Pocket Cruising Power

Associate Editor Marty Loken looks at a six-pack of workboat-inspired minicruisers

Some of the finest pleasure craft designs have evolved directly from traditional workboats, and for good reason: Whether designed for sail, oar or engine, workboats are intended to survive all sorts of conditions, perform their chores with economy and, of course, bring their crews home safely. What more could we want in a minicruising powerboat?

Today we’d like to celebrate half a dozen smaller motorboat designs that were inspired directly (or at least obliquely) by traditional workboats: Salmon trollers and gillnetters from the Pacific Northwest; lobsterboats from New England, and tugboats from…well, all over the place.

These personal-favorite camp-cruising motorboats have several things in common: Economy afloat in terms of fuel efficiency; attractive workboat-influenced design; size and accommodations suitable for a cruising couple; trailerability, and relative ease of construction. Plans and/or kits are available for most of the designs featured, and we should emphasize that this isn’t Consumer Reports: We aren’t pretending to showcase every single small motorboat that might somehow resemble a traditional workboat. These are personal picks, so if we’ve left out a design you think is deserving, please send your comments to SCA (seriously!) and we’ll consider including them or a review in a future issue.

After parading through the collection of six small powerboats, we’ll show how to create your own workboat-inspired minicruiser on an old hull—maybe a free fiberglass derelict you dragged home, or an aging skiff that could use a personality transplant, becoming an attractive camp-cruising motorboat instead of yard art.

So, here are some of our favorites, in no particular order:

Sam Devlin’s Dipper 19

Early in his career as a designer and builder of stitch-and-glue boats, Sam Devlin came up with the little Dipper 17, mostly described as a fishing boat with shelter cabin that would employ a modest 10-15 hp outboard, keep its occupants dry, and little else. Although the Dipper 17 had a certain utilitarian charm, it appeared frumpy alongside Sam’s bigger, perfectly proportioned and much-loved Surf Scoter 22.

In recent years, Sam’s been revisiting and updating some old designs, and he’s pumped fresh life into the Dipper series with creation of a larger and prettier Dipper 19, which might be described as an affordable halfway-house between the earlier Dipper 17 and the handsome, larger Surf Scoter 22 series.

The Dipper 19 checks a lot of our boxes: traditional workboat-inspired appearance; relative ease of construction; ability to tow, launch and store in at least some residential garages; modest power needs, and decent camp-cruising accommodations with forepeak berth and small corner for galley inside the pilothouse.

The accompanying photo shows a handsome Dipper 19 built by Tom Bonadeo, who lives on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay and enjoys cruising local waters.

We could be very happy with the salty-looking Dipper 19 as an all-around fishing, camp-cruising or picnic boat. For details on plans and kits, go to the website of Devlin Designing and Boatbuilding: www.devlinboat.com.

Specifications: Overall length-18' 8"• Beam-7' 3"• Draft-1' 3" • Construction stitch-and-glue plywood • Power-twin outboards in the 10-20 hp range, or a single engine in the 15-40 hp range • Cruising speed- 10-12 knots.

Tad Roberts’ Power Pogy

Tad Roberts is a respected designer who is fortunate enough to have a studio on Gabriola Island, in the magical waters of British Columbia. Tad has a passion for traditional workboats of the B.C. coast—especially old salmon trollers and gillnetters—and some of his small cruiser designs reflect the region’s workboat heritage, especially his Fidler 19, Regan 18 and Northcoast 18 Double Ender…all round-bottomed traditional designs that hearken back to fishboats of the 1920s-1950s period.

The lapstrake-plywood Power Pogy is a more achievable reworking of Northwest workboat designs; a practical, easily-driven small family pocket cruiser with jaunty appearance, excellent layout, lots of room for its overall 19-1/2-foot length, and relative ease of construction, trailering, launching and maintenance. While I aesthetically prefer the classic perfection of Tad’s round-bottomed workboat designs, Power Pogy makes more sense when it comes to budget realities and actual trailerboating use of a small motorboat, with its V-berth for two, inside steering, small galley in the wheelhouse, room for porta-potty, and lots of storage cubbies in the cockpit and cabin. It’s approachable and utterly functional…but not without loads of charm.

(Clockwise from top left)—Inside the B&B Outer Banks 20. Redwing 21 in cruise mode with umbrella set. The author aboard his converted Poulsbo Boat Salty (Photo Pete Leenhouts). A first-series Ranger 21 Troller…more classic in appearance than later R-21’s. (photo Rick Huizi). The Sam-Devlin-revised former Canadian lifeboat called Owl.

While Tad has sold a lot of Power Pogy plans, we couldn’t immediately find photographic evidence of a finished boat, so here is an illustration of Tad’s smart little camp cruiser. (If you’ve built your own Power Pogy, please send photos we can share with readers in a future edition.) For details, see Tad Roberts’ website: www.tadroberts.ca.

Specifications: Overall length-19' 6" • Beam-7' 6" • Draft 1' 3" • Power-8-25 hp outboard in a well • Construction- Lapstrake plywood over plywood bulkheads.

Classic Glass: Ray Richards’ Ranger 18

At the end of the 1970s, having designed the now-classic Ranger 20 sailboat (along with other Rangers and the much-admired Haida 26 sailboat), Ray Richards came up with a series of 18-foot double-ended hulls inspired by the early Columbia River and Bristol Bay gillnetters and Northwest salmon trollers…but scaled down for production at Ranger’s western Washington plant. Three sailboats and a motorboat version were offered: An open, sprit-rigged double-ender; an open sloop; a cuddy-cabin sloop, and the Ranger 18 Troller pocket cruiser, powered by one of the smallest available Yanmar diesels.

While examples of the 18-foot Ranger double-enders are scarce today, we see far more of the next-generation Ranger 21 Tugs (not “tugs” except in the parallel universe of the Marketing Department) which retained a cuddy cabin and pilothouse similar to Ray Richards’ original 18, planted on a stretched-out hull with broad purse-seiner stern, losing the classic double-ended appearance of the original R-18 Troller. The larger, square-sterned hull offered considerable weight bearing aft, along with incrementally higher hull speeds—provided by a slightly larger inboard diesel. (The first of the new 21-footers, with modest power and sweet lines, was still known as a Troller—not a Tug—and it is today viewed as a true classic. Ray expresses mixed feelings about the later-generation Ranger 21 “Tug” models—more power, higher speeds, enlarged pilothouse and add-ons like bow thrusters—preferring the simplicity of his original 18-foot double-ender as a tribute to traditional Northwest trollers and gillnetters. But everybody loves a little “tug” so the Ranger 21 Tug became popular and in later years of production the Ranger company morphed the early-series Ranger 21 Tug into an even faster and more feature-loaded pocket cruiser, the Ranger 21 Tug EC, which refers to Extended Cabin.

Above is a photo of Snug, one of the original 1979-designed Ranger 18 Troller double-enders. While it’s a shame that the original R-18s and R-21s are only found on the used market, you can view the current Ranger lineup—starting with a trailerable 23-footer—at www.rangertugs.com

Jay Benford’s 20' Tug Yacht

Known for some of his character-boat designs, as well as elegant sailing and cruising boats, Jay years ago worked as staff naval architect for Foss Launch & Tug, where he sharpened his eye for traditional tugboat designs. Not long thereafter, he designed the irresistable 20' Tug Yacht, a beefy, high-volume pocket cruiser that’s been built in wood, fiberglass and maybe even ferrocement.

The photo is of a fiberglass-hulled 20' Tug Yacht for sale in Port Ludlow, Washington.

Like the Ray Richards-designed Ranger 18 Troller described above, the 20' Tug Yacht is easily driven by the smallest diesel inboard. Also like the Ranger 18, the Tug Yacht was available in both sailing and motorboat models, including a cat-rigged sailboat, with and without a small cuddy cabin. (Years ago a company in Portland, Oregon built a number of fiberglass 20' Tug Yacht hulls, one of which was used to complete the green-hulled boat in the adjoining photo. Other Benford customers have built their 20-footers of wood, from Jay’s plans.)

Plans are available from Jay Benford via his website: www.benford.us While you’re there, check out two of Jay’s other small workboat-inspired designs: the 14' Tug Yacht (cute but a bit cartoonish for our personal tastes), and the more stately 20' Supply Boat.

Specifications: Overall length-20'-0" • Beam – 8' 0" • Draft 2' 3" • Ballast-750 pounds • Power- small inboard diesel, 6-10 hp with reduction gear to swing large prop • Headroom in pilothouse - 6' 3".

Karl Stambaugh’s Redwing 21

I have personal experience owning and cruising one of Karl’s Redwing 21 Pilothouse hulls, and can attest to the boat’s utility, stability, general roominess, ease of towing and launching, and fuel economy. With a 15 hp four-stroke outboard I could cruise all day on very little fuel, poking along just above half-throttle at a relaxed 5-6 knots.

Karl’s Redwing series includes the smaller Redwing 18 (sans pilothouse), as well as the larger and very attractive Redwing 23 Pilothouse and Redwing 26 Pilothouse configurations…but the 21 hits a sweet spot when it comes to reasonable cost, ease of towing, smaller and lighter outboard motor, and overall utility.

While many of the designs featured today were inspired by traditional West Coast fishing boats, heritage of the Redwing 21 Pilothouse is harder to pin down…but its pilothouse is reminiscent of East Coast lobsterboats and other workboat designs.

The pilothouse on my 21-footer (photo above) was a bit on the short side in terms of fore-and-aft length. It looked fine but if extended another 18 inches fore-and-aft it would have housed a more useful galley. (It was incrementally shorter than Karl’s design.) The boat had a nice zippered canvas curtain, that served as an aft pilothouse bulkhead at night, along with a simple light-blocking curtain over the doorway into the forepeak berth. The interior of the cuddy area was one large berth—comfy, but no extras such as porta-potty or much storage…except beneath the berth platform. The cockpit was comfortable, and when anchored during sunny-day cruises I’d unfurl a large cotton umbrella for shade.

The Redwing boats are basically big flatbottomed skiffs, high-sided, with cabins. Relatively easy to build, traditional in appearance, with shallow drafts and intended for relatively sheltered waters. In response to some owner-builders who want better performance, Karl offers a box-keel option that helps in rougher water, and with steering against a side wind or current. Either way, the Redwing series represents the finest kind of simplicity.

For more details on plans, go to Karl’s website: www.cmdboats.com

Specifications: Overall length-21'-0" • Beam – 7' 6" • Draft 1' 4" • Power – 10-15 hp outboard in a well under the stern deck • Weight – 1,800 pounds.

Graham Byrnes’ Outer Banks 20

Like the other small workboat-inspired designs highlighted, the Outer Banks 20 was designed mainly with a cruising couple in mind—forepeak berth, porta-potty stashed somewhere, a bit of galley space, inside steering, icebox, modest power and general affordability (at least when compared to any manufactured minicruiser you might find at a commercial boat show).

The OB-20’s general appearance is reminiscent of an East Coast lobsterboat, with its overhanging pilothouse roof and general cabin design. Unlike some of the other boats celebrated here, the Outer Banks 20 is capable of cruising slowly with hardly any power, or getting up on a plane and hitting 20 mph with a 25 hp outboard on the transom. (Cruising at the sweet-spot clip of 15 mph with the 25 hp motor, the engine burns only 1.5 gallons per hour—incredibly efficient compared with almost any other small, planing cabin cruiser.)

We really love the Outer Banks 20 and appreciate a lot of the details Graham has built into the design, including a hatch atop the forward end of the cuddy cabin; the comfy-looking passenger jump seat across from the steering station, and the fact that you can scoot to your destination in a relative hurry in a boat that still looks wonderfully traditional and well-proportioned. (Trust me on this: Graham’s achievement in hitting 20 mph in a 20-foot monohull cabin cruiser, using a fuel-efficient 25 hp outboard, is truly impressive…especially if you can get to the efficient f 15 mph at a lower and more pleasant throttle setting.)

Graham’s company, B&B Yacht Designs, offers plans and kits for the Outer Banks 20.

For details, check their website: www.bandbyachtdesigns.com

Specifications: Overall Length – 20' 0" • Beam 7' 1" • Draft 9" • Power – 25 hp (50 hp max) •Weight including 25 hp outboard – 1,200-1,400 pounds.

A Few Interesting Non-Production Mini-Cruisers…

---

OWL by Sam Devlin

Owl was built in 1952 as a 19-foot mahogany-lapstrake Canadian lifeboat, modified but never quite finished by noted yacht designer William Garden, who sold her to my youngest son Mackenzie in the year 2000. Bill had been working on her for many years; I remember seeing Owl in the back shop at his island retreat (Toad’s Landing) for almost a decade before our purchase. Bill was building her as a sort of “kids’ daysailer.” (Knowing Bill in the later years of his life, it seemed he was chasing his own mortality by thinking and dreaming about boats very much like a kid himself.)

But with other boats occupying his time and energies, Bill stalled on the project and during one of our visits to Toad’s Landing, he brought up the idea of letting us buy Owl. The negotiation was brief and we missed a significant detail: I had assumed Bill intended to finish his basic work on Owl and was offering her in floating condition, if not fully rebuilt. The reality was that Bill sold her as-is, where-is…meaning we paid for a half-finished kids’ cruiser with a four-cylinder Gray Marine gas engine plopped on beds but not hooked up, a fin keel that wasn’t yet installed, and a lot of other work that would be necessary before she could launch. (Just getting the hull watertight again, and ready to float safely would be a big chore, and then we’d have to tow her from the Gulf Islands of British Columbia back down Puget Sound to our shop near Olympia, Washington.)

So we jumped into the project of finishing her. It took four long weekends to finally get her ready to go into the water. Mackenzie got to spend some quality time with his idol, and while Bill was typically a bit gruff at the start of each workday, by afternoon he would occasionally pitch in and help.

Finally, we got her ready to launch. I had my old fishboat Lean-To, that I had run up to Toad’s Landing for the last work weekend with Mackenzie, and our old friend Fred Fenske along for support and help. The plan was to relaunch Owl with a gas-powered trash pump on board in case she tried to kill herself by drowning—a real possibility—and on a good, high tide she slipped into the water almost not bothering to try floating at all. Her dried-up planking allowed countless gallons of seawater to bathe her insides for the first few hours. The pump was started only moments after Owl’s release from the ways cradle and we spent the rest of the day and all night doing nothing but monitoring the water level in her bilges and refueling the noisy trash pump.

The next morning we began a long, 24-hour run straight for Olympia, the only interruptions being to pump her bilges every few hours, and a quick stop in Port Townsend to clear Customs. I don’t remember much about the paperwork at Customs, but the officer didn’t want to interfere with getting the leaky little boat off his dock…especially when he witnessed the spectacle of me firing up the trash pump and spewing a huge geyser of water over Owl’s side into the harbor.

A couple more weeks of work after arriving in Olympia and we had Owl ready to sail. Kenzie loved the boat, but quickly outgrew her mediocre sailing performance and graduated to one of my Arctic Tern gaff-rigged sloops, with ownership of Owl reverting to me. So, after a couple of years we hauled her, stowed the rig and pickled the Gray Marine (those leaky bilges had been hard on the old engine), and she sat on blocks in one of my barns for what became many years. Ideas on what to do with her would percolate, but the shop was busy and there was no time to work on her until last fall and early this year. The boatbuilding business had slowed, so we took the time to finally get Owl back into shape. Off came the long bowsprit and rig, the flush deck was retained and we built a new pilothouse for her, modeled slightly on the inspiration of Bill’s island launch and its larger sister Merlin, and with the added influence of Marty Loken’s microcruiser Salty.

One concern I had was how to run her during the summers and not overheat in the little pilothouse, so I devised a system of removable windows that we made ourselves. (There is a neat rack in the forward cabin area that takes the removed window panes and holds them safe and secure, allowing the pilothouse to become a shaded porch area in good weather, with the breeze swirling about. When the weather cools, the windows are reinstalled and I can stay warm on winter days using a simple propane heater.)

We replaced the old Gray Marine with a little Yanmar single-cylinder diesel we’d salvaged out of a sunken launch and rebuilt. For the fuel, I recycled a barrel-shaped stainless tank I’d been saving for years, adding polished brass straps to hold it in place just above and slightly aft of the Yanmar. With its 10-gallon capacity we can run Owl something like 30 hours between fill-ups. Cruising speed is about 5.6 knots at 2,200 rpm, with top speed of 6.4 knots.

One of my customers looked at Owl while we were doing the conversion, and said “It’s Sam’s Grandpa Boat,” which I suppose is about true. As for my goals, I’m hoping to enjoy putt-putting around on Owl after the shop is closed for the day and when the wind isn’t blowing enough to go sailing…just jumping aboard with my dog Bella or my granddaughter Evanna when she’s visiting Olympia, and poking about South Puget Sound—no agenda, no goals or destination in mind, and no worries! That’s what a Grandpa’s Boat is good for! —SD

---

SALTY by Marty Loken

While the adjacent article describes half a dozen existing pocket-cruising motorboat designs you can build or buy on the used market, we’d like to also suggest you can “do it yourself,” perhaps converting a free or cheap existing hull into a traditional-looking cabin cruiser that resembles a traditional workboat.

We’ve done it before and can recommend the approach, which can be a lot easier and more affordable than building from scratch.

Back in the 1970s, after restoring the first of several cedar-planked Poulsbo Boat hulls (open salmon-fishing launches built from 1930 to 1960 by Ronald Young in the Scandinavian port of Poulsbo, Washington), we did a lot of beach-camping aboard the 16-footer and loved its salty lines—springy sheerline, lots of tumblehome aft and very seaworthy, powered by its original 1946 Wisconsin air-cooled marine engine. But sometimes, when caught in bad weather, we longed for the protection of a little cabin, so we doodled what we had in mind—a pilothouse and small cuddy forward that echoed the lines of a traditional Northwest salmon troller.

While this wasn’t great naval architecture, we held onto the sketch and years later, after restoring yet another Poulsbo Boat hull, we finally got around to building the cabin, quickly turning the open boat into a camp-cruising mini-workboat.

Salty’s cuddy cabin and pilothouse were simple in terms of construction, but followed a few important “musts” in replicating a traditional Northwest salmon troller or gillnetter: 1) While the cabintops don’t have to have much (or any) side-to-side camber, it’s critical that in side profile they follow the main hull’s sheerline. If you have a springy sheerline like the one found on a vintage Poulsbo Boat, you especially want to avoid cabintops whose lines fight with the sweet sheer by being flat and parallel to the waterline, sloping downward or otherwise fighting with lines of the main hull. 2) While there are no rules about this, it’s helpful if the aft bulkhead and forward face of the cuddy cabin are vertical—perpendicular to the waterline, rather than sloping in either direction. And, finally, 3) When you frame in your cabinsides, especially on a hull that is full of curves and has some deck camber, be sure to have the side panels slope in a bit toward the centerline. If they’re plumb vertical, they’ll appear to be sloping out away from the hull, giving off the Mad Hatter effect—fine in Alice in Wonderland, but not so great atop your traditional hull. So, remember: Facing in, your side panels will appear vertical; actual vertical sides will look like they’re leaning outward…and that might not be the effect you want.

Assuming that, like me, you lack CAD boat-design software or the experience to use it, a great way to design your cabin is to use cardboard or ¼-inch foam-core sheets, which are easily cut, scored for bending and taped, as you mock up the cabin and/or pilothouse design. That’s exactly what I did with Salty’s cabin, verifying that I had enough sitting headroom and that the basic idea looked okay before committing to actual wood construction.

For Salty, knowing that building any kind of cabin structure on a small 16-footer was an aesthetic and practical challenge, I wanted to keep weight of the addition as light as possible. So the entire cuddy and pilothouse were framed in ¾" x 1"-ish Alaska Yellow Cedar, and all of the panels were of 6mm and 4mm Okoume plywood—4mm for the sides that had to wrap around the front of the cuddy, and 6mm for the cabintops, knowing that someone would try to sit or stand there at some point.

For hardware, I accumulated vintage bronze deck cleats and chocks, along with old bronze portlights on eBay, making sure all of the hardware bits were scaled to the diminutive size of the 16-foot faux salmon troller. The forward portlights were opening for ventilation, and the semi-rectangular window panels wrapping around the pilothouse were ¼-inch polycarbonate (Lexan by brand), which is far more scratch-resistant than plexiglass.

Because the original inboard engine was going to land right in the middle of the pilothouse—not the most pleasant seat in the house—I removed the engine, built a small-as-possible well just forward of the transom, and installed a short-shaft 8 hp outboard motor, setting everything up so that the outboard’s prop was in almost the same position as the original inboard propeller as it emerged from the shaftlog. Wanting to keep the outboard well small, I decided the motor would sit in a fixed straight-ahead position and that steering would be done via a transom-hung bronze rudder and cables leading to two vintage steering wheels—one just outside the pilothouse, and the other inside, where you could steer the boat and stay dry during occasional Northwest downpours. Simple, but effective. Throttle and shift controls were just inside the pilothouse, at your side when sitting in the cabin but reachable when you decided to steer in the open air.

I liked the looks of Salty in its mini-troller form, and now plan to upscale the whole idea to a larger 18- or 20-foot hull, which with its increased volume will be more comfortable as a pocket cruiser.

The point here is that you can design and build your own affordable little cabin on a variety of old hulls—maybe that free 1970’s sailboat that was missing mast and rigging, or Dad’s old plywood fishing boat. While some hulls are obviously more attractive and appropriate than others, vintage catboats make aesthetically-ideal choices with their plumb stems and generous beams. So do some other classic-glass sailboat hulls, or open outboard fishing boats. If you really want the traditional Northwest fishboat look, avoid sharply-raked bows…unless you want to replicate one of the Monterey Clipper fishboats of the central California coast. Plumb stems generally look best, followed by hulls with only gently raked stems.

Some photos of Salty above give you the idea of our approach.

So, go drag that old yard-art hull out of the woods and get started, or start shopping craigslist for cheap, derelict project boats that might fit the bill. It won’t be long before you’re cruising in style, with a fuel-efficient little motorboat whose design honors the classic lines of vintage workboats—some of the best-looking boats ever seen on the water, in our opinion. —ML •SCA•