Boat Review: Wee Seal

Iain Oughtred’s Jaunty Norse-Inspired Camp Cruiser

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While spending six months of 1986 in Camden, Maine, hosted by WoodenBoat magazine, Australian-born designer Iain Oughtred was encouraged to come up with a small cruising sailboat that might be ideal for one or two people—something buildable using modern materials, attractive, and especially seaworthy. The result was an elegant Viking-inspired lapstrake double-ender named Grey Seal—22'-2" overall with a beam of 7'-8," shallow draft with centerboard and easily-stepped gunter sloop rig.

Grey Seal is a beauty, but she’s a challenge to build for most folks—both in terms of cost and complexity—and the boat is a handful to store, tow, launch and rig … especially if you’re alone.

Many boat designs are derivative—inspired by something observed, remembered or found in the designer’s own previous work. This was a good thing in the case of Iain Oughtred’s Wee Seal series—inspired directly by the designer’s earlier Grey Seal...the elegant, larger lapstrake double-ender.

Partially in response to customers who wanted a lighter-weight, easier-to-build and lighter-to-trailer version of Grey Seal, Oughtred designed the first Wee Seal in 1992. The first “little Grey Seal” was 18'-0" overall, with a 7'-0" beam and only 51% of the Grey Seal’s displacement. The boat featured five strakes of glued-lap plywood planking per side; a centerboard build on the centerline of the keel, and a recommended Gunter main with overlapping jib and sail area of 177 square feet, vs. 265 for the larger Grey Seal.

Reflecting on the first-edition Wee Seal, and in response to comments from owners and builders, Oughtred tweaked the first Wee Seal design, offering the Wee Seal Mark II version in 2001. Feeling the first five-plank design looked awkward from some angles, Oughtred called for seven narrower planks per side in the Mark II, giving the hull a more rounded and classic shape. He also stretched the length on deck to 18'-6," expanded the beam slightly to 7'-3," and designed an offset centerboard to simplify construction of the trunk, hog and ballast casting—which is of a simple square section. (The centerboard is of wood construction, which is easy to streamline…and, although ballasted, does not require complex lifting tackle.)