May 2022 Archives - Small Boats Magazine

Doug Hylan’s sail-and-oar Little Crab and Mike O’Brien’s pirogue-like Six-Hour Canoe are our featured Boat Profiles while TotalFair fairing compound and 7 Seas 3-Eye Sneakers get a close look in our reviews. A do-it-yourself plywood boat cart is the subject of our Technique feature. We take a Maine-Coast weekend cruise from Bass Harbor to Pond Island and back and our editor recalls almost losing his canoe to a landslide on Chesapeake Bay’s Kent Island. Our Reader Built Boat is actually six boats, the work of a repeat boatbuilder in Florida.

From The Editor

By a Landslide

Buried and broken

In James Michener’s novel, "Chesapeake," his fictional Devon Island was slowly obliterated by erosion. At Kent Island, erosion is all too real and once tried to take a canoe down with it.

Boat Profile

The Six-Hour Canoe

An easily built 15' double-blade plywood canoe

Designed by Mike O'Brien in 1977 to put two extra sheets of plywood to good use, the Six-Hour Canoe has been an introduction to boatbuilding and boating for thousands.

Boat Profile

Little Crab

Doug Hylan’s 13’ V-Bottomed Skiff for Sail and Oar

The Little Crab is a 13’ flat-bottomed skiff by Doug Hylan to serve as a tender to a yacht, a weekend camp-cruiser for two, or a boat for exploring protected waters under oar and sail.

Adventures

Pond Island

A dinghy built for two

A September weekend cruise from Bass Harbor to Pond Island aboard an 11′ sail-and-oar dinghy made a pleasant Maine-Coast getaway for two.

Technique

A Take-Apart Boat Cart

An interlocking plywood frame for hand-truck wheels

A pair of hand-truck wheels, some bits of ¾” plywood and a steel axle are about all that’s needed to make a small-boat cart that comes apart for easy storage on board.

Product Reviews

7 Seas 3-Eye Sneaker

A flexible boat shoe from Sperry

Sperry’s boating sneaker has scuppers and hydrophobic uppers to speed drying, 360° lacing that provides a snug fit at the heel, and a siped rubber sole for a sure grip on wet surfaces.

Product Reviews

TotalFair

Quick and easy epoxy fairing compound

TotalBoat’s two-part marine epoxy fairing compound isn’t fussy about mixing, goes on smoothly, and sands easily.

Reader Built Boats

The Education of a Serial Boatbuilder

When the work is its own reward

A Florida man confesses he’d rather build boats than go boating. With a half-dozen boats in his largely unused fleet, he’s running out of room to keep them.

May 2022