February 2020

In the February issue we join Roger Siebert for a quiet weekend getaway on the Texas Gulf coast, making camp where Hurricane Harvey tore right through a Matagorda Island beach. Our boat profiles focus on Chesapeake Light Craft’s Lighthouse Tender Peapod, a double-ender with an interesting combination of edge-joined and lapped strakes, and the Gaff Sloop from Gartside Boats, a jaunty, traditionally built daysailer with a topsail and bowsprit. Earl Boissonou shares the details of wooden gantry cranes a home boatbuilder can easily knock together to lift and roll a heavy hull. Kent Lewis reviews a marlinspike knife that the U.S. Navy has issued to sailors for over a century, and editor Christopher Cunningham puts Jackery’s Explorer 160 portable power station through its paces. Our Reader Built Boat comes to us from Austria and is a unique combination of an American camp cruiser and Venetian oars and oarlocks. And our editor offers a look at his reproduction of a traditional Aleut baidarka, which was collected in 1934; it turned out to be an exceptionally fast and seaworthy kayak, even among contemporary sea kayaks.