When Dale Cottrell started building boats in the 1970s, he was working with fiberglass, not wood. At first he made fiberglass canoes, and then in 1984 he designed and built the Puffin Dinghy. He built a business around the Puffin and ultimately did quite well with it, selling thousands of them at a rate of 300 or more per year. But popping ’glass boats out of molds wasn’t where his heart was. He wanted to build wooden boats, and in 1994 he established Cottrell Boatbuilding in Searsport, Maine. He and his son Seth now build about a dozen small boats a year, rowing boats mostly, but a few for oar and sail. Their Tadpole Tender is a boat Dale designed and built for a customer looking for a boat that could be used to teach his kids to row. Drawn along the lines of a Whitehall, the 10′ Tadpole also proved to be popular as a tender.

The skeg does a good job keeping the Tadpole on track, eliminating the need to maintain course with the oars. The rope incorporated in the rub rail is one of several options.photographs by the author

The skeg does a good job keeping the Tadpole on track, eliminating the need to maintain course with the oars. The rope incorporated in the rub rail is one of several options for the gunwale guard.

The Tadpole is built in glued-lap plywood fashion with meranti marine plywood and epoxy. The 10 strakes are lined-off well, and the laps run fair from stem to stern. The hull is painted, making it easier to maintain and less stressful to use than a varnished hull.

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