Small Boats Annual 2014

Editor’s Page: Endless Experimenting
At last summer’s WoodenBoat Show in Mystic, Connecticut, a handsome little dark-hulled outboard-powered skiff caught my eye. It was at the dock behind a row of exhibitor tents, and I soon tracked it down to its builder, the Pert Lowell Co., and asked Ralph Johnson, proprietor of that company, about the design … Continued on Page 5 of PDF version.

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Boat Profile

Pen-Hir

A modern classic pocket cruiser

François Vivier designed the handsome pocket cruiser Pen-Hir for his own use. He cruises the boat for up to two weeks at a time, often singlehanded, along the Brittany coast.

Boat Profile

JADE

A gaff-headed sloop from New Zealand

To develop his trailerable daysailer, Herbert Krumm-Gartner started by carving a half model, inspired by the boatbuilding methods and design aesthetics of Nathanael Greene Herreshoff.

Boat Profile

The Mirror

An engaging English dinghy

With an open-cockpit layout, relatively high boom, and lots of seating, the Mirror is ideal for taking kids out.

Boat Profile

The Point Comfort 18

A modern deadrise skiff

Doug Hylan’s Point Comfort 18 offers the seaworthiness and lineage of a Chesapeake deadrise skiff with the light weight and ease of construction a plywood hull provides.

Boat Profile

The Ipswich Bay Skiff

Built by eye and shaped by batten

The Pert Lowell Co. in Amesbury, Massachusetts, designed the Ipswich Bay Skiff for a customer who wanted a lightweight but rugged skiff that he could launch from the beach on a dolly.

Boat Profile

The Ultimate Freight Canoe

The wood-and-canvas Moosehead Laker

Abundant cargo-carrying capacity was uppermost in Francis “Mick” Fahey’s mind when he designed a wood-and-canvas freight canoe for his own use in the 1960s. The canoe’s versatility has made its successors, including this Jerry Stelmok–built Moosehead Laker named FIELD OF STREAMS, popular among camp owners and fishing guides in the Maine lakes.

Boat Profile

Rescue Minor

From military rescue vessel to family electric launch

Shallow draft, center console, room for a family, and an electric motor make this Rescue Minor, built by students at the Great Lakes Boat Building School, an ideal boat for Michigan’s Les Cheneaux Islands.

Boat Profile

The Peterborough Nomad

A cottage runabout reborn

This 15' cedar-strip Peterborough Nomad by Woodwind Yachts was built on a mold created from an original Nomad launched by the Peterborough Canoe Company in 1958.

Boat Profile

Thompson Thomboy

A speedy little runabout

The author’s THOMMY, a 1955 Thompson Thomboy, is in original condition, with nothing anachronistic or out of place.

Boat Profile

Sinne 610 Expedition Boat

For adventuresome rowing

For long-distance rowing trips on Finland’s many lakes, Jouko Koskinen had in mind a lightweight boat that would row very well but could also be fitted with bicycle wheels for portages and equipped for camp-cruising.

Boat Profile

The Simmons Sea Skiff

A seaworthy outboard fishing boat

The Simmons Sea Skiff was first developed as a beach-launched, oar-powered fishing boat for coastal North Carolina, and it eventually evolved into an outboard-powered range of sizes, from 18’ to 22’. The 18-footer above was built by its owner, for family fishing excursions on and near Narragansett Bay.

Boat Profile

Lit’l Petrel

A simple and admirable tender

The diminutive pram, less than 9’ long, has remarkable carrying capacity. A centerline seat allows the person rowing to choose from two stations, depending on the boat’s fore-and-aft trim.

Boat Profile

DragonFlyer 3.2

Brooks Boats’ lively sailing dinghy

ZIP is the prototype model of the DragonFlyer 3.2, a design intended as a versatile and dynamic sail trainer. She can be sailed with main alone, main and jib, or main and asymmetrical spinnaker.

Boat Profile

The New Hampshire Snekke

A Norwegian motor launch descended from Viking ships

Low-powered, double-ended launches called snekker are ubiquitous along the coast of Norway, but rather exotic in New Hampshire, where Andrew Wallace’s Traditional Boatworks builds these boats.

Boat Profile

The Sid Skiff

A boat to take personally

The classic transom-sterned skiff that became known as the Sid Skiff, here with cobuilder Zach Simonson-Bond at the oars, first came to Ray Speck’s attention while he was living on a houseboat in Sausalito, California. The boat is as much as joy to look at as it is to row.

Boat Profile

The McIntosh Canvas Boat

An unusual and useful double-ended tender

Canvas sheathing over a wooden framework makes Ned McIntosh’s 9’ dinghy extraordinarily light, at only 35 lbs, yet it remains a versatile tender that is easy and quick to build.

Boat Profile

Thistle

A pedal boat with a fin drive

Harry Bryan’s 12’ Thistle is powered by a large rudder shaped like a fish’s tail and driven by foot pedals. With steady pedaling you can keep pace with about any rowboat of the same length.

Boat Profile

Spindrift 12

A performance yacht tender

The Spindrift series of dinghies from B&B Yacht Designs promises a range of capable yacht tenders that offer plenty of sailing excitement. Here we see a 12’ model built by Meredithe Stuart-Smith of Castine, Maine.

Technique

Making a Boat a Home, Part 2

Four more small boat tents

In Southeast Alaska, rocky beaches, insects, and a large resident bear population often make tent-camping on the beach an unappealing option,” James Danner writes from Juneau. “Having a boat tent has really opened up the family’s beach-cruising options. It can be set or struck easily while at anchor and has seen regular summertime use since it was created. My wife,…

Technique

Making a Boat a Home, Part 1

Boatbuilding never ends with launching day

In small-boat cruising—particularly under sail—having an absolute destination and schedule can be hazardous. At times, getting into a sheltered cove can be a necessity, but you can’t always count on finding a legal or comfortable place to camp ashore. Being able to stay aboard the boat gives the small-craft sailor the same kind of cruising freedom a yachtsman has.

Boat Profile

The Paine 14

A Herreshoff 12 1⁄2, in miniature

"Paine noted that AMELIA, in light air, literally sails circles around his 12½...”

Boat Profile

The Faering Cruiser

A stitch-and-glue solo expedition boat

For if you want to go where kayaks go, but faster, with more gear, less exertion, and more excitement…

Boat Profile

A Cape Cod Oyster Skiff

A historic sharpie type— with variations

Andrew Kitchen of Irondequoit, New York, had always wanted to build a sharpie, and he settled on Reuel Parker’s adaption of a historic boat recorded by Howard I. Chapelle, originating from Cape Cod. The sail reefs by being drawn to the mast.

Boat Profile

Beach Pea

Tender, daysailer, trainer

Beach Pea is based on the well-known peapod type that evolved on Maine’s Penobscot Bay in the 1870s, but built of lightweight plywood. It retains the earlier type’s oar steering and simple sprit rig.

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