Launchings

Re-launching of a 9 ft. Ken Douglas lapstrake row boat after some minor repairs, paint and varnish.

This is my first boat, a Penobscot 17 designed by Arch Davis. I built the boat with a bright finish cypress/teak deck, cypress faced sheerstrake, and white oak coaming, rub rail and flooring. A slight modification was made to the width and curve of the sheerstrake.

Matt Gillam and his father worked together for seven years to restore MS KEELY a 1958 Penn Yan Caribbean. They replaced her deck, nearly all of her oak frames, and repaired her gunwales. They also redid her entire interior and gave her a new finish all around.

Duncan Burns writes of his 13' peapod, SWEET PEA, “Built to the Doug Hylan design and launched in February 1998, this peapod has logged better than 2,000 nautical miles in Long Island Sound between City Island, NY and Stamford, CT.

Single sliding seat open water shell, self-built, plans adapted to stitch and glue construction and to fit the Big River rowing rig from Fyne Boat Kits in the UK.

 This 7'10" pram/kayak was built from plans in Gavin Atkin's Ultrasimple Boatbuilding, in spring of 2011 by Stephen Nickles, and launched this past June, my brave wife Christine is at the helm.

Last year, the physics class at the International Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, built cardboard boats as a class project. Each group of four students had to design a boat that could be built from 4′ x 8′ sheets of eighth-inch-thick corrugated cardboard.

Here is a Jeff Spira designed Pescadero I recently completed. It’s a Carolina style dory style that's been customized for fishing the central west coast of Florida. The boat performs well and makes a great fishing platform.

Jeff Ennis and his four sons built this birchbark canoe (16' x 36") in the summer of 2004 in Lac St. Marie, Canada. They used birch bark, green cedar, and spruce root in the construction. The green wood can be easily split into almost paper-thin sheets for making the floorboards.

These are 10ft flat bottom skiffs built by 5th graders at the Dennis Haley Elementary School in Boston. Materials are: 3/8″ fir, marine ply bottom, white oak stem, frames, knees, rails and keelson, old growth eastern pine planking, silicone bronze fastened.