Clever and Capable: The John Welsford Interview

We catchup with the prolific yacht designer whose impressive catalog of recognizable designs includes everything from sub-6-foot tenders to ocean-crossing sailboats.

We catchup with prolific yacht designer, John Welsford, whose impressive catalog of recognizable designs includes everything from sub-6-foot tenders to ocean-crossing sailboats. We’ve noticed over the years that this small-boat luminary also happens to be a master of myriad related trades and subjects—from rowing ergonomics to the maintenance of hand-tools. We had lots of questions for him.

Were boats an important part of your childhood? What are your first memories of watercraft? My family has had boatbuilders in one branch or another for as far back as we can find. William Denny and Brothers were a major shipyard on the Clyde in Scotland up until the mid-1950s. They had the first civilian tow-testing tank, one which is still in use, and their research and design work is held in the “Denny Library” at the Royal Institute of Naval Architecture in England.

Among my earliest memories is my grandfather rowing me out to a reef off the point to dangle a line over the side, hoping for a bite. From there, at about age nine I began making canoes from corrugated roofing iron. During school break, at about that age my grandfather took me to a boatbuilder’s yard where he “did the books” for Philip Lang, a competent but functionally illiterate boatbuilder. My “job” here evolved rapidly from “go-for” to “broom hand,” then to “hold this” and “pass that,” and finally to working the outfeed side of the heavy woodworking machinery—something that was in fact the beginning of a job that I still perform to this day. I’ve been working on, selling, teaching operators and tuning heavy sawmill machinery ever since then. But when working on a big bandsaw or planer, there is always the wish that it was still in a wooden-boat yard.

Welsford’s Penguin design, on paper and in practice

Tell us a little about your first design and about your becoming a yacht designer. I’d built, and was racing with some success, a 20-foot trailerable cabin yacht, and was on a yacht-club committee that gave me more credibility than I deserved. About that time a friend showed me a set of plans for a boat he was about to start building. When I told him it was entirely the wrong boat for the purpose he had in mind, he said that if I were to design something better, and it worked out, I could have the Stanley 55 moulding plane I’d been drooling over in his workshop. I drew the plans, it worked, and I still have that plane.

Which was your first design to be especially well-received? Jane. A 12-foot-long rowing and sailing boat—simple stuff, but similar in many ways to what I still draw today. I’ve since updated that design and you’ll see her descendant, Janette.

How about now—which of your designs are your favorites and which do you consider the most successful? Oh, that’s a hard one. Navigator has sold the most plans, and that boat has been a life changer for a number of people. Navigators have completed some amazing voyages, had some incredible adventures and they’ve become the “flagship” of the range, with around 725 sets of plans sold, and about 300 of them afloat. The most successful design is probably SCAMP, an amazing boat that’s often been built by people who had no real intention of ever going small-boat sailing, or sailing at all. SCAMPs have sailed down toward Cape Horn, as far north as Norway, and they’ve had the widest distribution of any of my designs. (At press time, 500 SCAMP sail numbers had been assigned worldwide.)

Welsford's Walkabout and Fafnir designs

We heard someone talking about radio broadcasting the other day, suggesting that anyone who’s heavily involved in radio is probably passionate and engaged, since nobody makes any money doing it. Naturally we thought of small boats and sailing. Hah! So true, but even though I do have another “sideline”—working with the aforementioned heavy woodworking machinery to support myself—I’ve gotten rewards from boat design that are far beyond just money. My design career has taken me to 16 different countries; has made me friends worldwide…and I get to share the joy that people building and sailing my boats experience. No amount of money can buy that.