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What Boat to Build Next?

Posted in Boat Building, Boating, Boating Books, Boats, Canoes, Sailing Canoes, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 22, 2011| 4 Comments »

Well, it’s December 22nd, 2011. The Fiddlehead is done, all my hand tools have been sharpened and tuned up again and I have a couple of weeks off work and some precious free time. What better way to end the year and look ahead to 2012 than to think about what boat I should build next?

Three possibilities have been going through my head for a while. Back in the mid 1990s when I worked at the old Marine Museum of Upper Canada with Peter the Boatbuilder (see last post), we taught a workshop course called “Introduction to Lapstrake Boatbuilding.” The boat we used as the example was Pete Culler’s 13′ lapstrake canoe, a design he called Butternut. This is a lovely little boat, weighing about 35 lbs. We liked it because it showed you everything you needed to know about traditional lapstrake boatbuilding in a nice small package that didn’t go through a whole lot of materials, and was also small enough that we could have two of them underway in the shop at the same time. We told the students it was “the original personal watercraft,” a boat you wear more than use. Here’s one of the completed Butternuts:

As usual with these projects, I didn’t end up with one for myself, so maybe now it’s time? Something this light would also fit on top of Wendy’s little Nissan, and be light enough for her to get up and down easily. Butternut is featured on pp. 23-25 of John Burke’s book Pete Culler’s Boats. The original book is out of print but WoodenBoat have reprinted a catalogue of Culler’s designs. A simple lines plan can be ordered from the Ships’ Plans Department at Mystic Seaport.

Another boat I’ve had in my head even longer than Butternut is the late Bob Baker’s lapstrake canoe Piccolo. He designed this for WoodenBoat back in the magazine’s early days, and a comprehensive how-to-build article appeared in issues no. 36 and 37. It’s an exquisite little sailing canoe, a boat of thoroughgoing charm and modest windward ability (but gentlemen don’t cruise to windward anyways, right?). I liked this boat as soon as I saw her and have always wanted one. Plans are available from The WoodenBoat Store. I’ve gotten as far as lofting Piccolo and starting to pile up some cedar to plank her with (sorry for the grainy photo, hard to take a picture of pencil lines on lofting!):

Two little lapstrake canoes, two worthwhile projects, and eventually I’ll probably build one of each. I’m still thinking about the 16-30 sliding seat canoe, though. One of the ideas I’ve been mulling over is turning the 16-30 into a how-to-build book that also includes some of the history of canoe sailing. I’ve made a couple of false starts on this, but they’ve always come up short. I think one of the things holding me back has been the fact that, much as I love the 16-30 and the sliding seat era of canoe sailing, it was a relatively late development, and isn’t really representative of the whole 1870-1900 era when recreational canoeing first flourished.

An idea came to me in the shower a while ago (often happens there, perhaps the water hitting my head shakes loose a thought?): what about developing another historic canoe design for construction in modern materials that could be a companion to the 16-30? The aims of that project (see the 16-30 page on this blog) were to capture the decked sliding seat canoe sailing experience in a boat that could be built by one person with average tools and skills, in a garage, in a winter, using readily-available parts and materials. Could I find an original design for a cruising sailing canoe that could be adapted the same way? If I did that, then the book could feature these boats as “bookends” exemplifying the range of canoe sailing types, with some history sandwiched in between, and complete plans and building instructions for both.

On to the search for a suitable design. One of the things that made the 16-30 work was that the original boat I was inspired by was a hard-chine hull. I don’t mind turning hard-chine cedar on oak into hard-chine stitch and glue plywood, but I’m not as interested in rendering a round-bottomed hull into a multi-chine stitch and glue boat. Then I came across a design while browsing through Forest & Stream, a treasure trove of canoeing, yachting and other 19th century sporting history. Called Isalo (which is a town in Madagascar, not sure of the connection to canoeing), the boat is a hard-chined hull with a removable sliding seat and two sliding gunter rigs: a cruising outfit of 60 + 18 square feet and a racing rig of 100 + 30 square feet.

This design looks as though it has some potential, so the first step is to do a feasibility study by scaling the design up, re-drawing the lines, generating offsets and thinking about how she might be built. I’ll let you know how it goes.

In the mean time, here’s an interesting development for those interested in the history of small craft. Isalo‘s lines were originally published in The Model Yachtsman and Canoeist, a British magazine which appeared from 1884-1894. It wasn’t what you’d call a mass-circulation piece, so original copies are very hard to find. The Albert Strange Association has just announced that the whole run of 2000 pages has been digitized and made available on two CDs in a searchable pdf format for the very reasonable price of 15 pounds sterling. You can order your copy from the Association’s web site. Perfect Christmas gift for the boating historian on your list.

Best wishes of the season to you all.

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Building a Fiddlehead: Part 2

Posted in Boat Building, Boats, Canoes, tagged , , , on August 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

We’re doing a construction diary of Harry Bryan’s double-paddle canoe Fiddlehead. In the last post, we were laying out the shape of the bottom, so let’s pick up from there.

A finishing nail is driven in at each point, and then a flexible batten is held against it with other nails to make  a smooth curve. This leaves a few small holes, but they tend to disappear as the project goes on.

It’s tough being fair in both life and boatbuilding. Before the curve is drawn, it’s important to sight down it and make sure that it’s “fair,” without humps or hollows or flat spots. The longer your view of the curve, and the lower the angle you view it from, the easier it is to spot unfairness. If you see a spot that looks flat or hooked, pulling the nail and watching the batten move will tell you if you have a problem. Sometimes I nail a line and go for a walk before drawing it.

The fair curves of the bottom are bandsawed just outside the pencil lines.

The sides of the bottom are then dressed down to the pencil lines with a block plane.

The shape of the watertight bulkhead is transferred from the plan to masonite to make a pattern.

The bulkheads are made up of two diagonally-opposed layers of ¼” cedar glued together with epoxy. Cut from random widths of cedar, they make economical use of scraps from the bottom planks.

A completed bulkhead with the pattern. The circular hole in the middle will have a screw-in watertight hatch.

Since we’ll be building this boat with classes, I’ve made masonite patterns for all of the smaller parts, including the midships frame, the stems and the coaming brace. These were made the same way as the bulkhead pattern, by pricking through the plan and then joining the points with pencil lines.

Finished spruce pieces for the stems and the midships frame.

Transferring the curved line showing the start of the stem from the pattern to the stem.

To be continued. . .

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Boating Books: More Stephens

Posted in Boating, Boating Books, Yachting, Yachting Books, tagged , , , on January 9, 2011| 1 Comment »

 

If W.P. Stephens had written only Canoe and Boat Building: A Manual for Amateurs, his place in boating history would be secure. He clinched his nomination for the all-time boating hall of fame, however, with Traditions and Memories of American Yachting.

Traditions and Memories

1981 edition by International Marine Publishing Company is on the right; the 1989 edition by WoodenBoat magazine is on the left.

The book began as a series of 83 articles that Stephens wrote for Motor Boating magazine between 1939 and 1946. Appropriately for a project of such biblical proportions, the first article was titled “The Genesis of American Yachting.” In a characteristically self-deprecating preface, he wrote

In offering this book to my fellow yachtsmen I feel that a few words of explanation or excuse are necessary: first, for the absence of formal style which is usually found in the recording of serious history; and secondly, for the lack of chronological order. . .The method of narration which suggested itself as the most fitting is that pursued by yachtsmen about the fire in winter and afloat or on the club porch in the season–reminiscent, discursive, argumentative, often wandering from the immediate subject.

We all have reason to be thankful that Stephens went about writing these articles in his own style, for the manner in which they are presented is thoroughly charming, and the side tracks and digressions, which are, after all, the way that history proceeds, are nothing that cannot be surmounted by the use of the very complete index.

The articles were collected and published in a book several times, with the most complete collection brought out in 1981 by International Marine Publishing Company. In 1989, WoodenBoat magazine performed a great service to yachting and boating history by bringing out a new and comprehensive edition on the 50th anniversary of Stephens’ death. All of the previous collections had been printed exactly as they originally appeared in the magazine. For the new edition, WoodenBoat re-set the articles in new type and devoted considerable effort to sourcing originals of the illustrations used in the articles, and added some 40 new images.

And what is in this wonderful book? Just about anything you could want to know about North American yachting and boating, from the sport’s beginnings in the middle of the 19th century, through the epic era of the America‘s Cup, to the great sloop vs. cutter and keel vs. centerboard debates to sandbaggers, catboats and of course, sailing canoes and canoe yawls.

The book is profusely illustrated with lines plans, sail plans, general arrangement drawings, photographs, engravings and paintings. As you page through the many drawings, you will from time to time see one of exceptional quality, such as this arrangement plan of the cutter Yolande.

Close examination of the finest examples of draughting in the book will often reveal the initials “C.P.K.” somewhere on the right-hand side of the drawing. Those stand for Charles P. Kunhardt. And who was he? Well, that’s another book. Until then. . .

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Boating Books: The Works of W.P. Stephens

Posted in Boat Building, Boating Books, Boats, Canoes, Sailing Canoes, tagged , , on January 1, 2011| 1 Comment »

 

I’m going to take a break from writing about the restoration of the Old Town sailing canoe to talk about some boating books. Reading books about boats and boating (and buying books about boats and boating!!) is something I enjoy almost as much as boats themselves. Turning away from my desk to look over my bookshelves, I’ve made a quick selection of some volumes I think are worth talking about. At the top of my list are works by William Piccard Stephens.

Better known as W.P., Stephens (1854-1946) is one of the giant figures in late 19th and early to mid 20th century boating. A true polymath, Stephens participated in his chosen sports as a builder, designer, yachtsman, editor and writer. Among his most enduring contributions to yachting and boating are his written works. Over the course of hundreds of thousands of words, he performed an invaluable service by documenting the history of North American yachting and boating, working from both meticulous research and considerable first-hand knowledge and experience.

My favourite book of his, hands down, is Canoe and Boat Building, or, to give its full magnificent 19th century title: Canoe and Boat Building. A Complete Manual for Amateurs. Containing Plain and Comprehensive Directions for the Construction of Canoes, Rowing and Sailing Boats and Hunting Craft. . .With Numerous Illustrations and Fifty Plates of Working Drawings. The copy I have to hand as I write this is the 5th of many editions, published in 1891. One can find copies on the second-hand market, but they are usually shorn of their plates. These 50 large-format drawings were sold in a separate folder, printed on very thin, almost tissue-paper-like stock, and most have not survived. Mystic Seaport Museum performed a great public service in 1987 when they compiled and published a complete set of plates, at the original size, from two original editions of the book. Canoe and Boat Building has been reprinted in paperback by Dover, that indefatigable reviver of out-of-print materials. You can also read a scanned copy of the 9th edition, along with the original plates, at the website of Dragonfly Canoes.

This book could be a litmus test for whether you are the least bit interested in small boats and boatbuilding. If you think you are, I defy you to read through even the first chapter and not want to head straight for the workshop, and/or the lumberyard, to start a project right away. Canoe and Boat Building is an almost inexhaustible well to which I return regularly for advice, inspiration or simply daydreaming. An added bonus for me is that the greater part of the book is given over to the building of decked sailing canoes, of which Stephens was one of the chief American exponents. Though there are some classic examples of sneakboxes, canoe yawls, sailing skiffs and a handsome little Delaware River Tuckup, it’s pretty much all sailing canoes, all the time.

The writing is characteristic of Stephens and his late Victorian age. It is sensible, practical, energetic and straightforward, and assumes that you want to roll up your sleeves and get on with it. In 18 chapters, an appendix and descriptions of the plates, Stephens gives you all that you need to know about building a sailing canoe, from making a model through lofting, building methods, rigging, rudders and centerboards and finally canoe-cruising accessories such as tents, stoves and camp beds. While the gear you take with you (and what you pay for it!) has changed, much of Stephens’ basic advice about laying down, building and rigging is as fresh and useful as the day it was written.

Stephens was involved in recreational canoe sailing and travelling from its earliest days, and in addition to its other virtues, Canoe and Boat Building is a history of the sport written by someone who was not only there but in it up to his ears. The decked sailing canoes illustrated in the plates, from Stephens’ own Shadow-model canoe Dot through the British Invasion Nautilus and Pearl boats of Warington Baden Powell and E.B. Tredwen to Robert Gibson’s game-changing Vesper and later developments such as Pecowsic, are a hall of fame of the most significant sailing canoe designs of the late 19th century.

Canoe and Boat Building is a book well worth owning and reading repeatedly for anyone interested the history of recreational small craft in North America and also, of course, the wonderful sport of canoe sailing. In the next post I’ll talk about Stephens’ other monumental work: Traditions and Memories of American Yachting. Until then. . .

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An Old Canoe Comes Back to Life: Part 2.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

We were talking in the last post about Henry K. Wicksteed, and what he had to do with Old Town canoes. Wicksteed was a designer of small craft like the beautiful canoe yawl Myra, but he was by profession an engineer, who spent a lot of time working and surveying in the northern bush. For many years, the legendary Old Town Canoe Company of Old Town, Maine, had in its catalogue a wood-canvas canoe called the “H.W.” model that was described as follows:

Instead of having a perfectly flat floor, the H.W. model tends toward the shape of the well-known salt water yawl boat below the water line. This gives the shape more draft and hence greater steadiness in windy waters. . .For cruising, carrying heavy loads, for use on large rivers, lakes, ponds and salt water, this is an excellent canoe. . .It’s a good sailor.

There has been a great deal of discussion in the canoeing history world, especially amongst members of the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association, a wonderful group of folks, about what “H.W.” stands for. Through the seductive explanatory power of folk etymology, conventional wisdom has decided on “heavy water.” In Susan Audette’s The Old Town Canoe Company: Our First Hundred Years, she says that at first H.W. was thought to stand for Henry Wickett, the builder at Old Town, except that his first name was really Alfred. She settles for saying that “the H.W. was intended for ‘heavy waters,’ as the sales literature attested.” Unfortunately, the sales literature quoted above doesn’t mention “heavy waters,” and outside perhaps of a sailor who also works at a nuclear power plant, it’s not a term that appears in the maritime vocabulary. “Rough water,” yes;  “heavy weather,” yes, but no “heavy water.”

In When the Chestnut was in Flower, Roger MacGregor advances the case that “H.W.” stood for Henry Wicksteed, who designed a number of canoes for the Chestnut company, including “The Canadian Northern Railway Freighting Canoe” and a shorter version called “The James Bay Railway Travelling Canoe.” We may never settle this for certain, but the association of Wicksteed and his small craft design talents with a particular model of Old Town canoe was sufficient for me to become officially interested in owning one. Imagine my delight, then, when an opportunity to own an Old Town came my way.

Not only was it an H.W. model, in wonderfully original condition, but it had also been equipped by its first owner, when he ordered it in 1937, with the complete factory-made sailing rig. The only thing better than a nice old canoe, IMHO, is a nice old canoe set up to sail. Here’s what the H.W. looked like when I first made its acquaintance (it’s the greenish one on the right):

(to be continued. . .)

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An Old Canoe Comes Back to Life: Part 1 of Many.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 11, 2010| 1 Comment »

So I know I said this blog was going to be about boats, and here I am talking about canoes. Well, let’s be clear from the start that a canoe is a “boat” too (as is a submarine, if you happen to be in the Navy, or a Great Lakes bulk carrier, or a towboat on the Mississippi)–in fact, the blog is really about (to lift a phrase from the title of William Kaplan’s book on notorious waterfront union organizer Hal Banks) “anything that floats.”

Now that that’s out of the way, let me tell you about my canoe. This will go on for a while, so settle in and get comfortable. A long time ago, pre-me, my parents both worked at a YM/YWCA camp in Minnesota called Camp Widjiwagan. This was a pretty hard-core canoe-tripping camp, and they had a large fleet (at one point, the third-largest one in North America) of wood/canvas canoes that they used for tripping. Many of them were Old Towns, manufactured in Old Town, Maine, and I’ve often heard my dad talk about using and repairing them. I have a great photo up on my office wall of my dad in his early twenties about to lift one onto his shoulders for a portage. So I heard about Old Towns a lot (and Chestnuts, and Peterboroughs and other makes of canoe), and that’s how this particular thread started.

Fast forward a few decades. My dear friend Roger MacGregor, who modestly describes himself as a “canoe fancier,” was working on a book about the Chestnut Canoe Company (called When the Chestnut was in Flower). Roger is the proprietor of the Ivy Lea Shirt Company, which sells clothing, books and other stuff in celebration of some of the great canoe marques of earlier times. Roger worked on this book for some time. In fact, Roger was working on this book, and telling me about it, for so long that by the time it was published I sort of felt it was an old friend. For all of the years we’ve known each other, Roger and I have traded research back and forth. He’s been all over Canada in search of canoeing history, and I’ve spent a lot of time in archives and libraries, and especially the great Metropolitan Reference Library in Toronto. While we were both out and about, I’d keep an eye out for stuff he was looking for, and he’d do the same for me.

In the course of researching the Chestnut Canoe Company, Roger several times came across the name of one Henry K. Wicksteed of Cobourg, Ontario and asked me if I had ever heard of him. I had, as it turns out, because Wicksteed was identified as the draftsman of one of the loveliest small boats I’ve ever laid eyes on, at least in plan form. The boat, a canoe yawl called Myra, is included in W.P. Stephens’ magisterial work Traditions and Memories of American Yachting. Here’s a shot of Myra‘s profile view from Stephens’ book (If you’re interested, Wicksteed’s original drawings are in Mystic Seaport Museum’s Ships’ Plans collection, numbers 1.645.1 and 1.645.2. This is a massive collection, and a treasure trove for the student of maritime, yachting and boating history).

Myra's outboard profile and sail plan.

There’s no indication on the original drawings of whether Myra was ever built or not, but building her is certainly on my list of “things to do when I win the lottery.” In the mean time, as a slightly (!) cheaper alternative to building the entire boat, I made a basswood and cherry half model.

Myra, designed in 1892, is what sailors in those days would have called a “canoe yawl,” an outgrowth of the canoeing craze that began in the 1870s. That’s a topic on its own, but what’s important here is the Henry Wicksteed connection as the second Old Town-related thread in my canoe story. . .

(to be continued)

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But Really John, Why Boats?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on November 10, 2010| 2 Comments »

Still life with plastic catamaran.

I’ve set you up for a big answer, asking a question like that. I hope it’s not a letdown, but I might take the “Hillary Option” (Sir Edmund, not the one who’s married to Bill) and answer my question by saying, “Because they’re there.” This statement of Hillary’s about Everest is almost too good to be true, and perhaps he never said it, but it will do for me, because really, I just like boats. Always have. Probably always will. Because they’re there.

Not sure where it comes from, this boat thing. There’s no history of seafaring in my family, no boatbuilders, no admirals, no captains in the China trade. We’re inland Germans on my father’s side, the Volga Deutsche, moving back and forth between Germany and Russia as politics dictated. Well, ok, the Volga is a river, and there are boats on rivers. And on my mother’s side, there are Swedes, who have done a bit of boating in their time, and may have known a few Vikings. But these are faint and distant influences. My parents were ardent canoeists, but for them a canoe trip was as much about the journey, and what might be around the next  bend, and spending time out doors, as it was about how you got there. Me, I don’t care so much about where I’m going in a boat as I do about just being in the boat, and I’m frankly as interested in how the boat was made as I am in where it’s going.

All I know is that I’ve always liked boats. As a child growing up on the West Coast in Vancouver, we often went to Horseshoe Bay for a picnic. Over in West Vancouver, it’s a busy harbour where you catch the ferries to Vancouver Island. After lunch, the family would head to playground, all five kids, where there were the usual assortment of swings and other apparatus. I might have swung once or twice, but soon it was down to the docks for me, walking up and down and looking at the hundreds of fish boats and pleasure boats in the harbour. My parents always knew where to look for me when it was time to go home.

So, this blog will be about boats: boats I like, boats I don’t like. Boats I’ve built, boats I’d like to build. Books about boats, and pictures of boats, and more or less random thoughts about boats. I hope I’ll fall into conversation with some of you out there who, whatever your age, experience and station in life, are still playing with boats.

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