About Josh’s article Going Small, reader Dale Kidd wrote:
Just a word of personal testimony. I didn't grow up around the water, my folks weren't water people. I fished off a little runabout once and a friend's family owned a small "cabin cruiser" for a while and I was out on it a couple times. That's about it. When I became an adult and moved to the Baltimore area, I became enamored with the sailboats that I would see at Baltimore's famed "inner harbor.” My thinking at that time was that sailing was a rich man's sport. Somehow it never occurred to me that there existed a world of small, not to mention used, boats out there. We later moved to NC and I saw an ad for a 1978 Kells 23' listed at $3000. I thought, "I could probably spring for that.” I went and looked, offered the guy $2500 and I became a sailor! That was 25 years and a half dozen boats ago. After buying, selling and building boats, I'm really only out a few thousand dollars (really!) in exchange for a whole bunch of fun. Now at 68, I plan to stay on the water as long as my body will allow.
On Marty’s column “Next Dreamboat” Follow-Up, reader Phil Truitt wote:
This is great stuff! I sometimes get a bit bored when folks talk like one type of boat or another is sacrilegious. While I tend to lean a particular way, there are very few boats I'm not interested in seeing and would guess I'm not alone.
Via Glen-L Marine, builder Alf Bangert sent the following photos of his just completed Chessie Flyer on Hornby Island BC. The boat will be launched this spring. Well done, Alf!
After Rusty Knorr’s first installment on Building the West Mersea Duck Punt, Reader Rick Pratt wrote:
I built several Louisiana pirogues, boats very similar to the Mersea punt. They were all copied from one original by Ixton Barras, a Bayou Teche boat builder of great skill.
A fine story came with the first boat. Might share it someday.
Fast and simple-to-build, they were the perfect small craft for our needs in those waters. I cannot imagine a better duck hunting boat. I converted one or two to sail using a small jib, turned into a Chesapeake Sprit by virtue of a spruce mast and sprit, and one line. This is the easiest and best small craft rig to build and use in my experience. I love them.
They were made weatherly by a leeboard, one only, that mounted to the side through the open gunwales. it would raise itself if you got too close to the bottom....a frequent occurrence in those shallow bays and creeks in the south Texas estuary where we lived.
At some point I ran into a magazine article about the mersea Duck Punt, a boat so similar in design and use as to be virtually identical. I intended to one day build one, but that day never arrived.
Both are superb for shallow water poling, rowing sailing or even powering with a fractional horsepower sputtering stinking two stroke mounted on the side of the boat, aft of the beam, on a mount held by the gunwale.
We caught many Redfish, cooned a lot of oysters and brought home limits of ducks and Rail birds in those fine, simple little boats.
Reader Christian Fusselman enjoyed seeingthe B. Frank article we posted recently. He wrote:
Ah. B Frank Franklin. I remember those fondly. From the days past. In fact often the first thing is read. Kinda like folding the back page of mad magazine… 😎
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