Great Boatbuilding Article

NY Times has a great article in its Preoccupations editorial about a writer who builds boats for fun and "describes his work on boats as a 'postgrad seminar in character-building". Please visit my links page to see this wonderful article as well as other good links.

"Building a boat offers no paycheck,
but teaches much about the values of work"

quoted from

"Finding an Answer To Rough Seas" by Lawrence W. Cheek

Read More..

How do you determine the number and dimensions of staves in a Bird's Mouth Mast or Spar?

Birdsmouth is the word in the shop, lately. We have several orders for birdsmouth masts and spars that are in progress. I have been working hard at nailing down the process to be able to make them efficiently and to a very high standard and feel very excited about how it is all going. The Landing School of Boatbuilding has asked me to to give a talk/demo on making things birdsmouth style, so I've been pressed to improve our webpage on birdsmouth spars as well. On the page is my procedure for determining the number and dimensions of staves in a birdsmouth spar. Gaeten Jette, a featured contributer to Duckworks magazine on the topic of Bird's Mouth Spars, generously helped me customize the online calculator for my use and students' use. I hope you find it helpful, too.

We make two styles of Birdsmouth spar, using symmetrical staves (most common) and asymmetrical staves, which when done correctly will yield a perfect octagon and a spar that is slightly stronger and quicker to make. I decided to apply this type to making an ultralight kayak paddle shaft.



I am pleased with the results. The biggest hold up was fitting the plugs in the scoops that will take a ply-composite or a carbon fiber blade, which is already something we produce for our wood/composite, high performance oars.

With that part of the process ironed out it really is just a matter of setting up the operation to produce these paddles after some testing. This one will go to some paddler friends who will take the design on the seas and really test it out. Hopefully, sometime this summer the results will come in and production will begin. I'll leave you with the best part of making new things: breaking them with a hammer. We test most spars this way to make sure that things break the "right" way. That is, in a proper glued structure, the wood should always break before the glue joint does, otherwise there is a problem. Happily, all our spars have been breaking the "right way" in the shop so we know they won't break out on the water.

Read More..

Why the Yawl Rig for the Goat Island Skiff or for any boat?

I am asked this a lot and wanted to put something together to answer this and other questions. I added the mizzen to the GIS because I wanted a boat for myself that would be easier to singlehand on longer excursions and for use in sail-and-oar events such as the Small Reach Regatta, the Texas 200, and other RAID events like the Shipyard School Raid and Sail Caledonia. Many, many of the boats you see in these events have a mizzen.

For my own use of the GIS, a mizzen is needed for a variety of reasons:

1) to hold the boat into the wind while the sail is raised, lowered, or reefed while singlehanding or sailing with my kids.
2) to hold the boat into the wind while rig is unstepped and stowed and oars are rigged for rowing
3) to be able to hold the boat to windward or to heave-to while underway for taking short breaks to move people, re-stow gear, or go to the bathroom with out getting blown off course.
4) to be able to back off docks and beaches and control steering in tight spaces
5) to be able to 'tune' the weather helm felt by the helmsman by trimming the mizzen

Other FAQ's

Is the designer aware of your changes to the Goat Island Skiff?
Yes, I have a great working relationship with Michael Storer whom I consider a friend. He and I correspond often and he has OK-ed the addition of the mizzen and trusts that I will design and build the new rig so that it fits in with the concept of the GIS. For example, all pains will be taken so that this addition adds very little weight to the boat. The mizzen mast will be a lightweight, birdsmouth mast.

Is the lug sail the same and is it stepped in the same place or how has the lug's position been adjusted for the new mizzen?
I have designed new sail rigs for boats before, for dories actually. After drawing the new rig, finding the new center of effort (CE) of the added sail area, and moving things around, the new CE and old CE are in the same place such that the centerboard does not need to be changed. In the GIS, the lug is the same standard sail (105 SF) and it will step in a secondary partner/step forward of bulkhead #1. It turned out that the lug needs to be moved forward only 9" keeping things tied into the bulkheads for structural integrity and simplicity. The original mast step is retained so the boat can be sailed with or without the mizzen. The GIS Yawl is is still the usual standard GIS, but with an added mizzen. You can take the boat out with more flexibility in rig choice.

Has one been built and how well does it work?
I expect to have a GIS Yawl on the water this summer, my personal boat, but orders for sail rigs and boat kits may prevent that from happening. However, one kit is going to a customer who will be doing the yawl and plans to be sailing this summer in the Texas 200. I have no doubt that the boat will go as well as the standard, upwind and downwind, but with the added benefits of the mizzen for RAIDs and sail0and-oar type of use. If the mizzen is not needed, leave it ashore and use the Goat as the standard lug-only arrangement.

You can learn more about How to Use the Yawl Rig in my blog post.

or the Goat Island Skiff page on my website.

Read More..

Open Water Rowing in Casco Bay

"I like to get out there sit in the swell and look out" is how I think of a pleasant row in my home waters of Casco Bay, Maine. Along with dreaming of boats, like Culler's Otter, I dream of where to go in the boats. Next year's big row is out to Halfway Rock in the middle of Casco Bay, about 15 mile offshore. You can also see a large scale chart of Casco Bay.

Rowing in open water like this scares the hell out of me. When I sit there, in the swell, looking out, the butterflies flutter inside, making it more challenging to assess the situation and peruse the mental checklist of precautions. Weather window, ferry traffic, tidal currents, my energy level, time of day, schedule back on land, amount of food in the dry bag, do I have all the gear I need, what is plan B, plan C....

But I am learning that these butterflies are annoying but good; they keep me alive and ultimately confident. Once I am out there in open water, and I am feeling strong, confident in the boat, and having a blast, I relax and therefore row better. In my open water boat, Drake, I can cover about 4 nm per hour and that is an average. Time slips away and life is good. Christmas has been wonderful, and the weather cold, and now I begin to plan big rows for next year. I am training for long distance rows and hope to make a 20-mile row somewhat routine. Halfway Rock, located below the 'Not' in "Not for Navigational Use" is uncannily "halfway" between the Eastern and western points that define Casco Bay. It is an exposed rocky isle with a lighthouse. Landing there will be difficult, so when I row there next summer, it will be my longest pull yet, at least 25 miles total, depending on the exact route.

Time to dream, be patient as the sun makes its way back north, and time to get in shape!

Read More..

A Pete Culler Otter for Christmas

With a little time off to sit back at Christmas and reflect, new boats are dreamed of day and night and usually they are rowboats or sail-and-oar boats. Another problem is that I have many charts framed and hanging on my walls. So, it is far too easy to day dream of excursions in these new boats. Thus, for Christmas, I want a Pete Culler Otter for myself and to offer potential customers who also dream of rowboats and rowing. It is said by those who have rowed an Otter that is is about as fast as you can go in a fixed seat boat, though it is more oriented towards protected waters. Otter is 17-1/2' long, 3' beam, and draws 3". She is a narrow, flat bottom, double ended skiff (a 'clipper bateau, Culler calls it) that is cross planked on the bottom and carries three strakes of cedar on each side, with no gunwale timbers at all, and is pure simplicity. To get an oar span wide enough, Culler made extra long oarlocks which created the spread he needed to use up to 8' long oars. Culler is a giant in my mind, particularly with regards to oarmaking and rowing. I'll be teaching people how to make Culler style oars in a Wooden Boat School course and Lowell's Boatshop. Otter would make for a very light traditional boat, even planked all solid timber. I would use the newer flexible epoxies to glue the splines, bottom boards together and other sealants in the laps to get a trailerable, traditional boat. Here are some pictures I pulled from a thread in the Wooden Boat Forum about the Otter, and I appreciate the information the guys there have provided about this fabulous boat by Capt. Pete. I'd love to hear from others interested in this boat or about oars and rowing, Feel free to contact me by email or leave comments below. More on the Otter will be my Clint Chase Boatbuilder soon.

Read More..

Boat Kits and Information About Kits

'Tis the season for kitting out boats here in the shop. It is keeping the business very busy as we finalize the Goat Island Skiff kits and in January we'll be "kitting" Clint's design, the Drake Rowboat.

FAQ's

What is unique about our kits?
Clint's kits are the equivalent of a professionally built boat, dry fit to perfection, and then taken apart and packaged so that you can replicate the results at home. That means the hull lines will be "eye-sweet" and beautiful when you assemble the boat. The numerous and subtle tweaks that a professional builder does to make the lines of a boat 'sing' has been done for you. This is the unique part of our kits: the kit is not cut directly from a computer file, but rather comes from directly from a hull built by an accomplished boat builder.

What is included in a boat kit?
Our kits have a number of options to suit your timeline and budget. One option will always include plans and the plywood components, planks and bulkheads or molds. The plywood is BS1088 Okoume and comes from Maine Coast Lumber, a trusted source for us. Timber kits are available. Pre-laminated components are available, frames, stems, and backbone components. A further option is a complete timber kit that gets you set up with seats, gunwales, floorboards and all the wood you need to build the boat. You can see kit information at our website kit information page.

Why buy a kit?
When I suggest to people that they buy a kit they sometimes are offended because they feel we don't think they have the skills to make their own kit. The truth of the matter is that we build our own boats from kits as well. In fact, a successful Pro Boatbuilder will build from boat kits himself. The reasons are the same as for you and me: it saves a lot of time, it saves money due to less waste in materials and less wasted time, and the results are a better boat. The boat fits together with less fuss and the lines are reproducibly beautiful every time.

Read More..

Goat Island Skiff Boat Kits Available

Our first kit offering at Clint Chase Boatbuilder is a plywood and timber kit for the Michael Storer designed Goat Island Skiff (GIS). Why buy a kit? Folks are sometimes offended when I suggest this, feeling that it is thought they don't have the skills to make the parts themselves, but that is not it at all. We build all of our boats in the shop from kits!!! Even professionals do it and the reason is that it makes the build process quicker and smoother and the result is more professional. In the case of the GIS, we have made parts and built the hull of the boat, making all the small tweaks that professionals with a good eye make to the lines of the boat to make them look eye-sweet. Any design, no matter how well drawn, will need some eyes on it in 3D to make final tweaks. We also have checked bevels and made some adjustments for a rabbeted gunwale, which covers the end grain exposed at the top of the gunwale. Our kit captures all these professional practices so you can get a better boat. Currently, kits are cut per order, but we may move to CNC when volume increases.

We were attracted to this design initially because of the sail plan, a beautifully proportioned Balanced Lug. Upon further reflection we noticed something was missing for RAID sailors and for others who might use the boat as a sail & oar craft. It needed a mizzen. A small mizzen gives great control of a small boat, allowing one to lie head-to-wind for reefing at sea or for heaving-to. It allows you to back off a beach or a dock, with practice. It is useful for trimming the sail plan, adjusting weather helm to create "feel" in the tiller. A mizzen makes single handing much easier, especially for switching between oars and sail, because the boat will tend itself and stay head-to-wind while you stow oars and fidget with things at the mast. For a useful diagram showing How to Sail a Lug-Yawl, by James McMullen.

We can supply a kit for the GIS as well as the mast and spars. Masts are round, hollow using the Birdsmouth technique. Yard and boom for the GIS are solid, laminated Northern White Spruce. Laminated spars stay straighter over time with changes in moisture content in the wood. We can make custom 9' oars specifically designed for the GIS. Rowing in the Goat Island Skiff is quite enjoyable, whether it is from the dock to a local area with wind, or coming back when the wind has petered out. Products for the Goat Island Skiff can be seen in the GIS Flyer on our website Goat Island Skiff Page.

Read More..