Launchings

In June 2011, Richard Van Voris, the boatman for the Tabor Academy crew in Marion, Massachusetts, launched a 27′ x12″ single scull designed by Graeme King. Richard built the hull from 1/8″ red cedar strips , reinforced with carbon fiber, and covered with epoxy.

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.

Boatbuilder Douglas Brooks led eighteen students at the University of Illinois in building a 21-foot Shinano River boat, a traditional design from Niigata, Japan.

Bob Chaput and Dick Dowdell built this Peeler Skiff from a John Harris-designed Chesapeake Light Craft kit. She will carry children and grand children fishing and digging clams in the salt waters of Southern New England.

Vince Trtan used a lot of 40-grit sandpaper in the restoration of this Old Town canoe, HW model, hull #150314-7. After sanding off the old canvas, he made new gunwales, keel, seats, and decks. Then he had to replace several ribs and planks.

MAE is a 9′7″ Maine Skiff designed by Walter Simmons of Ducktrap Woodworking in Ducktrap, Maine, and built by Edward Engarto of Bath, New York. Edward spent three years building MAE using traditional methods and copper or bronze fastenings.

Sundowner had her humble beginnings at the WoodenBoat School’s 2011 Glued Lapstrake class taught by Geoff Kerr. I was fortunate enough to take her home and finish the work we had started. A local mill supplied the cherry, walnut, and pine which I used to finish the hull.

David Satter restored this 1931 Old Town Canoe in 2002, after paying just $100 for her at a yard sale in NJ. It is an Old Town 50-lb 15 model. He replaced 10 ribs and 30 feet of planking, and replaced the canvas; then gave her a new coat of paint and varnish.