I guess I have been boat lucky. No bad boats in my fleet. Boats in order - 1970 Chubasco Snipe, 1970s Laser, 1989 Pacific Seacraft 31 (best built), 1983 Colvin Gazelle gaff schooner (most unique, most work in a refit), 1974 Tartan 34C (best overall sailor). I am now going back to my roots with a soon to be purchased sail and oar dinghy.
A Colvin Gazelle worked out of Bellingham (my home town) for several years. She was of welded aluminum (I think the prototype was steel), and was Chinese lug rigged. She was sailed all over the Pacific. I always admired that boat, and though it would make a good liveaboard.
Mine was steel and the previous owner converted her to gaff rigged. I moved her from Seattle to Waukegan IL on Lake Michigan. The builder placed the foremast 2 ft aft of where it was supposed to be because he shortened the cabin top in order to use some steel he had laying around (I kid you not). The gaff sails were made to Colvin's plans and did not fit until I moved the foremast forward. The boat went to weather a bit better, but still not very well at all. I pretty much did a full refit, rigging, electrical, new interior, new hatches, all two part epoxy coated paint inside and out. A very hard boat to handle in a marina with the long keel, fixed three blade prop, and small rudder - I would have had an easier time with her on a can in Monroe Harbor in Chicago.
I sold her to a guy who took her through the Erie Canal down the Hudson to Connecticut. He did not change too much except he had the man mast moved two feet forward. Although it does intrude below decks she sailed much better. She is now owned by a retired tug boat captain who has sailed her in a couple of Great Chesapeake Schooner Races - finishing first in Class C once.
I have a deposit on a Phoenix III designed by Ross Lillistone. I met Mr Colvin in 2002. He invited me to stop by his home in Florida while I was on my boat search (I looked at several Colvin designs in Florida on my trip). He was very helpful, and his wife was very gracious. Mr. Colvin kept a file on any boat made from his plans. He had recently downsized to a Sharpie he designed and had taken a short cruise with his wife (the boat was engineless, as I recall, and very spartan, complete with a honey bucket for a head).
Phoenix III was my choice if I was to build. She's quick, will leave me in the dust. And I like the way you can build an overnight bunk on her. Tom Pamperin, with his brother, on his brothers Phoenix finished the Everglades Challenge!! Good boat.
We are serial muck-abouters, there's not a bit of shaola water that we don't like. The worst boat for us was the Capri 18 with a wing keel. She's a great boat as long as she can stay in and near deep water, very stable and a decent cruiser with a sizable cabin.
But she was actually Cap'n Jack's boat that we talked him into buying. He'd had on for Corpus Christi bay, a great fit. The boat we owned that we a great raid boat but not a good fit for us was a schooner rigged Penobscot 17. Two huuuuge balanced lugsails, beautifully designed by Stuart Hopkins, with booms to match. Whitehall style hull built by a Master builder down in Florida, originally named Junie Jump Up and finished in beautiful bahamas watercolors. She'd outsail anything in the fleet, especially on a broad reach. But to do so you needed to sit very low on the floorboards of her already small cockpit and have a nice long bit of water for her to stretch her legs, while yours were not so stretched. We like having real seats and being able to tack without dodging two booms and a lot of lines, like we can on our O'Day Day Sailer II, also 17 feet with a small cuddy cabin.
We bought her to study the design and construction, to see if the design was a candidate for our next build, we liked her colonial lines and thought she might be fun for reenactments. She was and will be, her new Skipper ran the lighthouse at Pensacola and she'll fit right in there as a period piece.
Thanks, Kent, for the Penobscot comments. I think it's one of the prettiest boats around, and (probably because of that) you see an awful lot of ads like "Built by a master craftsman 10 years ago and sailed 3 times." I suspect that at some point in my life I may succumb to the temptation of those good looking lines.
She's swift and sure footed, but the Skipper needs to be also. But versatile as well, there are optional gunter sail plans with jib and one or two other sail plans. The boat we had had a third mast step just aft of the forward step, so she could be sailed with just on balanced lug if desired. We talked with Arch Davis and he said that the double balanced lug was not built that often.
Bob Pitt, a Florida Folk Heritage Award recipient was her builder. The boat was well traveled, she'd made it from Florida for the Small Reach Regatta in Maine and the Mid Atlantic Small Craft Festival, and as far west as Pensacola for the Florida 120 raid.
I bought a Leisure 17 brand new at the Norfolk VA Boat Show in 1967. It didn't have all the issues of your bilge keeler, Josh, but surely suffered from nearly all of the same designed in sailing deficiencies. I was such a a novice I never noticed! I thought she was a really seaworthy and handy little craft, if kinda funky looking, and I really loved her.... until 2 foot-itis set in.
My worst was also my first, however.....a Venture 17 (by Roger Macgregor). But she did exactly what she was designed to do...she got me.... and my wife ... cruising! And learning.
Hey Ferd! I always loved the look of the Leisure 17 and thought American designers could have done more to draw boats that had the character of the Fantasie, Leisure, Alacrity, etc. See that's my problem—you just said the 17 suffered from sailing deficiencies and yet I'd still kinda like to have one. Sigh.
If I could find a Leisure 17 in good shape I'd probably swap in my beloved CP19 Dauntless! That unique quart in a pint pot Brit occupies a special place in my excessively extensive inventory of past trailer sailers!
Wayfarer - f/g version. Yes, I know, it's a legendary boat. Just not user friendly. Partly due to my own newness at sailing, I'll admit, but the boat didn't keep me from banging up some knee or cutting myself somewhere, on almost every trip out. One night in the driveway while putting the rain cover on, in the pouring rain, standing on the floorboards, my feet went up and my elbow came crashing down on the hard fibreglass center thwart. That elbow ached for a year. I finally understood. The boat didn't want me, and neither did I, it. I gave it away, gratis, to a young family at the marina yearning to own their own sailboat. Good luck, I said to them, happy to part ways with the evil thing.
Shane Acton circumnavigated in a plywood twin bilge keeled Tucker Caprice in the 1970s. He wrote a book about it titled Shrimpy. He liked the bilge keels because in the South Pacific he could cross reef run through the surf up on the beach. He would aim for a village so people would come down and help carry his boat up the beach. He did this under sail as he had no motor.
Yeah, I have a copy of Shrimpy book. I remain a fan of twin and bilge-keelers generally. I’ve usually been impressed with their general construction and the ruggedness of a boat built to sit on its keels.
Isn't every boat you've owned a, "this is a great boat but..." I don't think I can call any of my boats "worst." For me the big question is, is there a boat I would go back to after learning from all the rest? And that question is sweet, for I wouldn't go back, won't leave my ILUR. To me every sailboat builds upon the last. But so far - when it comes to under 17 or 16 feet, she is my "little ship," as Ron her builder called her.
The worst boat I ever owned was one I designed and built for myself. Let me hastened to say that out of the multitude of craft I've authored over the last 68 or so years there's not a one I regret having done.
This particular boat was done early in this voyage through life. A flat broke married college student, I worked part time as an assistant to the general superintendent for a commercial construction company. I scrounged some damaged sheets of plywood and other scrap and built a "board boat" copied from something I saw in a Mechanic's Illustrated magazine. Sail was a lateen borrowed from from my father in law that he used on his Grumman canoe at times.
I had absolutely no sailing experience but had a lot of canoeing and hydroplane racing under my belt. First trials were inauspicious but what the heck, we on Beaver Lake in NW Arkansas and life was good. About the second or third summer weekend at the lake the wind died and my father in law towed me and a friend back to camp. Along the way the the boat took a wake at an angle and slid sideways a bit and there was a loud crack as the dagger snapped in two. Well almost in two we had to wiggle it back and forth a bt to bring the bottom part back on board.
Back at the ramp Gary Dodd who was with me on the boat at the time helped me once again to load the boat on my 64 Chevy 2 station wagon. Rather tried to help me load the boat; we couldn't budge the thing off the ground. Further inspection revealed that the boat was a little low in the water. rolled up on the ramp far enough to get the stern out of the water we pulled the plug and watched water run out for what seemed like an eternity. The inside of the boat was pretty well filled with beaded foam, I had access to a lot of scrap pieces and a hot wire cutter.
Try as I might I never got the daggerboard slot sealed again so we did use the boat for the rest of the summer always remembering to bring some short pieces of 2" pvc pipe with us. I don't really miss that particular boat, but I do miss Gary, he's been gone for a number of years now. There are some other craft that I'd love to see and use use again, just one more time. Some winter evening I might make a list of same and try the impossible and rank them in order.
In the meantime I'll work on the one in the shop and use the one sitting on sawhorses until they go on the list or I end up on the list myself.
That is sure a sweet looking boat, I can understand your attraction to her! I'm not a fan of o/b wells, and think I would have closed it up with a motor mount on the transom, if possible. But then again, I'm not keen on a transom mounted o/b either.
I haven't had enough boats to say one was the worst. The Folbot Super was a clunker, like paddling a log but I had a great time using it around Ketchikan and P.O.W. Island, had some great adventures with it. I guess my favorite was the GlenL-17. A joy to sail, minimal accommodations but everything I wanted in a boat. I sailed her out of St. Helens, OR until I saw a Santana 21 for sale. I fancied longer cruises with bunks, a dinette and galley. Found out the cockpit wasn't as comfortable as what was on the 17 footer, but by then I was committed. I sailed it on the Columbia, then when I went back to Alaska I sailed her there a good bit. There was a Catalina 27 after that which we brought u from Seattle but sold soon after. Now I have a 1975 12' Glastech which I have never had in the water in the 16 years I've owned it. Not the boat's fault, life has just kept getting in the way. Plus, being in SE Ohio limits the places to sail other than going to the Ohio River. I keep hoping though!
Yeah, as I recall the Fantasie came with a filler piece (of the original hull) that I could insert into the well opening if I wasn't using an outboard or had it stowed somewhere. That lazarette would have made a transom-mounted outboard feel sort of far away, so I never really considered moving it.
I've always liked the Glen-L 17's offset companionway and what it offers for the interior, though I recognize everything is a tradeoff.
My dad built a little 8' skiff when I was about 10 or so. The design appeared in "How to Build 20 Boats," which was an annual magazine, I believe. It rowed pretty well solo, but with a passenger on the rear thwart, it dragged its transom horribly, and would stop dead after every stroke. A fore & aft rowing seat might have helped. Ever since then, I peruse every plan for a rowing boat to see if it's going to be a transom dragger. Of course the fiberglass and aluminum skiffs designed for outboard motors are almost universally bad rowers, and I fear a lot of users of those don't realize why they row badly, nor what a good rowing boat should look like. They just assume that rowing is something to be avoided at all costs.
Fun story: once when I was anchored in Fossil Bay on Sucia Island (in the San Juans) I watched some people on a cruiser preparing to go ashore in a very small dinghy. After hanging the outboard on the stern, the owner pulled on the starter string about 100 or so times, to no avail. He could have rowed his family and guests ashore (about 100 feet distance) in several trips within the time he had wasted trying to start the OB.
I miss the old magazines that produced annual issues with boat plans. From some of them you could build the boat right out of the magazine, and didn't have to send off for plans. "The rudder" was one, "How to Build 20 Boats" another, and Sports Afield's"Boatbuilding Annual" was another. Weston Farmer, Edson Shock, and David Beach were some of the designers.
The best rowing tiny boat I built was a 6 1/2 foot pram with a shallow V bottom, by Al Mason, I believe. It had a T shaped rowing bench that allowed the rower to shift fore or aft for best balance. There was also Billy Atkin's "Tiny Ripple" which had a similar fore/aft rowing bench. It was only 6 feet long, I believe, and it rowed quite well for a simple hull shape (pram with good bottom rocker and flared topsides). I could easily outpace a Livingston of similar size, even if it was being driven by an outboard. I built 2 or 3 of those, including one for dad. He and my mom used to go fishing in it in some of the small lakes above Lake Chelan.
My worst boat was likely a very good boat, but one that was remarkably ill suited to who I was at the time.
I'd sailed all the usual suspects in college, from Lasers to an original Luders Annapolis 44. I'd always loved wooden boats, so when I discovered at my hometown's boat swap a handsome 18' Jollyboat--a planing dinghy designed by Uffa Fox in 1950--I was instantly smitten. To my eye, it looked like the Flying Scot, a benign, golden retriever of a boat, in which I'd had so much fun while racing and cruising.
The Jollyboat had a hot-molded mahogany plywood hull, built by Fairey Marine in Southampton, England and finished by the previous (and original) owner. He had all the paperwork and I discovered that the kit had landed in the US on the day of my wife's birth. It had gold-anodized, tapered Ian Proctor spars, hiking straps, good sails, and precious little else. I am a history guy, so I loved the Uffa Fox and Fairey connections.
So what was the problem? Well, Fox was not afraid to embrace the radical in pursuit of higher speed, and with a waterline of 17'6" and a beam of only 5', with very little wetted area and a big rig, and with a hull weighing 250(!) pounds, the Jollyboat was a rocket ship. It would plane at the slightest provocation. Essentially a scaled-up International 14 (perhaps Fox's area of greatest success), the Jollyboat really needed two strong young men on trapezes to maintain any sense of order. I liked to kid--although in truth it was barely an exaggeration--that the Jollyboat was as happy lying on its side as it was on its bottom. As a picnic boat for a young couple with an infant and a toddler, this was suboptimal.
I ended up selling it to a dentist who lived on a lake with two sons, who also bought my Ducati. I took them for a sail on their home water, and with little fanfare or warning, it came over once we hit a puff without our responding with sufficient alacrity. A neighbor of the dentist saw us go over and towed the swamped Jollyboat home.
The dentist had a big basement: I wonder if the Jollyboat ever went out again?
We enjoyed a 23' Clipper Marine Twin Keel in the early eighties, designed by Bill Crealock. 2' 9" draft, tough sailer on SF Bay, and very roomy. They also made a swing keel version. The twin keel was way more fun.
This is in reference to the McKenzie River boat shown on the cover of the magazine at the beginning of this thread. The first time I ever saw this design was in "20 Boats" I think. They showed the boat descending a river stern first (not bow first as the "Small Boats" cover has it). I think the reason for that is the descent should be slower than the current, especially in rapids. That way you are meeting the oncoming current with the pointed end of the boat, as you ease the boat downstream under control of the oars. The oars are there not to propel the boat, but to control it in the rapids. I do occasionally see one of these (or a version thereof) locally. Probably for use on the Skagit River, which does have a fair number of rapids.
In the words of the late great Brother Dave Gardner "The worst I ever had was wonderful"
I guess I have been boat lucky. No bad boats in my fleet. Boats in order - 1970 Chubasco Snipe, 1970s Laser, 1989 Pacific Seacraft 31 (best built), 1983 Colvin Gazelle gaff schooner (most unique, most work in a refit), 1974 Tartan 34C (best overall sailor). I am now going back to my roots with a soon to be purchased sail and oar dinghy.
A Colvin Gazelle worked out of Bellingham (my home town) for several years. She was of welded aluminum (I think the prototype was steel), and was Chinese lug rigged. She was sailed all over the Pacific. I always admired that boat, and though it would make a good liveaboard.
Mine was steel and the previous owner converted her to gaff rigged. I moved her from Seattle to Waukegan IL on Lake Michigan. The builder placed the foremast 2 ft aft of where it was supposed to be because he shortened the cabin top in order to use some steel he had laying around (I kid you not). The gaff sails were made to Colvin's plans and did not fit until I moved the foremast forward. The boat went to weather a bit better, but still not very well at all. I pretty much did a full refit, rigging, electrical, new interior, new hatches, all two part epoxy coated paint inside and out. A very hard boat to handle in a marina with the long keel, fixed three blade prop, and small rudder - I would have had an easier time with her on a can in Monroe Harbor in Chicago.
I sold her to a guy who took her through the Erie Canal down the Hudson to Connecticut. He did not change too much except he had the man mast moved two feet forward. Although it does intrude below decks she sailed much better. She is now owned by a retired tug boat captain who has sailed her in a couple of Great Chesapeake Schooner Races - finishing first in Class C once.
Brad, what Sail and Oar boat are you pursuing? I met Mr. Colvin in74' - quite the guy - with an beautiful daughter...
I have a deposit on a Phoenix III designed by Ross Lillistone. I met Mr Colvin in 2002. He invited me to stop by his home in Florida while I was on my boat search (I looked at several Colvin designs in Florida on my trip). He was very helpful, and his wife was very gracious. Mr. Colvin kept a file on any boat made from his plans. He had recently downsized to a Sharpie he designed and had taken a short cruise with his wife (the boat was engineless, as I recall, and very spartan, complete with a honey bucket for a head).
Phoenix III was my choice if I was to build. She's quick, will leave me in the dust. And I like the way you can build an overnight bunk on her. Tom Pamperin, with his brother, on his brothers Phoenix finished the Everglades Challenge!! Good boat.
We are serial muck-abouters, there's not a bit of shaola water that we don't like. The worst boat for us was the Capri 18 with a wing keel. She's a great boat as long as she can stay in and near deep water, very stable and a decent cruiser with a sizable cabin.
But she was actually Cap'n Jack's boat that we talked him into buying. He'd had on for Corpus Christi bay, a great fit. The boat we owned that we a great raid boat but not a good fit for us was a schooner rigged Penobscot 17. Two huuuuge balanced lugsails, beautifully designed by Stuart Hopkins, with booms to match. Whitehall style hull built by a Master builder down in Florida, originally named Junie Jump Up and finished in beautiful bahamas watercolors. She'd outsail anything in the fleet, especially on a broad reach. But to do so you needed to sit very low on the floorboards of her already small cockpit and have a nice long bit of water for her to stretch her legs, while yours were not so stretched. We like having real seats and being able to tack without dodging two booms and a lot of lines, like we can on our O'Day Day Sailer II, also 17 feet with a small cuddy cabin.
We bought her to study the design and construction, to see if the design was a candidate for our next build, we liked her colonial lines and thought she might be fun for reenactments. She was and will be, her new Skipper ran the lighthouse at Pensacola and she'll fit right in there as a period piece.
Thanks, Kent, for the Penobscot comments. I think it's one of the prettiest boats around, and (probably because of that) you see an awful lot of ads like "Built by a master craftsman 10 years ago and sailed 3 times." I suspect that at some point in my life I may succumb to the temptation of those good looking lines.
She's swift and sure footed, but the Skipper needs to be also. But versatile as well, there are optional gunter sail plans with jib and one or two other sail plans. The boat we had had a third mast step just aft of the forward step, so she could be sailed with just on balanced lug if desired. We talked with Arch Davis and he said that the double balanced lug was not built that often.
Bob Pitt, a Florida Folk Heritage Award recipient was her builder. The boat was well traveled, she'd made it from Florida for the Small Reach Regatta in Maine and the Mid Atlantic Small Craft Festival, and as far west as Pensacola for the Florida 120 raid.
More info on our blog: https://smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com/p/penobscot-17-hannah.html
I bought a Leisure 17 brand new at the Norfolk VA Boat Show in 1967. It didn't have all the issues of your bilge keeler, Josh, but surely suffered from nearly all of the same designed in sailing deficiencies. I was such a a novice I never noticed! I thought she was a really seaworthy and handy little craft, if kinda funky looking, and I really loved her.... until 2 foot-itis set in.
My worst was also my first, however.....a Venture 17 (by Roger Macgregor). But she did exactly what she was designed to do...she got me.... and my wife ... cruising! And learning.
Hey Ferd! I always loved the look of the Leisure 17 and thought American designers could have done more to draw boats that had the character of the Fantasie, Leisure, Alacrity, etc. See that's my problem—you just said the 17 suffered from sailing deficiencies and yet I'd still kinda like to have one. Sigh.
If I could find a Leisure 17 in good shape I'd probably swap in my beloved CP19 Dauntless! That unique quart in a pint pot Brit occupies a special place in my excessively extensive inventory of past trailer sailers!
Wayfarer - f/g version. Yes, I know, it's a legendary boat. Just not user friendly. Partly due to my own newness at sailing, I'll admit, but the boat didn't keep me from banging up some knee or cutting myself somewhere, on almost every trip out. One night in the driveway while putting the rain cover on, in the pouring rain, standing on the floorboards, my feet went up and my elbow came crashing down on the hard fibreglass center thwart. That elbow ached for a year. I finally understood. The boat didn't want me, and neither did I, it. I gave it away, gratis, to a young family at the marina yearning to own their own sailboat. Good luck, I said to them, happy to part ways with the evil thing.
I can see that. Great design, but "sportier" than I expected and maybe not super comfortable. Certainly gave me even more respect for Frank Dye.
Shane Acton circumnavigated in a plywood twin bilge keeled Tucker Caprice in the 1970s. He wrote a book about it titled Shrimpy. He liked the bilge keels because in the South Pacific he could cross reef run through the surf up on the beach. He would aim for a village so people would come down and help carry his boat up the beach. He did this under sail as he had no motor.
Yeah, I have a copy of Shrimpy book. I remain a fan of twin and bilge-keelers generally. I’ve usually been impressed with their general construction and the ruggedness of a boat built to sit on its keels.
My father had a plywood fin keeled Tucker Hurley Mark II. Needed a sling to launch her. So kept at a marina.
Isn't every boat you've owned a, "this is a great boat but..." I don't think I can call any of my boats "worst." For me the big question is, is there a boat I would go back to after learning from all the rest? And that question is sweet, for I wouldn't go back, won't leave my ILUR. To me every sailboat builds upon the last. But so far - when it comes to under 17 or 16 feet, she is my "little ship," as Ron her builder called her.
The worst boat I ever owned was one I designed and built for myself. Let me hastened to say that out of the multitude of craft I've authored over the last 68 or so years there's not a one I regret having done.
This particular boat was done early in this voyage through life. A flat broke married college student, I worked part time as an assistant to the general superintendent for a commercial construction company. I scrounged some damaged sheets of plywood and other scrap and built a "board boat" copied from something I saw in a Mechanic's Illustrated magazine. Sail was a lateen borrowed from from my father in law that he used on his Grumman canoe at times.
I had absolutely no sailing experience but had a lot of canoeing and hydroplane racing under my belt. First trials were inauspicious but what the heck, we on Beaver Lake in NW Arkansas and life was good. About the second or third summer weekend at the lake the wind died and my father in law towed me and a friend back to camp. Along the way the the boat took a wake at an angle and slid sideways a bit and there was a loud crack as the dagger snapped in two. Well almost in two we had to wiggle it back and forth a bt to bring the bottom part back on board.
Back at the ramp Gary Dodd who was with me on the boat at the time helped me once again to load the boat on my 64 Chevy 2 station wagon. Rather tried to help me load the boat; we couldn't budge the thing off the ground. Further inspection revealed that the boat was a little low in the water. rolled up on the ramp far enough to get the stern out of the water we pulled the plug and watched water run out for what seemed like an eternity. The inside of the boat was pretty well filled with beaded foam, I had access to a lot of scrap pieces and a hot wire cutter.
Try as I might I never got the daggerboard slot sealed again so we did use the boat for the rest of the summer always remembering to bring some short pieces of 2" pvc pipe with us. I don't really miss that particular boat, but I do miss Gary, he's been gone for a number of years now. There are some other craft that I'd love to see and use use again, just one more time. Some winter evening I might make a list of same and try the impossible and rank them in order.
In the meantime I'll work on the one in the shop and use the one sitting on sawhorses until they go on the list or I end up on the list myself.
Ha. Great story.
That is sure a sweet looking boat, I can understand your attraction to her! I'm not a fan of o/b wells, and think I would have closed it up with a motor mount on the transom, if possible. But then again, I'm not keen on a transom mounted o/b either.
I haven't had enough boats to say one was the worst. The Folbot Super was a clunker, like paddling a log but I had a great time using it around Ketchikan and P.O.W. Island, had some great adventures with it. I guess my favorite was the GlenL-17. A joy to sail, minimal accommodations but everything I wanted in a boat. I sailed her out of St. Helens, OR until I saw a Santana 21 for sale. I fancied longer cruises with bunks, a dinette and galley. Found out the cockpit wasn't as comfortable as what was on the 17 footer, but by then I was committed. I sailed it on the Columbia, then when I went back to Alaska I sailed her there a good bit. There was a Catalina 27 after that which we brought u from Seattle but sold soon after. Now I have a 1975 12' Glastech which I have never had in the water in the 16 years I've owned it. Not the boat's fault, life has just kept getting in the way. Plus, being in SE Ohio limits the places to sail other than going to the Ohio River. I keep hoping though!
Yeah, as I recall the Fantasie came with a filler piece (of the original hull) that I could insert into the well opening if I wasn't using an outboard or had it stowed somewhere. That lazarette would have made a transom-mounted outboard feel sort of far away, so I never really considered moving it.
I've always liked the Glen-L 17's offset companionway and what it offers for the interior, though I recognize everything is a tradeoff.
My dad built a little 8' skiff when I was about 10 or so. The design appeared in "How to Build 20 Boats," which was an annual magazine, I believe. It rowed pretty well solo, but with a passenger on the rear thwart, it dragged its transom horribly, and would stop dead after every stroke. A fore & aft rowing seat might have helped. Ever since then, I peruse every plan for a rowing boat to see if it's going to be a transom dragger. Of course the fiberglass and aluminum skiffs designed for outboard motors are almost universally bad rowers, and I fear a lot of users of those don't realize why they row badly, nor what a good rowing boat should look like. They just assume that rowing is something to be avoided at all costs.
Fun story: once when I was anchored in Fossil Bay on Sucia Island (in the San Juans) I watched some people on a cruiser preparing to go ashore in a very small dinghy. After hanging the outboard on the stern, the owner pulled on the starter string about 100 or so times, to no avail. He could have rowed his family and guests ashore (about 100 feet distance) in several trips within the time he had wasted trying to start the OB.
I miss the old magazines that produced annual issues with boat plans. From some of them you could build the boat right out of the magazine, and didn't have to send off for plans. "The rudder" was one, "How to Build 20 Boats" another, and Sports Afield's"Boatbuilding Annual" was another. Weston Farmer, Edson Shock, and David Beach were some of the designers.
The best rowing tiny boat I built was a 6 1/2 foot pram with a shallow V bottom, by Al Mason, I believe. It had a T shaped rowing bench that allowed the rower to shift fore or aft for best balance. There was also Billy Atkin's "Tiny Ripple" which had a similar fore/aft rowing bench. It was only 6 feet long, I believe, and it rowed quite well for a simple hull shape (pram with good bottom rocker and flared topsides). I could easily outpace a Livingston of similar size, even if it was being driven by an outboard. I built 2 or 3 of those, including one for dad. He and my mom used to go fishing in it in some of the small lakes above Lake Chelan.
My worst boat was likely a very good boat, but one that was remarkably ill suited to who I was at the time.
I'd sailed all the usual suspects in college, from Lasers to an original Luders Annapolis 44. I'd always loved wooden boats, so when I discovered at my hometown's boat swap a handsome 18' Jollyboat--a planing dinghy designed by Uffa Fox in 1950--I was instantly smitten. To my eye, it looked like the Flying Scot, a benign, golden retriever of a boat, in which I'd had so much fun while racing and cruising.
The Jollyboat had a hot-molded mahogany plywood hull, built by Fairey Marine in Southampton, England and finished by the previous (and original) owner. He had all the paperwork and I discovered that the kit had landed in the US on the day of my wife's birth. It had gold-anodized, tapered Ian Proctor spars, hiking straps, good sails, and precious little else. I am a history guy, so I loved the Uffa Fox and Fairey connections.
So what was the problem? Well, Fox was not afraid to embrace the radical in pursuit of higher speed, and with a waterline of 17'6" and a beam of only 5', with very little wetted area and a big rig, and with a hull weighing 250(!) pounds, the Jollyboat was a rocket ship. It would plane at the slightest provocation. Essentially a scaled-up International 14 (perhaps Fox's area of greatest success), the Jollyboat really needed two strong young men on trapezes to maintain any sense of order. I liked to kid--although in truth it was barely an exaggeration--that the Jollyboat was as happy lying on its side as it was on its bottom. As a picnic boat for a young couple with an infant and a toddler, this was suboptimal.
I ended up selling it to a dentist who lived on a lake with two sons, who also bought my Ducati. I took them for a sail on their home water, and with little fanfare or warning, it came over once we hit a puff without our responding with sufficient alacrity. A neighbor of the dentist saw us go over and towed the swamped Jollyboat home.
The dentist had a big basement: I wonder if the Jollyboat ever went out again?
Great story!
Exactly. Well said.
I have no experience with twin or bilge keels, but I have read that the added wetted surface is detrimental to performance.
We enjoyed a 23' Clipper Marine Twin Keel in the early eighties, designed by Bill Crealock. 2' 9" draft, tough sailer on SF Bay, and very roomy. They also made a swing keel version. The twin keel was way more fun.
My worst boat was only the worst for me, the SCAMP, an otherwise very popular design. Thats why there are so many designs out there, because there are so many different needs. http://thethingsrustydoes.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-scamp-sailboat-one-previous-owners.html?m=1
This is in reference to the McKenzie River boat shown on the cover of the magazine at the beginning of this thread. The first time I ever saw this design was in "20 Boats" I think. They showed the boat descending a river stern first (not bow first as the "Small Boats" cover has it). I think the reason for that is the descent should be slower than the current, especially in rapids. That way you are meeting the oncoming current with the pointed end of the boat, as you ease the boat downstream under control of the oars. The oars are there not to propel the boat, but to control it in the rapids. I do occasionally see one of these (or a version thereof) locally. Probably for use on the Skagit River, which does have a fair number of rapids.
Amusing read but is it for real ???
Sailboat data does not include this vessel in it's data base
A somewhat obscure design for sure.
https://sailboatdata.com/sailboat/fantasie-tucker/