During the first two decades of the 20th century, yachting was a particularly popular sport among men of standing and means. Each yachtsman wanted a tender worthy of his yacht. It needed to row and tow well and travel with efficiency and stability while carrying considerable weight in a range of sea states. It also had to have pleasing lines and be built to the highest standards of craftmanship. For this clientele, cost was not a consideration.
Charlie Lawton of Marblehead, Massachusetts, built some of the finest tenders meeting these requirements. John Gardner was a coworker and friend of Lawton’s, and when Lawton retired sometime in the 1940s at age 90 he gave Gardner the lines, table of offsets, and some patterns for the Lawton Tender. Gardner eventually put this information together as a detailed set of plans and instructions for building the boat and published them in the January 1978 issue of National Fisherman. They were also included in Building Classic Small Craft: Complete Plans and Instructions for 47 Boats, published in 2004.
Lawton built his tenders with carvel planking over delicate bent-oak frames. Newfound Woodworks worked from Gardner’s offsets, lines, and descriptions of Lawton’s building techniques to produce plans for a Lawton Tender built with cedar strips and covered with fiberglass cloth and epoxy resin. There is a sense in which these modern materials respect the original aesthetics of Lawton Tenders. Newfound Woodworks says that a Lawton Tender built with their kit materials weighs about 70 lbs, which is indeed light. The strip-built boat does not require frames, knees, or breasthooks, although they can be added if you want your tender to look more like Lawton’s.
Stephen Bowen
Applying the strips from the bottom up is straightforward for the first two-thirds of the hull, but eventually, the ends are butted against the inner keel and at that stage there is a tight bend for each strip. An alternative method is to plank down for about 20 percent and then plank up to close the gap. The author milled his own red-cedar strips.
I built a Lawton Tender from Newfound Woodworks’ plans with no intentional modifications. As fits its purpose, the tender is a short, stout craft with an overall length of 10′, an overall beam of 45″, and a capacity of 575 lbs. I bought the “standard set of plans,” which includes full-sized half-drawings of the form station outlines with several stations’ outlines superimposed on each plan sheet. Using carbon paper, the outline for one side of a station is traced onto 1⁄2″ MDF, then the sheet is turned over and the mirror image is traced to outline the full station form. Conveniently, the tallest stations are just under 24″ so at least four station forms can be made from a 4′ × 8′ sheet of MDF cut into four 24″ × 48″ pieces. Full-sized station outlines that do not require you to turn over the sheet and justify it to the centerline are available at an additional cost.
Included with the plans is a booklet consisting of 12 pages of step-by-step instructions, a bill of materials for the kits that Newfound Woodworks can provide, and some 32 pages of general information on strip-building techniques. These instructions are meant to be sufficient for experienced builders, but those with limited experience are urged to first get the Pre-Kit consisting of the book Woodstrip Rowing Craft by Susan Van Leuven and two instructional videos, Cedar Strip Boat Building and Applying Fiberglass and Epoxy, in DVD format, with additional strip-building notes (the company hopes to offer the videos in streaming format, too). I had built a cedar-strip canoe so didn’t get the Pre-Kit and already had the book, which I found invaluable in answering questions, but I haven’t seen the videos.
Matt Bowen
Whereas the Newfound Woodworks kits for the Lawton Tender use white cedar, the author chose to use his own red cedar with a contrasting accent stripe. The fine entry and aft skeg help the boat to track well despite its light weight and shallow draft.
Newfound Woodworks can provide a kit that includes nearly all the materials needed to build the boat: station forms, wood, fiberglass cloth, and epoxy. The woods they provide are specifically chosen for this boat. Most of the strips are white cedar, which is more flexible than red cedar and quite helpful when stripping the hollow forefoot and the most-curved section of the stern. Many of the pieces are pre-cut to the final dimensions. The kit is the practical option for builders who do not have access to a joiner, planer, router table, and table saw. I chose to use wood I already had or could obtain locally. I made strips from red cedar, and for the rest of the boat I used the wood of a Kentucky coffeetree that blew down in my yard a decade ago. This ring-porous wood has the same density as white ash. I’m sure there are woods that would have been easier to work with, but I liked the coffeetree’s golden-blond color.
The boat is built upside down on 10 molds, a stem form, and a transom support set on a box-beam strongback. The first step is to laminate the inner stem and assemble the transom, which is made up of 1⁄4″ plywood sandwiched by 3⁄8″ hardwood. Once they are attached to the form, stripping begins at the sheer and works up toward the keel.
Stephen Bowen
The strip-plank construction lends itself to a clean interior without frames, knees, or breasthooks, although these can be added for a more traditional aesthetic.
There are two ways to attach the strips to the stations: with staples or with clamps. I chose the latter to avoid all those staple holes, and applied a 1⁄2″-wide band of MDF beside the exterior edge of each station to hold the clamps, as recommended by Van Leuven. Simple spring clamps worked for most strips and didn’t mar the cedar. Given the degree of bend and twist required, it was essential to use straps between stations to hold the strips in place while the glue dried. The twist involved in attaching strips at the hollow forefoot and the transom is particularly challenging, and Newfound Woodworks offers some clever suggestions that helped me. A possible benefit of using staples is that they stay in place until all the strips have been applied, whereas clamps are removed after each strip. In applying strips to the forward half of the boat from the center to the keel, I found that the straps pulled the completed section away from the station forms and it did not fully return after the straps were released. Had I recognized this earlier, I would have used some small screws at a few points to secure the completed section to the station forms. Newfound Woodworks assured me that this relatively small departure from the intended shape would not affect performance.
As the first two-thirds of the strips are attached, they overlap the stem and transom and are easily trimmed once the glue has cured. Farther up the form, the ends of the strips have to be fitted as they butt against the inner keel. Fitting is difficult because these strips must be bent quite a bit. An alternative recommended in the building notes is to build about 20 percent of the hull by starting at the inner keel and working down. This section is not initially glued to the keel so that it can be lifted off the form. Then strips are added from the bottom up progressing to the point where they overlap the area covered by the top-down panel. The panel is put in place, scribed from underneath against the completed section of the hull, and cut to fit. The building notes provide more detailed instructions for this approach.
Matt Bowen
With its high freeboard the Lawton Tender has excellent load capacity, but can be adversely affected by a strong crosswind.
When the hull is completely stripped, it is faired and sanded, sealed with epoxy, ’glassed, and varnished. The outer stem, skeg, and outer keel are added and sheathed with more ’glass. The boat is then removed from the form and supported right-side up as the inside of the hull is faired, sanded, and ’glassed. The inwales and outwales are installed and a small deck is put in place. Finally, the seats and oarlocks are installed. My finished boat weighs 89.5 lbs.
Ibought a Trailex aluminum trailer that is a perfect fit for the 10′ Lawton Tender. The boat and the trailer are light and very easy to handle. For those with the strength, the 70-lb boat could be cartopped but with a center depth of nearly 20″ don’t forget it’s up there when you are pulling into the garage.
Stephen Bowen collection
The Lawton Tender has proved ideal for lake fishing with 125 lbs of grandchildren on board.
I chose the Lawton Tender as a small, easily handled boat for getting out on nearby lakes and rivers; sometimes fishing and sometimes taking out the grandkids. I’m pleased with its stability and balance. Because it is so light, I tend to treat it like a canoe and not stand too far away from the centerline, but I’ve never felt like it was in danger of flipping. I was surprised at how fast I can row it with about 125 lbs of grandchildren occupying the forward and aft seats; we covered 1 mile in 22 minutes. It tracks well, but with its ample freeboard is affected by wind.
I’m happy I chose this project. Building the boat was more challenging than building the canoe, and I learned a lot in the process. Newfound Woodworks was very responsive to questions either by email or by phone. Their Lawton Tender has lived up to my expectations and is getting quite a bit of use. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a small rowboat.
Stephen Bowen is a retired aquatic scientist, professor, and dean. For his research career, he had a series of nearly indestructible Boston Whalers. In retirement, he shares a 34′ sloop with his son for sailing Lake Michigan and he now has a small, easily transported boat for West Michigan’s inland lakes and rivers.
I am by nature a solo kayaker and seize the chance to go paddling when time and weather allow. While I’d enjoy the company and help of a paddling buddy, lining one up doesn’t seem to work with my spur-of-the-moment planning and will-of-the-wisp exploring.
As a 69-year-old lake lover with spinal alignment issues, I’d been able just to manage loading my 12′, 42-lb rotomolded kayak on my 2004 Subaru Impreza by myself. I’d prop the bow on a folding sawhorse, lay a rag rug over the hatchback window, then shove the kayak up onto the upright J-carriers on my roof racks. I’d done this for quite a few years, and it worked well.
This spring, it was time to replace my dear Impreza, but the newer ones were too low-slung so I bought an Outback. It has the clearance I need for the semi-remote gravel roads I travel, but it’s slightly taller than my old Impreza. The extra height and the spoiler would make loading more challenging. I bought a suction-cup-mounted kayak roller to get me “over the hump” but, worried the struggle would send me to the chiropractor, never tried it. I enjoyed paddling the chain of lakes where my husband and I have a rustic camp, but it was a frustrating summer not having an easy way to go kayaking elsewhere.
Photographs by the author and Richard Washburn
Folded in half lengthwise and then in thirds horizontally, the kayak easily fits into the trunk of the author’s Outback along with a heavy-duty plastic sheet on which to drag the kayak from the car to the launch, a 230-cm one-piece Malone feathering paddle, a life jacket and miscellaneous gear, and the kayak’s duffel bag, which holds the seat, pump, and other accessories.
In late September my dad sent me a link to an online review of inflatable kayaks, with the suggestion, “When cartopping gets to be too much of a chore, maybe this would work?” Two days later I had a serendipitous encounter with a kayaker bringing his inflatable ashore at a nearby lake. His enjoyment of his boat and the freedom it allowed him with its easy transport and setup inspired me to look it up online. It was well rated, but he’d admitted it wasn’t great in waves, so I shopped further and found a few other candidates in my size and price range. I kept coming back to the sweetly designed 10′ 6″ AdvancedFrame Sport Special Edition from Advanced Elements. With its semi-enclosed cockpit, moderate 32″ beam, and enthusiastic reviews, it seemed a kayak I’d feel comfortable and safe in. The reviews promised a paddling experience more like a hard-shell kayak than other inflatables, with better tracking and handling in waves due to the internal aluminum ribs and deck inserts that sharpen and define the bow and stern. At 26 lbs, it would be a bit heavier than other inflatables I had my eye on, but it seemed important to choose a boat I’d enjoy paddling, which, as my husband, Richard, told me, “is the whole point.” I ordered an Advanced Elements AdvancedFrame Sport Special Edition from an outdoor equipment retailer.
Before setting off on my first sea trials at a local pond, I asked Richard to help me set the kayak up on the lawn at home, to get the hang of inflating and deflating it. The kayak came fully assembled from the factory, neatly folded in a waterproof duffel bag with an owner’s manual, adjustable folding seat, repair kit, double-action pump with built-in pressure gauge, and other accessories.
After spreading it out and identifying all the parts, despite all the clear directions and diagrams about the spring and twist valves and proper inflation of the boat’s four chambers, it took us an hour to figure out how the pump worked with its various adapter tips and inflation/deflation ports. The pump came with four different adapters attached on a plastic loop tie to prevent losing them. Good idea, but confusing and in the way when I’d only be using the two adapters that fit my boat’s valves. We cut the cord and tied just the two tips I’d be using back on.
In comparison to other inflatable kayaks, the AdvancedFrame Sport is somewhere between ultralight and heavy. Although it can be carried folded into thirds and fourths, it is an easier lift if the kayak is inflated and then rested on the bearer’s shoulder. In that position it is well balanced and easily handled.
The kayak’s air chambers are inflated in a particular order while watching the pump’s gauge carefully to avoid exceeding the recommended pressure for each. There’s a learning curve to the valves and pumping process, but having inflated the kayak a few times, I now find it’s a snap and takes only 5 to 10 minutes to pump up the four air chambers. With both feet on the pump’s foot flanges, and both hands on the handles, I watch the pressure gauge as I pump, and slow down as the needle nears the right pressure. Clip in the seat, and I’m good to go.
A caveat in the manual is to be mindful of water and air temperature, as on a cold day the chambers may lose pressure and the kayak may sag, while “in hot weather or prolonged sunlight, the air inside it will expand. You must let some air out of the appropriate chambers to prevent the kayak from failing due to overpressure.” It wasn’t a concern during my October trials, but the warning is one I’ll take seriously in the summer.
The beauty of any kayak is being able to paddle through the shallows and pull up onto a sheltered beach away from the crowds. Despite being an inflatable, the tough three-layered skin of the AdvancedFrame Sport is rugged enough to be pulled (gently) ashore.
The hull is made of three layers of PVC tarpaulin material (polyester fabric with vinyl bonded on both sides) for puncture resistance, with reinforcing material covering the welded hull-to-deck and bow and stern seams. Both for safety and longevity, I’m careful how I launch and land, to protect the bottom from abrasion. When getting in and out, I wade the kayak into the shallows, bracing my hands forward on the sturdy cockpit coaming to hold my weight as I step one foot in the center of the floor. (The 32″ beam is too wide for me to straddle for a seat-first entry.) Then, with my hands bracing behind, I bring my other leg in as I sit down.
The accommodations are amazingly comfortable, with a nicely made, cushioned, buckle-in folding seat with high backrest. The trick is sitting down in the center of the seat, in front of the hinge, with the backrest nearly vertical, for the most comfortable position. Once I’m in, I can adjust the backrest angle with the straps, but it’s hard to shift the seat base back and forth with my weight on it. If I get in and the seat position doesn’t seem quite right, I try again until I find the sweet spot. Once I’m seated comfortably with the backrest upright, it’s a great seat and I can paddle quite a ways before wanting to come ashore and stretch my legs.
There is a cargo area behind the seat and a small amount of storage under the aft deck. Elsewhere, D-rings (as seen here on the aft deck) and bungees (on the foredeck), offer a variety of options for carrying gear. At both the bow and stern, reinforced nylon-strap handles can be used to lift the ends of the boat or for carrying by two people.
The seatback has a sewn-in mesh pocket, which came with a repair kit tucked inside. I carry a sponge in the pocket to mop up any puddles from drips or rain if caught in a shower. I also carry an oval piece of blue sleeping-pad foam to protect the inflatable floor from getting scuffed by sand and grit as I step in and out of the boat.
The cockpit is perfectly sized for easy entry and comfortable paddling, with just the right leg room. There are no foot braces, but I can easily adjust the seat straps so I can rest my feet against the air chambers in front if I want that sense of support I’m used to in my hard kayaks. I’m finding the trim feels better, though, if I adjust the straps to put me an inch or two farther aft. This still leaves plenty of storage space in the cargo area aft of the seat.
The AdvancedFrame Sport kayak is remarkably stable. The author was surprised by how far she could lean over while still feeling on the “safe side of capsizing.”
I find the kayak reassuringly stable, both in its initial stability when I’m getting in and out of the cockpit and in its secondary stability when I lean to the side. I was amazed how far I could lean over without tipping, the water just grazing the hull-to-deck seam. That boosted my confidence in the boat’s safety. The Sport’s 32″ beam seems just right—wide enough for stability plus a good width for the 230 cm feathering double-bladed paddles I already have for my other kayaks, and indeed, they are perfect for this boat, which is a little beamier but shallower.
A molded skeg is attached to the stern (at right) to aid tracking and another attachment at the bow has a lower profile and protects the hull when coming ashore.
The Sport is a pleasure to paddle. Properly inflated, it tracks remarkably well for a 10′ 6″ boat, with the frame in the bow providing a sharp entry and a skeg fused on the bottom aft. I find the bow yaws 2″ to 3″ with each stroke, but not annoyingly so. I had thought I might have to buy the optional “backbone” (a tubular keelson) or drop-stitched floor to stiffen the hull, as recommended by some reviewers, but for my weight (120 lbs in a hull of 250 lbs total capacity) it seems to handle just fine with only the built-in floor (twist-valve chamber #2), inflated to the recommended 1 psi. It cruises along quite well, almost as fast as my 12′ rigid kayaks. I’m strictly a flatwater paddler, and prefer poking along protected lake and pond shores, exploring sandy-bottomed coves, admiring the vintage camps, scenery, and geologic features, and botanizing. Sometimes I’ll cut across open water in light wind and waves, and the little blue inflatable has handled well so far in those conditions.
I’ve been impressed with how well the kayak is designed and made. Its shapely, attractive lines are accented by the curved gray-fabric coaming and black-fabric edging along the seams. Advanced Elements shines as an innovator in inflatable construction, with its well-thought-out performance-first design, quality materials, sturdy construction, and valve system, and all the thoughtful touches and accessories that make the Sport a stylish, safe, user-friendly boat. It includes all the features I enjoy on my hard-shell kayaks—rugged bow and stern handholds, bungee deck rigging—plus neoprene paddle guards, Velcro paddle holders, and ample cargo space. The only thing missing is a watertight hatch, but a small drybag could be stowed under the aft deck.
The AdvancedFrame Sport kayak has a semi-enclosed cockpit with enough room for easy entry but surrounded by reassuringly wide side decks. Unlike many inflatable kayaks that have shallower cockpits and raised seats, here the generous depth of the cockpit, with its cushioned seat resting on the inflatable floor, helps to keep the kayak stable when getting in and out and when paddling in breezy conditions.
Best of all is the Sport’s ease of transport and carrying. I can most comfortably carry the kayak when it’s firmly inflated, with the cushioned coaming resting on my shoulder. Even though the kayak weighs only 26 lbs, when deflated and folded it’s a little more unwieldy, but I’m getting adept at grasping and lifting it in the middle, folded first in half lengthwise, then in thirds, with the bow and stern overlapping in the middle. This makes a manageable bundle about 48″ long by 18″ wide by 8″ thick, which fits nicely in the back of my car.
To fit in the duffel bag, the manual recommends using the pump to fully deflate the air chambers, then folding the kayak in half lengthwise and quartering horizontally into a neat package 30″ long by 17″ wide by 14″ thick. It also emphasizes the importance of drying the kayak thoroughly before folding for extended storage.
I’m delighted with my AdvancedFrame Sport Kayak and being free to follow my watery whims without the stress of cartopping. I consider it a great value and look forward to a new world of paddling adventures next season.
Jane Crosen lives in Penobscot, Maine, where she publishes her hand-drawn maps and other map products as Jane Crosen, Mapmaker. She writes and copy-edits books and publications including this magazine. This is her first article for Small Boats.
There is something deeply satisfying about prolonged outdoor physical exercise when your body is injury-free and working well, when your muscles, tendons, and bones have overcome their initial protest at being asked to do the unaccustomed work and become conditioned to it. Long-distance cyclists and marathon runners know this, and as a former enthusiast of both of those pursuits, I, too, know it. However, for me, long-distance rowing delivers the most gratifying way to experience that ineffable feeling that comes from spending days and weeks at a time in the natural world moving under my own power. Thinking back over the various small-boat journeys I’ve made through the years, there is one day in my memory that epitomizes that feeling of fulfillment. It came aboard FIRE-DRAKE, my 18′ sail-and-oar boat, 10 days into a cruise south from Prince Rupert along British Columbia’s Inside Passage.
Early in the morning, under the last remnants of the overnight rain and with the roar of Butedale Falls receding beyond my boat’s transom, I rowed away from a ramshackle float at the abandoned settlement of Butedale. It was just another day of cruising in Princess Royal Channel, the steep-sided narrow trench between Princess Royal Island and the mainland, where the outer-coast weather forecasts only loosely corresponded to the actual weather in the passage. The previous day’s sailing wind had given way to calm in the morning, but I was grateful it was not a headwind. Although the flood tide was making against me as I rounded Redcliff Point and turned south along Graham Reach, I knew that I could make progress if I worked close to shore in the back eddies created by the small points and indentations resulting from the folds of the mountains where their feet met the sea.
Tim Yeadon
Alex Zimmerman was on a 300-mile cruise, with his friend Tim Yeadon in July 2016 when they called in to Pender Harbor on the east side of British Columbia’s Strait of Georgia. Before his AFib diagnosis, Alex thought nothing of long-distance rowing cruises, whether in company or alone, and relished the challenge of a multiple-day expedition under oar and sail.
The chill of the damp morning yielded to broken cloud with glimpses of sun between the mountain peaks. I shed a layer, drank some water, planted my feet firmly on the stretchers, and settled into my all-day pace of about 25 strokes a minute. Each stroke was a cycle: pushing the oar handles aft, dipping the blades of the oars into the water, pulling with extended arms, then completing the stroke by bringing the handles to my chest. The repetition soon became nearly as automatic as walking or running. I breathed easily in the crisp, clean air and the rhythm induced a kind of moving meditation, where the awareness of my body’s working was present but not uppermost. My mind was free from whirling jumbled thoughts, free to just be, and to absorb what was happening around me. Rowing close to the shore, I noticed all the little trickles, rills, and streams that would otherwise be hidden by the overhanging cedars, whose lower branches were trimmed by the high tide as neatly as by any gardener. The aural liquidity of a Pacific wren’s song, the scold of a Steller’s jay, and the hollow “quock!” of a raven testified to the unseen presence of deep-forest inhabitants. For some reason there was no other boat traffic that morning, and I felt that all this had been laid on especially for me.
The hours wore away, and the landmarks of my progress along the channel successively ticked by—Aaltanhash Inlet, then Asher Point guarding the entrance to Khutze Inlet to port, a brief puff of wind at Griffin Point that nearly tempted me to raise sail. Carrol Island came up to starboard, and I rowed through the narrow channel behind the island just because I could. In late afternoon, nine hours after I had started, as I approached Netherby Point at the mouth of Green Inlet in search of an anchorage, I was physically tired, but I had a profound sense of accomplishment and felt there was no other place or time I would rather be.
As I coasted into the bay, I was supremely grateful that, even at the age of 66, I was still physically able to do this. I was grateful to have been able to arrange my life to be there in that place at that moment, to row a loaded boat that I had designed and built down this storied stretch of coast. The experience was a privilege that few can access, and I believed I could keep doing it for years to come.
Dave Lesser
Alex designed and built FIRE-DRAKE to replace the Whitehall he had rowed and sailed for seven years. The new boat sailed well to windward but at times Alex found the best option was to lower the rig and row. But the characteristics that gave her better sailing abilities in comparison to the Whitehall—more beam and wetted surface—also made her harder to row. For Alex in recent years, that extra work became too much.
It wasn’t to be. Several years before that cruise south along the Inside Passage, I had experienced some intermittent heart-rhythm fluctuations that came and went. As an otherwise fit amateur athlete who had never smoked, never been overweight, had low cholesterol and normal blood pressure, I didn’t think much about it. I put the episodes down to too much caffeine and cut back somewhat. I woke up one night at home, however, with another of these episodes, and by the following afternoon it hadn’t gone away—my heart had not gone back to its normal rhythm as it had before. I finally had to admit this was not normal. My wife drove me to the hospital emergency department where we checked in and sat in the waiting room with others who, like me, showed no obvious symptoms but didn’t look well.
Eventually, the verdict was delivered—I had atrial fibrillation, AFib for short. It’s a condition where the electrical signals for the heartbeat are extremely irregular, weak, and usually rapid. I learned that there were several varieties of AFib and that mine was paroxysmal AFib, which happens unpredictably in distinct episodes. I was administered a cardioversion, a mild shock to jolt my heart back to normal rhythm, and while it did not reset the rhythm, my blood pressure wasn’t too low and I wasn’t feeling as bad as most people apparently do, so I was discharged. I went home where, 16 hours after the start of the AFib, my heart rhythm reset on its own.
After that visit to the ER, I went through tests and consultations with specialists. Stress tests revealed that my heart had the strength and stamina of a much younger man. That was gratifying. Given that my AFib was intermittent, my doctor prescribed a drug that I could carry with me and take whenever I had an episode; it should reset the rhythm. I was also told to drink more water and add a little salt (which I had avoided for years) back into my diet. That regimen seemed to work pretty well, at least for the next few years. There was one two-year period, in fact, during which I had no episodes at all.
Tim Yeadon
In FIRE-DRAKE Alex would often row for up to eight or nine hours a day, frequently alone, and sometimes in bad weather and remote places. Here he is north of Yaculta Rapids in the channel between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island.
I wondered what had caused my AFib and why I, who had led a very active life, had it. I learned, to my dismay, that I may have been too active by exercising too hard and too long for too many years. One doctor pointed me to a couple of studies that found that the incidence of AFib among marathon runners and cross-country ski racers in Europe was three to seven times that in the general population. Later, a friend recommended The Haywire Heart, a book that details heart problems among athletes, especially AFib. It confirmed and amplified the findings of those earlier studies. There was a high likelihood I had unwittingly caused the problem. More to the point at this stage, was that if I continued doing what I had always done, I was likely to make the AFib worse.
I did not want to hear that nor admit it to myself, and it took me a long time to accept it. It was something of an existential crisis. I had always defined myself, at least in part, by what I could do physically. I was the guy who had more stamina than most, the one who could persevere and make it through just about any physical challenge. If I could no longer do that, who was I? Now I had a condition where doing that could harm me. I’m a little thick sometimes, but eventually it sank in that going out and rowing for eight or more hours a day for weeks on end during a cruise was no longer a recipe for growing old gracefully. I grieved for the man I once had been, and belatedly accepted I could no longer do what he did.
I caved in and bought a 2.5-hp outboard to propel FIRE-DRAKE in the calms, but after a number of weeklong trips, I found it was not a congenial match. The boat was relatively lightly built, and I worried that the vibration from the motor might do long-term damage to the structure. The stern was not suited for the outboard—it had to be mounted on the gunwale, which I found very ugly, and taken off and stowed every time I wanted to sail. Stowed, it took up room on board that could be used for other gear. After much pondering about whether I could build a well for the outboard (awkward given the existing structure, plus it would eat up stowage space), or convert to solar electric (not enough area for needed solar panels and a lot of added weight for batteries), I concluded that if I wanted to keep making extended voyages along our wonderful British Columbia coast, I really should do it in a different boat, a motorsailer of some kind. I still wanted to sail when the wind served, but the boat should be happy motoring all day in the calm and/or the rain that we get up the coast. The rain also meant that if I could find something with a small cabin, so much the better. I could have bought a used, small, production cruiser, but I liked having an excuse to build another boat. I made this decision a few short months into the COVID-19 pandemic, so it would be a project to keep me occupied during the lockdowns.
Alex Zimmerman
Alex’s sketch of CAMAS MOON gives no sense of a man taking the easy life as she cuts through choppy waters under a reefed mainsail but full jib and mizzen.
Which boat to build? As I would mostly be cruising solo, I didn’t need a big boat. I didn’t want the expense of a boat that had to be kept in the water, so it had to be trailerable. FIRE-DRAKE, at 18′ long and 5′4″ wide, was the biggest boat I had built in the shop. After re-examining the space, moving things around, and offloading a radial-arm saw that I didn’t use much, I figured I could build a boat of about the same length, but a little wider. All these considerations led me to Tad Roberts’s Pogy 17 design, which is, as he puts it, “a minimum coastal cruiser for one or two people.” When I contacted him and said I was ready to order the plans, he told me that the detailed plans had never been developed, as nobody had yet built one. Tad proposed designing a slightly different solution for the same mission, and it sounded like an even better fit for what I had in mind. He named it the CoPogy 18, an 18′ gaff yawl with a pilothouse cabin and an outboard motorwell. I started the build in September 2020 and, at the end of August 2022, launched CAMAS MOON.
My shakedown voyage in September 2022 was a two-festival cruise, first motoring the 8 miles from my local launch ramp around to Victoria’s inner harbor for the Victoria Classic Boat Festival. Then I motored in the calm and the heat across the U.S. border, through the San Juan Islands, and south across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to take part in the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival the following weekend. After that, I returned home the same way, a 140-mile round trip. I came away from the cruise with a list of nearly three-dozen fixes, modifications, and improvements to be done over the winter. I got started right away. What also got started that fall was a return of my AFib episodes, which had been absent for two years. My meds still worked to reset my heart, so I wasn’t too worried, and the rest of the winter passed without more episodes. At the end of May, I had another major episode at home, but the drug still worked. Not so the episode that came three weeks later. The drug not only didn’t reset my heart rhythm, it turned the atrial fibrillation into atrial flutter, apparently a more dangerous condition because the heart beats even more rapidly. I checked myself into the emergency department again and was successfully cardioverted back to normal sinus rhythm.
I had planned an extensive summer cruise for 2023 and was eager to see how the boat would perform with my modifications, but this last episode had me worried. In a follow-up talk with my doctor, he thought that the risk of it happening a second time was low and that the meds could still work if it happened again. Accordingly, I planned a cruise for late July.
Galen Piehl
CAMAS MOON, with Alex at her helm, sailed in the Victoria Classic Boat Festival during their shake-down cruise in September 2022.
The morning of Thursday, July 20, I launched CAMAS MOON at the public dock in Sidney, B.C., and headed out. I had a very pleasant warm-weather sail in sunshine and light winds, with some motoring, over to Bedwell Harbour on South Pender Island, and arrived in midafternoon. As I was raising the centerboard, I heard a bang—the lift pennant had broken. I had to fix it somehow, and after thinking about it, came up with a jury-rig solution using the materials I had on board. It took me three hours down in the cabin in the heat, to complete the repair. By then I was tired and somewhat dehydrated. I drank some water, but probably not enough. As the sun went down, I moved CAMAS MOON over to a park mooring buoy, which was a little more protected from the swell that had started to roll into the anchorage. I went to bed a little early but woke at 11:15 p.m. to the familiar disturbed rhythm of AFib. I took my meds right away, but the AFib didn’t reset on its own. I was up to pee every hour through the night, one of the effects of AFib, which likely aggravated my dehydration. I got up for the last time at 5 a.m. and although I didn’t feel too bad at that point, I decided I couldn’t continue the trip. I needed help.
I slipped the mooring buoy and motored back to Sidney in the calm. I arrived at about 7:30 a.m., and luckily got a berth in the nearly full marina. The only spot left was on the very last float at the end of the last dock, 500 meters from the office and ramp. I called my wife to come to pick me up. I made three trips back and forth to the office to check in, back to the boat to fetch stuff that I didn’t want to leave on board, back again for a couple of important items I forgot, and then back up the final time, feeling more tired each time, having walked nearly 2.5 kilometers by then. I was feeling more and more light-headed as we drove to the emergency department at our local cardiac hospital. About three-quarters of the way there, it was so bad that I had my wife pull over and call 911. I was dizzy, nauseated, sweating, and apparently my color was not good. I felt like I came very close to passing out. I got out of the car and laid down on a lawn.
Paramedics arrived very quickly, first a fire truck, then an ambulance. My blood pressure had become very low, just 80/60. They loaded me into the ambulance and took me to the emergency department. It was very busy, so it was nearly three hours before I got to see a doctor. I was dehydrated and very thirsty, and my heart had gone into a flutter again, but at a higher rate than it had a month before. The paramedics got a drip going in the ambulance and dripped in about 1.5 liters of saline. As I waited, my blood pressure started to come back up. According to the ER doctor, it is likely that at least part of the unusually low blood pressure I experienced was due to low blood fluid volume. More of the usual tests followed and once again cardioversion was administered, which restored sinus rhythm with just one jolt. By then it was 2 p.m., nearly 15 hours after the AFib had started.
Alex Zimmerman
After leaving Victoria, Alex motored south through the San Juan Islands and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. The 140-mile round-trip cruise is the only long-distance voyage Alex has completed in CAMAS MOON but he’s still hoping there are more cruising adventures to come.
Would the AFib have had such a severe effect on me if I had remained properly hydrated? I can’t answer that. The other big unanswerable question I have, of course, is what if this had occurred later in the trip, when I was more than a couple of hours away from a marina? I’ve always hoped I would never have to call on the Coast Guard to get me out of a situation I could have avoided through better judgment or decision-making, but I am not ready to take the consequences of a bad decision and “die like a gentleman” either, rather than call for help. And if I had been even farther away when I called for help, what then? I might not be here to tell the tale.
It is early November as I write this, and while my AFib situation has clearly taken a turn for the worse, I feel fine at the moment and day-to-day. But I feel as if I am tethered to an emergency department. After more consultation with the cardiologist, I now have a treatment plan for my AFib that, if it works as well for me as it has for others, should allow me to get out and voyage solo again. I should know within a few months.
Through all this, have I experienced some transformative epiphany around affliction and aging? Not really. Everyone who has ever lived has been born under a death sentence. I think it took me longer than most to internalize that, and to recognize that my end might not come suddenly but via a slow decline. Regardless, I believe life is to be lived to the best of my abilities. If age, infirmity, or both mean those physical capabilities no longer include taking on tough challenges, then I will do what I can with my intellectual capabilities for as long as I can. Writer André Malraux wrote: “A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, nothing else.” I think I still have something to contribute, so perhaps I will pursue my writing more seriously, or gain competence with my recently begun artwork, or take up my guitar again. Regardless of to what degree I’ll be able to continue my cruising adventures, I may finally be developing a sense of self-worth that is based on what I have done and what I can still do, not on what I cannot.
Alex Zimmerman is a retired executive and engineering consultant who became enamored with the sea and sailing after he learned basic seamanship in the Royal Canadian Navy. From his home in Victoria, along the coast of British Columbia, he has put several thousand miles under the keels of the various small boats he has built for himself. His book, Becoming Coastal, chronicles many of those journeys. He continues to write about wooden boats and the people who build and sail them.
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.
Almost anywhere land meets water there’s a view to be taken in and the best way to do that is to sit down, stretch your legs out, and lean back on something comfortable. A portable homemade beach lounger makes that possible wherever you come ashore. All you need is a piece of canvas, a bit of wood, a machine screw with a wingnut, and an hour or two to devote to sewing.
I had some leftover bits of cloth—some canvas (#10 duck/15 oz judging by the weight of it) and a piece of marine Sunbrella (9.25 oz/sq yd)—and made two loungers. I was able to get a 19″ × 46″ piece from the canvas and a 27″ × 60″ piece from the Sunbrella. Any size in between would work though I much prefer the larger lounger. For sewing, use heavy-duty thread and a strong sewing-machine needle (100/16). If the mitered corners are new to you, they look good and reduce the number of layers you have to sew through.
Photographs by the author
All four edges of the fabric will have a double-fold hem. Lines drawn 1″ in from the edges provide a guide for the first fold. A second set of lines, drawn 1⁄2″ from the edges, need only be drawn at just one corner. They’ll be used for making a mitered corner between the hems on the intersecting edges and to produce a template for the three other corners. The mitered corners are much neater than having double-folded hems folded over each other and reduce the number of layers of fabric the sewing machine needle has to push through.
Draw two lines as shown. The solid line will be cut, and the dotted line is for a fold.
Make a stiff paper template of the triangle formed by the dotted lines and the corner of the fabric, and use it to mark the remaining three corners quickly. Cut the corner off at the solid line.
Fold the paper template along the line that indicates where the cut is to be made. Open it and lay it flat on the corner of the fabric. Trace the diagonal on the fabric, fold the peak of the template, trace the shorter diagonal along the fold, and then cut along the short diagonal. Repeat for the last two corners.
Fold the edges of the fabric to the 1″ lines, steam-ironing as you go to make the creases sharp. Put the second fold in along all edges; there won’t be a pencil line to fold to, but you’ll be able to guide the fold by feel along the tucked-under edge of the fabric. Iron the second folds to set the creases. Open to folds at the corners.
Fold the corner in along the dotted diagonal line. You’ll lose sight of the line, but you’ll be able to make the fold in the right place by setting the obtuse angles of the fabric on the 1″ pencil lines. Iron this corner fold flat.
Refold the first fold of one of the hems, making sure to tuck the folded corner fabric neatly into the hem.
Refold one of the hems, the second hem fold, again tucking in the fabric as needed. You’ll get a neat diagonal fold at the end of the hem. Iron it flat.
Repeat the process for the other hem, starting with the first fold.
Refolding the second hem finishes the miter corner. Iron it flat.
With all four corners folded and ironed, sew the edge of the hems, making the right-angle turn at each corner.
With the hems now sewn, fold 4″ of one end of the fabric over, iron the crease, and sew the doubled-over hems to create two pockets for the legs.
The folded top is sewn along the left and right edges. This involves eight layers of fabric and may require a stout needle in the sewing machine; I used a size 100/16. Backstitch at both ends of each line of stitching.
Sew across the middle of the fold to separate the two leg pockets.
To get the length for the legs, fold a corner across to the opposite side and use the length of the diagonal fold. I initially used dowels for the legs, but they sank easily into soft ground. Lengths of 3⁄4″ stock cut to a width of 1 1⁄2″ to 1 3⁄4″ have a larger footprint and aren’t as prone to sinking. A 1⁄4 × 20 machine screw serves as the pivot. A wingnut provides enough pressure to keep the assembled legs locked to one another with their upper ends fixed in the fabric pockets. I drilled 5⁄16″ holes for the 1⁄4″ machine screw (the next drill size up makes it easier to insert and remove the screw).
The upper ends of the legs are rounded to avoid wearing out the fabric while the lower ends are squared to help the corners get a bite into the ground. For both the small and large lounger, the middle hole is at the midpoint of the leg. For the large lounger, I drilled two more holes at 1″ intervals on either side for adjusting the height of the legs when joined. The upper holes make the lounger back lower, the lower holes make it higher.
For storage and transport, the lounger parts roll up into compact bundles.
With the top ends of the legs in their respective pockets and the wingnut tightened to keep them there, the lounger is ready to use. Here, the machine screw is in the lower holes, making the back higher.
The small lounger doesn’t rise as high in the back, but still offers good support.
In soft sand, the legs can sink a bit.
A pair of old tennis balls, slit along one side and slipped over the bottom ends of the legs, will effectively limit sinking and maintain the height of the back support.
To set the lounger up, spread the tops of the legs into the pockets and tighten the wing nut. Spread the fabric on the ground with the legs upright. Hold the legs upright as you pivot into the lounger. Once seated, you can reach behind to adjust the position of the legs. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the view.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats readers by sending us an email.
In 2011 I built a Mayfly 14 as designed by Jim Michalak. He recommended “that my customers sew their own sails either from common polytarp…or real Dacron sailcloth. I can do it and so can you.” So, I made a polytarp 76-sq-ft balance lugsail from the Mayfly plans. I sailed with it in the 2011 Texas 200 where it quickly started coming apart due to my terrible workmanship. After the 2011 event, a friend sent me a Mayfly 14 sail that he had made of Dacron sailcloth, which was a vast improvement, but five 200s and many other cruises in high winds took their toll on that homemade sail. I turned to Michael Storer, a well-known small-boat designer with expertise in balance lug rigs, for advice. As luck would have it, he had recently opened a sail loft called Really Simple Sails, which specializes in sails for small boats, especially lugsails. I decided to order the sail from RSS.
Chuck Pierce
The RSS lugsail combines time-honored reinforcing including leathered corners and stitched corner patches, with modern 4-oz sail cloth. The corner grommets are pressed stainless steel with plastic inserts.
I had some specific requirements for my sail. Given the high winds that are routine on the Texas coast, I wanted sailcloth that was heavier than normal for a sail of this size. I requested three reefs, with the third reef essentially making the sail a lateen. The cringles for the third reef needed to be angled up as they went aft so that the boom would not droop when the sail was fully reefed. The sail was to be loose-footed for draft control and, lastly, I asked for a heavily reinforced tack to accommodate the loads from the downhaul. Michael had me measure the amount of bend in the yard and boom under moderate downhaul pressure, and I sent him drawings of how those were built so that he could factor the curve of the spars into the sail design.
The sail arrived in May 2018. The build quality was excellent. RSS had used 4-oz cloth, and the three laser-cut panels that made up the sail had a single row of triple-stitch zigzag stitching that was straight and consistent, with uniform panel overlap. The tack, clew, throat, and peak were all reinforced with patches on one side, as were the reefpoints and reef cringles on the luff and leech. Grommets for the corners and primary reef grommets were pressed stainless steel with plastic inserts. The reefpoints were conventional nickel-plated brass spur grommets. Around the sail perimeter there was 2″ Dacron tape folded in half and stitched.
Chuck Pierce
The reef cringles are heavily reinforced as befits parts of the sail that will become the heavy-lifters in strong winds.
I used the sail for the first time when I entered the 2018 Texas 200. On the first day of the event, I played with the set of the sail and discovered that it liked to be a little farther forward than the old sail, so I moved the halyard attachment point on the yard aft about 4″. The sail performed quite a bit better than the homemade sail, powering my Mayfly 14, GAMARAY, up to a degree that I had not experienced in seven years of sailing her. Downwind she was a bit faster, and by afternoon the winds were high enough that she would occasionally plane in gusts, which had never happened with the old sail. By the afternoon of the first day, winds hit 30 mph (according to the NOAA weather station I was monitoring) so I pulled ashore at the turn into the Mansfield Cut and put the third reef in. I then tacked up the channel for about 6 miles to the camp. Out of the 13 boats that made it to the camp, there were only three others that sailed up as opposed to motoring. The lugsail did a great job on all points of sail, even to windward, whether under full sail or reefed.
Kathy Pierce
The author shows off his well-set RSS balance-lugsail. When he used it for the first time in the 2018 Texas 200, the winds rose to about 30 mph. He pulled ashore, put in the third reef and sailed upwind for 6 miles.
Over the past five years, I have used the RSS sail on my Mayfly 14 for four Texas 200s and on a Michael Storer 16′ Quick Canoe trimaran for this year’s 200. I’ve also used it on my 8′ David Routh Puddle Duck Racer. Once it was positioned correctly in relation to each boat’s center of lateral resistance, the sail performed well on all three.
My custom-built lugsail has been a rugged workhorse and RSS decided to make it a standard offering—the Mayfly 14 Pierce Expedition—and has sold it for use on a variety of small boats. It works very well when set up properly; balance lugs are easy to deal with, even for a singlehander.
The balance lug is not the only type of sail made by RSS. They can design and build sails for any small boat. The quality of workmanship is very good, sail shape is excellent, and although mine has been heavily used over the past five years, the RSS materials and workmanship have held up quite well.
Chuck Pierce is retired and lives in Beaumont, Texas, with his wife Kathy and Stella the Crazy Dog. He plays music, repairs and restores old analog synthesizers, brews beer, and builds stuff, including several small plywood boats. He goes on as many sailing and paddling trips as he can.
Really Simple Sails offers stock sails direct and through Duckworks. RSS also makes custom sails upon request. The Mayfly 14 Pierce Expedition sail, custom-built for the author, is now a stock sail. It sells for $456 in white, $475 in tanbark.
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Throughout my childhood there was a framed print of Winslow Homer’s oil painting “Eight Bells” hanging in the hallway between my bedroom and the bathroom. It depicts two New England mariners standing at the bulwarks of a sailing ship on a heaving sea with the dark lumpy clouds closing over them and threatening rain. Both men are wearing sou’westers. That set the standard for me at an early age and sou’westers have been the only kind of wet-weather hats I’ve worn while boating.
For the past few decades, I’ve worn a Black Diamond Sou’wester. It’s made of canvas and painted with a black rubbery coating. Mine was showing signs of age—the rubber coating was beginning to peel. The Black Diamond is no longer being made so I had to go looking for something else to replace it. In my search I saw that Best Coast Canvas (BCC) had recently added to its lineup the Nor’wester, a version of a sou’wester named for BCC’s home in the Pacific Northwest. I’d been impressed by BCC’s Verksted Apron and was eager to try the new headgear.
Photographs by the author
Folding the brim up creates a gutter to direct rainwater to the sides so it doesn’t drip in front of the eyes. It still provides good protection for the face.
The Nor’wester is made of waxed cotton canvas and lined with wool. The sewing is first rate. The earflap, also lined with wool, has a cotton drawstring and a spring-loaded toggle. The brim has two layers of waxed canvas sewn over a third layer of canvas sandwiched inside for additional stiffness. That said, the Nor’wester is not at all as stiff as other sou’westers I’ve owned. Facing a 25-mph wind, I could feel the front of the brim put a little pressure on my forehead, but the Nor’wester didn’t flutter and stayed firmly planted on my head. Unlike many sou’westers, including the Black Diamond, the Nor’wester is crushable and can be rolled up and tucked in a raincoat pocket when it’s not needed.
The tail end of the brim has plenty of length to protect the neck and keep rainwater from flowing down a jacket collar.
The sizing guide on the BCC website worked well for me: the XXL is just the right fit, neither too loose nor too tight. The wool liner is very comfortable and warm, even after I poured water over the wool. It soon felt warm again against the bare skin of my ear. The front of the bill can be worn extended downward to shield the eyes or folded up to make a gutter to divert rainwater to the sides of the hat.
The interior of the crown and the ear flap are lined with a thick and warm woolen fabric.
The BCC website notes the Nor’wester is “not waterproof but is water resistant.” It kept me dry in a gully washer that overwhelmed my street’s gutter drains and poured over the curbs, but the downpour lasted only 20 minutes. To make a longer-lasting trial, I had to resort to simulating a steady rain in my bathtub with a small electric fountain pump. For my first trial, I let the water splatter over the hat for three hours.
A bathtub, a small water pump, a length of tubing, and a gizmo I made from a coat hanger and a disc of copper create hours-long showers for evaluating the Nor’wester’s waterproofing.
Halfway through, I saw a few small beads of water forming on the underside of the back half of the brim, and by the end of the session there were more beads. But the wool-lined crown of the hat remained dry. In actual use, I imagine that any water that might collect under the long tail of the Nor’wester would shake off and fall onto the raincoat I would be wearing.
Prior to a treatment with wax, the waxed canvas is dark blue and water is partially absorbed without leaking into the crown.
The BCC website adds: “You can make it more water resistant by re-waxing it over time as needed with wear and applying wax to the seams.” I applied a coating of the wax BCC offers in a 40ml tin. The wax goes on easily with a soft cotton cloth. After I had waxed the outside surface of the hat (paying special attention to the seams) I rubbed it with a bare hand, thinking the warmth would help the wax further penetrate the canvas. When I finished, the fabric had a glossy sheen, was dry to the touch, and had darkened from dark blue to black. I liked the transition; it gives the hat the more traditional look of early foulweather gear, which was once waterproofed with a formula that included lamp black.
An application of wax turns the canvas from blue to black and gives it a glassy, water-repellent surface. Note how water beads up without getting into the weave of the canvas.
During a second trial, the wax treatment made the water bead up and roll off. After six hours in my artificial rainfall, once again there were a few beads of water on the underside of the bill, but when I pressed the canvas, there was no evidence that the water was coming from the inside of the bill. It’s likely the water splashed up from dripping into the tub. The crown of the Nor’wester was once again completely dry.
The Nor’wester could easily pass for a sou’wester painted by Winslow Homer in 1886. It is handmade of natural fibers, can be treated indefinitely to maintain its waterproofing, is comfortable to wear, stands up to a downpour, and has plenty of character.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.
The Nor’wester is made and sold by Best Coast Canvas for $97. It comes in five sizes, from Small (for 21″ head circumference) to XX-Large (25″). All sizes come in Best Coast Blue; XL and XXL are also available in Plank Brown.
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.
For about six years, until 2016, Jeff Ambrose worked at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado, first as a volunteer and then as Restoration Manager responsible for the restoration and upkeep of all the museum’s rolling stock and its roundhouse. Over the years he was assisted by around 65 volunteers. They included his A-Team, the “Tuesday Group,” some 10 volunteers who came weekly to help Jeff with a variety of projects. In 2016, Jeff left the museum. For the Tuesday Group it was the end of an era, one they were all reluctant to leave behind.
Rick DeWitt
Eric Robison, Jeff Ambrose, Jim Curtis, and Rick DeWitt (from left to right) glue up the second lower chine block. In the background, under a blue tarp, is a Night Heron kayak, which Jeff was also building at the time.
“We really enjoyed working together,” Jeff says, “so I suggested we continue the relationship by having them come over to my shop in Littleton once a week to build stuff. For about a year, maybe more, they’d come over and work on small projects—furniture, toys for grandchildren, that sort of thing. But then we ran out of projects, and we needed something to do. It didn’t really matter what we built. The object was to get together, develop our skills, and enjoy being around each other.”
Jeff had learned boatbuilding skills over a four-year period taking classes taught by Harry Bryan and Eric Blake at WoodenBoat School, and when he now suggested building a boat, everyone in the group was in favor. But what would they build? “I brought in plans and ideas, but nothing really lit them up. Then I remembered: a year or two earlier, Mike had shown me a boat that he thought was really cool.”
John Conover
Jim Curtis inspects the lower chine block, a three-layer piece glued-up in place. The boat’s framework was built over a jig. Frames were of solid ash with marine plywood gussets and bulkheads. The step in the lower stern portion of the hull is very evident here.
Mike is Jeff’s brother-in-law. He lives about 1,400 miles from Littleton, in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and grew up around boats. When Mike was a kid, his father had built a couple of ski boats and finished a 30′ cabin cruiser, but Mike knew little of boatbuilding or woodworking; instead, his interests leaned to the mechanical. After his retirement, Mike had begun restoring and customizing older motorcycles, usually with his friend, Bob Fouts.
John Conover
Jim Curtis, Jeff Ambrose, and Eric Robison (from left to right) consider the next steps in construction. The boat had been moved from the back yard to the side yard where there was less space to move around but it could be easily covered by a tarp strung from the fence to the house. Parts of the boat were painted at this early stage because the builders realized they would never be so accessible again.
When Jeff called to ask about that cool boat, the conversation evolved quickly.
“I told him the guys were looking for something to do,” says Jeff, “and what would he think if we built a boat up in Littleton and then got it down to him for the mechanics?”
Mike was in.
The boat Jeff had been thinking of was the Crandall Flyer 15, designed by Bruce Crandall in 1936 to the “135 cu in” C-class rules established that same year. The article Mike had found was written by Willard, Bruce Crandall’s brother, and was published in the July 1936 issue of Motor Boating. In it, Willard described the 15′ 2″ single-step racing hydroplane as being “designed to give maximum speed, but maximum speed under normal competitive conditions. Factors of design giving straight-away speed, turning ability, and ability to ride rough water have been so proportioned that in an actual race a high peak of speed is reached…” The Flyer 15 was, Willard Crandall continued, “designed on the principle of carrying most of the weight on the foreplane, so that a wide afterplane is not necessary.” The resulting hull is narrow, without flare, and streamlined with a torpedo stern.
Eric Robison
Rick DeWitt (above) and John Conover (below), measuring up for the first diagonal layer of mahogany veneer on the port side.
Jeff took the article in to show the guys. “They were excited from the start. It really is a cool-looking thing. So off we went.”
The boatbuilders were a group of seven, including Jeff. Six had met through the railroad museum and the seventh was Rick DeWitt, a neighbor who “mistakenly stopped by one day to see what we were up to,” remembers Jeff.
John Conover
The boat was moved into Jeff’s garage for the winter. Here, Jeff applies the first diagonal layer of mahogany veneer to the foredeck.
Deciding to build the Crandall Flyer 15 was the easy part; more challenging was finding lines drawings. The Motor Boating article included some drawings and a table of offsets, and Jeff was considering lofting the Flyer when, in one of his many forays through the internet, he found Classic Wooden Boat Plans, an online business that has, within its catalog of plans, a set for the Crandall Flyer 15 that includes full-sized plans and a digital 3D model, “which allowed us to spin the boat around and see it from all angles.” Jeff bought the set and recalls, “we did run across some issues in the plans but that’s all part of boatbuilding. On the whole, they were good.”
The Willard Crandall article described the construction of the Flyer 15 and while Jeff adhered to the original dimensions and scantlings, he veered away from some of the proposed building materials. “The article said that the boat’s frame should be in spruce,” says Jeff, “but that’s not the easiest wood to work with or to source, so we switched to ash. There was also talk of lapping the joints on the frames, but we opted for glued and stainless-steel-screwed butt joints with plywood gussets. The hull was originally batten-seam planked, but with today’s materials we decided to cold-mold it instead: three layers of 1⁄8″ mahogany—the inner layer laid fore and aft, the next two on opposing diagonals. The bottom of the boat, aft of the step, where there’s almost no curve at all, we fashioned from 3⁄8″ marine plywood, and for the deck we used 1⁄8″ plywood topped by 1⁄8″ mahogany. In all it’s probably heavier than the original, but we were going for durability rather than a true lightweight racer.”
John Conover
Curtis Cain, one of the original members of the Tuesday Group, fabricated the turned metal for the vintage-look instrument panel.
In recent years there have been discussions on classic-boat and yacht-design forums as to the safety of the Flyer 15’s design and its apparent instability if taking tight turns at high speed. But the building team in Colorado was in it for the look of the boat. “We didn’t put a lot of thought into what we’d do with it when it was finished,” says Jeff. “It really was just a matter of ‘what a neat project this would be.’ I don’t know that it does perform that well as a [practical] boat, but as a woodworking project, an art object, it’s perfect.”
The Colorado building team began work in 2017. By early 2019 the boat was finished. All it needed now was the engine to be installed. Around the time the project was winding up, Jeff was busy relocating to North Carolina and, he says, “in a spirit of generosity one doesn’t expect from a brother-in-law,” Mike drove up to Denver and trailered the boat back to Lake Havasu City. It was time for the mechanical phase of the project to begin.
MIke Slattery
The difference in the size of the two restored vintage engines is obvious when seen side by side. On the right is the Gray Marine Phantom 45, which was physically the perfect size but underpowered for the boat. On the left is the Gray Marine Fireball 90, which delivered sufficient power but required some structural adjustments.
Finding an engine had been a challenge. “It’s a small boat,” says Mike, “and the engine compartment is very confined, so the power options weren’t limitless. We needed a vintage flat-head marine engine with an integral transmission. Anything else wouldn’t fit.” While the boat was still in build, one of the building crew located a period-correct 45-hp Gray Marine Phantom 445 engine. It was in Michigan, sitting on a rack where it had been for the past 30 years. Thinking it would be perfect Jeff, Mike, and Jim Curtis, one of the boatbuilders, drove east to get it.
Mike Slattery
A vintage rudder was located at a shop on Lake St. Claire, Michigan. Mike is considering extending the rudder shaft to better position it in the water flow beneath the hull; it is hoped that this will improve the boat’s maneuverability at speed.
Over the next few months, as the build had been drawing to a close in Colorado, Mike had taken the engine apart, rebuilt it, and got it running. When the boat at last arrived in Arizona, the engine was ready, and the boat was ready to receive it. Mike had never done a mechanical installation on a boat before, but with 10 years of working on vintage motorcycles and having done a “ton of research and talking to people,” he was confident that, with Bob’s help, he could do what was needed. “Working on engines,” Mike says, “keeps us busy and interested in waking up the next morning.”
Mike and Bob installed the engine—making their own motor mounts—and in September 2019 they took the boat for a speed trial on Lake Havasu. “We quickly found out that 45 hp wasn’t going to get the boat up onto a plane. I don’t know what speed we were getting but the engine just wouldn’t turn over more than 2,100 rpm and peak horsepower in the Phantom 445 can only be achieved at 3,000 rpm.” Searching for solutions and still hoping they could get the engine to work, Mike installed a smaller propeller with less pitch to see if that would help. It didn’t, he says, “and at $480 a pop I wasn’t about to start buying propellers on spec.”
John Conover
The engine compartment is a very tight fit. Because the second engine was larger than the original, a vent was added to the engine cover, and a bite was taken out of the frame.
Mike considered his options. For a while he thought about getting a modern engine and shoehorning it into the Flyer. He even went as far as buying a $300 boat that had a “really nice MerCruiser 120-hp, four-cylinder engine.” He cleaned up the engine, got it running, cut up the old fiberglass boat, and took the pieces to the dump. However, once he had extracted the engine from the boat and was able to measure it properly, he realized that its weight would be too far forward and too high. He sold it and moved on. “I made a couple of bucks, so it was okay.”
The Mercruiser idea a dud, Mike was back on the hunt for a period engine. At last, on eBay, he found a Gray Marine Fireball 90, “an engine,” he says, “made for high-performance boats in the 1940s.”
MIke Slattery
Mike Slattery and Bob Fouts finished painting the hull in Mike’s shop in Arizona. The group had chosen the classic racing colors offset by the varnished deck, but it was Mike and Bob who perfected the finish.
In January 2022, the Fireball was shipped from Massachusetts to Arizona. “It had been sitting in a warehouse and was completely frozen,” Mike says, “so I had to tear it apart and do a complete rebuild. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to have too many hours on it, plus I was able to get all the parts I needed.” During his research, Mike had come across David Van Ness at Van Ness Engineering in Fairfield, New Jersey. “When Gray Marine went out of business Dave bought all their hardware, so he’s the source for all things vintage Gray,” Mike says. “He’s not the easiest to get in touch with but he’s very generous with advice and information, and through long-distance phone calls he led me through the rebuild. Thanks to him I got it back up and running.”
Mike Slattery
The completed boat ready to be towed back to Colorado on a used trailer that Mike and Bob customized. Mike chose the boat’s name because the paint color reminded him of the well-known steak sauce.
When Mike and Bob relaunched the Flyer in September 2023 it “jumped right up on plane.” But, Mike says, there’s still room for improvement. “It still doesn’t go very fast because the prop is now too small and doesn’t have enough pitch to get the most out of the new engine. I’m sure if I spent another $500, I could get a more appropriate propeller and then we could start pushing the boat into the zone for which it was designed.” Which, adds Jeff, “scares the hell out of both of us.”
John Conover
Although the cockpit layout is true to the original, the seat back—which is removable to allow access to the fuel tank—was designed by the Tuesday group and laminated over a mold in Jeff’s shop. The cushions were upholstered by Diane Slattery.
For now, the Flyer, with its undersized propeller and under-performance stats, remains in Arizona. Mike and Bob did trailer it up to Colorado in the fall so that everyone who had helped in the build could drive it around on a local reservoir. “It wasn’t the best outing,” says Mike. “Because of the higher elevation in Colorado the engine ran very rich, but it was still a lot of fun.” There are still one or two small mechanical issues to be fixed, which Mike was planning to do as soon as the daytime temperatures in Arizona eased up, but after that no one is quite sure. Lake Havasu, which straddles the border between Arizona and California, has no speed limit and, says Jeff, “is the hydroplane capital of California.” It might be an appropriate place to put the Crandall Flyer 15 through its paces.
Kathy Ambrose
With Jeff at the helm, the A-1 was finally underway at Chatfield Reservoir, Colorado. This was the first opportunity for the Colorado building team to see the boat finished and to try it out on the water.
“Without question the project has been a success,” Jeff says. Its creators were separated by almost 1,500 miles, and “start to finish, it’s taken nearly seven years—not many projects can be sustained so long.” What happens next may be undecided but, Mike says, “I think I’d like to drive it around at least once when it’s actually performing properly. Then I guess we’ll sell it and maybe we’ll all go out to dinner some time. It really was the challenge of doing the thing.”
The Crandall Flyer 15 building crew in Colorado were: Eric Robison, Jim Curtis, Rick DeWitt, Curtis Cane, John Conover, Bob Wilson, and Jeff Ambrose; and in Arizona: Mike Slattery, Bob Fouts, and Diane Slattery—who upholstered the seat and its custom-designed curved back.
Jenny Bennett is managing editor of Small Boats.
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We made it! You made it!! Six hundred nautical miles later—a conservative estimate—we’d like to sit down with you and take a look back.
How did this rowing sailing contraption of ours work out? What went well? What would we do differently? Are we still on speaking terms? What’s the take-away?
Well, there is a moral of sorts.
We’re not the brightest bulbs, the best builders, the best sailors. We’re neither tough nor intrepid nor especially courageous. What is it that gets and keeps us on the water—limitations notwithstanding—vessel after vessel, year after year?
Dreams. Determination. Persistence.
We all have dreams. Once we determine to pursue them, we are determined. If we persist, one measly step at a time, we will look back to find that we have the persistence we need.
It’s nothing special. It’s within our reach, one and all.
It’s time, for real, to get our sweet bippies out of the wild.
Snowline descends from no longer naked peaks. We wake to ice on the overhead. The stove warms cabin…boils coffee. We relish the thermal rush a hot mug imparts to cold hands. We blow steam till we can drink it down.
First we have to cross Icy Strait at its widest and perhaps most difficult point. We wait out a storm. We wait for a window. We get a fair forecast. We hop and go.
Well, the forecasts falls short around here, often as not. We take what we’re offered. We pay the toll in muscle and make the crossing.
We ratchet our way along Chichagof’s shore until fair wind finds us. All too soon, we round the corner that rounds the voyage.
Cruisers with any sense at all would call this a fine adventure and head home.
After all, it’s late in the year. Equinoctal gales are uncharacteristically late. But when they do arrive, they’re only the warning shot across the bow, presaging autumnal storms. And that’s just regional weather.
Lynn Canal, the largest fjord in North America, has a reputation. It squeezes between two jagged mountain ranges, funneling and amplifying wind and water flows between them over a four-fathom range of tide. Ocean-born lows vie with Canadian interior highs.
That is to say, the wind do blow.
But we’ve been having such a great time! We hear news of a family gathering up that way, and we’re invited. It’s only 60 nautical miles distant. It’s really been unseasonably mild, right? And we know the ground. Probably sailed it a dozen times. If need be, we can duck down.
We return to inside waters with a double sigh of regret and relief.
Icy Strait is a hydrological wonder. Deep and wide to the east, kinked in the middle, and shoal and narrow to the west, it connects Lynn Canal/Chatham Strait with ocean waters. The tide drive temendous flows across convoluted land and bottom contours. Right angle feeds collide in sudden rip fields. Fresh water flows over saltwater, dragging across tides. Bores, rips, and whorls abound. Add winds driven by glacier cooled downdrafts from northern quarters.
We’ve been learning how to sail this glorious mess over the years, one awkward passage at a time. But we slip through easy, this time. Sort of.
This past August, while I was riding my bike along one of my usual routes through Seattle’s northeast neighborhoods, I saw a moving truck backed onto the gravel parking spot in front of a white-clapboard single-story house. Sticking out from the back of the truck were four wooden rods with stainless-steel sleeves on the ends. I thought they looked like the ends of take-apart paddles and coasted up to the truck to take a closer look. I met the young couple, Kelly and Samantha, who were in the process of loading the truck, and when I asked about the paddles, they showed them to me and Kelly said, “If you want them, they’re yours.”
The paddles were homemade and very long. I was about to say that I didn’t need them when Kelly added, “If you want the canoe they’re for, you can have that too. It’s in the back yard.” I wasn’t expecting to be interested in it either, but it was a plywood lapstrake canoe and I recognized it by its straight raked sternpost as a Piccolo, designed by Robert Baker. I biked home, got my car, and drove back for the canoe and its paddles.
As I was in the last few days of getting this issue of Small Boats finished, I needed to take a break and took the canoe to paddle around Foster Island, part of a park on the shore of Lake Washington. The island is just a third of a mile long, surrounded by marsh and waterlilies, and separated from the mainland by only a creek-like passage that is shallow enough to wade across.
When I arrived at the parking lot closest to the launch site there was only one spot left but it was taken up by a green ride-share bicycle and scooter. I got out of the car and moved the bike. When I pushed the scooter out of the way, I had my head down and didn’t notice a low branch sticking straight out from a maple tree; I plowed into it with the top of my skull, which made my ears ring and, as blows to my head always do, put a damper on my mood.
The launch site is just a short walk down a gravel path from the parking lot.
I set the canoe on the cart I’d brought and, as I was tying it on, the cart rolled over and the canoe thudded to rest on the cart’s side. I crawled under the canoe, lifted it, turned the cart upright, and this time got the canoe tied down. At the launch site I set the canoe in the water and filled three dry bags with lake water to use as ballast. The only other times I’d been afloat in the canoe was with a single-bladed paddle instead of the double blade for which it was designed, and with my weight off-center to reach over the canoe’s 30” beam with a too-short paddle, I didn’t feel very stable. I could easily imagine why someone would happily give the canoe away.
I put the largest of the three bags, carrying about 30 lbs of water, into the stern. The other two bags were compression bags, and after I filled the first one and put it in the bow, the one-way valve to purge air sent an arc of water in against the side of the hull. I rolled the bag to put the valve on top and that stopped the flow. When I loaded the second bag on board, its top, which is like a soft-sided bowl attached by four straps as part of the compression system, scooped up a half-gallon of water and spilled it into the canoe. I hadn’t brought a sponge and needed some sort of bailer, otherwise I’d have to pull everything out, roll the canoe on its side, and start packing again.
At the top of the path leading to the launch site there was a garbage can. I peeked in but there were no cups that could serve as bailers. I found a 12-oz seltzer can in the car, cut off the top with a pocketknife and used that to scoop the water out. I’d brought a folding camp seat, the kind used to provide a cushion and a backrest when sitting on ground, and as soon as I’d set it in the boat I realized that I’d need both hands on the gunwales to get aboard and wouldn’t be able to hold the seat open to get into it. This was not turning out to be the restorative break from work that I’d had in mind. I used a line, stretched across the gunwales, to hold the seat back upright.
The passage around the southeast corner of Foster Island was darkened by a canopy of trees and obstructed by the submerged and semi-submerged trunks of trees that had fallen years ago.
I finally got underway to make a clockwise circumnavigation of Foster Island and headed to a path of open water between expanses of lily pads. I had paddled only a few dozen yards before getting stuck in the mud. I made the mistake of turning around rather than backing out and it was several minutes before I got free again. I headed in the opposite direction and entered the narrow passage on the island’s southeast side. It is shallow and the bottom is littered with fallen tree limbs that are invisible in the mud. I could only feel them nudging the bow sideways or bringing the canoe to a stop. Not quite 300 yards in, I was stopped by a log about 8” below the surface. I made several attempts to get by, but it spanned the entire width of the passage.
I turned around again and took a different route through the lily pads on the southwest side of the island. Beyond the lily pads the water was more open and I paddled under a footbridge that connects the northwest corner of Foster Island to the much smaller Marsh Island. When I reached Union Bay Passage, the waterway that connects Lake Washington to Lake Union, I retrieved a can of root beer from the dry bag in the stern and took a break. Between sips of root beer, I tucked the can into the front of my PFD and paddled to a second footbridge on the other end of Marsh Island.
A walking path connects Foster Island, on the right, to Marsh Island, on the left. Beyond it is Union Bay.
In the short time I’d been paddling, I’d begun to relax. I paddled up close to a raccoon busily gnawing at its backside, a great blue heron watching me with the full golden circle of its eye, and hooded mergansers with their extravagant black-and-white crests sprinting across the water as they took flight.
I was just less than a half-canoe-length away from this raccoon before it took a break from chewing on its backside to look at me. I backed off before I got so close that it could have jumped on board.
When I coasted by this great blue heron, it raised its head to keep an eye on me. Although I was only about 20′ away, the bird didn’t take flight.
At the point where Lake Union Passage enters the Montlake Cut stands the original University of Washington shell house where the crew made famous by the book The Boys in the Boat stored their racing shells.
The two overpasses of Washington State Highway 520 carry traffic over the backwaters of Lake Washington’s Union Bay to the 2-mile-long floating bridges across the lake itself.
Along the shoreline there were many places where trees had fallen into the lake. The beavers living in this island-like lodge are the likely culprits.
Before I returned to the launch site, I paddled into one of the fields of lily pads, let the canoe come to a stop, and untied the seat’s backrest to lie down in the canoe—a test to see if it was well suited for sleeping aboard. As I stretched out, my butt slipped off the pad and into the water that remained in the bilge. I scooted back onto the pad and tried again. This time it was my shoulder that was suddenly wet. I sat up and looked for the water, but there was none, neither in the bilge nor seeping from the water-filled dry bag. Slowly, I laid myself down again and again felt wet not only on my shoulder but also on my chest: it was root beer pouring out of the can that I’d tucked in my PFD.
The Piccolo was surprisingly roomy and I could lie down with just enough room to keep from feeling cramped. I’m a side sleeper and the canoe could accommodate me if spending a night aboard.
I drank what was left, crumpled the can, and tossed it into the bow. I lay down again, damp, slightly sticky, and smelling like sassafras, but very comfortable. The canoe was so still it could have been aground. With the only sound coming from a bird with a one-note chirp, I let the quiet sink into me and imagined spending a night in the canoe in places not so easily reached in my larger boats, boats that had so many elements that somehow kept me busy throughout a day of cruising.
Once back at the launch, I took all the gear and water ballast out of the canoe and paddled it in the open water near the shore. With the long double-bladed paddle, the canoe was much more stable than I’d previously given it credit for. I packed up and drove home at ease, energized by the future I saw for the Piccolo and me.
Paul Gartside originally produced his Beach Cruiser, Design #226, in 2017, “as a fast, light, lug-and-mizzen boat at 17′ overall for a fellow on the coast of Texas.” The following year, for a customer in California, he built a 16′ version with a gunter main, jib, and mizzen: Centerboard Yawl, Design #226A. In 2022 that 16-footer appealed to Andy Weimer of Zurich, Switzerland, when he enrolled at the Boat Building Academy (BBA) in Lyme Regis, England. “I liked the shape of the hull and the plumb stem—I am a bit of a sucker for West Country working boats—but I didn’t like the gunter-yawl rig, so I asked Paul if he could draw a gaff rig with a topsail and bowsprit.” Paul obliged and the result, the Centerboard Sloop of Design #226A, is the same 16′ hull as the Centerboard Yawl, but with the mast and centerboard moved forward to balance the new rig.
Courtesy Paul Gartside
Design 226A was originally conceived as a yawl with a gunter-rigged mainsail, overlapping jib, and leg o’ mutton mizzen set to a short boomkin. Paul Gartside drew a new gaff-sloop sailplan for Andy Weimer.
Paul specified edge-glued carvel strip-plank construction for the 16-footer designed for Andy. While both previous versions of the #226 were strip-planked, Paul noted “strip-planked construction has its place (working best on long, narrow hulls) but is very much an amateur method. Edge-glued carvel is structurally the same thing but just looks a lot better with plank lines in harmony with the hull shape. We wanted a varnished interior on that boat, so it was important. I suggested Andy do the same thing on his as it would be a more profitable learning experience. Lining out and then backing out and rounding planking are useful skills to acquire.”
The five sheets of plans supplied by Paul consisted of a sail plan, lines plan, table of offsets, setup plan, and a construction plan with scantlings and suggestions for materials.
As required for student projects at BBA, Andy started with lofting, and from there the nine building molds, the transom, and a template for the stem were produced. Although the plans show the inner stem in three pieces of solid pine, it was thought that it would be stronger if laminated in one piece. The outer stem (specified as laminated in the plans) and the inner stem were laminated together using 1⁄8″ sapele veneers with sheets of polyethylene separating the two elements.
Nigel Sharp
The plumb stem, short bowsprit, and tan-bark sails all reflect the influences of Andy’s much loved small traditional working boats from England’s West Country.
Once the molds and transom were secured upside down on a building base, the keel was laminated over the molds from 5⁄8″ sapele (two laminations over the whole length and up to five where the extra thickness is needed aft of the centerboard trunk) and then removed after the glue had set. The shaped inner stem was fitted into notches in the forward two molds and then the 5⁄8″-thick single-piece sapele hog/keelson was scarfed to it and laid into notches in the remaining molds and transom. Battens were used to line-off the planking on the stem, molds, and transom.
After carrying out some experiments it was decided that, rather than starting with thicker timber for the planking and then hollowing out the inside faces to match the shape of the molds and later doing a major fairing job on the outside, the curves across the grain would be achieved by steaming the planks. This allowed the use of 3⁄8″-thick timber, which came out of 16′ × 8″ × 1⁄2″ yellow cedar. The stock was long enough to make one-piece planks for six strakes and the remaining three strakes required planks in two pieces scarfed together.
The planking started with the garboard and the sheerstrake and then progressed down and up toward the shutter plank. The garboard and sheerstrake were epoxied to the stem and transom (and the garboard also to the hog); subsequent planks were also edge-glued to each other. There were nine planks each side. The garboard and two adjacent planks had to be steamed at their forward ends to cope with the twists at the bow.
The outside of the hull was sanded fair with long boards. A 2″-wide by 1⁄8″-deep rebate was machined into the perimeter of the transom face to allow the hull’s sheathing of 6-oz ’glass and epoxy to be extended into it. After being shaped, the keel (with the centerboard slot already cut into it) and the outer stem were fitted. While the plans specified a 1⁄4″ outer plywood face to cover the transom’s ’glassed perimeter and provide a smooth, flat exterior surface, Andy had some nice-looking 1⁄8″ sapele veneer on hand that would do the job, and vacuum-bagged it to the transom; the sapele had an attractive color and grain. The ’glassed hull was then faired, coated with five coats of primer, and the transom was finished bright. After the hull was turned right side up the molds were removed and the inside of the hull was sheathed in 123gm/m2 ’glass and epoxy.
Nigel Sharp
The contrast in wood tones is particularly evident in the centerboard trunk—the sides are 7/8” yellow cedar, while the top cap and end pieces are sapele. The curved face of the laminated aft end piece reflects the shape of the bottom edge of the centerboard. The double-purchase centerboard uphaul is led aft and cleated off on the port face of the trunk where it is close to hand for the helmsperson.
The sides of the centerboard case were made from 7⁄8″-thick yellow cedar with the logs, end pieces, and top cap in sapele, all biscuit-jointed together. Its aft end piece was laminated to form a gentle curve, partly for appearance but also to match the shape of the bottom of the centerboard itself. After the slot was cut into the hog/keelson, the case was fitted. Nine 1 1⁄4″-thick sapele floors were fitted, three of them were notched into the centerboard case logs. The forward two would later support the maststep while the others would also act as cockpit sole bearers.
The plans call for 1⁄4″ plywood bulkheads to seal two watertight flotation compartments, one in the bow with a 9″ access port, and the other in the stern under the seat and aft deck with a similar port in the deck, though Andy chose to leave the deck uninterrupted.
A central thwart in solid cedar provides seating amidships and braces the centerboard trunk. Between it and the stern seating, Gartside has drawn 3⁄4″ cedar-slat side benches. Andy chose not to fit these as he thought he wouldn’t likely need them.
A deck of 3⁄8″ white cedar is shown in the plans. Andy opted for a 1⁄4″ plywood subdeck supporting a 1⁄4″-thick yellow-cedar laid deck with sapele covering boards. After the kingplank was added, the whole deck was cleaned up and sheathed in ’glass and epoxy.
With the topsides painted, the 1″ × 1 1⁄4″ rubbing strake was fitted (Andy used sapele instead of the locust specified). The strake was bedded rather than glued so it can more easily be replaced if damaged. After the sapele coamings were fitted everything else was varnished. For the sole boards Andy used iroko.
Nigel Sharp
Seen from above, the unusual line of the cockpit coaming is apparent: its height is reduced aft of the jib-sheet fairleads so that the crew can comfortably sit up on the side deck, but kept high forward to keep water coming over the bow from flowing into the cockpit. Also visible are the darker tones of the sapele rubbing strake, kingplank, coaming, and transom that contrast with and compliment the lighter tones of the yellow cedar.
The 1″-thick rudder blade is laminated from cedar and sheathed and epoxied. The 1 3⁄8″-thick centerboard is shown in the plans as white pine vertical laminates sheathed in Dynel and epoxy and weighted with 25 lbs of lead. The spars are spruce: the 18′ 1″ mast is hollow while the boom, gaff, and bowsprit are solid. Andy made the bowsprit 4″ longer than designed to allow room for a furling gear with the jib tack in designed position and the forestay forward of it.
Nigel Sharp
The gaff-sloop rig, complete with small topsail, is traditional. The mainsail is low-tech: laced to the boom, gaff, and mast, and reefed with two rows of simple nettles. Less traditional is the jib’s roller furling mechanism, installed by Andy for easier control from within the cockpit. To accommodate the gear but still have the jib tacked to its designed position, Andy lengthened the bowsprit by 4″.
Andy and I took the sloop for a sail on a squally day on the Penryn River near Falmouth, U.K. When trailering the boat, the boom and gaff can fit inside the hull with the mainsail attached to them, while the mast rests in the stern and on a slightly offset mast support at the forward end of the trailer; the bowsprit is left in place. It takes about 20 minutes to step the mast (which Andy has found he can do by himself by initially standing it upright outside the boat), secure the standing rigging with lashings, lace the mainsail’s luff to the mast, and do everything else that is necessary to be ready to hoist the main and gaff, and unfurl the jib. One person can hoist the 1:1 peak and throat halyards simultaneously and, of course, the furling gear for the headsail makes life simpler. We didn’t set the topsail that day, but even with its jackyard and luff pole it can be easily hoisted with its halyard and sheet, and then tensioned with its downhaul.
There was plenty of room for the two of us, but there would also be room for two more people sitting on the central thwart, on the side decks forward, or just on the cockpit sole. I didn’t miss the side benches that Andy chose not to build. In their stead, the side decks certainly offered comfortable seating and good visibility and, with the tiller extension, effective steering.
The wind direction allowed us to sail away from the dock easily; Andy was due to fit oarlocks to allow the boat to be rowed.
Nigel Sharp
Reefed down on a blustery day, the sloop remains comfortable, heeled but still well-balanced. The fine finish of the carvel-planked hull is testament to the many hours Andy spent fairing and sanding.
The wind strength varied between a gentle 10 knots and a fierce 25 knots and, once we were underway, I initially found myself wanting to play the mainsheet with some urgency in the gusts and lulls, but I soon realized that the boat didn’t heel as much as I expected it to. It accelerated easily in the gusts and, with a reefed mainsail, jib, and no topsail, the helm was neutral. The boat tacked easily with no suggestion that it might get into irons. We were sailing in flat water, but Andy told me that the previous weekend he and a partner had sailed the few miles across Falmouth Bay to the Helford River in a 10- to 15-knot southwesterly and “quite a swell” from the south. He said that the boat slowed down a bit going into the swell on starboard tack but he enjoyed a bit of surfing on port tack and always felt safe. Andy is happy with the Centerboard Sloop’s performance and is looking forward to trailering it home to Switzerland for sails on Lake Zurich.
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.
During the pandemic I was, like many folks, stuck at home with only a few quick trips out when necessary, and I spent lots of time on the computer, watching video after video. It eventually occurred to me that something good could come out of all the “alone time,” and I went back to one of my favorite pastimes of the last 50 years or so: researching the possibilities of owning a boat, something special that I could pass down, and would last generations. I stumbled on Giesler Boats, and there was something about the company that struck a chord with me.
In October 2022, after exchanging emails for several months with Gerry Giesler, the third-generation owner of B. Giesler and Sons Ltd. in Powassan, Ontario, my wife Theresa and I went up for a visit to his shop. Taking in the smell of the wood, varnish, and sawdust on the floor, I was hooked, and asked Gerry where I should send the deposit
Al Lyall
The Giesler hulls are made of western red cedar shiplap strips, whch are then sanded using both electric palm sanders and hand sanders. Bottoms can be fiberglassed as an optional extra.
We ordered the Georgian Bay, an 18′ cedar-strip runabout, which would include a 60-hp Yamaha high-thrust four-stroke outboard with electric trim. The base model of the boat, without any of the options offered on the Giesler website, is perfectly fine and I would think it would do well with a 40-hp, but our lakes are large and deep and can be choppy, so the bigger, tougher motor was better suited to our needs.
Theresa and I wanted a real beauty, so we had Giesler Boats add a mahogany coaming to wrap around the top rails and around the front deck. I wanted a solid wood cockpit sole (or at least something other than the standard cedar and pine slats), but that didn’t happen as Gerry wasn’t enthusiastic about the change.
While we selected a long list of upgrades from the Giesler website, we didn’t think that the extra touches were particularly expensive considering the affordable base price of the boat. Gerry thought, based on how we intended to use the boat, that we should add a couple of inches to the freeboard, a longer front deck, and a rear deck with a splash well. There were also some cosmetic additions, which is where Giesler boats really shine as no two are alike.
Al Lyall
No two boats are the same. Here the foredeck is longer and the freeboard was raised a couple of inches. The mahogany sidedeck that wraps around the cockpit and foredeck was requested by the author. The wood brackets for the custom windshield were made in-house, and the oak strip laid into the center of the decks complements the oak dashboard.
Most of the wood—cedar, maple, oak, pine, walnut, and mahogany—is sourced from North America, as locally as possible. The boats are hand-built using molds/frames that have been around for almost 100 years (with some repair along the way as constant use wears down the wooden molds) but the design and building technique have not changed much.
The hulls are made of western red cedar shiplap strips measuring 3⁄8″ × 1 5⁄8″ and clench-nailed to the frames. The strips are applied on steam-bent 11⁄16″ × 3⁄8″ oak frames and fastened with thousands of copper nails. The hull is then sanded smooth by hand or with a palm sander. Giesler Boats offers the option to have the bottom fiberglassed and painted with antifouling paint.
The transom is mahogany, the dash oak, and the seats are pine. Gerry added a decorative oak and walnut stripe down the center from foredeck to transom, a very nice touch. The wood brackets for the custom windshield are made in-house.
Gerry and his crew always had time for us: we went to see them every two weeks once the build started, and while we always had lots of questions, they never seemed to get tired of us. They started our boat on April 2, and we put it in the water on June 24.
Al Lyall
With two bench seats aft of the bridge deck as well as the bench seat forward, there is comfortable seating for as many as six passengers. The cedar slat floorboards that mirror the strip-planked decks, are standard. The fuel tank is behind the aft bench.
Once the boat was complete, it went over to Giesler Marine, run by Gerry’s cousin Mark, for the mechanical end of things. They do an in-water boat test, give you a full tank of gas, help hook up the trailer to your vehicle, and have the boat ready to launch when you pick it up. Gerry even registers the boat in your name and has the identification numbers ready to go on the sides as well as the plates on the trailer.
The boat, motor, and trailer come in at just under 1,500 lbs, so I can tow it with my 2021 Rav4 which is rated at 1,500 lbs max for towing. We found it easy to tow the boat and put it into the lake at the ramp. We were lucky enough to get a slip at a local marina, so we don’t have to trailer from lake to lake.
My wife and I have both been around boats all our lives and have driven many but always with the owner present. It’s a whole different thing being on our own, but this little beauty makes it easy. It handles well, is not too powerful, and can take the rough water we get in our lakes. The wide beam and taller sides make it feel much larger than it is. At only 500 lbs you would think it would feel light and bounce around, but it has a solid, heavy feel and instills confidence.
Theresa Lyall
With plenty of curve at the bilge, the boat banks into turns, a motion that will feel unfamiliar to drivers more used to the sliding motion of a hard-chined planing hull.
The boat has what Gerry calls “pretty much a displacement hull.” To me, it’s like a Maine lobsterboat with a big V in the front and flat on the back. It pushes through the water nicely at low speed, about 12 mph, and when you hit the throttle, it pops out of the water right away and comes up on plane around 19 to 21 mph.
It’s a nice soft ride as the boat pushes through the water, and very comfortable anywhere from 21 to 30 mph. It has a top speed of 33 mph with the 60-hp outboard at full throttle. I have played with the trim angle to bring the bow up a few degrees to get a bit more speed, but the boat will porpoise fairly easily from 23 mph on and I find that I have to trim back down. I was told by Gerry to just leave the trim all the way in to keep the bow down all the time, but I sometimes push it a bit on a calm day.
The hull, with its ample radius at the turn of the bilge, banks into turns made at speed. It’s a strange feeling at first, as it seems to slip out under you—very different from a planing hull with hard chines that slide through a turn. The Georgian Bay’s cornering is very forgiving and just plain fun.
Theresa Lyall
Despite weighing only 500 lbs the boat handles well and has a surprisingly heavy feel that inspires confidence in its seakeeping abilities.
The boat inspires confidence, as rough water does not seem to bother it. The sound of the water against the hull has surprised us at times as we remembered there was only ⅜” of cedar between us and the water. The whole experience soon becomes second nature, and the sound melts away. You can get a bit of spray if going through a big wake as it rides up the wake and comes down hard. I usually try to roll with a big wake or just avoid it all together.
The total draft is 22″: the boat draws 8″, and the motor trimmed all the way down adds 14″ so we can go between islands and look down through crystal-clear water to rock shelves close below. The shallow draft allows us to get into quiet bays, enjoy the landscape, and slip slowly between the islands dotting the Muskoka lakes.
I really could go on and on about this boat—it’s just that good. It is a solid, seemingly invincible small boat that’s mostly old school with just the right amount of modern safety and convenience. At the price you just can’t get any better. B. Giesler & Sons was started in 1927 and after almost 100 years of building boats, let’s hope they never stop.
Al Lyall is a retired corrections officer living peacefully in Muskoka with his wife, Theresa (who still feels the need to work). He enjoys spending time with their adult children and grandchildren. A longtime dreamer of owning a classic boat, Al is now making up for lost time out on the lakes of Muskoka, Ontario.
"Atmospheric river” was the term used for the sheer volume of rainfall in Tacoma, Washington, at 6 p.m. on June 10th an hour before the start of the 2022 SEVENTY48 boat race. At the moment of that downpour, I was sitting at a bar and grill, less than 50 yards from where my boat was docked at the starting line. I watched out the window as others walked by clad head-to-toe in exposure suits of all kinds. Is that person in the drysuit part of the race or are they just dressed for the weather? It was hard to tell.
Our table at the restaurant was more than a dozen-people deep with mostly family who had flown in from across the country. They came to show their support as I was about to embark on the SEVENTY48 race for the second time.
Courtesy of the author
On a training run south of Whidbey Island, I focused on getting more comfortable crossing large channels and the hazards that come with them. Rain, low visibility, and boat traffic all added to my anxiety as a fairly new rower. The only way to get beyond those fears was time on the water and experience at the oars.
SEVENTY48 is a human-powered boat race from Tacoma to Port Townsend (roughly 70 miles) with a 48-hour window in which to finish. Which route racers take is up to them. As the website states, “the rules are simple: no motors, no support, and no wind.” Masochists from around the country show up in Tacoma every June (since 2018) to participate in vessels ranging from tried-and-true to, let’s say, experimental. The starting line is a mixed bag of sea kayaks, rowboats, paddleboards, 20-person canoes, and tandem pedal barges. There are two kinds of racers: those who are in it to win, and those who are in it for the experience and adventure. I am among the latter.
This was the second year that I sat at the restaurant, just above the docks, anticipating the start of the race. The previous year I had entered the race with my 15-year-old wooden sea kayak, a reliable and sea-tested boat that I purchased at the height of the pandemic in 2020. In my first go at the race in 2021, I saw 5′ whitecapped waves, endured 30-knot winds, and tested the merit of my eBay drysuit with DIY patches. Of the 92 teams that started in Tacoma that year, only 43 finished the race, myself included in 32nd place. I arrived in Port Townsend at 12:34 a.m. Sunday, just shy of 30 hours after the starting gun went off. Soaked to the bone and missing critical safety gear after a capsize early in the race, I stood on the dark beach and told myself that once was enough.
Then my resolve wore off. Racers from previous years had recounted their Zen-like experiences on a glassy Puget Sound through the night. Why couldn’t I have one of those? I decided to give the race another try but I wanted a new vessel—something more stable, more comfortable. I spent a few months researching and settled on building an Expedition rowboat designed by Colin Angus of Angus Rowboats. There had been a few of them in the race in 2021, including a pair rowed by a father and daughter who finished minutes ahead of me. The Expedition is not likely what you picture when you think of a rowboat. At boat ramps and on the water, it’s often referred to as “that thing.” “What is that thing?” “How do you paddle that thing?” “Why do you sit backward in that thing?”
Samuel Hendrix
Bainbridge and Blake islands were my primary training grounds leading up to the race. Here, looking east from Blake Island toward West Seattle, I beached my boat for a quick break before making my way back home on one of my longest training days, about 30 miles.
The Expedition is long, narrow, and almost completely enclosed by decking, save for the small cockpit where the rower and sliding seat are positioned. Three large, watertight hatches, one at the stern and two forward of the cockpit, provide ample storage for gear as well as buoyancy in the event of a capsize. It’s truly a boat designed to keep you afloat in even the worst conditions. After my experience in 2021, that’s what I was looking for.
As the 7 p.m. race start approached, my nerves heightened as the rain fell. I said goodbye to friends and family as I ran down to the dock for last-minute preparations. The rain had let up quite a bit from the hour prior, bringing a glint of positivity to the evening. As quickly as I was feeling better about things, I was brought down by the sight of my gloves and socks lying on top of the boat, completely soaked from hours of rain. Fortunately, one of my biggest takeaways from year one was to always have spares. I grabbed a dry pair of each, donned my rain jacket and pants, and kicked off the dock to queue with some 130 other boats for the start. All the boats take team names for the race; mine was Team Bogus Journey, a reference to the sequel of the Keanu Reeves classic movie (my father-in-law competed as Team Excellent Adventure in 2018 and 2019).
Dean Burke courtesy of Northwest Maritime Center
Moments after the starting gun fired paddlers, pedalers, and rowers fanned out through the narrow confines of Tacoma’s Thea Foss Waterway. I’m in the orange jacket just to the left and ahead of the stand-up paddler wearing a blue and black drysuit. As a rookie rower, and not used to being surrounded by so many others, I made frequent glances over my shoulder to avoid collisions. With well over 100 vessels competing for space, the first mile of the race would feel crowded until I reached Commencement Bay.
The Race Boss fired the starting gun at 7 sharp and off we went. One of the coping mechanisms I subscribe to for a long-distance race is chunking sections of the course into smaller, more manageable goals. Each of these chunks has its own characteristics unique from others throughout the 70 miles. The first 7 miles or so, from the start at the Thea Foss Waterway to Owen Beach, took me around 2 hours to cover and was defined by a crowded course, bumping oars, and constantly checking over my shoulder. It’s also where I got a surge of adrenaline to sustain me for the first third of the race. While daylight still hung in the air, the waterway was lined with fans who had come from all over to cheer on the racers as we pushed north. As racers began to spread out and settled into their paces, it could be an opportunity to meet new racers and old friends along the way. I caught up with 2021 race veterans Team Ted (a stand-up paddler) and Team PWS Sea Otter (a sea kayaker) for about an hour as we made our way together through the 2 ½-mile stretch of riprap-lined beach along Ruston Way toward the first checkpoint at Owen Beach, a mile from the tip of thickly forested Point Defiance.
Roger Siebert
.
At the checkpoint, racers make sure all the required SPOT satellite trackers are working. The race organizers plot the positions of each boat on a website chart and spectators at home can watch their favorite racers progress digitally up the course. After a quick shout with my team name to the checkpoint boat, the race marshals confirmed my live status on the tracker. I pointed my bow north.
Vicki Beaver
As I made my way into Commencement Bay with the Port of Tacoma in the background, I was able to settle into my pace with less fear of running into others. At this point, the pack had spread out significantly, giving racers room to breathe and better strategize their plan for the course. The rain continued to fall as my muscles warmed up and I found my rhythm.
The next 14 miles of the race run the length of Colvos Passage, the slightly kinked, mile-wide channel between Vashon Island and the Kitsap Peninsula. I started up Colvos at around 9 p.m. as the last glimmer of the sun set behind the darkening silhouette of the Kitsap hills to the west. The descent into darkness would accompany me for the next several hours; the half moon wouldn’t rise until 1:45 a.m. Racers’ headlamps and navigation lights dotted the water like floating lanterns all around me. A handful of fireworks rose and glimmered in the distance astern.
Before my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, it was nearly impossible to judge how far anything was from me. Sounds seemed to come undiminished across the water, tricking me into thinking conversations were happening a few feet from me when they were likely a hundred yards away; a light bobbing up and down in the distance turned out to be a paddleboarder drafting in my wake just a few feet behind me.
As engaging as the transition into night was, the row up Colvos Passage was a slog. The continued rain and overcast sky made it especially dark, much darker than in 2021, and the west side of Vashon Island includes several false summits, giving me the impression that I’d reached the end when I still had miles to go. Racers who had been thronged at the start found their pace and had spread out here. My intention through the last few miles of Colvos was to find a buddy to pair with for the upcoming crossings from Vashon to Blake Island, and then to Bainbridge. These are the longest and most exposed open-water crossings of the route and coincided with the darkest part of the night. Ferry traffic and unpredictable seas can make this a particularly scary part of the race.
I adjusted my pace, both speeding up and slowing down, attempting to pair up with headlamps that looked as if they were relatively nearby. After a couple of tries to flag down other racers, and a near miss with an old pier, I assessed the conditions and determined that I would just keep moving forward, even if that meant solo.
Samuel Hendrix
At one point in Commencement Bay, I snapped a quick selfie while asking myself why I was doing this. It wasn’t the last time I’d consider the question over the next 18 hours. The rain was beginning to let up but would still linger for a few more hours into the night.
Blake Island lies just over a mile north-northwest of Vashon and is a popular place for racers wanting to catch a few hours of sleep. One of my biggest regrets in 2021 was stopping at the island to stretch and regroup. Weather and crashing waves on the beaches at Blake that year caused me to roll my boat and lose some critical gear, including my VHF radio. This year, I had decided I was going to bypass Blake entirely if conditions allowed. As I reached the north end of Vashon, Blake, just 1 1/8 miles wide, loomed large and dark in the distance. Seas were fairly calm at this point, and the wind and rain had finally let up. I was able to strip off my raingear. Just around midnight I set a compass course north across the surprisingly friendly waters and continued to row.
The crossing from Vashon Island was uneventful. Bypassing Blake and crossing straight from Vashon to Bainbridge Island came up just shy of 5 miles and took about 75 minutes to row. Aside from the headlamps and audible chatter as I rowed by Blake, there was hardly a sign of anyone out there at all, making it all the more eerie. For the first time in this race, I felt truly alone and no longer connected to other racers. I settled into a steady rhythm and rowed at a comfortable, sustainable pace.
As I neared the southern end of Bainbridge Island, a few different things snapped me from my trance. The south side of the island is marked by a rocky shore. I knew I was coming close and could hear waves crashing against the rocks. When I turned my head to check my course, I was blinded by my own navigation lights. As dark as it had been, this was the first time I realized how bright my bow light was. It prevented me from seeing anything beyond the bow of my boat. I decided to play it safe and give the shore a wider berth. This was a wakeup call to keep a better mental log of where I was and of upcoming landmarks to ensure I wouldn’t make any costly mistakes like running aground.
Samuel Hendrix
On a training row outside of Seattle, I kept my eye on a cruise ship that appeared to be coming right for me. I was relieved when it made a turn away from me.
As I adjusted my course and let my night vision recover, I caught sight of a cluster of dozens of bright pinpoints of light to starboard, traveling west from Alki Point on the Seattle side of Puget Sound. It was moving fast and heading my way. It took a few seconds before I realized it was the Seattle-to-Bremerton ferry, probably the last westbound ferry of the night. It crossed only a couple hundred yards aft of me. Had I been only 10 minutes slower, I would have been right in its path, a realization that spooked me giving me the wake-up call I needed. I had assumed that I would be crossing the ferry lane late enough that the Bremerton and Bainbridge ferries wouldn’t be a concern. Had I known the ferry would have been coming through around 1:30 a.m., I would have better planned my crossing to avoid it. But, even knowing the schedule, picking out a ferry against the backdrop of the Seattle city lights and their sea of reflections can be a lot more difficult than I had expected. I moved north up Bainbridge Island with more caution as I approached the Seattle-to-Bainbridge ferry crossing at Winslow. Fortunately, I had missed the last run of the night and was clear to continue rowing without fear of ferries until Kingston, 13 miles farther north.
Fay Bainbridge Park, at the northeast end of Bainbridge Island, is roughly the halfway point of the race and another popular spot for racers to stop, have a snack, or catch a few hours of sleep. I had covered the 10-mile length of Bainbridge in about two hours and reached Fay Bainbridge at 3:30 a.m. The park is easy to miss from the water, but I knew I was getting close when I heard in the distance voices I could safely assume were racers. When I saw headlamps moving up and down the beach, I turned my bow toward them to make a quick stop to stretch and eat. I neared a particularly dark section of shore and hopped out, avoiding the piles of driftwood on the beach. As I turned my headlamp on to secure the boat, the light suddenly revealed a face no more than 6’ in front of me. A fellow racer had emerged from behind a large piece of driftwood to lend a hand getting the boat ashore. Having a stranger’s face pop out of the dark when I thought I was alone, got my adrenaline going and I no longer needed the break. I thanked the racer for his kind offer and let him get back to his beach nap. As quickly as I had pulled to shore, I was kicking off and ready to tackle the last half of the race.
Courtesy of the author
Blue skies peeked through the clouds as I made my way across Port Townsend Bay just a few hundred yards from the finish. Friends and family lined the docks and beach to welcome me home.
Beyond the north end of Bainbridge Island lies Port Madison, a 3-mile-wide bay that can be tricky for racers unfamiliar with the race route. In morning fog and with sleep deprivation, the open water there can send even seasoned racers off course. The best bet is to head north-northeast from Fay Bainbridge and point your bow toward Point Jefferson—if you can see it. The crossing can feel like big water with large rolling waves spilling over from Puget Sound. Fortunately, I made my way across Port Madison at 4 a.m., in calm seas as dawn was beginning to illuminate from behind the Cascade Range on the eastern horizon. As I rounded Point Jefferson, I passed the flank of a parade of four or five cruise ships making their way south into Seattle. One was adorned with garish purple lights and was blaring party music at this pre-dawn hour.
As I began to cross Appletree Cove at 5:30 a.m., I knew ferries would likely be running soon to and from the Kingston terminal on the cove’s north shore. These ferries move fast—16 to 18 knots—and I had two options. I could hug the shore, crossing the ferry lane near the dock in Kingston. This would add quite a bit of rowing distance but would allow me to cross the ferry lane where it narrows and the ferries are moving slower. Or I could cut across the cove on a more direct route. Having been awake for nearly 24 hours, rowing for the last 10, and loath to row any farther than I had to, I chose the latter. While I made my way across the bay, I focused acutely on the ferries docked at Kingston, looking for any sign that one might depart and head my way. A fisherman who had been watching racers come by motored alongside to let me know the morning ferry was broken down and wouldn’t be running for a while. This was a huge relief, and I took the opportunity to have a breakfast of leftover pizza and cold-brew coffee concentrate while gently bobbing at the cove entrance with no ferry worries. While enjoying my pizza in the morning light, I began to see several racers spread out astern, continuing their march north.
Courtesy of the author
When I crossed the finish line at the Northwest Maritime Center docks in Port Townsend an airhorn blew, signaling that I was done—18 hours and 4 minutes after leaving the starting line in Tacoma—the 32nd overall finisher. Filled with relief, I coasted the last few yards to the beach.
The next stretch of the race, the 7 miles from Apple Cove Point to Point No Point (yes, that’s the real name), were the most monotonous, tedious miles I’ve ever rowed. The weather was clear, the sun had come up, and the rowing conditions were perfect as I rounded Apple Cove Point. From there, Point No Point is the farthest visible point (yes, there’s actually a point) on the shoreline to the west. As long as I kept my bow in that heading and made forward progress, I couldn’t miss it. But I felt like I was fighting a current and Point No Point never seemed to get any closer, always looming in the distance. Yet the stretch took just under two hours to complete, matching my average pace for the race. Whether I could chalk my mental struggle up to sleep deprivation, or the pizza I had for breakfast, this chunk of the race will linger in my memory as the most difficult and most mentally challenging. Reaching the lighthouse at Point No Point felt like a huge accomplishment and built momentum for the final stretch to Port Townsend.
I had convinced myself that the worst was over, that I was almost done. I bought into the lie I told myself to keep moving forward. At Point No Point I was not almost done. On the chart, I could more or less draw a straight line to Port Townsend, but I still had at least 18 miles to go in what can often be the most volatile waters of the racecourse—Admiralty Inlet. Its north end connects directly to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and its swells and currents funnel between Marrowstone and Whidbey islands and dump into Admiralty Inlet, creating conditions not suitable for most of the small boats in the race. Though the 12-mile stretch through Admiralty Inlet can be serene, with no warning it can become whitecaps. In the previous year, I had spent about 8 hours beached 4 miles west of Point No Point near the appropriately named Foulweather Bluff waiting out a hailstorm, catching up on sleep, and hoping the weather would improve. This year, I rounded Point No Point and saw nothing but clear skies and calm waters ahead. I could have used the break and a burger in Hansville, the village a mile west of Point No Point, but opted to use this weather window to keep pushing on. I passed Foulweather Bluff and made my way toward the Port Townsend Canal, 8 miles to the northwest.
The Port Townsend Ship Canal is a narrow ¾-mile-long passage built in 1915 between the mainland and Indian Island to open access to and from the south end of Port Townsend Bay to Admiralty Inlet. The reversing tidal current in the 150-yard-wide canal can run up to 6 mph. I arrived at the south entrance at 11 a.m. with a steady 2 to 3 mph current flowing…in the wrong direction. My family and friends had lined up along the canal to cheer me on for the last push I needed to fight the current and break through into the bay. With their encouragement and a surge of adrenaline, I kicked up the rowing for the final leg.
Courtesy of the Northwest Maritime Center
The last thing to do was ring the bell. A volunteer offered her congratulations as she held the bell out for me. It was an exciting moment, made especially so as I had not rung the bell in 2021 because I finished late at night.
In 2021, I had emerged from the canal at 11 p.m., rowed the final 6 miles of the course, and finished at the Port Townsend beach just after 12:30 a.m., having rowed for 29 1/2 hours and finishing in 32nd place. This year the sun was high, the sky was clear, and the snowfield-draped Olympic Mountains loomed over the horizon. Schooners and sloops tacked across the bay. The beach at the Northwest Maritime Center was lined with locals, friends, family, fans, racers, and event volunteers who had come together to welcome the racers. Even more spectators had lined the docks and paddleboarders came out to encourage racers over the last few hundred feet.
I pulled onto the beach and rang the finish bell at 1:04 p.m., 18 hours and 4 minutes after the start, and once again the 32nd boat to reach the finish line. Tired, blistered, but in surprisingly good spirits, I gave my family a round of hugs, including my newborn daughter, and thanked them for all the support while I accomplished this silly goal for a second time. I was quickly congratulated, handed a beer, offered a place to shower, rest, and eat. After a few minutes to stretch my legs, I was ready for another cold drink and joined the crowd to cheer on the rest of the racers. It wasn’t long before I began strategizing on how to improve for the next year’s SEVENTY48.
Samuel Hendrix is a Midwest transplant now living in Tacoma, Washington, who has spent the last decade exploring the waters of Puget Sound. When he’s not rowing Commencement Bay or dreaming of his next boat build, he can likely be found bike touring with his wife and daughter at one of the many beautiful parks in the Pacific Northwest.
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.
There is not enough room in a small boat to be sloppy when stowing gear not in use. Tarps, sleeping pads, and sails (almost anything made of fabric) can be kept from occupying more space that necessary by being rolled tightly. The trick is to keep it that way. Putting a length of cord around the bundle and tying it with a bow knot, as if tying one’s shoes, is likely to lose tension in the process and a bungee, while it can stretch and keep the bundle compressed, may not be the right length to get the hooks on the end engaged.
Photographs by the author
This self-inflating sleeping pad has the squeeze put on it by three cinches, from left: loop and twist, toggle, and lark’s head.
I’ve found three ways to tie bundles using cord that are easy to use, increase the compression as much as you like, and release easily. All rely on friction, so it’s best to use cord that has some texture to it. Smooth-braid nylon cord is very slippery. If that’s what you have to work with, you can hold the tension by adding a slipped hitch around the standing line where it meets the loop, taking a couple of turns around and underneath the toggle, or square-knotting the tail ends over the lark’s head.
Loop and Twist
A length of 1/16″ braided cord works well to keep a 20″ x 38″ camp bath towel in a compact package.
The loop-and-twist cinch begins with a loop formed by a bowline, as seen here, or a figure-eight on a bight.
Tuck the tail end through the loop from the back side.
Take a turn around the side of the loop and bring the tail end through again.
Pull the tail end down.
When you pull the tail end tight, the twist will flip and trap the tail end against the bottom of the loop.
Pull the tail end to tension the cinch. It will lock when you let go of the tail.
To release the cinch, pull the tail end up.
A hard pull on the tail end will straighten it so it can be pulled back, loosening the cinch.
Toggle
Toggle cinches work well for bundling sails around their spars.
The toggle cinch starts with a loop—either a bowline or a figure-eight on a bight. The tail end is slipped through a toggle made from a dowel. A stopper knot keeps the toggle from slipping off.
Lead one end of the toggle through the loop.
After the other end of the toggle is through the loop, both sides of the line running through it are under the loop.
Pull the tail end, here on the right, to tension the cinch. You can hold the standing part of the line while you pull the line tight. You can also hold the toggle. If you hold the loop end of the line, you won’t be able to pull the tail end through the toggle.
The toggle can apply and hold a lot of tension around the bundle.
To release the toggle cinch, rotate the toggle parallel to the loop.
Push that end through the loop and out to the side. The other end will follow, releasing the toggle.
Lark’s Head
Pulling the tail ends of the lark’s-head cinch in opposite directions square to the cinch applies the tension around the bundle.
Start the lark’s-head cinch with a loop in the middle of the line and the tail end around the bundle.
Fold the loop over itself to create two loops side by side.
Fold the two loops back to lie alongside each other. This is the lark’s head.
Feed the tail ends through the lark’s head in opposite directions.
Pull the lark’s head tight around the tail ends.
Pull the tail ends tight. The lark’s head will hold the tension.
To release the cinch, pull the tail ends back through the lark’s head.
…
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.
You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats Magazine readers by sending us an email.
Small boats can be tricky places to store the quantities of water some cruises require. Our family of four consumes at least 3 gallons per day, more in hot weather. Carrying a week’s worth of water in rigid containers would leave precious little room for our bodies and gear in our 18′ sail-and-oar pram. What’s more, hard-sided bottles make poor use of the irregular spaces where water is often best kept in small boats. Rigid containers would be difficult to secure and impossible to fit into the small, curved, awkward spaces available low in our boat where we prefer to keep such dense supplies.
James Kealey
The Collapsible Water Bag can be laid down flat, stood upright and, if not filled to the maximum, be stowed in awkward places, conforming to the shape of the space.
Enter the soft-sided 2.6-gallon Collapsible Water Bags from WaterStorageCube. Remarkably inexpensive, they hold water securely and conform to the shape of wherever they’re stowed. They have a comfortable handle, stand upright, pour well, seal effectively, and hold about the right weight of water for adults to carry. When empty, they fold down to nearly nothing. They are BPA-free, and 1.3-gallon sizes are also available.
SBM photograph
Once emptied, the bags can be folded up and put away. Unlike a more conventional water bottle, the bags take up very little space when not being used.
The four bags I’ve been using have stood up very well to a season of use. They have been mildly abused, mostly at the hands of my six-year-old son, who cannot be convinced to stop lying on them. They have been dropped, frozen, lightly trodden upon, and packed into small spaces, and still hold water.
The claims of durability from the manufacturer are not particularly quantitative: “can withstand heavy pressure & falls.” To simulate what seemed to me a realistic worst-case scenario, I held a full bag at my side as it would normally be carried and dropped it repeatedly on concrete. After seven drops, it broke in the center of its largest panel (not a seam). I’m satisfied that this is durable enough for my purposes, particularly as we carry several bags and more water than we expect to use and so have safety in redundancy.
James Kealey
Thanks to the bag’s more adaptable shape, it can be used not only to carry water but also as an ice block for cold storage in a cooler.
When frozen, the water bags make excellent ice blocks for cold storage (remember to fill them only partially so that the expanding ice will not rupture the plastic). A little creativity in fill levels or their placement in your freezer should result in a block custom-fit to your intended use. Don’t use the bags for hot water storage, as the manufacturer only rates them to 140°F.
SBM photograph
The pleated base of the collapsible bag allows them to stand upright and, being narrower than most water jugs, they are unobtrusive, here standing alongside the centerboard trunk on an 18′ sail-and-oar dory.
I try to minimize my environmental impact, don’t love buying plastics, and felt some guilt around purchasing and using these water bags, which are made of LDPE (low-density polyethylene), which is collected for recycling in bins found at grocery stores in some communities (not mine, unfortunately). The thin-walled semi-rigid gallon water jugs that I previously used are made of HDPE (high-density polyethylene), which is accepted in curbside recycling; these gallon jugs typically last about a year before cracking and leaking. The water bags weigh 98 grams to the gallon jugs’ 64 grams and they store 2.6 times as much water, meaning that they are using substantially less plastic per gallon. My bet is that they will also last longer than the harder plastic used in the jugs.
The bags are a safe and inexpensive way to store plenty of water in a boat’s awkward spaces, and I’m happy to have them aboard.
James Kealey lives and teaches in Richmond, California. When he’s not chasing his two young sons, he can usually be found banging away on some project in his garage workshop or sail-camping on a mountain lake.
The first time I used the XPL Oars from Duckworks I didn’t even notice them. I was focused on the performance of the company’s new 10′ skiff I was rowing during speed trials, quick sprints, and sudden stops. If I had noticed the oars, it would have been for their faults. The XPLs went unnoticed because they had none.
When I took the XPL Oars along to row my Whitehall I could turn my attention to their virtues. They are exceptionally light. The 7′ 11″ oars weigh an average 2 lbs 9.2 oz. By comparison, one of the 7′ 4″ spoon-bladed oars I made of spruce weighs 3 lbs 2.9 oz, 9.75 oz heavier for an oar that’s 7″ shorter than the XPL. The XPL blades are 23″ long and 6 7⁄8″ across at their widest point. Their basswood handles are 10″ long with a grip area 1 1⁄4″ in diameter.
Photographs by the author
The flexible rubber sleeve covers the joint between the oar halves and the button that locks them together.
The XPL Oars are sectional and have a built-in ferrule with a spring-loaded button to lock the two pieces together. The fit is snug and assembly requires a bit of effort, which is as it should be. There is no play in the joint. A rubber sleeve covers the joint and the button and gets curled back on itself to take the oar apart.
The looms are 1 3⁄4″ in diameter and fitted with Seadog oar collars, which are made of molded polyethylene and split down one side. They’re meant to be secured by nails to wooden oars, but for the XPLs, they’re held in place by a heavy-duty heat-shrink tubing that extends from the buttons and 1 1⁄2″ beyond the sleeves to grip the looms. The loom, plus collar and tubing, has a diameter of 2 5⁄32″, too large to fit a standard 2″ oarlock.
The basswood handles are left bare for a good grip even when wet.
The oars were delivered with Gaco oarlocks, sold separately by Duckworks. Designed to fit oar sleeves up to 2 1⁄4″ in diameter, these are a good fit for the XPLs. They can be slipped over the loom before the two pieces of the oar are joined, avoiding the harder task of opening the lock with a screwdriver. The Gaco locks have 10mm stainless-steel shafts and adapter sleeves to fit 1⁄2″ oarlock sockets. The adapters seemed to be a bit oversized—I couldn’t get them inserted into any of my 1⁄2″ sockets so I trimmed them down with a scraper until they had an easy slip fit. (If the fit is too tight, the adapter will come off the shaft and remain in the oarlock socket.)
The faces and the backs of the blades are gently contoured and offer little resistance to lateral movement at the catch and the finish of the stroke and during sculling.
A dab of tallow—the same lube I use with oar leathers and bronze oarlocks—provides freedom of rotation to the oars for easy feathering. At the catch, the blade’s edges, only 1⁄16″ thick, cut into the water without disturbing it and the centerline ridge on both the back and face of the blade has gentle transitions that slip beneath the surface cleanly. I could consistently make hard catches without having the blade drive any air into the puddles.
While I couldn’t feel any give in the looms during the catch and drive, there is some flex when I try to bend an XPL oar by levering it against the ground. There is enough give in the loom and the end of the blade to ease the shock on one’s hands during a hard catch. The blade doesn’t flutter during a strong pull and exits the water cleanly at the finish of the stroke.
The blades are exceptionally thin. The ends of the blades, beyond the central ridges front and back, have a bit of flexibility to ease the impact of a fast and hard catch on one’s hands.
The swing weight of the XPL Oars is exceptionally light. It takes almost no effort to move the blades from the finish to the catch, even when rowing at a high cadence. I keep the blades low on the recovery, and inevitably slap waves and wakes with the back of the blades. The blades go quickly up and over, and I can maintain a light touch on the handles.
Sculling the boat sideways with one oar was made easy by lack of lateral resistance offered by the blade’s slim profile. I kept the blade deep in the water to get the most efficient use of its thrust and it would take several seconds before the produced upwelling reached the water’s surface. I was impressed by how much water the blade could set in motion. When I took the oars apart later, some water came out of the joint, likely a result of sculling, which put the rubber sleeve between the sections low enough to allow water under pressure to seep past it. Foam plugs in the loom on both sides limit how much water can get in, and keep it from the loom’s outboard ends where it would increase the swing weight.
In a quick, forceful catch, the blade slips into the water without drawing any air in with it. Keeping the air out of the water reduces slip to a minimum. The water shooting upward comes from the flip catch at the instant the blade comes off the feather and full pressure is put on the blade.
After rowing the Whitehall with a fixed thwart, I switched to the sliding seat I made for the boat. The oars performed equally well with the longer stroke. I could feel the weight of the boat during the drive, an indication of how little the blades slipped in the water. I would have liked to change the gearing of the oars by moving the collars outboard a couple of inches. If you were to order the oars with the sleeves and heat-shrink tubing, you could hold the sleeves in place with tape or hose clamps until you determine the best location and gearing for your boat.
The XPL Oars are available in any length from 6′ to 9′ 6″.
The XPL Oars perform very well during all phases of the stroke and are a great pleasure to row with. They have only one flaw: The feather-light touch they require on the recovery is going to make the oars I’ve been enjoying for decades seem clunky.
Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.
XPL Oars are made and sold by Duckworks for $850. They can be ordered in any length between 6′ and 9′6″. The rubber sleeve kit is a $30 option. The 1⁄2″ Gaco oarlocks are sold separately for $42.99.
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Steve Petty wanted to build a boat. He had done it before, twice: he had built an 8′ Frugal Skiff, WE DO, as a wedding present for his son and daughter-in-law; and he’d built a 12′ Frugal Skiff with a 5-hp outboard so he could “putter around West Falmouth Harbor in Massachusetts.” But he had sold the 12-footer when he moved inland to Sherborn where there was no coast but there were many lakes and ponds. He might have built anything on a whim, but he remembered that some years earlier his daughter had said she’d like to have a good rowing boat to keep at the family camp on North Channel in Ontario. That passing comment clinched it. Steve would build a rowboat.
Steve Petty
With so many molds set up on the strong back it’s easy to see the shape of the hull with the full ’midships sections running into a deep V both fore and aft—a combination that provides the boat with stability and good tracking.
While searching for the right project, Steve came upon an advertisement in WoodenBoat for Newfound Woodworks. He visited the website and liked what he saw—a catalog of plans and kits for “easy-to-build strip canoe, kayak, and rowing boats.” He especially liked the 15′ Rangeley Lake Boat. Steve has enjoyed fly-fishing for many years and had visited the Rangeley Lakes region in western Maine several times. Seeing the name of Newfound’s boat was enough to pique his interest.
Steve Petty
Within 10 days, the transom was in place and Steve was well along with the strip-planking. He had protected the molds with duct tape so that the strips would not stick to them.
Newfound Woodworks describes the Rangeley Lake Boat as “a distinctive American sporting boat that has been in use for something like 100 years, and was well known to past generations of fishermen for its numerous excellent characteristics.” Originally built of lapstrake cedar, Newfound Woodworks has adapted the design—using offsets published in John Gardner’s Building Classic Small Craft—for strip-planking with a combination of red and white cedar, as well as mahogany for the gunwales, sapele for the deck, and spruce for the coamings.
Steve was hooked. The design’s inherent stability, excellent tracking qualities, and two rowing stations made it an excellent choice for his children and grandchildren who, at the time, ranged in age from 8 to 12. He called Newfound Woodworks and ordered a kit.
Robert Conkey
After the strip planking was complete and sanded fair, Steve got his first taste of fiberglassing.
Steve has always enjoyed woodworking. In high school he took shop classes and, for a while, considered becoming a teacher of industrial arts. But in the end, he says, he went into carpentry and construction, and spent almost 35 years building timber-frame homes.
While Steve says “working with wood isn’t scary,” he was new to strip-planking, so he took advice from Alan Mann and Rose Woodyard at Newfound Woodworks and purchased the Pre-Kit Rowing Package. It included a DVD on cedar-strip boatbuilding, another on applying epoxy and fiberglass, and a book, Woodstrip Rowing Craft: How to Build, Step by Step, by Susan Van Leuven. “It was terrific,” says Steve. “Between those three things…well, there wasn’t much left out!”
Steve Petty
With the boat turned upright, Steve fiberglassed the interior.
When his kit was ready—all Newfound Woodworks kits are made to order—Steve drove up to Bristol, New Hampshire, to pick it up. “I could have had it sent, but it’s not terribly far away, and I got to meet Rose and Alan. They gave me a wonderful tour of their shop and what they do. I took another ride up partway through the build when I had some questions. And I called a couple of times—they were great to work with.”
Steve built the Rangeley in his shop, which is housed in a barn in Sherborn, Massachusetts. He shares the space with a friend, and they use the shop for “everything from playing with boats to building small pieces of furniture to larger parts of construction projects. We each do our own thing, but it’s nice to have an extra pair of hands around when you need them.”
Steve Petty
The thwarts and sternsheets were temporarily placed prior to installation. The inwales were milled with openings to create a slotted gunwale.
The Rangeley Lake Boat kit, says Steve, came with almost everything he needed. “You don’t have to buy a complete kit, but I did, and it was truly complete. It came with brushes and rollers, all the materials, even rubber gloves. Pretty much all I had to buy was sandpaper, vinegar, cleaners, and clamps—I didn’t have nearly enough before I started—and a few more rubber gloves.”
With the guidance of the Pre-Kit, the plans, and the construction notes, and pictures, Steve encountered very few problems. The only tricky moment, he recalls, was when he was gluing up the stem piece. “I got a little too excited and tried to bend it too quickly. It snapped right in half.”
Karen Naughton
The boat went in the water with little ceremony and without the family.
He called Newfound Woodworks and spoke to Alan. “He chuckled and said, ‘You bent it all at once, didn’t you? You have to do it very slowly.’” Steve thought Alan would suggest sending a replacement, but instead he reminded Steve that the kit “had come with some spare hunks of 2″ stock cedar. He advised me to make my own replacement out of that.” Steve ripped some new strips and started gluing them up, “a little slower this time.”
Karen Naughton
Steve didn’t try rowing during the first launching—he just wanted to make sure the boat didn’t leak.
The fiberglassing was also “exciting once in a while,” says Steve. He was new to the process and found ’glassing the inside of the hull particularly testing. “Keeping the bubbles and wrinkles out of there was challenging.” Once more, the Pre-Kit’s book and DVDs came in handy. One tip he found particularly helpful was to hold the cloth up to the gunwale with clothespins to stop it sliding down. “It sounds simple, but it was terrific,” he says, “it worked really well.”
Start to finish the project took Steve from early February 2021 to late April 2021, working about three to four hours, four to five days per week. “A lot of the time was spent waiting for glue to dry. But it’s good, it forces you to slow down and work at a measured pace.”
Sarah Petty
Steve rowed FOPA for the first time at the family camp in Ontario.
The Rangeley was launched on May 2, 2021, on Steve’s local pond. “I didn’t row it. I just put it in the water to make sure it floated, and that it floated somewhat level.” It did. Steve took the boat back to the shop, wrapped it up, and waited. The plan had been to take the boat to the family camp that July, but COVID had changed everyone’s plans, and it would be another year before the family was once again at Lake Huron and could receive the Rangeley. While he was waiting, Steve bought two pairs of oars and gave the boat a name: FOPA for each of his four grandchildren, Finn, Olivia, Parker, and Alexa.
Steve Petty
When the summer skies over the North Channel are clear and its waters are calm, FOPA is not likely to spend much time idle at the dock.
In July 2022, Steve and FOPA made the trip to Ontario and the family’s camp on North Channel. Now, two summers in, Steve says everyone loves her. “She weighs around 95 lbs, is very stable, and rows like a dream.” Within the family there’s a wide range of rowing abilities, but all, young and old, enjoy taking FOPA out on the lake.
Sarah Petty
On the day FOPA arrived at the camp, Steve took his grandson, Parker, out for a row.
As for Steve, he’s thinking of his next project. He doesn’t have a boat right now, but the Charles River and many of the Great Ponds of Massachusetts are nearby, and even the lakes of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are not far. He’s pretty sure he’ll build another kit but is undecided whether to go for a rowboat or a canoe. Although, he says, “I do really like the look of the Adirondack guideboat.”
Jenny Bennett is managing editor of Small Boats.
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We row and sail deeper into the maze to thread the passages between larger islands and Chichagof itself. Some passages squeeze into ocean level “lakes”—more saltwater than fresh—which “race” in and out between tides. Some “passages” burrow deep into blind coves and “inlets.” Some cross undulating “flats.” Some open into vast “ports” that aroused the naval envy of early European explorers. Some are straightaways. Some meander. Some are deep. Some are “dry.” Some wide. Some oar-cramping narrow.
Few of the standard features of the chart are “standard.” Most earn their air-quotes. Expect the unexpected.
The Tlingit People were here from the time of legend. Fur hunters came, and whalers. Miners by the hundreds. Moonshiners to quench their thirst and the Law to staunch the flow.
Nowadays, a few come, then go: hunters and fishers, kayakers and yachts. Fish biologists at a tribal chum stream.
It’s now September and we’ve left the outer coast; we’re in outside waters, but once again in familiar surrounds.
This is a short stretch, but it includes two of four communities on Chichagof Island. Together, they top 100 residents.
The south end is hemmed by steep granite walls that rise abruptly above timberline. Many find this inlet oppressive, even ominous. But there’s a slow joy to it. It is new stone, pushed up along the fringe of the ring of fire. It’s youthful geology positively kicking up its heels.
As we sail north, mountains moderate. We spend several days in a cove at inlet’s end and visit its overlooking muskegs—peat bogs of tough and wizened diversity.
Cross Sound opens on the Gulf of Alaska, but a short hop sees us into a more sheltered stretch, shielded by another span of islands.
Then a stop to visit old friends and await conditions.
A few years ago, I headed out for a solo afternoon sail on Puget Sound aboard my Caledonia Yawl, ALISON. It was a weekday and there was only a handful of trailers parked in the lot by the launch ramp at Meadow Point. The light summer breeze was just right for the ample spread of the lug main and, after I cleared the breakwater guarding the ramp, ALISON slipped briskly through the corrugated water.
Laurie Cunningham
After setting sail, I headed across Puget Sound toward Bainbridge Island. (The photographs here were taken in the same location but on different occasions. They closely resemble the scenes in the events conveyed in this account.)
The only other boat on the water, a sailing skiff, was about 1⁄4 mile from shore. We crossed tacks close enough that I could say hi to what appeared to be a father and a daughter in her early teens. In the northwesterly breeze, I was on a starboard tack headed west across the sound and they were on a port tack heading north into open water beyond Meadow Point.
Christopher Cunningham
After I’d crossed tacks with the sailing skiff, its sail was still visible for a while, a bit of white off Meadow Point, the wooded shoreline at left. The launch ramp is at the right at the edge of the marina’s line of masts.
I made good time with a summer breeze that provided decent boat speed without kicking up a chop. It was easy sailing, but I regularly scanned the horizon, a practice picked up from my father when he taught me how to sail.
Laurie Cunningham
Although there were few other boats out, I frequently scanned the horizon and often looked over the stern. What caught my attention was the absence of the skiff’s sail.
At one point I saw no other boats around me, not even when I looked aft. The skiff should have been somewhere astern, but I didn’t see it anywhere. The father and his daughter couldn’t have disappeared, so I came about and headed east on a reach toward the area where I had expected to see them.
After I had sailed 100 yards or so, I caught sight of the skiff with its crew clinging to its capsized hull. There was no centerboard or daggerboard showing. If it had been lowered while they were sailing, it had slipped back into its trunk during the capsize and couldn’t be used to right the boat. If they hadn’t deployed it, its absence may have been the cause of their capsize.
When I reached the pair, I rounded up, but ALISON was carrying too much speed. I reached over the starboard side and grabbed the outstretched arm of the father. Even as he was saying “Get her first,” I pulled him off his boat. ALISON came to a stop a few yards upwind, and I helped him crawl over the rail.
I pushed the main’s boom to port to bring the bow around, sailed a loop back to coast alongside the skiff, and brought the daughter on board. I retrieved an aluminized emergency blanket that I kept tucked under the foredeck and the father wrapped it around the shivering girl. By the time I had the two of them settled aboard, an outboard fishing skiff and a cabin cruiser had arrived, and their crews set about trying to right the capsized skiff. I sailed on a run to get my cold and wet passengers back to the launch ramp, about a mile away.
When we were about halfway there, a Coast Guard Zodiac that had emerged from the breakwater raced by about 50 yards away to port of ALISON. I pulled my VHF radio out of my PFD pocket and turned it on. I had only used it to monitor vessel traffic on Channel 14 and, while I knew the channel to use and the protocols for hailing another vessel, I’d never transmitted a call. I froze and, in a pointless gesture that embarrasses me still, I held my radio up so the Coasties could see it. Call me? The Zodiac was already long gone and soon joined the boats around the capsized skiff. After a stop there it turned around and caught up with ALISON when we were just a few dozen yards from the launch ramp. Assured that everyone was safe, they motored in ahead of ALISON.
A fire truck was waiting at the ramp for the father and daughter. I docked and handed my passengers over to the medics. Several minutes later, the other good Samaritans towing the still-capsized sailboat eventually arrived at the dock. I helped them get the skiff righted.
I came away from that incident with mixed feelings. I was, of course, glad that I could help, and I appreciated the attentiveness I’d learned from my father. But I was surprised and disappointed that things that I knew how to do had eluded me when I needed to put them to use. I knew that I should have rounded-up downwind of the capsized skiff to come to a stop alongside it, but it has been decades since I had practiced by throwing a cushion overboard and sailing around to retrieve it. I knew that I could have turned the VHF radio to Channel 16 and hailed the Coasties, but on the occasions that I was boating in the company of another boat which also had a VHF, I didn’t take advantage of the opportunities to practice making calls.
The rescue was, at best, an illuminating experience in how the mind works (my mind, at least). Sometimes even the simplest bits of knowledge can be safely stored in memory and recalled at a moment’s notice if recollection is all that’s required. But turning knowledge into action requires creating the pathway for electrical impulses to reach the muscles. It’s that way with music. I may know a tune by heart and be very familiar with all the notes and chords on the sheet music, but it’s not until I put in the practice on the piano that I can play it and eventually have the joy of listening to the music my hands create without having to bridge the gap between knowledge and action. As I put in the practice with my rescues and VHF, I’ll be able to do what needs to be done without hesitation and avoid making such blunders as tearing a father away from his child or holding my radio up as if it was meant to be used as a semaphore.
My decision to build a cedar-strip canoe came about when a close friend loaned me Gil Gilpatrick’s Building a Strip Canoe. He thought it would be a nice wintertime project for me since I had recently retired. After a few reads of the book, my wife and I decided on the 16′ Laker design. It’s been many years since we have done any serious canoeing and now, with grandchildren, we thought having a nice stable all-around canoe would be best.
We purchased the strips, gunwales, decks, etc. from Newfound Woodworks, a Bristol, New Hampshire, company that specializes in strip-building products. We came home with all the material needed for our design—a blend of western red cedar, eastern white cedar, and some accent strips in Alaska pine. The strips were all bead-and-coved and uniform in width and thickness, something we could not have accomplished if we had tried to rip and mill the strips. We also chose to purchase pre-caned seats and a pre-shaped yoke.
I deviated from the Gilpatrick design by selecting ash inner and outer stems instead of gluing the cedar strips together and shaping them at the stems. This decision was made primarily because I preferred the aesthetics of the stem guards. In his book, Gilpatrick states that, based on his experience, the stem guards do not provide any additional protection and they add weight, merely ounces, but something he is keenly aware of.
Before starting our build, we took the templates provided in the book to a print shop to mirror the half template and scale them to full size. Since we went with stem guards, we had to trim 3⁄4″ off the stem forms to keep to the design length.
Photographs courtesy of Tim Cormier
Thanks to the canoe’s flat bottom loading and boarding in shallow waters is straightforward.
Stripping the canoe and seeing it take shape proved to be an enjoyable process. My wife participated quite a bit and having that extra set of hands greatly helped. I tried using an adjustable air-powered stapler, but it was a mistake. I could not get the settings correct to keep the staple head raised above the strips. The T50 hand stapler suggested by Gilpatrick worked best.
Fairing the outer hull took more time than expected. The more you look and feel, the more sanding and fairing you want to do. I purchased a spokeshave and once I got the settings adjusted it was a fun tool to use. Keeping the blade well-honed was essential.
Purchasing pre-made caned seats from Newfound Woodworks saved a lot of time. All the Cormiers had to do was trim and install.
Fiberglassing was a new experience for us. The outer hull was easier to ’glass than the inner, and both sides required some patience toward the stems. After we decided where to make cuts for the cloth to fit together, the edges never seemed to lay wet the same way. I’ve read online forums where other canoe builders have ’glassed the inner hull in sections with better success.
The installation of the gunwales was also a challenge. The double curves toward the stems needed a lot of coaxing. After giving it some thought, I built a steamer out of a 4′ piece of galvanized dryer vent and a bending form to shape the gunwale. Once the shape was set, the gunwale was much easier to install. The Gilpatrick book showed solid wood gunwales with 3⁄4″ × 3⁄4″ outwales and 3⁄8″ × 3⁄4″ inwales. The inwales we purchased were milled with router-cut openings to replicate a spacered gunwale, allowing for quick and easy drainage of water from the canoe when ashore by turning it on its side.
Like the cane seats, the yolk was pre-made. The inwales have routered-out spaces along their entire length, which lends a traditional look, reduces weight, and allows for quick and easy water drainage when the canoe is tipped on its side on shore.
All that was required for the pre-made seats and yoke was to trim and fit them into the canoe. The book provides detailed instructions for making the seat frames and devotes 12 pages to caning them. I did not feel confident enough to drill all the holes in the frame with a handheld drill to cane the seats, but if I get a drill press, as Gilbert recommends for the process, I may attempt it on a new set of seats.
The build required about 270 hours over six months to complete. The canoe came in at 72 lbs, a little above the 65-lb estimate in the book.
I built a support rack for the back of my pickup truck and cushioned the black pipe crosspiece with a section of pool noodle. Sliding the canoe onto the rack and back off is easily accomplished singlehanded. Two short lengths of pool noodle, split to wrap around the gunwale, cushion the forward end of the canoe on the truck-cab’s roof.
In the stems, Tim added ash inner and outer stem guards. To maintain the canoe’s designed length, he trimmed ¾″ off the stem forms. While Gilpatrick advises against the stem guards because of the extra weight they bring to the canoe, Tim liked their appearance.
We held off putting the canoe in the water because we wanted paddles appropriate for it. We purchased Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own, by Graham Warren and David Gidmark, and chose the Sugar Island design. Making paddles turned out to be easier than we’d anticipated. They came out a bit on the heavy side, as I’d been too conservative when thinning out the blades. I later used some 1 × 6 pine to make some shorter, lighter versions of the paddles for our grandchildren to get them excited to join us.
After we slipped the canoe into the water for the first time, it floated in good trim. I stood up several times and found it to be very stable. Once we got seated and started paddling, it tracked well. Later in the day the afternoon wind picked up and the canoe sideslipped, but as long as we were actively paddling and used some small J-strokes, it wasn’t much of an issue and the canoe held its course well.
With smooth, easy strokes the canoe slipped along quietly; with more aggressive paddling the bow gurgled as it cut through the water. The canoe maneuvered handily as we paddled around lily pads and downed trees.
The canoe carries its beam well into the ends and the sheer rises sweetly to the stems. For the bow paddler, this results in a generous beam at the seat, narrowing forward for a comfortable stroke. Looking for a more stable canoe that would suit both themselves and the grandchildren, the Cormiers appreciate the Laker’s stability and generous freeboard.
I’ve done some solo paddling in shorter canoes, and the Laker, at 16′, is right on the dividing line between solo and tandem canoe. It seems a bit long for me to attempt significant solo trips, but this may be my inexperience showing.
As we built our canoe there was always a feeling of excitement as we progressed through each building phase, and this feeling never wavered.
When we’ve taken the Laker on the road, thumbs-up and beeps are common, and we’ve had numerous people walk over at rest areas and gas stations to admire and talk about the boat. This never gets old. We are very happy with the canoe and hope to get many hours on the water with the grandchildren aboard. I enthusiastically recommend the Laker as a wonderful general-purpose family canoe.
Tim Cormier and his wife, Renee, live in Merrimac, Massachusetts, where they raised three sons, and have five grandchildren. Tim is retired after a 35-year career as a software engineer. An active outdoor person, he enjoys playing soccer, golf, hiking, skiing, and snowmobiling—anything outdoors. He has always enjoyed some woodworking, and this canoe is the biggest project he has taken on. For 45 years, he and Renee have boated out of Pemaquid Harbor, Bristol, Maine, enjoying weekend cruises, fishing, or just sitting on anchor in one of Midcoast Maine’s many hidden coves.
Building a Strip Canoe, by Gil Gilpatrick, is available from The WoodenBoat Store for $24.95. The 112-page book includes plan sheets, folded and tucked into the back of the book.
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Sam Devlin’s Candlefish series—the 13, 16, and 18—was inspired by the pangas he saw while visiting Mexico. Those small workboats are sturdy but narrow, allowing them to weather rough water while still maintaining speed with a small motor. After the success of the cartoppable Candlefish 13—designed to be run with low-horsepower outboards—Sam recognized that people wanted more speed. He drew wide- and narrow-bodied versions of both the Candlefish 16 and the Candlefish 18. This “methodical uptick in sizes,” as Sam puts it, is commonplace for his design process. The narrow-bodied 16 was eventually discontinued, but the wide-bodied version has proved popular. Sam designed both a Bridge Deck Version with plenty of enclosed storage and a simpler Open Version. Drawings for both are included in the plans.
As with all of the designs from Devlin Designing Boat Builders, the Candlefish 16 is of stitch-and-glue construction. I was 12 years old in 2015 when my father and I decided to build a boat. To get a more complete boatbuilding experience, we opted not to purchase a kit, but instead to build the Candlefish 16 from the nine sheets of drawings included in the plans set. In addition, we used Devlin’s 80-page Building Instructions Booklet for Stitch & Glue Construction to guide our project.
Photographs courtesy of Lilja Hanson
Lilja and her father began building their Candlefish 16 when she was 12. The stitch-and-glue construction was a good choice for introducing her to the art of boatbuilding and to the art of fixing errors—such as a chipped bottom panel at the stem—along the way.
We scarfed the okoume plywood to get the length required for the two bottom panels (each in two pieces) and the intermediate and sheer planks (each in three pieces) for the sides. The shapes for those pieces—cut from 3⁄8″ (9mm) plywood—and for the 1⁄2″ (12mm) bulkheads, decks, seats, knees and breasthooks, are given as drawings with offsets, while supporting diagrams show how to distribute the pieces on sheets of plywood. The plans illustrate mounting the four bulkheads and the transom onto a 2×6 backbone frame with vertical 2×4 supports and, for the transom, angled plywood braces.
The planks’ mating edges at the chines are given a double bevel, cut at 45 degrees both inboard and outboard, to ensure fair alignment. Then, holes are drilled and wire is used to stitch the planks and transom together. The seams are spot-glued with thickened epoxy from the inside, then the wires are removed, and the seams are sanded smooth and fair. The outer seams are taped with 17-oz biaxial tape. The hull exterior is sheathed in 5-oz Dynel cloth and epoxy before being turned right-side up; friends and family made light work of flipping the hull. Once turned, the inside of the seams could be reached, and we gave these fillets of epoxy and wood flour, 17-oz biaxial tape, and a layer of 6-oz fiberglass cloth.
We had opted for the more complex interior appointments of the bridge-deck version for the storage compartments it offered and had built the hull around the plan’s bulkheads for it. We installed the 1⁄2″ (12mm) side benches, the bridge deck, and two storage lockers, one forward and one amidships.
the Candlefish 16, trailer, and 20-hp outboard motor together weigh in at around 1,500 lbs making it the ideal boat for towing behind the average family car.
The plans specify 3⁄4″ × 1 1⁄2″ hardwood for the inwales and outwales. To bend the pieces without the use of steam, we glue-laminated their forward halves from two 3⁄8″-thick pieces of white-oak to accommodate the curve of the sheer plank at the bow. Similarly, the plans suggest horizontal kerfs in the forward end of the 3⁄4″ × 1″ keel to accommodate the bend at the forefoot.
The Candlefish 16 webpage notes that the boat can be built in about 200 hours. Our father-daughter project took 18 months of sporadic work alongside school, extracurriculars, and work. I was 14 by the time the painting was finished, and our boat was ready to launch. We bought a 20-hp long-shaft, four-stroke outboard for the boat, which is in the middle of the recommended range of 10 to 30 hp.
The storage lockers in the bridge-deck version of the Candlefish 16 offer an impressive amount of space. The bow locker is ideal for stowing anchors and docking lines, fenders and extra flotation, while the ’midship locker has room for lifejackets, cushions, coolers, and more.
The Candlefish 16 is very light for its size. I have never weighed mine, but online forums suggest that the dry-hull weight falls around 325 lbs. Add to that the 20-hp outboard and a trailer Dad salvaged from the side of the road, and the whole package is well under 1,500 lbs and easily trailerable by any car with even modest trailering capabilities.
There are two storage lockers: a smaller one under the foredeck and a larger one under the bridge deck. The smaller locker stores fenders, deck lines, two small anchors and their rodes, and foam for flotation. The larger storage area amidships can hold PFDs, flares, coolers, gear, and a storage box for smaller pieces of equipment, with room to spare for at least four totes of gear. With its hatch closed, the larger storage compartment serves as a bench. A starting battery, a 3-gallon gas tank, and more flotation foam fit under the aft end of the side benches, out of the way but easily accessible. For flotation, the plans call for inexpensive Type-II PFDs strapped under the seats. We found billets of flotation foam washed up on the beach and they do just fine.
The cockpit is easily hosed down and has limber holes in all but the forward bulkhead and a drain plug in the transom. I have found that the limber hole in the aftmost bulkhead, at about 1″ in diameter, provides for adequate and efficient drainage, but anything less than 1″ can easily clog. The drainage under the bridge deck is facilitated by a 1″ PVC conduit ’glassed to the inside of the hull between that compartment’s bulkheads.
For our family, the Candlefish 16 is the perfect little on-water pickup truck. The boat handles well in rough water, though in choppy conditions we all prefer to wear rain gear as it can get fairly wet. When we beach the boat, the keel and the runners, which we chose to add aft just a few inches inboard of the chines, are protected by a stainless-steel half oval. Rolling on fenders up and down beaches is very doable and was easy for me even at age 14. The same goes for docking and loading onto the trailer, as the boat can turn within its own length and is sensitive to any changes in speed with the 20-hp outboard.
With just Lilja on board, the Candlefish 16 tracks and trims well.
The Candlefish 16 handily carries my family of four, plus the dog, and in calm conditions can take a few additional passengers. We take the boat camping with all of us aboard along with a cooler, camping gear, and even a paddleboard or sit-on kayak strapped along one of the inwales. While that may be a tight fit, it certainly leaves plenty of freeboard remaining for open-water crossings.
With our 20-hp outboard, the Candlefish will get on plane with two people aboard, but with more weight it’s hard to get past a semi-plane. The boat moves fine at that point, but while it isn’t plowing or displacing too much water, the plane isn’t as clear and the bow doesn’t carve the water as cleanly. I wouldn’t advise going with an outboard of less power than 20 hp. The plans suggest a maximum of 30 hp, which I would be eager to try out, especially for a larger crew.
The deep cockpit and ample seating arrangements mean that the Candelfish 16 can easily accommodate a family of four, plus dog and camping gear, in most weather.
I can’t think of a better outboard skiff for an amateur or adolescent boatbuilder. The uncomplicated nature of stitch-and-glue design and the options given between open and bridge-deck versions make for the perfect balance between straightforward construction and personal customization. What’s more, the robust seaworthiness of the Candlefish 16 is well suited to exploring the Maine coast, messing around with friends on lakes, and providing simple transport anywhere you want to have an adventure. The ample storage is conducive to overnight exploration, and the size of the boat is manageable while still allowing for a group of friends or family to come aboard. Now 20 years old, I’ve had great fun using my Candlefish 16 for several years and look forward to many more.
Lilja Hanson is a student at Barnard College of Columbia University studying English. She grew up on and around boats in Downeast Maine and has combined her passions for writing and boats as WoodenBoat’s editorial intern this summer.
The low clouds and fog of dawn had given way to sunny midday skies by the time we motored out through the sportfishing fleet tucked into Telegraph Cove, British Columbia. My old friend Craig and I were aboard my 20′ Whitehall propelled by an oddly squarish 3-hp electric motor, powered by two pairs of folding solar panels, which occupied most of the center of the boat.
We slipped quietly between the fishing boats with their enclosed pilothouses and stout aluminum hulls with 4′ of freeboard. People bustling about the docks watched as we silently motored by and must have thought the two of us, in our slender boat with a noiseless motor, were about to do something foolish. As we left the cove and entered the expanse of Johnstone Strait, I wondered if we were doing something foolish.
I had gained a fair bit of boating experience over the years on various lakes and oceans, though never in this part of the world, and Craig had experience on Canadian lakes and around the Channel Islands of California. He had joined me on my first two small-boat expeditions 34 years earlier—the first under sail and the second under electric power and (as it turned out) paddle power across Canadian lakes in my 17′ Whitehall. When I invited him to join me on the coast of British Columbia, I ran through the pros and cons of the boat and the equipment I had assembled, and recounted the planning and preparations I’d made over the previous months. I also noted that the experience and preparation did not guarantee I wouldn’t make mistakes.
Tim O’Meara
The white-painted wood hull of the 20’ Whitehall stands out at center right among the fiberglass and aluminum sport-fishing boats in Telegraph Cove the evening before our departure.
Out in the strait, we soon passed a whiskered sea otter lolling about on its back and gradually caught up to a spread of eight sea kayaks in bright white, yellow, green, and red heading east along the shore, the paddlers all torso, hat, and elbows as they wigwagged their dripping black paddle blades left and right over decks that rose only inches above the water. We didn’t look so small in their company.
We struck out north-northeast for heavily forested Hanson Island, which stood out in craggy silhouette 2 1⁄2 miles across Johnstone Strait. To the west was the even greater expanse of Queen Charlotte Sound and to the east were the steep-sided fjords and jagged mountains of the distant interior, which is where we were headed.
The boat was as tidy as we could make it. The boat tent, made of slippery white Tyvek (the CommercialWrap version), was rolled up against the midsection of the port rail while clothes, electronics, food, and kitchen gear were stowed in watertight plastic bins under the seats or stowed loose inside the two lockers under the amidships benches. The 20-lb lithium battery was wedged under the seat next to the port locker with pencil-thick, licorice-black wires running to and from charge regulators and buss switches mounted inside the locker and from the locker to the solar panels resting on deck. Stuff sacks with sleeping bags, foulweather gear, and the boat’s jib with halyard, block, and sheets were all wedged under the seats. The floor and bow platform were cluttered with fishing and crabbing gear, anchors and anchor lines, and three collapsible jugs that held a total of about 6 gallons of fresh water.
We had planned our outing for mid-August to catch the best weather the BC coast has to offer and to avoid the more extreme tides and currents that accompany the full moon. We also hoped to meet the early run of salmon as they moved up the straits and inlets to freshwater streams and rivers to spawn.
Tim O’Meara
We launched and packed the boat the evening before our departure and left it overnight at a slip so we could get away at first light. Dense fog out in the channel delayed our morning departure, but we spread the solar panels out on deck in anticipation of clearing skies to come.
Our target for the first day was a little cove at the eastern tip of Harbledown Island—one of several dozen potential anchorages in the region I had identified on the navigation charts and then cross-checked against Google Earth images. We had planned to depart Telegraph Cove that morning at first light in order to ride the last of the flood tide running east up Johnstone Strait, then slide past Cracroft Point on the far side of Blackney Passage at slack tide and, still headed east, pick up the start of the ebb tide that—according to the arrows printed on the chart—incongruously also flows east through Baronet and Clio passages to Knight Inlet.
Roger Siebert
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It would have been a neat trick to ride the flood, slack, and ebb tides all 14 miles to the Harbledown cove—saving battery power all the way—but dense morning fog had delayed our departure by four hours. Starting late, we motored against the current at a speed over water that looked to be 3 1⁄2 knots, but the GPS display on the motor showed we were managing only 2 1⁄2 knots over ground. Seeking protection from the ebb tide, we hugged the precipitous shore of Hanson Island, weaving around dark rock ledges and leathery fronds of bull kelp that bent toward us in the current.
As we left Hanson Island behind and crossed Blackney Passage with the midday sun shining brightly overhead, we passed through current lines and whirlpools that formed, dissipated, and re-formed, slapping our bow from side to side. Our timing with the flood and ebb was completely off, but most of the waters were only ruffled by modest currents.
As we approached the Bell Rocks that clog the narrow entrance of Baronet Passage, a pair of loud blows far ahead and two puffs of white mist hanging in the air announced the presence of whales, their dark, round backs visible for brief moments against the glimmer of the sea as first one and then the other rose slowly and then dove again close against the bare gray granite rocks.
We entered the Harbledown cove cautiously at its east end through a shallow, sandy channel only 30′ wide. A second channel opened 200 yards away leading north from the cove into Beware Channel where Care Rock was followed by Caution Rock, then Beware Rock, and finally Dead Point at the terminus of the narrow channel. Beware Channel was known for its treacherous currents, but no current flowed inside the cove where the water appeared stagnant and slightly milky—our first sign of the glacial runoff flowing from the rivers and streams at the head of Knight Inlet 65 miles to the northeast.
Craig Woodman
We reviewed route options on the charts and planned our travel or idleness each day. Options depended heavily on wind, tides, weather, the state of charge in the batteries, and the prospects for recharging the batteries during that day and the next. Even though we were powered by a motor, we generally were just as limited in what we could do as we would have been in a boat under sail or a kayak being paddled.
With a tidal range that night of nearly 10′ and the low coming at 2 a.m., we planned to put two anchors out, Bahamian style, to hold the boat between them and keep it in at least 6′ of water at low tide. Motoring slowly around the cove, reading depths and bottom conditions on the 4″ color monitor of the portable fish-finder, we found that the only area of the cove that wasn’t too deep, too shallow, or too rocky to anchor was already crowded with half a dozen bullet-shaped crab-pot buoys of red and white Styrofoam, each one coated with dark green slime along its waterline.
We left the cove to the crab pots and moved 800 yards north to a V-shaped cove that was only 150 yards wide at the mouth and completely open to the east, but it proved to have patches of sandy bottom of adequate depth.
The rain started sometime that night, but we were snug and dry under the full-length home-built Tyvek canopy stretched the full length of the Whitehall over eight fiberglass tent poles bent in hoops like a Conestoga. The heavy-duty polyethylene was as stiff as paper and rattled loudly as raindrops pelted it.
From the outside, the tent appeared perfectly white, but on the inside, the fabric was printed with bold red-and-blue logos, technical certifications, and a 1-800 number. Five rectangular portholes fashioned from freezer bags let in the soft light of a rainy morning. Trickles of rainwater slid down the outside of each window, streaking the view of the gray-green forest that surrounded the cove.
I turned on our satellite GPS-and-texting gizmo to read the weather update that my sailor-friend Jack was sending each morning and evening and to see what replies we had received from the “All good” check-in message we had sent the night before. Waiting for the messages to load, I pulled the electric kettle out of its bin, plugged it into the cigarette-lighter socket that otherwise connected the house battery to the motor battery, ground four scoops of coffee beans in the hand grinder, and made two steaming mugs of coffee.
Tim O’Meara
In fine weather, we could fold the aft end of the boat tent over the fiberglass poles to open up the cockpit. The boat has a 5′ 6″ beam, and temporary plywood inserts between the middle seats provide a fairly spacious sleeping platform. The two sets of solar panels are folded up and stowed vertically along the rails with their wiring still connected. Each set of panels is held up by two Velcro® straps that wrap around fiberglass tent poles. The portable fish-finder is on the seat in the left foreground. The black wire running from it connects to the transducer mounted temporarily with silicone glue to the stem of the wineglass transom.
Two days later, as we motored close along the north shore of Knight Inlet toward Hoeya Sound, we had our first sighting of a bear. It was sitting motionless on its haunches 200 yards up the hillside in a ragged, clear-cut strip of grey stumps and forest slash. It was facing directly toward us and appeared to be watching us. We had reached the margin of grizzly bear territory, but we couldn’t tell at that distance what kind of bear it was. The westerly wind had built to 12 to 14 knots, and whitecaps flecked the inlet. There is only one good anchorage in the upper section of Knight Inlet, and that is at Glendale Cove, which lies 12 miles farther inland and 2 miles across the inlet from Hoeya Sound. The sound itself is a poor anchorage as it forms a drawn-out U-shape 2 miles long and 1⁄2 mile wide that lies open to the west-southwest, but it was our only option.
We found that the back of Hoeya provided no shelter at all as the bottom is sandy and rocky and goes dry, or nearly so, at low tide. Hoeya Creek meanders out of dense forest at the back of the sound and then, as a shallow tidal stream, winds through mud banks covered with yellow-green sedge and grass before reaching deeper water near the middle of the sound.
We had hoped to do some fishing for trout and salmon in the creek but there was no sign of either so we headed to a slight indentation in the north shoreline where there was a log boom and a 40′ floating tank chained to mooring buoys and arranged to provide some protection for an aluminum dock. Two inflatable pink mooring buoys bobbed in the chop midway between the log boom and the dock.
We pulled up alongside the dock to read a sign posted on shore. Below the word Nalaxdlala—the original name for Hoeya Sound—the First Nations community of Mamalilikulla asked that any visitors treat the area with respect as it lies within their traditional territory. Not wanting to intrude, we anchored away from the dock and floats.
Clouds had formed and the evening light had begun to fade as we surveyed the bottom with the fish-finder. As we did, we noticed two bears on a narrow beach at the opposite shore. One appeared as a large black blob sitting in front of tall grass just behind the beach, and the other appeared as a little black dot sitting in sand near the water’s edge. I had read that bears regularly forage along beaches at low tide, and the tide had just passed low.
Craig Woodman
We stored fresh eggs, fruits, and vegetables in the seat lockers lying against the hull where the cold water of the bays and inlets helped keep them in good condition throughout the journey. In fine weather, we pulled back the tent and cooked on the “afterdeck.”
The tidal range that night was 9′, and we wanted at least 6′ under us at low tide to deter bears and to account for any undetected humps or rocky outcrops. After setting and resetting the 8-lb and the 10-lb anchors three times, we finally settled on a compromise position that avoided shallow rocks and ledges and a steep drop-off from the shore to a depth of 26′ but left us lying only 25 yards from shore. By then the sky had darkened, the wind had dropped, and Craig and I were both tired.
We dawdled about the next morning drinking coffee, frying bacon, and making blueberry pancakes with a cast-iron griddle on a propane camp stove. When the sky cleared around midday, we motored well back into Hoeya Creek to take a freshwater bath, then paddled out into the sound under a deep blue sky.
We fished the rest of the day in deep water along bold cliffs just outside the sound, but we caught only rockfish and released them. When the wind blowing down the inlet freshened to 15 knots in the afternoon, we retreated into the sound.
Early the following morning, we headed out in a dead calm heading due east up Knight Inlet for Kwalate Creek 18 miles away. A satellite text from Jack had reported a weather forecast of sunny skies with a west wind rising in the afternoon to 15 knots with gusts to 20.
We motored quietly in calm water close to the rocky shore with the hum of the prop and the light splash of the bow wave the only sounds. The solar panels were spread open on deck and propped up on plastic bins to face the morning sun. Checking the electrical current with a clamp meter, I found that the combined output of the panels was nearly 300 watts—close to their full capacity and half again greater than the 200 watts being consumed by the motor.
Tim O’Meara
We motored and then paddled up meandering Hoeya Creek looking for fish until rocks blocked our path. Finding no fish, we paddled lazily back out through a tidal marsh here toward the broad mouth of Hoeya Sound where it joins Knight Inlet.
The chart showed a depth of more than 500′ just off the shore and more than 1,500′ in the center of the channel, but the fish-finder screen showed only static as suspended silt from the glacial runoff apparently scattered the sonar beams. We relied instead on streaming fronds of bull kelp to indicate any hidden rocks and ledges. Across the inlet, heavily wooded mountains rose thousands of feet, and far to the north, the peaks were whitened with the summer remnants of pocket glaciers and patches of snowfields. Around the boat the water was a dull teal color, but in the far distance toward the head of the inlet, it gleamed bright turquoise.
Looking for a source of fresh water to replenish our supply, we pulled into a little V-shaped inlet where the chart showed an unnamed creek. Craig stood in the bow and cast a spinner toward the mouth of the creek hoping for a strike by a migrating salmon or a resident cutthroat trout. I went ashore in the shade of red cedars and dense undergrowth that had grown back after the area had been clearcut decades earlier. Walking along a floodwater bench of dirt and cobble above the stream, I found an iron pulley 3′ across and other pieces of rusted metal protruding from knee-deep grass. We chose to fill our jugs elsewhere.
A mile farther up Knight Inlet, we heard the gurgling of another stream, I tilted-up the motor as we approached, and Craig clambered ashore carrying our three collapsible water jugs. I paddled the boat back off the cobble beach and stayed close by, watching the forest for any sign of movement. Craig bent over a little pool to fill the jugs, but he stood up again and again to scan the woods behind him.
Cruising along Knight Inlet’s north shore, we ducked in again at Matsiu Creek, at another unnamed creek, and finally at Sallie Creek. At each one, I paddled from the stern and checked the fish-finder as Craig stood in the bow to cast a spinner at the mouth of the creek. When we reached Naena Point where Knight Inlet turns north on the final 33 serpentine miles of its 78-mile length, whitecaps broke along the tops of waves 3′ to 4′ high across the full 1 1⁄2-mile width of the inlet.
If we turned north at Naena Point toward Kwalate Creek, we would be sheltered from the west wind, but the anchorage in front of Kwalate Creek was largely unprotected from the southwest to the east. Two miles across the inlet to the south, the mast of a sailing yacht and the white hull of a big motoryacht were visible inside Glendale Cove. The cove is home to a boutique fly-in lodge that specializes in grizzly-bear tours on which visitors can watch grizzlies from the safety of tour boats as the bears forage along the shore. The lodge bills the location as having the greatest concentration of grizzly bears in North America.
Tim O’Meara
Kwalate Creek runs clean and clear into the teal-colored waters of Knight Inlet. Remnants of late-season snow dust the peak of Cap Cone Mountain in the distance. We were so delighted by the scene at Kwalate Creek that we wandered off to explore—failing to note that the falling tide would soon strand our boat on the rocks.
The tide was high by the time we arrived at Kwalate Creek, so we pulled in and put the anchor ashore right at the mouth. The stream looked more promising than the smaller streams we had passed, and Craig quickly pulled on his rubber-soled boots and headed up the stream with a fishing pole to search for trout. I pulled on my reef shoes and wandered up the stream over rounded boulders carrying only my phone.
The water in the stream was cold and perfectly clear as it tumbled over rounded boulders into a pool at my feet. Inland, the stream disappeared around a bend into a cedar-and-spruce forest just 100 yards away. At the mouth of the stream, the white hull and teak sheerstrake of the Whitehall stood out against a bright turquoise line of sunlit water that lay in the distance beneath towering mountains under a deep blue sky.
I ambled halfway back to the boat when I noticed it wasn’t sitting properly. It was a bit too high and listing slightly. I rushed to it and quickly saw that the tide had fallen enough that the boat was aground on the rocks. I jumped into thigh-deep water and tried to lift the bow off the rocks. It didn’t budge. I tried again, straining my back, but there is no good handhold at the bow of a Whitehall, and I failed again.
To get some weight out of the bow, I grabbed the anchors and anchor lines and tossed them ashore and then grabbed the big green tacklebox and tossed it ashore followed by two plastic bins that I could reach under the front seat. I stepped back into the water and tried again to lift the bow, but again it didn’t budge. I climbed back up the bank and called to Craig, who was standing in a shallow pool about 60 yards away. He didn’t hear my shout over the sound of the stream.
I cupped my hands and yelled louder, and he looked up from the pool. I motioned for him to come, but he pointed instead to something in the pool. I motioned again with exaggerated, rapid sweeps of my arm. He understood and came racing back to the boat wearing only his rubber boots, hopping over boulders as fast as he could manage. Together we tried to lift the bow, but it still didn’t budge. I tried wrapping the painter over my shoulders to use as a lifting strap, but we failed again.
I moved quickly to the stern of the boat and crouched in knee-deep water with my back under the turn of the bilge. Craig followed, grabbed the boat, and lifted with me, but it didn’t budge.
I had just one more idea. I told Craig to move to the shore side of the boat and push the boat sideways as I crouched again at the transom. No luck. I waded to the shore side of the boat, crouched under the bilge, and we heaved again. The stern scraped loudly and moved sideways a fraction of an inch. We heaved again and again, and each time the stern scraped sideways a fraction of an inch. On the fourth heave, the keel scraped long and loud across the rock that was holding it, and the back of the boat floated free. We moved quickly to the bow and with two heaves managed to set it free. Standing thigh-deep in the cold water and breathing hard, we leaned on the gunwales, exhausted.
I had made a mistake that might well have ended in disaster. The boat had gone aground late in the afternoon on the first fall of the tide. If we had not gotten it off the rocks at that moment, we would have been stranded at least overnight in the heart of grizzly country with a boat that was a veritable lunchbox of bear attractants.
Craig Woodman
In most of the bays we entered in and around Knight Inlet the bottom was rocky and uneven and dropped precipitously from the shore to depths unsuitable for anchoring a small boat. We were often forced to anchor in poorly protected areas near shore where the margin of error was small. We surveyed the bottom carefully before anchoring and estimated closely how much the tide would rise and fall overnight from the observed depths at the time of our soundings. We used those rise-and-fall estimates to determine the minimum and maximum observed depths in which we could set the anchors and position the boat, as well as how much scope would be required on each anchor. The easiest way to work out those numbers was to construct a new graph in the logbook each evening.
The narrow bay outside Kwalate Creek proved to be another poor anchorage as waves coming down the inlet curled around the point and into the bay. After several attempts at anchoring, we gave up and tied up alongside another floating dock built by the First Nations community a quarter mile south of the creek.
The forecast for the rest of the week was for strong afternoon winds, and it was apparent that the farther we went up Knight Inlet, the more open and potentially dangerous were the potential anchorages. It had also become clear that we had arrived too early for the salmon run.
At first light the next morning, we left Kwalate Creek into a light breeze to head south-southwest and then due west back down Knight Inlet. At noon we rounded Hoeya Head into a strong westerly and 3′ swells, and juiced the motor to 450°W as we lurched over the confused seas that ricocheted from the headlands crosswise into the incoming swells and turned north toward the calm arc of Lull Bay. There, old pilings off a sandy beach and the remains of a derelict house ashore crowded by encroaching trees marked the location of an historic First Nations community. We anchored near the pilings, aligned the solar panels directly into the sun, and lounged through the afternoon waiting to see if the wind would die enough for us to continue east with the ebb tide to get farther up Knight Inlet.
Tim O’Meara
We stopped frequently at streams along our route to refill water jugs and—on sunny days—to bathe in the chilly streams. Here at Lull Creek, Craig walks carefully on slippery rocks while carrying two jugs of water back to the boat. The wood pilings in the background are remnants of a pier that once served an historic village built along the broad sandy beach where the creek enters Lull Bay.
At 6 p.m. we motored half a mile out to the point at the southwest end of the bay to get a closer look at the inlet. In the main channel, the wind was blowing close to 20 knots and steep waves broke in frothing whitecaps. We immediately decided to retreat and turned the boat to run downwind back to Hoeya Sound with whitecaps breaking along our starboard quarter. As we neared the rock cliffs that marked the entrance to the sound, the boat began to toss and lurch in confused seas where the waves broke against the cliffs and reflected across the incoming swells which were bending around the headland directly into the sound. We motored into the quiet cove on the north side of the sound, went straight to the first pink mooring buoy there, and tied on for the night.
The next morning, we carried on westward and around noon rounded Steep Head into narrow Sargeaunt Passage and pulled up on the mainland side of the passage behind a low rock jetty that a logging company had bulldozed into the channel years ago. I went ashore while Craig held the boat off the barnacle-covered rocks exposed by low tide. As I stood on the top of the jetty surveying the rough beach on the other side, an adult black bear and two cubs emerged dripping from the water 100 yards up the beach. I hadn’t seen them approach because their dark fur blended into the dark water of the channel.
Tim O’Meara
The tide was low at Pulley Creek on the north shore of Knight Inlet when I went ashore to check out the stream. Craig moved the boat off into deeper water to await my return.
The bears didn’t seem to notice me as I stood motionless watching them wander slowly up the beach away from me. Then a second adult bear emerged from the water, its fur plastered to its body in a sharp profile, revealing long, powerful legs and a solid frame that would otherwise be obscured by thick fur. It looked every bit a predator. That bear did notice me, and it immediately turned and charged, galloping directly toward me like a racehorse coming out of a starting chute.
I retreated quickly down the rocks, calling to Craig to bring the boat as I scrambled head down using both hands and feet, trying not to slice my hands on the barnacles and mussels or slip on the kelp and tumble into a crevice between the rocks. I pulled up on a flat rock in 2′ of water then climbed awkwardly into the bow, looking over my shoulder toward the top of the jetty as Craig backed the boat into the channel.
A shiny aluminum but otherwise utilitarian boat soon appeared cruising steadily up the middle of the passage. When it was a quarter of a mile away, it changed course toward us. We could see three or four adults and a couple of children through the big windows of the enclosed cabin, and we thought it might be a First Nations community boat shuttling members into the back-country. When the boat had closed to within 75 yards, we waved a casual greeting to say hello but also to let them know we were okay, and the boat turned back toward the channel. Perhaps they had just been curious, but it seemed that they had turned in to see if we were in distress, and we appreciated their kindness.
Two days of strong westerly winds followed, and we spent the time fishing in the lee of basalt headlands near the north and south ends of Sargeaunt Passage. At the north end, we encountered three orca hunting close along the rocky shore. One adult with completely black sides and a sharply pointed dorsal fin was cruising in close company with two much smaller orca that had a pinkish tint to their topsides and small, rounded dorsal fins.
We left Sargeaunt Passage in fog early on the third day there and headed west into a light wind. Visibility was down to less than a mile, and we hugged the north shore of Knight Inlet to gain a little shelter from the wind and to avoid any traffic that might come down the channel. We soon passed Stormy Point where a thick fog of visible droplets blew sideways down the channel, soon drenching us and the boat.
Our options were to turn north off our route to seek protection in Port Elizabeth or Duck Cove or to continue west into the wind to Tribune Point where we could either try to cross the channel to a sheltered cove at the entrance to Canoe Passage or retreat just northeast of Tribune Point to an unnamed bay that offered protection from the west wind but was entirely open to the east. Arriving at Tribune Point in thick fog and strong breeze, the prudent choice was to retreat into that nearby bay.
Tim O’Meara
After passing Naena Point, where Knight Inlet turns north, we were protected from the strong westerly wind that raised breaking waves across the inlet. Riding close to the rocks in the lee of the shore, a strong flood tide helped carry us north toward Kwalate Point in the distance.
Inside the bay we found quiet water but, once again, difficult anchoring. After several attempts, we settled on a rather awkward position with the boat lying port-side-to and nearly parallel to a steep rock ledge topped by pine trees. We set the 8-lb anchor from the bow in a patch of thin sand near the head of the bay and set a 2-lb anchor from the stern between barnacle-covered rocks at the bottom of the ledge. At low tide, around 10:30 p.m., the boat should be in at least 6′ of water but only 25 yards off the rock ledge.
The night was completely black as we prepared for bed by the light of a headlamp. I was sitting at the stern when a great splash came from in front of the ledge close off our port quarter followed by the sound of something very large running through deep water and then swimming quickly toward the boat. Craig and I jumped in unison and shouted at each other, “That’s a bear!” At that, the swimming sounds seemed to make a sharp U-turn right at the boat and head toward shore.
I leaned back and pressed my head into the mosquito net in the gap between the motor and the end of the tent. Peering around the corner of the tent into the darkness, I heard the splashing recede and perhaps saw a trail of phosphorescence where the bear had executed the U-turn and then scrambled up the beach.
Craig handed me the headlamp, and I shined its weak light out the back of the tent onto the ledge and up onto the beach, but I couldn’t see anything moving. I then pulled open the port locker and dug out the cannister of bear spray and the foghorn and set them in the stern, but thinking again, I blasted the foghorn out the back a couple of times just to make some kind of statement. Neither of us had ever read the instructions on the cannister of bear spray, but we sure did then.
Craig Woodman
I found time for a nap after we left Cutter Cove on our way to Hoeya Sound. The red hospital socks I wore had grippy soles to help prevent slipping. I had foolishly re-sanded all the unpainted teak on the boat with 200-grit paper, which made the wood dangerously slippery even when it was dry.
We crossed Blackfish Sound four days later in bright sunshine with the sights and sounds of whales diving and spouting along the north shore of Hanson Island. We first jigged and then trolled for salmon along the many points and finally caught some small pinks. Their iridescent sides and tails were dotted with sea lice, and we unhooked them and watched them swim quickly into the depths.
Drifting quietly with the ebb tide in bright sun along the north shore of the Plumper Islands, we spotted a great whale directly abeam, perhaps 300 yards away and coming head-on toward us in a regular series of rhythmic, shallow dives. When the whale had closed to 100 yards—still coming directly at us—its huge, rounded back rose a bit higher out of the water and the whale dove under the boat, emerging minutes later 200 yards away on the other side.
We drifted on with the current and approached a noisy colony of sea lions jostling for position on an outlying rock off the northernmost of the Plumper Islands. As we watched and listened to their bellows, a sea lion rose, thrashing violently, just 10′ off our bow with a salmon clamped between its jaws. The current carried us swiftly away between two little wooded islands until we emerged into Weynton Passage at the west end of Hanson Island. Five miles across Johnstone Strait lay Telegraph Cove and the end of our travels.
Tim O’Meara grew up sailing and otherwise mucking about in small wooden boats on Lake Okoboji in northern Iowa during the 1950s and ’60s. In college he was fortunate to sail 30′ sloops on San Francisco Bay as a junior member of a club team, and during two summer breaks crewed on a wooden 50′ Rhodes cutter off the California coast and then around the Hawaiian Islands and back to San Francisco. After graduating in 1970, he set off with two friends and a brother and sailed around the Caribbean for a year in an aging fiberglass sloop. A lost year soon followed during which Tim built a cold-molded version of the tender for Herreshoff’s yacht COLUMBIA; the tender now hangs in his garage above the 20′ Whitehall. Three graduate degrees in archeology and anthropology were followed by 13 years of teaching at universities in the U.S. and Australia and then 25 years working as a consultant on economic development projects focused on the Pacific Islands where he learned to sail traditional wood canoes: in 1973 on the island of Taha’a in the Leeward Society Islands and in 1988 and again in 1993 on Ifaluk Atoll in the Western Caroline Islands. Tim is now retired and spending as much time on the water as possible.
If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.
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Stephen Bowen
Matt Bowen
Stephen Bowen
Matt Bowen
Stephen Bowen collection
