Going Whole Hog

Middle-school teacher Vince Kanthak spent several of his long summer vacations building this Norwegian-style 10-ft pram, following the lines and instructions in John Gardner’s “Building Classic Small Boats.” Gardner borrowed the design from L. Francis Herreshoff, who drew it as a yacht tender. Clinker-built (lapstrake) with bent frames riveted in results in a very light, “fancy” dinghy. Vince says he poured his soul into the building, so he decided to go whole hog for the little auxiliary sail -- classic cream cloth, hand sewn brass rings, Manila-colored boltrope, and rat-tailed corners. He started out with a tiny gaff rig but decided that was “too much rigging” for such a little boat. We batted possibilities back and forth, and wound up with a boomless lugsail that can be brailed up for rowing, and quickly deployed if a fair wind springs up. The broad transom affords a sheeting base to allow such a sail to set reasonably well. Various lakes in Wisconsin (“The Land of Lakes”) are the target waters.

Semiannual Report

The loft turned out 29 sails during the first 6 months of 2010 -- a few more than our long-time average of a sail a week. They were a typical mix of traditional types -- Bermudan, lug, sprit, and gaff. A few jibs, two tops’ls and a voyaging Chinese Junk sail rounded out the list. Some incorporated custom features like rat-tailed boltropes and hand-sewn grommets, giving us a chance to keep those skills alive. UPS delivered the sails to New England, Florida, the Midwest, California, and the Pacific Northwest. We have 11 new commissions on the books to launch us into the rest of the year.

Wiki Whoppers

The unusual rig shown here is essentially the same as the one described below. It comes from Sam Rabl’s 1947 “Boat Building in Your Own Back Yard.” The way the cloths are laid in the main prompted numerous letters from readers complaining their sailmakers had never seen a sail cut like that. In a 1958 second edition, Rabl snapped back “When I was a kid many skiff sails were cut thus.” Could be, but the iron rule about orienting cloths is they can meet the edges supported on a spar or stay (head, luff, foot) on the bias, but MUST be parallel or perpendicular to the leech. A rule ignored by the anonymous and unedited author of the Wikipedia article on “Sails.” Modern sails, he says, “are designed such that the warp and weft of the cloth are oriented parallel to the luff and foot of the sail. This places the most stretchable axis of the cloth parallel to the leech. . .” Fascinating! Elsewhere, in a Wiki article on “Reefing” we are told that “rows of cringles, called reef points, may be placed above the foot . . .” Startling! (To sort out cringles and points, see the self-edited article “About Reefing” on our “Appendices” page. Let us know if you find any errors.)

Plastic Classic

“All the qualities of wood, and none of the drawbacks. All the qualities of fiberglass, and none of the drawbacks.” That’s the claim for this Chesapeake Bay crabbing skiff, based on a 1905 model drawn by Howard Chapelle, being hand-crafted with sheets of cellular PVC for Virginian George Harrison. The rig is to be a club-clewed sprit-boomed main, with a clubbed jib set flying on the bowsprit. As a suitable match for the old design built in space-age materials, Mr. Harrison has specified a similar mix for the sails -- space-age Dacron, in the form of 5.5 oz cream cloth, adorned with rat-tailed faux Manila boltropes, hand-sewn rings, and brass grommets for lacing to spars. The builder is Eric Hedberg, who, after years of making and working on wooden boats, has turned to replicating traditional Bay workboats in plastic. You can read more about cellular PVC boats, and see some examples -- including a beautiful Hooper Island sharp-tailed sharpie -- at his website: www.rionholdt.com.

Restoration

The first day of Summer finds us making traditional sails for this pretty 17’ 7” Pete Culler vee-bottom daysailer, designed in the 1960’s. Her new owner, Dale Stevens, found her wearing an aluminum mast with spreaders, stays, and shrouds, borrowed from somewhere -- a pretty egregious misfit. He wanted a little more sail area than the original rig, leg-o-mutton main with Bahamian-style headboard, so adapted a gaff main from a similar Culler hull, an 18’ 8” Buzzards Bay Sloop. Dale is turning out the wood spars, which should be no trick for a high-end carpenter and building contractor. He chose a very soft 5.5oz low-aspect Challenge sailcloth for the 138 sq ft main and 48 sq ft jib. Construction to be vertical cut, two reefs in the main, jib set flying.

Designed from Memories

Eighteen years ago Californian Ken Link sold the family’s 56-foot wooden Bermuda-rigged schooner. Now that the kids are grown and out of college, he has designed and built a trailerable daysailer, based on recollections of boats he remembers from his youth -- six-meter class, Dragons, and photos of 1900’s knockabouts. Construction is strip composite with Alaskan cedar, West epoxy, and bronze fastenings. The generous rig is balanced by a lead keel. Between designing and building, the project consumed 5 years. The sail plan shows a 186 sq ft gaff main and 85 sq ft masthead jib. Sails to reflect the style of the design’s antecedents: classic cream cloth, rat-tailed boltrope, traditional patches, and bronze and brass hardware.

Junk Rig

Chinese lug (junk) sails always have a small following among boaters in the Western world. Several designers have more or less specialized in Chinese sails adapted to Western hulls. Tom Colvin put them on Chesapeake Bay Sharpie hulls; Jay Benford has drawn a number of dory-style hulls with junk rig. Blondie Hasler in the UK popularized the rig on his converted Folkboat “Jester,” which has cris-crossed the Atlantic for years. One of my new commissions is a Hasler-type junk fores’l for a schooner-rigged vintage fiberglass hull. The client plans offshore voyaging. The illustration, from Hasler and McLeod’s “Practical Junk Rig,” will be my guide for details. Junk sails are perfectly flat -- no broad seaming or panel shaping allowed -- but pretty labor intensive because of all the batten pockets and details around the edges. Also on the docket for the summer of 2010: Lugs’l and jib for a Matinicus peapod, sprits’l for a 14-ft flattie, gaff main and jib for a Pete Culler daysailer, and a club-clewed sprit-boomed main and balance club jib for an 18-ft Chesapeake Bay crab skiff.

Digital Database

Small-boat designs popularized in WoodenBoat have always been responsible for a significant percentage of Dabbler Sails’ work. The magazine has been a prime source of information and data ever since the loft started up nineteen years ago. But my collection only went back to issue 100 (when I began advertising there), and it has often occurred that a customer was commissioning a sail for a design described in those first hundred issues. That rankled. Sure, I had the sail plan, but sail plans don’t tell the whole story. Photos and/or details of the boat provide inspiration, and it’s sometimes possible to pick up an impression that contributes to a better sail. Now, suddenly, the digital age to the rescue. That little gadget in the photo, a flash drive that plugs into your computer, has all 200 plus (up to the date of purchase) issues of WB, in PDF’s, complete with a superior index. Turn pages one by one, or zip to a specific article. Enlarge any detail or text you want to focus on. Print out the data you need. I now keep the gadget plugged in, and check out new queries to see if WB had anything to say about that design. I gave about 100 lbs of paper WB’s to a friend. In my spare time I browse all those early issues.

Dabbler Ducks

When the box of duck logos gets nearly empty, it’s time to break out the silk-screen rig, cut up some scrap sailcloth, slop on the ink, ply the squeegee, and produce a batch of about 50. After they air dry, they get ironed to “set” the water-based ink, and cut out into circles with the heat knife. Only about 50 because logo making is tedious -- not half the fun of making sails. That’s enough for 25 sails -- one for the sail, one for the sailbag. If it weren’t for the accident that the duck can only appear on the port side of the sail (he’d be flying backwards on the starboard side) we’d need 75 logos for 25 sails and bags. My wife styled our duck after those on ancient Egyptian frescoes. Dabbler ducks are the ones that frequent shallow water, tip up their fannies to feed off bottom growth, and take off in a vertical leap. Mallards are the common dabblers. Others are widgeons, teal, wood ducks, and pintails. “Dabbler” was the name of our first catboat, befitting a shallow-draft design. Also fitting for the traditional small craft we cater to, most of which busy themselves in shallow waters.

Old Gaffer

Naval architect Frederick William Goeller, Jr. designed this sprightly 14-ft daysailer before the first world war. Rudder magazine published the plans in Volume 32, Number 11, November 1916. Goeller intended her primarily as a trainer for youngsters. Two mast steps were provided, allowing the boat to be rigged as a cat or sloop. The design was immediately popular, because the Sea Mew was inexpensive to build, relatively uncomplicated, and just right for backyard builders. The magazine was swamped with requests for detailed construction plans. A California sailing club ordered a small fleet of them from a local yard. Other fleets sprang up, for junior sailing programs and class racing. One of backyard builders who ordered plans was my friend and neighbor Nick England, who got around to building her in 1986. He sold her a few years ago, and she passed through several hands until the present owner decided it was time for a new suit of sails. Nick loaned me the original gaff sloop sail plan so I can get the dimensions right. (The tattered mailing envelope, with 6 large sheets of blueprints, still has the original postage on it -- 5 cents!) The boat is currently on a trailer, due to be towed out to a new home in Arizona for some lake sailing. Sails will be 5 oz low-aspect Dacron, with narrow panels, traditional patches, roping, and other details suitable to the design’s age.

Sharptown Barge

Cap’t R.D.“Pete” Culler’s elegant 24’ flattie “Sharptown Barge” is a dream boat for the traditional sailmaker, sporting a balanced club jib, sprits’l main, and sprit-boomed leg-o-mutton mizzen. Stephen LeQuire came across the design in the ’80’s, and bought a set of plans. Stashed them away, rediscovered them two decades later, and built her. Culler specified “boat drill, vertical cut, Cuprinol treated” for the sails. Dabbler Sails was fresh out of boat drill, treated or untreated, so we agreed on Oceanus Ship’s Cloth. Stephen towed the just-finished Barge down from his home in North Carolina to the 2009 (20th annual) Georgetown, SC Wooden Boat Show, where, to his surprise, she took first prize in the sail category. “There were many boats there far more refined than mine. But the judges weren’t impressed by varnish and polish as much as a whale of a good design and perfect sails.” (There’s no such thing a perfect sail Stephen, but thank you for the flattery.)

Sea Wind Revisited

The current owners of this 1966 Allied Seawind Ketch, aboard which my wife and I spent many happy years cruising the Eastern Seaboard, Bermuda, and Caribbean, are in process of restoring her down in Mobile, Alabama. Amanda and Robert found her in very sad shape at a local marina, more or less abandoned, with water over the floorboards, rails torn off, pulpits smashed, spars lying in a tangle on deck. They are now well along with her restoration, and recently commissioned a mule like the one in the photo (which we invented for her) -- the original sail didn’t survive hurricanes and intermediate ownerships. We’ve been following Amanda and Robert’s attentions to the old girl with great interest, and the invitation to contribute directly to her rebirth is a welcome opportunity. The miter-cut sail is set flying on a wire luff, with a half-wishbone spar (out of sight on the starboard side of the sail) tied in. The half-wishbone functions like a sprit boom, and makes the sail self tending. A detailed description of the mule rig appeared in the March, 1980 issue of SAIL magazine. An abridged version is on our Appendices page, under Published Articles. Sea Wind is shown here in 1979, lying off an abandoned Coast Guard station up in Maine. We had left the mule set to damp roll, as an annoying swell was coming into the anchorage.

Dragonfly

This photo appeared recently (as a black & white) in Messing about in Boats magazine, one of the publications where Dabbler Sails advertises. I thought it looked familiar. Sure enough, rummaging through a file of snapshots sent by customers over the years, there it was. Ed Hammer designed and built the two-person sailing kayak in 2004. He called her the Dragonfly. He and his wife Sue live near the Parker River in Newbury, Massachusetts, in a “little hunting cottage” they restored. An adventurous couple. They have also restored a Gloucester fishing boat, and lived aboard that for a year. Also restored a houseboat the family uses as a retreat on the river. Describing the Dragonfly, Sue wrote it has “beautiful sails made by Dabbler in Virginia.” That made my day. Thank you Sue.

Narrow Waters

This nice review of one of my wife’s books just came to our attention. Appeared in the print magazine Northern Breezes, and the on-line version at www.sailingbreezes.com. Written by the publisher, Thom Burns, and elegantly illustrated with a montage of Dee’s art work. If you want to read the fine print, and see this scanned copy in the luminous colors of a computer screen, just search for “Narrow Waters” on Thom’s site. Dee participates in Dabbler Sails loft affairs as general inspector and quality advocate. Helps the sailmaker get all the dimensions right when lofting, checks every sail over before it goes out the door, and encourages adherence to high standards. She also copyreads posts on this web site, so I have to watch what I say here. Her many years on the water, in a variety of traditional sailing vessels, give her an appreciation of how sails work and how they should look. Descriptions of this and Dee’s other books appear on our Pen & Ink Press page.