August 2020 Archives - Small Boats Magazine

In this issue, we meet Brko, a Croatian fisherman who makes lobster traps worthy of any art museum, and tour Lake Riffe in Washington’s Cascade foothills. Paul Gartside’s Centerboard Lugger and Walt Simmons’s Ducktrap Wherry are the subjects of our boat profiles, and we take a look at Discovery View dry bags and inexpensive but effective hook scrapers. Alex Zimmerman, who knows a lot about lighting, makes the case for upgrading shop lights from fluorescent tubes to LED strips. Frank Turner is the builder of our Reader Built Boats, four strip-built canoes, one for every member of his family.

From The Editor

The Mustached One

Breakfast with Brko

Our editor’s sea-kayak tour of islands off the coast of Croatia had more than its fair share of wilderness adventure, but his brief stop at a small costal village brought one of the trip’s most memorable moments, breakfast with a fisherman known as Brko, the mustached one.

Boat Profile

Gartside’s Centerboard Lugger

Old ways at work

Paul Gartside drew the inspiration for his Centerboard Lugger from British workboats of a century ago. With its traditional lapstrake hull and lug-yawl rig, it’s nearly identical to the boats of the past. The addition of a centerboard trunk is the only notable “upgrade” from the original.

Boat Profile

Duck Trap Wherry

Forty years a classic

Walt Simmons first offered plans for the Duck Trap Wherry in 1980 as a pulling boat for traditional construction. Later, in response to requests from his customers, he created a lighter version in glued-lapstrake plywood and added a sailing rig.

Adventures

Dammed

Exploring Washington's Riffe Lake

Riffe Lake is a reservoir in the foothills of Washington State’s Cascade Mountains, an idyllic setting but for the shoreline’s reminders of abandoned towns, lost forests, and an aging dam.

Technique

LED Shop Lighting

Better lighting for finer work

To do good work in the shop, you need to see what you’re doing. While fluorescent tubes have long been the standard shop lights, new LED strip lights are brighter, more economical, last longer, and don’t flicker or hum.

Product Reviews

Discovery View Dry Bags

Removing the mystery

Kent and Audrey Lewis row, paddle, and sail their fleet of boats in the warm waters of the Florida panhandle. While they don’t mind getting wet, the gear they take with them needs to stay dry. Their Discovery View dry bag does the job.

Product Reviews

Hook Scrapers

Inexpensive and versatile

Hook scrapers are inexpensive tools that make themselves useful in building and renovating boats, whether shaving wood, smoothing cured epoxy, or removing old paint.

Reader Built Boats

The Turners’ Canoes

A canoe for each man, woman, and child

Frank Turner built a canoe for himself as a new challenge to his woodworking skills. It turned out that he enjoyed paddling and so did his family, so he built three more canoes. One for his wife, and one for each of his two sons.

Past Issues

From The Archives

Small Boats Annual 2008

July 2017

May 2022

May 2025

View All

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