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SEVENTY48

"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.

Man rows a white kayak on a cloudy day.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?”

White sea kayak beached near the water.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).

Photo of participants in the water for the SEVENTY48 boat race.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

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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.

Man paddles a white sea kayak during the SEVENTY48 boat race.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.

Rower rings a bell after finishing the SEVENTY48 boat race.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.

Quick Cinches

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.

Collapsible Water Bags

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 Premium Collapsible Water Bags from WaterStorageCube are available from its Amazon Store. A set of four 2.6-gallon bags sells for $16.96.

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.

 

XPL Oars

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 7shorter 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.

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.

FOPA

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.

Do you have a boat with an interesting story? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats readers

MUSTELID – Episode 10

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.

And now, in this episode, us.

MUSTELID – Episode 11

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.

To the Rescue, After a Fashion

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.

The Laker Canoe

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.

Laker Particulars

Length: 16′
Beam: 36″
Depth: 13″
Height of stems: 22 1⁄2″
Weight: approx 65 lbs

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.

Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us!

Candlefish 16

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.

Candlefish 16 Particulars

Length:   16′ 2 1⁄2″
Beam:   6′ 10″
Draft:   7 1⁄2″
Propulsion:   30-hp outboard, max

Plans for the Candlefish 16 are available from Devlin Designing Boat Builders for $95 (download) or $125 (printed). The WoodenBoat Store offers the plans for $85, digital or print (plus shipping).

Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us!

 

 

An Electric Journey to Knight Inlet

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.

Quick Coils for Throwing Lines

If you’re going to lend a hand or ask for a helping hand while you’re afloat and you’re beyond an arm’s reach, you’ll need a length of line to connect across the water. Whether or not you’re able to quickly pull some unfortunate out of the drink or have someone keep you from drifting away from a dock depends on how well you’ve prepared the line for throwing.

For my 36′ monkey’s-fist heaving line I’ve been using a simple coil, twisting the line with each loop to get it to lie flat against the other loops. This works consistently and doesn’t tangle when thrown. The U.S. Coast Guard uses the same method, but neatly making the coil takes a bit of time and attention to ensure that the loops are even and not twisted. I was once handed a hastily coiled line to throw from the boat I was aboard to a dock during a boat festival with dozens of nautically knowledgeable people watching and no time to recoil it. I knew what was going to happen: it would land in a bird’s-nest clump halfway to the target.

There are two other ways to coil a throwing line quickly and effectively: the butterfly coil and the figure-eight coil, which is known in whitewater-river circles as the TRU coil (for Thompson Rivers University). Both alternate the loops of the coil, so no twisting of the line is required to relax them.

The butterfly coil is like the standard coil in that loops are laid in one hand, but instead of making them all in the same direction across the palm of that hand, they’re made on either side of the palm.

Photographs by the author

Hold the end of the line in your left hand, palm up, with the end extending to the left. Hold the line in the right hand, palm down, at a bit more than a shoulder width.

For the standard coil, you would bring the right hand over the left and lay the line across the palm from left to right. For the butterfly coil, the hands come together to form a bight. The left hand turns palm inward to take hold of the line that extends from the right hand.

The left hand holds the bight, which is on the pinkie finger side.

The hands separate to gather a length of line for another bight. The left hand holds while the right hand slides along the line.

As the hands come together to form the bight, the left hand turns palm up.

The right hand lays the line across the fingers of the left hand, forming the bight on the left hand’s index-finger side.

The hands part again and the process repeats.

The figure-eight coil is a modification of the landlubber’s way of wrapping line in loops along the forearm and around the left thumb and elbow, a method sure to create a tangle.

For the figure-eight coil, hold the line in the left hand, palm inward and the end of the line extending on the index-finger side. With the right hand, bring the line down and across the forearm.

Loop the line under the elbow and bring it up and across the forearm.

With the right hand, pull the line across the left palm from index finger to pinkie.

Bring the line down and across the forearm.

With the second turn under the elbow the process repeats.

With practice, both methods can be done very quickly. With the butterfly method, it doesn’t matter how long or even the coils are; with the figure-eight method, the loops are sized automatically.

These coils are ideal for making repeated throws of a rescue throw bag if you miss the first time. You retrieve the line as you make either coil and when the bag is back with the coil you’re ready to throw them together.

The figure-eight coil finished for storage may look like a common coil.

The butterfly coil may have uneven loops when coiled for storage.

Both the butterfly and the figure-eight coils can be secured for stowing by leaving a yard or so of line at the end of the coils and using it to make a few frapping turns around the coil below the left hand, adding turns upward. With a few feet of line left, pull a bight though the top arch of the coils as you remove your left hand. Then bring the tail end over the top of the coil, tuck it through the bight, and pull it tight.

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.

Scotty Rescue Throw Bag

When I stepped aboard a friend’s little motor cruiser, the first bit of kit I noticed was a rescue throw bag hanging at the ready from the wheelhouse overhead. It got me thinking about the usefulness of a dedicated rescue line and the fact that I didn’t have one. I’d assumed that with all the lines I have on board, including my heaving line with a monkey’s fist, whichever one I could lay my hands on could be used as a throw rope in an emergency. But what I might have handy might not float or be coiled in a manner that I could deploy quickly and throw accurately.

Christopher Cunningham

The floating line contained in the bag has a 47′ reach. The bag, with the line packed into it, weighs less than 14 oz.

So, I recently bought a Scotty Rescue Throw Bag to fill the gap in my safety gear. Its bright orange bag is 8″ long, 4 1⁄2″ in diameter, and it has a disc of 3⁄4″-thick closed-cell foam for flotation on the inside and a band of retroreflective material on the outside for enhanced visibility in the beam of a flashlight. The top of the bag is made of mesh, making the bag self-draining. A cord and spring-toggle tighten the opening around the loop at the end of the line stuffed in the bag so there’s no rummaging around to find the loop to hold onto when throwing the bag. The line is a 50′ length of 9⁄32″ floating polypropylene kernmantle rope. Each end of it has a bight tied with a figure-eight knot. (The knots take up a bit of the line, so its working length is 47′.) The rope is “flaked” into the bag so it will pay out without getting hung up. The bag and line weigh just under 14 oz.

To throw the bag, you open its mouth, hang onto the loop with your non-throwing hand, and pull out about 10’ of line. Next, grab the bag with your other hand and throw it underhand, overhand, or sidearm—whichever you prefer. I practice mostly underhand and some overhand. The aim is to get the bag to land beyond the rescuee with the line draped over them. The 47′ length of the line is more than enough. My best throws, on land where I could measure them, were at 45′. More often the bag landed at a distance of 35′ to 40′. Throwing with accuracy comes with practice.

Rachel Hynd

An underhand throw begins with holding the tail end of the line with one hand and swinging the bag forward with the other.

Rachel Hynd

If the line has been properly packed, it slips out of the bag without tangles.

Rachel Hynd

A good throw will land the bag at nearly the full extension of the line.

There are different methods for stuffing the line back into the bag, and all involve pushing just a few inches of line in at a time. It may seem messy, but it ensures the line will feed out without getting hung up when the bag is thrown. You can hold the bag open with pinkies and ring fingers on both hands and feed the line in, pinching it between thumb and index finger, alternating hands as you push line in. I prefer holding the bag with the ring and pinkie fingers of my right hand and guiding the line with a bit of friction with a stationary right thumb and index finger. The thumb and forefinger of the left hand pull the line in a few inches with each pull. Having the line draped over your shoulder makes either method easier.

Rachel Hynd

The line has to be put back into the bag by pushing it in a few inches at a time. Hold the bag open with the ring and pinkie fingers and push in the line, pinched between the thumb and index finger, first one hand…

Rachel Hynd

…then the other.

Restuffing the bag takes a few minutes and isn’t necessary or practical if you miss connecting with the rescue on the first throw. The coiling methods in this issue’s Technique article are much quicker and ensure the rope doesn’t get tangled when the coil is thrown along with the empty rescue bag.

Because I do a lot of boating alone, much of the safety gear I carry on board was acquired with keeping myself safe in mind. The Scotty Rescue Throw Bag will make me better equipped to help others.

Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.

The 793 Rescue Throw Bag is made by Scotty and available from many outdoor and boating retailers and online vendors. The price is around $27.

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.

Reverse-Reading Compass

It’s been a humid, foggy summer in Maine, one of those summers where you don’t leave the shore without a compass. You need one in fog or if you are doing any open-water rowing. It might be something as simple as a hiking compass tucked into a PFD pocket—a compass that you won’t use to navigate precisely but one that will get you home when the world closes down to 100 yards visibility.

Photographs by the author

The easy-to-read card is printed backward so that a rower, facing aft, can immediately see the heading—no math, no straining to see the far side of the card. The note on the card, “Dial Reads 180° Out,“ alerts users to it’s unusual orientation.

If you want something better, there are lots of compasses available. Some are removable, some want a fixed mount, but almost all of them assume that you are facing forward. If you’re rowing, that poses a problem. To see it as you row, the compass has to be between you and the stern. If you use a regular compass, set or mounted so its lubber line is parallel to the boat’s centerline, you’ll need some math. Adding or subtracting 180 from the number you see on the compass card is easier if you add 200 and subtract 20 if your course is less than 200, or subtract 200 and add 20 for courses 200 and greater.

In the days of flat-card box compasses, you could read your course directly from the card, just by reading the edge that was closest to you, whether you were facing forward or aft. Small ones were sold as dory compasses, part of the standard outfit for fishing on the Grand Banks. You can find them in antique stores, and there are replicas available.

A thwart aft of the rower is the ideal location for the reverse-reading compass. It is mounted on a block that is bungeed to the seat so that it can be removed at will without leaving behind exposed screws on the thwart. Note the bezel has been rotated to 212° to provide a desired heading. The rower holds the course by keeping the compass card at the same reading behind the lubber line. Ritchie calls this feature the CourseMinder.

The Ritchie company, which has been manufacturing compasses of outstanding quality since 1850, makes its reverse-reading Rowing Compass, a modern spherical compass designed for the rower. The card is printed backward so that the lubber line, on the bow-facing side of the compass, indicates the course that you are rowing. Clearly printed on the top of the card is “DIAL READS 180° OUT.” With white marks printed on the black card, it is highly visible, with numbers every 30 degrees and easily legible vertical marks every 10 degrees and, in between them, dots marking the 5-degree increments.  The compass is 4 1⁄4″ in diameter and has a 2 3⁄4″ card. Outside of the dome is a movable bezel, Ritchie’s “CourseMinder,” with big numbers mirroring the compass markings. You use it by turning the bezel to set your course under the lubber line, then just steer the boat to match the compass card with the CourseMinder. I find the compass easily readable from 3′ or so away; the ideal distance is a mount below your knees, at your feet, or on a thwart aft of your rowing thwart.

The compass is designed to be removable. Its base has two small keyhole openings and a glued-on layer of foam. The non-magnetic screws to fit the keyholes need to be installed on a line parallel to the boat’s centerline. When you install the compass over the screws it locks with its lubber line in the proper orientation. If you have a place on your boat to mount the compass where you can leave it installed, the screws that hold it won’t be a problem. If, however, you mount the compass on a thwart or floorboards, the protruding screws will catch on you when the compass is removed. I suggest mounting the compass on a block of wood and working out a way to bungee the block to a thwart or add a spline on the bottom to slip into a gap between floorboards.

Bob Lombardo

There is not always a suitable place to mount the compass—a thwart or floorboard, for example—and even if there is a suitable location, leaving the two mounting screws uncovered when the compass is removed would be a hazard. Here, the compass has been mounted on a triangular block that sets flush to a foot brace. The CourseMinder bezel has not been set for a particular heading. Here, set at 0°, it would be used for rowing north.

If you have neither floorboards nor thwart aft, some creativity will be needed. My friend Bob Lombardo solved the problem in his Gloucester Gull by making a footboard mount using a triangular block as a base to which a wooden compass baseboard is bungeed.

With handheld GPS units common, why a compass? Reliability and legibility. Batteries run out of power at inopportune moments, and I’ve had devices fail from moisture getting into “waterproof” battery compartments. A GPS on a fixed mount can’t be moved to read a small screen in direct sunlight, and a handheld GPS tends to wander about the boat. Compasses, on the other hand, have centuries of unfailing performance behind them and can be read at a glance.

Ben Fuller, curator emeritus of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, and former curator of Mystic Seaport and Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, has been messing about in small boats for a very long time. He is owned by a dozen or more boats ranging from an International Canoe to a faering.

The Ritchie Rowing Compass is available from Old Wharf Dory Company for $100 and Duckworks for $114.99.

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.

 

 

Brother Jim’s Paddle

Working as the editor of Small Boats for the past nine years has given me the opportunity to meet, correspond with, and work with a lot of remarkable people from all over the world. Jim Schroer, who first emailed me on March 29 of last year, was one of them. In the subject line he had written the following: “Hi Christopher, launched in Feb. after 6 months work, still not done. I’m a reader and this is reader built. Is there a way to get the info to you without all the composing and typing? thanks, Jim.”

While those few words didn’t say much about him, the photographs that appeared copied in the body of his email suggested Jim was a kindred spirit. The johnboat he had built for river cruising echoed many of the ideas I’d had for HESPERIA, the little camp cruiser I’d built with all the comforts and conveniences I’d dreamed of while on my earlier cruises.

In our subsequent emails and phone calls, I learned that Jim and I had even more in common. We both had done long cruises in small boats, though he had done many more and continued even after getting married and having twin daughters. Our fathers were teachers and we both had attended the schools where they taught. We both had flown hang gliders, though he had become an accomplished and licensed flier and I could only claim to have gotten airborne, briefly, with bamboo, plastic sheet, rope, and duct tape. As an aircraft pilot, Jim had aspired to own a Stearman biplane, the trainer my mother had flown while with the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in World War II.

After our calls, I was always eager to share what we’d talked about with Rachel, and Jim evidently did the same with his wife, Sher. In an email he sent on April 10 of 2022, he wrote: “My wife explained it this way after hearing about all your adventures and boat building ‘I guess you’ve found your brother by another mother.’” I was honored to be regarded so by someone whose accomplishments far outshone my own.

Jim had offered the photos of his latest boat for a possible Reader Built Boat article, but as I was reviewing the many photos he’d sent of his boats and travels and transcribing the recordings I’d made of our phone calls it became clear that there was so much to his story that our narrative feature was the better place for it. I told Jim I would be pleased to write it, but months went by without leaving me time to work on the article.

We kept in touch by email and my last message to him, dated October 25, 2022, ended with, “Is all well with you?” I never heard back from him. Sher emailed me a few months later: “This is Sher, Jim’s wife. I am writing to convey the sad news that Jim passed away. I would like to thank you for all that you have done. It meant so much to Jim to have his life’s work recognized.” She added that she and her daughter “were facing the task of finding homes for the many beautiful things that he had made (the most recent boat, canoes, kayaks and many paddles).” For the things that they wanted to sell, I suggested a few places, including our Small Boats Classifieds, where they could post ads. I had been intrigued by one of the paddles Jim had made that appeared in one of his photos. Sher was happy to let me buy it and had it safely boxed and mailed to me.

Jim passed away on December 27, 2022, at the age of 79. In March of 2023, I turned 70, entering a decade on that perilously steepening slope that lies “over the hill,” where time passes more swiftly and opportunities can easily slip away. Jim and I never met face to face, and I don’t have any pictures of the two of us together but I now have a paddle that he made. While it will do nicely to keep him and our nascent friendship close at hand, it will also remind me to be more mindful about how and where I spend my time because people can slip away too.

Jim’s paddle is extraordinarily light: just 9.2 ounces. The four spruce canoe paddles I’ve made had always seemed light to me but they weigh an average of 21.6 ounces. The lightest of them is 3″ shorter than Jim’s and comes in at 18.9 ounces—more than twice the weight. On a windy day, I’d be wise to either tie or weigh down his paddle to keep it from taking flight.

 

The blade is flat and just 7⁄32″ thick. If I had made the paddle, I would have made a parallel-sided slot in the shaft to fit the blade and tapered the outside surface before gluing the shaft and blade together. By studying the shaft-stave glue lines I could tell that Jim cut a slot that began with a 7⁄32″ width at the throat and widened to the tip. When the shaft was glued to the blade, the two sides of the shaft were bent to meet the blade. Jim’s method was harder to execute but preserved the parallel-sided exterior faces of the staves, an aesthetic choice that few would notice. The blade’s black coating concealed whatever it is made of. An edge guard of white paracord is seated in a groove routed in the blade’s perimeter and saturated in epoxy.

 

The shaft is made up of eight coopered western-red-cedar staves and, judging by the sound it makes when tapped, it’s hollow. It has a diameter of 1 1⁄64″ and measurements taken with a digital caliper vary only occasionally by 1⁄128″. Some of the glue lines are nearly invisible and lost among the wood’s grain. The handle is made of two pieces of darker western red cedar and tapered to a wedge that is let into the shaft. I don’t know how Jim got the interior faces of the notch in the shaft straight and flat to fit the handle. Making a simple scarf joint is difficult enough; making two that face each other and intersect is a much greater challenge.

 

I remember using a carbon-fiber paddle for the first time and being impressed with how light it was, but Jim’s was a step beyond that. It had such an airy touch in my hands that as I switched sides, I found myself watching the blade to see where it was as it crossed over the canoe. The paddle has just a bit of flex, much less than I would have expected given its slender dimensions and light weight, and yet I could take strong strokes with it and not feel any give in the shaft. Using Jim’s paddle has been a remarkable experience.

Joe Lanni’s LUCKY DUCK

Joe Lanni’s boatbuilding journey began in 2020 when he built 3’S A CROWD, a sectional rowing and sailing skiff designed by Ken Simpson. Two years later, in search of something “more boatlike…a composition of curves flowing into one another,” he built David Beede’s Wackless Lassie, based on Fritz Funk’s Wacky Lassie. Still a boat of relatively simple construction—hard chine, flat bottom, sheet-plywood sides and bottom—the Wackless Lassie had enough curve and subtle sheer to satisfy Joe’s aesthetic leanings. But even as he christened it PARTY OF ONE, Joe was already musing about his next boat: “probably something larger and with, perhaps, even more curves.”

In 2023, Joe did, indeed, launch his third boat, a Puddle Duck Racer. “The complete opposite of a boat with nice lines and curves,” admits Joe. “It is quite literally a box.”

Joe Lanni

Joe made the parts for the hull inside over the winter then brought them out into the spring light for assembly. The side panel clearly shows the boat’s profile. The curve of the bottom is required for racing Puddle Duck Racers.

But Joe describes himself as the perpetual novice and, despite his appreciation for more complex hull designs, and his proud admission that his skills are “much improved,” he didn’t feel he was quite ready to “build a more complicated type of sailboat.”

There were no boats in Joe’s early life, nor even any woodworking experience. He watched his father work on carpentry projects in the house but never got to help. But he has always loved boats and has always been good with his hands—today he is a middle-school art teacher. He is also, by his own admission, addicted to small wooden boats. “I can’t stop looking at Small Boats and WoodenBoat. I dream of all the boats I would like to make and use. If I had better woodworking skills, my addiction would be much easier to take.”

Joe Lanni

The boat comes together. The bow and stern are similar in profile although there is a little more height in the bow, seen here to the left. Toward the stern, Joe added some 1 x 2″ pine to strengthen the sheer and provide a modicum of comfort when sitting on the windward rail.

The Puddle Duck Racer was the brainchild of David “Shorty” Routh, who devised the class in 2003 so that amateur boatbuilders could get out on the water, easily and cheaply. Shorty enjoyed building boats, messing about in boats, and racing boats. But when he realized there was no club that catered to and encouraged all three, he established his own and created the 8′-LOA Puddle Duck Racer as the club boat.

There were simple rules: all Puddle Duck Racers must have the same shape for the hull’s flat parallel sides; all must be at least 48″ wide across the bottom; all must have enough emergency flotation to be self-rescuing. Today’s class rules are even simpler: the bottom 10″ of every boat must be identical. But, says Shorty, “it’s not about the limitations of the rules, it’s about the creativity of everything else.”

Joe Lanni

Once the boat was fully framed up, Joe turned it upside down and attached the bottom panel—a single sheet of 3⁄8″ plywood. The two vertical struts on the starboard side are for the leeboard.

Joe came across the Puddle Duck Racers during his many wanderings down the rabbit holes of the internet. “They kept popping up,” he says. “I kept reading how surprised people were by how well the boat actually sails, despite being so easy to build.”

At the time, Joe had an old Styrofoam Snark sailboat that had become waterlogged and very heavy. When he saw an image of a Puddle Duck Racer rigged with the instantly recognizable lateen sail of a Snark, he saw his way forward: he could save the usable parts of his old Snark to outfit a new Puddle Duck. He was also drawn to the affordability: “The plans were free; the materials were cheap. I could use my Snark sail and modify the daggerboard—it would be perfect.”

Joe Lanni

Joe used a Snark ‘s daggerboard for the rudder’s blade and a Sunfish’s daggerboard for the leeboard for his PDR. The latter was too short so Joe extended it with a piece of pine sandwiched between two pieces of overlapping plywood.

One aspect that attracted Joe to the Puddle Duck Racer was the “encouragement of creativity. The bottom 10″ have to follow the plan, but above that anything goes, and people have introduced a variety of rigs and styles.” The most obvious element of variation is in the flotation. “Shorty Routh considered safety and encouraged the building of airboxes. Some builders have made them lengthwise on either side, others, like me, have placed them in the ends, where they take up less of the cockpit area.” As it says on the Puddle Duck Racer website, with the end airboxes there is “a lot of interior room for passengers, drink cooler, and your dog.” Also, by placing the buoyancy tanks in the ends the skipper is encouraged to sit farther forward, which in turn balances the boat, and the forward tank keeps the boat a little dryer when sailing into a chop. For Joe, there was no doubt, end airboxes were the way to go. He downloaded the plans and building instructions for Jim Michalak’s Catbox design.

Over the winter of 2022–23, Joe built the boat’s parts in his basement. “I used three sheets of exterior-grade plywood, 1⁄4″ for everything except the bottom, which is 3⁄8″.” He started by sketching all the parts full-size on paper. “I taped the paper sheets together and then transferred the drawing to the plywood sheets.” For the framing he used 1 × 2″ pine and, to strengthen the bottom, he would add longitudinal pieces of 1 × 6″ pine. By spring everything was ready for assembly and Joe moved the project outside.

Joe Lanni

Ready to go: LUCKY DUCK sits on her home-made launching trolly. In the stern, Joe used small bicycle wheels, while beneath the bow are smaller dolly wheels, which Joe says are not large enough and will be replaced.

“Always looking for ways to keep the costs down—I have a patient wife who allows me the time to build but did not want me to spend a lot—I decided against using epoxy and fiberglass,” he says. “Instead, I used the same method I used on my two earlier boats: stainless-steel screws, Titebond III waterproof glue, and FibaTape, a self-adhesive fiberglass-mesh tape used by dry wallers.” Titebond is typically used for non-structural joints but, Joe says, when combined with the tape, it “forms a rock-hard seal on the outside edges, which has held up well on my other builds.”

Joe painted the sides of the boat with latex house paint and finished the interior and bottom with exterior porch floor paint. “I didn’t ’glass the bottom,” he says, “because I wanted to keep the expense down until I was sure I liked the boat. Of course, now I wish I had.”

Joe Lanni

The old Snark daggerboard was repurposed as LUCKY DUCK’s rudder blade. Joe made a pine frame resembling rudder cheeks, to which he attached the tiller, and which holds the lifting blade in position, down or up, by a single bungee in tension.

With construction complete, Joe turned his attention to the rig. The sail and spars came from the Snark, but he decided to use the Snark’s daggerboard as his new rudderblade. He fitted it in a pine-framed slot and made the tiller from a single piece of knot-free pine, “stained to look like a more expensive piece of hardwood.” The leeboard was fashioned from a daggerboard reclaimed from an old Sunfish. “It wasn’t long enough so I extended it with a piece of 3⁄4″ pine sandwiched between two pieces of plywood that overlapped the bright-finished board.” He attached some leftover 1×2s to either side of the sheer for strength, to provide some protection for the sides of the boat, and to make a more comfortable perch for the skipper should they wish to sit up to windward. Finally, he made a transom-mounted bracket for a Minn Kota electric trolling motor, and a launching trolley fashioned out of 2×4s and reclaimed bicycle and dolly wheels.

Ruthann Lanni

The Snark lateen rig fits LUCKY DUCK well, with its boom set high to make changing sides easier when coming about. Kept in place by their oarlocks, the oars are out of the way while sailing yet instantly ready when needed.

LUCKY DUCK was launched and christened in May 2023, and Joe sailed her all summer long. “My hull is #1108. It says a lot that more than a thousand of these little boats have been built. I read somewhere that there’s no good reason a boat that looks like this should sail as well as it does, and I have to agree, it does sail really well, and it feels super big for such a small boat. I can take my 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son for rides, one at a time; it’s pretty comfortable. And it’s standing up well: I’ve dragged it, banged it, bunked it, left it in the rain, and it’s going strong.”

Ruthann Lanni

The stern flotation compartment doubles as a seat for the skipper although when performance demands it, Joe moves forward to sit in the cockpit.

For this year, it seems, Joe’s small-boat addiction has been fed. But there will come a time, he knows, when the rabbit holes will get the better of him, and he’ll be pulled into a new boatbuilding project. Maybe next time, he’ll trust his abilities and go for that “different type of sailboat…a larger one, with more curves.”

Jenny Bennett is managing editor of Small Boats.

Do you have a boat with an interesting story? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats readers.

 

MUSTELID – Episode 9

We sail across some invisible divide, into a dreamscape in dream time. Time slows.

Away out there, the ocean’s floor creeps. Relentlessly shoves at the granite continent. Inconceivable force hefts coastal ranges to buckled heights. The foreshore fractures and crazes and mazes.

And the sea sweeps in, and with it, fog.

What lives here the years round has winter scribed on its very bones. Stunted trees lean into winds long blown yet soon enough come storms again. We are mere transients. Brief sojourners in summer’s easy embrace. We move among survivors of winter’s mauling wind and wave—and are humbled.

For all this surge and surf, these waters teem with life a’roar and a’roil, adapting to each moment.

We drift and row and sail among wonders, wondering. Our senses flung wide. Our selves hushed. Our hearts and breaths slow to the tempo of this place.

Are we even awake?

Summer Breeze

My first sailboat was a Summer Breeze, an 11′ 8″ flatiron skiff designed by David Beede, and winner of the 2001 Duckworks design contest. For decades I was content to paddle canoes, then, one blustery day on Ross Lake, my wife and I were hammering the water like we were killing snakes while trying to round a point when it popped into my head that it would be really nice to have a boat that could harness the wind instead of fighting it. About that time, I found Gavin Atkin’s book Ultrasimple Boatbuilding and it convinced me to build my own boat, one that could comfortably sail two people for short camping trips. The book includes only one tiny photo of the Summer Breeze but somehow it was enough to capture my imagination.

Then I found David Beede’s website and was impressed by his description of the boat: “Summer Breeze was designed to be the most boat from the least materials. It is a robust all-purpose skiff targeted primarily at pleasurable rowing and sailing in protected waters, but also suitable for a small motor. It’s light enough to car top, narrow enough for most truck beds, and yet has capacity for two adults and a child. When fully loaded (up to 500 lbs) with two adults and gear her transom and stem barely touch the water.”

That sounded ideal. I decided to trust David and, heck, the plans were free. Back in 2017 I spent $235 on three sheets of exterior grade 1⁄4″ plywood, some good 2×4s, and some brass screws. For the adhesive, the instructions recommended PL Premium construction adhesive, epoxy, and Titebond II, which is what I chose to use.

Bob Van Putten

Blocks of 2″ rigid-foam insulation, wrapped in offcuts from the sail tarp and lashed firmly in place with paracord beneath the inwale should provide good flotation in the event of a capsize or swamping. It has the added benefit of providing a comfortable surface on which to lean when sailing.

The free building instructions on David’s website may seem a little disorganized at first—because they are duplicated in two places—but they include a lot of useful information based on several builds. There are also printable drawings for the plywood layout, center frame, transom, and sail.

The sides of the boat are lofted to measured drawings showing their positions on sheets of plywood. Butt blocks, screwed and glued, join the two pieces that make up each side. The plans don’t call for it but I later ’glassed the outside of the butt joints with polyester resin and 2″ fiberglass tape.

The single frame has plywood gussets at the chine corners. The drawings indicate a cross spall, but the frame didn’t seem to need one—bending the sides in around the frame didn’t impose too much force and didn’t distort it.

The shaping of the hull begins with bending pre-shaped sides around a center frame and connecting them to the beveled stem and transom. External chine logs are attached with glue and bronze ring-shank nails, then planed flat. The two pieces for the bottom, cut slightly oversize, are dry fitted then joined with a butt block near the bow. The full panel for the bottom is then glued and nailed in place before being trimmed flush with the chine logs. It’s about as simple as a boat can be.

Bob Van Putten

Bob originally built frames for two removable thwarts but ultimately decided the seats introduced too much clutter and replaced both with a single moveable box. The sail’s halyard and snotter are made fast to simple belaying pins in the mast thwart.

David didn’t include a seat in his prototype: “I like that space open for sailing,” he wrote. “With no centerboard trunk, the whole boat becomes a cockpit with much sprawling space. I prefer to sit on a moveable seat when I row, usually a stack of cushions.” He did include a drawing for short risers attached to the center frame and a pair of 1×2 supports set forward of the frame and parallel to it. A thwart would be cut to fit on the risers. I originally made two removable rowing thwarts using similar side frames and risers. One thwart sits amidships for solo use and the other can be set forward for when there is a passenger in the stern and you need to trim the boat. I made the thwarts from heavy 1′ × 8′ rough-cut boards but I eventually tired of the weight and clutter in the boat. I replaced them with a portable storage box/rowing seat, as per David’s suggestion and it suits the purpose nicely.

I made the rudder and its pivoting blade rudder to David’s specifications, but I used a pair of old door hinges for gudgeons, knocked out the original hinge pins, and connected them with one long 3⁄16″ rod. The plans call for seatbelt webbing as the rudder “hardware,” between the rudder stock and a tapered wooden wedge that slips between a pair of mating wedges on the transom.

The instructions suggest running the mainsheet “through a hole in the tiller that has been routed into a kind of smooth fairlead.” The sheet is clamped by light downward pressure of the tiller against the rudderhead. It works surprisingly well and allows for one-handed sailing. I added a bungee cord stretched across the stern which catches a cleat on the tiller to hold it and the sheet in place, at least in light winds, allowing a solo sailor to let go of the helm long enough to unwrap lunch.

Heidi Kay Van Putten

With no centerboard to occupy space in the cockpit, there is plenty of room to stretch out. Directional stability is provided by the single leeboard. The sail is sewn from tarpaulins, reinforced at the corners and along all four edges.

The Summer Breeze has a standing lug with a sprit boom spreading a sail of 63 sq ft. My mast, yard, and boom were made from cedar saplings. For the mast, the instructions call for a 10′ 2×4 tapered along the upper 7′. It is stepped with the wider face athwartship. David cautions, “If you end up in conditions you think are going to break your 2×4, get out your oars and get home!” David also documents making a mast of two pieces cut from a 2×6 on a taper, glued together, eight-sided, and rounded. David used bamboo for the yard and sprit boom and suggested 10′ closet rod or 2×2 as alternatives.

A link on the Summer Breeze webpage provides instructions for making a lugsail from poly tarp. I’d found a big tarp, laid it out on my rather uneven lawn and, using wooden battens, cut it out as best I could to the dimensions David provides. It was hemmed and reinforced with double-sided fiberglass carpet tape. Amazingly, this sail was very effective and surprisingly close-winded. But, by the end of the second outing it was little more than a rag. The tarp material was wearing out, the carpet tape no longer holding. I bought a new tarp and made another sail to the same pattern, carefully sewing it together with many reinforcements. Sadly, it never worked as well as the original—the leech fluttered and the sail was never very close-winded. I used it for several years and it held up perfectly, but I eventually tired of its lackluster performance and carefully sewed a third sail, still to the same pattern. This one works better. It seems that making a truly good sail is something of an art.

I took a hint from one of Dynamite Payson’s books and sealed the plywood with Bondo polyester resin thinned with acetone. This sank right into the plywood and seems to have prevented it from checking. I found free paint at a local recycling center.

It took me about two months to complete my Summer Breeze, much of the time being spent waiting for the glue and paint to dry. The boat weighs more than it should, a hair over 100 lbs. I knew nothing of boatbuilding so many of the components are oversized and I used heavy larch for much of it. Call it “workboat specs.”

The day I cartopped the boat to a local lake for its maiden voyage was the first time in my life I’d rowed a boat, and it took a little getting used to. I soon discovered that it rows surprisingly well when light and have rowed it more than 10 miles a day many times. I’ve become fond of rowing: it’s good exercise and I can row faster than I can solo paddle a canoe and keep at it longer.

Heidi Kay Van Putten

When rowing, the rig and rudder can be carried in the boat and do not impede the stroke. With the leeboard left down, the boat tracks well. Raised or lowered it does not obstruct the sweep of the oars.

On that first outing, the breeze picked up, and I decided to raise the sail. The halyard passes through a hole at the top of the mast and is made fast to a pin on the mast partner. The downhaul is looped around the mast under the partner, fed through the loop of the bowline and pulled tight; it is finished off with a quick-release knot. The snotter is pulled tight to tension the boom and is also made fast to a pin on the mast partner. We were soon sailing faster than I could row. Before long the breeze intensified, and the Summer Breeze was really zooming along. The boat is quite stable and unlikely to go over if kept out of the whitecaps. I think I was hitting 6 knots that day, quite a clip for such a short boat. Since that exciting first day, I’ve seldom been able to match that speed, but David reports hitting a measured 7.5 knots “quite a few times.”

The Summer Breeze has a single leeboard on the starboard side, which is used on both tacks. Mine was inspired by the designs of Jim Michalak and is a little more sophisticated than the one shown on David’s website. It pivots on a bolt through the hull and an extension of the board forms a handle for raising and lowering it. A lanyard, which passes through the leeboard and is retained by a stopper knot, can be cleated off to hold the board up or down. In practice, friction and gravity hold the board well.

The boat tacks just fine. I have no trouble switching sides in the cockpit, but sailing the boat would probably be a bit easier for a smaller, more agile sailor.

David notes “being all wood, this skiff won’t sink, however it won’t float high enough when swamped to make self-rescue very feasible,” and he provides general instructions for installing blocks of construction foam as flotation. I fitted blocks of 2″ rigid foam insulation along the interior of the boat under the inwale, wrapped the blocks in leftover tarp material and lashed them firmly in place using paracord and small eye screws. This should be enough flotation to make bailing after a capsize relatively easy. While I haven’t yet tested it, it’s a nice surface to lean back against when sailing.

My wife and I took the boat on a three-day island-hopping trip on Priest Lake, Idaho. Our food pack was stashed under the tiller, our tent and a dry bag with clothes and bedding went in front of the mast, leaving the whole center of the boat open for lounging. The trip was a great success, but other boaters couldn’t understand how we fit in something so small. At the end of the first day, we encountered winds so strong along the east coast of Kalispell Island that we could only just manage to work the boat to windward. It felt like a solid 25 mph, gusting higher. Without all the ballast on board I would have had to drop the sail and row, or more likely beach the boat and walk it along shore. I’ve since added a row of reef points to reduce the sail to about 45 sq ft.

In 2019 I took the boat on the first Salish 100, a 100-mile cruise running nearly the full length of Washington’s Puget Sound. I ’glassed the whole bottom (which fixed a leak that had developed) and made a rowing seat/stowage box to replace the removable thwarts. I left the seat risers in to lash things to. The only shorter boats in the race were two Mirror dinghies, but my boat was the cheapest, for what that’s worth.

Aleta Mueller

With the sail pulling and the tiller secured just windward of amidships, the rower is helped on his way. The thwart has been replaced by a moveable box that doubles as a watertight storage compartment.

There was some fine sailing, a long exhausting day of rowing, and a day when I set out reefed and opted for a tow when it began blowing over 20 knots. In rough water the boat rolled rail to rail several times but did not take on any water except for spray. It was a challenging week, but the Summer Breeze got me safely over the finish line.

I’ve had many more adventures, especially on Lake Roosevelt, a reservoir in Eastern Washington, where I often go for day sails and occasional overnight trips. I dream of taking the boat from the Canadian border down the Columbia River and Lake Roosevelt to the Grand Coulee Dam some summer.

I have since built bigger, more sophisticated boats but LA MADALENA, my simple little Summer Breeze, is always the first out of storage and the last to be put away for the winter.

 

Bob Van Putten and his wife live off-grid deep in the mountains of Washington State in a straw-bale cottage they constructed for themselves more than 20 years ago. He is a self-employed systems integration technician specializing in smaller municipal water and wastewater systems.

 

Summer Breeze Particulars

Length:  11′ 8″

Beam:  4′ 2″

Depth amidships:  15″

Sail area, standing lug:  60 sq ft

Auxiliary power:  Outboard, no more than 3 hp

Plans for Summer Breeze are available at David Beede’s website simplicityboats.com, and the Summer Breeze build notes include a full set of instructions. His site also offers a diary of building the prototype and sailmaking instructions.

Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us!

Portage Pram

When my wife and I decided to start cruising together, we acquired a 19′ Phil Bolger–designed Chebacco gaff cat-yawl and quickly realized that we’d need to find a dinghy as well. Although it will float in a foot of water, the Chebacco’s weight and bulk make shore landing more challenging than we are used to in either our Oughtred Arctic Tern or Adirondack guideboat, both of which can be easily beached. Moreover, we cruise the tidal waters of Oregon and Washington, where the possibility of being stuck aground in an outgoing tide makes it prudent to anchor out and row ashore.

The first season we towed a plastic sit-on-top kayak. It was easy to transport and light enough to carry solo, but it was a wet ride, had no cargo capacity, and was challenging to climb aboard from the Chebacco.

The following winter, I researched other lightweight options, including an inflatable packraft, as well as some plywood boats like the Nutshell Pram. I eliminated the packraft because it seemed it would sit low in the water and be another wet ride. While the Nutshell is a proven design, at 90 lbs it would be too heavy to lift and carry by myself.

Upon further research, I discovered the 6′ 8″ by 3′ 8″ Portage Pram, available as a kit with CNC-cut plywood parts and having a finished weight of 35 lbs. I borrowed a completed pram that a friend had built, and after a few minutes at the oars I realized that its combination of light weight and good handling would be perfect for our needs.

Photos by or courtesy of the author

The design of the Portage Pram has been updated to include a foam gunwale sandwiched between two pieces of plywood. Bulkheads under the seats fore and aft create sealed flotation compartments, which can also be used for dry stowage if access hatches are added.

The Portage Pram was originally designed for solid-wood construction in the 1970s by Bill Peterson at Murray G. Peterson Associates. Duckworks Boatbuilders Supply prototyped an ultralight plywood version in 2017 and soon after began selling kits. (Recently, Duckworks started offering a sailing version of the kit.)

The rowing-only kit I ordered arrived in a flat-packed crate approximately 7′ × 2′ × 3″. All pieces were precut and required only minor sanding. A 190-page digital manual, illustrated with color photographs and drawings, guides builders through the steps of construction. The manual was helpful, although it was last updated in 2021 and did not represent all aspects of the latest updates to the design (and could be edited for brevity). As an example, the manual showed a previous version of the gunwales, which were composed of 6mm plywood inwales and outwales supplemented amidships by shorter inwale doublers, each made of two layers of 6mm plywood laminated inside the inwale. The kit was delivered with an updated gunwale construction: closed-cell foam pieces to be encapsulated in plywood strips and fiberglass to create a curved bow-to-stern box beam.

Even when a few pounds over the design weight of 35 lbs, carrying the Portage Pram to and from the water is an easy task for one person.

The pram is initially assembled with zip ties, using the stitch-and-glue method. Its benches have precisely cut tabs that connect to slots in the hull. The chines are filleted with thickened epoxy. The gunwales, lower chines, and entire bottom of the pram are covered with fiberglass for strength. Building the pram is straightforward and involves basic woodworking tasks, such as trimming plywood, drilling holes, applying epoxy, and sanding. This makes it an easy project for first-time builders. I spent about 60 hours on the construction, with some extra time figuring out how to assemble the foam-cored gunwales.

The completed pram has a comfortable 11″ × 32″ aft bench. A 40″-long T-shaped forward bench, along with two sets of oarlocks, allows a rower to shift as needed to balance a second person or heavy load in the boat. The 8″-high benches sit atop sealed compartments, each providing about 1.5 cubic feet of flotation or dry storage if ports are added for access. No floorboards or foot braces are specified in the plans. The recommended oarlocks are tubular plastic sleeves installed vertically through the gunwales.

My boat weighs 43 lbs, including a stainless-steel pad-eye for towing, two nylon cleats, two pairs of bronze oarlocks, and two watertight plastic inspection ports. Even as a middle-aged man, I find the pram easy to load onto my car’s roof rack or roll up a beach on a fender. Carrying the boat solo from car to shore is easy.

Trim is all-important in the Portage Pram. With a single rower onboard the twin skegs are not fully submerged, but despite this the boat still holds its course well. With a passenger seated in the stern, the skegs provide excellent directional stability.

Getting in and out of the pram from a dock or a boat is like climbing aboard a large canoe. The pram can slide horizontally if I don’t place my weight in its center but overall is fairly stable. Due to its flat bottom, it rolls very little, especially when we climb aboard or adjust our weight while seated. When using the pram solo on flat water, I find it stable enough to stand up in. It can comfortably hold two adults, a full 3-gallon gas can, and a bag of groceries.

Although no oar length is specified in the plans, I used the Shaw and Tenney oar-length formula and made 6′ 6″ straight-blade cedar oars, which are effective and stow flat on the seats while towing. The two rowing stations function well as designed, and the boat balances nicely, with one or two aboard. At 6′ 1″, I am unable to fully stretch out my long legs when I’m rowing at the center station with my feet braced against the aft bulkhead. When I’m rowing at the forward position, I just rest my feet on the lower strakes. Although I prefer foot braces in a rowing boat, I do not miss them in the pram because their absence keeps the boat light, and I only use the pram to travel short distances. The boat rows comfortably at around 2 knots; at faster speeds the oars and bow splash, getting me, and the inside of the pram, wet. There is a sculling notch in the transom; it works, but with a 6′ 6″ oar, I find it challenging to use while maintaining good trim by squatting near the aft thwart.

The forward seat allows the rower to shift his weight into the bow and thus trim the boat to comfortably carry a passenger. Unusually, for a boat of this size, the pram has two rowing positions, allowing for correct weight distribution.

The pram tracks well with one person aboard, and even better with two. While rowing solo, the rocker allows it to turn quickly and playfully, but it never turns without my choosing to. With a second person aboard, the two skegs on the aft end are better engaged with the water and keep the boat going straight, even in a strong crosswind. The pram tracks and rows comfortably in winds up to about 10 knots; however, splash and spray come on board more often when there is any kind of chop or wake. Surprisingly, while towing it through 2′ to 3′ chop or in crosswinds, the interior can remain almost entirely dry.

When under tow behind the author’s 19′ Chebacco, the Portage Pram tracks well, following politely whether going straight or turning. Even with a bit of chop or swell, the pram stays dry and upright.

The pram is impressively well mannered when towed by our Chebacco under sail or motor. It follows our track whether going straight or turning, and whether the water is choppy or smooth. Even when faced with multiple large wakes from passing trawlers, the pram rises without tipping or taking on water, then resumes following behind. It never surges forward during rough conditions, threatening to hit our sailboat.

For such a small and light boat, the Portage Pram carries a substantial load and has the stability of a larger craft. Aside from the occasional challenge of keeping it from hitting our sailboat while boarding and deboarding the pram’s easy manners make going ashore elegant and fun.

Bruce Bateau, a regular contributor to Small Boats, sails and rows traditional boats with a modern twist in Portland, Oregon. His stories and adventures can be found at his website, Terrapin Tales.

Portage Pram Particulars

Length:  6′ 10″

Beam:  3′ 8″

Weight:  around 35 lbs

 

Portage Pram kits are available from Duckworks for $1,099.

Is there a boat you’d like to know more about? Have you built one that you think other Small Boats readers would enjoy? Please email us!

Jim Schroer

If you were to draw all of Jim Schroer’s travels on an atlas of the world, it would look as if an untended toddler had scribbled all over it with great scrawls across two oceans and a tangle of squiggles all over the eastern half of the U.S. But the intricate lines are the tracings of a waterman’s life, shaped by water winding across a continent and wind wandering over oceans.

Jim had never intended to share his stories beyond his family and friends. The notion of publishing anything soured after his first ocean crossing: “After my girlfriend and I sailed a 19 1⁄2′ boat to Hawaii, she talked to a person who was writing an article while I was out trying to earn some money so we could fly back to the mainland. It must’ve been a year later when we were cruising in the Florida Keys and crossed paths with somebody who had read the article. He showed us the magazine it was in and asked, ‘Is this you?’ We said it was. The title of the article was ‘From Yachts to Buckets They Come to Hawaii.’ Of course, the bucket was our boat, which I did not appreciate much. So, I figured people who write articles are more concerned with themselves than the people they’re writing about. And I don’t think that about you, and it’s because I’m comfortable with what you do that I’m doing this. This is very different for me because I’ve never gone for recognition or fame or whatever you might call it. But I’ve been reading your articles and what you’ve done and that convinced me that I could do this.”

Jim passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in December of 2022. His wife Sher and his daughter Zoey were eager to have me publish his story in Small Boats and provided invaluable assistance with finishing this project. In 2022, I recorded two long phone conversations I had with Jim. The last call ended with him laughing and saying, “Okay, this might be the longest I’ve ever been on the phone.” Below, in his words, is what he had to say.

 Travels and Boats
Photographs courtesy of the Schroer family

Jim (right) had two friends, Cal Hand and Bill Hinkley, see him off as he launched his Grumman canoe to paddle the Mississippi River from its headwaters to the Gulf. Cal and Bill were musicians and future members of the band, The Sorry Muthas, and went on to perform on A Prairie Home Companion.

Jim encountered muddy shores on the Mississippi River.

The first thing was the Mississippi River in 1968 and that was about three months in a 17′ Grumman from Itasca to New Orleans. I did Itasca to Minnesota alone and then I picked up a girlfriend and did the rest of it with her.

Jim: “My girlfriend, my cat, and I crossed the Pacific from California to Hawaii in this 19 1⁄2′ sloop.”

After the Mississippi, my girlfriend, cat, and I hitchhiked back to St. Louis to get my truck. We then went west to California and bought a little blue-hulled 19 1⁄2′ sloop. Apparently, the owners thought they had broken something underneath. When we hauled it out, the plywood form that they had poured the cement keel into was torn off, half torn off, and sticking out. I guess they thought it was the keel itself. We got the boat cheap and just ripped the plywood off. We used a bunch of instant concrete and smoothed it up.

We didn’t know anything, but I read everything in the San Diego library about singlehanded sailing. I then had a lot of theoretical knowledge but no experience. We sailed the sloop to Hawaii. I had rerigged it with two jennies to run downwind, a tradewinds thing, but they overpowered the little boat, so we only used one. That was better than the mainsail, which made it difficult to steer—it wanted to round up when we didn’t want to round up. Our slow trip to Hawaii took 39 days. In Hawaii we sold the boat. That was in 1969.

Jim: “I lived aboard this 1959 cutter, TRESARUS, for 13 years, had it for 15 years, most of the time without a motor. I sold the motor to keep sailing. I sailed around the islands in the Atlantic and back to the Caribbean and up and down the coast a couple of times. It’s a William Atkin fore-and-aft cutter, very English. Strip-planked and quite a nice boat, it was 15 years of my life.”

After that, the big one was to the Atlantic islands in 1975 in the TRESARUS, a 28′ 8″ Atkin cutter. I left Cape May, New Jersey, and sailed to the Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde. That was with a girlfriend, a different one, but they were close friends. [Laughs] When one departed, the other one moved right in. I sailed alone after Cape Verde and had the fastest passage over to Barbados. That was just under 15 days. That was not fun, but I always said if I had the chance to do something fast in the boat, I would just grit my teeth and do it just so I could brag about it. It was horrendous. It was noisy plowing through the water all the time, bashing around, and having a hard time staying in the bunk. There were times the boat slowed down to 4 knots and I’d put up the topsail and get it back up to 5 1⁄2. I had back-to-back 265-mile days in that little cutter. Normal sailing would be 100 miles per 24 hours. From Barbados, I went up the island chain to the U.S. Virgins and then I sailed to Panama to go through the canal, but I didn’t get to, so I sailed up to Newport. That was in ’75. I don’t recall how long that took.

 

Robin, Zoey, and Sher paused at the Penobscot Bay launch site just before embarking on a four-month cruise.

My wife Sher, daughters Robin and Zoey, and I did a long canoe trip ’79. That was what I call the Maine Triangle. It’s probably the trip I’m most proud of. That was with a boat we called TSHANNA, which is an Indian name for The Silent One. It was a wooden and canvas 20 footer and it was quiet. We had rebuilt that. We re-canvassed it and patched up all the broken frames. It was a $30 canoe when we bought it—well, my wife, Sher, and the girlfriend bought it—for my birthday and we took it to Florida. We were then living on that cutter. We did that in a little park next to the marina. We re-canvassed it, and got it ready and then we hauled it all the way up Maine. My wife and I and two daughters—I don’t really remember if the cats went or not—went up the Penobscot, and up the West Branch and up the North Branch until we ran out of water. It was a beautiful month, and it didn’t rain on us hardly at all, so we didn’t have any water when we got to the North Branch. So we backed down and went over, what’s that called, the Mud Pond Carry. And then we got into the Allagash, and went down the Allagash to the St. John, and down the St. John to the coast and down the coast to Penobscot Bay and up to where we started the trip and left our vehicle. That was about two-and-a-half, almost three months. Great trip, a great trip. The girls don’t want anything to do with boating anymore. I lost my crew after that trip.

Jim, with daughters Robin and Zoey, about to embark on a cruise to the Florida Keys on TEATIME TURTLE, the lapstrake canoe he built.

Did I tell you about the problems in the Florida Keys, getting raided because we were camping hidden in the woods? Well, let me see, that was TEATIME TURTLE, the 22′ lapstrake. It was 1981 and we got a delivery car to drive to Miami, Florida, and we put this great big canoe on top of it, which you’re not supposed to do on a delivery car. This was with the two girls, twin daughters Zoey and Robin, who were 9 at the time. We never got to pick the car and just got what they had available, but I couldn’t complain about the Mercedes. It was very nice. I dropped the canoe and the family on the beach in Miami and delivered the car and got back somehow. Off we went in the canoe. There were lots of little islands, so we didn’t have to go very far to make our first camp. I remember the island was full of flip-flops. We had a contest to see who could get a pair of flip-flops that fit. That was great fun. We paddled along the Florida Keys and got down to Marathon. There we went into the harbor, way up into the top of it, found some woods, and hauled out. We put up a tent and made a barricade to hide the canoe and covered it with a tarp. We were there for days while I went to work at a marina. It was almost Christmas. We didn’t have any money, so I had to make some. I varnished a boat and did this and that. One day I came back and Sher was real upset because the police had shown up and told her it was illegal to camp there. They took her and the girls down to the station, hassled them, and then told them that if we continued camping, they would confiscate the girls. While they said they would take the girls away, they couldn’t actually do much to us because we were from out of town and not Florida residents. They couldn’t get us for the girls not being in school.

A discarded plywood hull became home in Marathon, Florida.

TEATIME TURTLE formed part of the roof over the derelict motorboat that was home to the family.

Sher didn’t want to continue after that. We paddled out and stopped to talk to a guy on a boat. He had two more boats in the harbor, and he let us spend the night on one of them. But then his wife didn’t like the idea of him letting weirdos stay on the boat, so we went over to where the fishing fleet was. They were cleaning out the area with a bulldozer making a pile of junk, a great big hill of junk. On top of it was this old plywood motorboat, an open boat, and kind of big but with a hole in it. I found a guy with a pickup truck and told him I’d give him a couple of six packs if he would pull the boat down and to the water. He did, happily, and I patched the hole and we put it into a little creek area of the harbor. We moved aboard it, and the police never bothered us again. We put the canoe on top and then the tarp over it and we had it enclosed that way. We spent the rest of the winter in that junk boat meeting all sorts of interesting people including Cubans who were arriving about that time. They loved the girls and would bring them food. They thought we were destitute, I guess, but we weren’t really.

The back of the Oldsmobile was riddled with rust but stayed in one piece on the road.

I bought an Oldsmobile from a fisherman and I guess he used to throw fish in the trunk because it was really rusted out. To get it ready to haul us back to Rhode Island I took it to a mechanic and said, “I’d like it looked at to see if it would get us back to Rhode Island. Could you put it on the lift?” He took a quick look under it and said, “No, we can’t lift it because it’ll probably break in half.” We decided to forgo that and drove it to Rhode Island anyway. It was a great comfortable car, but I couldn’t get out of the driver’s door because it was smashed. I had to get out the passenger door, but otherwise it did really well. It was just difficult to pay tolls.

Robin and Zoey were older when the family cruised northern Florida.

Our north Florida trip was in ’87 with TEATIME TURTLE, the varnished 22′ lapstrake canoe. I had a boat shop in St. Petersburg, Bayside Boatworks, for a couple of years. The Atkin cutter was in a little bitty harbor behind the Salvador Dalí Museum and the shop was about a block away from the water, so we could go down to look at the boat. We were living in a school bus at the time.

Jim did business as Bayside Boatworks while in St. Petersburgh, Florida.

While in St. Pete, Jim opened a business doing boat repair.

Anyway, that canoe trip was up the St. Marys River, down the Suwanee, and then along the Gulf coast, up the Withlacoochee, down the Hillsborough, and into Tampa.

At Rattlesnake Key in Tampa Bay, Jim came across a rattlesnake while he was walking on the island where the family had camped. He cut off a branch with a fork in it, took photos, gave a dissection lesson to Zoey and Robin (who’s peering in from the left), and served it for dinner. Zoey recalls, “It tasted like chicken.”

The friends who took us to the St. Marys lived in Tampa, so we called them up and went back home with them to where the truck was. You know, I haven’t found any sort of notes or log on that trip so I really don’t know how long that was. It was a winter trip and cold a couple of times because we had frost on the canoe. It looked like snow.

While Jim stepped ashore, Sher and the four conscripted feline sailors—Looper, Friends, Rebar and Beanie—remained on board the 20′ Old Town canoe.

And then, let’s see, the nine-month canoe trip in Maine was in ’95–’96. It was an open-ended trip without a destination. The girls were much older so Sher and I went without them but with our four cats. We were going to paddle forever—that’s what we had in mind. We started at Popham Beach, just below Bath, and went up the Kennebec River and all the way up the Androscoggin to Errol, New Hampshire. There we portaged by vehicle—that’s where you go talk somebody into taking you over in a pickup truck or stick your thumb out—over to the Connecticut River. It’s not very far actually, just one highway, and that was to Colebrook. Then we paddled down the Connecticut River, through Massachusetts and Connecticut all the way down to the coast. A great trip. A great river.

There we got picked up by friends from Rhode Island and taken back home so Sher could visit with our daughters. It was September and I knew that we were going to get caught by weather, so I bought a junker and we loaded up and, instead of taking the canoe west to the Genesee River, which dumps into Lake Ontario, we drove to Pennsylvania and started on the upper Allegheny River.

And, of course, the police caught us there. Well, I wanted to sell the car and the guy I tried to sell it to called the police and said, “This guy is trying to sell me a stolen car.” They didn’t catch us driving but as we were unloading the canoe from the roof racks and getting ready to go down the river. Somehow, they just decided to forget it. Maybe because we weren’t driving. Anyway, they did all the stuff they had to and left. I gave the car to somebody.

Sher and I paddled down the Allegheny to the Ohio River then up the Kanawha. At the New River, Sher’s sister from Boone, North Carolina, came up with a little Coleman canoe, and Sher went to North Carolina with her in the big canoe. I went up to the New River, which was a fantastic, very interesting trip. When I got into North Carolina it was freezing. My tennis shoes would be frozen outside the tent every morning.

Once I got to North Carolina, I thought that’s good enough. Sher and her sister picked me up and we did Thanksgiving in Boone. We bought a motor for the canoe because I thought we could still maybe beat winter if we had a motor. That was stupid, because we didn’t beat it, and Sher’s sister and husband gave us a portage over the height of land over to the French Broad River. We descended the Tennessee River, and then the Tombigbee River down to the Gulf coast. We did a little along the coast, but I knew that if we went too far we’d wind up back at Cedar Key where we had already been on our North Florida trip. It was too early to head back north and I couldn’t think of anything else so we kind of gave up. A friend flew down, rented a truck to carry the canoe, pick us up, and take us to Saint Pete. We stayed there a while. But anyway, that was that trip, a big one.

Sher and Jim toured the country in a motor coach with a van and canoe in tow.

We bought a van that my brother had for sale cheap, mainly because it needed a lot of work. I fixed it up and we made a bed in it. We traveled in it for a year and then found a nice motorcoach in Florida. We traveled in it and towed the van with the canoe on top of it. That was from ’96 to ’99 and we went paddling here and there.

While Jim was working at the camp, he took many week-long solo canoe trips.

In 2000, I got this job as caretaker here at a camp in Rhode Island. Or I should say my wife got me this job. It really wasn’t my idea. So, after 2000 it has just been trips of a week to 10 days on New England rivers doing all of the river except for the whitewater parts at the beginnings. A couple of rivers I split in half and did three days for part of it and three days the rest of it, like the Kennebec. I did the Machias River, the Grand Lake Stream, the Delaware River, and the Saint John River, which is up along Canada. The Saint John was interesting because without a passport I couldn’t camp or even land on Canada’s side. It was the first river that had only one bank that I could get out on.

These trips were all in solo canoes. One was a 14′ Bell Wildfire made of ABS. Then I got a lighter one, which was a Mohawk Solo 13. The Solo 13 is 1′ shorter and not as pretty but it’s lighter and I’m getting older, so that is good. Then I got a a 12′ Kevlar ADK and went for three or four years doing different things in the Adirondacks, mostly for a week at a time.

Jim: “I have a shuttle car that I do all my solo trips with. I have a Honda van, an old one, an Odyssey, and I tow a ’91 Corolla with a canoe on top. And then I can drop it off and go up to the headwaters and paddle down to the Corolla. I’ve taken the rear seat out of the Corolla so I can sleep in it and then drive back up to the headwaters and pick up the Odyssey, then tow the Corolla back home. I’ve done that for ages, the past 20 years, and it’s worked out very well.”

In 2020 I drove to the Susquehanna River. It starts in New York and continues all the way down to the Chesapeake. That’s a big river so I did just the part in New York. That was the first year of the pandemic, so nobody was on the banks and nobody was on the river. The highway runs along the river almost the whole way so I hid water bottles on my way to the put-in so I wouldn’t have to go to people’s houses to ask for water. That worked out really well. A good trip.

There was another nice solo in 2014 that took 10 or 11 days from north to south in Rhode Island. I started up near the northern border and worked my way down the river to the bay. I got out of the bay at Fall River and paddled several rivers and came out at Westerly. I crossed over to Connecticut and took out.

I guess that’s about it. It has been pretty constant.

Jim: “My brother asked me: ‘Do you want a schooner,’ and I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ This is after I had sold the others, my last sailboat. He was working in a boatyard and he knew this boat, DISTANT STAR, had sunk at the dock and the owner was not being responsible. The boatyard wanted it out, so he said to me I’d better come look at it. And I got it for under $2,000. I really really didn’t want the schooner; I was really done with sailboats. I sort of refurbished it. All I did was make it look pretty to resell it.”

 

There are a few things other than boating. There was flying. I always have my eyes up in the sky when I hear something. I love the biplanes and always wanted to buy a Stearman biplane. I remember when they were about $5,000 and I just didn’t have quite that much. Then I sold the DISTANT STAR, the big schooner, and I said, “Gee $25,000! I can get a Stearman now.” I looked it up and they were $60,000 at that time. So, okay, I’d forget that dream. I did hot air ballooning and got my certification for that and for gas balloons because it was early on and they weren’t too organized and they just put them both together. If you could answer the questions about the dangers of gas, you got the certificate for gas (even though I couldn’t afford to fill a balloon up with it). In the ’90s my wife and daughters bought me hang-gliding lessons, so I did hang gliding for about three years. I got up to Hang 4, which is an advanced rating. With it I could technically fly off any mountain. That was really cool. I loved it.

The other fun thing was motorcycling. I’ve had five motorcycles. The biggest fun trip was with my daughter Zoey, from Saint Pete up the Smokies all the way to Rhode Island. I was really surprised that she agreed to go. And I once did 1,000 miles in 24 hours just for the heck of it.

What in my background led me to do all this? I would say one thing. It was the fact that my dad was a schoolteacher and a principal and I went to his junior high school. He retired a year early and talked about what he and my mom could do, but then he died that year, the year he retired. So that probably influenced me. I know that in college—I went to Southeast Missouri State in Cape Girardeau, Missouri—the Mississippi River ran nearby and I would go down to it quite often. It gave me what I needed for the four years that I was in school. Instead of looking forward to what the school could give me, I think I looked forward to what the rivers could give me.

JAYCEE BODIE, Jim’s last boat

Jim: “That’s the first time I got to see what my so-called plan would look like in real life. Uncle John’s classic Louisiana Johnboat happened to be a boat that I like the looks of. I decided I wanted more flat bottom and less curve so I moved my center form toward the bow a little bit and drew that curve from the sideview full size. That’s what I went with. I’m pretty happy with it.”

Jim: “I turned the hull over right in the garage, alone. I tend to collect whatever anybody doesn’t want and when I needed a come-along I was able to find four of them. With them I was able to lift the boat. I lowered one side of the boat and rested it on dollies and then cranked the other side up with the come-alongs until it was vertical. I got it all the way over and set it at working height, right-side up.”

Jim: “That’s the mobile-home trailer. Of course, I had to buy that winch gizmo, the whole thing. That’s my garage in the background. When entering or leaving the garage shop, I would acknowledge the boat’s presence or compliment its progress. Since there were six canoes hanging from the rafters, I addressed it specifically as Boaty, pronounced Bodie because that was easier, I guess. On my design doodles it was ‘Johnboat Camper.’ JC Bodie looked too obvious, so it became JAYCEE BODIE.”

Jim: “That’s the port side, my bunk. Back when I quit teaching…I taught for two years after college in St. Louis County…I built a camper out of a panel truck. Well actually, my brother and a friend and I bought a St. Louis County water truck and filled it full of camping gear and went out to Wyoming and backpacked different places in the mountains and stuck our heads into Utah and kept going around Wyoming then I bought the truck from them. It was 8′ long and as wide as this boat. That’s where the design came from except the camper didn’t have a bunk and I slept on the floor. The johnboat’s head, stowed in a compartment under the mattress along with toilet paper and a bag of sawdust, is just a bucket with a plastic bag.”

Jim: “The galley is on the starboard side. I had a rolling stool in the truck so I have one in the johnboat.”

Jim: “I bought this stove just for this boat. I still have the ’60s model double-burner propane stove that was in my truck, the camper. It’s heavy; it’s got cast iron. The galley has room for a double stove, but I didn’t want the big tank, so I use this little stove with the 1-lb propane tanks and they’re underneath the cabinet. I’ve never used the teeny fuel canisters that look like a paint spray can. I can refill these one-pounders, so that’s what I’m doing. On the starboard transom knee I have a hole where I stick a flag or set my fire pan. That’s probably the nicest feature. It gets the most uses anyway.”

Jim: “The fire pan on the starboard quarter is a film case for old-time 35-mm movie film. My daughter was into photography and teaches photography in college. They were throwing a bunch away and of course I don’t let anything get thrown away. She said ‘just be careful with the film because it’s very flammable.’ I said, ‘Well, maybe I’ll take it on my camping trip!’ But anyway, the cans had been bouncing around and I had thought of using something bigger, but I’ve always had very small campfires. Generally, what I do at night is watch the fire until it gets late.”

Jim: “The blue thing is my battery. I have a battery for recharging things like the phone. I have a rechargeable that’s the anchor light but I don’t have running lights yet—but I’m working toward that. In the black bag is my anchor line. I wanted it kept neat. I’ve had enough anchoring with my sailboats. I prefer not to anchor. It brings up all the mud. But I figured I could anchor off the stern as I go toward the beach, hit the beach, and just throw the anchor off the stern and then do whatever I have to do. The tape on the oars is trying to keep the copper from scratching up the paint. I’ve got some makeshift things scattered around. The white things next to the black bag are kneepads. I kneel in my canoes when I paddle and I use kneepads like the white ones here. I stumbled once and landed with my knee on a root and now it’s difficult to kneel. I’ve been using the kneepads on the boat as well whenever I kneel. I have several pair of them because I’m trying to protect my knee and I want to keep paddling. What am I? 78, going on 79 this month. We’ll see.”

Jim: “Because I’ve had big boats and little boats I have some boat parts around and that’s where that great big bronze cleat comes from. I put it there because it’s been sitting around the garage for a long time. I know it’s overkill, but it was free and sitting around, wanting to be used. As well as my oar locks, I had two sets of these, too, so I had to use those. The oars I bought for a boat in the backyard, a Rangeley Lake boat from Maine. They’re a little short for the johnboat but they’re the longest I had. I’m using them until I can find something else. I wouldn’t use spoon blades on this boat.”

Jim: “This is a pond near the Pawcatuck River. I’m anchored with my pole here, practicing what I hope to do when I’m on some kind of voyage. It will be real handy where I expect to be, hope to be, or might not ever be. ”

Jim: “That’s just one of the ponds in Rhode Island. The Wee Lassie canoe here is the fourth that I built. The first one I built was a canvas skin on open wood framing. I had bought some good cedar, boat cedar, to build a lapstrake one but after I built the skin one, I just went paddling and didn’t look back. I’m more of a paddler than a builder…in my mind, anyway.”

Jim: “I built the boarding ladder strictly because I thought I would have difficulty getting into the canoe from the boat, but I couldn’t use it. First of all, the second step is under water and I have had enough of wet feet. If want to go paddling from my johnboat, I don’t want wet feet. Standing on the top step was no good because that made me really unbalanced. That was no better than laying on the deck, so I did not use it. I didn’t even take it the next time I went out. If you’re the kind of person who likes to swim, the ladder would be fine but I’m an on-the-water not an in-the-water kind of guy.”

The johnboat is not really for here in Rhode Island. It’s for the big rivers of the Midwest. We’ll see what happens. I don’t think we can get out of here unless things change. But you never know. It doesn’t matter. I’ve enjoyed building it and it has been great fun. I did add some more things. I put the shelves beside the bunk so there’s a place to put a few things: clothes, a wallet, whatever. I’ve enclosed the space behind the cabinets and those spaces will be hidden and look like just a panel to hide the hull. I’ve got them attached by magnets, so I can squirrel something in there like money or papers or whatever. Whatever I want to hide, I’ve got a hiding place.

I built the boat for finishing the Ohio River and then seeing the tributaries and the interesting areas along the Ohio, and maybe the Tennessee River. And there’s the Cumberland. The Tennessee goes way on up to Knoxville. That would be a nice place to spend the winter. But we’ll see.

Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.

If you have an interesting story to tell about your adventures with a small boat, please email us a brief outline and a few photos.

A DIY Light Bar

Few things will ruin a small-boat trip faster than trailer drama, and no component of a trailer is as likely to fail as its electrical lighting system. Conventional trailer lights have it hard: they are often cheaply made and poorly wired; they are subject to the indignity of regular dunking; and they rely on the metal of the trailer and its oft-corroded bolts for their ground connection. By building an LED light bar you can ensure that the lights are properly wired, reliably grounded, and never dunked. Because of their position high up at the extreme rear end of your trailed load they are also much more visible to other drivers.

Photographs by the author

Assembly parts for a custom light bar: an LED trailer light kit, a wooden bar, a length of brass rod, a four-wire cable, some heat-shrink butt connectors, and various fastenings; the only things missing are the split sleeving and wire ties with which to attach the cables to the bar.

To build your LED light bar you’ll need the following items (the links are to products that I used, but there are many equivalents available elsewhere).

An LED trailer light kit.

A four-wire cable as long as the combined length and beam of your boat plus 6′. A 30′ cable was about right for my 18′ pram. I recommend a jacketed four-wire cable with a flat connector. I do not recommend the flat four-wire trailer wiring kits commonly found at auto parts stores. Their white ground wires are usually cut short on the assumption that you’ll use the trailer itself as the ground; the four wires are not protected by any kind of jacket; and the individual wires themselves are often thin and unreliable.

A Y-adapter is required to supply power to the light bar as wells the trailer’s existing lights.

A bar about as long as the width of your trailer. I used an old wooden hockey stick that I pulled from the trash. It’s a hardwood laminate roughly 3⁄4″ × 1 3⁄16″. Aluminum C-channel from the hardware store also works well.

A 5′ length of slit corrugated sleeving (also known as wire loom), about 1⁄2″ inside diameter (not pictured above).

Reliable waterproof electrical connections. I recommend solder-loaded heat-shrink butt splices with an adhesive insulation.

Rudder fittings or some other way to attach the completed bar to your boat’s transom for trailering. I used a length of 5⁄16″ brass rod because it fit nicely through my 3⁄8″ transom-mounted rudder gudgeons.

Zip ties

Start by cutting the bar to length—about equal to the width of the transom—and mark the location of your upper gudgeons, usually the center. If the transom is angled, drill at the same angle for the rod that will go through the gudgeons. This will keep the lights parallel to the road. Install the rod through this angled hole and secure it with epoxy and/or peen the top of it.

The bar is countersunk to recess the light fixtures’ mounting hardware. If the bolts protrude, they should be cut flush with the back of the bar. Here the hacksaw blade has been mounted on the frame at a 45-degree angle, facilitating the flush cut.

Drill for the light kit’s mounting bolts and test-fit the lights. The fixture with the white license-plate lamp goes on the left with the light pointing down. Bolts that protrude past the back end of the light bar should be cut flush with a hacksaw and filed smooth.

A central hole is drilled through the bar. By drilling at the same angle as the slope of the transom, the retaining rod will fit smoothly through the gudgeons and the bar will sit snugly against the boat.

Check the fit of the bar on your boat and determine how you’ll keep the bar locked in place. The same retaining clip that locks my boat’s rudder down when on the water keeps this light bar in place when we’re on the road. A tie around the bar and the gudgeon could serve the same purpose. Now is also a good time to determine how you will secure the cable to the light bar. I drilled two holes, just large enough for the cable, through the bar from top to bottom, about 1 1⁄2″ apart. The cable will make a U-turn through these two holes. With assembly and hardware complete, remove the light fixtures, then prime and paint.

Pull enough cable through the two holes in the bar to reach both lights—first one, then back across the bar to the other. Where the cable makes the U turn, a zip tie around the bar and the bottom of the U will lock it in place. Carefully strip away a few inches of the jacket where it emerges from the bar until you can see the individual wires inside. Go slowly so you don’t damage the insulation on the wires. Then gently pull the cut-off end of the jacket from the protruding wires.

A heat-shrink butt connector is slid over two of the three wires that have had 3⁄8″ of their insulation carefully stripped away; the copper wires are spliced together before being covered by the butt connector.

If you bought the recommended four-wire cable, the connections are straightforward: everything of like color should be spliced together. Bring each wire from the cable to its matching wire on the LED lights. Cut the wires so the leads from the light fixture overlap the cable wires by about 3″ to leave some slack in the system and room for a possible rewiring in the event of a bad connection.

When heat is applied—from a heat gun or a flame—the butt connector shrinks around the wires. A ring of low-temperature solder melts and wicks into the copper strands, assuring good electrical transmission, and a white heat-activated adhesive within the connector melts and bonds to the wires’ insulation, making the connection both strong and waterproof.

Notice that the white wire and the red wire must be brought to both lights. I first cut the red and white wire at the length needed to connect them to the nearest light. When I connected each to its partner on the near light, I included the off-cut wire of the same color. I then carried the other end of the off-cut wire to the far light.

Your LED light kit probably came with some wire nuts or solderless splice wire connectors to make up these cables. Do your future self a favor and throw them away. Electrical connections are likely the weak link of this system; make them as reliable as possible with heat-shrink butt connectors that include low-temperature-solder. Here’s how to make the only-slightly-more-complicated three-way connection needed for the white and red wires. Start by slipping one end of the 18–22-gauge solder-loaded heat-shrink butt connectors over two of the 18-gauge wires, then strip 3⁄8″ of insulation off both wires. Holding those wires parallel, push their copper conductors into the third stripped wire. Ensure the copper strands interweave, then slide the connector back over the joint. Apply heat to the connector with a heat gun or torch. When the heat-shrink contracts around the wire, a heat-activated adhesive will make a strong bond and seal out water. Continue heating until you see the doughnut of solder melt and wick into the copper wire. The resulting connection will be secure and weather resistant.

The cables, kept tidy and protected from the elements by a length of slit sleeving, are cable-tied to the light bar. The bar itself is held in position on the boat’s transom by a rod slid down through the two gudgeons. On a boat that has no gudgeons the light bar can be tied to existing attachment points.

When all six connections are completed, plug your light bar into a vehicle and check the running lights, brake lights, and turn signals. Then, protect the wiring with the corrugated sleeving. Tuck all the wires into the sleeve and secure the sleeve to your bar with zip ties and electrical tape.

The rudder retaining clip holds the light board down and prevents it from popping out of the gudgeons. The sculling notch is a convenient channel for the light cable as it is led from the light bar to the vehicle outlet. The trailer’s original lights remain operational; it’s especially important that its left taillight illuminate the license plate as required.

Your light bar is complete and is ready to be connected the the Y-adapter that will power it and the trailer lights. It should provide years of trouble-free service and an additional measure of safety for your boat while in transit on the roads.

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.

You can share your tips and tricks of the trade with other Small Boats readers by sending us an email.

A Universal Marine Compass

In the late 1990s and early 2000s I taught small-boat seamanship classes under sail at WoodenBoat School in Brooklin, Maine. For the most part, we sailed within a sheltered cove with an occasional voyage around some not-too-distant islands. At no point were we out of sight of land or, indeed, more than a few hundred yards from shore. Our boats were Herreshoff and Haven 12-1/2s, each equipped with sails, paddle, chart, anchor, and compass.

I had come to Maine from southwest England, an area known for its rain and wind. Those of us who sailed small open boats there were well practiced in reefing, but we rarely had to navigate by chart and compass. I don’t remember ever carrying a compass except for the few times we were sailing offshore or at night. We did, of course, have the occasional foggy day, but it was always well forecast and when it came, it hung around, socked in for the day. We simply stayed home. Maine, I quickly realized, was different. Here, on a bright summer day, a fog bank could roll in and overtake me with alarming speed. Within minutes I could go from full visibility to a few feet. Even more confusing, I could be sitting in full fog yet still see blue sky above. I understood why all the school’s sailboats had compasses.

Photographs by the author

Mounted on the aft end of a centerboard case the compass is conveniently placed for use as a steering compass and easily to hand if needed to take a bearing. The underside of the bowl has a flat area that allows the compass to lie flush with the surface beneath it.

While most of the boats had small bulkhead-mounted steering compasses, one or two had handheld compasses that had to be retrieved from a locker and so were seldom used. One boat had a compass that hung in a simple bracket mounted on the forward bulkhead and could be removed to be used as a handheld bearing compass.

I came to love that compass and determined to buy one for myself. I researched the product number and details only to discover that it was no longer on the market. Through the ensuing 20 years I have, from time to time, half-heartedly looked online for my compass.

Last month I found it. It was not the same brand, but in all other respects it appeared to be identical. I ordered one immediately.

The central strip in the bracket has a slight flex. When the compass is slid into the sleeve two tabs on the bracket snap into grooves in the compass handle and hold it securely, but not so tight that the compass cannot be pulled out of the bracket one-handed and with just a slight tug.

The Silva 70UN measures 7″ from the top of the bowl to the bottom of the handle, and the outside case around the bowl has a 3 1⁄2″ diameter. It is waterproof and floats semi-submerged horizontally. It comes with a bracket and four brass mounting screws. (Additional brackets are available if there’s a need for more than one fixed location.) The compass can be mounted at any angle, even upside down, and read from the side or the top. As a steering compass, it must be mounted parallel to the plane of the boat’s centerline, either horizontally on a flat surface such as a thwart or centerboard case, or suspended from a cabin-top, or vertically on any bulkhead or other fixed upright.

Once the bracket is fitted, the handle of the compass is slid into it and held stable, prevented from jumping out by a subtle plastic snap within the face of the bracket that aligns with shallow 3⁄8″-long grooves in the compass handle. If the bracket is mounted so the compass can be seen from the helm, head-on with the curved front and back lubber lines overlapped, it can be used as a steering compass and, thanks to the large digits, is easy to read.

The compass is fully waterproof and floats. The case of the illuminated 70UNE is white, which might be easier to see if it’s dropped overboard.

For taking sights, the compass is quickly detached from the bracket. It can be lifted out with just a little force; only one hand is needed. The ergonomic shape and plastic’s matte finish make it comfortable in the hand. There are two scales: a main steering scale on the horizontal face of the compass card and a direct reading scale on the vertical edge. Both are marked in five-degree increments, with each 30-degree angle numbered: 0°, 30°, 60°, etc.

The manufacturer’s description says that the bowl is made from clear scratch-resistant acrylic and that the “combination of a sapphire jewel bearing, and a hardened steel pivot minimizes friction, which in turn gives rapid and accurate movements.” The damping-fluid-immersed card does not spin. When the compass is mounted, the card will still function with the boat heeled up to 30 degrees. Beyond that, it sticks.

Thanks to its ergonomic design and matte-plastic finish, the Silva 70UN is well balanced and comfortable in the hand making it easy to hold steady when taking bearings.

In the week following delivery of the compass, I used it in various boats, both under sail and power. Weighing just 9 oz, it can be held steady with straight or slightly bent arm and reading the bearings is easy and swift, even in choppy water. Depending on where it is mounted, either scale is used for steering. I read the vertical scale most of the time, but my crew enjoyed being able to lean over from any position in the cockpit to line up the lubber lines and easily read the horizontal face. The compass is also available in a battery-powered illuminated (red light) version, the Silva 70UNE.

Jenny Bennett is managing editor of Small Boats.

The Silva 70UN is available from various online outlets priced from around $110, the Silva 70UNE is priced from around $120; I found my 70UN on Amazon for $107.99, and additional brackets at tridentuk.com priced $13.43 plus shipping.

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.

Flex Tape vs. Densyl Tape

When I’m out sailing on the wide, cold waters of Puget Sound, I carry a lot of safety gear, but I’m more casual in my approach to kayaking for exercise on a slow-moving, shallow slough. A few weeks ago, I saw a couple of deadheads lurking just below the surface, and while I now steer clear of where they’re located, they got me thinking about the consequences of hitting something else hard enough to crack my kayak’s delicate mahogany hull. If the kayak took on water, it would be easy to get ashore and my safety would never be compromised, but getting back to the launch ramp overland wouldn’t be easy. I’d have a miles-long walk with a tote bag full of gear slung over one shoulder and my kayak over the other. I would spare myself a lot of misery if I could simply patch the hull and paddle back to the ramp.

Jennifer, my dental hygienist, in a one-sided conversation while a suction tube, a mirror, and an ultrasonic scaler were keeping me mum, mentioned that she carries Flex Tape aboard her sea kayak. It looked promising on the web, so I bought a roll. The label said it was for “boats and yachts, canoes and kayaks” and could be applied “wet or dry…even underwater, conforms to any shape or object,” and could seal “virtually everything.” I was, however, unpleasantly surprised the first time I tried to apply a piece of it to my kayak, which I had hosed down for the test. The tape stuck in some places but not in others and didn’t flex enough to stick to sharp inside corners. I did a bit more research and found a reference guide for Flex Tape on the manufacturer’s website. It stated that the tape is “not compatible with most paints”; to that, I’d add varnish. And then, hidden inside the roll of the tape, there was a warning I found nowhere else in the manufacturer’s literature: “Tape is not intended to remove cleanly. May damage surface during attempt to remove.” That was it for me and Flex Tape. I may give the rest of the roll to Jennifer because the tape will work on her plastic kayak.

Photographs by the author

While the packaging for Flex Tape makes wide-ranging claims about its abilities and applications, especially for marine uses, it didn’t take long to find out what it wasn’t able to do.

Decades ago, I’d heard that British kayakers were using Denso’s Densyl Tape for emergency leak repairs. It was manufactured in the U.K., primarily for industrial use to protect pipes from corrosion, and at that time wasn’t available in the U.S. The tape is now manufactured in Texas and available for DIY use in a 2″ × 33′ roll. Densyl Tape, according to the manufacturer, is “a cold-applied corrosion prevention and sealing tape based on a synthetic fabric, impregnated and coated with a neutral petrolatum compound.” The olive-drab petrolatum is only slightly sticky to the touch and has a texture somewhere between modeling clay and lip balm.

While Flex Tape’s rubberized backing is flexible, it does not do well with sharp inside corners or compound curves. This test patch adhered to the hull and skeg, but couldn’t adapt to the shape and seal the area.

The full roll is about 5″ in diameter and much more than I’d need to carry for any outing so a few precut lengths would do. For testing, I cut 6″ pieces with scissors and, following the lead of U.K. Denso-advocates like sea-kayak instructor (and Denso-kit supplier) Howard Jeffs, I backed them with aluminum foil. The foil can stay with the tape when it is applied to a leak, preventing fingers from getting sticky with petrolatum. I put waxed paper on the other side and trimmed it and the foil around the tape with a margin of about ¼″. The prepared pieces take up very little space and would be easy to add to the minimal amount of gear I take for a two-hour paddle.

When the Flex Tape’s adhesive is able to bond to a surface, it has a tenacious grip and may need pliers to be removed.

I wasn’t going to punch any holes in my kayak for the tests—it has already suffered enough after taking flight from the roof rack. Seeing how well it stuck to the hull was the important thing. After hosing down the hull, I applied one patch with the foil backing and one without it, both on the gentle curves amidships. Pressing the patch from the middle outward pushed trapped water out from under the tape. On the patch without the foil, I could see how smearing the petrolatum also forced a few beads of water through the tape but then consolidated the tape’s coating and the fabric to form a more impermeable barrier. Smeared petrolatum also created a fillet outside the fabric that seemed like it would facilitate the flow of water over the patch and prevent it from peeling. I applied a third piece of Denso, without foil, to the forward end of the skeg and it quickly conformed to the complex contour without creases or gaps.

Denso’s Densyl Tape comes in a large, sticky roll. Developed as a means of preventing corrosion on metal pipes, it has been adopted by kayakers as an effective emergency patch.

With the patches in place, I paddled on a local lake for an hour, which is as long as it would take me to get back to the ramp on the slough in a worst-case scenario. All three patches stayed put and only the forward corners of the foil were dog-eared by the flow of water.

A strip of Densyl Tape can be applied right off the roll. Note how the tape’s coating feathers the edges. Gloves can keep hands clean but aren’t required.

One of the concerns I had about Densyl was for whatever residue it might leave behind after a patch is peeled off. If it were difficult to remove and perhaps contaminated the damaged area with petrolatum, it could make permanent repairs difficult. I needn’t have worried. What little goop was left behind was quickly removed with a paper towel and firm pressure. I finished up with soap and water just to make sure no oily film was left behind. The Densyl Tape I removed was as good as new and could be used again.

Strips of Densyl Tape can be sandwiched between aluminum foil and waxed paper to make ready-to-use patches. The foil backing can be left in place while the patch is pressed to the hull. It eliminates contact with the petrolatum and adds an extra measure of waterproofing to the patch.

Having the tape on the outside of the hull takes advantage of water pressure to stay in place. To see how it resisted water pressure working against the tape, I used a 4″ ABS drainpipe to hold a column of water and, for a leak, cut a 3″ kerf with a bandsaw.

Densyl Tape is exceptionally flexible and was easily applied to the complex shape at the forward end of the skeg.

Denso, without foil and applied over the kerf while water was flowing out of it, initially adhered to the pipe and stopped the leak. With 16″ of water in the pipe, the tape developed blisters that crept to the edge and then allowed water to flow. With 12″ of water, the Denso held its own against the pressure and didn’t form any blisters. None of my boats have hulls that draw even 12″, so a patch made on the inside could keep water leaking through a narrow crack. I would keep an eye on the patch and back it up to better secure it.

The three test patches on my kayak survived in very good shape after close to 5 miles, even with a few encounters with weeds like the one left draped over the stern.

The residue that Densyl tape leaves behind is easy to wipe off with a paper towel and firm pressure. The used tape can be re-covered with foil and waxed paper and reused.

Denso’s Densyl Tape is wonderful stuff: simple, effective, and well worth adding to any small-boat repair kit, and there’s enough on a roll to share it with boating friends.

Christopher Cunningham is the editor of Small Boats.

Densyl Tape is manufactured by Denso. The company doesn’t appear to offer the tape directly. The 2″ × 33′ (50mm × 10m) roll is available from Amazon for $27.

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.

John Greiner, His Way

John Greiner celebrated his 85th birthday in February 2022 and, six months later, sailed his newly launched 24′ boat into a slip at the North Cape Yacht Club in La Salle, Michigan. The boat’s arrival was the culmination of 23 months of work, and the realization of John’s lifelong dream to build a small cruiser.

When he was five years old, John was introduced to sailing by his father. “It was World War II,” John says, “and little boys didn’t get to do anything because of gas rationing and lights out at 8 p.m. to save energy. My dad was line foreman at Ohio’s Toledo Edison and was kept out of the war to repair wires…they were afraid of saboteurs taking down the electrical lines or bombing our factories. He’d come home from work on a Saturday afternoon and say, ‘George wants us to go sailing.’ So off we’d go to Toledo Yacht Club and join George King on OLD SAM, his 22′ by 8′ centerboard K-class catboat. They’d let me take the tiller. I had nothing to compare it with, but I fell in love with sailing.”

In 1951, when he was 14, John bought his first boat, a 12′ Nipper. Designed by Ray Green, the Nipper was a marconi-rigged catboat first built in 1938. There was an active Nipper fleet at the Toledo Yacht Club and John began racing with about 20 other boats. Within a year he was winning. It was the start of a long racing career on Lake Erie.

Photographs by Randy Mascharka

Before building his dream boat, John created a half model by gluing together some pieces of wood and then shaving the hull to the shape he wanted—high-sided, plumb transom, slightly raked stem. Initially he considered a centerboard but ultimately went with a fixed keel so that he could maximize the cabin space.

Three years after buying his Nipper, 17-year-old John tried his hand at building a boat. “I was working at a boatshop where we worked on molded-plywood outboard boats,” he says. “I built a Rhodes Bantam in the shop. I loved it and thought I’d make a career building wooden boats, but five months after graduating from high school in 1955, the boatshop owner said, ‘all my dealers are buying those damn fiberglass boats.’ Just the year before, he had told me that fiberglass construction was a fad, and I shouldn’t worry about it. But people still had wooden boats, so I started doing repair work. And I built four more Rhodes Bantams.”

When he wasn’t working, John was on the water sailing and racing. It was while he was racing Thistles that he tried his hand at sailmaking, a move that would change the direction of his career. “I made myself a sail and then friends started asking for sails for their boats. I set myself up as Greiner Sailmakers and made sails for 52 years before I turned the business over to my grandson, Brian, in 2019.”

John had built small boats before and even cold-molded a 30 footer with a friend, but MY WAY was the biggest he had built solo and his first lapstrake hull. The project was too large for John‘s garage so he built a temporary extension off the back, but space was still tight.

While boatbuilding may not have been the focus of his career, John continued to build boats for himself and the family. With the exception of a half-ton cold-molded 30′ sailboat, which he built with his friend, Jim Davis, his builds were all small: Penguins, Optimists, kayaks, and iceboats. “I was always too busy and didn’t have the spare time to build a bigger boat,” explains John. When COVID struck everything changed.

In early 2020, Brian was running the sailmaking business, but John was still working as an advisor and going into the office and sail loft on a regular basis. As the threat of COVID grew, however, the family became increasingly nervous. It was John’s daughter, Jill, who spoke up: “Dad, get out of here, you shouldn’t be here with all these young people partying and what-not. They don’t need you here anymore.” It was, says John, a pretty harsh message, but then the light came on: “At the age of 83,” he says, “I was finally free, with time to follow my dreams, time to build my own little cruising boat.”

Courtesy of John Greiner

MY WAY emerges from the garage. The move was complicated and required removing the door frame leading into the garage to accommodate the boat’s beam, and then removing the top frame from the front door and jacking it up to take out the span’s sag. There was just enough space for the boat to slide out beneath.

At the time, John was still sailing his Santana 35, RED CLOUD, in which he had won 150 first-place flags since the beginning of the 2000s, but she was 41 years old and had been raced hard for most of that time. And, John was forced to admit, she was just too big for him these days. He turned his thoughts to the next chapter. He would design and build a new boat in which he and his wife, Judy, could enjoy cruising for the next five years, until he was 90 or more.

Lake Erie, where they would be sailing, is known for its occasional serious and sudden storms. John decided that 24′ would be as small as he should go. It would have accommodations for four so they could take friends along on cruises. It needed to have full headroom, which would not be easy on a 24-footer, and John knew that a taller cabin would give the boat a “high look,” but comfort and safety were all-important.

Never one to do things without thought and planning, John developed the design by building a half model. Using a 1:12 scale—“It made the math easy!”—he glued some wood together and got out his block plane. He shaved until he had a hull with flat topsides, a fairly plumb bow, and a vertical transom. Lake Erie is relatively shallow and John considered fitting a centerboard, but didn’t want to compromise the interior space. Instead, he designed the boat to take a fixed keel.

John sits in the cockpit of MY WAY—where a racing background meets a cruising future. The tiller extension is a reflection of John’s many years racing small boats and allows him to sit forward of the outboard and mainsheet. The placement of the outboard within the cockpit is a nod to John’s age and an acceptance that he no longer wants to be leaning out over the transom to start the motor.

John’s garage wasn’t large enough for building the boat, so he built a 26′ × 16′ workshop off the back of it, and by October 2020 he was ready to start the boat. He took the lines off his model and scaled them up to construct 10 frames. He was, he says, torn between cold-molding and lapstrake but in the end went for lapstrake because he didn’t want his boat to “look like every other fiberglass boat.” To educate himself in lapstrake techniques he read the Clinker Plywood Boatbuilding Manual by Iain Oughtred, Practical Yacht Joinery by Fred P. Bingham, and The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction.

John created the molds, built the strongback, hung the molds and laminated stem, laminated the keelson, hung the transom, and bent on the 1 1⁄2″ × 2″ sheer battens. He spent a week fairing the molds. “Because I was only working off my model and not from plans drawn by a professional naval architect,” says John, “getting things fair took longer than I’d anticipated.” He cut the planks. “Each plank is 9” wide and I could get six pieces out of one sheet of 1⁄2″ marine-grade plywood. I scarfed these together. I got all the planking—13 strakes—out of 14 sheets of plywood. When the hull was fully planked, I epoxy-coated it and then we had a turning-over party. Forty friends came over and the youngest 20 of them picked it up and flipped it over. It took two minutes!”

Randy Mascharka

Down below there are accommodations for four and full standing headroom. Thanks to the many large portlights there is plenty of natural light, and with both a built-in sink and porta-potti, longer cruises on the Great Lakes will be comfortable.

With the hull right-side up, John worked on fitting out the interior and completing the structural framework. He ’glassed-in bulkheads of ½″ marine plywood and floors of 2″ Indonesian pine and built accommodations for a porta-potti, a sink and an icebox, a double berth in the forepeak and twin saloon berths. He made a well for the outboard motor because, “When I’m 90,” he says, “I won’t have to lean over the stern, I can stay in the cockpit and deal with the motor from there.” The cockpit was framed out, the sole installed, and the side benches—hinged to access spacious lockers beneath—were fitted. The deck, two layers of 1⁄4″ plywood laid over laminated 2″ × 2″ beams, was followed by the mahogany cabin sides and cockpit coaming.

When the build was complete and there was still all the finish work to be done, John’s friend, Ben Riley, showed up to lend a hand. “We sanded everything down with 220-grit sandpaper and then coated the deck, cockpit, and cabin with three coats of epoxy before applying three coats of varnish.” John had planned to paint the hull blue but decided, instead, to leave it bright so the grain of the wood could be seen.

Randy Mascharka

The two saloon berths are a good width and, thanks to cut-outs beneath the cockpit, long enough for most adults. The lower shelf fiddles are angled to provide a comfortable back rest.

Then, says John, “the fun started. We had to get the boat out of the shed, through the garage, and into the street. We had a lot of help. The boat was in a cradle and my son-in-law, Gary Goldberg, engineered two 16′-long 2 × 6s, which he slid under the cradle. We rolled the whole contraption—cradle and all—on 1″ pipes. The boat’s beam is 8′ plus the rubrails, which we had left off at this point. The back door into the garage is 8′ wide, so I had to remove the door frame and we wheeled it through into the garage…it just touched!”

With the boat still in the garage, John fitted the rubrails and then, once more, they were on the move. This time there was ample clearance of the boat’s beam, but height was a concern. “We had removed the upper frame of the door but, even so, it was too tight a fit and she got held up on the frame of the cabin hatch. We couldn’t remove that so, instead, we stood a 4 × 4 on end on a bottle jack and raised the door opening just enough to take the sag out of it and—BINGO—we rolled out into the street. Now all we had to do was install the keel and launch.”

Randy Mascharka

MY WAY’s sail plan with fully-battened mainsail and large overlapping genoa is more evidence of John’s racing influences. Despite being only 24′ long, there is more than enough room for four adults on board.

While that might sound straightforward, John and his friends were faced with more challenges. John had received a $5,000 estimate to have the keel pre-fabricated. It was too expensive. But his friend Mike Fahle found an old J24 for sale for $1,000. The J24, John says, was in poor condition, but the keel could be reused on his new boat. It took the friends seven hours and 25 Sawzall blades to remove the keel. John’s boat was lifted in slings on a hoist at Jockett’s Marina on the Ottawa River in Toledo and the keel was maneuvered into position on a forklift truck. The keelbolts lined up perfectly and the whole assembly was bolted and epoxied into place.

More parts were salvaged from the J24: the boom, the bow and stern pulpits, the stanchions, the rudder gudgeons, and a few other pieces. The mast was repurposed from a C&C 24 and a friend donated a set of winches. John made new sails and his daughter, Jill, and Gary helped with the rigging.

Randy Mascharka

The pulpits and stanchions were salvaged from a J24 that was to be demolished; they fit MY WAY perfectly. The uncluttered cabintop provides comfortable seating on a fair day.

The boat was launched from the marina into the Ottawa River and with John, Judy and friend Jerry German aboard, sailed from the river to the North Cape Yacht Club in La Salle, Michigan. They christened the boat MY WAY, and took the family out sailing. “We found her to be very well-mannered,” says John, “I could steer her with two fingers on the tiller. We sailed at 6 knots in medium winds, and she pointed well. I’m very pleased with her performance.”

John and Judy are looking forward to several years of happy cruising around Lake Erie. He may no longer be racing, but he is still out on the water, sailing, enjoying the wind and the weather, and, as John says, “still doing it MY WAY.”

 Jenny Bennett is managing editor of Small Boats.

Do you have a boat with an interesting story? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share it with other Small Boats readers

 

CLC Nesting Dinghy

I’ll put a case to you, as lawyer Jaggers did hypothetically to young Pip in Great Expectations. Put the case that a boat should be designed, and that this boat should be handy under oars. Put the case that this boat should also sail well, and further that it should accommodate a small outboard motor off the transom, should some unknown person desire to do so. Put the case, as well, that this boat must be detachable into two halves that may “nest” one inside the other so as to be hauled aboard and lashed down in the smallest possible space on the crowded deck of a long-distance cruiser, and therefore must be very light yet equally very strong. Put the case that this boat must also be attractive, and put that last case to yourself very carefully. These expectations are great, indeed.

Compromising to resolve such thorny conflicts is the intellectual challenge that Russell Brown, a designer and boatbuilder of Port Townsend, Washington, took on in working up a nesting dinghy that has one further twist: he wanted his company, PT Watercraft, to be able to market the boat as a kit that could be built by amateurs.

The result is impressive. Brown has been working a long time in lightweight boat construction, with an eye toward engineered solutions tending toward minimalism. Using thin plywood and powerful epoxy to best advantage, he strives for construction that is light in weight yet very strong, as many others have in using these techniques. He also spent a good part of his youth cruising the world’s oceans, first with his parents and later on his own, so he has direct practical experience of what works and what does not.

Nesting DInghyTom Jackson

By extensive ocean cruising, Russell Brown came to know what he valued in a nesting dinghy, and his PT 11, which weighs just 85 lbs, balances conflicting purposes of sailing, rowing, light weight, and compact stowage while still remaining a handsome boat.

For light weight, Brown chose 6mm okoume plywood for the topsides and the bottom panel. Almost every part of the boat is made of plywood, sheathed in fiberglass cloth set in epoxy. Though 11′ long when joined, the hull weighs only 85 lbs. With its low weight, this boat’s halves can be manhandled ridiculously easily by two people, and probably very easily by a fit person working alone. To keep the dinghy to a minimum size for hauling aboard, Brown chose to make the hull flat-bottomed, with but slight rocker and a skeg of minimal depth. Plus, he made the boat’s profile very flat at the sheerline, that critically important curve formed by the top edge of the uppermost plank. Giving a boat a flat sheerline risks ungainly appearance, but to Brown it was imperative to do so to allow the boat to stay compact when nested on board: the bundle is only 5′ 10″ long and 1′ 8″ high at one end and 1′ 5″ high at the other, and more sheer would have made for a taller nested stack. Brown anticipates that most cruising sailors will lash down the boat under the swinging mainsail boom, so height is critical.

Brown developed custom stainless-steel hardware to join the two halves together, and the system seems to work well in the water or on land. In this type of boat, the hull is usually constructed in full, then two bulkheads are installed at or near amidships, and then the builder—no doubt after taking a deep breath—cuts his hull in half, a process fully described in the kit’s extensive instructions.

Nesting DinghyTom Jackson

The 11’ hull divides to form a bundle only 5’10” long, 4′ 2″ wide, and a maximum of 1′ 8″ high, and the flat bottom makes nesting them easy.

The forward of the two sections is completely decked over at thwart height, which provides necessary hull stiffness and also sees to it that any water coming aboard is directed to the after section for easy bailing. At the top of the sheerstrakes, plywood pieces scarfed together and set perpendicular to the sheer planks make L-shaped gunwales that stiffen the topsides, deflect spray, and provide a flat surface to receive a glued-on continuous, low-profile rubber fender that actually accentuates the boat’s appearance. Brown kept his ’midships bulkheads low, so that the foredeck extends aft of the joined bulkheads when the hulls are assembled. This provides a comfortable rowing position, with no need for a thwart.

The joining hardware, meanwhile, consists of four knobs that screw through bushings in the after bulkhead and into threaded receivers in the forward one, with O-rings making the fittings waterproof. The sequence for attaching the hulls together is well thought out. The forward hull has two custom carbon-fiber brackets mounted on the deck and tight against the bulkhead sides. These brackets extend aft just far enough to have the after bulkhead slip behind them, which is easily managed. They hold the hulls together and in the right alignment while tightening first the lower knobs and then the upper ones. The hull halves join together surprisingly tightly, and in rowing and sailing (admittedly in light conditions) I never saw any water come through.

Nesting DinghyTom Jackson

The two hull halves assemble easily while afloat.

Technology and innovations seem to have come together to make nesting dinghies more viable than ever. Lightweight plywood-epoxy construction makes a stiff hull, which is especially important when introducing the added complexity of cutting it in half. The challenge of lightweight structural design is what got Brown thinking about nesting dinghies in the first place. “A dinghy is really a tool, it’s not a pleasure boat. If you’re talking about a dinghy being a tender for a cruising boat, it has to be light, it has to be really tough, it has to be abrasion resistant, and it has to perform all the other functions it has to perform.

“The intent was to make a dinghy for serious cruisers,” Brown said. “I have a nesting dinghy that I built in ’85 that I took on most of the cruising I’ve ever done. It didn’t have the kind of sophisticated attachment hardware that this one does, but it’s what really got me into the whole idea of nesting dinghies. And cruising really led me to see the interest and need for a serious nesting dinghy. There’s more nesting dinghies out there than you can shake a stick at, but none of them that were ever really highly developed, as far as easy assembly in the water, light weight, complete kit package, good sailing characteristics, and really good rowng characteristics.”

Nesting DinghyTom Jackson

Two carbon-fiber brackets (visible at the edge of the foredeck near the bulkheads) hold the hulls in alignment while knobs are tightened to hold them firmly together.

Brown started with pleasurable rowing in mind. He noticed other cruisers needlessly struggling with dinghies mainly because they were miserable to row, while his was comparatively easy. “That’s what I ended up doing with my nesting dinghy. I loved it. Other people had these god-awful inflatables, they were hoisting these 18-hp engines on and off, and going for gas all the time. It was my experience that got me going in this direction. This boat’s not a sprinter of a rowboat, but it really has very good cruising speed capabilities.” Brown earlier considered all-carbon-fiber construction for even lighter weight, but actually building a prototype gave him experience that came to the rescue: “I actually didn’t like it because it’s too loud. I don’t like rowing it, I don’t like using it. If you dropped the bow painter snaphook into the boat, the whole anchorage woke up.”

Nesting DinghyTom Jackson

Coming onto a beach, the boat’s flat bottom, which is well sheathed in fiberglass cloth set in epoxy to resist abrasion, allows her to stand upright, and the long foredeck makes it easy to step ashore.

During my row, I found that the new boat, largely because of its light weight, feels a bit squirrelly at first, but in short order it’s very simple to find her sweet spot. The boat tracks well enough. The combination of light weight and slight rocker, or longitudinal curvature, to her flat-athwartships bottom, meanwhile, make her extremely maneuverable. She’ll turn with just a flick of the oar. That’s an excellent characteristic in a crowded harbor, where responsive turning and quick stops are often necessary. However, in my judgment she would be plenty able for gunkholing expeditions and amply commodious for ferrying supplies from shore. “We’ve rowed the boat with four 200-lb guys, and it still goes right along,” Brown said. I found her quite a pleasure to row; I could see Canada over my shoulder, and Brown coaxed me back to shore only with some difficulty.

Nosing into shore, the flat bottom proved its worth once more. The boat comes easily to the beach, and it stands upright prettily. The foredeck makes it exceptionally easy to step forward and out of the boat, dry-footed.

The sailing rig is deliberately simple, a modified windsurfer rig with the sail’s sleeve slipping over a two-part carbon-fiber mast, which needs no standing rigging. The mast itself fits easily into a tube mounted between the foredeck and the bottom. The entire rig weighs but a few pounds. Brown, who has long experience in developing foil sections in plywood, has also designed a daggerboard and a kick-up rudder, both of which would be very familiar to any dinghy racer. The designer likes to sit right on the boat’s bottom while sailing; in light air, I found kneeling amidships to work all right for me. It was a light-air day during our rendezvous, so I can’t say much about the boat’s sailing characteristics, though I found her quick for what little breeze we had. Heeling to the few puffs that materialized, she held out the promise of surprisingly good performance. Later, when Brown found a bit more breeze during his time at the helm, I observed that she accelerated quickly and tacked easily. Like any lightweight dinghy, she is very responsive to crew weight, yet she feels stable. An old dinghy racer would be at home here and would not be displeased by her sailing qualities.

Nesting DinghyTom Jackson

The dinghy attains good speed quickly, tracks reasonably well, and rows very comfortably. Unlike many dinghies, she’ll make rowing ashore from an anchorage a pleasure.

As I sailed, in my imagination, I thought of anchoring down in some pretty harbor somewhere and spending the few minutes necessary to get the boat launched, rigged, and ready to sail into the golden light of evening. I put the case, further, that doing so would allow anyone so fortunate to enjoy such a harbor in a boat that is fine-looking beyond all expectations.

Nesting DinghyRussell Brown

To keep the PT 11’s nested dimensions to a minimum, Brown made the boat flat-bottomed with only slight rocker and also quite flat-sheered. Nevertheless, the boat is handsome and sails smartly with her modified windsurfer rig. The boat is available in kit form only, and the designer has developed an extensive instruction manual for builders.

The PT 11 nesting dinghy is available as a kit from PT Watercraft.