Launchings

The boat is an Alden Indian rigged with it’s original gaff sail plan.

Dave Paquet constructed this 23'6" x 7' fantail launch using yellow cedar strip planking on the hull, and red cedar strips for the decks. This Glen-L 'Harbor master' design took Dave four winters to complete. He launched PILGRIM in May 2004.

When he was eight years old, Shaw Clifton and and his father, David, built this 8′ flat-bottomed skiff at the Toledo Wooden Boat Show in Toledo, Oregon. They named her COMRADE and rowed her for a while in a local pond, but Shaw’s interests turned elsewhere.

William Leake likes the look of strip-built canoes but his wife prefers the look of lapstrake canoes. He thought a hybrid model—strip-planked on the bottom half and lapstrake above that—might be the solution to both of them getting what they want.

This is the most recent of two Abenaki kits I have built (materials supplied by Newfound Woodworks of Bristol, NH). It was a joy to build and even more fun to paddle. My wife and I launched this canoe on Drakes Creek in Franklin, KY on October 10th, 2021. It tracked nicely was very stable.

Woodrow Smith (standing) and Robert McDonnell (kneeling) built this Redbird design canoe, 17'9" long. They built her from scratch, starting with rough-cut lumber. They are proud of their work, as the canoe turned out to be a work of art.

David Stevens, a Nova Scotia boat builder, took the lines for the schooner BONNY (30'LOA, 8'beam) from a derelict boat in saw in a field on Bush Island. He built her as a work boat for his own use in his declining years.

Doug Capps designed and built this 15-foot sea skiff to use in Wrightsville Sound and the other waters near his home. He used strip-planked red cedar construction, 'glassed and epoxied inside and out.

David Calloway wrote that a couple of years ago, he was infected with the boatbuilding bug.  He spent many enjoyable hours looking for boats to build on the internet before he decided on Jim Michalak's QT design.

Lori Jamieson and her young apprentice, Cory Lacey, built this 14-foot canoe from Jamieson's design. She wanted stable, light recreational canoe, and drew these plans after reading a few books including Ultralight Boatbuilding and Featherweight Boatbuilding. They launched the 45-lb.