12-Foot Custom Cruiser

A close-up look at Scott Widmier's new sailboat

Veteran sailor and adventurer, Scott Widmier, always asks a lot of his small boats, so we were excited and curious to see the latest he’s been building—a 12-foot cruiser of his own design. —Eds

I am building yet another boat. A successor to my self-designed Pelicanish kind of boat Otis that was destroyed in our house fire in 2019.  The boat I’m currently building is along the same vein as Otis, only 12' long, with the same 66" beam and a more generous freeboard. The pram shape and extreme flare made for some very odd shaped panels as calculated by Carlson Hulls program, but it’s all gone together well with only a few hiccups to make the process “interesting” and “fun!”

The resulting boat has sealed flotation compartments fore and aft, with the rest of the boat being open down the middle for a generous 90"-long cabin with 44” worth of headroom in the cabin trunk ...not bad for a 12 boat! The footwell for the cockpit is actually a hatch opening up to the cabin space, an idea I borrowed from Bolger's Brick design. I also borrowed the idea of having the cabin slot top open to walk forward to the mast.  I will be using aluminum spars and a 4-sided sprit rig I have from a rig experiment on my Holder 14 (added a cabin to that boat) which should be a perfectly sized and handy rig. The mast is pretty far forward, so will have a bowsprit to fly a jib.  I went cheap with plywood using 3/8 inch exterior sheeting based on some very positive experiences by some other boatbuilders I know.  Ply took bends well and has made for a very solid and heavy boat...not a bad thing for a trailer sailor IMHO.

My original Otis. And the sprit-rigged Holder mod.

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