The Mini Auray

The perfect tender?

Lightweight but sturdy, sure. Sweet to row but able to carry a heavy load safely, of course. Well-behaved while being towed, yes. Will take a sail rig or a motor. Stable under foot or butt. Looks good—the list goes on and on.

In 1912, the English yachtsman Claud Worth saw fishermen from the Breton port of Auray using pram dinghies that checked a lot of those boxes. “For steadiness, carrying capacity, landing on a beach, or dragging over mud they would be difficult to improve on,” he wrote in his book, Yacht Cruising. “Any amateur carpenter could build one.”

Courtesy of Andrew Fetherston

Claud Worth’s plans and description for the 9′ 9“ workboat, Auray Fisherman’s Dinghy, was published in his book, Yacht Cruising.

The Auray prams were either carried on the decks of luggers or towed. “The next day we saw one of these punts being towed in a fresh breeze,” Worth wrote. “It seemed to be skimming along the top of the water like a hydroplane.” Worth measured and drew plans of an Auray dinghy that was 9′ 9″ long, 4′ 2″ beam. In profile, it was quite like a Norwegian pram, but was a simpler build with a flat bottom and flat planked sides. The long bow, as Worth said, kept the pram dry while under tow, and would allow a rower to step ashore dry-shod.

Several designers since—Phil Bolger among them—have drawn their own versions of Worth’s Auray plans. Even though Worth noted that knocking 9″ off the length would do no harm, most subsequent versions stayed near 10′ long—big and quite heavy for a tender. Eventually, plans for smaller versions appeared; Gavin Atkin features one—along with a more Worth-sized version—in his book Ultrasimple Boatbuilding.

Gavin Atkin

Auray punts are still in use as dependable workaday boats in their home region. This one was spotted in France in the Gulf of Morbihan, Brittany.

Another smaller Auray comes from Hannu Vartiala, the Finnish proprietor of the website Hannu’s Boatyard, a labor of love through which he offers free plans of his small—sometimes very small—plywood boats. Visit his site and you will see two designs that are smaller, lighter versions of an Auray pram: the Micro Auray, which can be built from one sheet of plywood, is too small to make a good tender, but the Mini Auray, built from one and a half sheets, I would say, sits right in the Goldilocks spot.

“As it happens, the boat scales down very nicely,” Vartiala notes. “The overall shape is conserved beautifully. The Mini Auray measures 7′ 6″ × 4′…she displaces about 1,200 lbs just before flooding. At 250 lbs displacement—that is, one person—her freeboard is 10″. The freeboard is 6″ at 570 lbs displacement.”

Building the Mini Auray

A few years ago, when I was living part-time in France, I decided to build a Cape Henry 21. I ordered a kit from Alec Jordan of Jordan Boats in the U.K., and also asked him to cut me a kit for Vartiala’s Mini Auray out of 1⁄4″ okoume plywood. It would, I thought, give me something to work on while epoxy cured on the main project, and later would serve as my tender. This was, I confess, a lazy man’s shortcut. Vartiala’s plans, given in both imperial and metric units, are models of simplicity and clarity, and I could have laid out and cut the parts in a few hours. But Vartiala’s plans include CNC cutting files, so opting for the kit—even adding a nice crown to the transoms, just for style—was an easy choice. I needed to drill holes for the wire stitches, but then it was straightforward pulling the hull into shape and filleting with epoxy and fiberglass tape.

Amanda Harris

Alec Jordan cut and delivered the parts for the Mini Auray’s hull; all the author had to do was drill the holes for the stitches and put everything together.

The kit did leave much to the builder’s imagination. Vartiala’s plans yield five pieces of plywood that, assembled, give you a hull and one small but crucial piece of information: the location of the aft edge of the main rowing seat. The rest—rubrails, frames, seat arrangement and supports, bow eye location and backing plate—are up to the builder. Like many boatbuilders, I prefer this. Want quarter knees? Sheer clamp? Floorboards? Skeg? Have at it, if you’ve got the wood and don’t mind the extra weight.

Vartiala’s site has photos of a Mini Auray with floorboards, a rowing seat, a stern seat, a small foredeck and a rubrail. Sealed with three coats of epoxy, it weighs 43 lbs, according to the builder. My experience suggests that this is close to the minimum possible for a solid, useful, good-looking copy of the boat.

I wasn’t too concerned about weight, so introduced some structural elements to make the hull stiffer and stronger. At my request, Jordan created and cut three okoume frames, to be set 20″, 50″, and 75″ aft of the forward perpendicular to be part of the seat structures. (The Auray’s sides splay at a constant 68°, so you can easily put frames wherever you wish.) I put in an iroko sheer clamp and rubrail, to create a solid base for oarlocks, and added iroko quarter knees and doubled the transoms to 1⁄2″ thickness.

Other features blended the practical with the aesthetic. The center rowing thwart is a simple pine plank, slotted to fit over the second frame, resting on short riser cleats screwed and epoxied to each side panel, and a single ’midship post. The forward seat and sternsheets are my creations, pieced together from okoume offcuts, carried on black-locust riser cleats, and braced against the forward and after frames. There’s room for flotation underneath them.

Amanda Harris

When rowing solo, the author sits at the ’midship rowing station. He moves forward when carrying a passenger in the sternsheets. In either configuration the boat’s fore-and-aft trim is excellent.

There is a 2″ space between the transom and the sternsheets: I realized that my feet would reach the Auray’s transom when I rowed, so I created this gap to give my toes wiggle room. If you build this boat, I strongly recommend this; it is the difference between pain and comfort.

Because the boat would be dragged off and onto beaches, I added a small skeg and two rubbing strips—all of black locust—on the bottom. The rubbing strips allowed me to epoxy and through-fasten floor strips inside to enhance the bottom’s rigidity. I could install floorboards over the floors, but haven’t yet felt any need.

The finished boat, including two sets of oarlocks, weighs 52 lbs. I could and often did carry the boat comfortably on one padded shoulder, with a pair of 6′ 6″ oars in the other hand—at least until I began looking back to my early 80s with nostalgic longing.

The Mini Auray’s Performance

The Mini Auray was quick to show its merits. I was meeting some friends at Lacanau, a lake west of Bordeaux, for the champagne launch, and found I needed wider roof racks to carry the boat. I sawed out some wood extensions and headed for the coast. Got stuck behind a slow driver on a back road. Passed him doing 60+ miles per hour. One of the wood rack extensions snapped. I watched in the rear-view mirror as the boat hit the pavement and started to tumble. Not a pretty sight. It ended up in the roadside weeds.

Amanda Harris

The Mini Auray has the distinctive sweeping lines of the original working pram as drawn by Claud Worth. The high bow keeps the boat dry when rowing in a chop or being towed. The skeg (just visible here below the transom) assists in maintaining directional stability under oar or tow.

I pulled over and walked back. The boat was undamaged. Yes, you read that right. A couple of scuffs. I jury-rigged the rack and drove—carefully—the rest of the way. Launched the next day. No leaks. So, without question, sturdy and durable. And, as a few moments at the oars would reveal, a dancer. Tourner, glisser, elancer—it had all the moves. And it was quick. Two of my boat-wise friends, paddling hard in an inflatable kayak, could not keep up. The pram carried well, ran straight, turned when asked, pirouetted on demand. I put a passenger in the sternsheets and rowed from the forward seat; the resulting fore-and-aft trim was perfect.

In a later outing, to test her ability to carry weight, I enlisted two sturdy friends as cargo; together we weighed about 550 lbs. As Vartiala had promised, we had a bit more than 6″ of freeboard. I rowed from the center thwart, 100 yards across the Lot River at Caix and back, without incident, although I would hesitate to try it in a choppy anchorage. Also, the oarlocks were too close to the water for comfortable rowing. I think rowing from the bow seat might be easier.

Kristin Fetherston

The diminutive size of the Mini Auray is deceptive. It can carry as much as 550 lbs and still have 6” of freeboard. With an adult and two children the freeboard is more generous and motion through the water is smooth.

So, I had my tender. One of the sweet details of a Mini Auray is that the towing eye is mounted under the bow transom, where it won’t damage your big boat’s topsides paint job.

And there, alas, the project ended. I wasn’t spending enough time in France to finish the Cape Henry quickly, and had not been able to find a mooring or dock space in the region. So, I sold the Cape Henry hull.

Which left me with my little Auray. No regrets. She’s great company.

Andrew Fetherston, born in New York City, has owned boats since he was 11, including eight that he built himself since retiring from a career in journalism. He is an artist and the author of two books. He worked on tugboats, freighters, and railroads in his youth. He has three grown children and eight grandchildren. He and his wife, the writer Amanda Barton Harris, live in Manhattan, Shelter Island, and Pestillac, France. In the April 2024 issue of Small Boats, he wrote “Crow’s Last Sail.”

Mini Auray Particulars

LOA:   7′ 6″
Beam:   4′
Weight:   52 lbs

 

Information and cutting plans for the Mini Auray can be found on Hannu Vartiala’s website, Hannu’s Boatyard.