Day 12, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 7hrs. Made the decision to move the seats, and made relatively quick work of modifying the seating and relocating the risers. Center seat shifted 5 inches aft, stern seat 10 inches aft, very close to my original plan. Feet now land on the subsequent thwart, as it should...
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Day 11, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 11, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 7hrs. Spent the better part of the morning massacring otherwise innocent lumber in my indecisiveness about how I wanted to make the spars. I ultimately decided that Doug Fir was going to be too heavy, (after cutting it) so I took a deep breath and turned an absolutely...
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Day 10, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 10, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 8 hrs Well, today was f-ing frustrating. I banged out the floorboards set the risers and removable seats, planning for spars and foils tomorrow and then on target to barely catch a window of weather warm and dry enough to varnish. Then I got in the boat for...
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Day 9: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 9, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 4 hrs. It always seems like the finished hull should be more than half the battle but whenever you get strings and sails and metal bits and oars involved, it’s actually only about 1/3rd of the overall cost and work. Even if you’re a hard core minimalist like...
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Day 8: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 8, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 3 hrs. Pleased to see the dip in my keel disappeared overnight. Boat has settled at about 43 inches wide which works for me. Put the goop on today. There’s lots of things you can coat a skin boat with but I’ve never found anything even half as...
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Day 7: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 7, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 4 hrs. Put a skin on the boat today, pretty uneventful, fast and easy. I’ve decided not to build any permanent crossmembers into the canoe for now. I think I’m going to set it up with the same system that I use for the pack canoes so I...
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Day 6: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 6, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 7hrs. Started the day by removing the spreaders and then playing with the shape of the frame by adjusting the width. 44 inches was as far as I could go before it started making unsettling noises. At that width it was 13 inches deep which looks nice. I...
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Day 5: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 5, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 7hrs. Spent the morning making new stems and briefly reconsidered changing my whole stringer strategy and even cut a fair amount of wood before coming to my senses. In the afternoon Liz and I worked together tying on stringers which took about three hours to finish the whole...
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Day 4: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 4, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 7 hrs. 15’6 x 40.5”x 15” Late last night I realized that my canoe formula probably still works at this size, I just hadn’t scaled the central ratio up quite far enough. So today I gave it another go with fresh oak and a new base number, and...
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Day 3: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 3, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time: 7hrs. Decided to back up and rework the boat today. A little narrower a little shallower. 40.5/15 It looks nicer and now I can get all of the ribs out of an 8 foot plank, with the shortest ribs being just below the length of the falloff for...
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Day 2: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
Day 2, Skin on frame rower-sailer. Build time: 6hrs. Made stems, set up the keel, milled ribs, built a new steam box. The hardest part about prototyping new boats is the gnawing uncertainty that is constantly begging me to stop mid-build and change course. Like right now, I’m damn near certain that I’d be...
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Day 1: Skin-on-frame rower-sailer
This week I’m taking a wild stab at putting together a little rowing/sailing canoe using the fast easy system that I developed last year for building pack canoes. My hope is to eventually develop a nice little rower that is a lot easier to build than my beloved skin-on-frame Adirondack Guide boats. This boat...
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14’ full size solo canoe with an 11′ double-paddle canoe
14’ full size solo canoe with an 11' double-paddle pack canoe. 29lbs and 17lbs respectively. We're packing up the 14 footer and its nesting sister canoe this week to send to Nepal with The Weight We Carry, where they'll be portaged to Everest base camp....
Anybody can make something that’s pretty and curvy looking, but how does it perform?
Anybody can make something that’s pretty and curvy looking but my passion is focused on how it performs in the water. When it comes to understanding something there is simply no substitute for experience. This is the 12th canoe I’ve built since May. It’s built with white oak ribs, red cedar gunwales and upper...
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Allowing for height and angle adjustability in canoe seats
One of the cool things about these new skin on frame canoe designs that I’ve been working on is that the solid laminated gunwales provide a beefy enough surface to hang seats the same way you would in any canoe. This allows for the same kind of height and angle adjustability that you normally...
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