Launchings

Sue Gaire’s first attempt at building a wooden boat turned out beautifully when she launched ARROW from a small beach at Ponce de Leon Park in Punta Gorda, Florida, last summer.

This is my CLC Shearwater Sport Hybrid. Believe it or not this is the first thing that I have ever built from wood. It took me a little over 2 years to build. Built in an unheated building and working with epoxy in Buffalo gives you less that 6 months to work per year.

Jack Lightfoot has been busy. He built a Francis Herreshoff/John Gardner pram, then an Iain Oughtred McGregor canoe (15'8" x 33"), and has now started a Phil Bolger dory. Jack writes the McGregor took him six months to build, and that was without using any power tools.

Jaakko Toiviainen found in fall 2021 a neglegted Haven 12,5 bare hull in the corner of the boat hall where he kept his sailing yacht. It appeared that the hull had been built by a professional boatbuilder some twenty years ago, but for some reason never completed.

This is an Arrow 14 geodesic canoe designed by Platt Monfort. I used spruce for the stringers, gunwhales, and rub rails, oak for the ribs, cutwaters, and keel, mahogany for the breasthook and knee stems, cherry for the gussets, and maple for the thwarts. The skin is 30 gauge vinyl.

After reading Geoff Kerr’s article about the W17 folding/trailerable trimaran in WoodenBoat Magazine #254 I was immediately interested and went to see and sail one.

Over a pandemic winter Carl Frey built the NOELLE Q, an 8′ long, 26-pound kayak (19″ beam) from his own plans.

Starting with the plan for the Chaisson Dory in John Gardner's "The Dory Book," Dennis Rogers rounded her hull and used double-diagonal planking based on the Ashcroft system to make this lovely tender, LAZY BIRD.

Jim Maas can fit his Sabotina dinghy into his minivan. Jim launched the 7′10″ Ken Hankinson design last July. He rows it on the lakes of eastern Pennsylvania. The hull is stitch-and-glue, built from okoume plywood. Jim took these pictures at Beltzville Dam.

David Russell, David Russell, Jr., and James Brownlee built this modified 16′ Catfish Beachcruiser over the summer of 2007, and launched her in August 2007 in Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina. The design is by Phil Bolger.