One evening in late May 1994, my phone rang. Standing by the kitchen door, receiver in hand, I heard an unfamiliar voice with an American accent.
“Jenny Bennett? This is Carl Cramer. Will you be at the Wooden Boat Show in Greenwich next weekend?”
When I didn’t immediately respond, the voice repeated, “Carl Cramer…WoodenBoat magazine…hello?”
For some years before that phone call, I had been working first at Classic Boat magazine and then at The Boatman in Cornwall, England. Now, I was back in my home county of Devon, working for a large book-publishing house. Like most people in marine publishing at that time, I was familiar with WoodenBoat, but the name of its publisher, Carl Cramer, had passed me by.
“I’ll be there,” said the voice. “It’d be good to meet you.”
Why, I wondered, would the publisher of WoodenBoat magazine want to meet me?
“I think I’ll be there,” I said.
“Great, I’ll see you on the Saturday.”
And with that the call ended.
A week later, I was in the grounds of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, chatting with old friends, admiring new boats, and hearing about forthcoming projects. As I made my way around the annual show, I asked if anyone had seen Carl Cramer from WoodenBoat. The oft-repeated answer was: “Yes, you’ve just missed him.”
As the day wore on, I came to think that our paths would never converge, and that our meeting would become one of my life’s “might-have-beens.” But then, in the gloom of the small-exhibits tent, there he was: a slight man with wild dark hair, a short but unkempt beard, a crumpled suit coat above a pair of jeans and, on his feet, well-worn boat shoes without socks.
“Aha,” he said, “there you are. There’s no time now, but I’m having dinner with friends, come join us.”
I did. We sat together and talked magazines, and boats, and books that we had read, and books that I had not read (Carl seemed to have read every book ever published), and Maine, and why I had never been to America. We closed the restaurant, shared a taxi, shook hands as I got out at my stop, and went our separate ways. It had been an amusing and frenetic encounter, and I stored it up for later anecdotes, unaware that there would be a postscript.
Photographs courtesy of Aaron Porter
Carl taking a break during set-up at the International Boatbuilder’s Exhibition and Conference (IBEX), which he established after he launched Professional BoatBuilder in 1989.
He called the following Tuesday.
“Hi, it’s Carl Cramer. Do you remember the name of the restaurant? I left my glasses there.”
I didn’t, but I would find out.
And then he asked the question that would change everything. “Do you want the job?”
Job? What job?
It was only weeks later, after I had visited the WoodenBoat offices in Maine, been toured around the area by Carl for three days, gone for a sail in a Herreshoff 12 1⁄2, eaten countless American pancakes, and been treated to a front-row “seat” at a small-town Fourth of July parade, that I understood: the London encounter had been an hours-long interview for the position of managing editor, and the unorthodox approach had been typical of the man.
In the three years that I worked alongside Carl in Brooklin, Maine, and later when I returned to England but continued to work with WoodenBoat remotely, I was never aware of him taking time off—unless it was to go for a sail, or to step outside for a smoke. His energy seemed boundless as he kept tabs on all the comings and goings in the magazine’s offices. He’d move from art department to editorial department to advertising department without pause. He seemed to have the pulse of every aspect of WoodenBoat and Professional BoatBuilder, somehow managing to be in control while giving his staff free rein. He could talk boats with passion, loved them all, but never preached or forced his opinion on others. Endlessly curious, he could strike up a conversation with anyone. And his laugh—a loud infectious bark made raspy from his lifelong cigarette habit—was ever accompanied by a twinkling eye, owl-like behind his glasses.
Carl Cramer, 1946–2025
I had worked in magazines for five years before joining WoodenBoat, and yet it was from Carl that I learned the importance of the finer details of producing a magazine…how to choose between one front-cover image and another; how to say more with fewer words; and above all, how to love the job.
Carl passed away on April 10, 2025. He had been publisher at WoodenBoat Publications from 1989 to 2014, stepping down just as Small Boats was beginning. He had changed the trajectory of my life, championed my position at the magazine and, ever in the background, had offered advice, good humor, and kindness to me and all who worked with him. Like everyone connected with Small Boats and WoodenBoat, I have much to thank him for.
Lightweight but sturdy, sure. Sweet to row but able to carry a heavy load safely, of course. Well-behaved while being towed, yes. Will take a sail rig or a motor. Stable under foot or butt. Looks good—the list goes on and on.
In 1912, the English yachtsman Claud Worth saw fishermen from the Breton port of Auray using pram dinghies that checked a lot of those boxes. “For steadiness, carrying capacity, landing on a beach, or dragging over mud they would be difficult to improve on,” he wrote in his book, Yacht Cruising. “Any amateur carpenter could build one.”
Courtesy of Andrew Fetherston
Claud Worth’s plans and description for the 9′ 9“ workboat, Auray Fisherman’s Dinghy, was published in his book, Yacht Cruising.
The Auray prams were either carried on the decks of luggers or towed. “The next day we saw one of these punts being towed in a fresh breeze,” Worth wrote. “It seemed to be skimming along the top of the water like a hydroplane.” Worth measured and drew plans of an Auray dinghy that was 9′ 9″ long, 4′ 2″ beam. In profile, it was quite like a Norwegian pram, but was a simpler build with a flat bottom and flat planked sides. The long bow, as Worth said, kept the pram dry while under tow, and would allow a rower to step ashore dry-shod.
Several designers since—Phil Bolger among them—have drawn their own versions of Worth’s Auray plans. Even though Worth noted that knocking 9″ off the length would do no harm, most subsequent versions stayed near 10′ long—big and quite heavy for a tender. Eventually, plans for smaller versions appeared; Gavin Atkin features one—along with a more Worth-sized version—in his book Ultrasimple Boatbuilding.
Gavin Atkin
Auray punts are still in use as dependable workaday boats in their home region. This one was spotted in France in the Gulf of Morbihan, Brittany.
Another smaller Auray comes from Hannu Vartiala, the Finnish proprietor of the website Hannu’s Boatyard, a labor of love through which he offers free plans of his small—sometimes very small—plywood boats. Visit his site and you will see two designs that are smaller, lighter versions of an Auray pram: the Micro Auray, which can be built from one sheet of plywood, is too small to make a good tender, but the Mini Auray, built from one and a half sheets, I would say, sits right in the Goldilocks spot.
“As it happens, the boat scales down very nicely,” Vartiala notes. “The overall shape is conserved beautifully. The Mini Auray measures 7′ 6″ × 4′…she displaces about 1,200 lbs just before flooding. At 250 lbs displacement—that is, one person—her freeboard is 10″. The freeboard is 6″ at 570 lbs displacement.”
Building the Mini Auray
A few years ago, when I was living part-time in France, I decided to build a Cape Henry 21. I ordered a kit from Alec Jordan of Jordan Boats in the U.K., and also asked him to cut me a kit for Vartiala’s Mini Auray out of 1⁄4″ okoume plywood. It would, I thought, give me something to work on while epoxy cured on the main project, and later would serve as my tender. This was, I confess, a lazy man’s shortcut. Vartiala’s plans, given in both imperial and metric units, are models of simplicity and clarity, and I could have laid out and cut the parts in a few hours. But Vartiala’s plans include CNC cutting files, so opting for the kit—even adding a nice crown to the transoms, just for style—was an easy choice. I needed to drill holes for the wire stitches, but then it was straightforward pulling the hull into shape and filleting with epoxy and fiberglass tape.
Amanda Harris
Alec Jordan cut and delivered the parts for the Mini Auray’s hull; all the author had to do was drill the holes for the stitches and put everything together.
The kit did leave much to the builder’s imagination. Vartiala’s plans yield five pieces of plywood that, assembled, give you a hull and one small but crucial piece of information: the location of the aft edge of the main rowing seat. The rest—rubrails, frames, seat arrangement and supports, bow eye location and backing plate—are up to the builder. Like many boatbuilders, I prefer this. Want quarter knees? Sheer clamp? Floorboards? Skeg? Have at it, if you’ve got the wood and don’t mind the extra weight.
Vartiala’s site has photos of a Mini Auray with floorboards, a rowing seat, a stern seat, a small foredeck and a rubrail. Sealed with three coats of epoxy, it weighs 43 lbs, according to the builder. My experience suggests that this is close to the minimum possible for a solid, useful, good-looking copy of the boat.
I wasn’t too concerned about weight, so introduced some structural elements to make the hull stiffer and stronger. At my request, Jordan created and cut three okoume frames, to be set 20″, 50″, and 75″ aft of the forward perpendicular to be part of the seat structures. (The Auray’s sides splay at a constant 68°, so you can easily put frames wherever you wish.) I put in an iroko sheer clamp and rubrail, to create a solid base for oarlocks, and added iroko quarter knees and doubled the transoms to 1⁄2″ thickness.
Other features blended the practical with the aesthetic. The center rowing thwart is a simple pine plank, slotted to fit over the second frame, resting on short riser cleats screwed and epoxied to each side panel, and a single ’midship post. The forward seat and sternsheets are my creations, pieced together from okoume offcuts, carried on black-locust riser cleats, and braced against the forward and after frames. There’s room for flotation underneath them.
Amanda Harris
When rowing solo, the author sits at the ’midship rowing station. He moves forward when carrying a passenger in the sternsheets. In either configuration the boat’s fore-and-aft trim is excellent.
There is a 2″ space between the transom and the sternsheets: I realized that my feet would reach the Auray’s transom when I rowed, so I created this gap to give my toes wiggle room. If you build this boat, I strongly recommend this; it is the difference between pain and comfort.
Because the boat would be dragged off and onto beaches, I added a small skeg and two rubbing strips—all of black locust—on the bottom. The rubbing strips allowed me to epoxy and through-fasten floor strips inside to enhance the bottom’s rigidity. I could install floorboards over the floors, but haven’t yet felt any need.
The finished boat, including two sets of oarlocks, weighs 52 lbs. I could and often did carry the boat comfortably on one padded shoulder, with a pair of 6′ 6″ oars in the other hand—at least until I began looking back to my early 80s with nostalgic longing.
The Mini Auray’s Performance
The Mini Auray was quick to show its merits. I was meeting some friends at Lacanau, a lake west of Bordeaux, for the champagne launch, and found I needed wider roof racks to carry the boat. I sawed out some wood extensions and headed for the coast. Got stuck behind a slow driver on a back road. Passed him doing 60+ miles per hour. One of the wood rack extensions snapped. I watched in the rear-view mirror as the boat hit the pavement and started to tumble. Not a pretty sight. It ended up in the roadside weeds.
Amanda Harris
The Mini Auray has the distinctive sweeping lines of the original working pram as drawn by Claud Worth. The high bow keeps the boat dry when rowing in a chop or being towed. The skeg (just visible here below the transom) assists in maintaining directional stability under oar or tow.
I pulled over and walked back. The boat was undamaged. Yes, you read that right. A couple of scuffs. I jury-rigged the rack and drove—carefully—the rest of the way. Launched the next day. No leaks. So, without question, sturdy and durable. And, as a few moments at the oars would reveal, a dancer. Tourner, glisser, elancer—it had all the moves. And it was quick. Two of my boat-wise friends, paddling hard in an inflatable kayak, could not keep up. The pram carried well, ran straight, turned when asked, pirouetted on demand. I put a passenger in the sternsheets and rowed from the forward seat; the resulting fore-and-aft trim was perfect.
In a later outing, to test her ability to carry weight, I enlisted two sturdy friends as cargo; together we weighed about 550 lbs. As Vartiala had promised, we had a bit more than 6″ of freeboard. I rowed from the center thwart, 100 yards across the Lot River at Caix and back, without incident, although I would hesitate to try it in a choppy anchorage. Also, the oarlocks were too close to the water for comfortable rowing. I think rowing from the bow seat might be easier.
Kristin Fetherston
The diminutive size of the Mini Auray is deceptive. It can carry as much as 550 lbs and still have 6” of freeboard. With an adult and two children the freeboard is more generous and motion through the water is smooth.
So, I had my tender. One of the sweet details of a Mini Auray is that the towing eye is mounted under the bow transom, where it won’t damage your big boat’s topsides paint job.
And there, alas, the project ended. I wasn’t spending enough time in France to finish the Cape Henry quickly, and had not been able to find a mooring or dock space in the region. So, I sold the Cape Henry hull.
Which left me with my little Auray. No regrets. She’s great company.
Andrew Fetherston, born in New York City, has owned boats since he was 11, including eight that he built himself since retiring from a career in journalism. He is an artist and the author of two books. He worked on tugboats, freighters, and railroads in his youth. He has three grown children and eight grandchildren. He and his wife, the writer Amanda Barton Harris, live in Manhattan, Shelter Island, and Pestillac, France. In the April 2024 issue of Small Boats, he wrote “Crow’s Last Sail.”
Mini Auray Particulars
LOA: 7′ 6″
Beam: 4′
Weight: 52 lbs
Information and cutting plans for the Mini Auray can be found on Hannu Vartiala’s website, Hannu’s Boatyard.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
My first experience of boatbuilding was with my father, constructing a strip-planked canoe and a stitch-and-glue kayak while I was at school. Later, while doing research in a fairly theoretical field, I felt a strong urge to do something practical. I had long been fascinated by traditional boatbuilding methods, particularly those I’d seen when visiting the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark, and wanted to see if I could learn some of those skills.
The engineering department where I was doing my research has a large workshop, equipped with many tools from lathes to 3D printers. The space is mostly for professional use but is also available for personal projects. I had known and worked with the workshop supervisor for several years, and he kindly allowed me to build a boat there, with the condition that it had to be small enough to carry down the (fairly wide) stairway.
I had read about the Nottage Dinghy in How to Build a Boat by Jonathan Gornall. It is a 3m (9′ 10″) lug-sailed lapstrake dinghy designed by Fabian Bush. When I bought the plans direct from Fabian, he invited me to visit the Nottage Maritime Institute in Wivenhoe, Essex, England, where students can enroll in a class to build dinghies for themselves. On a dark and cold Saturday, I went to the workshop where they gave me tea and biscuits, and in a happy daze I wandered around boats being built, and chatted with the students. By the time I went home late in the evening I was committed.
Alastair Gregory
The Nottage Dinghy can be built upside down or rightside up. I chose to build upside down and made four molds. After constructing the backbone with iroko and sapele, I used some strip planking—left over from another project—to line out the 10 strakes.
The Build
The Nottage Dinghy is heavily built for its size, with spruce planking over steamed oak frames on an iroko-and-sapele centerline structure. It has internal floors supporting floorboards. Fabian helped me source the timber and was always happy to answer my questions throughout.
I had chosen the Nottage Dinghy specifically to learn traditional boatbuilding skills, and it is excellent for that. Gone were the days of playing with large quantities of epoxy, accidentally leaving it in a pot until it starts to smoke; in were the days of steaming inch-thick timbers into shape, only to find they had split the next day. (I did this with the gunwales…twice.)
The build begins with constructing the backbone, for which I used iroko and sapele. The drawings specify the dimensions, with several full-scale patterns included. The hog is a fairly heavy piece of wood and needs to be steamed into shape at the stern—which gave me my first experience of steaming. I used a wallpaper stripper to generate the steam and bagged up the parts.
The rabbet position is marked in the drawings, but you need to work out the bevels yourself. This can be done by lofting the boat, but I did it by constructing the backbone, setting the molds, and cutting the rabbet in place using battens and some educated guesswork. The boat can be built upright or inverted; I planked it upside down and later turned it over to work on the interior.
The plans include patterns for seven molds. I made four—three evenly spaced between the stem and transom, and a fourth at the bow to help get the right twist at the forefoot. This worked well with the 10mm—as specified in the plans—spruce planking, which was able to self-fair over the four molds. If using thinner stock, additional molds might be needed.
Alastair Gregory
I planked the boat in the recommended 10mm spruce and finished with a sapele sheerstrake, which I would leave bright finished.
I lined out the 10 strakes using leftover strip planking as battens, marking plank lands on the transom, molds, and stem, and got down to planking. My lining-out looked nice to me, though a more experienced boatbuilder might have been able to achieve fairer planks. I found plank spiling particularly rewarding. It always seemed a bit like magic to take the strange sinuous shape I had cut out and have it wrap onto the hull and assume the shape I needed. At least, it was magical when it worked.
For all but the garboard and a couple of nearly straight strakes around the bilge, I scarfed together stock to ensure that the wood grain was running as straight as possible along the planks. This is important around the forefoot where the planks have significant twist and grain runout could cause a split.
The garboards had the most extreme twist and needed steaming and careful clamping along their full length and especially at the bow. Indeed, most of the planks needed steaming at the bow, and some required steaming at the stern also. If the hull were planked in hardwood, the stock could likely be thinner—perhaps around 8mm—which could considerably reduce the amount of steaming required.
For the 12mm × 20mm oak frames I bought the wood early and for a couple of months submerged it in a tank filled with tapwater to which I added a bit of salt to minimize rot—a method used at the Nottage Institute. I checked periodically for signs of rot, but encountered no issues. My steambox for the frames was a 10’ length of schedule 40 PVC pipe, which handled the heat well (most plastic pipes melt like a Dali painting…ask me how I know). With friends helping, we bent the frames quickly, breaking only about three. The much longer process of hammering in all the copper rivets and roves took several weeks.
Alastair Gregory
I originally planned to fit a sapele gunwale, but it split when I tried to bend it into the stem. In the end, I followed the suggestions in the plans and steamed and laminated two pieces of oak—the lighter wood contrasted nicely with the darker sapele of the sheerstrake and the seats.
The interior fitout was mostly sapele and iroko left over from the backbone build. The only false start was my attempt to use leftover sapele plank stock for the gunwales instead of the oak, iroko, or teak indicated in the plans. The sapele split when I tried to steam it to shape. In the end, I steamed two laminated pieces of oak for the gunwales, and this worked fine. I made the sheerstrake with sapele rather than the spruce I used for the other planks. It made the thwart-knee connections feel sturdier and allowed me to varnish the sheerstrake as a nice accent. One of the longest jobs, second only to riveting, was shaping and fitting the floor timbers. Each had to be patterned, cut, and beveled. It was time-consuming, but I particularly enjoyed it, as it felt like the purest form of “traditional” boatbuilding I got to try.
I made the sail from a Sailrite kit—Sailrite cuts the panels (they worked from Fabian’s sail plan) and the customer sews them together.
Sailing the Nottage Dinghy
I launched the dinghy in January 2023. Over the course of four years, I had probably spent about 1,000 hours on the build. Since completion, I have kept it at a local sailing club on a non-tidal river and have trailed it to various estuaries on England’s East Coast; this year, I plan to take it to the Norfolk Broads.
Joanna Wolstenholme
Thanks to the second rowing station forward, there’s room for four adults. Despite being less than 10′ long, the Nottage Dinghy carries the weight well, maintaining decent trim and plenty of freeboard.
Rigging the Nottage Dinghy is straightforward, and I can go from trailering to sailing in about 45 minutes. The dinghy is small but feels sturdy. Its weight makes it seem larger, and stability is good, even when moving about in the boat. In light airs I sit on the center thwart, moving aft as the wind picks up. When sitting on the seats, my head is quite close to the boom while closehauled and coming about or jibing, and it can feel a bit cramped. I am considering removing a section of the side benches so that I can more easily sit on the floorboards, which I think would make light-airs sailing more comfortable and would aid visibility. In stronger winds, moving aft on the side bench improves both trim and visibility. In a short chop some spray comes over the bow, but when I’m sitting aft of the center thwart it doesn’t reach me.
Maneuvering the boat is straightforward, and it’s pretty responsive. In light airs it slips along fine as long as you are careful to keep it well-balanced, the sail filled, and not to stall when going through a tack, but it is definitely not a racing boat. In stronger winds it comes alive with the crinkling sound of the bow wave on the plank laps. I’ve sailed in winds up to about 18 knots, and with the sail reefed I think it would handle more, so long as the sea state allows. It’s a comfortable boat, feels very safe, and while it does respond to gusts the motion is neither violent nor unwieldy and is accompanied by the characteristic creaking of a traditional wooden boat.
Joanna Wolstenholme
As the dinghy picks up speed, the chuckle of the bow wave against its narrow lapstrake planks is a comforting sound. In stronger winds it’s best to move aft to maintain good trim. In a short chop, if spray does come over the bow, it doesn’t reach farther aft than the center thwart.
The yard and boom fit comfortably in the length of the boat (the mast is too long, but for trailering can be strapped in place with its heel in the sculling notch), and I can row with the rig lying alongside me on one of the side benches. The center and forward thwarts are both rowing stations and I’ve rowed with four adults aboard without difficulty. When estuary sailing, I often launch and row into clear water before raising sail. The boat lies comfortably beam-on to the wind when hoisting the sail; I have also made use of this trait when putting in a reef.
Overall, the Nottage Dinghy has been a fantastic choice for learning traditional boatbuilding, and while I’m still getting to know it as a sailing boat, it’s the ideal messing-about Swallows-and-Amazons-type dinghy that I look forward to making the most of.
Alastair Gregory is an engineer working in medical device development near Cambridge in the U.K. When he started building his Nottage Dinghy MABEL he was a researcher at the University there. He’s a keen sailor and amateur boatbuilder, and has a particular ambition to build a Folkboat one day. He says that throughout MABEL’s build, he learned from YouTube channels such as Tips From a Shipwright by Louis Sauzedde, and also from many books, including Clinker Boat Building by Martin Seymour, Clinker Boatbuilding by John Leather, Boatbuilding by Howard Chapelle, Planking and Fastening by Peter Spectre, and From Tree to Sea by Ted Frost. All are available from multiple outlets both online and on the high street.
Plansfor the Nottage Dinghy are available for £55 (plus shipping) from Fabian Bush, The Old Yacht Store, 49 High Street, Rowhedge, CO5 7ET, U.K.; tel: +44 (0)1206 728577.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
I’d been driving around Vancouver Island for two and a half weeks, boat in tow, looking for chances to sail and take myself out of my comfort zone. I had come hoping to explore the Broken Islands group on the west side of the island, but heavy and prolonged rain had curtailed the trip. I had driven, instead, to Sproat Lake in the middle of the island where I’d camped overnight and had a whole day’s sailing on the mountain lake before the rain returned. Finally, I had bent to the inevitable and driven to a friend’s house to dry out and make a plan for my last week on the island.
I’d owned FIRE-DRAKE—an 18′ lapstrake open boat with lug yawl rig—for almost a year. Alex Zimmerman, her original owner—also her builder and designer—had sailed and rowed her the entire length of the inside coast of Vancouver Island. His story was inspiring, and while I didn’t have such high aspirations, I did, and still do, have hopes of adventure, exploration, and a sense of accomplishment.
Photographs by the author
By the time I had stepped the masts, stowed all the gear, and set up the cockpit tent, the rain was coming down hard again. I decided to cut my losses and find a room ashore for the night.
The boat is well suited for camp-cruising and I had already had some experience in her. From Bellingham, Washington, I had made several trips out to Sucia, an island on the north side of the San Juan archipelago. I had also sailed around Lummi Island to the west of Bellingham Bay. But this trip up to Vancouver was my most ambitious yet.
Now, drying out at my friend’s house in Courtenay I was feeling a little discouraged. Getting soaked by rain is a common theme of stories about Vancouver Island, but that didn’t provide me much solace. After all, it was only the end of August; it hardly seemed fair. I spent a day and a night in comfort, and awoke the second morning revitalized. I headed off to Telegraph Cove, farther up the island’s east coast, and arrived in the small town before dark. I packed the gear into the boat, slipped the boat into the water, and parked the truck. My plan was to sleep on board at one of the marina slips and then head out in the morning. But soon after I got everything set up, the clouds opened once again, and the rain came down in sheets. I sat nursing a beer at the little tourist bar, looking out over the harbor as the rain filled the air and made it hard to see across the bay. I imagined sleeping on the boat, waking up damp and cold and stiff, and decided to get a room for the night.
Through the narrow opening leading out of Telegraph Cove, I could see the islands of Broughton Archipelago on the far side of Johnstone Strait—where I would be headed the following day.
Telegraph Cove to Flower Island
By early morning, the rain had eased, and I rose to sort the boat and get underway. I could feel, as much as see, the tall trees looming out of the haze—other than a few quiet gulls that watched me as I passed them by, the trees were my only company. I rowed out of the cove in a light drizzle, but the moisture didn’t dampen my spirits. In the distance, the islands were veiled by a thick mist—in my mind I was venturing into a true wilderness. Out in Johnstone Strait, the 2-mile-wide channel that separates Vancouver Island from the Broughton archipelago, I raised my sails. There was a perfect breeze for a beam reach across to the northwest end of Hanson Island. Visibility still wasn’t the best, so I wanted to cross perpendicular to the channel to make the shortest route possible to the Plumper Islands, a small archipelago at the northwest end of Hanson Island.
I flew across Johnstone Strait. It was thrilling. The wind blew a steady 10 knots just abaft the beam, and the sea was smooth. The boat settled into a groove and almost sailed herself. A little tinkering with the lines and stowing the gear, and then I sat back. What a great way to start the trip; I couldn’t have been in a better frame of mind.
Roger Siebert
.
When I reached the far side of the channel, approaching Weynton Passage between Hanson Island and Pearse Islands, I saw what looked like breakers ahead. “That can’t be right,” I thought. I fished out the iPad I was using for navigation from a drybag that wasn’t as accessible as I had imagined. Yes, indeed, there actually was a bunch of shallow rocks just in front of me. I fell off and jibed to run parallel to them, feeling lucky and slightly stupid for not having had my chart in front of me as I sailed. It planted a seed of nervousness in the pit of my stomach that would return off and on through the rest of the trip.
When I passed the last of the rocks, I turned toward the Plumper Islands, a group of wooded islands, which I would sail around en route to Blackfish Sound. As I neared the intersection where Weyton Passage meets Cormorant Channel at the entrance to Blackfish Sound, water that a moment ago had appeared just slightly confused, was suddenly very steep and very confused. FIRE-DRAKE was tossed from side to side and up and down. “Okay,” I thought, “a little exciting, but I have wind and I’m in no danger of jibing or getting caught in irons.” I was still on a reach as I struggled to control the boat, but then the waves pushed the stern up and off the wind and suddenly I was at risk of broaching. Cursing, I tugged on the push-pull tiller and got back on course. It was probably only moments, but time stretched until I was at last out of the confusion and in one piece, though my confidence was shaken.
As I rowed out of Telegraph Cove the next morning, the air was still damp, the clouds still low. Mist hung in the trees and along the foreshore, and I felt like an explorer venturing out into the wilderness.
As I caught my breath, I heard the staccato burst of a whale’s breath. Barely 50′ away and coming straight at me was a humpback whale. Normally, I try to keep my distance and stay out of the path of whales, but I had been unaware of this individual until it was too late. I clenched my jaw and held my breath as the whale slid away beneath me. I was thrilled, but once more my heart was pounding—the whale was many times larger than me and my boat, and even slight contact could have been disastrous.
To the north of Hanson Island, the wind dropped, but there was still enough for me to sail along slowly. Off to starboard were two more humpbacks surfacing near the shore. I glided by. This was why I was here!
When heard close by, the loud staccato puff of an exhaling humpback is exhilarating. Seabirds gather around the whales, looking to catch some of the fish forced up to the surface by the feeding pods.
I could have lingered and stayed to watch the spectacle, but I had places to be. I wanted to get to Flower Island in the early afternoon to avoid having to fight a current and to give me plenty of time to set up camp. I find it difficult to estimate just how far I can get in a day. Some days seem to go smoothly, and I can go 20 miles with little effort; other days I have to struggle for every inch. On this day, I hoped to make it 10 or 15 miles, depending on the wind and current.
I continued out into Blackfish Sound and turned closehauled, ready to sail across to Flower Island, an islet just 150 yards wide, off the southern tip of the much larger Swanson Island. It had been described on the BC Marine Trails website as a campsite with an easy landing and a view of Blackfish Sound; it seemed ideal for my first night. For a while I stayed close to shore, but the wind began to die so I started to row. I was being followed by a couple of well-fed-looking sea lions. I kept telling myself, “There is no danger, nothing to worry about. Who’s ever heard of a sea lion sinking a boat?” But I couldn’t shake a nagging fear, and while I’m sure their interest was simple curiosity, their presence raised the hairs on the back of my neck. They would surface in random places, sometimes next to me, sometimes behind, but always they would stare at me with giant inky black eyes. They’d quietly watch me pass and then submerge. They seemed to have no trouble in keeping pace with me. I rowed farther out into the sound and left them to their own business.
Mist and drizzle soon enveloped me, but as the wind picked up to a slight yet steady breeze, I put away the oars and started sailing again upwind with no reefs. The visibility dropped to less than 50′, forcing me to steer by compass. It was otherworldly. Except for the occasional sound of humpbacks breathing in the distance, it was eerily quiet, and I could see nothing but the boat and a circle of gray water around me. I was sailing in a bubble, and time stopped.
As I sailed past Hanson Island, two humpbacks surfaced and dove close inshore. I tried to stay away from the whales but shortly before this sighting, had found myself sailing on a head-on-course with a large humpback barely 50′ away. Fortunately, it dove and swam beneath me without incident.
After what seemed like an entire afternoon but was in fact just a short hour spent in a near-trance, I heard sounds of birds and waves, and the forested shore emerged as the mist lifted.
The breeze shifted and I was close to the southern shore of Swanson Island, downwind of Flower Island. I had tried to make it across before the tide turned but now, as I measured my progress against the trees that stood proud above a low bluff on shore, I realized I was punching into not only the wind, but also the ebb current. At least I was moving and didn’t have to row, but I was shivering with cold, even though I was already wearing all my warm layers: a thick wool sweater over wool long johns, my foulweather pants, and a wool knit cap. Yet, I was chilled still more as even the light breeze knifed through my clothes. I was making good time though, and I was right where I had hoped and planned to be by early afternoon. It was validating and filled me with a certain pleasure that despite my inexperience dealing with the region’s currents, my calculations and predictions had worked out.
I drew level with Flower Island. The current had grown stronger and started to overcome my ability to sail upwind. Several times I tacked into and away from the island, but I made little progress. I tried to head away on a long tack that would take me upwind of the island so that I could come back down on it, but even that didn’t work. I was becoming frustrated. Then, I saw kayakers paddle by close inshore, following the route I should take. They were paddling through a narrow passage between Flower Island and Swanson Island. I had avoided that route because I was nervous about short-tacking in a narrow channel, even though FIRE-DRAKE’s draft is minimal. But I sailed in, tucked behind Flower Island, dropped my sail, and followed them up the channel. It was the correct move and the origins of a mantra I held in my mind through the rest of the trip: “When in doubt, follow the kayakers.” At last, I came around the point to the beach on Flower Island where there were several marine-trail spots for camping, and rowed right up to the beach.
Within minutes of setting up camp on Flower Island the rain started again, coming down in sheets. It was the heaviest rain I experienced on the trip but fortunately was short-lived and soon after I took this photo the sun came out. As the tide fell, FIRE-DRAKE settled on the gently sloping gravel beach.
There wasn’t much of a bay in which to anchor, so I decided to beach the boat for the night and sleep on shore. For a few hours, I tended the boat: pushing it out with the falling tide, until it reached the point that, by my calculations, would put it at the edge of the water on the rising tide the next morning when I would want to depart. I found a place to camp for the night: a perfect little spot that had been terraced and made flat, surrounded by trees from which I could string my hammock and tarp. Low down, the branches were sparse and I had a clear view to the east toward islands that seemed to pile up over each other into the distance. FIRE-DRAKE was resting on the gravel beach just in front of my slightly elevated pitch. I set up the hammock and tarp, and tucked all my gear away beneath the shelter. I was just in time. I thought I had seen rain before, but now it truly opened up and dumped everything it had. It was the kind of rain in which you have to keep your face down for fear of drowning. It thundered against the top of the tarp, where it quickly made little puddles that built and flowed to the edge of the tarp to spill over all at once. But the tarp stood up to the torrent. I sat beneath it, dry, and watched as several paddlers emerged from the downpour and came ashore through the murky gray wall of water.
After the rain, the sun came out. Glorious! The transition was immediate, and though there wasn’t much heat in it, the touch of sun quickly warmed me. More kayakers came dribbling in, soaked but grateful to have made it, and in a while we had a full beach—there were only a dozen of us, but the beach is just about 10 yards wide with six campsites. I felt a little guilty that FIRE-DRAKE was taking up so much of the beach where the kayaks were landing.
In the middle of the night, I got up to check on the boat. It was high and dry. I was amazed by how far the tide had gone out. The range was only about 4–5′, but on the gently sloping beach it was significant. The moonlight reflected off the water and the stars hung low and bright. The water itself seemed to glow and shimmer, and in the dark FIRE-DRAKE looked like a spaceship surrounded by a galaxy of stars.
Beyond the landing beach, the geology of Flower Island was less welcoming, with a steep slope and sharp rocks that would make beaching out on a falling tide impossible.
Flower Island to Boat Bay
The next morning was bright and crisp, with vibrant greens and blues everywhere I looked. Every tree had a different hue. I occasionally dabble in watercolors, but the variations that morning would have stumped any attempt of mine to express what I saw in paint. The sky bled from a deep blue near the horizon to a lighter blue above. The air was cold in my lungs, but I could feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. There was a strong westerly breeze. My goal was to make it down to a small bay at the southwest tip of West Cracroft Island, a distance of some 8 miles—where I thought there would be some shelter from the west—or perhaps all the way to Boat Bay, also on West Cracroft, which would be sheltered for sure but was an additional 4 or 5 miles away.
I started out from Flower Island with a single reef, and quickly took in a second one. I was still a little gun-shy after the near-broach in the tide rip the day before. All morning the tidal current would be with me as I headed southeast. I flew down and out through Blackney Pass between Hanson and Harbledown islands. As I neared the main channel, I saw a tanker heading northwest toward me, so hung tight to the side. When it had passed, I turned onto a run and sat back; it was the kind of run that goes on and on until you have had all the fun and are ready to be done.
The wind was blowing straight down Johnstone Strait between Vancouver Island and West Cracroft, but I was reluctant to go too far—miles run downwind today would have to be reclaimed upwind tomorrow.
The end of the second day could not have been less like the first. As I arrived in Boat Bay, I had a following wind and the sky above was almost cloudless.
I reached my little bay protected by the Sophia Islands off the western end of West Cracroft, and it looked perfect. There was plenty of kelp to keep any surf down and a narrow entrance between two rocky points, but it was kind of windy. As I approached, becoming dubious of the landing’s suitability, I saw that the beach was covered in large sharp cobbles. I changed my mind and decided to press on to Boat Bay. But first I had to row hard to get out against the wind.
To reach Boat Bay I had to sail along an exposed bluff for at least 3 miles, then turn to duck into the bay. I was glad to be sailing downwind: there were large rolling waves running and the wind was blowing about 15 knots, more than I usually like. Going upwind would have been hard work and most likely cold and wet. I pulled into Boat Bay and found a protected bay with a sandy spot on the beach.
I rowed into Boat Bay, a protected bay with a sandy beach, looking south toward Vancouver Island.
A crowd of people watched me as I pulled up to the beach at the same time as a water taxi. As I reached the shore, the taxi captain started berating me: I needed permission to come here; I should go somewhere else. I was confused; the spot is listed on the BC Marine Trails website as having 12 campsites and is crown land. I replied that I wasn’t going anywhere but that I would stay anchored out in the bay if it was an issue. This seemed to mollify him a bit, and he pulled away with a load of kayaks.
After he’d gone, one of the other people told me I was allowed to be there but to avoid the orca watchers’ camp at the edge of the bay where a group of people were living and working. They were monitoring Robson Bight, an ecological reserve across the strait that is critical habitat for orcas. My informers, another crowd of kayakers, had been dropped off to go on a hike that would end by my first bay at the northwest end of the island. I was grateful for the explanation, and far more sympathetic to the taxi captain’s confrontational approach. I stretched my legs a little and then, having no desire to upset the locals, rowed out to anchor in the bay.
In Boat Bay, after an encounter with a less-than-friendly water-taxi operator, I decided to sleep on board. After a peaceful night, the day dawned bright, sunny, and calm.
The night was dry, but the breeze cut right through my little boat tent. Even in my 20°-rated down sleeping bag I was cold. I built a little wind block with my toilet bucket and drybag, and once more put on all my clothes. Finally, I fell asleep.
Boat Bay to Telegraph Cove
I awoke mid-morning. It was another crisp and sunny day. The wind had dropped, but later it would be perfect to sail back without a reef. I did my morning stretch routine—or as much as I could in my small and rather messy boat. I had plenty of time; the current wouldn’t be going my way until the afternoon, so I stayed at anchor in the warming sun, and spread everything out: my tent, my clothes, my sleeping bag, my gear. I let the sun into all the nooks and crannies so that everything could dry out while I relaxed and drank coffee and wrote in my journal. Then I heard voices. A crowd of kayakers paddled by; they were going my way!
“When in doubt, follow the kayaks,” I remembered. “If they can go, I can as well.” I had originally planned to stay out another night, but between my coldness and dampness, as well as a need to get back to prepare for a new job, I decided to see if I could get back that day.
Waking in Boat Bay to a sunny day with little wind and time to wait for a favorable current, I decided to spread out all my gear to dry. Later I would take down the cockpit tent so the sun could get into all the nooks and crannies of the boat.
I had been worried about having to beat all the way back, but the wind veered just enough that I could make it three-quarters of the way to Telegraph Cove on one tack. I was able to lock the tiller down and sit and watch the boat sail itself for hours. After that I just needed a few short tacks to get into the marina.
About a mile from Telegraph Cove a medium-sized cruise ship with a French flag came down the channel. As they passed me by, I saw the bridge crew come out and look at me through their binoculars. I waved and watched them go.
I had some moments around a point where I was in a wind shadow and had to row between wind spots. I tried rowing with the sail up—in my mind it was akin to motorsailing—but the boom whacked my head right on my ear.
The wind on my last day could not have been kinder. With no reefs in the sail, a single tack took me three-quarters of the way up Johnstone Strait from Boat Bay to Telegraph Cove. I was able to tie-down the helm and watch FIRE-DRAKE sail herself.
At last, I pulled into Telegraph Cove, sailed right up to the entrance, and then smoothly dropped the sails to row into the boat ramp. As I stepped ashore, I thought about the days behind me: I had struggled with the weather issues, the currents being sometimes with me, sometimes against, and my own lack of rowing stamina. I had felt ridiculous at times, working so hard yet making no progress. But on the other hand, using wind, tide, and muscle, I had traveled independently around the edge of the Broughton archipelago. With no engine available, I had been forced to think ahead and use my skills to their utmost. I had also learned where my skills were lacking.
I had come back a day early, but I was satisfied. It was late afternoon as I threw all the boat gear into the truck, tied the boat down, and hit the road. Four hours later I was pulling into Campbell River where I planned to spend the night. I looked out over the water and saw the French cruise ship that had passed me earlier in the day. A warm sense of satisfaction came over me as I found my place for the night and felt my exhausted bones and muscles relax.
Merlin Clark-Mahoney grew up sailing on dinghies with his dad. He’s been a sea scout, a merchant mariner, a tall-ship sailor, and now is exploring Washington and British Columbia by small boat.
If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
RANTAN, my Tony Dias–designed Harrier, was launched in 2008. She’s a glued-lap boat planked in plywood; her hull is round sided but with a flat bottom to easily take the ground and live on a trailer. Since her launching, she’s not had much maintenance thanks to a well-fitting cover and a secondary top winter cover. I’ve refinished the brightwork on her cherry seats, refinished the removable floorboards, and redone the orange paint on the rails once. This winter, while she didn’t need any wooding—none of the finish needed to be taken back to bare wood—she did need to be painted inside and out.
Photographs by the author
RANTAN (seen here at The Apprenticeshop in Rockland, Maine, where she was built) has lengthy decks in both ends that prevented me from reaching the stems. However, when I used the homemade extender, I could access every inch of the boat’s interior.
I set her up on benches 18″ high, which are 48″ long and 15″ wide. The height is great both for reaching the interior structure and working on the topsides of a small boat, and with RANTAN’s flat bottom I needed nothing in the way of props to keep her upright. The biggest problem was figuring out how to get to all the places that were easily reached during the boat’s build but are now tucked away. There are decks and benches that restrict access to the ends and sides, and the open gunwale structure has lots of small spaces between the tops of the ribs, the inwale, and the sheerstrake, all of which need to be sanded and painted but are difficult to access.
Possibly the best Christmas present ever: a portable tray that holds four rolls of sandpaper and four sanding blocks.
For sanding, my favorite tools are rolls of sticky-backed sandpaper coupled with soft hand blocks. Years ago, a friend gave me a portable tray with a bar that holds four rolls of sandpaper. Below the bar, the tray carries my sanding blocks and the scissors I need to cut the paper. The paper can be pulled off the roll straight onto a block; it can also be stuck to other tools suitable for tight spaces, and doubled back and stuck to itself for sanding small spots. Sandpaper rolls are expensive, but for an amateur like me, a roll could last an entire career of boat maintenance—after a decade or so of building and maintaining half a dozen small wooden boats, I’ve only had to replace the 80-grit roll (my boats are mostly painted workboats—80-grit is fine enough). I do use power sanders, but there are so many intricate spaces in RANTAN that most of the interior work is done by hand.
My overall plan for RANTAN’s repainting was to tackle the hardest parts first. I began with the challenge of sanding the inside of the sheerstrake. The spaces between the inwale and the sheerstrake are too narrow for sanding blocks to access, and I couldn’t get the pressure I needed with folded paper; there also seemed to be no way I could sand the small areas of planks beneath the ribs. I solved these problems by wrapping sticky-backed paper around a wooden paint stick and around a narrow 6″ length of 3⁄4″ × 6″ aluminum bar stock that I had in my scrap bin. With these I could access all the smallest nooks and crannies.
Narrow gaps, such as between RANTAN’s inwales and sheerstrakes, can be extremely difficult to get to for sanding, but with the help of some homemade tools, even the tightest of spaces become accessible.
Next, I moved my focus to the ends of the boat.
I lowered RANTAN from the benches and set her on the floor so that I could step aboard. Now, however, even when I lay on my chest or side in the boat, I couldn’t reach all the way under the foredeck or the sternsheets to sand, so I had to come up with a way to extend my reach. I had some 1 3⁄4″-wide hardwood battens with which I could make an oversized pincer tool that could hold a sanding block and (later) a paintbrush. I thought about cutting one of my sanding blocks down to a width of 1″ but then discovered some mini foam sanding blocks at the hardware store that were ideal for the job.
The tools for sanding in hard-to-reach places: the extender is homemade using a couple of battens, three bolts (two with wing nuts) and a mini foam sanding block; for accessing tight nooks and crannies, sticky-backed sandpaper can be wrapped around a paint stick or anything else thin, such as the short piece of aluminum stock seen here.
I rounded the ends of two battens, and drilled 1⁄4″ holes into them, equally spaced along their lengths—unsure of exactly where I would need them to produce the desired tensions, I drilled five holes. I then drilled same-diameter holes through the mini foam block—two, so that I would be able to adjust the angle of the block. In the squared end of the battens, I inserted a 1⁄4 × 20 bolt tightened down with a simple hex nut. In the middle hole I threaded a bolt with a wing nut (this would be used to adjust the tension of the pincers). Finally, I placed the sanding block between the two rounded ends of the battens, threaded a third bolt through both battens and the block, and tightened it down with a wing nut. And there it was, a 16″-long sanding-block extender that allowed me to reach into the very ends of the boat. I later used the same tool for painting by replacing the sanding block with a 1″ paintbrush into which I drilled a hole through the handle just above the metal ferrule (I also use this hole to hang my brush after use).
The job of prepping RANTAN for painting was time-consuming and not always comfortable, but with my simple and affordable tools I was able to reach into every spot on the boat.
Tools used for sanding RANTAN’s tight spots
Foam sanding blocks—standard and mini sized (I used a Gator Zip Micro Tool—1″ × 3 1⁄2″—which came with 80-, 120-, and 220-grit paper. I bought an extra pack of 120-grit paper)
Sticky-backed sandpaper in grits from 80 to 220
Paint sticks and aluminum stock bar
Bright rechargeable headlamp—essential when working in the ends of the boat
Battery-powered portable vacuum with crevice and dust-brush attachments (handier than a regular vacuum because it stayed with me in the boat and didn’t get in the way)
N95 face mask
Thin leather gloves (I use disposable nitrile gloves for painting)
Knee pads
Ben Fuller, curator emeritus of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has been messing about in small boats for a very long time. He is owned by a dozen or more boats: kayaks, canoes, a skiff, a ducker, and a sail-and-oar boat.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats readers by sending us an email.
Even though I’d dabbled in camp-stove baking, I was never inspired to do much beyond cooking frozen pizzas. When I happened across the Omnia oven I was intrigued by how simple and compact it is compared to the other systems I’ve used.
Photographs by the author
The basic oven kit includes (back row, left to right) the stainless-steel base, the aluminum mold, and the enameled lid. The options I added (front row, left to right) are the stainless-steel oven rack and silicone mold.
It has a stainless-steel base with a hole in the middle to allow the heat of a camp stove to pass through it. The center element, made of aluminum and called the mold, is nearly identical to a bundt pan. The open cylinder in the middle brings the heat to the top of the mold and reduces the risk of overbaking the outside of food while waiting for the middle to be cooked. The enameled lid has a knob handle on the top and six small ventilation holes in the side, sized to accommodate Omnia’s optional dial thermometer.
Most Omnia baking projects require a low heat, so a camp stove that can maintain a low to medium flame is all that’s required. The folding digital thermometer at left was a good tool for monitoring the temperature in the oven. The pot pliers at right came in handy for moving the hot mold.
For baking with the Omnia, I use my compact Gas One Mini dual-fuel camp stove with a butane canister for fuel. One of the repeated complaints I had found in the oven’s reviews is that food touching the base of the oven and the inner ring of the mold can easily get scorched, so it’s important to use a low flame. The best way to regulate the temperature is to use a thermometer. Omnia’s optional dial thermometer, fixed in one of the holes in the lid, measures the temperature in the upper part of the oven. Removed from the lid, it can be used as a probe to read the internal temperature in the food being baked. Rather than buying Omnia’s dial thermometer, I used a digital meat thermometer that I already owned which has a probe sized to fit the holes. With its probe inserted through a hole in the lid, I could read temperature fluctuations in temperature quickly and accurately on its digital readout and make fine adjustments to keep the oven very close to the target setting.
I did, however, buy two of the many other options offered by Omnia: a stainless-steel oven rack and a BPA-free silicone mold. Both reduce the risk of food being scorched at the bottom of the oven, and the mold is nonstick and easily cleaned.
My wrapping of the pizza dough around the fillings wasn’t pretty, but the calzone I made was tasty. The silicone mold helped to avoid scorching the dough and simplified clean-up.
My early trials with the Omnia went very well. Pizza, one of my favorite indulgences at anchor, isn’t well suited to the shape of the Omnia mold, but calzone, a pizza folded around the toppings, is. Using store-bought frozen dough with grated cheese and tomato sauce, I made a ring-shaped calzone. Omnia’s recipe called for cooking on medium heat for 30 to 40 minutes but didn’t specify a target temperature for the thermometer; I used 350°. The calzone came out very well despite my clumsy work with the dough; it was cooked through and there were only two small scorched spots where the dough had been in contact with the mold’s chimney.
Once I had popped the calzone out of the mold, I could see that its bottom was a nice golden brown.
I was concerned about fuel consumption for the long cooking times required by baking recipes, so I weighed the butane canister before and after baking two batches of cookies. For the first batch I placed seven well-spaced 1″ balls of dough on parchment paper resting on the oven rack; the second batch was a closely spaced dozen. The first batch consumed 21g of butane over the 13 minutes it took to bake the cookies, the second used 26g for 20 minutes of baking time. At that rate, the 8-oz/227g canister would provide a reassuring 2 hours and 39 minutes of baking time; in terms of cookies, that would make 10 average batches.
The oven rack, with a cut-out of parchment paper on top of it, worked well for baking chocolate-chip cookies. I’ve already eaten one from this batch and two have been flipped over to show the evenly cooked bottoms.
I’d never baked a yeasted bread either at home or in camp, but I was eager to try the Omnia manual’s simple recipe for thyme bread. Set in the silicone mold, buttered and lined with sesame seeds, the bread baked thoroughly, without scorching, and turned out even better than I’d hoped, with an artisan bread’s crispy crust and fluffy interior.
The yeasted thyme bread, with sesame seeds baked on the crust, was surprisingly good, especially while it was still warm.
The Omnia oven’s three components, plus the silicone mold and the oven rack, all nest together in a stack 3 1⁄2″ high and 10″ in diameter and fit in the nylon stuff sack included with the oven. The compact 1 lb 12 oz package is well suited to small boats. The prospect of adding freshly baked goods to camp-cruising cuisine makes the Omnia system a welcome addition onboard.
Christopher Cunningham is editor at large of Small Boats.
The Omnia oven and accessories are available direct from Omina or from a worldwide network of retailers. I paid $59.99 for the oven, $26.99 for the silicone mold, and $17.99 for the oven rack.
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.
Before the advent of electric-powered hand tools, the humble spokeshave could be found in every woodworker’s tool kit. It was an essential shaping and smoothing tool that excelled in chamfering, beveling, and rounding, and was just the ticket for beveling that dory stem or working in the compound bevel on lapstrake planking.
Consult the pages of the Antique & Collectible Stanley Tools: Guide to Identity & Value and you’ll find a plethora of spokeshaves…something for every purpose. Round or flat bottoms; cutters that are straight, concave, or convex; angled guides for chamfering; handles that are straight, others that arch upward like gull-wings to provide clearance for the user’s hands above the work. There were double-cutter marvels that had side-by-side concave and straight cutters; the curious Stanley #67 with handles set at 90° for working into corners; a jumbo version for coopers and diminutive versions for modelmaking. There was even the delightful Stanley #54 with its spring-loaded adjustable throat that effectively changed the iron’s depth of cut.
Photographs by the author
When seen alongside a classic Stanley #54 spokeshave of the 1940s there is an obvious difference in shape. Also, where the traditional tool has but one central screw and slot for adjusting the cutting iron, the Melbourne spokeshave has a pair of adjustment knobs as well as the cap-iron screw.
Alas, by the 1960s, much of the wide variety of spokeshaves had disappeared outside of antique and curio shops. If you could find a new one in your hardware emporium, it would likely be the most basic version: straight bladed, flat bottomed, in Japanned black iron with lackluster casting. It would probably require extensive tuning to operate as intended. The performance of such a spokeshave can be off-putting and make one question not only its purchase but also its practicality.
That said, there are still some new versions produced by smaller manufacturers who are sticklers for quality. Some of these tools are extraordinarily elegant, finely tooled, and cast in bronze. Others are accurate reproductions that have the Victorian elegance of early-20th-century tools. Yet others are 21st-century reimaginings of the classic tool, but with the same attention to detail of their predecessors. Such tools are made by people who actually use tools.
One new entry into the pantheon of modern devices is the Melbourne Tool Company (MTC) Flat Sole Spokeshave; our Small Boats editor sent me a sample to review.
On this white-oak stem with a confused grain, the spokeshave performed well, producing clean shavings and a very smooth surface.
The body of the MTC spokeshave is modern in its appearance. Clean and sleek, it is crafted from a single piece of investment-cast steel, which renders a very clean reproduction with none of the sharp edges occasionally found on cast-iron tools. Cork is inlaid into the upper face of the hand grips, which span roughly 11 1⁄2″. The handles are narrower than those of my 1940s Stanley #54 spokeshave and I did wonder if it would be less comfortable or ergonomic in my hand. But the shape and cork work well, and there are dimples on both sides of the cutting iron into which a user’s thumbs naturally nest, affording better control of the tool.
The width of the cutting iron (or blade) is 2″ and the thickness is 1⁄8″ (twice that of the Stanley, which should make the blade relatively chatter- or vibration-free in use); it is made of M2 High Speed Steel (HSS), which should stay sharp longer. Straight out of the box, the spokeshave’s sole and the back of its cutting iron required no extra lapping to ready them for work. I did add a slight micro bevel to the iron’s primary bevel.
One feature that I especially appreciated was the cutting iron’s adjustment mechanism: a pair of ample knurled brass adjustment knobs. Old-time spokeshave irons typically have a central slot cut into them, which slides under a screw. To get the blade set to the proper depth and without skew usually takes a lot of persnickety trial and error, followed by a lot of hope that the single cap-iron screw holds it in exactly the position you want. With the twin screws, it’s easy to “sneak up” on the desired adjustment and then simply hand-tighten the cap-iron screw.
Even though the handles are narrower than might be found on a traditional spokeshave, their shape, coupled with the soft cork covering, is ergonomic, feels comfortable in the hand, and offers good control of the tool.
Finally, the fixed mouth of the tool is wide enough to allow shavings to pass through, and the leading edge of the cap-iron is sharp enough and set tight against the cutting iron to keep the shavings from jamming or plugging up.
So how did it work? I liked it. I tested it to bevel the pine bottom board of a dory, and a dried and convoluted-grain white-oak stem. On both woods, it performed well, producing clean shavings and a very smooth surface. I then tried it on pressure-treated yellow pine, hackmatack knee stock, and both mahogany and sapele plywood. Again, smooth surfaces were easily produced on all.
The verdict? The MTC spokeshave is a quality tool at an affordable price that simply functions as advertised. These days you can’t ask for much more than that.
Greg Rössel is a builder of small boats and a longtime instructor at WoodenBoat School. He is the author of Building Small Boats, The Boatbuilder’s Apprentice, and Half Hull Modeling, and a regular contributor to WoodenBoat magazine. He is also a member of WoodenBoat’s Mastering Skills video crew, and the presenter of A World of Music on WERU-FM.
In 1975–76, Felix Garlasco and his two sons, Mark and John, built a 16′ boat from plans published in the Sports Afield Boatbuilding Annual of 1965. The design was called “Scaup” and was said to have been based on a Maine Lobsterman type but modified for duck hunting. The Sports Afield editors described it as “A wildfowler’s dream come true.” At the time of the build, Mark was studying at the University of Connecticut and boatbuilding was restricted to the long summer vacations. Felix had built his first boat in the early 1950s, and now, as he introduced his two sons to the art of woodworking, they used many of the classic hand tools he had used on that earlier project.
Photographs courtesy of the Garlasco family
In the 1950s, Felix Garlasco built his first boat, the 19’ sloop seen here with Felix standing on the cabin top.
Almost 35 years later, in 2009, Mark chatted with his father one evening, fondly recalling the project of his youth and musing about building another wooden boat. He was now also a father, and his children were much the same age that he and John had been when they built the Scaup. But he also had a management role in a growing company that required long hours and a good deal of travel. Felix reminded him just how much work was involved in building a boat. Even so, Mark was enthusiastic and suggested that, while his availability would clearly dictate the pace of the build, if they built the boat in his garage, the inconvenience of its presence would provide the motivation he needed to complete it. He wanted, he said, to share with his own children the satisfaction and skills he had gained at their age.
Over the winter of 2009, Felix, a retired manufacturing and design engineer, designed the Garsharp-14 and produced a 100-page binder of lines and detailed construction drawings.
The Design
As soon as Mark had committed to the project, Felix went to work. A retired manufacturing and design engineer for Grumman—now Northrop Grumman—he looked around for a suitable boat design. He settled on a sharpie, deciding that it would be relatively straightforward to build and would perform well with just a simple spritsail. The fact that the type was also native to the Garlascos’ home state of Connecticut didn’t hurt. After studying the plans of many possible sharpies, Felix eventually developed his own modified version that would be slightly wider than a traditional sharpie to provide more comfortable seating and more stability.
After struggling to dry-fit mahogany chine logs and sheer clamps, the Garlascos switched to steamed white oak. They built an 8’-long steambox with a hinged lid for easy loading and a plugged end through which the steamed wood could be quickly extricated without lowering the internal temperature of the steambox.
He worked on the design over the winter of 2009 and in the spring presented Mark with a complete set of hand-drawn plans—100 pages that included detailed drawings of all the parts, frames, joint details, wood types and dimensional requirements, and a comprehensive materials list including wood and hardware. The level of detail, said Mark, was much more than is “typically found in commercially available boatbuilding plans, but it was nothing short of necessary in the mind of an aerospace manufacturing engineer used to government and military programs.” Felix called his design the Garsharp-14. It was 14′ overall—long enough to suit the family’s needs, but short enough to be built in the garage—with a beam of 4′ 4 3⁄4″ and a draft of 9″. The mast was 13′ long so that, together with the sprit and loose-footed sail, it could be laid down in the boat for trailering.
The plywood sides were cut and clamped into place with adhesive caulking applied, then screwed to the oak chine logs. More than 30 years after building the Scaup, the Garlasco brothers—John (in the foreground) and Mark—were back together building another boat.
Mark, Felix, and Mark’s then-20-year-old son John Paul started work that year. It was, says Mark, slow going, but “we tried to get together most Sunday afternoons and on any other spare days.”
Building the Garsharp-14
They built the hull upside down, using marine-grade okoume plywood—3⁄8″ for the sides and 1⁄2″ for the bottom—on an oak centerline structure and mahogany frames. They eschewed the use of epoxies but instead fastened everything with stainless-steel screws and bolts (except for galvanized rod to fasten the skeg), and used Sikaflex adhesive between the plywood panels and the frames, sheer clamps, and chine logs. The stem was two pieces of white oak laminated with resorcinol, and the centerboard trunk was bedded to the keel with canvas smeared with compound on both sides, which, said Mark, “helped to fill in the slight voids between the hand-shaped curved surfaces of the centerboard-trunk logs and the keel.”
Felix Garlasco looks on as his grandson John Paul uses a ratchet brace to drive a screw through the plywood side and into the frame.
For the most part, the build went smoothly. But when it came to fitting the chine logs and sheer clamps the Garlascos ran into an unforeseen issue. They had opted to use 2″ × 1″ mahogany for all four parts. But as they tried to bend the pieces into the bow the mahogany cracked. “Even after we soaked the parts in the swimming pool for multiple days,” said Mark, “they still cracked.” They revised the jig and added 3″ to the boat’s length to ease the tight bend. Still the mahogany split. “We couldn’t add any more length,” explained Mark, “because of the limited shop space.” Instead, they researched the process of steaming wood. “We determined that white oak was one of the more pliable woods if steamed, and it’s more water-resistant than red oak.” They went back to the lumber yard and bought some suitable 2″ × 1″ white oak.
“Then we built a steambox, 8″ × 8″ and 8′ long,” said Mark. “The top hinged open so we could easily place the oak inside two at a time. The door closed with spring-loaded latches to keep it well sealed. Inside the box, we set a ‘piccolo tube’—a length of copper pipe drilled with holes to equally distribute the steam—which we connected to a hose. The other end of the hose was connected to a repurposed 5-gallon oil can filled with water and heated on a propane burner. We steamed the parts for an hour and then a team of four gloved friends pulled them out through one end of the box, which we’d left open save for a wood plug and rag seal, and ran them over to the boat where we clamped them in place until they cooled off. Problem solved.”
Felix’s great-grandson Nicolas, the youngest member of the building team, was given the honor of fastening the breasthook, the last part of the construction.
Mark estimates that they put about 2,000 man-hours into the build. The main building team were Mark, Felix, and John Paul, but they were joined on occasion by Mark’s wife, Kathy, their daughter Gina, and Mark’s brother John when he was in town. Toward the end of the project another family member pitched in: “We had started building in 2009, but we didn’t finish until 2020,” Mark said. “By then John Paul had become a father himself, and my grandson, Nicolas, then aged seven, was also helping out. We gave him the honor of fastening the very last piece of construction—the breasthook.”
Painted, varnished, and ready to go. The two maststeps were designed to provide a choice of mast position depending on wind conditions and load. The centerboard trunk is bolted through the 1 1⁄8″ × 4 1⁄2″ white-oak logs, the keelson, and keel with 1⁄4″ × 7″ galvanized bolts. The trunk and logs were shaped to follow the slight curve of the boat’s bottom, and the logs were sealed with canvas gaskets and bedding compound to keep everything watertight.
Launching the Garsharp-14
Construction complete, the boat was finished with Interlux polyurethane primer and paint, the spars and sail were built, and she was launched in July 2020. “We christened her TRADITION, which seemed an appropriate name,” said Mark. “From the day we put her in the water, she’s never taken on a drop of water, even when moored overnight—we’re quite proud of that.”
Nicolas prepares TRADITION for her first sail. From the day of her launching, the boat has never leaked, an achievement that the Garlasco family builders are justifiably proud of.
The Garlasco family have now sailed the sharpie for three summers and, said Mark, “we continue to learn how to sail her, going out on increasingly gusty days. The spritsail arrangement is extremely easy to set up and take down, and has the minimum of lines to manage. It’s great for a novice like me.”
Some 70 years after launching his first boat, Felix Garlasco stands on the dock with TRADITION, the boat he designed for and built with the next three generations of his family.
One day, late in 2024, Mark was with John Paul. “Out of the blue, he asked me, ‘What do you think about building another boat?’ I was surprised,” said Mark, “But I’m seriously considering it.” And why not? After all, boatbuilding is now a Garlasco family tradition.
Jenny Bennett is editor of Small Boats.
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Sandy Buxton and Todd Skoog enjoy an early evening row in TINKER, their Matinicus double-ender built by Walter Simmons of Lincolnville Beach, Maine.
Like water finding its own level, those who are familiar with wooden boats seem to be drawn to the Matinicus double-ender, built by Walter Simmons. Designed over a century ago for fishing, she represents the finest kind of Maine workboats. The boat has a length overall (LOA) of 15′ 6″ and a 4′ 5 3⁄4″ beam. She moves easily and rises to meet seas without pounding. It’s no wonder that she was chosen to grace the cover of the book, Boats, Oars, and Rowing, written by R.D. “Pete” Culler, an icon of the boatbuilding trade.
In an age when many designers and builders are out to “push the envelope” and “revolutionize the industry,” designer and builder Walter Simmons carries on, honoring many of the old ways of doing things. He has been building the Matinicus double-ender for years, using molds passed on to him from the family of Merrill Young, one of a long line of boatbuilders and fishermen who lived on Matinicus Island, off midcoast Maine.
In boatbuilding circles, Simmons is known for writing several books, including works on lapstrake boat-building, a traditional type of construction in which planks (strakes) overlap, appearing somewhat like the laps of a clapboard house. Lapstrake construction makes a strong hull, since the laps themselves—about 3⁄4″ wide in this case—add strength to the hull.
The term double-ender is applied to a variety of boat types. Simmons refers to his model as a double-ender (rather than a peapod, or anything else, for that matter) because the Youngs referred to her that way, so whether technically correct, a bow to her heritage, or both, she is a double-ender.
Karen Wales
Boatbuilder Todd Skoog added stemhead details to each of TINKER’s stems.
There are two keel versions of the boat: one with a T-shaped keel that Simmons builds exclusively and one with a two-part plank keel that he both builds and offers in plan form to other builders. I was invited to row and to ride in a Simmons-built double-ender (T-shaped keel model) owned by Todd Skoog and Sandy Buxton.
Todd is a professional boatbuilder and Sandy has lifelong experience on the water; she has even co- owned and worked on a couple of sardine carriers. With the vast boatbuilding and boating knowledge that exists between these two, it is high praise that they would choose to buy a boat rather than build one themselves—but no surprise that they would settle on this one. They’ve named her TINKER.
Karen Wales
The Matinicus double-ender weighs about 130-145 lbs. Though this is not a lightweight boat, two people can load and unload it from a trailer.
She tracks beautifully. After a few pulls on the oars, momentum begins to carry her in calm water like a large and happy fish awakening from slumber, propelling into the morning’s hunt. She never feels tippy or corky. Imagining what it might be like to have a child aboard (or to be one), I stood up, sat down, turned around, rowed, sat back, and sometimes shifted my weight without warning. TINKER never wavered or gave fright.
As mentioned, TINKER is the model with the T-shaped keel. This type of keel receives its garboard planks (the lowermost planks in the boat and the first ones to be installed during the building process) by way of a rabbet that is cut along the keel’s length.
Benjamin Mendlowitz
Descended from a long line of workboats, these striking lapstrake double-enders are often very long-lived, partly because of the pride they instill in their owners.
The plank keel, as it sounds, is flat—like a plank. In cross-section, it is wider than it is deep. In construction, garboard planks are fitted to bevels that are cut along the length of the plank keel’s bottom. The edges of the garboard and the bottom of the plank keel are then protected by a second, outer keel-type piece (called a shoe in the plans), which covers the bottom of the plank keel and butts against the garboards. The plank keel allows for the easy installation of a centerboard trunk if the builder wants to rig the boat for sailing. It also gives nice footroom in the bottom of the boat. I envision how helpful this flat sole might have been to fishermen of old as they hauled their lobster pots or otherwise stood while handlining for fish. Simmons has drawn remarkably well-detailed plans for the Matinicus double-ender—plans that carry the mark of experience.
There are other boats in this family. One notable design is John Gardner’s Matinicus Peapod, which, due in part to the name, is sometimes confused with Simmons’s Matinicus double-ender. A comparison of the plans of both boats shows some significant differences. Simmons’s boat is a full 6″ longer (15′ 6″ to Gardner’s 15′ LOA), yet has a smaller beam (4′ 5 3⁄4″ compared to Gardner’s 4′ 6 3⁄4″). The biggest difference is that while the Gardner boat is symmetrical about the ’midship section (she is the same fore and aft), Simmons’s boat is not. The aft sections of the Matinicus double-ender are finer than those forward, and the stern profile is not the same as the bow.
Walter Simmons
Unlike many other double-ended rowboats of this size, the Matinicus double-ender’s hull is not symmetrical fore and aft. This, combined with her different bow and stern profiles, makes a very pleasing and interesting hull that will always be a joy to use.
Although Gardner mentions a plank keel in his write-up, his plans show a rectangular keel topped by a narrow keel batten, while Simmons’s show details for the wider plank keel described earlier. Finally, the Gardner Peapod was designed for rowing and her plans show none of the sailing rig details such as the mast, sprit, sail, rudder, centerboard and aforementioned centerboard trunk. These details are all completely spelled out in Simmons’s plans.
This would be a fine boat for any serious builder to take on. Lapstrake planking makes this a particularly good choice because it does not require as much time to swell as carvel planking. It is a workboat in the true sense of the word. No flash, no varnish needed. Her charm is all in her lines and in her performance.
While it may seem that boaters and boatbuilders with a more experienced eye are drawn to this design, they are not an exclusive club. Almost anyone can own this boat. Plans are builder-friendly and the finished product is a down-to-earth pleasure with enduring quality. Like Walt Simmons himself, she’s the real deal.
Matinicus Double-Ender Particulars
LOA: 15′ 6″
Beam: 4′ 5 3⁄4″
Weight: 140 lbs
Plans and finished boats are available from Duck Trap Woodworking, P.O. Box 88, Lincolnville Beach, Maine 04849, 207-789-5363.
Check Out These Other Duck Trap Offerings
Ready for more boats from the mind of Walter Simmons? We’ve profiled a few you might enjoy.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
Sliding-seat rowing is a great exercise; it is good for building strength in the muscles and flexibility in the joints. Racing shells are fast, but they require a refined technique and smooth water, so for recreation we’d enjoy rowing more in a boat that offers a bit of stability and seakeeping ability without giving up a lot of speed. Ruth, Dave Gentry’s rowing wherry, is 18′ long and while it has a maximum beam of 33″, it’s appreciably narrower at the waterline. Those dimensions add up to a good turn of speed. Its light weight, 45 lbs, will be quick to accelerate and reward good rowing technique.
Skin-on-frame construction keeps the weight low. The keel, chines, and gunwales that support the fabric skin take their shape from the six plywood frames. The keel and the lower chines give the hull a shallow-V cross section, and combined with the skeg they give Ruth good tracking abilities. The transom sits well above the waterline so the underwater shape of the hull is fine at both ends. There’s a thwart for a passenger in the stern and it’s set at the aft frame, not at the transom, to keep the additional weight close to the center of the boat. The aft ends of the chines, spread apart by the transom, contribute some reserve buoyancy to keep the boat in proper trim if you choose to take a friend along. Floorboards slipped through slots in the frames provide a place to step aboard.
Dave Gentry
Ruth, the Dave Gentry rowing wherry, is 18′ long and while it has a maximum beam of 33″, it’s appreciably narrower at the waterline. Those dimensions add up to a good turn of speed.
The wherry will take a drop-in sliding-seat rowing rig with outriggers. The plans show a Piantedosi rig bolted in place for rowing, and make the attachment easy to take apart. It’ll be a lot easier to car-top the boat and carry it to the water’s edge without the extra weight and width of the rowing rig. The plans provide the option for fixed-thwart rowing with simple plywood outriggers. They only need to be about 11″ long to provide a good span between a set of standard oarlocks to suit 7′ oars.
Skin-on-frame construction is very economical and with the money you can save building a Ruth, paying for a sliding-seat rowing rig and a pair of sculls is not going to make a big dent in your checking account.
The author’s Ruth is rigged with a homebuilt rowing rig for solo rowing and is without floorboards and a seat for a passenger. A False transom covers the edges of the fabric skin for a tidier appearance.
Kyla Dumser
While this Ruth isn’t equipped with a seat for a passenger, the reserve buoyancy created by the transom will support the additional weight without putting the hull well out of trim.
Originally designed for racing in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the Baybird Sloop by W. Starling Burgess found a true home in the summer sailing camps on Cape Cod’s Pleasant Bay beginning in the 1920s.
Originally designed for junior racing at the Corinthian Yacht Club in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the Baybird Sloop was a product of the restlessly creative naval architect W. Starling Burgess (see WoodenBoat Nos. 71–74). The Marblehead sailors, however, soon found that the very flat sheer Burgess drew for the gaff-headed sloop made the boat a wet ride in their blustery home waters. The type was, fair to say, less than successful—until sailors in the thin waters of Pleasant Bay on Cape Cod bought 20 or 30 of the boats (the story varies) and brought them down from Marblehead. This group fanned the embers, and soon the Baybird’s popularity was ablaze, especially in summer sailing camps in the shallow bays centered on the elbow of the Cape.
The flame never fully extinguished in the ensuing decades, and the Baybird’s modern supporters fervently hope it will soon undergo a second rekindling with a return to wooden construction. The pretty towns of Chatham, Harwich, and Orleans are surrounded by a tangle of bays, and people here take a keen interest in preserving the lifestyle of Cape Cod. Their love for this area is evident, and by some alchemy the Baybird tradition has become bound together with it.
The shallow and sandy waters are ringed with salt marshes and sinewy channels leading to hidden ponds. It can blow here, but winds can be temperamental and fluky. The bottom is rarely out of sight: it isn’t uncommon to see sailors jump overboard so they can push a boat grounded on a bar off to deeper water. The waters are protected, however, so the Baybird’s flat sheer seems to be no issue. A centerboard and kick-up rudder give the boat 6″ of draft, making the type an excellent choice for daysailing and racing here.
Katherine Mehls
Suzanne Leahy of Pleasant Bay Boat and Spar Company in South Orleans, Massachusetts, built a new cold-molded Baybird in 2010, hoping to rekindle an interest in wooden-hulled boats of the class.
Boatbuilder Suzanne Leahy, who grew up in Marblehead, discovered Baybirds after moving to Orleans from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1993. Possessed of the wiry energy of a coiled spring, the former sculptor (she holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania) found boatbuilding—sculpture come to life—by working as a volunteer with John Brady at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia. She fell for it hard. Then, after a vacation to Cape Cod, she planned a way to forge her boatbuilding experience and the Cape into a new lifestyle for herself. Then she “met someone,” moved to Orleans, tried finding work in boatyards, and ended up working five years in a hardware store—a great way to get to know the locals. She later started a business, now called Pleasant Bay Boat and Spar Company, focusing primarily on wooden boat building and restoration but also on hollow spar and flagpole construction. Along the way, she became active in the Friends of Pleasant Bay and later was instrumental in restoring a historic Coast Guard 36′ motor lifeboat (see WoodenBoat No. 212). Boats, the Baybird among them, became as important to her as the Cape itself.
“I was meeting people who talked to me about the Baybird, but I hadn’t noticed it at all,” she said. “This is the story of my life—I just stumble into these things.”
In 2010, she built STARLING, the first new wooden Baybird sloop in more decades than anybody can remember, maybe even since the original boats were built at Marblehead.
Katherine Mehls
The Baybird STARLING, named after her designer, is a comfortable racing daysailer for a skipper and crew. The teamwork involved in sailing it is what made the type so great for use in Pleasant Bay’s numerous sailing camps—and her builder hopes to revive that use.
She took the lines off the Cape’s only surviving wooden example, PURA VIDA. (The only other known wooden survivor is in Maine.) She faired them to what she and other Baybird aficionados believe to be as accurate a reflection of Burgess’s original design as can be attained, since the original plans are lost. At the same time, she joined others in launching a new Baybird Class Association to nurture the type and control its specifications.
Leahy hopes her cold-molded version will help to revive one part of Cape Cod’s history by steering more sailors toward wooden-hull heritage. Because this is a one-design class, requiring tight control over specifications, the association has granted Leahy the exclusive right to build the type; plans aren’t available for purchase.
Tom Jackson
With two halyards for the gaff-rigged main and one halyard for the jib, the Baybird’s rig is uncomplicated.
It was probably wise of Leahy and the nascent association to permit modern methods and materials, as they have done, to bring the boat into a new century. STARLING is cold-molded, using an inner 3 ⁄8″ layer of white cedar strip planking followed by two 1⁄8″ veneer layers of Spanish cedar on opposing diagonals for a
total thickness of 5⁄8″. The hull, very fair and stiff, is sheathed inside and out with Dynel set in epoxy. The deck is 1⁄2″ okoume plywood, also sheathed in Dynel in
epoxy. The white cedar side seats are comfortable, with a low coaming of laminated mahogany making hiking out easy and comfortable when necessary. The cedar floorboards make an unobstructed cockpit, easy to move around in and providing many ways to shift crew weight to find the right balance.
The centerboard trunk is neatly trimmed with mahogany, and a wooden mainsheet jam cleat is mounted on its aft end. Inside, however, the centerboard is made of 1″ ultrahigh molecular-weight plastic faired to a foil in cross-section.
Tom Jackson
A bronze gooseneck fitting clamps around the hollow Douglas-fir mast, avoiding holes for fastenings.
The rig, too, is modernized, with the mast built hollow using the bird’s-mouth method of fitting together staves for glue-up (see WoodenBoat No. 149). The standing rigging is high-tech, low-stretch synthetic line. The boom is intentionally left solid, adding a bit of weight to the foot of the sail. The gaff, however, is hollow, and instead of wooden jaws it has a saddle, a carbon-fiber lamination that allows the gaff to slide up and down the mast. The boom’s gooseneck fitting is cast bronze using straps that encircle the mast and therefore don’t require fastening holes bored into the spar’s lovely bright-finished Douglas-fir.
I sailed with Leahy in August on the first day of the annual Arey’s Pond Catboat Gathering, in waters she has come to know well. I had sailed with her first at The WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport with not enough time, not enough wind, and too many boats, after which I formed an idea to join her again in the sloop’s home waters, which I’d never seen. Here, the Baybird shone. In the shifting winds of Pleasant Bay, we tacked easily, dodging the shoals—most of the time.
Tom Jackson
A purpose-made mainsheet jam cleat on the after edge of the centerboard trunk is handsome and works well.
Leahy has a fine eye and has built a fine boat. The boat has all the hallmarks of a classic daysailer—comfortable to handle, fast, nimble, and placing a premium on the teamwork of a skipper and crew who know each other and their boat well and sail often. It tacks easily, is responsive, and has a very well-balanced helm. It’s unusual these days to see gaff rig on a boat of this size, but it is powerful and close-winded enough to surprise many a dinghy racer. The boat is a joy to sail. Such boats tell what they need, and an attentive crew quickly learns to listen.
Old-time sailors tell Leahy that they sail the boats very flat, not even inducing heel in light airs, as is commonly done on light racing dinghies. They keep crew weight far forward, and they don’t strap the mainsail in too tight. In the camps, “they were never allowed to bring the boom in over the stern quarter—that was a rule, and even farther outboard was better,” Leahy said. They also used about 80 lbs of lead ballast in the boat, and told her that they remembered adding more ballast in the camps to account for the fact that their sailors were young and light. Racing against one boat in the hands of an old-time skipper, “we were watching them fly. That’s the only way to sail them. It’s completely not rational. It defied reason. The sail was old, full of holes, but the guy was flying. I was trying everything to catch him.”
Suzanne Leahy
Suzanne Leahy took the lines off one of the last two surviving wooden Baybird boats to reconstruct W. Starling Burgess’s original design, plans for which do not survive. She and others also formed the Baybird Class Association, with the intent of reviving the type and keeping control over its specifications. Plans for the type are not for sale; Leahy is the sole builder authorized by the association.
The beauty of racing, and the reason why it is such a great teaching tool, is its instant feedback on experimentation, not to mention the way it teaches people the mental habit of paying constant attention with ease. The Baybird is an excellent platform for that kind of sailing and that kind of learning, which is why the type took off so well in the sailing camps of the Cape.
“Because so many people learned sailing there, they have memories of what the bay used to be like,” Leahy said. “It was in them to try to keep the bay like this forever. The memories they’ve described to me were just magical.” Some families have summered here for four generations, and sailing catboats and gaff-rigged sloops has always been part of their lives. May it always be so.
Pleasant Bay Boat and Spar Company, P.O. Box 1174, 80 Rayber Rd., Orleans, MA 02653; 508–240–0058. The website also has information about the Baybird Class Association. Note: Google lists the company as Permanently Closed
Katherine Mehls
During the annual Arey’s Pond Catboat Gathering, held each August on Pleasant Bay, Baybirds—most of them ‘glass—are active participants. Supporters hope more gaff-rigged wooden boats of the type will help Cape Cod hold on to what they see as an important part of the area’s historical legacy.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
Charles Wittholz recommends rigging this catboat with the gaff sail.
Here is an easily built small boat with a big heart. A seaworthy daysailer or vest-pocket cruiser, Corvus (named for the constellation known to mariners as the
“gaff-rigged mainsail”) has the look of a traditional Cape Cod catboat with tumblehome stem, a beam of almost half her length, and a “barn-door” rudder on her stern. She has room for six adults in her 7′ -long cockpit, and there’s a “head” in her small cabin. Some builders have extended the trunk cabin a bit in order to fit in two berths for cruising. A few other boats have been built without any cabins at all for use as open daysailers. For auxiliary power, a small out board can be mounted on the stern, or an inboard engine can be installed. (There’s information on one of the drawings for this latter option.)
The head and stores occupy the cuddy.
Corvus is designed for planking with 3/8″ plywood over eight sawn frames. She’s well thought out for amateur construction; the plans contain better-than-average detail and even show how to fit Corvus with an outside ballast keel, if you’d prefer that over a centerboard. While her designer recommends the conventional gaff mainsail, there is an alternate lug rig shown having a considerably shorter mast-a special requirement for one boat that had to pass underneath a bridge on her way to open water.
Wittholz 15 sheer plan. Lots of shape for sheet plywood.
These boats make delightful daysailers because they sail at a small angle of heel, and the centerboard version can be used where the water is but knee-deep.
Plans for the Wittholz Catboat design come in seven sheets, including sail plans, spar and rigging details, lines and offsets, construction plan, keel construction details, inboard profile and arrangement. WB Plan No. 47. $75.00.
BUILDING DATA
Skill needed: Intermediate
Lofting required: Yes
Alternative construction: None
PLANS DATA
No. of sheets: 7
Level of detail: Above average
Cost per set: $75.00
WB Plan No. 47
Completed 14′ 11″ Wittholz Catboat Images
Asli Iskeceli
We christened the boat GAVIIDAE (from the Latin genus, Gavia, and family, Gaviidae, for members of the loon species) and sail her on both lake and Gulf Coast waters. Her large sail moves her in all but the slightest of breezes, and the 3-hp Torqueedo 1103 gives us good auxiliary power when the wind fails completely, or we’re maneuvering alongside a dock or into a ramp.
Asli Iskeceli
The plans offer lug or gaff sail plans. We chose the latter and have found the boat to be responsive, stable, and remarkably close winded.
Rumor has it, spring is on the way. I say “rumor has it” because here in Maine—tucked up in the far northeast corner of the United States—this last weekend of March has brought snow. A week ago, we were in shirtsleeves being tricked into such conversations as “Shall we pull the boat out of the garage and do some work on it?” Even yesterday, despite the wind and a forecast of snow, the sky was cloudless, the temperature hovered somewhere in the 50s, and the central heat barely kicked in. But here we are, the last Saturday in March, and we have woken to two inches of snow on the ground and more still falling from a leaden sky.
As a recent import to these shores—I moved here nearly 20 years ago from southwest England where the thermometer rarely dipped below freezing—I have always been fascinated by winter, and snow in particular. I enjoy those harsh days when the air is so dry and cold that it literally takes my breath away. I take satisfaction in shoveling paths. I’m intrigued by the icicles that grow down from the roof outside the kitchen window. But by the end of March, even I have had enough. Now, I am ready for spring and warmth and getting out on the water. It seems I’ll have to wait awhile.
But, while I wait, I can do two things: I can make ready, and I can dream.
Each year, around this time, I start to think about getting boats ready for launching. The Shellback Dinghy in the garage is due for its five-year paint job and now that the ambient temperatures are mostly above freezing, my weekends will be taken up with scraping and sanding and painting. The 16’ daysailer needs less work and will stay snug and dry under its tarp until the forecasters stop talking about rain for three days straight, but I’m still itching to get at its topsides and bottom paint.
And then there are the trailers, which are called upon to make a half-mile round trip delivering the boats down to the harbor each spring, and back again in late fall. Despite their essential role, year after year those trailers are forgotten until the last possible moment. Only then, with the boats loaded and ready to go, and one trailer after another is hitched up to the car, do I think to check that everything is in working order.
This year, I have no excuse. Thanks to Kent and Audrey Lewis’s thoughtful, easily referenced Road-Ready Trailer Checklist in this issue, I have all the guidance I need to inspect both trailers in plenty of time to get replacement bulbs, inflate tires (buy new ones if necessary), and check on all the car-to-trailer connections. Of course, if I follow my usual MO, I’ll still wait far too long and it’ll still be a last-minute scramble, but we can always hope.
And in the meantime, my dreams of summer boating are well underway, inspired, in no small part, by Davis Taylor who in this issue shares his story of a short-but-sweet voyage on the Bagaduce River last September. He saw no other boats, camped on uninhabited islands, dealt with tidal currents for the first time, and relaxed through long leisurely mornings waiting for the water to float his boat each day. It wasn’t an overly ambitious trip, nor was it one of high drama and excitement, yet such stories never fail to inspire me to pull out the charts and plot some island-hopping adventure of my own.
Rumor has it spring is on the way. Here in Maine those rumors may be exaggerated, but when spring does eventually find us summer will be hard on its heels, and my boats and trailers had better be ready.
To those of you already enjoying fine and fair boating weather…see you on the water soon.
In December 2020, Australian boatbuilders Paroz & Co.—based in the outskirts of Brisbane, Queensland, on the banks of Breakfast Creek, a tributary of the Brisbane River—launched FINCH, an 8′ plywood hard-chined stem dinghy. A few years later, proprietor Simon Paroz, who had designed the boat, decided he would like a sistership for his own use. But before the build was complete, a new client saw it and made Simon an offer he couldn’t refuse. That boat was launched as TENDER TO MALVEENA.
Before embarking on a third build, Simon gave some more thought to the design and what modifications he should make for his own needs, and came up with a list of criteria. Essentially, the boat would be used as a tender to PERCY, Simon’s 37′ retired prawn trawler, built in the 1950s. It would need to have enough volume to carry himself, his wife, their two teenage daughters, and small dog. With just one person on board, it must plane easily with a 3-hp outboard motor (he didn’t want to deal with the weight of a larger outboard). And the dinghy should be easy to hoist aboard PERCY with a pair of simple davits each having a 2:1 purchase.
In order to fulfill this wish list, Simon determined that the new boat would need to be 18″ longer than FINCH and TENDER TO MALVEENA, but that weight must be a major consideration. To improve the aesthetics of his design, he also redrew the transom to give it more tumblehome, and raised the sheer and chine line forward slightly. “With a bit more length you can sweeten the lines,” Paroz said. “I was really happy with the way it looked.”
Photographs by the author
The floorboards are fabricated to lay flat, even in the deep V of the bow section. They are screwed to the keelson and the slats are of Queensland beech, an oily timber that needs no sealing. With an eye to low maintenance, Simon used a two-part high-gloss polyurethane paint known for its durability in hot climates and abrasion resistance. Four pad-eyes were installed to which lines can be attached when lifting the dinghy onto another boat or dock.
Building the Paroz Tender
The build process began by setting up the 1⁄4″ plywood transom (with its 2″ × 5⁄8″ internal framework already attached) and three temporary molds. The inner stem, laminated from six layers of 1⁄8″ Douglas fir, was then scarfed to the 1 1⁄2″ × 3⁄4″ Douglas-fir keelson, which was let into the transom and molds. The 1 1⁄2″ × 3⁄4″ internal chines and inwales and 5⁄8″ × 5⁄8″ stringers, all in western red cedar, were then also let into the transom and molds and fixed to the stem—none needed steaming.
Next the plywood sides and bottom panels were fitted. On all three of the dinghies, Simon drew distinctive V-shaped entries to minimize slamming in a chop. On his earlier builds this shape was achieved by cold-molding the forward sections of the bottom panels, but to save time on this later boat he used 3⁄16″ plywood, which could be “tortured” into shape in the forward 3′ of the bottom and scarfed it into the 1⁄4″ plywood that was used for the rest of the bottom. Simon designed the boat to ensure the most economical use of 8′ × 4′ sheets of marine plywood: the maximum width of each of the bottom panels—one on either side of the centerline—is just over 21″ so that both can be cut from a single sheet of plywood. The topside panels are 3⁄16″ plywood with a scarf joint near the stern to accommodate the length; their maximum width is only 15″ so, again, Simon was able to cut both sides from one sheet.
The dinghy is easily driven with 6′ 4″ oars. It is quick to accelerate and, thanks to the skeg-like keel aft, tracks well.
Once the plywood shell of the boat was assembled, it was time to fit the solid wood pieces to the outside of the hull. The centerline components were made from Douglas fir: the outer stem is 10 laminations of 1⁄8″ fir, while the keel is 3⁄4″ × 3″ and runs almost the length of the hull, providing an ample skeg but ending 3″ short of the transom “to allow the water to come through to the propeller,” Simon explains. The gunwales (1 1⁄2″ × 3⁄4″), external chines (1 3⁄8″ × 5⁄8″), and transom frame (1 3⁄8″ × 1⁄2″) are all in western red cedar.
The 9 1⁄2″-wide thwarts are of 3⁄4″ western red cedar, as are the 9⁄16″ stiffeners attached to their underside, and the stem and stern knees are all of 3⁄4″ western red cedar laminated between two layers of 3⁄16″ plywood. Simon appreciates western red cedar for its light weight, strength, and stability, especially, he says, when it’s glued to other materials. He used epoxy as an adhesive throughout the build.
Floorboards were next on Simon’s wish list: water inevitably collects in the bilge of a small boat, and Simon wanted to keep passengers’ feet dry. He was also keen that the boards should follow the internal shape of the hull and not stand up too high. To achieve this, each of the two floorboard panels has three 1 1⁄4″ × 1″ athwartships beams laminated in four layers, with 2 3⁄8″ × 1⁄2″ fore-and-aft slats glued to them. On the forward panel, all but the center two slats are laminated in two layers to achieve the necessary curve of the boat’s V-section. The slats are of Queensland beech, a naturally oily timber that needs no sealing, and each panel is screwed to the keelson.
With only one person on board, it’s hard to bring the boat onto a level plane without a tiller extension. However, it can still achieve 9 knots with just a 3-hp motor.
Simon finished the boat with International Perfection Pro two-part paint, chosen both for its durability in the hot Queensland climate and for its abrasion resistance (Perfection Pro is no longer available in the U.S. but has been replaced by Interlux Toplac Plus, a one-part silicone alkyd yacht enamel). To minimize damage when coming alongside PERCY, the dinghy has a 3⁄4″-diameter Hempex polypropylene fender rope around the sheer—it sits in a cove routed in the gunwales and is fixed in place with adhesive sealant and boat nails at 14″ centers.
The Paroz Dingy Performance
The new boat was finished and launched in December 2024, and named SUNNY SIDE UP (a name chosen by Simon’s 13-year-old daughter). The final all-up weight (including the floorboards) is 105 lbs—rather more than the 77 lbs of the smaller FINCH, which Simon says he can carry by himself on his shoulder, but still light enough that he and I could carry it through his workshop to the water’s edge with little difficulty.
With a tiller extension a single operator can move their weight forward and help the boat to level-out on plane. Thus balanced, the boat can be driven at 12 knots. The bow line fitting is mounted low on the stem for optimum pull when being towed.
On the day we tested SUNNY SIDE UP, conditions were calm in the sheltered river. Thanks to her hard chine sections, the boat felt very stable at all times, including when getting in and out.
Rowing SUNNY SIDE UP with Simon’s 6′ 4″-long spoon-bladed oars was a delight. The boat’s light weight gives quick acceleration and a lively feel, and the skeg is deep enough to provide good directional stability. The aft thwart can be used effectively as a foot brace.
While Simon reports that the boat is well balanced rowing from the central thwart with just one passenger in the stern, there is no reason why oarlock sockets shouldn’t be fitted to allow the use of the forward thwart as a second rowing position. He also reports that with all the family on board (typically with him rowing, his daughters in the stern, his wife in the bow, and the dog on either of the sole boards) the boat is “very comfortable” and has “room for more.”
Despite being only 9′ 9″ long, the dinghy has plenty of volume and can carry Simon’s family of four plus dog. When he lengthened the hull from the original design on which it was based, Simon also raised the sheer and introduced some tumblehome in the stern.
Under power with the two of us on board, the 3-hp outboard gave us a maximum speed of 5 1⁄2 knots. We then each tried the boat singlehanded with no tiller extension and were able to reach up to 9 knots, planing, but because it was only possible to perch on the aft part of the central thwart, the bow was raised a little too much. It was clear that it would be advantageous to sit farther forward. Sure enough, after Simon managed to find a tiller extension he could shift his weight farther forward, which leveled the boat nicely and the speed ticked up to 12 knots. Simon has found that SUNNY SIDE UP “tows easily and is well behaved” behind PERCY.
SUNNY SIDE UP is a delightful, good-looking stem dinghy that clearly satisfies all of the requirements that Simon identified at the design stage. It should be within the capabilities of most amateur builders, although Simon thinks that “moderate skill levels” will be needed to cope with the scarf joints in the plywood, and the laminated stem.
Nigel Sharp is a lifelong sailor and a freelance marine writer and photographer. He spent 35 years in managerial roles in the boatbuilding and repair industry, and has logged thousands of miles in boats big and small, from schooners to dinghies.
Paroz Tender Particulars
LOA: 9′ 9″
Beam: 4′
Depth of hull: 1′ 6″
Plans and custom builds are available from Paroz & Co., Tripcony Slipway, 32 Argyle St., Breakfast Creek, Queensland 4010, Australia; [email protected].
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
Ninigret is easily driven by a modest outboard motor (25-60 hp) and runs flat, smooth, and dry.
This 22′ skiff seems about perfect for most of our needs. She’s easily driven by a modest outboard motor (25–60-hp) and runs flat, smooth, and dry. We’ll spend most of our time in the huge cockpit, and not in the cabin. Yet when we do go below, we’ll find a head and sleeping room for a couple. If we should fall victim to claustrophobia, we’ll simply roll back the cloth housetop and stow its ash battens. The large fixed windows will block the breeze, and we can hunker down on the berths and look up at the sky. What a fine place to enjoy the last light of day.
John Atkin designed this outboard skiff-cruiser for a client who wanted a practical boat for use on Ninigret Pond (really a coastal lagoon) in Rhode Island, but this good boat will be at home along almost any coast.
An efficient hull with steep deadrise forward for a smooth ride in a chop, and a flat run for stability and easy speed with moderate power.
The hull shows healthy deadrise (V-shape) up forward, which warps down to about 15% amidships and disappears in a flat bottom at the transom. All this shape gives us a boat that planes easily across smooth water, and yet cuts smoothly through a harbor chop. In truly rough conditions, Ninigret’s ample volume above the waterline ensures that she’ll climb over large waves.
The designer tells us to sheathe Ninigret’s bottom with high-quality 3/8″ plywood. We’ll plank the sides lapstrake fashion with four strakes sawn from the same plywood sheets. This is simple work, but let’s take care with the lining off. Shadow lines cast at the plank laps will define the sweet shape of this hull, and we’ll want to get it just right.
Deck and bottom framing.
Atkin never liked the look of a big outboard motor clamped to the transom of a handsome boat, so he hid Ninigret’s engine in a well. Then he enclosed that well in its own compartment. We won’t see the engine, and we’ll barely hear it. How large an engine should we fit to Ninigret? Early on, the designer suggested 25–30- hp. Experience proved that this skiff could be happy with more horses. A revised motorwell drawing allows up to 60-hp.
John Atkin eventually built a Ninigret for himself, which is a designer’s ultimate compliment to a particular boat. For several years he and his wife, Pat, cruised and picnicked their way around the western end of Long Island Sound. That’s a fine use for a good boat. Ninigret design plans are available for sale at The WoodenBoat Store.
Timm Schleiff’s motor sits handsomely in an exposed well.
Roeboats
John Atkin recommended a 30–45-hp outboard for Ninigret; the corresponding top speed with this power reportedly ranges from 18 to 25 knots. Tiernan Roe’s Ninigret is powered by a 30-hp Honda.
While John Atkin designed Ninigret for fishing the choppy waters of Block Island Sound, the boat also makes a superb camp-cruiser. Irish boatbuilder Tiernan Roe built the fine example in the photograph above.
In 2023 I spent some time rowing and sailing the Scout 10, a sailing dinghy that is the result of a collaboration between Brandon Davis of Turn Point Design and Scott Jones of Duckworks, both based in Port Townsend, Washington. Their goal was to create the “ultimate mini cruiser,” small and light enough to be cartopped yet able to accommodate a solo sailor sleeping aboard. On land the diminutive Scout 10 certainly has some noteworthy advantages, but a longer boat will be faster on the water. While Scott and Brandon were pleased with the performance of the Scout 10, they wanted to shift the design toward better speed under sail and oars and greater carrying capacity. The answer was the Scout 14.
Scout 14 Construction and Layout
The Scout 14 is available as a kit, which includes CNC-cut pieces of marine plywood and closed-cell sheet foam. The planks, transom, and bulkheads are of 4mm BS 1088 plywood, and the bottom and laminated skeg are of 6mm plywood. The recessed deck, which serves as seating, is of weight-saving 1⁄4″ marine-grade foam. The gunwale has a 1″ foam core boxed in with plywood. Where the full length of a component—plywood or foam—demands the use of more than one piece, the sections are connected with puzzle joints and epoxy. After assembling the full-length pieces, both foam and plywood are fiberglass-and-epoxy coated on one or both sides.
Photographs by the author
The recessed deck, made of foam reinforced with fiberglass and epoxy, encloses the storage areas and provides generous seating and flotation. The holes in the gunwale caps are lined with phenolic tubes and serve as oarlock sockets and attachment points for sheet blocks, fenders, and other items.
The hull is built without molds or strongback. Mating tabs and slots assure that adjoining pieces are properly aligned. Support jigs holding the hull right-side up and a spreader spanning the sheer amidships help to keep the hull straight and without twist. The seams between the bottom, the garboard strake, and the lone broadstrake are butted edge-to-edge, which aids in ’glassing the bottom of the hull and reduces abrasion. The sheerstrake overlaps the broadstrake, and in the finished hull casts a shadow to accentuate the hull’s curves. A foam daggerboard and rudder blade are included in the kit and are both CNC-shaped as NACA 0012 foils; all they require is sanding, ’glassing, and finishing.
At around 100 lbs, the Scout 14 is about at the limit for cartopping, lifting one end at a time, and I would use a cart to get the boat to and from the water. During my time with the boat, Brandon helped me to carry the boat across the beach. The transom has two oval handholds, and the breasthook provides a good hold at the bow.
In the cockpit, the side benches and bow and stern seating areas surround a footwell that is 8′ 3″ long by 21 1⁄4″ wide by approximately 9″ deep. Sealed compartments beneath the benches provide storage and flotation and are accessed from above via three 10″ × 14″ Sealect Triple-Latch hinged hatches as well as three optional 6″ deck plates. For gear that needs to be accessed quickly, there are two open-sided compartments at the forward end of the footwell.
The thwarts, made of carbon-fiber and plywood, can be located anywhere along the parallel-sided decks. The two holes relieve the pressure on the rower’s sit bones. The daggerboard slot can be seen in the starboard sidedeck.
The inside edges of the side benches are straight and parallel so that two removable rowing thwarts—made of plywood and carbon fiber—can be located anywhere over the footwell and locked in place with thumbnuts that clamp to a flange that extends from the side bench edges. The thwarts hang about 2″ at center below the level of the side benches, providing more clearance between the oar handles and tops of the thighs while rowing. Each thwart has two holes in its surface, a feature common in racing-shell sliding seats for relieving backside pressure points. I’ve used seat pads with such holes, but they result in a higher sitting position.
I lay down in the footwell to try it for size for sleeping aboard the Scout 14. It has more than enough length and is wide enough for me to rest on my side with my knees drawn up and my elbows out. Lying on my back was more cramped: my shoulders filled the width of the footwell, and I could set only one arm alongside my torso; the other had to rest on a side bench or across my chest. Because the tops of the side benches have flanges extending over the footwell, a pair of floorboard panels with transverse slats could be built to serve as a sleeping platform at night. Alternatively, a long single panel with slats parallel to the centerline could rest on the thwarts. Either way, the Scout 14 has more than enough stability to support a good-sized sleeping platform at bench level.
The top of each gunwale has 14 holes lined with phenolic tubes that can be used for oarlock placement, attachment points for sheet blocks, and even hoops to support a camping canopy. The holes are spaced about 12″ apart with an extra one amidships to allow for a finer adjustment of the boat trim for a solo rower.
A solo rower can use the unoccupied thwart as a foot brace. The ready adjustability of the seat and oarlock positions makes it easy to trim the boat to accommodate load carried and conditions encountered. Here rowing the Scout 14 is its designer, Brandon Davis.
Rowing Performance
The Scout has good stability and is easy to get aboard. To test the secondary stability, I sat amidships with my seat planted on a side bench and both legs hanging well over the side. With my mid-thighs resting on the gunwale, the outwale was still an inch or more above water level.
Rowing solo, I found the Scout 14 tracked well and was easily maneuvered. From a standing start I could spin the boat through 360° with eight strokes—two and a half more than the Scout 10 but still a quick spin and a good indication of easy maneuverability.
While I didn’t have a second pair of oars to try tandem rowing, the cockpit is long enough to accommodate a rower in each end. While there are no dedicated foot braces, the aft rower can use the aft bench as a brace; there is no such brace point for the forward rower.
The daggerboard trunk is offset to starboard to leave the cockpit unobstructed. A bungee cord, anchored forward of the trunk, holds the board in any position; here it is raised high while the boat is on the beach. At the forward end of the cockpit are open storage compartments with easy access.
During GPS-measured speed trials, with the boat empty and one rower, the Scout 14 averaged 3.7 knots at a relaxed pace, maintained 4.3 knots with an aerobic exercise pace, and averaged 5 knots in short sprints. The speeds are an average of 17 percent faster than those of the Scout 10.
To row with a passenger seated in the stern, I moved the thwart to the forward end of the footwell and placed the oarlocks in one of the many holes built into the gunwale. Then the speeds, respectively, were 3.6, 3.9, and 4.4 knots, averaging 35 percent faster than the Scout 10.
Sailing Performance
The daggerboard trunk is housed within the starboard storage compartment, leaving the footwell unobstructed. Its opening is in the side bench where a loop of bungee cord, anchored in the side bench forward of the trunk and stretched around the back of the board, keeps the board at any depth. The rudder also has bungee looped around its blade that will hold it down but still lets it kick up if it hits an obstruction. For beaching, a lifting line runs from the blade’s trailing edge, through the rudderhead, and is secured by a jam cleat on the underside of the tiller.
The arrangement of the sheet brings it readily to hand without obstructing the tiller or interfering with the sailor.
The 70-sq-ft square-top boomless sail has four full battens. A single row of reefpoints will gather up the sail and the bottom batten beneath the second batten. The two-part mast is made of carbon fiber and fiberglass and can be easily pulled apart to stow aboard. The sheet has an unusual arrangement: It runs through a block tethered to one of the holes in the gunwale, then aft to a block mounted close to the transom, up to a block at the sail’s clew, down to the transom on the other side of the boat, and forward to a final gunwale-mounted block. There is a stopper knot at each end of the sheet so that the line can be managed from either side of the boat. For handling the sail, the windward end of the sheet is pulled through until the leeward end is prevented from running through its forward block by the stopper knot. Now the sail can be trimmed from the windward end. With the sheet running around the perimeter of the stern, it was never in the way when coming about, and with its ends led forward, they were within view and accessible while I was keeping watch over the bow.
Thanks to its full-length battens, the Scout 14’s 70-sq-ft square-topped sail holds its shape and provides good power even in light air.
Under sail, the Scout 14’s well-balanced rig required only a light touch on the tiller. The boat pointed well and was exceptionally quick to tack. I suspect the NACA-foil rudder and daggerboard get the credit for the Scout 14 carrying so much speed through tacks. The bow would swing through the eye of the wind so quickly that I had to change sides swiftly before the sail filled on the new tack. In the light winds I had for the sailing trials, the full battens usually popped on their own to push the belly of the sail out to leeward. If they didn’t take care of themselves, a tug on the sheet did the job. When jibing, the battens absorbed much of the impact when the sail snapped the slack out of the sheet.
The Scout 10 was designed as the smallest camp-cruising sailboat, and the Scout 14 incorporates all the features of the 10 with the benefits of greater speed, stability, and capacity that come with the additional length. It was a pleasure to row and sail. In 1980, I did my first Inside Passage cruise in a traditionally built dory skiff very similar in size to the Scout 14—if I’d had the Scout, I could have traveled not only faster but also in greater comfort and safety.
Christopher Cunningham is Small Boat’s editor-at-large.
Kits for the Scout 14 range from CNC-cut parts for the boat alone priced at $3,399, to a complete package including sailing rig priced at $4,999; all are available from Duckworks Boat Builders Supply.
Matt Steverson built a Scout 14 as a tender for the DURACELL racing yacht he has been converting and shows the process on his YouTube channel, The Duracell Project, episodes 123 through 126.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
In the parking lot of the South Penobscot, Maine, boat ramp the gravel crunched beneath the tires of my small truck and trailer. I am usually a bit nervous when trailering a boat and had chosen the location as my put-in for a four-day, 20-mile row on the Bagaduce River in part because I knew the ramp would not be busy—there would likely be no one to witness my erratic maneuverings with the trailer. And I was right: save for a great blue heron standing motionless in the water to one side of the ramp, I had the place to myself. Northern Bay of the Bagaduce stretched out before me in the warm early-September sunshine. About a mile away, in the middle of the bay, small whitecaps were lifting in a 10-knot southerly breeze. It was midday and the smell of salt water and mudflats wafted through the air, mingling with the earthy perfume of the mixed forest that lined the shore.
Photographs by the author
As expected, the public boat ramp in South Penobscot was quiet. When I arrived, the tide was too low to launch, which gave me time to sort my gear and get everything squared away. One way and another there was a lot to tidy up: I carried enough fresh water for the whole four-day trip and, even when rolled up, the homemade wooden sleeping deck (visible beneath the oars) took up quite a bit of space.
The South Penobscot ramp can only be used at half-tide or higher, and even at half-tide the lower slope looked pretty slick. I decided to wait for the water to come up some more. For a couple of hours I futzed with gear, double-checked the chart, and soaked up the sunshine. At last I was able to ease the trailer down, slip AURELIUS, my Whitehall Spirit Tango 17, into the water, and tie her up to the dock while I went to park the truck and trailer. By early afternoon I was clambering aboard and pulling away. I was heading into both wind and tide, but was happy to be on the water and at the oars.
I eased down Winslow Cove and around 2-acre Winslow Island, a scant half mile from the boat ramp. A narrow channel that started as an uncharted sliver and widened to 40 yards led out of the cove, and I was immediately aware of the navigational challenges I would be facing. The seabed of the Bagaduce’s Northern Bay is a mix of mudflats, rocky shoals, and kelp beds. Even fully laden, AURELIUS draws less than 1′, but although I had rowed her extensively on ponds and lakes, I was new to the river, new to cruising in tidal waters, wary of running aground, and unsure how easily I would get stuck or unstuck if I rowed into mud. So began the oft-repeated pattern of the trip: check the chart, look over my shoulder to verify my location, row a few hundred yards, check, verify, row, repeat. I had a small sports mirror mounted on my baseball hat and, though it took some getting used to, I grew to appreciate not having to crane my neck quite as often. I also discovered that if I could see kelp beds beneath the boat, it was a good sign we were getting into the shallows.
As I readied myself and AURELIUS, I took time to enjoy the view from the parking lot west across Winslow Cove to Winslow Island and beyond to Northern Bay. The conditions were perfect and I could see no one on the water.
From the estuary mouth at the town of Castine, the tidal Bagaduce “river” is more like an extended inlet that winds its way circuitously for 14 miles into the interior of the Blue Hill peninsula. In parts it is relatively bay-like, but elsewhere, especially between Penobscot and Brooksville where I would be, steep forested sides funnel the surging tides into narrows that feature reversing rapids or roiling eddies and slicks. To many people, the Bagaduce is famous for two things: Bagaduce Lunch, a popular take-out restaurant on the upper reaches of the river where patrons can eat fried seafood while shouting above the roar of the reversing falls; and the 11’ tides that create those rapids. While tempted to check out the rapids, I determined that I should play it safe and explore the northern branch of the river, from South Penobscot to Castine and out into the open waters of Penobscot Bay. The river landscape had its appeal, but I also dreamed of sleeping on the edge of a cobbled beach, a jagged line of spruce trees behind me, and the cold waters of the Gulf of Maine in front of me.
Down the Bagaduce River to Emanuel Island
I successfully wound my way out of Winslow Cove and into the half-mile-wide main part of Northern Bay. There was no boat traffic and—extraordinarily for the coast of Maine—not a lobster trap in sight. A 15-knot wind, blowing across a mile of fetch from the south, had built up some chop, but it was scant challenge for AURELIUS. I just had to pull a little harder. I wound my way south through the mouth of the Bay, with Aunt Mollie and Sparks islands to the west, and Gravel Island to the east, easing by rocks and shallows as I went. The islands ranged in size from about 2 to 6 acres, sometimes with gravel beaches but often with 20′-high eroded embankments, topped by oak, maple, pine, and spruce forests. They showed no obvious sign of human habitation, and I was tempted to go ashore to explore. But the rocks, the shallows, and the mudflats warned against it, so I rowed on.
Roger Siebert
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The first site where I could camp ashore was Battle Island. Along with a handful of other islands in the Bagaduce, Battle is conserved and maintained by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust (MCHT), and low-impact camping in small groups is permitted. But I was still only 2 miles from the launching ramp, and if I wanted to spend at least one night in Penobscot Bay, I needed to press on. I set a goal of the next MCHT island, Emanuel Island*. I could, of course, have anchored for the night along the river and slept aboard on my homemade sleeping platform, but islands have their magic, and for me, the MCHT islands served as waypoints and preferred destinations.
Getting to Emanuel meant navigating through the Bagaduce Narrows, the channel that wraps around Jones Point, noted for tricky waters. As I eased past the several forested, mudflat-edged islets that comprise Youngs Islands, just north of the narrows, I saw my first lobster-trap buoy; the cant of the buoy and the water racing past it gave me my first real sense of the strength of the current I was rowing against. But I was still making good headway, and consoled myself with the thought that the current would be with me on the return trip.
My first landfall was on the beach of Emanuel Island. After offloading the camping gear, I came back down to set up the outhaul. With a view north toward Esther Island and beyond, I was looking back up the Bagaduce and the route I had taken since leaving Northern Bay earlier that day.
The forested banks along the river rose up steeply to about 40′, and as I approached Jones Point the river narrowed to about 240 yards. The waters of the narrows were threatening, with swirling slicks and mysterious changes in the pattern of surface wavelets and I half expected a kraken to rise up and pull me into the depths. AURELIUS’s bow was tugged a few times, but I stayed mid-channel and was relieved as I came through unscathed into Grindles Eddy and the river opened up again. In truth, the Narrows had been underwhelming; there had been no kraken, but just three harbor seals playing in the disturbed waters. Ahead of me, barely a mile south from Grindles Eddy, lay Emanuel Island.
That last mile seemed long. On the river’s steep, heavily wooded banks were camps and small houses, the first buildings I’d seen since leaving Northern Bay, and every couple of hundred yards a dock reached out from shore. One camp looked much like the next and such was the repetitiveness that it felt like I was making little or no progress, but eventually I came to the tricky shallows off Emanuel, and carefully eased into the shore. I had been on the water about two and a half hours.
There is nothing like waking up on an island and making a cup of coffee on the camp stove. My mornings were slow as I waited each day for the rising tide, but I made the most of them to relax, read, eat a leisurely breakfast, drink coffee, and soak in the sights, smells, and sounds of Maine.
Emanuel was longer and narrower than the other islands I had passed, and its 4 acres were scattered with fire-damaged (but still living) older trees standing amongst younger saplings and occasional blowdowns. The forest stood atop a 10′–15′-high embankment, worn away by tidal erosion. At high tide the beach would be almost entirely underwater, but there was plenty of room to camp above it at the edge of the forest. I was faced with a choice: should I camp ashore or onboard on my new homemade sleeping deck? Ashore, I would have to haul my gear up the embankment by way of the rickety, makeshift wooden ladder. And the slope of the beach was shallow so, even using the full extent of my outhaul line, AURELIUS would be high and dry at low tide, forcing me to wait in the morning for the tide to rise. Perhaps I should anchor off and sleep in the boat. But, I reasoned, I have always found sleeping ashore more comfortable than afloat and, somewhat carelessly, I had forgotten to bring a proper anchor light. There was little or no traffic on the river, and I could pop a lightstick and be fairly visible for most of the night, but I was wary of testing my nascent anchoring skills on a river known for its powerful currents. Besides, waiting for the tide in the morning would enforce some much-needed leisure time. I rowed ashore, made AURELIUS fast to a spruce sapling, offloaded my gear, and clambered up the wobbly ladder.
By the time I had all my gear moved to the campsite, I was utterly exhausted. The challenge of rowing and navigating, the unspoiled beauty of the river, and the sense of exploration had kept me energized on the water, but now fatigue hit hard. I set up the tent, arranged the kitchen, and wearily returned to the boat to set the outhaul.
Dinner was a quick affair. I was as hungry as I was tired and dug into some snacks as I cooked. The food revived me and, not wanting to miss the sunset, I made my way along the winding, 100-yard trail through the woods to the south end of the narrow island to witness a deep red western sky, and see the lights come on in Castine about 2 miles away. In the dark, I strolled back to the tent by headlamp, and almost as soon as my head hit the pillow fell into a deep sleep.
On the first morning, the view from my campsite on Emanuel Island was uninterrupted down the Bagaduce to Castine. By early afternoon, I would be pulling into Castine and wandering through town in search of a late lunch.
Downriver to Penobscot Bay
Fffft, plunk, crack! I awoke at dawn to an unfamiliar sound. I lay still. There it was again—ffffft, plunk, crack! Tentatively I peered out of the tent. Nothing. I waited. Ffffft, plunk, crack! And then I saw… no strange wild creature but acorns falling off the oak trees that grew among the pines all over the island. Reassured that I was not about to come face to face with a savage rodent, I rose, and 15 minutes later was enjoying a cup of hot instant coffee heavily laced with sugar and creamer. Ffffft, plunk, crack! I was hit, fairly painfully, on the shoulder. For the rest of the trip, I took to wearing a hat and fleece pullover around camp.
For several hours I waited for the incoming tide to lift AURELIUS off the rockweed and mud she had settled onto during the night. I was in no hurry—there were no bugs, the warm air was laced with the sweet tang of mudflat, spangling light danced on dappled waters under mostly sunny skies, and I had plenty of coffee and a good book.
By 11:30 a.m., AURELIUS was afloat. I carried my gear down the ladder, loaded up, and pushed off just before noon. The current was flowing fast against me: a few minutes after pushing off, I paused to tighten the collar of one of my oars, and saw Emanuel Island slide past me in the wrong direction. I quickly reset the oars, put my back into the stroke, and inched forward at 1 or 2 knots.
Each morning, I awoke to find AURELIUS high and dry. The gently sloping, almost flat beaches and 11’ tidal range meant that my 120′ of outhaul line was not nearly enough to keep AURELIUS afloat at all tides when I went ashore. And even though I had thought I might sleep on board, nights ashore on Maine islands were always too tempting and the inconvenience of waiting for the tide next day was a small price to pay.
I aimed for a series of green cans and red nuns that sent me first along the eastern bank, then along the western bank of the broadening river. My goal for the morning was Castine. One of the earliest European settlements in North America, present-day Castine was the site of a French fort in the 1630s, but by 1713 the region was under British rule. The earliest permanent settlement began in the 1760s and by 1776 the town boasted some 20 houses. Today, it is most famous for Maine Maritime Academy, which was opened in 1941, and as a popular destination for visiting yachts.
I had decided to go ashore for some lunch and a cold drink. I enjoy arriving at a town by boat, and was sure that a place with such a storied maritime pedigree as Castine would welcome an unkempt boater who had rowed down the Bagaduce. I was under the impression (wrongly, as I later learned) that I could not tie up at the town dock, so, instead, I landed at the first floating dock I encountered. There were a handful of kayaks on the dock—a positive sign—but as I made my way up the ramp to check in at the building immediately ashore, I realized I was at the Castine Yacht Club, and was suddenly aware that my salt-stained shirt, blistered hands, and neon-green drybag might not fit in. There was no one in the office, so I made my way the few short blocks to Castine’s small, quaint downtown. There I was dismayed to learn that the only pub still open in September would not start serving until 4 p.m. It was only 2 p.m. and, not wanting to wait that long, I opted instead for a quick lunch of fish and chips at the closest restaurant, before making my way back to the still-deserted yacht club. Somewhat disappointed that my arrival at Castine had not quite lived up to my elevated expectations, I pushed off, happy at least to have the tide finally in my favor.
I had thought about camping on the boat rather than ashore and had experimented with the setup on a pre-trip overnight excursion on a local pond. My tongue-and-groove boards, held together by bungee cords, rest on a molded lip that runs around the inside of AURELIUS’s cockpit. The narrow one-person back-packing tent fits perfectly atop the platform and within the boat. In lieu of stakes I experimented with weights to stabilize the tent
Bright sunlight and calm waters surrounded Castine Harbor as I made my way past the working waterfront of Maine Maritime Academy, but a few hundred yards beyond that the Bagaduce opened up into Penobscot Bay, and the outgoing tide collided with waves produced by a strong southwesterly wind and a fetch of more than 2 miles. A cloud cover rolled in, and the shuttered summer homes on the bluffs of Dice Head, a mile to the west, seemed a long way off. The sea was confused but dominated by a 3′ long-interval swell, broken by a chop going in the same direction, straight at me and AURELIUS.
For the first time on the journey, I became uncertain of my precise location. All I had to do was make my way around the southern end of Nautilus Island, less than a mile southeast of Dice Head, find the green can that marked the shoals at Nautilus Rock to the southwest of the island and, once past that, turn east into a virtual hurricane hole (unnamed on the chart) created by a combination of islands and a steep, forested peninsula on the northern tip of Cape Rosier. But I could see no green can. Perhaps the island I thought was Nautilus was something else entirely; perhaps I had somehow misread the chart. I was bobbing up and down on the 3′ swell, the biggest I’d ever experienced in AURELIUS, the wind howling and the sky dark, not sure how my boat would handle these seas. I had to fix my location. As fast as I could, I shipped my oars, set the chart aside, and pulled out my phone to check my location. AURELIUS immediately turned broadside to the swell, but she handled it well. I studied the phone and confirmed that I was, indeed, off Nautilus Island. Relieved, I relaxed, but by then was being pushed uncomfortably close to the lee shore. I quickly tucked the phone back into the drybag and put my back into the oars. It was hard, wave-tossed rowing for another 20 minutes or so, but at last the green can came into view, and as I pulled past Nautilus Rock, the water immediately flattened out. As if by magic, the clouds parted and in sunlight I made my way across the anchorage to Ram Island, the most southerly of the MCHT islands in and around the Bagaduce.
Six-acre Ram Island is actually two small islands, joined by a bar exposed at low tide. I made my way to the smaller eastern isle, where camping is permitted. The beach was a mix of gravel, mud, and rocks, and the embankment up to the forested center of the island was a mere 4′. It was late afternoon when I stepped ashore and once again, when the excitement and adrenaline dissipated, I found I was exhausted.
My sunset dinner spot on Ram was surely unbeatable. To my left was the western islet of Ram, in front of me and to my right was Nautilus Island, and away to the west, silhouetted blue against the sunset sky, was the far shore of Penobscot Bay.
Unlike the upriver islands Ram was a typical Maine-coast island: a cobbled beach with a scattering of large boulders, a few oaks within an otherwise entirely spruce forest, and too many islands to count silhouetted in the setting sun. Once more I elected to sleep on land. If I slept on board, I reasoned, I would be committed to an eastward view of just the anchorage—nice enough in its way—but on shore I could make my way across a small isthmus and enjoy long sweeping views of Penobscot Bay. Within the hour, the gear was ashore, AURELIUS was anchored for the night, the tent was up, and I was making dinner as the nearby spruce trees stood stark against a blazing sunset, first orange, then fiery red, and finally deep purple. A bald eagle flew overhead. It had been a good day, and the forecast for the morning was for sunshine and southerly winds that would help me on my way back upriver.
From Ram Island to Battle Island
When I awoke, low gray clouds scudded overhead, pushed by a northeasterly wind. How could this be? I had strained against wind and tide most of the way down the Bagaduce, confident that at least I’d have things working in my favor on my return trip to South Penobscot. I felt cheated. All too soon I was aware of another predicament: my unnamed hurricane hole remained as calm as a millpond but beyond its entrance at the southwest end of Nautilus Island, the seas looked even more wave-tossed than they had on the way in. The northwest wind was fighting a closely spaced swell from the south—the product of a nasty little storm east of Cape Cod. I wouldn’t know exactly how rough things were until I got out into the mix. And then I realized: there was an alternative route.
Since leaving South Penobscot I had been determined to do things “right” on this, my first big trip. I had heeded the navigational aids and avoided taking shortcuts, even though AURELIUS’s shallow draft probably would have allowed her to pass over many an obstacle at half-tide or higher. But Nautilus is, of course, an island, not a peninsula, and there was a way around to the northeast that would be sheltered from the wind. At low tide Nautilus is linked by a bar to Whites Head on the Cape Rosier peninsula, but at high tide that bar would be covered. I had to wait on Ram Island for the tide to rise and lift AURELIUS off the beach. By then, maybe the bar would also be covered; the slight risk of something going amiss as I crossed that way seemed very preferable to the adventurous ride I would have in the open waters of the bay.
On each of the islands I found a convenient spot to pitch my tent from which I could see AURELIUS. Here on Ram, as on my other two nights away, the good weather allowed me to sleep without a rainfly and with only a lightweight sleeping bag.
I spent several hours breaking camp, reading, and trying not to fret about the weather. An osprey nesting on the island cried out at me every 20 minutes or so, making it quite clear that I was not welcome. When the tide lifted AURELIUS in the early afternoon, I packed her up quickly and pushed off. There was only a slight riffle on the waters of the anchorage, but the wind was still blowing 15 knots, gusting 20. I strained hard against the wind and leaned into the starboard oar as the wind continually threatened to push the boat off course. I nervously approached the bar. There was insufficient detail on the chart to know where was the best place to cross, so I aimed for the middle and held my breath…I never saw the bottom. I crossed into Castine Harbor in a more modest breeze of around 10 knots across a tolerable chop with only the occasional whitecap. It was time to head back up the sheltered waters of the Bagaduce.
At last, the tide was with me, and as the river narrowed, the wind diminished. Most of the Blue Hill peninsula is not mountainous—apart from the eponymous hill, which comes in at 934′ while most of the land is below 200′—but it is hilly, with almost no extended flat land. This terrain, along with the twisting route of the Bagaduce itself, means that there are few places on the river where wind can really make boating a challenge—it is the tidal currents that have to be watched.
The wooden steps up from the beach on Battle Island led to a short trail to the southernmost tip of the island from where I watched the sunset and the lights coming on downriver in Castine. The late summer/early fall conditions were perfect with clear dry air, comfortable temperatures—even overnight—and no biting insects.
I raced past Emanuel Island, happy to be making good speed, and was soon back at Jones Point, where I was again greeted by three seals. I rowed through the turbulent slicks heading first north, then east, then northeast. As I made the passage through the final stretch, I kept AURELIUS pointed at a green can to the east of Youngs Islands. As I neared it, I took a couple of good strokes on the oars to pull away from it…and AURELIUS refused to respond. The current had me. Bam! I slammed into the large metal can. Between the current and my rowing, I was moving at about 6 knots, and the force of impact, gunwale to can, was substantial. As I pushed off and sped away, I made a quick inspection of AURELIUS’s gunwale, she seemed unscathed. I, however, was chastened. On my downriver leg, I had treated the Narrows with caution and respect, and my passage had been uneventful. Now, on my return, I had made the mistake of being nonchalant and had paid the price.
Heart pounding, I picked my way past Youngs Islands and headed north again. For my last night on the river, I had decided to stay on Battle Island, a bit less than a mile farther upstream, and within minutes of my altercation with the can I was easing into the calm shallows at the south end of the island.
Eager to perfect my onboard sleeping arrangements for future trips, I have tried leaving the platform up while rowing through the day. On this occasion, not having the rolled-up boards lying around in the boat was a good thing, but I had not brought the tent—the overnight weather was forecast fine—and the temperatures dipped below freezing with a heavy frost. I awoke cold and very wet in the morning.
As with Emanuel, most of Battle Island’s 2 acres is no more than 10′ or 15′ above the high-tide mark, with steep embankments eroded by the river’s currents. A sturdy wooden staircase rose from the rock-and-mud beach up to a mature forest of mixed hardwoods and conifers, where a short trail, no more than 20 yards long, led to a shady clearing in the island’s center. I would sleep ashore. Once more I trundled my gear up to the campsite, set an outhaul for AURELIUS, made camp in the late-afternoon shade, and settled down to an early dinner. The current-assisted rowing of the day had been easier than the previous days, but I had covered 8 miles and the cumulative effect of three days of rowing had once again left me drained. After another hurried dinner I settled down in the tent. The air was cool and dry, and I slept soundly, lulled by the distant cries of seagulls and the occasional thud of the falling acorns.
From Battle Island back to South Penobscot
Turning in early led to rising early, aided in part by a dawn chorus of coyotes somewhere on the mainland. I enjoyed my coffee and toast on the upper steps of the beach ladder, watching the sky turn from gray to orange to yellow as I waited for the water to lift AURELIUS. Overnight, the wind had died completely and the only movement on the water’s surface was from the tidal current. From time to time gulls and cormorants flew by. A great blue heron passed, its wings rising and falling in slow deliberate arcs, its long legs trailing behind.
I spent the last night on Battle, mooring AURELIUS on the south side of the island. It wasn’t always easy to find the best spot so that the boat lay somewhat level and didn’t dry out resting atop a large boulder. As I waited through my last morning, I looked down the river that I had rowed the previous day. The waters around Youngs Islands and beyond were glass-like in the calm conditions.
I struck camp early in the afternoon, about half an hour before the water lifted AURELIUS, and when she was loaded and floating, pushed off in bright sunshine and a modest northerly breeze. The South Penobscot ramp was just 2 miles away in the southeast corner of Northern Bay. In the four days I’d been on the river, and despite the green-can incident of the day before, I had gained a sense of confidence in my rowing, navigational abilities, and “river sense.” But I was still cautious. I knew that this last leg was challenging with its narrow channel through the otherwise very shallow Northern Bay. I pulled past Gravel, Sparks, and Aunt Mollie islands, and made the sharp turn eastward toward Winslow Cove. I rowed, glanced over my shoulder, checked the chart, noticed the several small white channel-marker buoys that I had missed on the first day, and all too soon, it was over. AURELIUS’s stainless-steel keel guard scraped the South Penobscot boat ramp, and I was back. My hands were blistered, my heart was lifted, and my mind was already thinking about possible overnights on local ponds before the Maine winter overtook me.
Davis Taylor lives in Bar Harbor, Maine, where he has sailed and rowed for the past 30 years. He enjoys being on any kind of boat, but has definitely found that the smaller the boat, the more it gets used and enjoyed.
*In 2021, the people of Castine, Maine, voted to rename the Negro Islands as the Meguntic Islands. Upper Negro is now Esther and Lower Negro is Emanuel. The name change has yet to be federally approved.
If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
Back in 1993, Skipper (Audrey) had a boat and was in search of a first mate with a towing vehicle. I stopped by with my Ford Explorer and, after passing a few tests to see if I could grease trailer bearings and swap out rusty fenders, she let me tow her boat, and then took me sailing. A trailer mechanic and a small-boat skipper—two people meant for one another. We were married six months later.
Over the years, our fleet of small boats and trailers has grown. We currently have seven trailers, and…well…a good number of boats.
To keep track and ensure that we are taking the best possible care of everything, we have checklists. There are lists for when we put boats away; lists for when we get boats out; lists for refitting; lists for gearing up to go afloat.
We have a list that we use any time we are hitching up a trailer to take a boat on the road. This “PreTow Checklist” has saved us from several embarrassments and even some catastrophes.
Photographs by the authors
Smaller, lighter boats can be stacked if the trailer and hitch are strong enough to support the load. Tie-downs are essential, keeping the boats well located on the trailer, both side to side and fore-and-aft. The tail of the overlong lower aft strap will highlight the end of the load for vehicles approaching from behind. If a spar is substantially overhanging the end of a trailer, tie a bright-colored rag to its end to increase its visibility.
The PreTow Trailer Checklist
The items with asterisks (*) can cause serious injury or loss of boat and/or trailer if not properly attended to.
Receiver/draw bar/pin/ball
Check that all of the hitch and coupler components are in good condition and rated for at least the weight of the trailer and boat plus any gear. All weight ratings should be given in the tow vehicle’s manual, on the hitch components, or on the hitch’s packaging.
*Coupler latched
Either do a physical touch to check that the under jaw is engaged beneath the ball, or take out your phone camera and get a visual—the camera saves having to lie down on the ground to look back up. The lever on the top of the coupler should be down, latched, and secured with a hitch pin or padlock.
Chains
After checking the coupler connection, hook up the chains—if something goes awry and the trailer becomes unhitched from the vehicles those chains will, at least, prevent the trailer from running away. They should be crossed under the tongue to catch it if it disengages and falls.
Jack stowed
Make sure the trailer jack is raised, swung back, and stowed securely—if you don’t, your drive will be loud and bumpy. We left the jack down once; luckily, we had a light trailer, but we had to replace the jack’s nylon wheel.
The jack is a useful addition to any trailer, taking the forward weight and greatly enhancing the trailer’s maneuverability when not hitched to a towing vehicle. But it’s important to raise and stow it securely before going on the road.
*Boat straps and winch hook
A winch hook and/or bow strap, plus two or three other tie-downs are essential for keeping the boat on the trailer and preventing the boat and trailer from beating each other to death. Get a good marine-grade strap, like those from CustomTieDowns. You can also use Dyneema for a winchline—it doesn’t rot if left damp, isn’t affected by sunlight, doesn’t rust, and is much kinder to your hands than wire. Inspect the straps and winch for wear and tear, and check that everything is snugged down correctly. Remember to engage the locking mechanism on the winch.
*Tire condition, pressure, date
Check the tires for uneven wear, tread depth, cracks, or bulges. Regardless of their visible condition, it’s sensible to replace tires at least every six years (see “Trailer tires: Age before wear”).You can check the date on the sidewall of the tire: the last four digits of the DOT code represent the week and the year of manufacture. For example, 2921 means the tire was manufactured in the 29th week of 2021. With a gauge, check the tire pressure; use maximum recommended pressure for paved roads, but reduce it slightly for unpaved roads. The recommended pressures are marked on the tire sidewall.
*Lug nuts
While you’re checking the tires, take a look at the lug nuts: make sure they’re all there and that they’re all tight. I didn’t tighten a set once and almost lost the wheel—we were down to two severely worn studs when we pulled over to check the bad vibration.
*Bearings greased
Give the top of each wheel a tug. There should be some play, but no more than about 1⁄8″. If the play is as it should be, but you hear squeaking or grinding when you head off, pull over and add some grease. If the noise persists, you should turn around and go home, prepared to overhaul the bearings and their seals.
Trailer lights
Check that all the lights—taillights, brake lights, turn signals, side marker lights, and license-plate light—are working. If you’re alone, and getting in and out of the car is annoying, set up your phone camera behind the trailer to record the lights. Once you’ve run through the sequence, watch the video.
The transom saver keeps the lower unit of the outboard away from the boat, not only protecting the transom but also reducing the strain and load on the outboard’s bracket.
Transom saver and bunks
If you haul your boat with its outboard motor in place on the transom, you should invest in a transom saver—a bar that connects to the trailer frame and supports the lower unit of the outboard in a V brace. Bunks, too, will keep strain off the hull as you drive over every pothole and poorly maintained railroad crossing on your route. Make sure your bunks are in good condition and correctly placed—a bunk in the wrong spot can cause more damage than no bunk at all.
When you think you’re done, do one more walk around to confirm that all is as it should be, or better yet, have your boating companion check everything. Then, hit the road, confident that you’re leaving with boat and trailer in the best possible condition for the journey ahead.
Audrey and Kent Lewis have trailered boats from the Gulf to the Pacific to the Gulf and now to Tidewater Virginia. Their land and sea travels are logged at smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats readers by sending us an email.
Some woodworking tools are “must-have,” others are just fun to have. A low-angle block plane like the Jorgensen plane I reviewed in the November 2024 issue easily makes the must-have tool list. The corner easing plane reviewed here is probably optional. Nevertheless, inspired by the quality of my Jorgensen low-angle block plane, I bought this plane as well—I’m glad I did.
In boat construction and, indeed, most woodworking projects, edges should be “friendly,” or slightly rounded. On furniture and cabinet work an eased edge is less prone to damage and has a more finished look. In boats, soft rounded edges are easier to live with in the confines of a small space. On all projects, “breaking” the edge of a board allows a finish to adhere well and, as a result, be less prone to wear.
Photographs by the author
The knurled adjustment wheel is conveniently placed and sized. Its movement is both smooth and precise so that the operator can fine-tune the depth of cut.
The Jorgensen Corner Easing Plane 70748 is a solid chunk of tool. It weighs 16 oz, heavy enough to have some momentum when making cuts but not so heavy that it’s tiring to use. The body is made from high-grade aluminum painted Jorgensen’s signature orange, and measures 6 1⁄2″ long, 2 3⁄8″ tall, and 1″ wide. It comes with four hardened 01 steel cutters: three for round-over cuts, and one straight cutter for making 45° chamfers. The round-over profiles are 1⁄8″, 3⁄16″, and 1⁄4″. All the blades come very sharp, and none required any touchup to the edges before I used them. When the 3⁄16″ blade became dull after extended use, it was easy to bring the edge back up simply by polishing its back.
The molded plastic handpiece is comfortable in the hand and lifts to reveal a storage compartment for three cutters.
The action of the knurled adjustment wheel in the body of the plane is precise and smooth and moves the blade in or out so that the user can fine-tune the depth of cut. There is a threaded hole in the end of each cutter that accepts a threaded screw on the adjustment wheel. Turning the wheel counterclockwise lowers the cutter, which can eventually be removed so another can be installed. The feature allows for easy use and precise adjustments and is, in my experience, a unique setup.
The Jorgensen plane weighs 16 oz, heavy enough to have some momentum but not so heavy to be tiring when used. The four cutters offer three radius profiles and a straight edge for producing a 45° chamfer.
Fit and finish on the cutters and tool as a whole are fine, and the unpainted V-shaped steel sole is nicely polished. The plastic piece at the rear of the tool is ergonomically shaped to fit the palm of your hand comfortably when using the plane. It’s a nice detail, being softer than the aluminum body, and it holds a surprise: hinged at the top, it lifts to reveal a storage compartment for the three cutters not in use.
Wood edges can be eased in several ways: shaped with a block plane and sanded to the final shape; addressed with sandpaper alone; or shaped with the correct round-over bit chucked into a router. The Jorgensen Corner Easing Plane creates a more uniform finish than either a block plane or sandpaper and is much more pleasant to use than even a small router. I’m pleased I’ve added this plane to my kit.
Bill Thomas has been a custom woodworker, designer, boatbuilder, and teacher for more than 40 years. He lives and works in South Berwick, Maine.
Purchasing options for the Jorgensen Corner Easing Plane can be found on the Jorgensen website.
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.
We figured out a while back that if we keep our boats and sails covered when they are not in use, they will be ready to go when it’s time to mess about, and the better the cover—in quality of fabric and construction—the better the protection afforded to the boat. Over the years we’ve experimented with a variety of off-the shelf covers and have made some of our own, but we’ve not found any to beat the quality, selection, and service from SLO Sail and Canvas.
Photographs by the authors
SLO Covers come with web tie-down loops as standard. The 1″-wide straps are an optional extra.
Based since 2005 in San Luis Obispo, California, SLO Sail and Canvas is owned and operated by a group of sailors who specialize in high-quality, handmade products from sails to boat covers, sail bags to spar bags. They build custom sails and class sails, custom covers and class covers, and make only to order, aiming to ship most items within five business days of the order being placed. When it comes to boat covers, they have patterns for more than 100 classes of boat including such classics as the Optimist; Cape Dory 10 and 14; the Dyer Dhow, Dink, and Midget; the O’Day 15, Lightning, Whitehall Spirit, and Widgeon. However, if they do not have a template for a particular boat, they can supply customers with a kit to make a pattern from which SLO can then make a cover.
SLO Cover Materials and Construction
SLO builds its covers in polyester, Sunbrella, or TopGun fabric and for stitching uses Tenara Teflon thread (for Sunbrella and TopGun) and V-138 polyester for polyester. All covers and bags are single-stitched using a short stitch length to ensure a strong seam, and come with a lifetime seam guarantee.
The tie-down loops work well with line. Areas of known chafing or stress—as here in the bow section of a Sunfish cover, under strain from the spars beneath—are reinforced with extra fabric layers. Bungee cord sewn into the hem around the bottom edge of the cover provides a snug fit.
We first came across SLO when we were looking for covers for our fleet of Sunfish sailboats and ordered a cover in the water-resistant 600-denier polyester. The fit and quality of build were excellent. However, our boats are typically stored under a metal roof. It quickly became apparent that in hot, humid conditions breathability is more important than total water resistance: if moisture cannot escape from beneath a cover, mildew will follow. We ordered our next cover in water-repellent acrylic Sunbrella, a fabric that offers a good balance of water resistance, breathability, and protection from UV damage. Paired with SLO’s excellent fit and construction, the Sunbrella cover has served us well. The third fabric option is TopGun, an acrylic-coated polyester that is exceptionally abrasion- and tear-resistant and is, according to the SLO website, ideal for trailering. Like the lighter polyester, TopGun is 100% waterproof, but air vents can be added to any cover. A less rugged alternative to a full TopGun cover is to use the material to reinforce any chafe points of a Sunbrella cover.
All SLO covers come standard with tie-down web loops placed every 3′. An optional upgrade includes 1″-wide web straps with Fastex urethane buckles and reflective tape. We have found the buckles easy to handle even with wet hands, and they can be quickly adjusted to provided the right tension in the straps. Cover flaps are closed with UV-resistant Velcro; bottom edges are cinched with 1⁄4″-diameter bungee; and where needed, YKK heavy-duty Vislon zippers are standard.
SLO spar bags are as rugged and as well-made as the boat covers. The company sells a large range of stock bags—both full-length zippered bags, as seen here, and drawstring bags—for specific class boats. They also offer made-to-measure custom bags.
So impressed have we been with our SLO covers that we have also bought SLO spar bags in two versions: drawstring and full-length zipper. As in the covers, the quality of design and construction is excellent. Being able to keep our sails and spars bundled together, whether in the boat for trailering or over the shoulder when walking down or up the beach, has been a game-changer for us.
Audrey and Kent Lewis have a sea of Pacific Blue Sunbrella covers protecting their armada of small boats in the Tidewater region of Virginia. Their adventures are logged at smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com.
For pricing and availability of standard covers and bags or to consult on a custom-designed cover or bag, emailSLO Sail and Canvas or call them at 805–479–6122.
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.
"Hey Jude! You got five minutes?” It is a familiar cry in the Jordan home. Bill and Judy Jordan have been married 47 years. They met in college, and as young adults working in education and without much money, by necessity and choice, became frequent do-it-yourselfers. They bought a 10-acre piece of land and built their own home as well as some of the furniture within it. Much of the work was done by Bill, but on frequent occasions he needed an extra pair of hands, and the call for Judy to come help would go up.
Bill first tried his hand at woodworking as a child, watching, helping, and working on his own projects alongside his father in a converted cellar workshop. As an adult, his career was in athletics and physical education—both coaching and administration. “That world,” he says, “is very competitive and high-energy, and as a release from the stress I always had some building project going on.” Eventually, he was drawn to bent-wood boxes of both Shaker and Colonial style. It began as a hobby. “Judy liked and bought bent-wood boxes on visits to Williamsburg, Virginia. I realized I was capable of making them and found it relaxing and rewarding.” He made boxes as gifts for friends and family, then started selling them at craft shows. Then, when he realized people were curious about how the boxes were made, he started including demo sessions at the shows. For the past few years, he has run an annual class in box making at WoodenBoat School in Brooklin, Maine.
Photographs by Bill Jordan
HEY JUDE was constructed on a building platform set up on posts sunk into the ground beneath the barn, their bottom ends beneath the frost line. The white-oak keel was steam-bent and saturated with penetrating epoxy. Once in place on the molds, but before being through-bolted to the frames, it was held in place by supports between the hull and the barn ceiling joists.
In 2017, Bill turned his hand to building a Ted Moores–designed 15′ 2″ strip-planked Ranger canoe, and the following year he signed up for the Fundamentals of Boatbuilding class with Greg Rössel at WoodenBoat School. Judy accompanied him to Maine and, while they were there, they took out one of the school’s Haven 12 1⁄2s. As they sailed through the anchorage, Judy on the helm, Bill holding the mainsheet, he looked back and saw Judy smiling from ear to ear. Then she said the immortal words: “I really like this boat.” Back on land, Bill went right into The WoodenBoat Store and bought a set of plans.
The garboard was strip-planked with the strips paralleling the keel. Once it was installed—as a single strake—the rest of the hull was strip-planked from the garboard down to the sheerstrake.
Preparing to Build the Haven 12 1⁄2
At home in Pennsylvania, Bill had the space to create a building shop in his barn. But the barn floor was made of bricks set in sand. In winter, the floor moves with frost heave, and it is far from level, so he built an elevated floor. “I dug six post holes 42″ deep, and planted 48″ posts that reached below the frost. Then I built a flat 3⁄4″ plywood floor on 2×6 joists on top of the posts. It served as a building platform and stayed flat throughout the build.” He also built a raised 4′ × 6′ layout table with a white top. While preparation of this sort is often overlooked in manuals or anecdotes of boatbuilding, Bill says he considered “the building platform and table essential elements of the build.”
Bill had planned to build a traditional carvel-planked 12 1⁄2, one that would, he says, “be launched in the spring, swell shut, and live on a mooring. But the oceanside-cottage purchase did not materialize, and the reality that the boat would spend most of its life being used as a daysailer from a trailer necessitated a change of plan—carvel-planked boats and frequent trailering don’t mesh well.” So, after building the forms, keel, stem, and transom, and bending 22 white-oak frames over the summer of 2019, he came to a decision: “I would strip-plank it.”
As the planking neared the bottom, Bill butted the forward ends of the strips into the sheerstrake but cut the after ends short by 3⁄4″, leaving a 3⁄4″ gap from about amidships to the stern, which would be filled by a single strip at the end.
Bill could find little available information on strip-planking a 12 1⁄2, but with his previous experience building the Ranger canoe and the knowledge he had gained in Rössel’s class, he believed he could handle it. The biggest problem, he says, is that “the planking layout of all strip-planked boats includes a football shape, and it can get to a point where the strips cannot take the extreme bends and still lie flat over the form. It’s not a problem in a smaller hull, but in a boat like a 12 1⁄2, with a wide bilge admidships, it is. I solved it by making a garboard plank that was wider amidships than the plans called for when traditionally planking.”
Building the Hull
Bill decided he would build his garboard plank out of 3⁄4″ western red cedar strips. But before he started, he spent hours in the barn designing the layout for the whole hull’s planking. “I measured and remeasured and stuck bits of blue painter’s tape all over the forms and the battens until I had the plan: a wide—almost 10″-wide amidships—garboard where the strips essentially parallel the keel, and then regular strip planking paralleling the waterline all the way down to the sheerstrake.” Bill glued and pegged the garboard plank strips, and as the plank grew it was clamped to the frames so that it formed the necessary convex curve. Once he had it built up to more than the required width, Bill drew the arc of its lower edge, took the assembly to the workbench, and cut and planed it to size. Then he returned it to the boat and glued and screwed it to the frames.
Bill coated all the interior surfaces with epoxy, primer, and final finishes while they were still accessible. The deckbeams are of white oak, the sheer clamps are Douglas fir, and the foredeck would be laid 1⁄2″ marine plywood covered in fiberglass and epoxy.
The rest of the hull was traditionally strip-planked from the garboard to the walnut sheerstrake, using bead-and-cove strips glued together and to the frames. The strips were also screwed to the frames every 4 1⁄2″ in the ’midship section and more closely toward the stem and transom. When laying out the planking design Bill had realized that near the sheerstrake it would be challenging to bend and shape the strips into both ends of the boat and that doing so would create an arc that would result in the “football shape” he was trying to avoid. Instead, he brought the forward ends of the strips into the sheerstrake, but at the stern cut them short by 3⁄4″. When planking was complete, he was left with a 3⁄4″-wide gap from about ’midships back to the transom. This gap he easily filled with a precut spacer strip.
Before turning the hull upright, Bill, Judy, and their son Will sheathed it in fiberglass and epoxy. “It’s not a hard job, but it needs more than one person, so having Judy and Will there to help was good.”
The forward and after bulkheads are strip-planked in western red cedar and provide the 12 1⁄2 with flotation and storage. The stern deck was planked in 1⁄2″ cedar, which was fiberglassed and epoxy coated. The walnut covering boards are seen here shaped and ready for installation. The centerboard trunk was built in sapele.
After fairing and painting the hull, it was time to turn it over. In hindsight, Bill says they should have marked and painted the waterline, but “I chickened out, deciding it would be prudent to wait until I launched her. Of course, that meant wading around in the water to check measurements only to find out if I’d done it while the hull was still upside down on the building frame, everything would have worked out just right.”
Will came in to help with the flipping. “He’s a rock climber and he’s built challenge courses. He understands about pulleys and purchases and has all the right equipment. I knew he was the guy to figure out how to lift it and turn it.” The event went smoothly, and suddenly there was a boat in the barn.
The transom, with its distinctive raked wineglass shape, is bright-finished sapele.
Then began the long process of fitting out. First the empty interior was coated with epoxy and painted—“a whole lot easier to do before all the furniture goes in.” That done, Bill followed the plans and the directions in How to Build the Haven 12 1⁄2-Footer. Trim and seats were fashioned in bright-finished walnut; bulkheads were crafted in strips of western red cedar. The spars were all in Douglas fir. The 600-lb lead keel was prefabricated by Broomfield & Son in Providence, Rhode Island, and Will helped his father lay it. “We had to get it lined up under the boat and drill down through the keelson; then Will stayed under the boat while I got in the boat, and we worked the silicon-bronze bolts into place with a wrench on both ends.”
Judy Jordan
Will Jordan holds HEY JUDE alongside the float on launching day. With the paint and varnish finishes, the placement of frames, and all the traditional fittings from a distance there is little to distinguish HEY JUDE from a carvel-planked Haven 12 1⁄2. But thanks to her strip-planked construction, her hull has remained stable and tight and has not leaked despite trailer-sailing for two summers.
Judy was there most days, says Bill, “every time I called out, ‘Hey Jude…’.” But for much of the build, his help was long-distance. “I enjoyed solving problems. I’d go out to the barn and take measurements, then go back to the house and get on the internet, read books, and reach out to people. I met so many people along the way: Eric Dow who builds carvel-planked 12 1⁄2s in Brooklin, Maine; the folks at Hylan and Brown boatyard and Artisan Boatworks; Steve White (son of [Haven] 12 1⁄2-designer Joel White), and all kinds of YouTubers who I’d connect with. I’d call commercial people thinking they wouldn’t want to chat because I wasn’t buying anything, but everyone would talk. Yes, they were making a living, but they were passionate about what they were doing, and were happy to help.”
Kate Jordan
The building crew: Will, Judy, and Bill Jordan. Bill “chickened out” and did not apply the waterline prior to launching—a decision he would come to regret as there was subsequently a good deal of standing around in the water taking measurements only to reveal that the waterline was exactly where the plans had indicated it would be.
Bill had steamed the first frames for the boat in 2019, and the strip-planking was completed in September 2020. But it would be another two-and-a-half years before HEY JUDE was finished. She was launched in April 2023, 17 miles from home at Lake Arthur in Moraine State Park, Pennsylvania. Since then, Bill and Judy have sailed her on countless days, often in the company of Will and his young daughters. For Bill, the experience of both the build and the subsequent impact of the boat in their lives has been a delight. “I can’t adequately put into words the enjoyment I found in building her,” he says. “There wasn’t a single day I could describe as a low, not one day when I thought the project would get me beat. And all the people I’ve met who have shared ideas, expertise, encouragement, and time along the way… it was truly a wonderful experience.”
Built by Artisan Boatworks of Rockport, Maine, KITTY (left) is of the same configuration as the 11-boat fleet that the Herreshoff Mfg. Co. turned out in 1923 for Rhode Island’s Watch Hill Yacht Club. The first boats of this hull shape, however, were gaff-rigged like MURMUR (right), instead of marconi (like KITTY) and began appearing as Buzzards Bay 15s in 1899. In all, well over a hundred originals and variants have been launched.
I’d never laid eyes on one of these distinctive sloops until Phil Farout invited my wife, Anne, and me out for an evening sail aboard ELF, a Herreshoff 15 (LOA 24′ 6″). Phil sat across from me in the Electric Boat (EB) design office where as a young engineer I’d taken a job. He kept ELF moored right off the waterfront apartment he rented in Noank, Connecticut, and when we arrived there and the boat came into view, she seemed to me to be all bow compared to the boats I’d grown up with. That long forward overhang made a lasting impression—unusual at first, but soon much appreciated for both performance and good looks.
Our sail turned out to be fun, big-time, as it was our very first in these strange new waters and, I believe, our first in a genuine Herreshoff.
ELF came more fully into our lives a couple of years later after Phil had sold her to Bill Welte, an EB naval architect who sat a few desks farther away. When Bill discovered he wouldn’t be able to use her the coming summer, he asked if I’d be interested in taking her over by doing the painting, launching, and rigging in exchange for sailing. He only had to ask once, and we were on the case—sanding, filling, and painting at Joe Butson’s yard, also in Noank, where ELF had been spending the winters under canvas.
Sailing ELF that summer taught me a lot. These are sporty boats with plenty of sail area, so they zip along surprisingly well in only a zephyr. You sit comfortably on seats down inside the boat, not on the deck as you’d have to in a boat with a self-bailing cockpit. Its long and high bow combined with a generous foredeck helps keep spray from drenching the passengers.
Nevertheless, daughter Kathy, who at six months rode in a car bed perfectly suspended between the centerboard trunk and the edge of a seat, got splashed occasionally, along with her parents. The three of us in ELF managed an overnight cruise to Millstone Point, along with lots of day sails in Fishers Island Sound. Ever since that summer with ELF, Buzzards Bay 15s and their derivatives have, for me, been special. The primary variants are called Newport 15s, which have slightly deeper ballast keels, and Watch Hill 15s, which carry marconi rigs. Four, including FLICKER, were built to this same hull shape, but with full keels.
Benjamin Mendlowitz
A single jibsheet, made possible by the boomed jib, helps make this boat easy to sail. (Here, because of the light wind, the traveler-mounted block has fetched up on the opposite side from the jib.)
In 1969, after I quit engineering and became Mystic Seaport’s shipyard supervisor, the BB-15 FIDDLER came under my care. For nearly a decade, she had been on dry land and was hurting from years of outdoor exposure, so I soon sent her to Sonny Hodgdon of East Boothbay, Maine, to have him replace all of her frames, give her a new deck and coaming, and generally refurbish her. Sonny’s uncles had worked for Herreshoff, so he understood their construction methods better than anyone at the Seaport at the time. That was some 40 years ago, and FIDDLER has been on inside exhibit ever since, neighbored by two other Herreshoff classics— ALERION and the 12 1⁄2 -footer NETTLE.
FLICKER, which Anne and I bought about 10 years ago, is the third boat of this model that I’ve been involved with. In FLICKER, N.G. Herreshoff eliminated the centerboard and gave her a deeper keel, along with a couple of inches more freeboard and slightly heavier scantlings, so she could be hoisted onboard her “mother” steam yacht without being strained. Because she’s never been restored or rebuilt during her 103-year life, she’s a bit fragile. So we sail her gently. Big winds don’t seem to bother her, but I fear that seas would, so she’s pretty much confined to Eggemoggin Reach’s sheltered waters.
Compared to ELF, FLICKER is easier to sail, and for me, more fun because she has a self-tending jib and no running backstays. (Herreshoff gave her a stouter mast, and I added a boom to the jib.) Once you have the sails up, about all you have to do are steer and occasionally trim sheets. I deal with big wind differently than I used to with the other boat, thanks to advice from sailmaker Nat Wilson: When the breeze stiffens and the boat begins to dip her rail, and you wish the mainsail were half its size, you can quickly ease her yet keep her moving without reefing. You do this by backwinding the forward part of a slacked-out mainsail with a tightly trimmed-in jib. This puts a big and visible “bubble” in the main that greatly diminishes the angle of heel. Yet the boat keeps on moving nearly as fast, can point at least as high, and has much less weather helm.
Benjamin Mendlowitz
Artisan Boatworks has turned out three of these lovely cedar-planked craft, the two most recent having full keels rather than KITTY’s keel-centerboard combination. The latter two draw about a foot more water, but are stiffer under sail because their cast lead ballast keels are that much lower.
These boats turn on a dime because of their short waterlines and saucer-like underbodies, so in having no running backstays to tend while jibing, FLICKER is ideal for doing this maneuver Hudson River style—even in strong winds. It’s rather spectacular to view or experience, but so far has proven perfectly workable.
With the mainsheet slacked out for running downwind, all you do is quickly pull the tiller to windward for a jibe and leave it there. You don’t touch the mainsheet except to make sure it doesn’t snag on anything. The boat snaps around, jibes, and comes up into the wind so fast that the mainsail luffs on the new tack instead of filling. What appears as a disaster in the making—the boom lifting, the sail and gaff starting to wang across to the other side of the boat—ends up with the sheet completely slack and the boat sitting there like a pussycat, ready to head off on her new tack in whatever direction you wish. The jib, usually trimmed in, takes care of itself because it’s on a traveler and has but a single sheet.
Some sloops, once their mainsail is hoisted, seem overanxious to start sailing even though they’re still moored. By contrast, FLICKER just waits there with her mainsail luffing (as long as its sheet is kept free) until you’re good and ready to cast off. After you slip the mooring by walking its pennant aft on what will be the windward side, you gently trim in the mainsail and pull the tiller to windward, and she’s reliably off on the tack of your choice, either with jib or without; it doesn’t seem to matter.
Benjamin Mendlowitz
Once the sails are raised, about all one has to do is to steer these fine craft and occasionally adjust the sheets. Here, while maneuvering KITTY for the camera, Justin Ward grasps both sheets as well as the tiller, giving him full and rapid control of the sails as well as the boat’s direction.
Herreshoff 15s have long had their enthusiasts, and for good reason, for these are really wonderful little boats. They seem to have the perfect balance between speed, responsiveness, cockpit size, seakindliness, and good looks. Herreshoff turned out over 90 of them in several configurations between 1899 and 1928, and since then others have been built in both fiberglass and wood, bringing the total to date to 131.
Although I don’t recall having seen a cruising cabin on a Herreshoff 15, it could be done without spoiling the looks, as long as it was kept low and short. One of the round-fronted day cabins (basically a roof resting on turned stanchions, and enclosed when needed by rolldown canvas curtains) that were once common on Great South Bay catboats would work well and could easily be removed for switching back to a full cockpit. A boom tent would be another option in creating a weekend cruiser. This kind of setup served us very well on ELF, but for FLICKER I’m hoping for the Great South Bay version.
Mystic Seaport, Daniel S. Gregory Ships Plans Library, Mystic, CT, #59.1286
This drawing, made by naval architect Edson Schock from measurements of Mystic Seaport’s Buzzards Bay 15 FIDDLER, represents the boat’s lines and the gaff sail plan originally carried by the class.
Check Out These Other Herreshoff Boats
Quite a few handsome small boats bear the Herreshoff name. Take a look at some we’ve covered, including one built by a Small Boats reader.
Biscayne Bay 14 | The Biscayne Bay 14, designed by N.G. Herreshoff, is a delightful, low-cost daysailer that transports easily and is a good performer.
Colonia Dinghy | Designed by Herreshoff in 1901, numerous modified versions of this 17′ daysailer have been built over the ensuing decades.
A Herreshoff Coquina | One of our readers built a cold-molded version of the lapstrake cat-ketch that Nathanael Herreshoff built for himself in 1889.
Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us your suggestions.
It seems that I never get enough time on outboard powerboats. I’ve always loved driving them for the simple wind-in-your-hair joy of it, especially when you can reach that out-of-the-way beach that often remains out-of-reach on a day off unless you have a fast boat. And anyway—shouldn’t everyone want to own a fast red motorboat at some point in their lives?
I think Graham Byrnes probably had just this sort of thing in mind when he designed Marissa, with a couple of further criteria: owning such a boat shouldn’t create hassles, and building it and running it shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg. Marissa’s promise of such simplicity — along with her undeniable fuel-efficiency — made the design the winner in the 2010 WoodenBoat Publications “Design Challenge” for new powerboat designs capable of sustained cruising at 15 knots using less than two gallons of gasoline per hour.
Benjamin Mendlowitz
Marissa was conceived as the smallest practical center-console runabout, and she became the winner of WoodenBoat’s Design Challenge for efficient small powerboats.
Byrnes, of B&B Yacht Designs in Vandemere, North Carolina, has a habit of blending speed, efficiency, and simplicity with strong aesthetic appeal in his sail and power boats. Any designer worth his salt would strive to make a design good-looking but also well suited to its uses, whatever they may be. Marissa delivers on both counts.
This is, above all, a stable boat, having the feel of a much larger one. Boarding and moving around the cock-pit have little effect on her trim. Her hull’s form stability is augmented by her stiff construction, which dampens the harmonic vibration Byrnes sees in other boats. So in addition to her solid feel, she has a remarkably smooth and quiet ride.
In heritage, she is a reduced version of Byrnes’s earlier North Carolina sportfisherman, the Ocracoke 20. But her function is not at all narrowly drawn. Marissa started as an intellectual challenge for Byrnes: Create the smallest center-console runabout practical. “You can always make a boat smaller,” he said, “but you can’t scale down people. It’s the smallest that is gracious and reasonable.”
The bottom panels reach 30 degrees of deadrise one-quarter of the hull’s length aft of the stem. At their top edges, the bottom panels culminate in chine flats, which give the hull a rakish look. Rising forward and tapering until they are flush with the bottom plank- ing only right at the stem, these flats accentuate the sheerline, which is already pleasing from all angles.
The chine flats are a handsome touch, but they are also practical, since they knock down spray forward and function very effectively as stabilizers while running. “And boy do they make it dry,” Byrnes said. “In whatever weather I’ve been in, it’s just dry as a bone. You can see how it’s really turning that water back down.” Powering in 4′ seas with four people aboard, he gave the boat a proper sea trial and found that she remained stable and dry. “That was running as hard as I could get it, even though it upset my ladies,” Byrnes said.
As a boatbuilder, if I like the looks and the lines of a hull, the next thing I do is take a close look at the construction drawings. I imagine myself building the boat in sequence and in as much detail as possible, and I ask myself whether the boat would be simple enough to make its construction practical yet challenging enough to keep it interesting. Marissa’s hull passes that test. Her construction is plywood throughout, using a conventional egg-crate-style framework of athwartships frames and bulkheads and longitudinal stringers, all of which are integral to the hull’s structure. With this framework set up for upside-down construction, the developable bottom and side panels are glued into place.
Benjamin Mendlowitz
Chine flats coupled with her hull form make Marissa a very stable boat, with sure handling whether the water is flat or choppy. Graham Byrnes (here at the helm beside his grand-daughter, Marissa, the boat’s namesake) designed the boat for a 25-hp outboard; here, he’s using a 30-hp four-stroke because he found the used motor for sale at a good price.
The chine flats may seem tricky to make on first glance, but on close examination I believe they would be simpler than traditional chine-log construction. Instead of chine logs, which typically require a lot of twist and rolling bevels for their lengths, this hull has chine battens for longitudinal stiffness. They are installed on the upper inner edges of the bottom panels, making their installation very simple, without bevels. Next would come the plywood chine flats, which butt against the top outer edge of the bottom panels and attach to the horizontal jogs in the frames and bulkheads — again, very simple to shape. After that, the topside panels would be fastened in place, flush with the bottom of the chine flats.
The joint would be radiused, assuring a better bond than a sharp corner would for the exterior sheathing of 10-oz fiberglass cloth set in epoxy. The joints between the chine flats and the bottom panels will be filleted with thickened epoxy and reinforced with fiberglass tape set in epoxy. Such joints — radiused on outside corners where sheathed, filleted and taped on inside corners — are used uniformly throughout the hull to reinforce the structure. For the structural elements that double as the components of the building jig, the plans, which are very neatly drawn, include full-sized patterns. A kit consisting of these components precut by CNC (computer numerically controlled) router is also available.
The rest of the hull construction would be straightforward work, the only complications being the installation of a pipe chaseway under the cockpit sole to carry steering cables and wiring; the installation of a fuel tank under the console, which has a fill tube on its starboard side; and filling chambers on both sides with flotation foam before installing the cockpit sole. All these details are clearly specified and easy to follow in the plans.
The center console as designed is functional, and the seat is comfortable for the driver and a single guest. Flip-up seats in the quarters provide a place for more guests to sit. I suppose similar side seats up forward might well serve the same purpose, if guests are often along for the ride and if other intended uses — fishing, for example —can tolerate such intrusions.
The console itself provides opportunities for individual choice, for example in the selection of a GPS with a large display. There’s ample room for, say, a fishfinder, as well, along with a VHF radio and other gear left to the imagination and personal preference. Byrnes added a tachometer and a fuel gauge and left it at that.
Tom Jackson
This partly-finished center console provides ample room for whatever the owner wishes to install. A fuel fill is inset on the starboard side.
For power, Byrnes specifies an outboard motor of between 25 and 60 hp, matching the light weight of the hull. Her fuel consumption statistics are based on the 25-hp model, with which she reportedly can achieve 15 statute miles per gallon. That motor’s top speed of 21 knots puts fuel consumption at 2.2 gallons per hour. Byrnes found the measured results very close — and slightly better — than predicted. Running at 5,900 rpm, she hit a top speed of 22 knots, and with the motor trim fine-tuned she reached 22.5 knots, half a knot above projected top speed. “I was tickled to death,” he said. “That’s what we wanted and that’s what we got.”
For those results, Byrnes used a 30-hp Suzuki four-stroke when he brought Marissa to WoodenBoat’s waterfront in July 2010, while he was teaching design at WoodenBoat School. That motor, which he bought secondhand and whose installation he was still tweaking, seemed perfectly fine to me: the boat is pleasantly responsive, maneuvers easily, accelerates well, turns handily, and planes readily. His outboard came without a power tilt trim, and that’s one thing Byrnes recommends adding, not only for easily raising the motor while nosing into shallows but also for making minute adjustments for greater efficiency under way. “That would really be at the top end of my wish list,” he said.
Byrnes said that when he designed the boat, he had the Design Challenge rules in mind but also wanted something that would be marketable in his area, which he calls “center-console country.”
“Having used most layouts, I can really see that center console is the best choice: it’s so easy to get around the boat, you can do anything. Being able to quickly get to any part of the boat just makes sense, and visibility is very good. I didn’t think I’d win, but I felt that at the very least I’d have an excellent, salable, marketable project.” He also knew that many would want more power — “you can never overpower a boat for the American market,” he said. He wanted a hull that could take more power if asked to. Cruising at 15 knots using a little more than a gallon per hour “exactly suits me,” he said. “That’s exactly where my mental outlook is.” But the question he is most often asked is whether the boat can take a bigger motor.
Marissa, B & B Yacht Design’s winning entry in the 2010 WoodenBoat Publications “Design Challenge,” is economical to build and use. A stepped chine gets the boat on plane quickly; the center-console layout is conventional but efficient; the lines show a boat that moves easily through the water at displacement and semi-displacement speeds.
More power might be tempting to some, but that would come at a cost, not only in the cash outlay for the motor itself but also in fuel consumption. For me, 15 knots or so is a very civilized speed to watch the world go by, rewarding the driver with a quiet, smooth, and enjoyable day on the water. Plus, you can still enjoy an actual conversation with the person with the wind in her hair.
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At the turn of this century Iain Oughtred was commissioned to design a canoe, or “Canadian canoe” as they’re called in the British Isles where Iain makes his home. The Canadian canoe has had a long history and has taken countless forms, so rather than aim at coming up with something new, he set out to create the ideal: “I just want to get it right, to get it as it should be, to make the archetypal Canadian canoe. All variations and designs are evolving towards the perfect canoe, and that’s what I want to achieve.”
As he studied the designs of existing canoes he took note of curves that were too strong or too weak and applied, in his own way, a version of the averageness hypothesis that has been used to measure and define beauty in the human face: What we recognize as beautiful is the balance and proportion of features that is the mean of all of the variations. Oughtred’s Beaver is his expression of the anything-but-average-looking mean of Canadian canoes.
The ends rise high enough to give the sheer a strong, sweeping curve without adding unnecessarily to windage. The rocker strikes an even balance between tracking and maneuverability; the shallow-arch cross section strikes its balance between speed and stability. The tumblehome at the sides eases getting the paddle to the water and yet maintains strong secondary stability and a dry ride.
The Beaver is symmetrical and the seven molds on either side of the center mold are identical. The full-sized patterns for the molds are lined off for optional lapstrake construction, either glued-lap or traditional lapstrake with steam-bent ribs on 6″ centers. Particulars for cold molding are also offered. Strip-built, the Beaver should come in at about 40 lbs, an easy weight to manage for cartopping and carrying.
The four sheets of Beaver Canoe design plans provide offsets, but the full-sized patterns will get you around having to loft the boat. Included are 16 pages of notes from Oughtred.
This sweet-lined tender is the smallest in Iain Oughtred’s design series of Acorn skiffs and dinghies. She is sufficiently burdensome to be useful as a general-purpose shuttle from ship to shore; she is also handsome and light enough to be carried on deck or in davits aboard the mother yacht. And what is more, her overall length can be shortened to suit — from 7′ 10″ to 7′ 7″ or 7′ 5″, as needed and as per plans.
Like other Oughtred design offerings, the Acorn tender may be built traditionally of solid lumber to heavier specifications. But the preferred and featured building method here is frameless, glued-seam, lapstrake plywood construction — an excellent system for amateurs in particular, and an efficient procedure for lapstrake small craft in general. The dimensionally stable plywood allows boats to be kept ashore for long periods without drying out, and the frameless interior makes maintenance easier.
Consistent, too, with his other designs, Oughtred’s tender allows for multiple choices in other areas. This boat may be set up for sail with either a standing- or balanced-lug rig, a leeboard or daggerboard, and a fixed or pivoting rudder; or she can be outfitted for oars and outboard only.
The Acorn 8 can be constructed without lofting, using standard sheets of marine plywood. She can be finished plain or fancy, according to taste and role requirements. There is no keen technical skill required, since all the necessary information from building the jig and constructing the hull to the final fitting out, is contained in Oughtred’s packet of plans.
This Acorn Tender Design Plan packet consists of four sheets: lines, construction, sail, and full-sized patterns for plank lands and major parts. Included as well are detailed construction notes, a tools list and materials schedule, and a 14-page booklet illustrating the plywood building procedure. There are also recommendations and data regarding conventional construction. WoodenBoat Plan No. 87.
Photographs courtesy of Aaron Porter
