New Francois Vivier designed Yawl with Clint Chase

Francois Vivier and Clint Chase are busy designing a new dayboat/weekender. This has been a fun collaboration and we have a lot more work to do. By this time next year, it is planned that we will be building this boat in our shop for our family use and for showing in 2012. Francois's boats are designed with a CAD-CAM approach, meaning the drawings...

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Free Goat Island Skiff Yawl Plan

Drake and family at the beachDrake is getting built in the shop to test the fitting of the kit before they get shipped off to first customers in WA and PA. Kent Fosnes in WA will be exhibiting Drake next year at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. All kits are tested more than once to ensure everything goes together properly. Many of these CAD...

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Day Three in Drake: The final day of the Small Reach Regatta

The final day was going to have big shoes to fill after an incredible reach and row day 2. The rowing group gathered at breakfast to scheme a separate rowing group to explore along MDI's north coast and down to Bar Harbor. We did just that with the generous support of the chase fleet whose member take very seriously there job to watch everyone, help...

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Small Reach Regatta: Day 2 in Drake Rowboat

I was a little nervous beginning day 2 on a long reach with a potentially gusty offshore breeze that would carry the fleet 8+ miles to the lunch stop. The cracked mast step was only glued back together last night. Would it hold? This was going to be the same tack that I was on when it snapped. I didn't want to ruin this sail!While the rowboats and...

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Drake in the Small Reach Regatta on the Coast of Maine: Day 1

The Small Reach Regatta was the next stop in my busy summer. The SRR is a gathering of 70 sail-and-oar boats, this year, at Lamoine State Park and put on by the Downeast Chapter of the Traditional Small Craft Association. Irowed and sailed (downwind) his rowboat design Drake and consistently finished in the front of the fleet (but of course it wasn�t...

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Teaching at The Wooden Boat School: Tradional & Modern Oar Making

After work at Shaw and Tenney, I had my debut teaching job at Wooden Boat School. One of my favorite (and most labor intensive) specialties is oar making, so I was to teach the traditional way and the modern way, using composite blades. Each students chose an oar type of their choice to fit a boat they had or wanted to have. We had everything from...

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