canyon Dam and the beginning of the Grand Canyon. Fifty years ago at this spot Martin Litton, Pat Reilley, Brick and young Dave Mortenson, and six other passengers launched three boats that had never touched water. I wondered whether they were either a bit crazy, poor time managers, or just very confident in their boatbuilding ability.
I eased my PORTOLA down the ramp for her first touch of water and prayed this would not be the most embarrassing launch in the history of Colorado river running. She slid off the trailer and floated for the first time in the quiet entry to the Grand Canyon. The crowd on shore was as pleased as we were to see PORTOLA and SUSIE TOO floating together alongside the cataract boat replicas FLAVELL, SUSIE R, and GEM.
In the clear pool above the Colorado’s first riffle, I took the first pulls on my 9′ red-and-white wooden oars and looked downriver, admiring the impressive rose-colored canyon walls rising 1,500′ on both sides of the river. The point of no return was only a few strokes away. Beyond it there would be no rowing back upriver against the current.
I was part of a 16-member team that included some of the most experienced oarsmen on the Colorado and five support rafts. I’d developed my skills in Oregon boats on Oregon water, but I was uneasy. This was the Colorado River, and I had only a fraction of an inch of plywood between me and disaster.
Dave Mortenson
Badger is the first significant rapid on the Colorado downriver from the launch site at Lee’s Ferry. It has a 15’ drop and is rated Class 4 to 6 depending on the water level. The untethered oar Greg lost was fished out of the river down below by teammate Craig Wolfson.
Our first real test was a Class 5 rapid (a 1-to-10 scale is used on the Colorado instead of the I-to-VI classifications used elsewhere) called Badger just a few miles below Lee’s Ferry. It has a drop of 15′ over a sixth of a mile, an impressive wave-train of high rollers down the middle, and sharp hydraulics on the edges caused by hidden boulders washed into the river from two side canyons. At the start of the trip I’d been told I needed tethers for my oars, in case they popped out of the oarlocks and out of my hands. Pop out of an oarlock maybe, but out of my hands? Not likely! After logging thousands of hours and as many miles rowing a drift boat on technical water, I had never lost an oar, never even come close.
As I raced through the first drop, it felt like I was in the front seat of a roller-coaster and should stick both hands in the air and scream. A cold wave splashed over the bow and slapped me in the face. I dug the left oar deep in the current to get out of the wild ride in the middle. The river pulled back and lifted me out of my seat. In a split second of good judgment, I let go of the oar and avoided being catapulted out of the boat.
I suddenly had an untethered oar adrift in the water and only one in hand to finish the rapid. Craig Wolfson, one of our most seasoned Colorado river rats, was the safety spotter waiting in cataract replica SUSIE R in an eddy below the rapid. He fished my oar out of the river. “Welcome to the Colorado!” he laughed as he handed it over. That night I made tethers for my oars.
We camped where the Litton party camped and could recognize the places recorded in their diaries and photographs. Many nights I rolled out a canvas cowboy bedroll and slept on the soft sand under the stars wrapped in a wool blanket. When I had the energy to set it up, I slept in a canvas pyramid tent similar to those used in the ’60s. It had a familiar musty smell from the moisture of the morning dew that reminded me of the tents at Boy Scout camp when I was growing up.
Dave Mortenson
Greg races PORTOLA down the tongue, hitting his line in Soap Rapid. This second major rapid has a 17′ drop and gave the rowers a feel for the river and their newly built boats.
About 40 miles downriver from Lee’s Ferry we camped at a place called Tatahatso, right in the heart of Marble Canyon where soft-pink stone walls rise up straight out of the river, leaving just a winding ribbon of river a half mile below the canyon rim. A narrow strip of sand nestled between the canyon wall and the river was the perfect campsite for our group.
Before dinner I took a hike in a side canyon above our camp with teammate Tom Pamperin, one of the support raft oarsmen. After a half hour of boulder jumping and trail scrambling we reached an overlook about 300’ directly above our campsite. In the fading sunlight the river looked like a thin twisted piece of chrome. We could clearly hear the clatter of pots and pans in the camp kitchen below, and the air had a wonderful aroma of campfire, tamarisk, and food cooking on the camp stoves. From this vantage point high above camp I began to see and feel the immensity of the canyon: I was amazed at how much bigger it was than I’d imagined.
We tried to replicate many of the 1962 photographs as we could. At Boulder Narrows a rock five stories high juts straight out of the river, forming a channel on each side of it. Perched on top of the rock is a helter-skelter pile of tree trunks and root wads and driftwood deposited by a high-water flood in 1957. They’re still there unmoved, a half-century later.
The camping gear used in the early ’60s was often canvas and wool. In a nod to that era, I camped every night using either a canvas tent or cowboy bedroll. Nighttime temperatures were usually in the ’40s. Here at Tanner Wash I pitched my tent away from the river and did a little hiking.
We talked around the campfires at night and over coffee in the morning about the rapids we had already run and the challenges of the rapids ahead. Each presents a different problem to solve and a unique challenge to overcome. At House Rock the main current sends you faster and faster toward a rock the size of a two-story house where the river makes a hard right turn. If you can’t break through the grip of the current and pull to the right, you’ll smash right into the rock and your boat will either flip, break apart, or get sucked into the huge hole on the other side of the rock. Hermit has a wave-train created by boulders buried underwater; it builds to a crescendo at a towering fifth wave followed by an exceptionally deep trough. At Bedrock the river runs with great speed into an imposing rock wall that violently splits the river in two. The safe line is to the right, but not too far or you’ll run through shallow water filled with boat-wrecking rocks. If you screw up and go through the left channel—and survive—you’re entitled to wear a T-shirt that says, simply, “I went left at Bedrock.”
Dave Mortenson
Randy Dersham, rowing SUSIE TOO, hits his line perfectly between two explosion waves in Crystal Rapid. Before Glen Canyon Dam controlled river flows, Crystal was a minor rapid but a major flash flood dramatically changed its difficulty and is now considered by many to be the biggest rapid on the Colorado.
Crystal, a Class 9, is a loud, angry, and confusing rapid where waves explode out of nowhere and send boats spinning out of control. There never seems to be a clear line through Crystal, and there are two huge holes at the bottom on opposite sides of the river that can swallow a boat.
Dave Mortenson
In Lava Falls success and failure both take only take 30 seconds. Greg takes PORTOLA successfully through the maelstrom as safety kayakers stand by ready to come to the rescue.
And then there’s Lava Falls, a 10, with a steep drop at the top, big rolling waves, huge holes, boat-flipping lateral currents, and big rock obstacles. There is a scouting perch on top of a huge black boulder where you can watch the carnage of boats attempting the falls until you can make yourself believe there’s a way to run the rapid unscathed and muster up the courage to get back in your boat.
Dave Mortenson
Granite, located at river mile 93 and rated a Class 8, requires a quick dip in the top hole in order to miss the larger hole at the bottom. Stefane Poirier, rowing SUSIE TOO, takes a big bite out of the hole but came popping out on one of the wildest runs of the trip.
Granite is a Class 9 that you can hear long before you can see it. Its roar is louder and more unsettling than most because of a precipitous drop and haunting echoes from a sheer canyon wall that rises straight up on the far shore. You can pull off the river and walk several hundred yards down to the point where the water drops out of sight. The only path is on the far right, balancing boats on a ridge of water welling up between the canyon wall on one side and one of the largest and deepest holes on the river—a Scylla and Charybdis with no margin for error.
There are rapids to run in almost every mile of the river, though most are rated no higher than Class 6. At mile 150 we arrived at Upset Rapid, one of the prettiest and yet most treacherous rapids in The Grand Canyon. With a beautiful red canyon wall as a backdrop on one side and a cobble garden of boulders on the other, it’s possible to scramble the entire length of this rapid on the river-right side at the water’s edge. It’s hair-raising to be so close to the power of a Class 8 rapid as it thunders along between the walls and over the ledges from top to bottom. One ledge at Upset runs across the entire width of the river, creating a steep drop that can easily flip boats. There is a deep hole on the right, and the run along the left requires nerve and a steady hand from the boatman to put the nose of the craft as close to the left wall as possible.
As we picked the running order for this rapid, we sent a few of our support rafts to test the line before sending the wooden boats. Tom was the first to go. He set up his raft for a river-left run at the top of the rapid and dropped into the turbulence. With his strong and steady rowing he avoided the dangers of river right, hit the ledge hole nose-first, and powered through the drop. At the bottom of the rapid he eddied out and stood by as a safety boat.
Yoshi Kobayashi went next. At just 4′10″ she has to stand up to power the oars and move the big raft through the rapids. Just before the ledge the river turned her, and she hit the drop-off slightly sideways. The raft boat hit the dip and stopped abruptly, and Yoshi was thrown into the fast-moving cold water. She managed to swim to the raft and grab the flip lines on the upriver side but was unable to pull herself up onto the raft. Craig, this time rowing SUSIE R, another cataract boat, tossed a throw-rope and pulled her out of the icy water.
Dave Mortenson
Upset Rapid at mile 150 has a 15’ drop and a big spread in its rating: Class 3 to 8 depending on the water level. Greg keeps PORTOLA perilously close to the canyon wall in order to break through a big lateral wave at the bottom of the run.
I was next. PORTOLA dropped into and flew down the rapid so close to the canyon wall that I thought she’d leave red paint on the rocks. I hit the ledge bow-first and dropped over. I pushed hard to get enough momentum on the climb out of the trough; then a tidal wave of water crashed over the bow and over my head, and PORTOLA rose as if shot from a cannon. The bow pointed straight up into blue sky, and I thought PORTOLA might pitchpole backwards. Breaking through the crest of the wave, I struggled to see through the sheet of water pouring over my face. PORTOLA landed hard, but with a few tugs on the oars I was safe in the eddy at the bottom of the rapids. This was what it had been like to be in this exact spot a half century ago, exhausted and elated in a gentle eddy at the bottom of a powerful and inspiring Colorado River rapid.
We had replicated many elements of the 1962 trip—the boats, the campsites, the pictures—but during our three weeks and 280 miles on the river the excitement of running each rapid, the dread as we heard another rapid ahead, the emotional highs and lows we shared with teammates, and the awe that the Grand Canyon inspires were experiences uniquely our own.
Greg Hatten is an outdoor writer, a consultant for active-consumer products, and a licensed Oregon Outfitter and Guide who hosts outdoor river adventures in a hand-crafted wooden drift boat pursuing steelhead on the fly.
Afterword
Two years after Litton and crew ran the Grand Canyon in their McKenzie-inspired boats, those same pioneers used these same boats on a trip for a public-relations campaign to halt construction of two dams that would have inundated the canyon and put a halt to river running. They were successful, and PORTOLA and SUSIE TOO were referred to by many as “The Boats That Saved the Grand Canyon.”
Dave Mortenson
A dam was almost built near here but Martin Litton and his fellow river runners documented their travels through this amazing place in 1962 and again in 1964 and showed the world what would be lost. Greg and Pam Mortenson in the replica PORTOLA are surrounded here by the vertical Redwall limestone cliffs that were saved, in part, by the original PORTOLA.
In the late 1960s, Martin Litton left Sunset magazine and formed a guide service called Grand Canyon Dories. During an era when most commercial guide services started using rubber rafts, he insisted on using wooden dories on the Colorado River. The appeal of wooden boats helped him bring people to appreciate and preserve wilderness. He named the dories in his fleet for natural wonders that had been destroyed by development. PORTOLA was renamed DIABLO CANYON, commemorating a pristine stretch of the California coastline where Martin and the Sierra Club had lost a bitter battle in 1968 to prevent the construction of a nuclear power plant atop an earthquake fault. SUSIE TOO was renamed MUSIC TEMPLE after one of the most beautiful side canyons within Glen Canyon. It was inundated when the Glen Canyon dam was finished, and now lies at the bottom of Lake Powell.
Litton last rowed the Grand Canyon in 2004; at the age of 87 he was the oldest person to do so. On November 30, 2014, he passed away at his home in Portola Valley, California, at the age of 97. His obituary in the New York Times called him “an unrelenting scout in the battle to preserve what was left of the wilderness in the American West, most notably the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River.” —GH
Replicas of the 1962 River Dories
Overall dimensions on the hulls of the PORTOLA and SUSIE TOO were 16′4″ long with a beam of 82″ at the sheer and 58″ at the chines. Although the hull form of the McKenzie river boats was well suited to the Colorado, an open boat wouldn’t survive the rapids. The interior had to be filled with sealed compartments to preserve buoyancy in rapids that could suddenly submerge the entire boat and fill it with water.
Greg Hatten
Using hundreds of pictures of the original PORTOLA from the 1962 trip, Greg carefully matched the placement and dimensions of the hatches, seats, and hardware. The various compartments were complex and extremely hard to replicate.
In the 60s Keith Steele used old-growth Douglas fir plywood hulls– ¼″ for the sides and ½″ for the bottom. Known for it’s long straight grain and superior strength, it was a preferred boat building material in the Pacific Northwest and was used in making some excellent plywood. We had to use the fir plywood available today and it was not nearly the quality that it was 50 years ago. Our cataract boat replicas were also built out of plywood. The originals were fiberglass and after many patches and repairs, they were quite literally fell apart.
When Martin picked up the boats in the spring of ’62, he commented how wide the hulls were compared to the cataract boats they had used on previous trips. The cataracts they had been using were about the same length but were almost 2′ narrower. One of the biggest differences however was the rocker that was introduced with the new boats. PORTOLA and the SUSIE TOO had enough rocker to keep their ends out of the water, making them more agile than the cataracts, and allowing them ride up and over big waves rather than through them. I’ve logged a lot of hours rowing McKenzie river boats and while my PORTOLA was almost too maneuverable and felt a little flighty she was very agile in rock gardens.
Sawyer Oars provided the replica oars and spares we used. They were as close to the originals as possible. We painted them to match the original colorful schemes of the boats.—GH
If you have an interesting story to tell about your travels in a small wooden boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
With the additional seating aft of the center thwart you can slide around the tiller between tacks and shift your weight aft.
As age makes its inevitable changes to the sailor’s once supple joints, certain positions that were once assumed without thought become uncomfortable, if not actually painful. When I was younger and singlehanding, my favorite place to sit was on the floorboards with my back against the side planking. If conditions are right, it’s hard to beat this position for comfort and a sense of being one with the boat. This position only works going to windward in a moderate breeze or on a reach in more boisterous conditions. As the wind dies or the boat heads downwind, it is necessary to scooch toward the boat’s centerline to maintain proper trim. Here the posture is nowhere near as comfortable. Tacking while sitting on the boat’s bottom brings out the grunts and groans.
The thwarts and stern sheets of my own rowing-and-sailing skiff are placed, as they need to be, for the best trim with varying numbers of crew. The center thwart is the rowing position for one person in the boat. The forward thwart is placed where the oarsman will balance a passenger at the stern. Either thwart can be used for rowing with two passengers.
The middle and aft seating positions are usually not ideal for sailing. Few small, light boats sail well with the helmsman sitting in the stern sheets: The transom drags and lateral resistance moves aft, upsetting the balance of sails and hull. Keeping the helmsman’s weight near center of the boat to preserve fore-and-aft trim for light air requires that he sit on the middle thwart. In a boat over 10′ long, this requires an impractically long tiller.
One solution to the problem is a second board butted aft of the original center thwart that increases the seat’s total width to about 16″. Extending aft from each side of the widened thwart are arc-shaped boards supported by the seat risers and cleats at the added thwart’s after edge. A rower sits on the original seat with thighs extending across the added board. The sailing position is on the new woodwork, closer to the tiller. The skipper can slide around the arc created by the doubled thwart and the sideboards to a nearly ideal position either for light air or for going to windward in a breeze, and come about, without having to rise from the seat or pass by the tiller.
The sheet on most boats this size leads from a point on the boom either directly above or somewhat aft of the sailing position, so facing aft when coming about makes handling the sheet and tiller smoother. Tacking thus becomes an easy slide around the arc of seating with no crouching or pirouetting required.
When two people are aboard, the forward thwart is often a wet place when sailing to windward. Balance is best achieved when both people sit on the center thwart. The doubled thwart with its wings makes this a comfortable arrangement.
Harry Bryan is a boatbuilder, purveyor of plans, and contributing editor for WoodenBoat magazine.
You can share your tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Monthly readers by sending us an email.
From top: Tasman Salt, Salt 1, Atlantic Salt, Pacific Salt, Mariner Salt
A good knife for boating has to hold up well in the marine environment. The blade has to be rustproof and hold a sharp edge. The Salt series of knives by Spyderco have been some of my favorites. I’ve collected a handful of them in the past nine years and they’ve held up well. The folders have remained easy to open and the blades have held their edges well and have been unaffected by salt water. (Some of the knives shown here are no longer in production or are available with a serrated edge only. Check Spyderco for the models currently available.) With just one exception, the Salt knives are made with H-1 steel. According to Spyderco, it’s not a true steel, but an exotic steel: It uses nitrogen instead of carbon in the alloy. Carbon reacts with the chloride in salt water to cause rust; nitrogen doesn’t.
After five years of exposure to salt water, the Caspian 2 had spots of rust, not from the H-1 steel but from iron-bearing grit picked up from the environment.
My longest running test of the H-1 steel for corrosion goes back to 2009. In the spring of the year I strapped the sheath of a Caspian 2 Salt, a model now discontinued, to the front of my PFD. For the five years the knife has been in that sheath it has been subjected to countless immersions in salt water (rolling was a regular part of my kayaking routine) and a regimen of neglect. At best, I’d hose my PFD off with fresh water, but I never removed the knife from its sheath to rinse and dry the blade. When took a look at the blade to report on it for this review there was rust stain at the base of the blade, a bit surprising so I took a closer look with a high-power loupe. The rust was in an area where the blade makes contact with the sheath. There were coffee-colored stains and some small black nodules of rust. A wipe with some fine steel wool removed the stain and the nodules and the H-1 underneath showed no signs of pitting or any permanent stain. While it had looked like the H-1 steel had rusted, the rust was from iron particles that had attached themselves to the blade. The blade was slightly magnetic, confirmed by tiny fragments of the steel wool fiber I found stuck to the H-1. I looked with the loupe at another knife that I’d used for many years and saw particles of what must have been iron, not yet rust stains, stuck to the blade. I lightly brushed a brand new Salt knife with steel wool and found tiny fibers of steel, too small to see seen with the naked eye, attached to the blade. So, while I found rust on the H-1, it was from foreign particles attracted by the weak magnetism of the blade.
After being intentionally dulled by whittling through a nail, the resharpened H-1 blade could cut cleanly into the loose edge of a piece of note paper.
To test how well the H-1 steel would take an edge, I needed a dull knife so I started with Atlantic Salt with a plain edge (this model is now only available with the Spyderco serrated edge) and whittled through a 16-penny nail. The factory edge was sharp enough and tough enough to curl up little shavings of steel from the nail and after going through the nail the blade was dull but not chipped. I restored the edge with my usual sharpening sequence: a diamond hone, two Japanese water stones and finally a buffing wheel charged with rouge. In 2 minutes the blade was sharp enough to pass the thumbnail test, catching instead of sliding, and in another minute, sharp enough to slice into the loose edge of a piece of paper.
The Jumpmaster is designed to cut through cordage and webbing. While developed for parachute mishaps, it has qualities well suited for marine emergencies.
Among the latest offerings in the Salt series are the Jumpmaster and the Tusk. The Jumpmaster has a 4″ serrated blade and textured fiberglass-reinforced nylon grips. Developed for Army parachute troops, it’s meant to cut through cordage and webbing quickly. I cut through ½″ solid braid nylon line in a single easy swipe and almost as easily sliced 8 layers of 1 ½″ nylon webbing —a combined thickness of 3/8″—in one go. A fiber-reinforced ½″ vinyl hose also succumbed to a single pass of the serrated edge. A tougher job is cutting out through a bight of line, but the Jumpmaster easily went through 3/8″ braid, and although the serrations made it hard to get a pull started on a bight of 1/2″ line, a single swipe cut through. The Jumpmaster and other Salt knives are good candidates for safety and rescue work where entanglements pose a threat.
The Salt Tusk has titanium grips and a LC200N steel blade.
The Tusk has blade of LC200N steel. Like the H-1 steel, the LC200N has nitrogen in the alloy to keep it from rusting. The blade is 2 ¼″ long, a very handy size for daily tasks and well suited to whittling. The titanium grips incorporate a tab to lock the blade in the open position and a spring-loaded ceramic ball to lock the marlinspike, a polished piece of 300-series stainless steel. A slot in the spike and the space between the spike and the handle serve as shackle wrenches. The hole in the blade, a Spyderco signature element, lets you open the blade with one hand.
The Tusk’s blade is locked by a tab just below the belt clip. Its marlinspike is held in the open position by a spring-loaded ceramic ball.
It should come as no surprise that the knives Spyderco makes for marine use are so well suited to their tasks. Sal Glesser, Spyderco’s founder and chief designer, and his wife Gail also run a company that makes sailing pocket cruisers.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats Monthly.
Spyderco’s Salt-series knives range in price from $69.95 to $399.95 and are available direct from Spyderco and a network of dealers.
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.
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all photographs by the author
