Last week I finally got up to the Belfast area to see Jewell. This one is the first US built hull, so it is exciting for me having spent the last couple years collaborating with the designer, Francois Vivier, to work out a boat that would be popular for our market here in the USA and Canada, be fun to sail for weekend warriors as well as families, and not be terribly complicated or expensive to build.

Jewell hull #2 under construction in Belfast, Maine. I mentioned in the last post that sometimes when you go from virtual to physical reality with a boat design, somethings don't look or feel quite the same. But with Jewell, she is exactly as we wanted her to look and feel. The lines are great, her proportions are great, and the boat will be roomy for a 20-footer, or 19'8" to be exact. In the photo above you can see the transom. Here is one of two pieces of custom SS parts to be fabricated, the rudder housing...

Rudder head for Jewell

The bulkheads and planking in the kit went together without any fuss and all the inside components have already been check for fit. Things drop right into place on the inside. We're working out some details regarding limber holes and placement of hatches and the plans will reflect those changes. Pretty soon the rig will be going up and Jewell will sail.

Regarding sails and hardware, an extensive list has already been made based on the dozens of boats Mr. Vivier has rigged. His specialty is gaff rigged boats and, while the yawl is new for his catalog, it is one of my specialties. Sails are made by our favorite Maine sailmaker and the custom hardware like the rudderhead can also be made here in maine and shipped out to a kit builder anywhere in the US or Canada.

Email me if you are interested at boatkits@gmail.com

Jewell is progressing at French & Webb for their Maine based client who will use her on lakes and ocean. I'll be heading up to video the turnover in a week or so. The kit we cut is going together beautifully.

Here is Chris after the garboard is attached.

And the planking is done. Those patches are the scarfs that are being faired with putty. The box keel is visible, filled with lead in the forward portion.

Speaking of scarfs, they are cut on the CNC machine and come with the kits. I recently visited MultiCAM Northeast and we played. Here is a video of the morning I spent there. We cut an NC scarf.

The Jewell Project: Virtual Reality becomes Physical Reality

These days I spend more time building boats in the computer than in real life. So, it is highly satisfying when I see a boat becoming the real thing.

A Mainer from Norway, Maine has commissioned his own Jewell. It is being built from my kit by French & Webb in Belfast, Maine for a summer launch.

After years of planning and design, we have gone from this virtual set up:

To this set up "in the flesh":

All bulkheads are CNC cut plywood. Their shapes come directly from the model you see in the screenshot. When designs are made in 3D CAD, the objects are actually lofted in full-size. In other words, the model is not a "scale-model" but rather a full-size model in 1:1. Once modeled, each bulkhead is simply flattened onto a virtual 2D surface and the outlines are duplicated and nested on 4x8 virtual sheets of plywood. The CNC cutter than programs the machine to follow theses lines and voila! a bulkhead is directly cut.No lofting by hand, no tracing lines onto wood, cutting with a jigsaw (but not too close to the line!), and high accuracy and repeat ability. The downside, I suppose, is that some feel satisfaction cutting their own parts. But even pro builders know their is more satisfaction in getting a boat launched in good time and greater accuracy. This Jewell will be a 3-month build. Lofting and cutting your own parts would result in another month of work.

Keep track of the Jewell project here, on my facebook page, or on my website.

We are excited to announce the cutting of the first Jewell kit of many in the US and Canada. This kit is going not to an amateur but to French & Webb boatbuilders in Belfast, Maine to be custom built for a customer in Norway, Maine. Stay tuned for construction photos!

A Fabulous 15-foot Rowboat

One of the most unique aspects of the St. Lawrence River Skiff (SLRS) is its hull shape which we believe derives from the bark canoes, at least partly. Both hull forms feature a very fine entry and exit to the waterlines. However, on nearly all the St. Lawrence River Skiffs, their after sections are finer than the forward sections.

The bow of an 18-footer, Annie.

Many rowboats show the opposite, with the aft sections being fuller. The reasoning behind this SLRS hull form regards how the boat trims when under power (oar power, of course). Once the boat is up to speed, the aft part of the hull settles into the water creating a skeg-type effect. A skeg improves tracking of the hull through the water. But by making the hull itself behave as a skeg, we eliminate the extra wetted surface area (WSA in designer speak) that a skeg creates. Any rower knows one tenet of making a rowboat fast: reduce the wetted surface area! This is one reason the SLRS glides along effortlessly with a single stroke of an oar, creating a feeling of flying.

Here is a shot showing the Fry 15 being stripped up. We built the Fry Skiff in 2013 at WoodenBoat using strip-composite construction. A builder by the name of Fry built these circa 1910 in Clayton, NY. The first shot (left) is the bow. The second (right) is the stern view.

You can see (right) how the strips are fairing into the stern with slight concave curvature even before we've stripped to the designed waterline. The strips are not showing this hollow curvature quite yet in the bow (left). This 15-foot model, shows a pronounced hollow even for a SLRS, partly because the boat is pretty short for a Skiff. (In fact, it is the shortest I'd recommend for fast rowing. I chose the Fry 15-footer because it is going to be the cartopper in my catalog.)




So this is the 'fineness' or 'hollow' in the stern that I am asserting is a classic feature of the SLRS hull form, making the it such a slippery, fast rowboat.

Two other SLRS's that I am working with, the Bobby at 20 1/2' (which was strip-built in 2012) and Clotilde at 18', are true double-enders, meaning they are symmetrical. So one end is not finer than the other, but their waterlines still show a strong hollow fore and aft. Clotilde is unique because its hull is fairly full in the ends compared to the other SLRS, which has me interested because it may be a faster boat and better in a seaway. So I plan to also model this hull and develop mold kits for Clotilde as well. Bobby mold kits are available.

For the first time, the Fry Skiff is newly updated and ready to cut as a mold kit. She strips up perfectly and produces a hull that is fairer than any hand-lofted set of lines could hope to produce, I dare say. The molds receive a roundovered edge so the soft cedar is not dented. A dado is routed into the molds to make a place for squeeze clamps to hold strips in place. The stems are laminated on fore-aft molds. An alignment batten slots all the molds together in place to ensure squareness and proper spacing. The kit is $750 which includes plans package and the molds.