Some years ago I wrote an article for the Bulletin in two parts, describing about two dozen different boats I had owned. At the conclusion I said that because of my curiosity where small boats were concerned I expected there would be more to come. In fact my 'consumption' of boats slowed up once I had my Roamer. At the time of the article I owned an aluminium Canadian canoe, a cold moulded 13 foot lug rigged canoe yawl and the Roamer. The little yawl was a trifle delicate for knock-about use and I tired of aluminium so I replaced them both with one of McNulty's little 10' clinker lug rigged dinghies. Built of larch on oak it was robust yet light in weight. I bought it from its first owner who lived on the bank of the Thames. It leaked at first when allowed to dry out, but once I had got some salt water Canoe Yawl into it stayed tight throughout the average winter. I put this down to the hygroscopic property of salt which never allowed it to dry entirely thereafter.

I grew quite fond of this boat but there was no denying that it was slow. A passage of a dozen miles seemed to take all day. Although size had something to do with it, it was also under canvassed. It was at its best with a steady force 5. Wishing to experiment with a sprit rig I had one made of somewhat larger area than the lug. This improved it no end but the waterline length of a 10 foot hull still made it too slow for sea work. I sold it to someone for use in the lake district. I have written enough about my Roamer so will merely reiterate that I consider it the best cruising dinghy available, the worse the weather the truer this becomes. As my body has got older and stiffer I have tended to lose my appetite for sleeping in small boats. This has meant that the superb passage making capability of the Roamer became largely wasted. As I trail, launch and recover for every outing, I thought that as I no longer needed its seaworthiness there must be better boats for my purpose. My Roamer is now owned by a careful owner and enjoys regular use on the east coast.

When I retired five years ago I set up a building frame in the back of the car-port next to my workshop. On it I have built four boats and converted one. The first was a delicate little double paddle open clinker canoe designed by Lain Oughtred called 'Wee Rob'. With seven strakes per side and only 28" beam it was painstaking work but rewarding to look upon. My previous experience was all of the single bladed Canadian type and I found having to hold the weight of a double paddle the whole time rather “Wee Rob” hard work. I was using a mass-produced plastic paddle so I built a nice spoon bladed one of silver spruce. This was better but I decided that the saying about old dogs was too accurate so it had to go. I had built all the sailing gear for it but was not so enthusiastic about its stability that I was prepared to fork out for the actual sail. I sold the canoe to a jumbo jet pilot who already had one of lain's 'Acorn' pulling dinghies.

Intrigued by the challenge of converting a suitable racing dinghy to cruising I looked around for a suitable candidate. The sight of the lines of the International Finn in a book convinced me I had found what I was looking for. I was not disappointed. I described the work in an article a couple of years ago so will spare the detail here. The Bicky Finn is undoubtedly the 'sailingest' dinghy I have ever owned. She is remarkably close winded even with a mizzen. On two occasions I have been approached by strangers after a sail asking me how can she sail so close to the wind. The answer of course is mainly the cat rig; but my sailmaker and Rickard Sarby the designer must have had something to do with it. Going to windward against a chop she does not throw as much water over you as might be expected, as the beautiful long bow causes a minimal bow wave. Even with its original rig it does not plane as easily as most racing dinghies, but her directional stability when sailing fast in rough water is most endearing. With a fresh wind aft or on the quarter, she will often hang giddily over the crest of a wave with the forward half of the hull in mid air for seconds at a time, yet never feel like broaching. Then down goes the bow and she shoots forward like an arrow, often storming straight up and over the next wave without stopping her exhilarating charge. Never does she feel out of control but one must keep a hand on the tiller at all times. Then if one feels tired; one rounds up into the wind, mizzen sheet in tight and helm down. Like a seabird with it head under its wing she lies quietly while one sits on the bottom boards and sips one's coffee. The self-stowing gear for the CQR anchor is one of my more successful creations. It would otherwise be too difficult to get forward under the boom and past the mast to handle it. The only fault she has is that she is not good for rowing. This would undoubtedly be improved by a skeg, but I never have to row her apart from the need to leave a launching ramp, so the fitting is not a priority in my case. I thought the unstayed mast might be a problem to step. In fact after the first couple of times I never found any difficulty. The American yacht designer L. Francis Herreshoff designed a fifteen foot single sailed dinghy for his own use called 'So and So'. It is similar in concept to a Finn with less beam, but had an alternative Bunter rig. Nevertheless I am not prepared to spend time and money on another rig for her. In any case the present sail and bendy mast are so well suited that I should be worried about spoiling her character.

I will digress to mention a boat which I and a friend owned for several years and which was very successful in its own way. I was concerned with two large area of island saltmarsh on which the populations of various water birds were monitored. During the winter wildfowling took place. It could not be reached on foot except at low water. In order to visit it one had to spend the whole tide out on the marsh This was OK in summer but in winter it meant that the walk took place in the dark either inwards or outwards, sometimes both. As one gets older this trudge taking perhaps three quarters of an hour over soft going wearing thigh waders and carrying a load of gear gets harder. A boat kept on a half tide mooring is the answer. Our boat started life as one of Freezer's speed boats and was built of riveted aluminium. It was round bilged 14 feet long with a small foredeck and windscreen. We used it with a hand-steered motor of 15 hp which could give 6-16 knots depending on load. We carried the engine across the mud to the mooring slung on a yoke between the two of us. As is the way of estuaries the seas kicked up by wind and tide, though not high, are steep. We had used conventional dinghies of 9 and 12 feet in the past. The difference in comfort and safety of the 14 feet speedboat was well worthwhile. The extra size helps of course but the speedboat type of bow deflects the water away from the boat when travelling at 8+ knots. Most designers would agree that under power slow boats are the wettest. Of course in very bad conditions one has to slow down. Some people doubt the longevity of aluminium in salt water. We had no trouble with the hull plating, but the rivets started rotting off after several years. I imagine there was some slight difference in the alloys and this caused slow galvanic action. We replaced them with pop rivets which of course have holes through them; however we painted the bottom with pine tar. This also showed some anti-fouling properties. On occasions this boat would carry four men with their dogs and gear. This was OK in smooth water or in daylight. On a couple of occasions in the dark of a winter's night we were pooped over the quarter being unable to see which waves were dangerous. Frantic use of the pump prevented disaster - it would have been impossible to bail using a bucket, at night with 24 legs in the way!

A couple of years ago I began to miss the marshes and built one of Selway Fisher's designs of garvie of 11' 6". The shape is of a flat bottomed pram but with a strongly rockered bottom. This rowed and sailed very much better than one would imagine from its description. The only mistake I made was to stay with the original dagger board. When used with a motor water would gush up through the case. The sprit rig from the McNulty fitted this boat to perfection. Thirty years ago one could leave a small boat on a lonely estuary mooring and nobody would ever touch it, apart from bailing it out for you if they thought it was getting waterlogged. If we found a boat adrift we used to haul it up onto the saltings and tie it to a stick, where its owner would be able to see it. Nowadays it is necessary to padlock a boat to its chain and to take its gear ashore. As a result the effort of carrying mast, sail, dagger board, rudder, tiller, oars, rowlocks and anchor over the mud has made the half-tide mooring for an open boat less attractive. Accordingly my garvie is up for grabs.

After the Finn conversion, looking for a boat that would have a reasonable performance under oars, sails or motor I decided to build a Swampscott dory. They were the longshore fishermens' standard beach boat on parts of the New England coast. Excellent load carriers, good in surf and seakindly; they are well described in American nautical books. Narrow flat bottom but with clinker rounded sides they are quite different from the Bank dory used for cod fishing from schooners. They retain the narrow 'tomb stone' (transom) of the Bank type making it virtually a double-ender. The cutaway of this is so steep that it could not possibly carry an outboard, so an interior well is the normal method for fitting an engine. The boat design I chose was another of lain Oughtred's. I built it with four strakes per side instead of the three as drawn. Although he shows several different interior arrangements for this dory, from completely open for rowing only to part decking dagger board sailing, none of them suited my ideas. I ended up with well decks fore and aft which enclose buoyancy/storage compartments.

I borrowed a good design of centreboard from John Gardner's 'The Dory Book' in place of the dagger board. lain is not keen on motors so his design of motor well was pretty useless being far too shallow. I gave it the proper depth of 15" and used the piece cut out from the bottom to include in a box which fits the well exactly. It has two damps to hold it down against its own buoyancy. The motor sits on pads on the rear well deck when not in use. The dory reaches its maximum speed with an outboard of 3 hp. This is quite impressive as the stem wave then follows the slope of the stem and emerges as a swell of water just behind the top of the tombstone. 16' long and 4' 5" beam means that it is never going to need much sail, nor carry it, but I started off by using the sprit sail from the McNulty. This mast and sail has now been used on three boats. To ensure this I made all of them with 2 7/8" mast partners and a mast step to take a 1/2" pin. The trouble with sprit rigs is that it is normal for the sail to be permanently laced to the mast. When one wants to take the sail down one rolls up the sail with the mast and sprit and lowers the whole lot into the boat. On a stable hull this is no problem but in the bows of a dory it feels a bit tippy although I used this rig for a year or so. I therefore had a new sail made that can be used as a standing or balanced lug. This feels much safer though I have a feeling that it is not such an efficient sail. The trouble with a long slim boat with a steep transom is that you end up with a very long tiller. I used a rope mainsheet horse but often got tangled up when changing tacks. With the sprit rig you merely take the sheet round a pin on a pin rail on each gunwale. As I still have the pin rails I have rigged my lug sail sheet in this way and saved my sanity. The classic way of propelling a Swampscott however, is by rowing. I made up a balanced pair of 8' oars to one of Peter Culler's designs using first grade builders softwood which I hand picked and they turned out light and lively. I got the leather from my local saddler and attached the leathers according to current thinking i.e. lacing them on to avoid the tack holes that are supposed to weaken the oar. Talking the matter through with an old boatbuilder we thought perhaps that it was the holes that ran round the loom of the oar that did the damage and that those that ran lengthwise could not hurt much. Certainly the lacing “Maisie Lou” is not particularly decorative and I don't propose to use it in the future. It is probably due to my faulty technique but I always find my oars try to walk outboard when I am rowing.

The old type of leather collar to prevent this was nailed on and the plastic version is fairly useless. However I am pleased to say that I have solved the problem, at least to my own satisfaction. I made up a hardwood button for each oar, about 3/4" diameter by about the same in height. A hole in the centre takes a wood screw which fastens it at the top of the leather. The button should be towards you when you are rowing. This button tends to wear on the horn of the rowlock so I am looking for a plastic version. Probably one of those knobs that are attached to the bottom of holdalls for their protection would work well. I tend to treat the Swampscott as a rowing boat, carrying the engine if I have a distance to go. The sailing rig I take if I expect conditions to be moderate. I get many admiring comments when I am rowing her - her looks not my rowing! There is no way that I would wish to sleep in the dory even if a long enough flat space could be found. Although I have done some short cruises in her I slept ashore on those occasions. Her only fault is that I haven't left any space in her for a passenger. The buoyancy compartments use up the space where fore and aft thwarts were. The centreboard case takes up room where another thwart could be. I have taken another person on board but they have to sit forward with the mast partners digging into their kidneys. She is a very nice boat for spending a day afloat, either pottering about an estuary or away from other humans well out to sea. With three equally efficient methods of propulsion you can cope with most weather, push her over mud banks or lie at anchor snoozing the day away. She launches easily from beach or trailer.

When I was in Vermont a couple of years ago I picked up a book in a village store on how to build a strip cedar Canadian canoe. There was a lovely little 14' canoe in it for a single paddler that caught my fancy, with half scale mould drawings included. I built it during the winter of '95 - '96. I thought that I would be able to use it on a local river when the weather was too bad to go to sea. This hasn't quite worked out as it is as susceptible to side winds as you might expect of a Canadian without a keel. Being a Maine guide and a white water man the designer sneered at canoes with keels so I built it without. It might get one yet, as it need only be 3/4" deep. When I see it lying by the river bank on a summer's day, it recalls the beginning of one of O'Henry's essays on the pleasures of loafing - "Put into a punt some favourite tobacco, four pipes so that one may always be cool and twelve boxes of matches so that one may always be to hand..." Included in the canoe book was the design for a lightweight paddle built of the same strip cedar and ash. I built two of different lengths and they are without doubt the nicest paddles I have ever used. The snag in building this canoe was the cost. At 45 lbs it is the lightest, yet apart from my Roamer, the most expensive craft I have ever built. The explanation is the cost of two dear timbers, cedar and ash, and the price of epoxy and glass.

Well, that's a few more under my belt. I have an idea for the next one I shall build - but I'll have to sell a couple first or there won't be room in my boat-store!)