Launchings

Neal Goman of Minneapolis, Minnesota, built this 12′ Wood Duck Hybrid kayak from plans by by Chesapeake Light Craft.

This is a photo of my wife using her kayak on hyena Pere Marquette River in Michigan in the fall. I built two of them from plans bought from CLC.

Floridian Mark Nye recently built and launched this 14′ long Petrel Play kayak.  Mark spent just under 135 hours, spread over five months,on the construction of this stitch-and-glue kit. He stained some of the hull pieces prior to construction of highlight the hull’s puzzle joints.

At The Folk School of Fairbanks, Alaska, last August, a group of students and their instructors, Andy Reynolds and Bruce Campbell, built a 12′6″ Stand-up Paddleboard in a little over two weeks.

Bruce Lemon designed this 17' Aleutian Baidarka skin-on-frame kayak, built by Charles Hall of Salt Lake City, UT. He made the frames from bent oak lashed to Douglas fir stringers. The skin is a synthetic canvas sewn together on top and around the canvas coaming. He used no glue or screws.

After a couple of years owning and extensively sailing our 12′ Westphal catboat on Biscayne Bay, we decided we needed a larger day sailor. Unfortunately, the classic day sailor market is pretty limited in South Florida and as we couldn’t find anything we liked, the answer obvious: build one.

Rob Hess launched this Cosine Wherry designed by John Hartsock on June 30, 2002. He rows and motors WINNIE around the waters of Webster, NY.

Jerry Stein of Neenah, Wisconsin, built this 15′ canoe, a Hiawatha design by Bear Mountain Boats, and shown in Canoecraft, by Ted Moores. He built the hull from western red cedar and ash, then sheathed it with fiberglass cloth, inside and out.

Jason Corsini of Quiet Waters Boatworks in Riva, MD built this beautiful example of Cerny Yacht Design’s Hill 16. Using a unique strip plank method and sheathed in fiberglass, she is lightweight, dry, and seaworthy while powered with a 40 horsepower outboard.

Twelve years ago, Bill Burns and his sons rescued an old cedar skiff that was being used as a lawn ornament in Oriental, North Carolina. The started restoring the 16′ skiff by replacing some rotted areas, including most of the transom.