The Marsh Cat

I had spent a long time looking for a boat that I could build to sail the waters of Chesapeake Bay and beyond. The boat would need to be able to carry four for daysailing, accommodate two for camp-cruising for up to two weeks, offer good sailing performance, have a shallow draft for exploring backwaters, and carry a small outboard for auxiliary power. It had to be small enough to be built and stored in a two-car garage, easily trailered, simple enough to be built in a reasonable amount of time, quick and easy to rig at the launch ramp, and have the good looks of a classic wooden boat. Although my list of requirements seemed to grow as I browsed through books of boat plans, my focus narrowed down to catboats. Their generous beam, sometimes almost half their length, offers lots of room, and their single sail is as simple as rigs get. In the book Forty Wooden Boats, I finally found the boat I wanted to build, the Marsh Cat by Joel White.

Kevin MacDonald

The Marsh Cat's broad beam makes the cockpit sole wide enough to sleep two flanking the centerboard trunk. A boom tent provides cover.

At 15′ long and with a beam of 6′11″, the Marsh Cat has a spacious cockpit. With that much breadth, there would be ample room for sleeping comfortably on the floorboards on either side of the centerboard case. The 152-sq-ft sail set on a high-peaked gaff rig supplies the power. The 1,309-lb displacement assures easy trailering and launching, and the 9″ draft, with the centerboard up, makes exploration of the Chesapeake Bay’s shallow estuaries possible. The Marsh Cat plans from The WoodenBoat Store offered all the detail needed for a first-time builder. The full-sized patterns for molds, stem, and transom eliminate the need for lofting.