Launchings

Christoph Harlan of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, kept a blog of the six-month construction of his Night Heron kayak kit that he launched in April.

SPIRIT is the first wooden kayak that Rod Chelberg has built. He started with an ocean kayak kit from Newfound Woodworks in Bristol, New Hampshire. Rod used red cedar strips with accent strips of white cedar on the 44 lb. hull.

In the late 1950’s, my younger brother and I spent summers at our grandparents’ cottage on the Winnipeg River in northwestern Ontario, fishing and exploring in a small squat wooden rowboat called the Flea.

Instructor Larry Benjamin of the Adirondack Folk School led students in the construction of these Wee Lassie canoes. They are slight revisions of the classic Wee Lassie on permanent display at the Adirondack Museum.

Bill Burgess built NELL to sail on Hoods Pond in Topsfield, Massachusetts and the waters of Kittery Point, Maine. Launched in September 2000, she is strip-built with 1/4" northern white cedar cove and bead strips, and covered with fiberglassed epoxy.

This N.G. Herreshoff 1889 designed custom built Coquina “L” has similar kind of rig than International 12 foot dinghy (1912) and small fore and aft decks with watertight compartments.

She’s a light cedar strip solo canoe that will appeal to the paddling enthusiast that finds himself/herself without a partner for day trips, birdwatching, or the occasional overnighter.The canoe is light, stiff, easily driven and a joy to paddle.

Peter Philips summered on China Lake, Maine as a child. His cousins Sherman and Ray Kelsey owned this Jacoby Class step hydroplane (9' x 46"), which Peter has recently rebuilt. Named ME-53, she was relaunched in June 2004 after 6 years of restoration work.

IBIS is a 15’plywood lapstrake Duck Trap Wherry built in the late 1990’s by Will Buchanan to a design by Walter Simmons.  Now in the care of Miles McCoy of Orcas Island, Washington, IBIS was rebuilt over the past two winters and relaunched this summer, just in time for Miles and his bride Louelle

My Doug Hylan designed 13′ Beach Pea is the first wooden boat I have built from scratch. She is made from okoume ply, Douglas Fir, with utile mahogany thwarts and knees and Sitka spruce spars.