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Article Tag: daysailer

Shrimper 19.

T he Cornish Shrimper 19 is a successfully odd little boat. Odd because of its almost-plumb stem, square-shouldered bowsprit, near-vertical hull sides, a flush deck that wondrously scrunches a usable cabin underneath itself, a peculiar pair of deadlights peering like a shark’s eyes from just under the rubrail, a striking profusion of teak brightwork adorning its production fiberglass hull, and a proudly anachronistic gaff rig. But it’s likely these very features are what has made it a success with 1,168 built over a 43-year production run that still hasn’t ended.

British builder Cornish Crabbers says the Shrimper 19 was the best seller in its line of sailboats ranging from 17′ to 30′ for decades, though now the roomier and much costlier Shrimper 21 has ascended to top seller in its lineup. But the manufacturer is still building a handful of the 19s to order every year, says managing director Peter Thomas. It is not an inexpensive boat: current base price is about $40,000 for U.S. customers (not including engine or import duty).

The recessed foredeck serves as an anchor well and is self-draining. The Sitka-spruce mast is set in a stainless-steel tabernacle to ease the task of lowering the rig for trailering.

“The viability only comes because of the niche that we created,” Thomas said in an interview. “We have kept up a build quality that exceeds all those around us and not fallen into the trap of building them cheaper. The early boats are still very active and perfectly sound.”

The particular boat profiled here is among those early examples, built in 1985. Its owner for the last six years, Kent Zimmerman of Port Townsend, Washington, keeps it in immaculate condition; there’s no hint that it’s a 37-year-old boat. Zimmerman, a retired U.S. Navy and airline pilot, has owned a number of sailboats, though the progression is rather unusual. He started with a Crealock 37, which he lived on but rarely sailed; proceeded through a 25′ Atkin Eric Jr., a 12′ Beetle Cat, and finally the incumbent Shrimper. Although he enjoyed the Beetle Cat, he wanted a boat that was large enough to sleep on but small enough for comfortable singlehanding. And for reasons that are eternally inexpressible but entirely clear to those of us in the circle of gaff-rig enthusiasts, he just loves gaffers.

“I was just drawn to the Shrimper’s aesthetics,” says Zimmerman. “It’s not a wooden boat, but it really looks at home here in Port Townsend.”

The self-draining cockpit clears water through ports in the footwell and at the corners of the side benches. The low cabin keeps the view forward unimpeded.

U nlike many pocket cruisers, the Shrimper doesn’t strive for self-conscious cuteness; “businesslike” would be a better one-word description. Although its look is unique, it’s not because of a designer’s wayward indulgence: every feature carries an obvious rationale. The upright stem lengthens the waterline and thus enhances the potential hull speed. The squarish bowsprit resonates with the squarish aesthetic established by the stem and vertical hull sides. You understand the advantage of this hullform as you board: a 160-lb person stepping into the cockpit provokes barely a bob, and hints at a very stable ride. There are 700 lbs of ballast, part of it provided by the galvanized steel centerboard. The rudder, a plywood laminate, houses a stainless-steel drop plate to extend its effective area below the keel.

The recessed foredeck provides large, easily accessed anchor and rode storage. The unusual flush-deck cabin is a compromise between living space below and low windage/great visibility above. Whether it’s a workable compromise may depend on your personal dimensions. Cabin headroom is only 43″ in the middle. Seated on one of the quarter-berth settees, my hair is less than 1″ from grazing the overhead—and I’m only 5′ 7″. However, both berths extend through the aft cabin bulkhead and under the cockpit seats for a total 6′ 7″ length. This Shrimper is a Mk I model; the Mk II offers 6″ more headroom.

The forward end of the cabin has accommodations for a compact galley. An optional removable tabletop—the plywood to starboard of the centerboard trunk—sits on top of the trunk for dining.

The advantage of the flush deck becomes evident in the cockpit: a glorious, sweeping, 360-degree view. Even a shrimpy helmsman has no trouble seeing forward. And there’s no difficulty clambering onto the deck to get to the mast and the bow.

Mounting an outboard motor is an everlasting problem with small daysailers and pocket cruisers. The Shrimper addresses it with a well in the cockpit, which easily accommodates one of the single-cylinder 4- to 6-hp outboards from various makers. Keeping the motor’s weight low and inboard helps the boat’s balance, but the Mk I’s transom cutout isn’t tall enough to allow tilt-up. Zimmerman’s 6-hp four-stroke Tohatsu outboard, at 60 lbs, is heavy enough to discourage lifting it out for everyday sailing. The Mk II hasn’t remedied this issue, but the builder does now offer inboard diesel and electric outboards as options.

While the Shrimpers are production boats, they’re built to order and each offers a sprawl of options. The current 19 provides more than 40 choices, including a chartplotter, autopilot, carbon-fiber mast, and custom hull colors and fabrics. It wouldn’t be hard to kick the price beyond $50,000. As with most of the Cornish Crabber line, the gaff rig is not open for negotiation: the builder has an unwavering enthusiasm for it. “At the sizes we are building, the gaff rig is far easier to handle shorthanded than a Bermudan-rigged boat,” Thomas said.

So, let’s go sailing.

The gaff-sloop rig carries 194 sq ft of sail.

A s is typical for a gaffer, the mainsail is a bit of a snarl to hoist and set properly, but once it’s sorted, the Shrimper seems to gravitate to its comfort zone and sail with confidence. And the zone is wide and forgiving. The tiller is all but neutral; fingertips are all it wants or needs. We have an 8- to 10-knot breeze, and on a close reach we’re logging 4.8 to 5 knots. The Shrimper’s theoretical hull speed should be 5.6 knots (I suspect the prop drag is robbing us of a few tenths). The Shrimper clearly has no inclination to go racing, but in compensation it’s remarkably well-behaved. In gusts, the Shrimper heels to about 15 degrees and there reassuringly stiffens up. After a while the gusts seem to be intensifying, so we tuck in a first reef (the Shrimper has two). The boat speed drops only 0.2 knot, and the balance doesn’t change.

I have a gaff-rigger very close to this same size (a Devlin Winter Wren ), which seems a little faster and slightly more tender than the Shrimper—exactly what I’d expect, since it’s less beamy, some 300 lbs lighter, and its transom-mounted motor tilts to get the prop out of the water. Both boats tack through about 110 degrees. I’m pretty sure I could coax the Shrimper into tighter upwind sailing with more time and practice. It offers a stout hook for a boom-vang tackle on its galvanized tabernacle—a fairly unusual feature on a boat this size. A gaffer typically sails upwind reluctantly because the head of the mainsail twists away from its alignment with the boom, spilling air and reducing lift in its upper area. If a vang is available to tug the boom downward, the tightened leech will force the gaff into improved alignment. The Shrimper also has a mainsheet traveler mounted just forward of the transom and movable jibsheet fairleads, rounding out a dazzling array of fun tools to tweak sail shape.

The Shrimper turns into a tack rather lazily, losing more momentum than it should as it crosses the wind. Zimmerman says that in light wind he’ll leave the jib backwinded most of the way around to help accelerate the bow into the new tack.

As an experiment, we roll up the jib and try sailing on reefed main alone. The Shrimper still tacks, though it’s now very slow on any point of sail—it clearly craves its jib. The cupcake-sized Harken furler spools the canvas around a flexible cable in the jib’s luff rather than around a rigid tube, so partial furling to reef the jib doesn’t really work. It is possible to leave a hankie-sized scrap of jib flying, which can help with a small boat’s helm balance but doesn’t provide useful thrust. There’s a shortage of affordable small furlers with reefing capability—something small-boat sailors would really appreciate.

The Shrimper 19 is well balanced under sail with or without reefs and needs only a light touch on the tiller.

There’s a shortage, too, of production pocket cruisers like the Shrimper. Most manufacturers were dropping out of this market segment around the time that Cornish Crabber was slipping in. The reasons are obvious. Most buyers with $40,000 to $50,000 to spend would rather have a good used 30′ boat than a new 19′ boat. And for the manufacturer, big boats are more temptingly profitable than small ones.

By contrast, there’s a galaxy of plans for the amateur builder drawn by very capable designers. In a quick survey of well-known names, I counted 30 available plans for 18′ to 22′ trailerable sailboats with cabin accommodations. And while it’s deeply satisfying to build such a boat, not everyone has the time, space, tools, or perseverance to take it on. There’s also something deeply satisfying about sailing an excellent production boat like the Shrimper, where professionals have spent years—even decades—refining it.

Lawrence W. Cheek is a journalist and serial boatbuilder (two kayaks and four sailboats to date) who writes frequently for WoodenBoat.

Shrimper 19 Particulars

Length on deck/19′ 3″ Length overall/22′ 6″ Length of waterline/17′ 7″ Beam/7′ 2″ Draft, centerboard up/1′ 6″ Draft, centerboard down/4′0″ Displacement/2,350 lbs Ballast/700 lbs Sail area/194 sq ft

The Cornish Shrimper 19 is available from Cornish Crabbers .

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O’Day Day Sailer

T he production of small boats was booming in the 1950s on both sides of the Atlantic, and really took off in the late ’50s with the introduction of fiberglass. Famed designers Uffa Fox and George O’Day teamed up in 1956 to create the O’Day Day Sailer. Fox is credited with introducing the technique of planing to dinghy racing and designed many significant classes of boats, including the International 14. The story goes that Fox wanted a pure racing dinghy but O’Day wanted the small cuddy added to increase appeal to the recreational market in the U.S., so Fox designed the planing hull and O’Day designed the cuddy. The resulting Day Sailer was a 16’9” centerboarder with a displacement of 575 lbs, which makes for a light load to tow behind the family car. The fractional sloop rig includes a generously sized spinnaker for exciting downwind sailing.

The first Day Sailer was sold in 1958 and immediately became popular in the recreational and racing markets. It was later designated as the Day Sailer I as four different models have since been built, with over 10,000 boats hitting the waterways. Day Sailer (DS) models I through III have been built by eight different manufacturers, with the current Day Sailer being a modified DS I with a few DS II attributes, such as the internal foam flotation and cuddy thwart. The original DS models I, II, and III were built from 1957 to 1990 by the O’Day Company in Fall River, Massachusetts. The DS I and modified versions of it were later built by Can-AM Sailcraft, Rebel, Spindrift, Precision, McLaughlin, Sunfish/Laser Inc. The current builder of the DS I+ is the Cape Cod Shipbuilding Company (CCSC) in Wareham, Massachusetts, holder of the exclusive license since 1994. The Day Sailer Class Association owns the molds that are currently used by CCSC.

The long side benches in the cockpit provide uncrowded seating for six. The sole is above the waterline and is self-bailing.

The early DS I can be identified by wooden thwarts, seats, and cockpit sole, a centerboard lever, open cuddy, and a transom deck. The DS II came out in 1971 with built-in foam flotation. The cuddy opening is smaller than the opening on the DS I because it also acts as a thwart, and a thinner transom allows mounting a small outboard motor without the need for a bracket. The Day Sailer I and II are considered class legal for one design racing, but the DS III is not considered race-legal due to higher freeboard on the transom, which was a departure from Fox’s hull design. O’Day built the III from 1985 to 1990, so to race in One Design regattas it is important to buy a DS I or DS II. The current Day Sailer in production is a modified version of the DS I with improved self-rescuing capabilities, two sealed air tanks, and a cuddy flotation tank with a smaller hatch.

The Day Sailer, no matter which model, is a very versatile boat, easy to rig, sail, transport, and store. With the mast down the boat and trailer take up just a few feet more than an average family car, so can be stored in most garages, though the mast may need to be stowed diagonally. At the ramp, the Day Sailer can be rigged in under 30 minutes: step the mast, add the boom, bend on the jib and main, clip the pop-up rudder onto the transom, and sort out the sheets.

Stepping the mast is the biggest challenge. The 23′4″-long racing mast is stepped through the top of the cabin onto the maststep fixed to the floor of the cuddy, and that can be tricky for one person. The mast does not weigh much, but it is helpful to have a helper at the foot of the mast to guide it into the cuddy opening. The good news with this arrangement is that once the mast is stepped, it is secure, and there’s no rush to attach the forestay.

A mast hinge, a popular option, makes raising the mast much easier.

About 75 percent of the new boats are delivered with a hinged mast, eliminating the awkward gymnastics of stabbing the mast through the cuddy. Once the mast is raised and the forward hole on the hinge pinned, securing the forestay to the bow fitting takes the strain off the hinge. Side stays can then be tightened to take out the slack, but no more than hand tight. Stays that are too tight can damage the hull. Tighten the nuts on the turnbuckles and tape over any cotter pins.

There are different sheeting arrangements for the boom. Some boats have sheets attached in the middle of the boom; the sheet on a DS II starts from a traveler on the transom and ends forward on a swivel cam cleat mounted to the centerboard case. The DS II boom also has a spring in the gooseneck that allowed for roller furling— disconnect the sheet, pull the boom aft, and roll the sail onto the boom. A reefing claw has to be added to connect the sheet to the sail-wrapped boom, but this design is not optimum, nor is the wad of rolled-up sail by the boom’s gooseneck. A better arrangement is to add a conventional set of reefpoints to the mainsail. The boom also has a vang to improve sail control.

The 6′ 3″ beam gives the Day Sailer good stability, enough to keep the boat under someone standing on the foredeck.

The jib on the racing version of the DS is a standard affair, attached with hanks onto the forestay and raised with a halyard. Some skippers add a downhaul to lower the jib from the cockpit. Both the main and jib halyards are led aft on the top of the cuddy. The recreational version of the new DS I comes with a roller-furling jib, which we consider essential for sailing dinghies, especially if singlehanding. We have added a roller-furling jib to our DS II along with the mast hinge. We also added the hardware and rigging for a spinnaker, halyard, spinnaker pole, spinnaker pole control lines, sheet blocks, and jam cleats.

T he Day Sailer is a treat to sail; it handles well, tacks with ease, and powers up quickly with its large sail area. The planing hull is responsive to the tiller, and the wide beam makes it stable. The boat will roll quickly but then sets on a tack, holding it with stable and positive helm control. The centerboard can be easily adjusted from amidships.

We sail a Drascombe Lugger and a Sunfish; the Lugger drives like the family sedan and the Sunfish like our Mustang. The Day Sailer handling is closer to that of the Sunfish—when the breeze picks up, the mainsheet needs to be held in the hand and someone should be ready on the jibsheets. The jibsheets run through the coaming on the DS I and through small cars on the DS II. For the highest performance, skippers have added tiller extensions and hiking straps. There is an outhaul on the battened main; racing versions have barber-haulers and travelers added. Pop the spinnaker, and it will scoot along quite nicely in a light breeze.

The Day Sailer carries 100 sq ft in the main, 45 sq ft in the jib and, for sailing off the wind, another 95 sq ft in spinnaker.

The Day Sailer’s 7′ 4″-long cockpit provides plenty of room for three adults, or two adults and two kids. With four adults it gets cozy; there is not much moving around, so whoever is sitting next to the tiller or foredeck needs to know what to do. It is easy to depower the main, reef it, or furl the jib as needed.

The cuddy is spacious for storing picnic or camping gear, and it affords a space equivalent to a two-person backpacker tent for sleeping aboard for overnight cruising. Adding a topping lift makes the boom nice ridgepole for a boom tent; there’s plenty of room to sleep in the uncluttered cockpit. The Day Sailer has completed many endurance cruising events, such as the Texas 200, Florida 120, and the Everglades Challenge.

A small kicker can be added for auxiliary power. We have used both an electric trolling motor and gas outboard, with best results coming from a 2-1/2-hp four-stroke that pushed push the boat to 6 knots at one-third throttle. The DS I will require a bracket to support and outboard; the DS II transom is thin and sturdy enough for a direct mount. If we’re not going far from home, we occasionally skip the outboard and carry a paddle; with her low coaming we have paddled her a bit, even backward over the transom.

The transom of the Day Sailer II will accommodate an outboard for auxiliary power. The Day Sailer I will require a bracket.

D ay Sailers are easy to find and inexpensive, considering their capabilities. If you come across one, there are few important things to check. Make sure the centerboard moves in the trunk, see that the forestay tang and bow seam are not pulled up, inspect the cuddy deck for noticeable depression which would indicate failure of the maststep under the cuddy floor, and if it is a DS II look inside the flotation compartments. Rinse her off and get her ready to sail. There is a great Day Sailer Association with a web-based forum, and excellent parts availability.

Audrey and Kent Lewis enjoy time with CYANE, along with their small fleet of kayaks, canoe, sailboats, and lapstrake runabout. They blog about their adventures on smallboatrestoration.blogspot.com

Day Sailer Particulars

Length:   16′ 9″ Beam:   6′ 3″ Draft, board up:   9″ Draft, board down:   3′ 9″ Displacement:   575 lbs Sail area Main:   100 sq ft Jib:   45 sq ft Spinnaker:   96 sq ft

The Day Sailer is built by Cape Cod Shipbuilding Company . Prices start at $18,335 (less sails). For more information about the Day Sailer Class, visit the Day Sailer Association .

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Salt Bay Skiff

Y ou wouldn’t know from its good looks, but the Salt Bay Skiff is a quick-and-dirty boat to build. I discovered the skiff through the Willamette Sailing Club (WSC) in Portland, Oregon, where RiversWest Small Craft Center hosts an annual family boat-build on a summer weekend. For the past ten years, each participating family builds their own Salt Bay Skiff. Chuck Stuckey, one of the founding members of event, said, “We picked it because we believe it to be a real boat, not a 12′ toy.”

In 2017, my brother and I, with two of our friends, joined in the largest group to date, with 16 families packed into the club’s modest boat-parking lot. We started on a Saturday morning and the next afternoon rowed the unpainted hull across the Willamette River. With four adults aboard, it rode pretty low in the water but it did not swamp. With a rated capacity of 300 lbs for passengers and gear, the 500-or-so lbs we had aboard was, admittedly, pushing it.

On the starboard side, amidships, you can see the tongue that holds the leeboard in place. The chine logs, on the outside of the hull, simplify and speed construction.

Designer Chris Franklin set out with the intention to create a simple, sturdy boat. It was introduced in Getting Started in Boats , Volumes 7 and 8, supplements to issues of WoodenBoat in the winter of 2007-08. These issues were specifically geared toward building boats with kids. Thanks to the simple design and ease of construction, there is plenty of flexibility for personal modifications. Most Salt Bay skiffs are built as rowboats, but some build them as driftboats by omitting the keel and skeg. The skiffs can be sailed, and the plans include dimensions and drawings for adding a leeboard, a rudder, a gunter rig with boom, and jib. Some builders have rigged the boat with the gunter without the boom, or without the jib, or with a lug sail instead of a gunter.

I decided on a sprit rig, for greater sail area aloft for the 9′4″ mast height, and included a boom for better downwind performance. I wanted a camp cruiser that I could sleep in, so I stayed with the leeboard to preserve cockpit space that would be taken up if I opted to install a daggerboard trunk. With a 12′ overall length and a 4′ beam, there’s not much extra room. A sprit rig and a leeboard may not be best for sailing upwind, but if I ever needed to travel against the breeze I figured I would simply strike sail, pull the board, and row.

The boat requires two 4′ by 8′ sheets of marine plywood: one 1/4″ sheet for the sides, and one 3/8” sheet for the bottom. A half sheet of 3/4″ plywood provides the transom, rudder and leeboard. Add to that a few boards of pine for the seats, quarter knees, breasthook, keel, and frames, and some strips for the gunnels, chine, and stem, and all that’s left to buy are glue, screws, and paint. At the family boatbuilding event, we used marine-grade polyurethane glue in place of the epoxy recommended in the instructions, as the two-day event couldn’t afford the time it takes epoxy to cure.

The volunteers who prepare the kits each year spend about two months of weekends and evenings for 12 to 16 boats, giving builders at the weekend event a head start. If you begin with nothing but a pile of wood and a bucket of screws, getting to a finished, painted boat rigged for sail can easily be done in the span of a summer.

The author’s sprit rig is a departure from the gunter rig in the plans.

The sail is where I diverged most from the original Salt Bay plans. Drawing upon the information in David Nichols’ book, The Working Guide to Traditional Small-Boat Sails , I determined the dimensions of the spritsail that would best fit my boat and my weight: 6′8″ luff, 7′7″ foot, 9′5″ leech, and 4′2″ head. I aimed to keep the mast height low to preserve stability by reducing weight aloft, and that led to the short luff. The boom could also only be so long before it extended beyond the transom, resulting in a shorter foot. Even with these limitations, the spritsail carried more area than the gunter main, while still meeting the constraints of the spars. The longer leech and head make up for the shorter luff and foot. The Salt Bay Skiff works with a variety of sails in the range of 30 to 50 square feet. My sail is 44 square feet.

I made the spars from spare lumber I scavenged from the RiversWest shop—primarily cedar, Douglas fir, and white oak. Though I made the spars lighter than the ones in the plans, they have held up to 15-knot breezes well enough in my opinion, and suggest the originals are more than stout enough.

The instructions don’t mention what material to use for the sails. The low-budget option is to make one from polytarp or Tyvek house wrap, and I considered this at first, but decided against it because the sails I had seen made with these materials appeared to stretch too easily. Luckily, another builder in the shared RiversWest workshop had an old genoa, and I reused its fabric for my own sail. The Dacron sailcloth was a little wrinkled, but to me looked much nicer than tarp or Tyvek.

The plans specify an one-piece plywood rudder. The author made his rudder with a kick-up blade for sailing shallow waters.

The only changes I made to the leeboard were for aesthetics rather than improved performance. I made the rudder with a pivoting blade, rather than fixed, to make for easier beaching, and added an extension to the tiller. The rudder is a bit large for this size of boat, but that is useful when navigating at low speeds, not to mention sculling through lulls by wigwagging the tiller. A leather guard across the transom is important to protect both the tiller and the transom from abrading each other. The leeboard is symmetrical around its vertical axis and can be mounted on either side of the boat, and switched at any time. The tongue that slips inside of the gunwale fits nicely between the mid-frame and aft oarlock mounts.

The designer recommends 7′ spruce oars for rowing and a pair of 5′ oars as auxiliary power when sailing. The shorter oars will take up less room in the cockpit when under sail.

F or a boat that you can practically make with spare change and scrap lumber, the Salt Bay holds its own on the water. No one would expect it to break speed records, or to endure the ravages of estuary bars and whitewater rapids, but for having fun with friends or kids on a calm summer’s afternoon it does quite nicely. I found on my 100-mile voyage on the Columbia River  that it can also serve as a cozy camp cruiser for protected waters.

For voyaging, the boat is really best suited for one adult. When messing about and traveling short distances, two adults or an adult and two kids is a comfortable occupancy.

The skiff has great secondary stability. When sailing, I have sometimes heeled the boat until the gunwale is inches from the water. This has also proved useful when I want to pool water along the chine for bailing. My friend John modified a Salt Bay by installing airtight tanks along the sides to provide flotation in the event of a capsize or swamping. Closed-cell foam blocks, tied down between the frames or under the thwarts would also keep the boat afloat.

Chances are, if someone is in a Salt Bay, it’s not going to be for clocking speed. Indeed, I haven’t myself. I’d estimate I row it at a steady 2-knot pace, with sprints just over 3 knots. Sailing downwind in a good breeze is the fastest way to go, topping out between 4 and 5 knots. What really matters is that it moves fast enough to feel like I can get somewhere.

The cost for my boat, including the sail, rigging, trailer, and cover, came in at just over $1,000. Keep in mind that much of it was bought secondhand or salvaged. For one who wants only to build the boat and has no need for a trailer or cover, the cost would certainly come in under $500.

Torin Lee lives in Portland, Oregon, and wears a few hats at a local solar installation company. On summer weekends he teaches at the Willamette Sailing Club. He learned to sail in college, racing Flying Junior dinghies. He still enjoys racing with the club fleets, and got the boatbuilding bug from the folks at Portland’s RiversWest Small Craft Center .

Salt Bay Skiff Particulars

Length/12′1″

Sail area, main/38 sq ft

Sail area, jib/13 sq ft

Weight/ under 100 lbs

The full-sized printed plans mentioned in the articles are available for $50  from designer Chris Franklin at [email protected] . Plans and instructions for the Salt Bay Skiff are available as digital downloads of Getting Started #7 and Getting Started #8 , available from The WoodenBoat Store for $1.95 each. 

In profile, CHIPS bears a strong resemblance to the Herreshoff 12-1/2, one of the boats that inspired Carl’s Block Island 19 design.

C arl Kaufmann, at 92, likes to keep busy. He has a workshop at both of his homes, one on Block Island, Rhode Island, and the other in Mystic, Connecticut, and has built boats ranging from a 34-lb cedar racing shell to a 12-ton, 40′ yawl. If that weren’t enough to fill his days, he makes beautiful mandolins and guitars, 15 so far, and regards himself as a between a beginning and an intermediate luthier. He’s drawn more to building instruments than playing them: “After years of trying—well, maybe not trying very hard—all I can do,” he writes, “is stumble through ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ and ‘Don’t Think Twice.’”

These two guitars and the mandolin are examples of Carl’s skills as a luthier.

The list of boats Carl has built from scratch includes the Sparkman & Stephens yawl, three Graeme King rowing shells, a Butler and Hamlin 26’ centerboard sloop, an 11-1/2′ Alden X dinghy, an 11′ 2″ Shellback dinghy, a 14′ Atkin skiff, and an 8′ pram of his own design. He built a plywood pram and a 17′ Thistle-class sloop from kits. Ownership of the boats has been shared among his son, Eric, two grandchildren, and a great-grandchild—she’s only three, but her skiff is ready whenever she’s ready to row.

There was a place in the family fleet for a daysailer, and Carl considered building to an existing design. He looked at the Herreshoff 12-1/2, but it was too small and perhaps not as fast as he had in mind for his new boat. He also considered Herreshoff’s 21′ Fish Boat and Chuck Paine’s 21′ Pisces, but these were keel boats and Carl preferred something not quite so deep. He kept looking around at other designs, but nothing quite felt right, so he decided to draw his own design. Although he had made his career in journalism, his education was in naval architecture and marine engineering. So, he drew up his Block Island 19, a centerboarder with an overall length of 19′, a waterline length of 15′, a beam of over 7′, and a draft of just 2′ with the board up. An 1,100-lb lead keel would bring the boat weight up to 2,500 lbs, “an extremely light boat,” he notes, for its type, more substantial than a 12-1/2 but substantially lighter than the Fish Boat or Pisces. For the rig he drew a generous gaff mainsail and a small self-tending jib on a traveler. For construction, carvel and lapstrake—either traditional riveted seams or glued plywood—were options, but Carl settled on a three-layer composite hull.

W ith the drawings finished, Carl began construction. He built the hull on ten 1″-thick molds, a structure strong enough to allow him to raise it and the hull with a chain hoist when planking was finished and turn it right-side up. The steam-bent frames were wrapped hot around the molds, which were undersized to accommodate the frame stock. The first layer of planking was 5/8″ cedar strips, nailed and edge-glued with Aerodux resorcinol, an update to the pre-epoxy standard. Like its predecessor, it is quite tenacious and even boil-proof, but is more forgiving of small gaps in the seams between planks.

Prior to painting, the inner layer of strip planks was evident. The two additional layers of diagonal planking made up the full thickness of the hull, almost 7/8″.

About 70 strip planks went into each side of the hull for that first layer, and after it was sanded smooth and fair, Carl applied two layers of thin cedrela, a variety of mahogany also known as Spanish cedar. The planks, just shy of 1/8″ thick, were not rotary-cut as plywood veneers are, but quarter-sawn from timbers by a horizontal bandsaw mill. The stock was 12″ wide or more, so Carl cut it into strips 3″ to 5″ wide, spiled them, and applied the two layers at opposing 45-degree angles. Nylon staples, driven by an air gun and set just below the surface of the mahogany planks, held the planks while the epoxy cured and then remained in the hull. The planks weren’t required to take a reverse curve to fair into the keel, so the staples were enough to push the cedrela tight to the form.

The completed hull was leak-proof, light, and so stiff that it required few ribs to strengthen it. The exterior surface was quite smooth after the last layer of planks went on and required very little sanding prior to rolling the hull upright.

Carl had the lead keel cast—in a mold he made—by a Connecticut boatyard with a foundry. It has a slot for the centerboard and was connected to the hull’s oak keel, without any deadwood in between, by bronze bolts that run through the heavy oak floor timbers.

The hull’s three layers of planking required minimal framing.

The interior work—installing floors, framing, and bulkheads—was all pretty straightforward, but the deck framing was more difficult. Like any large open-cockpit boat like CHIPS, it requires a lot of carlins and half beams, and the shelf and sheer clamp need to be sturdy because the load on the deck is not supported by an inherently strong arched beam spanning from sheer to sheer.

The coamings were designed to serve as comfortable backrests so they were steam-bent over a jig with crosspieces cut with 5-degree slopes.

The coamings posed an interesting challenge. Carl had some beautiful, broad South American mahogany, wood that demanded a bright finish, so it had to be handled carefully every step of the way. The 9″- to 10″-wide coamings would meet at a point forward and be angled outward at 5 degrees to serve as comfortable backrests for people sitting on the boat’s side benches. Carl decided to make each full-length half of the coaming in two 3/8″-thick layers.

He started with a doorskin pattern and a bending jig, which had cross pieces angled at 5 degrees to meet at a peak in the middle. He steamed the shaped mahogany pieces, applied them to the jig, and left them to cool. After they had dried, he installed them in the boat, and when everything fit properly, he removed the four pieces, applied epoxy to the interior surfaces of each pair, and reinstalled them to cure in place. He could then remove them to do any finish work required before permanently installing them. The coamings alone took somewhere between 50 to 75 hours of Carl’s time.

CHIPS has plywood decks, sealed with epoxy prior to installation, and covered with Dynel everywhere but the foredeck, where Carl used canvas because Dynel wide enough to cover the foredeck in one piece wasn’t available. Carl used some of his South American mahogany for the seats, to be bright-finished, of course, and tried his hand at wood-turning to make supports for them. Some of CHIPS’s bronze hardware was cast from patterns Carl made, and he got a Mystic Seaport rigger to teach him how to splice wire so he could make his own standing rigging.

Carl made the mast hollow to save weight. He used this same bird’s-mouth construction for the gaff and jib boom.

The mast is made of Douglas-fir, and the gaff and jibboom are Sitka spruce, all made hollow with bird’s-mouth construction. The boom is a box beam, made from Sitka spruce salvaged from a much larger box-beam boom that had been abandoned at a shipyard. The boom is relatively heavy compared to the other spars, but Carl likes to have a bit of weight pulling the foot of the sail down. It tensions the leech and keeps the gaff from falling off the wind.

Carl didn’t build the boat with accommodations for an outboard, so for auxiliary power, he uses a single long oar. With the oar set in one of the two oarlocks, he rows on one side, facing forward and standing. Steering with the tiller between his knees, he makes about 2 knots. The generous sail area can take advantage of very light breezes, so he has yet to row very far.

Sitting on her trailer, CHIPS shows her modest draft.

C HIPS has a few sailing seasons to her credit now, and Carl can imagine a few tweaks he’d make. He’s giving some thought to adding a side mount for an electric outboard. While under sail, the motor and bracket would stow in the bilge. CHIPS has a light weather helm and a longer centerboard case located farther aft would help, but that’s a project for a second Block Island 19. Giving CHIPS a small bowsprit would achieve the same end, but the weather helm isn’t so much of a problem that moving the sail area forward is really necessary. Carl has mused about an alternate rig, marconi instead of gaff. Downwind speed would suffer a bit, upwind speed would improve—perhaps a wash in a day’s sail, but an interesting experiment that would require no change to the boat beyond switching the spars, shrouds, and forestay.

The forward ends of the coamings support the roof of the cuddy.

Musings aside, Carl has been pleased with CHIPS. She performs well, and the high-peaked gaff makes her quite weatherly for a gaffer. Downwind, CHIPS is “extremely fast,” says Carl; “you pull up the centerboard and that big mainsail really goes.” Carl made CHIPS’s run a bit flat rather than full so she isn’t dragging a big quarter wave that would slow her down. Off the wind, she has kept pace with 420 Class Dinghies—up until they get enough wind to put them on plane. “She’s dry, easy to handle, and she snap-tacks in a jiffy. We couldn’t be more pleased with her performance in choppy weather; when she’s properly set up, she sails herself.”

Carl took pride in CHIPS’s connection to her Block Island birthplace and had her sails made by an island sailmaker.

Have you recently launched a boat? Please email us. We’d like to hear about it and share your story with other Small Boats Monthly readers.

Winter Wren II

S am Devlin’s boat designs always major in strength, practicality, and versatility. But Sam is an artist, a complicated, self-contradicting, cigar-smoking romantic, and frequently he can’t help himself: He draws a boat that’s as unapologetically cute as it is strong. This describes the Winter Wren, one of his older designs (the earliest example dates from 1980), and the one that lured me down a life-changing path a decade back.

I had already built a smaller and simpler Devlin boat, the 13′6″ Zephyr daysailer, a project that seemed plenty challenging at the time. The Winter Wren, while employing the same stitch-and-glue composite construction that I’d begun to get comfortable with, added the complications of cabin, outboard motor, electrical system, much more structure, and vastly more rigging. Listen, this rig is stout . One day I was scrutinizing a 24′ production sloop whose owner was embarking on a bluewater cruise to Hawaii, and I noted that the much smaller Winter Wren’s standing rigging was far more robust. This gave me a warm feeling.

The Winter Wren II will take an outboard between 2 and 4 hp. The transom motor-mount cutout—the author’s design and not in the plans—does allow about 15 degrees some swiveling in each direction, which is used in concert with the rudder for maneuvering inside marinas.

The original Winter Wren, still available in Devlin’s plans catalog, is a full-keel gaff-rigger measuring 18′8″ on deck, 22′7″ overall, with a 6’10″ beam. The Winter Wren II wears the same dimensions except for a 7′ beam, and it substitutes a daggerboard for the full keel. Both versions weigh about 1,800 lbs and carry 685 lbs of lead ballast, all lodged internally. Plans for the latter include both marconi and gaff sail plans, either measuring 176 sq ft. I chose to build the gaff daggerboard Winter Wren II with visions of trailer excursions to sailing destinations around the Pacific Northwest. I now know that was unrealistic. The Winter Wren II is too big and complicated to serve routinely as a trailer-sailer: it takes me 2 hours to wrangle the rig up or down; plus, I’ve learned that I hate trailering. If I had it to do over, I’d opt for the full-keel outfit, which is stiffer under sail and enjoys more unencumbered cabin space.

Although it’s one of Devlin’s older, hand-drawn designs, the Winter Wren II is now available as a CNC-cut hull kit. If you build from scratch you’ll have to scarf plywood sheets, loft the hull panels, and craft your own building jig. While some of this is fun, a kit offers advantages in precision and saves considerable time. Either way, this design teeters on the cusp of being a reasonable first build for the amateur: maybe so for someone with substantial woodworking and some sailing experience; probably not for the woodshop rookie. I had built a pair of kayaks and the Zephyr daysailer, so I was moderately confident starting out—and I still came to spend many nights awake at 2 a.m., questioning my judgment and competence. In an effort to drown the doubts, midway through construction I named the boat NIL DESPERANDUM, “Nothing to Worry About.” It did not help.

The Winter Wren II’s sail area of 176 sq ft is good for light summer breezes, and the entirely feasible addition of a topsail would make it even better.

I made a couple of changes in the design—one practical, one aesthetic. I sacrificed some storage to build in 14 cu ft of positive flotation, equaling about 900 lbs of saltwater. I’ve never even approached capsize, but in a worst-case scenario, I’m confident NIL DESPERANDUM would stay afloat. I also wanted to invite more daylight inside, so I built competing cabin side mockups with Devlin’s one and my two portlights and photographed each on the boat. I emailed the photos to eleven friends, all either sailors or architects. Eight voted for the two-light version, so I felt I had authorization, though I didn’t ask Sam.

The plans don’t call for a ceiling (a wooden liner around the inner hull), but I felt it would make the cabin visually warmer, so I built one of 1/8”-thick vertical-grain fir planks screwed to battens epoxied to the hull. It was worth the effort. Even with just 43″ maximum sitting headroom, the cabin is a pleasant place to hang out. The Winter Wren II’s main drawback as a minimalist cruiser is that storage space is likewise minimal. On the several multi-day cruises I’ve taken with my wife or a friend, we’ve stashed our accumulations on the V-berth during the day but had to shuttle some of them out to the cockpit when sleeping time arrived. Even if deploying sail covers over the banished goods, this tends to be a soggy solution.

Everything falls easily to hand in the cockpit for singlehanding: all lines, the tiller, and motor controls. A folding plywood boarding ladder stashes under the starboard coaming and side deck.

The most difficult aspects of the construction, looking back, were the hull fairing after the ’glassing—long, tedious, and ultimately imperfect; I have since discovered the blessings of System Three’s Quikfair—and the rigging. I had no experience with rigging, and I was determined to bring all sail control lines into the cockpit, which added complication. I took camera and notebook to marinas in Seattle and Port Townsend, haunted the docks, and studied. Helpful reassurance came from a friend who’s a retired professor of physics and a sailor. “The loads on a rig like the Winter Wren’s are so small that almost anything you do will work,” he said. He was right.

T he Winter Wren II splits accommodation space between cabin and cockpit perfectly. The 6′6″ cockpit seats welcome four adults for daysailing, and are tolerable for sleeping if you carry a boom tent (we’ve accomplished two-day cruises with three aboard). There’s a bridge deck 16” deep with storage underneath for a porta-potty and quick-access miscellany such as tools and first-aid kit. The footwell is too deep for self-draining, so an automatic bilge pump or a cockpit cover is essential. My only ergonomic criticism is that the cockpit is slightly too wide for comfortable tiller management; a short-armed helmsperson can’t quite lounge back on the coaming and hold the tiller on center. Curving the aft side decks in 2″ more would solve the problem.

Summer sailing in Puget Sound asks for boats that are satisfying in light air, and the Winter Wren complies. It starts sailing with 3 knots of poke, feels alive in 5, and can make her official hull speed of 5.3 knots on a close reach with about 8 knots of breeze. I reef at around 10 knots of wind when the boat is beginning to feel a bit harried. I have a second row of reefpoints on the mainsail but no longer use them; the Winter Wren doesn’t seem to like a double-reefed main. What works best is to take the first reef at 10, roll up the jib at 15, and start heading for home if it seems likely to rise much further.

The Winter Wren’s cabin acreage is mostly given to the V-berth, which is punctuated with the mast compression post, a 1″ steel tube dressed up with a mahogany sheath. The daggerboard case, slightly offset to starboard, bisects the rest of the available space.

Like any self-respecting gaffer, the Winter Wren II resists being ordered tight to the wind, like a distinguished dinner guest being asked to do the dishes. It tacks in 100 degrees and makes rather gradual progress if you have an actual destination from which the wind is huffing directly at your nose. One strategy in such cases is to fire up the outboard—I have a 4-horse four-stroke, which is adequate—and run it quietly just above idle, which will tighten up the close-haul vector by 4 or 5 degrees. In compensation for its windward reluctance, the rig is an efficient delight on a broad or beam reach, or even a downwind run. In light air, I love to clip a preventer line to the boom and sit out front on the cabin roof, poling out the jib with the boathook for a wing-and-wing configuration. It’s so peaceful out there.

The great joy of the Winter Wren is its responsiveness. Every nuance of change in air or water conditions translates into some sensation transmitted directly through the tiller, sail controls, or seat of pants. There are no filtering mechanisms such as winches between controls and fingers, so every input has a tangible effect that you not only see but also feel. Tiller touch is light; when you find the groove there’s barely a fingertip’s worth of weather helm. You’ll frequently choreograph the crew to change sides, sometimes during a tack, and tinker constantly with the mainsail shape by playing the peak halyard, outhaul, and mainsheet. For me, this is what sailing is about: savoring the multi-sensory array of interactions between natural environment and machine, and learning to gracefully negotiate among them. On days when conditions are reasonable for small boats, the Winter Wren feels like an extension of your body, an organic being in itself.

The rig has its complications—four halyards and five stays—but the 20′ mast pivots on a bolt in a tall and beefy tabernacle, which makes it reasonably easy to raise and lower. NIL DESPERANDUM’s solid spruce mast weighs 40 pounds, but hollow birdsmouth construction would save about 15 pounds.

Devlin’s shop will cheerfully build you a Wren  if you ask. I have a copy of the January 1984 Small Boat Journal in which a Devlin-built Winter Wren was the cover story, and it then carried a base price of $10,980. I hardly have to add that today’s bill would be several times that, which is why few pocket cruisers are being professionally custom-built now. I spent about $20,000 for parts and materials to build NIL DESPERANDUM in 3,000 hours over three years from 2008 to 2011, including motor, sails, covers, and cabin cushions. In heartless economic terms, that makes no sense—I could have bought a used production pocket cruiser in good condition for half that.

Lawrence W. Cheek is a journalist, frequent contributor to WoodenBoat magazine, and serial boatbuilder. He lives on Whidbey Island, Washington, and since 2002 he has built two kayaks, three sailboats, and currently is at work on a fourth: 21′3″ Song Wren, a Sam Devlin–designed gaff cutter.

Winter Wren II Particulars

Length on deck/18′8″

Draft, board up/1′1″

Draft, board down/3′6″

Outboard power/2 to 4 hp

Displacement/1800lbs

Sail area/176 sq ft

Maximum load/1250 lbs

Plans for the Winter Wren II are available from Devlin Designing Boat Builders  for $162 (print) or $132 (download). Study plans are $1.

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