Reader Boat: Lady Bug

Article by Robert Petersen

In the 1960s I was co-owner and general manager of a yacht services business on the island of Grenada, in what was then the British West Indies. Our business included maintenance and repairs on some of the finest yachts in the world, including nearly century old Fifers from Scotland, as well as early 20th century yachts by Herreshoff, Sparkman & Stevens, and many others. I also had the pleasure of getting to know the owners and legendary skippers of the replicas of America and Bluenose, Waldo Howland and his fabulous schooner Integrity, plus sailing on Ticonderoga and many others.

In spite of this heady atmosphere I never lost my appreciation of neat little boats. During my previous years with a steamship company in Japan, I had accumulated a few books on yacht design, namely Chapelle’s Yacht Designing and Planning and Skene’s Element’s of Yacht Design, which I practically memorized. Being exposed to all these marvelous yachts I looked at them with the information I had gathered from my books. I also signed up for the Westlawn School of Yacht Design correspondence course, which taught me the basics and calculations necessary to get ideas down on paper. I had a copy of the Rudder book of sailboat plans, in which was Bill Garden’s 1945 design for June Bug, an 18-foot sharpie cat schooner. In my spare time I sketched out a little gaff sloop daysailer based on the June Bug hull.

I never had time to build that boat while I was in Grenada, but a few years later back here in the States, a friend and neighbor approached me with the idea of going into partnership on a boat. He would supply the materials and I would build it to the plans I had drawn earlier. That was in 1976. The boat is going into its thirty-third season this year and has been a joy.

A few years ago I got to toying with the idea of putting the raised deck cabin of the original June Bug back onto it, but finally decided it would be better to start from scratch. Flashing back to my steamship days, one of the things I had learned about naval architecture was that in designing a new vessel one should take an existing ship of known performance characteristics and apply the modifications desired to it, to more accurately assess the results of the changes. I therefore took the basic design of Garden’s June Bug, stretched it out by three feet, changed the bow from plumb to raking and changed the double-ended stern to a transom. I traded the long, shallow keel for leeboards, changed the schooner rig to a tabernacle-mounted, jib headed sloop rig, and changed the inboard engine to an outboard in a well. The amazing thing is that aficionados of the original June Bug have no trouble recognizing the heritage. I sent pictures of the modifications to Mr. Garden, and he has been nothing but complimentary. By the way, the boat was awarded “Best Small Sailboat” at the 1999 Wooden Boat Show, hosted by the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle.

I kept the construction of the new boat as simple as possible, while simultaneously making it strong and traditional. The bottom is two layers of 3/8" plywood and the sides are single 3/8". The raised deck cabin sides are 1/4" and the decks are 3/8". At that time, good Douglas fir shop-grade plywood was available directly from local plywood mills. I was fortunate to have some excellent old growth Douglas fir left over from previous boats, for frames, etc., and some Malaysian hardwood called Keruing for hatches and rails, etc. I was also fortunate to have some old growth Sitka spruce on hand that I used for hollow box section spars.

The mast is set in a tabernacle laminated from marine grade aluminum. I can stand on the closed companionway hatch and reach far enough aft to raise or lower the mast with one hand. The boom rests in the gallows over the aft end of the cockpit and the mast lowers into a little saddle that fits over the boom. It takes me about a half hour to remove the sails, get the rig down and the boat onto the trailer, ready to hit the road, or visa versa. The total weight of the boat, including about 600 pounds of concrete blocks under the floorboards for ballast, is about 2,000 pounds. I can tow it with my Subaru Forester.

It’s the interior of the cabin that makes it a real cruiser. It has a little wood burning stove right up in the forepeak. There’s a wide-open main cabin with plenty of room for two air mattresses and sleeping bags (practically a queen size berth). On the port side, a portable toilet slides aft under the cockpit seat. To starboard is what Chapelle calls a “Portuguese Galley,” a box that houses a Propane stove, stowage for pots and pans, dishes and silver, etc. It also slides under the cockpit seat. Up under the overhead to starboard is a VHF radio, and on a hinged bracket that swings over into the companionway to be visible from the cockpit are a GPS and a depth sounder/fish finder/speed log. Pretty sophisticated for a simple little boat.

The cockpit is self draining into the outboard well and under the starboard cockpit seat is a portable ice box with wheels that you can trundle down the dock. There is another locker to port for other necessary things. Alongside the outboard well are self draining decks for the gas tanks. Any spillage goes right overboard. I’ve used an 8-horsepower Honda for power, which is great because it will push the boat to over 6 knots, wide open, and will charge the battery. I’ve since added a solar panel that keeps the battery charged up and lets me get along with my 4-horsepower Johnson. The four horsepower gives the boat 5 knots, which is adequate most of the time, and the motor is much smaller and lighter. The motor tips up inside the well and there’s a plug that closes up the shaft aperture to reduce drag under sail.

As far is sailing is concerned, the boat does everything I expected of it. The shoal draft, the relatively high center of gravity of the ballast, the leeboards instead of a fin keel, and the consequent relatively low aspect ratio of the rig do not make for a boat that excels going to windward. It’ll get you there, but at times one must accept that it is basically a motor sailer and with a pull on the starter cord you’re going to windward with the big boys. Off the wind is another story. Once on the lower Columbia River I was powering along at about 5 knots in a near flat calm. Late in the afternoon the usual northwester piped up. I unrolled the jib to give me a little extra push and before long found us surfing along with a very impressive following sea for waters nearly 100 miles from the ocean. We were bucking a bit of ebb tide, but the GPS showed us reaching 10 knots as we surfed down the faces of the seas. The motor would race like it was going to fly apart, and then settle back to push us up the next one. I would love to have set the main too, but being alone on the boat I did not want to leave the helm to do it. Anyway, it was a great ride. A tiller pilot is one piece of gear I wish I had.

To me, the leeboards are a very good compromise. They do not obstruct the cabin like a centerboard trunk would and do not pose a place for possible rot and leaks. Admittedly, changing leeboards every time you tack is one more thing to do, but I always lower the windward board before tacking and haul the new windward board up after everything is squared away. If a person used a boat like this where draft is not a problem, hanging a Cal 20 or 110 keel under it and maybe a taller rig should provide very good performance to windward.

Its easy trailerability has enabled us to use the boat extensively on the Columbia River as well as on Puget Sound. Drawing less than two feet (the rudder blade folds up too) anchorages are open to us that I can only look longingly at from any other boat. Its home mooring, in front of our home on Willapa Bay, dries out at every low tide, but it just sits there upright, waiting a few hours until it floats again. In the winter the boat lives under a portable shelter, which keeps annual maintenance from being a major chore. So, I’m happy with the boat the way it is. •SCA•

First appeared in issue #63