Building a Camden Class Knockabout Sloop

When I was in my late 50s, many of my retirement-aged friends told me they kept working because they felt they would have nothing else to do if they stopped. Others retired but said they felt lost without someplace to go in the morning. Determined to avoid that and to spark a new chapter in life, I started planning for my retirement about 10 years in advance by making annual trips to WoodenBoat School in Brooklin, Maine. Each year, I learned a new skill, starting with stitch-and-glue hull construction and later moving on to cold-molding and strip-planking. Once I was comfortable with hull construction, I took courses in finishing out hulls and reconstructing tired ones. Eventually, my yard was half-filled with boats I had built or repaired. If I didn’t change course, I soon would have no yard at all.

I decided to take on a larger project: the largest sailboat that I could fit in my shop, knowing it would take years to build. I turned to several B.B. Crowninshield designs available through The WoodenBoat Store, especially the Dark Harbor 17 and the Camden Class knockabouts. Of the two, the Camden had longer overhangs. It also had a deeper cockpit, where a pair of old-timers could sit comfortably. In a 1980 article comparing the two (see WB No. 37), Maynard Bray wrote that he thought the Camden was the prettier one. That did it for me: a Camden Class knockabout it would be.