Boat Kits, Boat Kits, Boat Kits

There is a lot of work happening in the world of kitting boats in the shop. The Goat Island Skiff kits have been done for a week now and are going to make some beautiful boats. The Deblois Street Dory, Hull #1 is being planked by a customer here in Portland, and plans are being finished up by Eric Risch for a new, 14'9" rowing skiff called Caravela, which will be built for customers in Martha's Vineyard and will be available as a CNC cut kit by the end of June. As if that was not enough, we are excited to soon announce a new collaboration with a fabulous designer in Europe who is known for his beautiful sail-and-oar boats. A press release will be forthcoming. Enjoy some images of the boats we are kitting.



Goat Island Skiff (designed by Michael Storer) built by Richard Harvey in the UK with a beautiful sail by John MacNamera.



Deblois Street Dory (designed by Clint Chase) being built by Shane Hall in Portland, Maine.



Echo Bay Dory Skiff (designed by Eric Risch) being kitted for CNC by Clint Chase, available in late March

Goat Island Skiff Build for Making Kits

My own build of the GIS continues until this Friday when kits for the boat go out, the patterns for which are based on this build. The assembly of the sides is quite typical of a self-jigging skiff, with side panels wrapped around bulkheads, glued, and carefully leveled to prevent twist in the hull. These builds are notorious for twist getting built into the hull. It is easy to see when the boat is in the water without any people or gear, and the transom sits out of level with the water. With this sighting trick in mind, you will see it more often now!

Pre-finishing is always employed to make finishing and painting a more efficient process. I use "scrape-filling" to fill the grain of the wood and seal the plywood in epoxy.



I approached this hull differently because of the twist in the side panel as it wraps around the first bulkhead, developing compound curvature as it fairs into the stem. Putting the whole thing together in one glue-up session, solo, is a workout. But boy was it fun. I've built a few dozen boats like this; this skiff was the most fun to assemble.

I started by glueing and screwing the panels to the first then second bulkheads, the place where the compound curvature in the panel is centered.



The stem was fastened then the hull was zipped up from the midship frame aft. It is now glued with no twist in the hull fore-to-aft.



I am also posting on the Michael Storer Boats Forum.

GIS Yawl Bare Hull Under Construction

A Day's Work...



Busy putting together a bare hull for a Goat Island Skiff and finishing the kit process.

Lying Head to Wind Under Mizzen

Awhile back I wrote about the merits of the yawl rig and posted James McMullen's Instructions on How to Use the Yawl Rig.

Here is a great image showing perhaps the greatest use for the mizzen: lying head-to-wind while the helmsman or crew moves forward to set or strike the sail.

Yawl should know the conundrum of getting a tiller 'round the mizzen mast

The details of how to design a yawl so that the tiller gets around the mizzen is an interesting topic. There are a number of tricks:

Using a line steering system: Here you can see Michael Storer's Beth Sailing Canoe with the tiller forward of the mizzen and the lines connecting to the rudder, which is out of the picture.


I'll add that there are a number of ways to do line steering. My Deblois Street Dory has line steering coming into the boat from a rudder yoke but there is not a remote tiller as in Beth. The Coquina is another example of line steering in which lines are attached directly to the rudder and pass through the transom, via a pulley system, and the steering line goes around the perimeter of the boat.

Using a long push-pull tiller: Here you can see James McMullen's Oughtred's double ender.


Using a curved, laminated tiller or split tiller


Using a normal tiller with an offset mizzen




For the Goat Island Skiff, we go with an offset tiller as in this model by a customer:




The other methods I mentioned just won't fit the situation we have in the Goat Island Skiff, mainly because there is not room for a split tiller and we want to keep the solution simple. We are deciding about just how much to offset the tiller. You can see above that the tiller will hit the mizzen before 45-degrees. The big question is how much room do we want to give the tiller to swing. In the pictures, we decided to test a 45-degree swing. That puts the mizzen a little further off the centerline than I'd like. This boat is very light and pushing a tiller than hard over makes the rudder act like a brake and the risk of losing so much speed that you can't get through the tack is something to consider. Then again, we don't need it so close that things feel claustrophobic. In the picture above of the offset mizzen, notice how little offset the mast is...the tiller must touch the mizzen pretty early. Does that give enough steerage for the helmsman when the push the tiller in the mizzen direction?

We'll have a solution soon after a full-scale mock up. The way we are doing this, collaboratively, is something I do on many projects. It always gets a better result because many thoughts and ideas can be sifted through. The more the merrier. Whatever the solution I draw up, the mizzen can always be moved a little more or less off the centerline according to the skippers preference. The important thing is to maintain the rake of the mizzen, which has been determined. My point is, that collaboration with designers, customers, and other folks with experience through the forums and boat shows can be an advantage in getting many thoughts onto the table and generating the best solution.