Small Boats Annual 2008

Editor’s Page: Life with Small Boats
There’s a great image from early-last-century Marblehead, Massachusetts, showing a 21′ decked dory being lowered from the second story of a village workshop. The boat, brand new in the photograph, was built on that upper floor and was being lowered to the ground for commissioning and launching. A gang of helpers with rolled-up sleeves stands by… Continued on Page 5 of PDF version.

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Boat Profile

Nancy’s China

A 15' hard-chined pocket cruiser

The Nancy’s China design is a marriage of the big and the small. It’s the biggest boat you can fit in a garage and the smallest boat you would want to sleep on.

Technique

Living with Little Boats

A guide to orderly storage and transport

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Little boats are...well...little. By my definition, they can be towed by four-cylinder cars and ride on trailers without brakes. They are usually less than 400 lbs and often are powered by only wind, muscle, or both. The smallest ones can be placed on roof racks and carried atop a car. They are the…

Various small boats with different colored sails out on the water.

Adventures

The 2007 Small Reach Regatta

A portfolio of small boats

For the 2007 Small Reach Regatta, the waters off WoodenBoat swarmed with small boats for three days. Read the recap of that inaugural event.

Boat Profile

The West Branch

A Y-sterned canoe

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Unlike its square-sterned cousins, the West Branch canoe can carry a small motor on its transom while retaining the good paddling qualities of a double-ended canoe.

Boat Profile

The Ipswich Bay 18

A classically inspired one-design

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - The Ipswich Bay 18 is a decked sailing dory reminiscent of the small racing boats of the Massachusetts North Shore of the first half of the 20th century.

Boat Profile

Lumber Yard Skiff

The Model T of boats

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Walter Baron’s Lumber Yard Skiff is so-named because its materials can be procured from local lumberyards. The boat is rugged, inexpensive, stable, and meant for a variety of purposes—from fishing to recreation.

Boat Profile

Acorn 13

A jewel of a boat

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Designer Iain Oughtred’s Acorn 13 has evolved from a series of designs, starting with a 7' 10" dinghy. With his 11' 8" Acorn, he used a finer hull for rowing and sailing, and the 13' version of the Acorn is simply the 11' 8" version stretched by spacing the construction molds a little…

Boat Profile

Shearwater

A pulling boat with auxiliary sail power

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Shearwater is a lithe, easily built adaptation of a traditional Norwegian design—the oselver, or Os estuary boat.

Boat Profile

Redwing

A power skiff for simple cruising

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Karl Stambaugh’s REDWING 18 is a plywood boat based on a Howard Chapelle design of traditional construction. Stambaugh designed his version “to make her easier to build while keeping the traditional appearance of the Chapelle design.”

Boat Profile

WAYWARD

An efficient canal and river cruiser

An easily driven hull needn’t be unattractive, as designer Paul Gartside has proved with WAYWARD, which relies on a 25-hp outboard for propulsion.

Boat Profile

The Core Sound Series

Camp-cruisers with attitude

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Designed by Graham Byrnes, the Core Sound 17 was a development of his earlier Spindrift 10-footer and Bay River Skiff 17. The latter, inspired by the traditional working skiffs of the Hatteras area in North Carolina, was conceived in the late 1980s as a “good utility boat that could be rowed, motored, and…

Boat Profile

The 18′ Mower Dory

A boat for fine rowing and sailing

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - The 18' Mower Dory is an evolution of the beach-launched fishing boats of Swampscott, Massachusetts. Fishermen were skeptical of these boats when the type debuted in the early 1900s; these dories gained respect rapidly, however, for their windward ability and dryness.

Boat Profile

The Weekend Dinghy

High pleasure per pound

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - The Weekend Dinghy, designed by Karl Stambaugh, is a quickly and simply built stitch-and-glue skiff. The Weekend Dinghy may be kept a simple rowboat, or rigged to sail.

Boat Profile

Freestone Classic Drift Boat

Wooden boats for whitewater

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - The basic drift boat form evolved from various sources: among the boats that made their way from the East Coast to the West Coast in the 19th century were log-driving bateaux and fishing dories. These flat-bottomed types were later adapted for use on Oregon’s McKenzie and Rogue Rivers, where they were given considerably…

Boat Profile

CARPENTER

A beach-explorer tender with a design pedigree

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Paul LaBrie is new to professional boatbuilding, but the design he chose for his first commercial project is one of the oldest in this publication. CARPENTER was drawn up by L. Francis Herreshoff in the summer of 1929—his Design No. 41—and featured in his book Sensible Cruising Designs.

Boat Profile

JOLENA III

An electric-powered “steam” launch

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - "I’ve been the subject of a helluva lot of flattery over the past three days—not to say that I don’t appreciate it,” said Jim Hulm, beaming, while working his fantail launch alongside a floating dock at Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport. It was a Sunday in June, the third day of the 2007 WoodenBoat Show,…

Boat Profile

MARTHA

A soulful little pocket cruiser

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Sam (S.S.) Crocker designed the 19' 9" pocket cruiser Sallee Rover as a yawl in 1953; later, in 1955, he drew the sloop-rigged version seen in the accompanying photographs. Making just a few changes to her for aesthetic purposes, Joel White built this sloop in 1967 for his father, E.B. White, and named…

Boat Profile

The 18′ 8″ Mackinaw Boat

A mini Lake Michigan workboat

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - This boat is a pint-sized version of a well-known and respected type that worked Lake Michigan from the late 19th century until the beginning of World War I. It’s called a Mackinaw boat—though historically that name applied to a range of boats that have only tenuous family connections.

Boat Profile

The Melonseed Skiff

Daysailer and duckgunner

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - This fine gunning skiff from the bays and coastal lagoons of southern New Jersey might have evolved from the lapstrake beach skiffs that worked the exposed Atlantic beaches of the Garden State. Similarities of line and construction between the beach skiffs and the melonseeds seem too powerful to ignore.

Boat Profile

Dad’s Ol’ Outboard Skiff

A dreamboat for the rest of us

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - In a sea of wooden boats that are out of reach for many of us, here is one that offers some respite—Dad’s Ol’ Outboard Skiff. She’s the brainchild of Michigan builder Mike Kiefer, who has been building boats and teaching wooden boat building at the Great Lakes Boatbuilding Company, for well over 20…

Boat Profile

Night Heron

A fast and handsome 18' kayak

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - Have you noticed all of those kayaks riding along atop cars and trucks on their way to waterborne adventures? Their owners have seen the light. These slender double-ended boats require little initial investment, not much maintenance, and can be put on the water in seconds. In them we’ll cross open water, and when…

Boat Profile

The Moosabec Reach Boat

New life for a striking 14-footer from the 19th century

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - I never met John Gardner, but I’ve spent many an afternoon with him. Leafing from one chapter of his books to another, it’s easy to get distracted by the down-to-earth practicality, the enthusiastic descriptions of traditional boats, and the ringing call to action to see these boats built anew and put to use.…

Boat Profile

The Long Point

A center-console skiff

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - There’s something nearly archetypal about the Long Point skiff. This 15-footer has high sides and a flat bottom, and is driven by a small four-stroke outboard motor. “It used to be that everyone had one of these things,” said the designer, Tom Hill, as we skipped across a modest chop on Penobscot Bay…

Boat Profile

Skerry

A Norse-inspired kit boat

From the 2008 Small Boats Annual - My penchant for Scandinavian boatbuilding techniques once prompted Matt Murphy at WoodenBoat to tell me that it seemed as though I was trying to “get in touch with my inner Viking.” But when I look around, I see that I am hardly alone. Some aesthetics—think of Japanese architecture, Italian stonework, New England barns—have…

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