Boat Profile
A small lapstrake gem
<span class="excerpt_part">...and her easy entry and run, this would be a simple and pleasurable boat to plank. Either light copper rivets or clench nails would serve as fastenings for the plank laps and conceivably even for the plank-to-frame joints. It’s typical in a boat like this that the lapstrake seams don’t leak—water <strong>com</strong>ing in is more than likely <strong>com</strong>ing from the...</span>
Boat Profile
Quick to build, fast to row
<span class="excerpt_part">...lower edge of each plank. Aren’t <strong>com</strong>puters grand? To assemble the hull, we’ll place the square edge of a plank into its neighbor’s rabbet and join everything with twisted wire ties (as in <strong>com</strong>mon stitch-and-glue construction). Then, using a plastic syringe containing epoxy filled with silica, we’ll fill the voids at each lap…no tricky <strong>com</strong>pound bevels needed. Because the hull...</span>
Boat Profile
A Cat-Rigged Sharpie
<span class="excerpt_part">The MerryMac catboat tends to make the blood hum with a se<strong>nse</strong> of adventure and challenge. Its owners claim that it has always been so since the first of about 200 MerryMacs sprouted wings on the banks of New Hampshire’s Great Bay back in the early 1950s. And MerryMac lovers will tell you that the se<strong>nse</strong> of adventure and challenge...</span>
A lifetime of inspiration
<span class="excerpt_part">...“I used this shape but flattened it just a bit,” <strong>com</strong>pared to the 15°-deadrise in sandbaggers. During tank tests of a prototype model, he was impressed how the <strong>com</strong>bination of these elements in the hull design affected wave shape. “It does not have a deep wave at hull speed like other boats.” He also pointed this out in pictures, and...</span>
Rough-water skiff
<span class="excerpt_part">...at 25 knots while clutching the king spoke of a side-mounted Wilcox Crittenden wheel, be afraid. From Moby’s crisply sculpted stemhead and mooring bitt, past the coaming, to the afterdeck and splash well, Wittholz made a fine job of <strong>com</strong>bining traditional appearance with contemporary performance. This honest skiff deserves a good measure of popularity. -M.O’B” Plans from The WoodenBoat Store,...</span>
An 11' 6" beach cruiser
<span class="excerpt_part">...can work into each other as they swell, and they’ve been known to cure imperfect plank bevels with no help from a builder’s hand. On the Jersey beaches of my youth, cedar-planked skiffs seldom required seam <strong>com</strong>pound. Boats planked with mahogany consumed gallons of the goop. Stimson includes alternate specifications for sheathing this skiff <strong>com</strong>pletely with plywood. Although we might...</span>
18'7" Hardangersjekte
<span class="excerpt_part">...Valgerda’s considerable momentum could have carried her into the middle of next week. She loved rough water and had se<strong>nse</strong> enough to mush through the small waves and ride over the big ones. Rowing this boat was pure joyor would have been if the builder hadn’t installed a centerboard trunk. -M.O’B. Plans from Atkin & <strong>Com</strong>pany, Box 3005, Naroton, CT06820....</span>
Fitting Out Guide
Parameters for success
<span class="excerpt_part">...promised to never reveal their secret (sorry, guys), they informed me that the little white rollers left a finer stipple, giving a smoother finish. I tried them. The varnish guys were right, but the downside is these rollers <strong>com</strong>e only in short lengths, inadequate for a large surface. The yellow foam rollers <strong>com</strong>e in three sizes and fit standard roller...</span>
A likable 15' catboat
<span class="excerpt_part">...attention of Madison Avenue’s “average family,” a production builder might be tempted to erect a split-level house on Corvus’s deck. For the way most of us will sail her, the cuddy and large cockpit shown here make more se<strong>nse.</strong> The 3’6″ headroom described on the plans seems to be about the <strong>com</strong>fortable minimum for using an enclosed head. Of course,...</span>
Dasailer and Beach Cruiser
<span class="excerpt_part"> Based on traditional Shetland workboats, this rugged double-ender makes good use of plywood and epoxy. When asked by WoodenBoat to talk about my Chesapeake Bay open-boat cruising adventures of long ago, I described a typical ( or perhaps a <strong>com</strong>posite) summer’s day: Up at first light after having slept on the beach; take a short, slow walk along...</span>
Boat Profile
A Y-sterned canoe
<span class="excerpt_part">...is on the form. Then the hull is pulled from the form in the usual manner and <strong>com</strong>pleted before canvasing. To build this boat in this manner, you must first build a labor-intensive form that gives the boat its shape and provides a backing for attaching planks to the steam-bent ribs. If you are lost at this point, this may...</span>
Boat Profile
A beach-explorer tender with a design pedigree
<span class="excerpt_part">Paul LaBrie is new to professional boatbuilding, but the design he chose for his first <strong>com</strong>mercial 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. In an era when small boats were less <strong>com</strong>monly created for their...</span>
Boat Profile
Wooden boats for whitewater
<span class="excerpt_part">...fly-fishing guides view their boats simply as a form of transportation rather than as a tool to help them catch fish. “I see a lot of guides take their clients down the river and drop them off on a bank to fish from shore. That doesn’t make any se<strong>nse</strong> to me.” To be sure, rowing a boat upstream with three...</span>
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Technique
A guide to common construction methods
<span class="excerpt_part">...the hull form seem more like an organic creation. We are naturally attracted to repetition in lines and forms; it’s an aesthetic principle that seems rooted as deeply in boatbuilding as it is in art, architecture, music, and even the written word. Perhaps it makes <strong>com</strong>plex things more understandable by breaking them into their <strong>com</strong>ponent forms. How <strong>com</strong>plex are lapstrake...</span>
Boat Profile
Dave Gentry's skin-on-frame version of a Massachusetts classic
<span class="excerpt_part">Living amidst many inland lakes and rivers, and near the north shore of Lake Michigan has turned me into a boatbuilder. It took a while to <strong>com</strong>mit to building a boat, but in the winter of 2015 my wife, Sue, and I decided I needed an interesting snow-season project. I looked online for an easy-to-build rowboat that we could use...</span>
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Powerboats, Designs,
Stephens plywood utility launch
<span class="excerpt_part">...as drawn results in a stiff, relatively light ( 600 lbs) hull. Good sheet-plywood outboard boats – really good ones- are hard to find. But they are out there if you look, Calkins’ Bartender, Dunbar’s Bristol Bluefish, Bolger’s Diablo, and others. By all reports, Stephens’ 18-footer can run in their <strong>com</strong>pany. Not bad for Design No. 1. -Mike O’Brien ...</span>
Adventures
Rowing and sailing the Sea of Cortez
<span class="excerpt_part">...an hour into the rainstorm. But, hey, we were going to Mexico, so a little Rainex and we carried on. Joe Talbert On our way south we killed off our Seattle mossyness with some climbing in the boulders of Lone Pine, California, at the foothills of the <strong>Sie</strong>rra Nevada mountains. Our boat generated many strange glances in the high country....</span>
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Boat Profile
Daysailer and duckgunner
<span class="excerpt_part">...it stability and the ability to carry sail. A shapely, and relatively broad, raked transom eases our concern about waves that might <strong>com</strong>e down on us from astern. Photo by Benjamin Mendlowitz Although evolved from a Barnegat Bay duck-hunting boat, the melonseed skiff is well suited to recreation. There are several plans available for the type; the one shown here...</span>
Designs, Daysailer,
A handsome daysailer based on the Herreshoff 12 1/2, but modified for a centerboard
<span class="excerpt_part">...much easier than with a full-keeled boat. Admittedly, a keel/centerboard configuration adds something to the boat’s cost and <strong>com</strong>plexity, but it seems more than a fair trade-off. Construction Plans The Haven 12 1⁄2 is not a quick-and-easy boat to build. Like anything worth doing, it is worth doing well, and it seems only proper that something this wonderful would require...</span>
Designs, Performance Rowing,
V-bottomed single shell with sliding seat, outriggers and light plywood construction.
<span class="excerpt_part">...strongback, keel and patterns. WB Plan No. 51. $75.00. A <strong>com</strong>plete construction kit for the Kingfisher is also available from King Boat Works, and the kit <strong>com</strong>es with everything you need to build your boat, except varnish and oars. For those who are building from plans, outriggers and hardware can be purchased separately from King Boat Works as well. Write...</span>
Designs, House & Canal,
Phil Thiel's ESCARGOT is a canal boat designed for slow, enjoyable journeys in protected waters.
<span class="excerpt_part">...of the 23 pieces of plywood, and the L’Ark supplement. <strong>Com</strong>pleted 18′ Escargot Images Photographs and video by the author The storage space on this Escargot was used to add a wood-burning stove to ward of the cold of off-0season boating. The catwalk added to the cabin roof proved to be a popular perch aboard this Escargot. The bow often...</span>
Designs, Powerboats,
Design based on the Alton Wallace West Pointer workboats from the Maine coast.
<span class="excerpt_part">...appearance in any <strong>com</strong>pany. <strong>Com</strong>pleted Ocean Pointer Images Matthew P. Murphy Owner-builder John Blatchford with his Ocean Pointer skiff near Bucksport, Maine. Using detailed instructions from designer David Stimson, Blatchford built the boat over the course of two years. Matthew P. Murphy Ocean Pointer uses a classic center-cockpit layout, with ample storage under the foredeck, in the console, and under...</span>