Boat Profile
An inspired daysailer
...than the Haven. There’s more of everything— building molds, planks, frames, deckbeams. There’s also the cuddy cabin. Comparing the displacement of the hulls minus the ballast, one of White’s own cost-estimating techniques, provides a good indicator of the relative work involved in building the two boats. The Flatfish weighs 1,300 lbs compared to the Haven’s 800 lbs—a factor of 1.625....
News and Curiosities
...112-page print anthology of the quality content you’ve come to expect online from Small Boats Magazine. In addition to a variety of boat profiles, it delivers product reviews, adventure narratives, and reader-built boats in a book-quality magazine that you’ll want to reference for years to come. Available for purchase in print or digital format from The WoodenBoat Store. Cover Image...
Boat Profile
A simple girl
...galley—stows in the forward compartment. Because gear is not stored in compartments under the cockpit sole, the deck surface is kept perfectly watertight while sailing, but inspection ports allow some access to the flotation compartments. Photo by Jean-Yves Poirier The cuddy is nice for storage but too short to accommodate a properly sized bunk. Firm on her chine, PETITELISA is...
Boat Profile
From workboat roots, a solid recreational boat
...wood not fiberglass.” The resulting hull, Miller asserts, is lighter in weight than its conventionally planked ancestor, and considerably easier to maintain. The company’s brochure for the West Pointer notes that the cedar and mahogany used for veneers is rot resistant and completely sealed with epoxy: “The result is a solid, impervious structure. With proper maintenance, rot won’t have a...
Boat Profile
A good sense of balance
...watertight compartments, and frames, are all constructed of 3⁄8″ plywood. Her cockpit sole, rudder, and rear hatch are slightly thicker, using 10mm plywood (about 7⁄16″) that is easily found in France but may be less standard elsewhere. The backbone is made of the hardwood sapele, with wood-epoxy technology used all over, fillet joints included. Long common in America, such composite...
From the Editor
Small Boats Magazine is excited to announce the kickoff of our new contest series. Every month, subscribers will have the opportunity to win products from our generous sponsors. We’ve worked closely with our sponsors to create this added benefit as a thank you to our loyal subscriber community. Only active subscribers are eligible to participate in each monthly contest, which...
Boat Profile
A small cruiser for going just about anywhere
...to want to just change a little here, add a little there, reconfigure this, and end up moving everything around. Stock answer: don’t do it. Mitchell’s engineering background combined with a lifetime of sailing, cruising, and boatbuilding gives him an unusual skill set and an ability to communicate in the right language with the designer. He had already been through...
Boat Profile
High pleasure per pound
...sides to a beam of 40″. A mahogany rail stiffens the sheer, and fiberglass fabric sheathing outside contributes to rigidity. A breasthook and quarter knees provide excellent handholds, and their compound bevels aren’t going to deter an amateur. The Weekend Dinghy’s near-instantaneous assembly has made it a popular subject for “family boatbuilding” glue-a-thons, where parent-child teams build a basic hull...
Boat Profile
A boat for fine rowing and sailing
...came to be known as the X-dory was highly competitive against the Alpha dories of Salem, Massachusetts, and the Beachcomber dories of neighboring Marblehead. Although it was Mower’s first commissioned design, it has stood the test of time. This 18′ Mower dory is essentially a scaled-down X-dory, John Gardner concluded after the more than 40-year-old blueprints came into his hands...
Boat Profile
Camp-cruisers with attitude
...for both line fishing and crab potting either commercially or for pleasure…. The bottom shape is a moderately shallow V form, with a shallow V running aft. This allowed very shallow draft without the inherent problems of flat-bottomed boats, such as pounding and poor directional stability.” Photo by Jenny Bennett The Core Sound 20 is easy to beach, and its...
Boat Profile
An efficient canal and river cruiser
...mileage and thus cut his boat’s level of polluting in half. He finds as well that noise is minimized and comfort is optimized at this modest cruising speed, and he seems to get there just as fast. In my own campaign to promote modest power and speed in boats, I frequently hear the argument that equates speed with safety. Specifically,...
Boat Profile
A power skiff for simple cruising
...in case) an electric bilge pump are about all the complication Redwing or her crew should have to endure. Photo by Bill Thomas Designer Stambaugh estimates the materials cost for a Redwing 18 at about $5,000 (not including power). This figure assumes high-quality materials and finish. Another place to avoid complication is with the cabin layout. There is a lot...
Boat Profile
A classically inspired one-design
...also understands boats. He spent summers in college working in aerospace composite materials, including vacuum-bagging foam-cored high-performance daysailers and raceboats. But he loves traditional boats as well. He put in six years building dories at the Lowell Boat Shop, and at the Pert Lowell Company—state-of-the-art industrial production shops in their day—before designing and building the IB 18. Impressed with the...
Boat Profile
A solo canoe for double paddle
...a boat,” because rowing requires that one face aft, looking at where he’s been rather than where he’s going. This paddling business was something of an epiphany for Harry Bryan, and his fertile mind was inspired to adapt the Wee Lassie to his preferred construction techniques. We’ll come to those in a moment. First, a word about the Wee Lassie....
Boat Profile
An easy-to-build racer finds its inspiration in history
...century or so ago. Geoff Kerr No racing boat is complete without a competitor, and several 16/30s were built in a workshop at the Antique Boat Museum. Summers based the concept for the new 16/30 class on a boat built by the Gilbert Boat Company of Brockville, Ontario, one of a number built circa 1920 for the Gananoque Canoe Club...
Boat Profile
A strip-planked kayak from Redfish
...If Paul ever looked over Joe Greenley’s shoulder as Joe built one of his strip-built kayaks, I think he’d sputter, “We’re not building a damn Louis XIV escritoire here.” Joe has created quite a reputation for his company, Redfish Kayaks, by transforming strip-built kayaks into works of art. For years I’ve admired his craftsmanship at wooden boat festivals and kayak...
Boat Profile
A fast and stable outboard-powered skiff
...& Company. Small-scale plans and building instructions for Diablo are included in Build the New Instant Boats, by Dynamite Payson, available from H.H. Payson & Company and The WoodenBoat Store. The book’s small-scale plans were intended as illustrations only, not for reading text and numbers; the plans and patterns from H.H. Payson & Company are recommended for building the Diablo....
Boat Profile
A high-end hybrid for paddle and sail
...comfortable rhythm is an acquired skill and requires patience gained with time in the cockpit. Raising the adjustable seat adds comfort while paddling. And as with any wooden boat, there is the pleasing natural beauty of wood grain to contemplate from the cockpit. The sheer is low enough to allow for comfortable paddling. Horton carries both single- and double-bladed paddles...
Boat Profile
A much-admired yacht tender
For some people, the meaning of life seems forever to be bound together with a quest for the perfect yacht tender. There is no such perfection, of course, since the just-right fit for one person will be completely wrong for the next, and boatbuilders and boat owners seem never to lack opinions. These days, however, it seems a great many...
Boat Profile
A frisky little cat
...for Fenwick Williams’s Design No. 1. Except for the cross spalls spanning the sawn and steam-bent frames, there was nothing on deck, or above the sheer—the interior was totally open. He bought it all for $250. Completing the boat took most of Frank’s spare time over the next five years. Frank christened the completed 18-footer KITTY KELLY, his mother’s nickname....
Boat Profile
Easy to love, easier to build
...out your own lumber and fastenings, or you can opt for the kit that comes complete with all plywood, lumber, epoxy, fastenings, and sailing rig. While these options are available from other designers, the vast amount of detail provided makes GRACE’S TENDER stand out. Back at The Carpenter’s Boatshop, I asked one of our first-year apprentices to look through the...
Boat Profile
Comfortable—and quiet
...deck hatch. (You can access the compartment itself through a door in the bulkhead.) Between the permanent forward and aft seats, there’s a removable thwart for rowing. Being flat-bottomed, this is an easy boat to walk around in, although you’ll find yourself sitting side-by-side with your companion most of the time, leaning comfortably against the backrest and enjoying the view—and...
Boat Profile
Elegant and able home-built kayak
...composite and rotomolded plastic kayaks, but this stitch-and-glue kayak is also lighter and stiffer than fiberglass kayaks and plastic kayaks of similar size. Pygmy’s computer-generated panel shapes and laser-cut templates produce kit pieces that will come together in an exceptionally fair hull that will hold its shape for the life of the boat. [Update: Pygmy closed at the outset of...
Boat Profile
A self-bailing power dory
...with years of experience, became a director of his family’s boatbuilding company, Brin Wilson Boats, in 1974, when his father died. In partnership with his brother, he ran the company until 2000, when they made the decision to sell. Today, Wilson is a marine technology tutor at Auckland’s University of Technology, UNITEC. Photo by John Eichelsheim Kingfisher is an outboard-powered...
Boat Profile
A purpose-designed Raid boat
...is likely to meet a wide range of weather conditions, from varied wind strengths, both upwind and downwind, to sudden rain squalls or katabatic gusts coming off the mountains. This drama is always complemented by enough soft breezes and sunshine highlighting the dramatic Scottish scenery to make one wish to stay longer. The week of competitive sailing and rowing originally...