Free Small Boats Hat
Boat Profile
Black Skimmer
A Phil Bolger sharpie
...around the bulkheads and transom, which act as molds. True lofting and building jigs are not needed. This is fast work for experienced hands and easy work for beginners. With the help of two friends, I assembled the hull in one 11-hour workday (after four days spent cutting and finishing various components). Get- ting the prototype completely built and ready...
Boat Profile
Townsend Tern
A small cruiser full of ideas and innovations
...a comfortable berth, a good book, and a hot meal—well, what else in the world does a person need? Comfortable accommodations, ample storage, a practical rig adapted wholesale from the Norwalk Islands Sharpie, and numerous clever solutions make the Townsend Tern an excellent cruising boat for a couple. The stepped centerboard allows the trunk to double as companionway steps, the...
Boat Profile
The Sid Skiff
A boat to take personally
...it’s not about to claw upwind like a sloop. But it also doesn’t suffer from a sloop’s rigging complications. As it is, it’ll reach off the wind in a wisp of a breeze, and it glides so deftly and easily under oar power that on any given day’s outing, it would be a crime not to include an exercise leg....
$1 Dollar a Month
Boat Profile
Lit’l Petrel
A simple and admirable tender
...when it tends otherwise.” On my bookshelf, Leopold shares space with worn volumes of those other writers more familiar to the boating community, among them L. Francis Herreshoff, Pete Culler, and John Gardner. Small boats do, in fact, represent a “biotic community” of sorts, and Sam Devlin’s Lit’l Petrel design is, to use Leopold’s evaluation, “right.” Three years ago, my...
MUSTELID
MUSTELID – Episode 1
Intro, Who We Are, How We Live, What we Propose
...easily handled vessel to complement our more demanding sailing home, to keep us on the water longer.“ So, starting from scratch, they invite you to join them, in this video series, to observe the whole process of conceiving and building a new boat, from identifying needs and purposes, through brainstorming and design, construction and launch, outfit, rig and sea trials—and,...
Boat Profile
The Simmons Sea Skiff
A seaworthy outboard fishing boat
...North Carolina commercial fisherman’s need for a seaworthy skiff that would allow him to launch from the beach into the Atlantic surf, row through the waves, and fish with a seine before returning safely through the breakers. That first boat, built in 1946 by Tom Simmons, was a success, and eventually Simmons was asked to build larger, outboard-powered versions. Today,...
Boat Profile
Sinne 610 Expedition Boat
For adventuresome rowing
...of granite bedrock, but with a couple of strategically located supporting blocks under the hull, the Sinne makes a level sleeping platform, and the tent can be secured by passing straps under the hull. Anthony Shaw The owner favors camp-cruising, but found that level ground was often hard to find. His solution was blocking, at the ends and supported by...
Boat Profile
The Peterborough Nomad
A cottage runabout reborn
...The Old Town (Maine) Canoe Company and the Chestnut Canoe Company of Fredericton, New Brunswick, developed wood-and-canvas construction. In Peterborough, Ontario, and nearby towns, builders such as The Ontario Canoe Company, later to become the Peterborough Canoe Company, pioneered cedar-strip construction. This technique was based on John S. Stephenson’s 1883 patent for “Longitudinal Cedar Strip” construction (hereafter referred to simply...
MUSTELID
MUSTELID – Episode 2
The Concept
...gone into the mental stew-pot and…well… stewed. Other ideas have mellowed and blended and complemented one another. But years have thundered by, and it’s time to serve up the stew or abstain from it.” In this episode, Dave and Anke serve up the stew. They present their influences on the design of their new hull. From these influences, they draw...
MUSTELID
MUSTELID – Episode 3
Construction
...modern, gap-filling adhesives but favor lower-tech and common materials. We build simple and robust structures, but let handsome be as handsome does. Who builds their own vessel must be able to persist. Heads down, put-in-the-time persistence that plods on and around every obstacle. As you’ll see, we are living proof that success is in reach of those who persist. https://youtu.be/5Fb4VKkBknM...
Boat Profile
The Point Comfort 18
A modern deadrise skiff
...even a compact car a possibility. But the look and the ride is pure Chesapeake. Robert W. Stephens The Point Comfort’s light weight and efficient underbody make her a joy to drive. She rises to a plane smoothly without jerking. Hylan has shifted from solid lumber to thin, stable plywood for the hull planking—high-quality, easily attainable, and dimensionally stable on...
Contribute to Small Boats Nation
Contribute to Small Boats Nation Did you finish building your dream boat? Did you just get back from the trip of a lifetime? We want to know about it. Small Boats Nation is a community website were our readers can contribute their projects or adventures and our editors will bring their story to life the SBN website. No writing experience...
MUSTELID
MUSTELID – Episode 4
Outfitting MUSTELID
...must be clever, but not too clever. Flexibility: The more roles it can fill, the merrier. Modularity: Interchangeable, reconfigurable, and redundant. Synergy: Parts that work together. And the further challenge of sea-trials lie yet ahead. Phil Bolger once commented that he had abandoned a design due to the sheer number of untried features it involved. We’re not that wise. https://youtu.be/5bDINpw4Oac...
MUSTELID
MUSTELID – Episode 5
Rigging MUSTELID
...But, should things get contrary, we can always hunker down until conditions favor us. For remote cruising, we built the rig of found materials–conifer saplings. The six identical sails are interchangeable and redundant. We led our lines aft then forward again to the cockpit. The masts should come down and stow easily and out of the way for rowing. https://youtu.be/WF8kaDeYIDM...
MUSTELID
MUSTELID – Episode 6
Life Aboard
...clearance, and even more along the hatched-over, midship gangway. You are warm. You are dry. A meal’s savory fragrance suffuses the cabin. Cue your favorite music. Look about at the lovely vista opening around you from kayaker vantage. Wait. Aren’t we supposed to be roughing it? https://youtu.be/BST4OvpkW2M This Part wraps up our focus on the boat. Next we go venturing!...
Adventures, MUSTELID,
MUSTELID – Episode 7
Introduction to the Venture
In this installment, we are getting ready to cruise, intending to row and sail around Chichagof Island, a distance of about 450 nautical miles—if we were to limit ourselves to the straight and narrow. But first we recap a change of venue, from the Southern Admiralty Wilderness site where we built MUSTELID to our home port of Tenakee Springs, Alaska,...
Contest
Boat Profile
Pen-Hir
A modern classic pocket cruiser
...could then be better distributed, but would the extra wetted surface slow down the boat? Here Vivier comes into his own, for careful research and analysis that might be shared with the boatbuilding community is something that comes naturally to him. Drag calculations showed that it is the number of appendages that is the critical factor rather than the wetted...
Boat Profile
JADE
A gaff-headed sloop from New Zealand
...a record of the hours for each job. Krumm-Gartner selected 23′ as the length so the boat would be easy to trailer, store, sail, and maintain yet still achieve a reasonable turn of speed. The cabin sleeps two comfortably and the cockpit seats four people. Facilities include a chemical toilet under the cabin sole, an icebox under the port cockpit...
MUSTELID
MUSTELID – Episode 8
Heading Out
We’re finally underway! We won’t see the wilderness wedding we set out for that never materialized. We won’t see Dave forget the durn camera at home and row back a mile for it. We won’t see the whale that almost T-boned us. Those are tales for another time. We will see our first big wind. Our first narrows to negotiate....
MUSTELID
MUSTELID – Episode 9
The Outer Islands
We sail across some invisible divide, into a dreamscape in dream time. Time slows. Away out there, the ocean’s floor creeps. Relentlessly shoves at the granite continent. Inconceivable force hefts coastal ranges to buckled heights. The foreshore fractures and crazes and mazes. And the sea sweeps in, and with it, fog. What lives here the years round has winter scribed...
Product Reviews
Aeré Beach Rollers
Moving heavy loads over soft surfaces
...the bow and the other the stern, the task was manageable. On a flatter beach, Sergei could have moved his boat by himself. A second roller (in use under the boat in the background) would normally be set just astern to catch the stern as the middle of the boat passes over the roller shown here. As the boat moves...
Boat Profile
The Ipswich Bay Skiff
Built by eye and shaped by batten
...the others, is built of pine screwed to the thwart risers. Closed-cell Styrofoam flotation is mounted beneath the thwart. The rear thwart is composed of five individual pieces, resulting in a visually interesting seat whose components can be individually removed for refinishing. My first, and most lasting, visual impression of this boat was that it’s decidedly graceful, but it took...